by James Grady
“Might be.”
“Speaking of new meds,” said Justin, “got a new nose spray for you.”
Justin’s medical bag clicked.
The tea kettle on the stove rumbled with about-to-boil water.
Vin shook coffee beans into the grinder, pushed its lid down for a scree that drowned all other sounds until he stopped.
Heard the rumbling tea kettle generate a tentative toot.
Heard a plastic medical glove being pulled on Snap!
Turned to see Justin wore medical gloves. Held a white plastic, thumb pump nasal spray bottle with a still-on blue cap. He marched toward Vin. Held the capped nose spray.
“Let’s do this,” said Justin.
Black cane man didn’t limp.
Vin threw the coffee grinder at Justin. Its cord plugged into a counter socket jerked the grinder short—flipped it over. Coffee perfumed brown powder dusted the kitchen.
Justin ducked and pulled back—
—as Vin flowed after the attacker, dead-certain he had to keep that blue cap on, stop that medicine dispenser from spraying him. He t’i fang/fa chin pushed through Justin’s arm as the killer reached to pull off the spray bottle’s blue cap.
Justin staggered backward.
Vin dove like a high school football tackler—got caught.
In a standing variation of wrestling’s full nelson, Justin had leverage against Vin’s trapped and tortured crucifix arms. Justin bent back Vin’s arms to reach and pull off the blue cap for the nasal spray clutched in his right fingers.
Vin flashed on Frank Sinatra in the black and white movie The Manchurian Candidate surprise battling for his life in a New York apartment against the North Korean mole who’d infiltrated American presidential politics as part of a Communist puppet master team.
The tea kettle whistled.
The radio blasted the crashing guitars/piano/drum opening of Warren Zevon’s Lawyers, Guns and Money from when Vin was hunting the poison pellet shooting Umbrella Assassin who murdered fiction author and anti-Soviet exile Georgi Markov in the streets of London.
Justin twisted to reach the spray’s blue cap without losing his grip on the man he wanted to kill. Vin shoved with that twist and they spun through the kitchen.
Vin ducked and Justin rolled across/over/off his back, stumbling backwards—
—crashing into the come to stop the tea kettle whistling Merle.
Her silvered thick widow’s peak hair’d never went back to blond after. Her thick breasts strained her bland tan blouse and her black slacks hips curved like the moon.
Merle’s ass hit the floor.
Justin slammed near her on his back.
The blue capped nasal spray popped out of Justin’s grip. Rolled toward the stove.
Vin tumbled over the kitchen table. Ended up tangled on the floor with a wooden chair.
Justin jackknifed onto his hands and knees. Crawled toward the stove.
Toward the blue capped nasal spray gently rocking after its roll.
Vin tried to hit Justin with the chair—missed/slammed it into the kitchen counter and knocked its weapon from his grip. He stomped a dragon kick at the crawling killer—missed.
Justin grabbed the nasal spray, staggered to his feet.
Merle leapt on his back.
Justin spun her off. Blocked Vin’s punch and hooked one back at him with his nasal spray holding fist. Vin ducked as Justin reached for the blue cap.
Merle grabbed him. He threw her into the kitchen stove. The collision knocked the tea kettle half-off the burner but it kept screaming. That attack stretched Justin’s spray bottle holding arm over the burner’s exposed blue flames.
Justin yelled—jerked his arm away from fire, dropped the blue capped nasal spray onto the silver metal stovetop. He kicked Vin, grabbed for—
Merle whumped Justin in the head with a black iron frying pan.
Dropped Justin to his knees.
“Hit him again!” yelled Vin.
But she froze as Justin oozed up the front of the stove, his face above the aluminum stovetop by the blue flames so he could see as he reached for the blue cap nasal spray—
—that his fingers accidentally knocked into the blue flames.
Vin saw the white plastic mushroom melt POP out a mist that the blue flames exploded like a Fourth Of July pink starburst.
