Blackout

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  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF CAMPBELL ARMSTRONG

  “Campbell Armstrong is thriller writing’s best-kept secret.” —The Sunday Times

  “Armstrong is among the most intriguing of blockbuster writers … near to unputdownable.” —GQ

  “While touching on suspense with a skill to please hard-core thriller addicts, he manages to please people who … warm to readable novels of substance.” —Daily Mail

  “Armstrong’s skill is not just an eye for a criminally good tale but a passion for the people that will populate it.” —The Scotsman

  “Subtle and marvelous … This is a dazzling book.” —The Daily Telegraph on Agents of Darkness

  “A consummate psychological thriller … Without doubt, Armstrong is now in the front rank of thriller writers.” —Books on Heat

  “Armstrong has outdone both Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett.” —James Patterson on Jig

  “A full throttle adventure thriller.” —The Guardian on Mambo

  “A wonderful puzzle that keeps us guessing right to the end.” —Publishers Weekly on Mazurka

  Blackout

  Campbell Armstrong

  For Roy Stevenson,

  fisherman, bookman, friend,

  and for Stephen Black for his help

  This stuff will probably kill you

  Let’s do another line

  – Tom Waits, Heartattack & Vine

  1

  The jackrabbit, frozen in terror by the headlights of the car, appeared abruptly out of nowhere. Samsa – even if he knew it was completely the wrong response in heavy rain, that a jackrabbit’s life wasn’t worth a nickel in the larger scheme of things – slammed his foot hard on the brake.

  Pure blind instinct.

  The car went immediately into a searing skid on the slick blacktop and plunged off the road down an incline, overturning. Samsa found himself suddenly in a jarring upside-down world, an inversion of black sky and black rain glittering in the headlights, the passenger door bursting open and the girl screaming as she fell out, as if she’d been sucked into another dimension.

  The girl. Oh, dear Christ.

  He twisted the wheel, imagining there might be some corrective maneuver he could perform, but the car kept sliding on its roof across greasy terrain. Only the buckled seat belt, digging into his chest, kept him in place. The hazard lights came on, blinking and clicking crazily, and the Billie Holiday tune playing on the tape deck slurred to a halt. He heard the malevolent roar of the useless engine, and the wheels spinning overhead as the car scudded along. A half-empty vodka bottle shattered the windshield, and Samsa had the frightening impression he was seeing the night through an opaque clutter of plastic packing pods, or in a spidery dream that obscured a terrifying mystery.

  There was a stabbing pain in the region of his shoulder and the seat belt felt like a band of iron. But these sensations came to him dimly because of a whine deep inside his skull, and his heart was very loud, and he could still hear the echo of the girl’s scream and feel wet air flood through the open passenger door. The car churned up soil and kept plowing forward and Samsa thought for the first time of a possible explosion, a punctured gas-tank, an electrical spark from somewhere, and boom.

  Because of a goddam jackrabbit traumatized by headlights, because of some misbegotten respect he’d entertained for the sanctity of life, here he was in this upturned car, fighting panic and powerlessness and wondering how far the car might travel before it finally ground to a halt, or whether it would combust first. Stricken by an assortment of acute fears, he groped for the seat belt with the idea he could free himself and open his door and roll out of the vehicle, but he was fumbling, and his hands couldn’t work the buckle, and the car was shuddering in a way that suggested it was about to fall apart in a disconnected series of bits and pieces, broken wing mirrors, hubcaps, misshapen engine parts. He imagined a field strewn with such things, like the horrific wreckage left by an airplane that had fallen out of the sky. Bodies burned beyond recognition. The sifting of charred bones.

  He thought, I’m dying, this is it. Big time. Blood zoomed to his head, an almighty roaring.

  And then it was over, the car struck something hard and spun round once and stopped. The engine died. Samsa clawed free of the seat belt and slid out into the rain.

  Smoke hissed through the shattered radiator grill. The headlights, which somehow hadn’t died, picked out the shape of the tree the car had hit. A leafy branch, bark violently stripped and raw, lay across the chassis. On his back in the wet grass, Samsa moved away from the vehicle. He was aware of how the wheels still turned in diminishing whispers, and of the sound of rain falling through leaves, and the odd silence that lay in a spectral place just beneath these noises.

