Coincidence by David Ambrose

through the rear window, giving a little wave and a gesture
     of reassurance that everything was going to go just fine.
    Then I took out his mobile phone, which I’d brought with me, and called Skeeter again. I told him that in fifteen minutes’
     time I would be walking along Central Park South. I described the clothes—my clothes—that George would be wearing, though
     this was probably unnecessary: They would have spotted him anyway once they’d been told where to look. The important thing
     was that he was carrying my wallet with my credit cards and driver’s license. He would not lightly talk himself out of that.
     He would do his best, of course, but without success. The killers themselves, the men who actually did the job and who I’d
     seen outside the bank the day before, spoke very little English.
    But they were professionals, skilled and ruthless. They would pick him off the street without a scuffle. No one would notice
     a thing as he was bundled into the back of the waiting car. I didn’t know where they would take him, but everything would
     have been planned in advance. They would put a bullet in his head—that much was tradition. Then the body would be disposed
     of with equal permanence. They would use a lime pit, or possibly a deep hole in the foundations of some construction site,
     into which he would be thrown, after which rubble and concrete would be added.
    That this would happen I knew with certainty. I knew it because I knew that Skeeter had betrayed me. I had suspected for some
     time that I could no longer trust him, and seeing those men yesterday had confirmed it. I knew that anything I told him would
     be relayed directly to the people who wanted me dead. He thought I had played into his hands, whereas in reality he had played
     into mine. I owed this reversal of fortune to pure chance. I had been in deep, deep trouble, and only the accident—coincidence,
     if you prefer—of meeting George had saved my life. That was extraordinary, I grant you. Quite extraordinary.
    A month earlier, such a coincidence would have been amusing at best, perhaps simply irritating, and certainly irrelevant.
     But it has always amazed me how quickly things can change. A month earlier I’d been on top of the world. I was taking risks,
     but then I always had, and so far I’d always gotten away with them. Perhaps I’d started taking my luck too much for granted.
     Was that my fatal mistake?
    I’d used the music business as my cover for many years. When I felt myself burning out on the creative side, which had happened
     after a very short time, I started arranging introductions, for a fee, between people in the business and others who could
     provide certain services and substances much in demand in the music world. This had led to an increasing involvement in the
     financial side of things, until a federal money-laundering inquiry had curtailed my activities. Charges had been dropped owing
     to lack of evidence, more particularly lack of witnesses owing to a couple of unfortunate accidents.
    It had been a setback nonetheless. The people I worked for had stood by me, but chiefly out of self-interest. Now I was a
     liability, and found myself being rapidly sidelined. I decided to take one last shot at a big payday while I still had the
     chance. I could have done it a hundred times in the past, but never had. I’d imagined doing it and knew how it would work,
     but it was just a mental exercise, neither a plan nor an intention.
    But now?
    I did not see how this venture I had my eye on could go wrong. Whichever way you looked at it, it was a cinch, a cert, a shoo-in.
    What actually went wrong was something I could not have foreseen even as the remotest of downside possibilities. A guy in
     a key position had a heart attack at the wrong time, unraveling the whole operation.
    When that happened, the guy with the heart attack wasn’t the only dead man. The next one was me—or would have been.
    Thank you,