Fear triggered Justin’s gasping inhale.
He gagged. Pushed away from the stove.
Breath-holding Vin leapt past him, dragged Merle far from the stove, his hand cupped over her nose and mouth.
From the dining room doorway, they watched Justin stagger. His face flowered blotches. Tightened into a skeletal leer. His eyes went bloodshot. “But I got the money!”
Justin collapsed on the floor.
The radio played.
The tea kettle whistled.
Blue flames burnt clean the pinked air.
Merle sobbed to Vin: “You said no! You said no more. Never again. Everything was … no! Now I’m a killer, too! Just like you! Just like you always do!”
Vin yelled: “Bonnie! Initiate Lockdown!”
That A.I. female voice called out: “Lockdown initiated. What alert protocol, Condor?”
“Protocol Pearl Harbor!”
Condor pulled Merle out of the kitchen, through the dining room covered with actual newspapers proclaiming the official realities of that day. Clinton, Trump Win Big In Primaries. National Archives Hosts Screening of ‘Elvis & Nixon’ Documentary. Panama Papers Expose Tax Dodging & Criminal Activities Of World’s Wealthy. Merle let him hustle her up the stairs.
“We gotta get out of this place!” said Condor. “Get your Go Bag!”
Merle hurried to the bedroom as he scurried into The Office with its glass table where three giant screens faced a keyboard.
“Bonnie: Replay fast-forward perimeter scans, last seven minutes.”
Scenes outside this house filled the screens …
… with nothing unusual. But no brown dog. No man with black cane.
Like the replay was a loop of some other day.
“What the fuck?”
He jerked open the closet door—
—to no “Hy-yah!” screaming murderous ninja.
Condor grabbed a messenger bag. Strapped his shoulder-holstered .45 automatic over his long-sleeved maroon shirt. Clipped a belt-holstered .45 on his right hip. Glanced at his Go Bag’s gear: A dopp kit with toothbrush and paste. Razor. Five cycles of daily meds. Ammo mags. Three burner phones and charge cords. An envelope with $2,000 in cash. Three passports and driver’s licenses. Three wallets packed with identity-back up “pocket litter” and credit cards. A packet of lilac-scented baby wipes.
He pulled on a faded black leather bomber jacket that covered his guns.
Cellphone, wallet, and keys scooped off the office’s glass table, shoved into jacket pockets. He looped the messenger bag across his chest: ‘made it hard to grab the shoulder-holstered .45, but the gun on his left hip was still a clear draw.
Condor found Merle in the hall. Her Go Bag hung from her shoulder.
Forget the underground emergency escape tunnel that ran from the basement’s Cold War Armageddon bomb shelter to the trees behind the house and beyond the black iron fence.
Whoever flipped Justin also probably knew about the tunnel and had posted an ambush team.
But watchers outside the house might think that Justin still rocked.
Condor hurried Merle down the stairs.
“We’re going to Skorzeny it,” he told her, citing the World War II German commando genius she didn’t have time to Google. “Defy reality. Bluff bold. Our car’s in the driveway, facing the gate to the street. Be cool. Don’t run. Get in, seatbelt. We clear the gate like we’re going to the grocery store and fly in the wi
nd.”
“You should have let me die last time. You’re Condor. You’re all about death.”
“I try to rock the flipside. Come on.”
They opened the clearly-not-safe house’s shiny black front door.
Condor tried to screen Merle from snipers as they innocently scurried to the red Ford parked facing out in their driveway. She beat him to buckled-up by nine slamming heartbeats. He gunned the engine to life.
The black iron pole gates securing the driveway from the road …
… yawned open toward them.
Merle yelled: “What the Hell? You didn’t use the wand to—”
Condor slammed the gearshift into DRIVE. Punched the gas.
The red Ford surged toward the slowly opening gates.
A purple van swung onto the driveway.
“No!” screamed Merle as the purple van telescoped in the red Ford’s windshield.