  He got to his feet. His legs trembled. The girl. Where was the girl?

  His mouth ached. He must have broken a tooth along the way, although he couldn’t remember how. He had to find the girl. Spitting out the gritty debris of the tooth, he walked the field in the direction of the blacktop, listening for some sound of her. But there was nothing except the goddam rain and mud sucking at his shoes.

  When he came to the foot of the incline where he’d skidded off the road he stopped. For a time he didn’t move, paralyzed by aftershock. His system shut down. A collapse was taking place inside. He shivered, closed his eyes, and the scary incident replayed itself in his head. He had to shake off this numbness and find the girl, nothing else mattered. He moved, lost his footing, went down in the grass. Pain penetrated his shoulder – a torn muscle, a dislocation maybe. He could tolerate that. He’d known worse. He got up again and called the girl’s name a couple of times.

  No answer.

  She’s unconscious somewhere nearby. Blacked out, lying in the warm rain. Yes.

  He felt the need to check the time, anchor himself in the familiar, the quantifiable. He glanced at his wristwatch, but the face was cracked and the hands bent and the luminous dots meant nothing. A wind came up and gathered the rain together and blew it directly into his eyes. Where was she – this girl he barely knew? He remembered her waiflike face and the detachment in her eyes and her long legs under the short blue velvet skirt, the white shoes with the thick clunky heels. He remembered how she’d drunk vodka like there was a new Prohibition Law about to be enacted. Sometimes she’d tried to make a fluting sound by pressing her lips against the neck of the bottle and blowing. He’d seen the shape of her mouth by the lights of the instrument panel and been distracted by it. Or enchanted. It didn’t matter which anymore. Because of that fucking demonic jackrabbit.

  ‘Say, where you taking me?’ she’d asked.

  And he’d talked vaguely about some place he knew, although in reality he wasn’t thinking of a particular destination. His head was filled with motels. A key to an unfamiliar bedroom, a double bed and white sheets, a corny painting hanging on the wall.

  His lightweight summer suit was soaked and clung to him like a second skin. He was oblivious to his discomfort. He was starting to experience another kind of panic now, different from the one he’d felt hanging upside down inside the car. This had its origins in a place less primal, that civilized intersection where you were supposed to know right from wrong. But he’d overridden all the internal controls that regulated everyday behavior. And now he wished he could turn the clock back to the point where he’d first decided to switch off these instruments and just go go go with his gut feelings and his needs.

  Jesus, his needs –

  He stumbled into her. She lay half submerged in a hollow of water maybe five or six inches deep. He bent down, gripped her by the shoulders and raised her up a little way. Rain fell into her short soft hair and ran down her face, and mascara tracks that resembled some kind of weird shorthand message slid across her cheeks. His throat was dry as cinder.

  There was a lawful procedure to follow, regulations to obey. He knew all that. You reported the accident and a cop duly arrived on the scene, and you uttered the details of the incident in the flashing glare of a patrol car’s roof lights.

  But he couldn’t do that.

  Not immediately.

  His shoulder throbbed. With the tip of his tongue he explored the stub of the broken tooth and tried to gather his thoughts, but they were in disarray.

  2

  ‘Take a pew, Lee,’ Jimmy Plumm said.

  Lee Boyle, who hated being ordered around, sat down. The room was lit only by a single green-shaded lamp on the desk, which had the effect of making Plumm appear like something you’d encounter on a bad trip. He had enormous glowing green eyebrows and shoulder-length hair the same color. He wore a faded monogrammed smoking jacket that had the look of a garment passed down from one generation to the next, as if to impart the impression of a decayed English aristocrat who’d sold off the family estates and hocked the crested silver years ago.

  Boyle knew better. He knew for a fact Plumm had been born and raised in Long Island. The closest he’d come to England was probably a travelogue about the Lake District on TV, or maybe some groveling documentary on the House of Windsor.

