WALKABOUT - Taking a Mulligan (111 - 115)

111

Sydney, Australia

Kingsford Smith International Airport

The black Holden Commodore Calais-V braked to a stop at the T1 International departure parking bay, and all three occupants got out. The driver could pass for a cover girl or movie star if not for the scar than ran from just below her right ear to the corner of her mouth. She made no attempt to conceal it, keeping her raven hair pulled tightly in a ponytail. She was trim and fit, and watched with steely grey eyes as her two male passengers retrieved their luggage from the trunk. “Your passports, gentlemen,” she said, handing the documents over. “And boarding passes. You’ll fly to Auckland, change planes, and then on to Papeete.”

“Ah, Tahiti!” Archer, the younger, obnoxious one, said with a grin. “The tropical land of enchantment and half-naked women!” He was of medium height, with the look of a prize fighter, with a cauliflower ear and a nose that had obviously been broken a time or two. His powerful arms were tattooed from wrists to shoulders.

“I needn’t remind you this is a business trip,” she said. “When you land in Papeete, you are to go directly to the port and board the ship. And remember, Archer, Peter is in charge.”

“Yes, mother,” Archer said. Pressing his luck, he leaned in for a kiss goodbye. With her index and middle fingers, she sharply jabbed his solar plexus, and he abandoned the effort.

The other man, Peter, stood taller than Archer by half a foot, and was by far the more responsible of the two. He rolled his eyes and sighed. “I’m used to working with Jocko,” he said. “I’ll have a time of it, keeping an eye on this one.”

“Jocko couldn’t pull a greasy stick out a dead dog’s arse,” Archer said.

“Yes, well, be that as it may,” the raven-haired woman said. “You have two things to focus on. Protect Daniel Seton, at all costs. And eliminate Jared Mulligan.”

Archer asked, “Jared Mulligan?” He held his hands out, palms-up, and shrugged. “Never heard of ‘im.”

“He’s not one to take lightly,” she said. “He’s a pro. Learned his trade in the U.S. Marines. Works freelance. Has a reputation for always getting his man.”

“Like Dudley frikkin’ Doright,” Archer scoffed. “How will we know the bugger when we come upon him?”

“Mid-forties. Medium height and build. Sandy hair. Marine tattoo on his left arm.” She held up a photograph. “This is rather old, I’m afraid. Mr. Mulligan is very good at not drawing attention. You likely won’t see him, though, unless he wants you to. And then, it will be too late.”

“Well, if we won’t see ’im, ’ow we gonna kill ‘im?” Archer demanded.

Peter placed a hand on Archer’s forearm, “Steady, mate. That’s our job. Find him and deal with him. We’re pros, too.” He turned to the woman. “This Daniel bloke, he knows we’re comin’, and why?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Flynn says he’s not to know.”

“You ask me, it’d be a bit easier doin’ our job if he knew,” Archer said.

“Well, no one asked you,” she said. “You have your instructions, gentlemen. Archer, you can take it up with Flynn upon your return if you have a problem with his decisions.”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Archer backpedaled. “No worries.”

“So I thought.” She glanced at the security officer walking toward them.

“Cooee!” The officer called out. “Two minute parking limit, miss,” he said, pointing to his watch.

She smiled warmly and waved to him. “Yes, then, I’ll be on my way.” As she climbed back into the car, she looked at Archer and Peter, lowered her voice and said, “Do not cock this up, gentlemen.”

She closed the door and started the engine, then powered down the window. “One more thing,” she called out to them.  They turned to look back. “Mulligan frequently works with a partner, whom we know nothing about. So beware.”

She backed out of the parking bin slowly, keeping an eye on the two men that had been sent by Dexter Flynn, president of the Death Adders Motorcycle Club to dispatch a professional hit man. Were they up to the task? She knew better than to question Flynn’s judgment, and quickly dismissed the thought.

112

Jared Mulligan

I was still trying to wrap my head around how they could fail to notice the gunshot wounds during an autopsy and rule his cause of death accidental drowning.

Or how they could possibly misidentify the real Mulligan as being me, even with all the circumstantial evidence, like my truck and my boat. Had they found my clothes and wallet on the island? I hoped not. If so, then they might also found the hole I’d dug to bury Mulligan in.

Okay, so it had been roughly three weeks since I’d killed Mulligan and dumped his body into the river. How badly decomposed would it have been? How hard would it have been to identify him?

What did we ever do before Al Gore invented the internet? How did we ever conduct research? Especially out in the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from the nearest library? Thank God for Al Gore, smartest man on planet Earth, Thank God for satellite communications, and Thank God for Google, where I learned that the tissues of a body floating in water that is less than seventy degrees Fahrenheit for about three weeks will develop what is known as “grave wax”, a soapy fatty acid, halting bacterial growth. Fish and other river-dwelling critters would have been feasting on the soft parts of Mulligan’s face, like the lips and the eyes.

I also read that bodies recovered after twenty or so days tend to be badly decomposed. DNA and dental records are the only reliable ways of identification in such cases. After about a month, the bodies could in some cases be completely skeletonized. 

So is that what happened? Did the body completely skeletonize? Or maybe enough that the gunshot wounds weren’t so obvious. I’d aimed for center mass when I fired the gun. I would have expected some bones to have been shattered. And speaking of gunshot wounds, my own were healing quite nicely. Still a little sore, but no infection.

What about the anchor I’d put around the body? It was hard for me to believe that even a skeleton would make a clean break from it. Equally difficult to imagine that the anchor would have prevented the body from coming to the surface.

There were four possibilities:

1—They had found someone else. Not Mulligan. The coroner was sloppy.

