Chapter 45
Bloch
Bloch waited.
Bloch watched.
The wind gathered speed.
The tree branches swayed. The foliage rustled.
And . . .
The black tires of a gray panel van rumbled over the gravel outside the East Hampton house.
Slow, unhurried. The driver was a tall young man with blond hair so light that it was almost white.
The man in the front passenger seat was older, smaller too, judging by how low he was in the seat, with dark hair.
The van came to a stop. The passenger door opened.
The small man with black hair got out and his boots crunched their way up to the front porch.
He wore gray coveralls, way too big for him.
At least, they were once gray, and maybe he’d lost weight.
The overalls were covered in different colors of paint, mostly pale but some yellows, greens and reds too, and the same smattering of paint was on his boots.
He had a hard face, weathered and full of experience.
His sleeves were rolled up to reveal thick forearms. For a small man, he was well put together.
Not stocky, but thick. Years of working paint brushes and rollers will build a certain physique.
The sticker on the side of the van said Perfect Finish, We Paint Houses.
The small man walked up the porch steps as Corbett opened the front door to greet him.
‘You took your time,’ said Corbett. ‘I think he’s finishing up in the kitchen, but he’s made a goddamn mess of the wall. Look, our client is super important to us, so we need you to match the paint and make sure it looks like nothing happened in there. You got it?’
‘Got it,’ said the small man as he took blue gloves from his hip pocket and put them on. ‘So the guy’s finished?’
‘Almost,’ said Corbett. ‘I saw him packing up about ten minutes ago.’
‘Is the owner here?’
‘No, just those two. The realtor and the investigator from the wife’s law firm. They’re getting the house valued and their valuer was checking for dry rot or some shit. It looks terrible. We can’t risk pissing off this client.’
The tall, blond driver got out of the panel van.
Bloch had been wrong when she’d assumed he was tall.
When he stood on the gravel, his head was above the roof of the van.
He was gigantic. Thin and wildly pale, like a corpse that had been stretched on a rack.
His overalls and boots were similarly stained with paint and were comically too small.
The bottom of the pants swayed around his ankles, three inches from the top of his boots.
He walked around the van and opened the sliding side doors to reveal tarpaulin wrapped in rope, buckets and brushes, aluminum poles and lots of large paint cans inside.
Another man climbed over the cans in the back and leapt out onto the gravel. Average height, shaven head. Tattoos from his neck snaking up behind his ears. Tanned and muscular.
The giant picked up the tarpaulin, tossed it aside and lifted a roll of thick blue rubber sheeting out and dumped it onto the gravel. He then took a five-gallon bucket of paint by the metal handle and together they walked over to the porch.
Following him, the bald man hauled the rubber sheet over, then dumped it on the porch and rolled it out.
Corbett stood by the open door, the small dark-haired man beside him.
The tall blond put the bucket on the porch and opened it.
From inside he took out a length of rope, which he placed in his teeth, and then he took a roll of plastic garbage bags from his pocket.
He tore off a bag, opened it and then whipped it through the air, fanning it out, and walked around the porch, coming up behind Corbett.
‘How long is this going to take?’ asked Corbett.
The small man said, ‘Not long at all.’
The giant flung the bag over Corbett’s head, cinching it tight at the neck. Corbett’s arms flailed uselessly, his cries muffled. The giant then took the rope from his teeth, and wrapped it round Corbett’s neck, holding the bag in place.
The small man casually drew a silenced pistol from his overalls and shot Corbett once in the head.
But his body didn’t drop. The tall man, his fists holding the rope around Corbett’s neck, ducked low and turned and then leaned forward, hauling Corbett’s body up so that it rested on him, back to back, so he was carrying Corbett. The giant’s fists clenched over his left shoulder, holding the rope.
Suspended on the back of the giant, Corbett’s feet dangled in mid-air.
The small man with the pistol watched the front door, listening to any movement inside.
‘Hurry up,’ he said.
On command, the bald man bent down and undid Corbett’s right shoe and then took off his sock. He brought the five-gallon bucket over and rested Corbett’s bare foot inside it. Then he produced a knife and sliced the sole of his foot.
Blood hissed into the bucket.
‘Keep him steady,’ said the bald man.
Makes sense, thought Bloch.
A recently deceased human still has a high-pressure blood system inside them.
The heart would still beat for a few seconds, even after brain death, and there are no major arterial sprays from the bullet wound in the skull to alleviate that pressure.
They were using gravity to drain the system.
After ten seconds, the bald man took the still-bleeding foot out of the bucket, but the blood flow had drastically reduced.
The giant arched his back, dumped Corbett’s body on the tarpaulin.