  Plumm said, ‘I do very much like that little gold doodah round your neck, Lee. Set you back a good sum, I imagine.’

  ‘I got it pre-owned,’ Boyle said.

  ‘Pre-owned, eh? Good shoes, too,’ Plumm remarked. ‘Top of the line, if I’m
not mistaken. Also used?’

  ‘Who wears used shoes?’ Boyle said. He didn’t like the notion of Plumm running an inventory. He considered it an invasion of his private space. Plus, the obvious subtext here was criticism of his spending money he didn’t have. And he didn’t need to hear that either.

  ‘Well, then,’ Plumm said. ‘Where exactly do we stand?’

  ‘Basically, I need more time,’ Lee Boyle said.

  Plumm raised one of the big eyebrows. ‘Let me guess. You’re going through a bad spell.’

  ‘Business sucks.’

  ‘If I believed every sob story I heard I’d hang one of those sweet little Gone Fishing signs on my door.’

  ‘I wasn’t giving you a sob story, Jimmy. I’m only saying there’s this cash flow problem, which is inconvenient and embarrassing.’ Boyle leaned forward in his chair. He knew Plumm found him attractive – gays were always drawn to his yellow-haired blue-eyed looks and his physique, the good Aryan template that probably fueled decadent fantasies of a sado-masochistic Nazi nature. But when it came to business, Plumm’s bottom line was cash. You owe. Pay up. Plumm’s equations were very simple and sometimes vicious.

  Plumm rose. He was massive, six-five at least, and broad-chested. He stepped round the front of his desk and looked at Boyle for a time. Rain swept against the window beyond the curtains. The summer night was profoundly foul.

  ‘You do have somebody you could ask, of course,’ Plumm said.

  Boyle shook his head. ‘Get real.’

  ‘I am being real. Very much so. Dear old Daddy.’

  ‘Dear old Daddy doesn’t talk to me,’ Boyle said.

  ‘I hate to hear of estrangements in families. A rapprochement would be in order, given the circumstances.’

  ‘Daddy doesn’t believe in forgiveness, Jimmy. You only get one chance with him, and if you fuck up you’re through. And I fucked up years ago as far as he’s concerned. End of story.’

  Plumm didn’t move for a while. He appeared to be considering the situation, sifting courses of action. Then he reached out and gripped Boyle’s upper lip between his thumb and index finger and pulled on it hard. Boyle felt himself being drawn forward, his face level with Plumm’s crotch. This was humiliating and disturbingly intimate. Nobody – nobody – treated him like this.

  ‘My advice is simple, friend. Go to good old Dad,’ and Plumm twisted the upper lip with nasty vigor, holding it a moment. Just as Boyle had had enough of this fiasco and was raising a hand with the intention of hammering Plumm’s fingers away, the big man released him.

  ‘What the fuck,’ Boyle said.

  ‘You don’t like physical?’ Plumm asked.

  ‘I prefer to choose who touches me. And I don’t remember giving you a free pass, Plumm. Don’t ever pull that kind of stunt again. I mean that.’ Boyle, who stored grudges the way some people accumulated price-saver coupons, sat back in his chair and thought murderous thoughts. He thought about the gun in his apartment, a Llama Compact .45 he kept stashed in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, concealed behind Almond’s tampons and toiletries, and he imagined pressing the barrel into this phony’s huge forehead just to watch the bozo sweat.

  ‘I was only trying to emphasize my point. Go see Daddy,’ Plumm said.

  ‘I already told you, Jimmy. No can do.’ Boyle’s lip hurt. ‘Daddy’s not Santa nowadays.’

  ‘Then Daddy and I have something in common,’ Plumm said. He sat behind his desk, opened a folder and lowered his head. Without looking up he added, ‘The sands of time are just running and running, love.’

  Love. ‘How fast are they running?’

  ‘Oh, let’s say three days, shall we? I’m in a charitable mood.’

  ‘Three days? Three whole days? Gee.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you have a problem with that.’ Plumm flapped a hand.