2—It was Mulligan, and the coroner was, again, sloppy.

I didn’t really know Perry Winters, other than from having met him occasionally at church, back when I used to attend. He seemed anything but sloppy.

3—This was a trap designed to get me to lower my guard. Make me think that I was in the clear, come out of hiding. This might actually be the case. It made more sense. Sorry, guys. Not gonna happen.

Or, most unlikely of all:

4—There was some sort of cover-up. I almost laughed at the idea of me being chased around the globe by professional killers hired to prevent me from reappearing and blowing the lid off their scheme.

I was tired of thinking about it, so I grabbed a pen and a few pieces of paper from the desk in the cabin, and went out on the deck to scribble an outline of my novel, maybe meet some new writer friends.

113

I walked three laps around the ship, carrying the iPad, enjoying the sea breeze, the sunshine, and the relative solitude, even among so many hundreds of people. I say I enjoyed it, but the truth is I was constantly on the lookout for Alex. I had failed my first real test as the reincarnation of Jared Mulligan, and I wanted to avoid another encounter at all costs.

I could see Alex’s point of view. I actually agreed with it. A person should earn the right to wear the Marine Corps emblem on his arm.  But, my reason for getting the tattoo was purely from a standpoint of survival, nothing more. The tattoo was insurance against being found out for pretending to be Mulligan, and I saw no reason to beat myself up because of it. I wasn’t going around claiming to be a war hero, despite Alex’s accusation. Think what you will.

114

I stopped when I got to the aft pool. There were only a handful of empty deck chairs. One was next to a redhead that should be a movie star, if looks were all it took. I made a mental note that she would be a good character in my novel. If I were a more experienced, professional novelist, I might actually screw up the courage to approach her, introduce myself as an author, and ask a few questions, get her started talking about herself in order to help me give her character some background and depth.

But I didn’t have any questions that came to mind, so that would have to wait for another day. If I had to describe her as a character in my story right then, at that moment, I suppose the best I could do would be to say something like, ‘She was a smoking hot redhead, built like a brick outhouse. Her purple bikini covered the bare essentials, and not much more.’ As you can see, I have a long way to go as a writer.

There was an empty chair was next to an older couple who were fussing over something, and another one next to a portly fellow with a neatly trimmed beard, who made me think of Santa Claus.

I left the chair next to the redhead for someone who might actually be in her league, and took a pass on listening to the old folks spat. I’ve not been such a good boy lately, and Christmas was only a few months away. Couldn’t hurt to make a few brownie points with Santa.

“Mind if I sit here?”

Santa shrugged, made a gesture with his hand that said ‘Suit yourself ’.

“Thanks,” I said, offering my hand. “I’m Jared. Jared Mulligan.” I wanted to introduce myself, my new self, as many times as possible, until it came naturally.

Santa looked at me through half-open eyelids for a moment, the corners of his mouth turned down. He appeared at that moment to be anything but a right jolly old elf. “You don’t know who I am?” he sniffed.

Was this some sort of test? To see if I would take the bait and say something stupid about him looking like Santa? “I’m afraid I don’t have a clue, Sir.” I said. I felt like an idiot, standing there with my right hand extended.

He accepted my hand just as I was about to withdraw it. “Stan,” he said. Stan Nichols.” What were the odds?

Stan turned out to be okay. He was a best-selling author, who’d had a couple of his books made into Hollywood blockbusters, neither of which he cared for. “The books were much better than the movies,” he said. He was on board as a guest lecturer for the writers’ conference.

I was about to mention that I myself was an aspiring writer, when Stan said, “I apologize for the frosty response when you first approached me, Jared. I’m constantly asked by new writers to read their manuscripts, which I never agree to do.”

“The reason being?” I asked.

Stan seemed momentarily put off by my question. “Well, to be perfectly frank, they usually don’t want an honest evaluation. They’re fishing for praise. Or a recommendation to an agent or a publishing house. And I do not allow myself to be put in the position of having someone claim I stole their idea for one of my own novels. I’m not being a snob. I really do wish them well. I just think it is their job, not mine, to promote their own careers. Those, my friend, are among the many reasons that I do not read manuscripts from beginning writers. And besides,” he added, “I would never have time to work on my own stories. If I said yes to one, I would have to say yes to all.”

Then, another of many tests I must pass as the new Jared Mulligan came when he said, “Enough about me. Tell me something about yourself, Jared. What do you do for a living?”

Just then, a couple walked by, hand in hand. The woman was smiling, not just with her mouth, but with her eyes as well. She looked to her partner, and leaned in toward him, and they kissed without breaking stride. It was graceful, coordinated. Short and sweet. You could tell they had done it before. Dianna had never looked at me that way. Never kissed me like that in public. Not once.

Stan said, “Jared, I was asking, what do you do for a living?”

I was totally unprepared for the question. I had been concentrating on remembering my new name, I hadn’t given anything else, even something so basic as how I made my living, a thought.

“Me?” I said, “I’m a hit man,” and I laughed right along with my new friend, Stan.

115

Since making the mental transition from being Ty Hamilton to becoming Jared Mulligan, I had made a breakthrough of sorts. I had a tattoo now. Just like or very nearly like the one that the real Mulligan had. Ty Hamilton would never have gotten a tattoo. And I was approaching people, introducing myself as Jared Mulligan.

But, I had not been ready to provide even the most basic details of my new identity. And prior to that, I had been sloppy, sitting out by the pool with no shirt both before and after getting the tattoo. Like it or not, I had to take a professional approach to this identity-change business, or, sooner or later it would bite me in the ass.