The bald man took something from his pocket and gave it to the giant: a fine wire, maybe four feet long, with what appeared to be corkscrew handles on each end, like a garrote.
But this wasn’t a garrote.
The bald man drew a gun from his coveralls, and stood beside the small dark-haired man. Each of them fell into a firing and moving stance, pistol grip supported by both hands as they entered the house.
The giant looped the wire completely around Corbett’s neck, then stood over him, both handles in his hands, maybe twelve inches in front of Corbett’s face.
The giant put a huge boot on Corbett’s chest, then pulled on his right hand, which lowered his left.
Then pulled on his left, which lowered his right.
It was a pump-action motion, which drew the wire back and forth across the entire surface of Corbett’s neck in a sawing motion.
The giant pumped his fists, faster and faster, the loop of razor wire tightening.
Within five seconds, Bloch heard a whine from the steel sawing through bone.
Less than ten seconds. The giant reached down, picked up the bag containing Corbett’s severed head and placed it in the bucket.
He had some blood spotting on his hands, but not much.
Draining the arterial flow of blood first had cut down on the spray.
The giant then put the lid on the bucket, knelt down beside Corbett’s headless corpse and rolled him into the rubber mat.
He squatted and heaved the body onto his shoulder, then picked up the bucket with his other hand and walked to the van.
Total time since they’d arrived, less than three minutes.
It was efficient. Practiced. Smooth and unhurried. A quiet, clinical execution and dismemberment, as if these men were not dealing with a human being. They were body disposal operatives. Like men who had worked in a meat processing plant all of their lives.
This was human processing.
‘Jesus Christ, what have you got me into?’ whispered Raymond.
‘You got this on video?’ she whispered back.
Raymond, holding up his phone, nodded.
‘When you see a chance, get out of here on foot. Call Lake.’
Bloch put her index finger to her lips. Raymond had finished twenty minutes ago, but she’d told him to leave his equipment and follow her out the back doors of the kitchen, across the sand through the trees enclosing the property until she could get a good look at the entrance unobserved.
Just because Lake was paranoid didn’t mean they weren’t coming to get her.
She grabbed the long item lying beside her on the bed of rotten leaves.
Unwrapped it. Slowly, she made her way through the foliage of the evergreen trees surrounding the house.
As long as she kept the soft earth beneath her boots, the giant wouldn’t hear her coming.
The noise from the wind buffeting the trees would help.
The storm was coming in fast now.
His two friends, the short one and the bald one, would take two, maybe three minutes to clear the house. Maybe half that time had gone already.
Ninety seconds until they came around the side of the property, following her and Raymond’s footprints in the sand.
She had never seen these men before. Between Lake and Bloch, they had photographed and researched every single man on Patrick and Julian’s security team.
These three men were not part of that detail.
It was important to keep as many of them alive as possible. One of them would talk. One of them would confess to who had hired them.
The giant put down the bucket at the back of the van, opened the rear doors with his free hand and then, as he dumped Corbett’s body in the back, Bloch stepped onto the gravel.
He spun round, his eyes locked on what she held in her hands.
Bloch pointed the working end of a Beretta 1301 tactical shotgun at the giant.
Center mass.
Stock tucked tight to her shoulder. The Beretta fired with lower recoil than most models and its gas system fed the next round into the chamber automatically.
It was loaded with six twelve-gauge shells in Bloch’s preferred load out.
Two slugs, two buckshot, and then two slugs.
The slugs were for penetration, and the buckshot for stopping power.
At this range, Bloch could put a hole in the giant that would never be filled.
‘Hands in the air,’ she said.
In thirty seconds, the small man and his bald friend would emerge from the left side of the house, pistols drawn, looking for targets, pissed and high on adrenaline. When that happened, she needed to be somewhere else, under cover and silent so she could pick them off without being seen.
The giant was unarmed. She had to take him down quickly and quietly. And make sure he could talk.
But he wasn’t following her instruction.
His arms hung by his sides like legs of beef on a meat hook.
‘Hands up. On your knees. Now,’ said Bloch.
The giant didn’t move.
He just stared at her, almost as if he was wondering if he could break the shotgun in half before he got to her.
Five feet between them.
Twenty seconds until Bloch had company.
Her eyes flitted, half a second, no more, to the house and then back to the giant.
He was big, but not stupid. He knew he had back-up on the way.
All he had to do was delay.
Should she risk stepping closer to him, to take him out quietly? And maybe having to wrestle him for control of the shotgun.
Or pull the trigger and give away her position to two armed men hunting her and Raymond?
There was no safe option here. Two choices. Both high risk.
What was the right choice?
She now had eighteen seconds to decide.