  Boyle realized he’d been dismissed just like a Domino’s delivery boy. He walked to the door and looked back. Plumm was making a scratchy sound on paper with a pretentious gold-nibbed fountain pen, like he was answering an invite to tea from an imaginary fucking duchess or something.

  Asshole.

  Seething, Boyle let himself out and stood at the top of the stairs. Through the glass panel of the door below he could see rain brightened by street lights. He went down quickly, two steps at a time. On the sidewalk he hauled his jacket up over his head and hurried through the downpour. Halfway along the block he ducked inside a bar called Chang’s, a big white-walled room decorated with pink plaster-of-Paris flamingoes, scores of them.

  Busy place. Escapees from the weather crowded the joint, cluttering all the available floor space and tables. Raincoats had been hung over some of the flamingoes. The air stank of damp clothing. Boyle scoped out the faces, recognized a couple of dopers looking strung-out, and a few small-time hoods planning low-grade scams that were doomed from conception. A bunch of losers.

  He eyed the women as he usually did. He didn’t see Almond anywhere. He pushed his way across the floor, tense, hands knotted. Plumm might be a faggot and a fraud, but that didn’t alter the fact he was a tumor inside Lee Boyle’s head and had to be excised somehow.

  He made it to the other side of the room, where he took a pack of Camel Lights from the pocket of his jeans and lit one with a Zippo on which his name was embossed. Almond had given him the lighter on his last birthday. She’d wrapped it in tissue and put it inside a little cardboard box with a ribbon stuck to it. ‘The big three-oh,’ she’d said at the time. ‘You’re getting up there, babe.’

  Where the hell was she? He touched his lip where Plumm had yanked it and he thought, Three days and counting. He gazed into the Zippo flame.

  A girl in tight leather pants stepped out of the toilets. ‘Hey, good-looking.’

  She had a gaunt face, a little heavy on the make-up. He knew her as Krystal with a K. Her real name was probably something like Darlene. She had an accent that might have been prairie.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Boyle asked.

  ‘I’m thinking you need, uh, like a snorkel to work in this weather. Maybe a tank of oxygen strapped to your back.’

  ‘Innovative stuff.’

  ‘I’m running,’ she said. ‘See you around.’

  ‘Say, Krystal. You seen Almond anywhere?’

  ‘I saw her yesterday, I think. Maybe the day before. I never keep track of time, Lee. You know me. I’m scattered.’

  Boyle watched the girl vanish in the crowd. He considered hanging around for a while, wait for Almond to show. Then he thought he’d go home instead. He made his way to the front door, working his elbows into a few spines and ignoring complaints – ‘Hey, buddy, watch where you’re going’ – with a scowl. His car was parked in an alley about a hundred yards away. He ran splashing through puddles. At the end of the alley a solitary light hung above the back door of a seafood restaurant, illuminating the black dumpsters where he’d left his old Porsche. He took the key from the pocket of his jeans. He didn’t see the man emerge from the cover of the doorway.

  ‘Lee.’

  Still cowled in his jacket, Boyle turned. The man stood under a black umbrella. He had a huge punched-out face and one bad eye that looked like somebody had used white-out on it. Tom Raseci, known as Bigshoes, was about the same height as his employer Plumm, except he’d gone to fat. He was carrying about 300 pounds of blubber.

  ‘What is this, Tom? I just talked with your lord and master. Didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘Fine car,’ Raseci said. ‘Classic.’

  ‘You want to make small talk in this weather? I’m going home.’

  ‘Not in that car you ain’t.’

  Boyle looked at Raseci. ‘Why? You intend to confiscate my vehicle as collateral, Tom?’

  Tom Raseci shook his head. ‘What I’m trying to say is, your car’s got a problem.’ He approached the vehicle, nodded at the front right tire. ‘You ask me, I’d say somebody came along and slashed it.’

  Boyle went down on one knee and fingered the soft rubber, feeling the ragged slit and getting angry. ‘Nice fucking work, Tom.’

  ‘You think I did that?’

  ‘Yeah, I think you figured a little vandalism might hassle me. Keep the heat on.’