The purple van’s driver cranked his steering wheel. The van still charged ahead but now desperately angled off the collision city driveway toward the green lawn.
Six tons of machine welded steel in purple and red packages slammed past each other at a combined speed of 49 mph. The red Ford scraped along the purple van, the Ford’s windows so low that all Condor could see was a grape wall grinding his car door, ripping off the side mirror. Merle’s side scraped the opening steel gate.
The red Ford … popped free of the squeeze, clattered away on this commuter road.
Merle screamed: “You’re crazy!”
“Yeah!”
Whoosh past the city bus pulling away from the curb.
“Are they following us?” said Merle.
“How the fuck should I know!”
Condor glanced toward where the driver’s side mirror wasn’t. Toward the side mirror on the bent-in door beside Merle where now he saw only the sidewalks flying past the car. He flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror. The colliding squeeze had knocked it asunder.
He punched the gas to shoot the red Ford through a yellow light.
Fucking bicyclist on a ten-speed, white helmet won’t—
The red Ford blared its horn and the woman pedaling her way to work swayed curbside in the lane the law let her claim for herself as some asshole in a red car sped past her.
Condor picked a lane in the workday traffic.
Whirled to look at Merle—still here, still alive, still alert, still not crashed back to a needs more meds hollow passenger. “Grab my cellphone! Inside my jacket! Heart pocket!”
Merle leaned—jerked back by her seat belt.
“Come on!” he yelled to Merle.
She unbuckled. Reached toward the surging car’s driver. Thrust her right hand inside his unzipped black leather jacket. Her fingers and palm slid across the sweat-soaked maroon shirt covering his pounding heart. He felt a tug and—
Merle slumped back in her seat, eyes widening as her hand lifted in front of her face—
—the black steel .45 automatic from Condor’s shoulder holster.
“What the hell are you doing!”
She whirled to face him and the .45 whirled so it’s bore—
“Point it straight up!”
A mom driving a white minivan beside them glanced left, saw no fucking way HELP—
—but the beat up old red car shot past her and Mom was too shaken, too Did I have too many glasses of white wine last night after I put the kids to bed? to catch the red car’s license plate number or push the button on her Bluetooth steering wheel to call 911.
“Point it down!”
“It’s going to shoot!”
“No! The grip safety’s still on and got to be squeezed and you’ve got to thumb back that hammer spur. Stick it somewhere!”
Took Merle three whomps of her closed fist to get the Ford’s jammed glove compartment to pop open. Took two punches to slam the glove compartment closed with the .45 inside.
“My phone!” yelled Condor.
Caught a green light!
This time she pulled that communication device from his jacket. “Now what?”
“Swipe to my contacts! Tap on F-Stop! Tap Facetime!”
Calling bzzt’s came from the cellphone Merle held as the car raced through city streets.
Condor spotted a white-on-green street corner sign. Careened a hard right onto North Capitol street going down the posted address numbers.
“Hold the phone so I can see the screen!”
Bzzt! Bz—
The black screen filled with a woman’s face. Mussed rust hair. High cheekbones. Clean jaw. Wide lips. She told the image of a man in her cellphone: “We cool?”
“Hellhounds on my trail,” said Condor. “You?”
“Unknown but eyes wide open. Janitors found a USB stick in your downstairs computer. Odds are, kitchen killer’s move, fuck him and fucking him now. Glad to see you’re gone.”
Gave Condor a smile he told himself was almost like a daughter’s.
He said: “Can you hear me?”
“Maybe we all can,” said the redhead. “Status your partner.”
Merle turned the cellphone to broadcast her face; turned it back to Condor.
The redhead said: “You need a new tea kettle.”
Frowned: “What’s all that noise?”
Then Merle and Condor also heard what they’d ignored:
Ding! Ding! Ding! Merle’s unfastened seat belt.
A garble of guitars and voices as who the fuck cares what song wailed out of the car radio popped on by the collision back at the gate.
