Retribution

by David LaGraff

  Chapter 5

  “We’re just going to do a little recon,” I said to them both as we approached our first area of potential operations. “Just to get the feel.”

  We pulled up opposite Lenny Poon’s castle, which wasn’t visible from the street, owing to a higher than usual concrete wall, a solid, no-peeking gate made of iron and oak which cost more than most ordinary people’s houses, and the presence of towering pines and other foliage which suggested that perhaps somewhere beyond the wall, something evil lurked which the primitives had put up the wall to contain. While we sat watching the place, the gate began to retract, and I could see beyond it a set of retractable steel posts set into the driveway. The setup was designed to let a vehicle enter the first gate, but not progress further until after an inspection of sorts, after which the further retractable steel posts were lowered. Heavy security, of the kind which suggested an assault by armored infantry were imminent owing to some breach of law or contract which threatened too damn many people in too many high, or low places, depending on the merchandise or services in question. Lenny Poon had a lot of enemies by the look of things. Perhaps because he hired thugs with big noses from Novo Sibirsk to assassinate people’s children.

  “A fortress,” Johnson said. “No way we’re going to get in there.”

  “Heinz has terrible breath,” I said, feeling no need to discuss the obvious implications of the heavy security presented by Lenny Poon. “Don’t you know they sell those doggy breath mints?”

  “Open a window,” Johnson said.

  I did better than that. I hit the one button mechanism that opened the top. The whole thing folded neatly into the boot behind Johnson’s seat. A multi-bloomed magnolia tree in the easement dappled the light across our faces. I slipped on a pair of Ray Bans. There’s just nothing like a convertible on a sunny Southern California day.

  “McDougal,” Johnson said. “There’s something I forgot to tell you. One little detail which may affect our plans just a tad. I saw on CNN this morning that Poon is having a visitor this week.”

  “Who?”

  “Just a certain famous person who’s going to be speaking at USC this Saturday at some sort of New Age thing.”

  “Which famous person?”

  “Gorbachev.”

  “Are you kidding me? This guy’s hosting Gorbachev this weekend?”

  “Yeh. He’s going to share with select intimates how to take over the world or something.”

  The gate was now fully retracted. Would we get a glimpse of the Gorbachev motorcade emerging? One thing was very clear. I wasn’t on Granny’s farm anymore. Being a lonely man, and one of an age to spend time reminiscing over better days gone by, I thought of Granny. She’d raised me from infancy on the family farm just outside Memphis. As I sat there, waiting to possibly get a glimpse of Gorby, I wondered what she would have thought of the man I’d become.

  She’d raised me to respect God, family, hard work, and the absolute moral truths by which she was certain God ran the universe and every living thing within it. But falsely accused, convicted and imprisoned for ten years in a steel room had stripped me of most of my early formation, and left in its stead something more in line with the values held, say, by the average Great White on a day when the feeding grounds haven’t quite filled the demands of its insatiable belly.

  “Do you guys think Gorbachev’s the antichrist?” Angela said.

  “Today,” Johnson said, “I’m the antichrist. At least as far as Lenny Poon’s concerned.”

  I sighed, wondering what I was doing with these two people. I’d become something twisted, a creature as hard as the iron walls which had been my torment. Still and all, it was at times like these that I remembered Granny, as though she was calling to me from a better place, telling me that I still had time to avail myself of the mercy which stilled flowed throughout the earth for those such as I.

  “What are you frowning about, John?” Angela said. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  “I was just wondering what my Granny would think if she could see me now,” I said. “She--”

  “--Someone’s coming,” Johnson said. He fished around in a large gym bag he’d brought for the occasion, producing a sawed off Remington.

  “Put that thing away. We’re just here to observe,” I said.

  “Observe my ass,” Johnson said.

  “Put it away. What if Gorbachev’s coming out? There’ll be a half-dozen guys armed to the teeth. They’ll probably have an armed attack chopper overhead. And the last thing we need is for you to start blasting away with a shotgun and get ourselves ground into hamburger from above by some fanatic with a mini-gun.”

  Johnson guffawed heavily, and sprayed slightly the back of my neck. Yes, real men still guffaw, and he didn’t cover his mouth when he did it. I glanced his way in the rearview mirror, where he sat cheek to cheek with Heinz, the both of them exposing a great many teeth, of which it could be said the dog’s were the more numerous, and in better condition than the man’s.

  “That’s it,” I said. “I’m taking you both home. It was a mistake to let either of you come with me. Somebody is probably watching us from somewhere in there right now, taking down our plate, or snapping pictures. Johnson, you’re a cop. An honest man. What you should do is stay that way. Go back home to your rich wife. And I want you to take Angela in for a few days until I’m done with my work.”

  “I’m staying,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “Your cop reflexes will get in the way when it’s time to do the killing. Deep down inside you there’s a moral component you won’t be able to break. Don’t feel bad. It doesn’t make you less of a man or anything. It’s just that not many men in this world have the stones to do what I’m about to do.”

  “We’ll take Angela back to my place,” Johnson said, “and then the two of us can continue our reconnaissance.”

  “We’re all staying,” Angela said softly. She was on the verge of passing out, her head resting back, eyes half closed. “I don’t care if they kill me.”

  I cared if they killed her. Because every time I looked at her I felt something down deep inside me I’d long thought dead. No, I’d never have such a woman, but her presence in my life was a saving grace anyway. “You’re drunk, Angela,” I said, putting the car in gear. But before I could swing away from the curb, a van approached from the north.

  “Someone’s coming in,” I said. A white delivery van, nondescript and unmarked. The van obviously had advance communication powers to the gatekeepers, who had opened the gate, another security measure designed to prevent the van from an overly long stop in the street, where it would be vulnerable to who knew what manner of predatory thing.

  The van, which was being driven by a tiny woman, pulled inside the first gate and lo and behold, coming out to meet the van, to usher it safely into port, was a squat, heavyset man with a huge beak. It had to be none other than the triggerman who shot David. Who, because he had such a huge proboscis had been nicknamed Nose by the local cops.

  “There is a God,” I said, “and there is justice in the world.”

  Nose, not realizing he was God’s gift to us, instead appeared to be an aggressive bastard, immediately trotting toward us, waiving one arm as though warding off an evil spell, while at the same time reaching beneath his coat.

  “Damn,” Johnson said. “I put my shotgun back in the bag and now the zipper’s stuck!”

  There was an obscene, grunting command from Johnson and Heinz sprung from the car with an incredible swiftness and savagery. Nose stood stock-still, possibly from the fear of having his gun arm torn off at the joint by the fast-closing and very ugly canine. Which gave me a couple of extra seconds during which I pulled out my Colt Commander, and popped off an ear-smoking round, catching Nose through the back of his left thigh. It was a cheap snap shot, way off center body mass, but he’d smartly turned and ducked when he saw my piece come up. He’d
intended to duck and roll, to gain some safety behind the side of the van opposite us, but the bullet must have struck bone, the hydrostatic shock dropping him like a rag doll. At which point the frightened driver of the van, trying to escape the trap, and frightened by the gunshot, backed over the wounded man’s leg. We could hear the crack of bone and Nose’s simultaneous scream from where we sat. The driver lacked the nerve to back up any further, her basic instinct about such things tending towards mercy and goodness.