Merle tried to turn the battered radio off. Couldn’t. Condor sent her a forget it shake of his head. She fastened her seatbelt click and stopped the dings.
Condor told the redhead: “We’re coming in!”
“Where?”
“Chris Harvie’s turf. A dump and jump.”
“ETA?”
“Maybe 10, maybe 15. Work for you?”
“It’s what we got,” she said.
Killed the Facetime connection.
Left him staring at his reflection in a rough road bouncing black screen.
Merle whispered: “Chris Harvie’s dead. You … We … She loved him, Faye loved him.”
Condor swerved to pass an empty school bus.
Nodded to the windshield: “There!”
North Capitol stretched straight ahead beyond the red Ford, a four-lane divided thoroughfare clogged with near bumper to bumper traffic. Way beyond those lines of crawling steel, way down on the horizon, Condor and Merle saw the dime-sized glistening curve of the white icing US Capitol Dome.
Condor told her: “Bail out as soon as I stop the car. We race across that Park, look for Faye cruising past for a fast pick up and—”
Starburst hole crackin’ bustin’ out of the red Ford’s windshield!
The twisted vertical rear view mirror filled with a purple van closer, surging closer.
“The passenger!” yelled Merle who was one, too. “He’s shooting us with a black stick!”
The scraped and dented purple van surged closer …
Ramming—van is going to ram …
Condor stomped on the brakes as the red Ford zoomed into a major intersection, cranked the steering wheel hard left.
Crying tires. The Ford shuddering leaning on its two right wheels. Oncoming traffic veering away from the crazy left-hand turning Ford. Merle screaming. Blaring horns.
The purple van brakes screeching as it wobbled side to side—
—its front grill and bumper punched the right rear corner of the red Ford, a collision that pushed the Ford further into its sliding-sideways left turn. Condor jammed down on the gas and the red Ford shot off North Capitol street into a DC residential neighborhood.
The van careened down North Capito
l street perpendicular to where the Ford raced.
Blocks of row houses behind curbs of parked family cars flashed by the wobbling Ford.
A giant high school loomed ahead two blocks on the right.
Condor turned left.
“Where are you going?”
“I know a cemetery!”
“No,” she moaned. “No.”
Condor glanced at her face. Saw it shrinking away from fear—from all emotion.
“Stay with me!” he told the woman strapped into the speeding car beside him.
The clattering car. The wobble of broken steering. The smell of burnt rubber.
Who knows what song the radio played.
Through the cracked windshield came a vision of the road rising to a silhouette of tall trees off to the left, their limbs reaching to the blue sky. Another black pole steel fence surrounded the crest of that hill, far bigger ornate steel pole gates opened for a well-paved turn off from the city that ran under an arc of metal letters:
EVERWOOD CEMETERY
The red Ford shot under that steel arc. Past a sign on the side of the fence:
WE PROSECUTE ALL TRESPASSERS
Like that fucking matters.
But Condor braked and slowed to the posted 10 mph speed limit for the one lane road gracefully circling through a square mile of family plots, gravestones dating back to the 1800s, trumpet blowing stone angels, vases of fading flowers, white marble Madonnas with forgiving arms stretched down to lift sinners up.
A giant dump truck blocked the red Ford’s path. The idling truck’s cargo box angled up so its load of environmental advocates’ approved natural fertilizer could slide down to where three men on the graveyard crew filled their shovels and walked through the tombstones scattering sustenance for life with success only for the grass, the planted flowers, the trees.
Vin braked the Ford, backed up in an angled turn, stopped before he hit gravestones, cranked his steering wheel left and curved a clattering but tight turn to go back—
Purple van, stopped dead, blocking the road, front bumper dangling, headlight smashed, red paint lines with dents on the door swinging open to let the front passenger flop out, stout with bushy black eyebrows and none of the paratrooper smoothness of the horseshoe bald man leaping out of the driver’s side who Vin’d last—and first—seen walking with a black cane.
