I open the closet in the bedroom, unlock the safe, and remove a Starlight hardcase. I take it into the living room and open it up.
I put on U2’s Love and Peace Or Else.
There she is.
Sinister black, high shine, polished to deadly perfection. My ArmaLite Super SASS (Semi Automatic Sniper System). Her name’s Sylvia.
She’s .308 caliber, direct gas system, 20 dark inches of stainless steel barrel with a hard-anodized aluminum, manganese phosphate steel finish.
Sylvia.
Tonight, honey, you’ll sing. You’ll kiss his face off.
I pull out the oils, bullet jacket fouling agents (Sweet’s 7.62 solvent) and brushes and cloths and begin her baptism.
I am focused. I am calm. I am in complete control of every drop of sweat that leaves my body, of every ounce of air that enters my lungs. I am the only living thing in the universe. I am wrath.
Senator Michael Davis Ruttleby JR. Age 52. Libra. Born in Greentree, Maryland, graduated with honors at the University of Maryland, received his MBA at Northwestern Business College. Married Annette Elizabeth Dennison, age 49. Father of Michael Davis Ruttleby III (age 10, attends St. Anne School) and Michele Annette Ruttleby (age 16, attends Kaplan College Prep). He lives on Mercer Island on the Ruttleby Estate. This is his second term in the Senate. His wife currently works for Easton, Rose, and White, a law group located in Bellevue.
Politicians die. They are assassinated. This has been a staple since man first began following leaders. Kings and Caesars, czars and dictators, senators and congressmen. Machiavelli once asked; As a Prince, is it better to be feared or to be loved. A wise prince should establish himself on that which is his own control and not in that of others; he must endeavor to avoid hatred.
Ruttleby’s hated. He did something wrong. The Indians never specified how they want him gone and had I months to plan I’d make it look like an accident. His Cessna would stall over Lake Washington, or his boat would sink, or he’d suffer a heart attack.
Such as it is, meaning the crap-shoot that my life is quickly becoming, I have no time. This means that this job is going to be quick and messy.
He’s attending a fund-raiser for some Seattle art project. Two hundred dollars a plate.
It starts at nine. He won’t make it.
#
It’s eight.
I’m sitting in a small ravine on the island, five hundred yards from the Senator’s estate. Its wrought-iron gated with security posted at the entrance. There are cameras but the cameras are ancient.
I’m in the brush, looking straight up the lawn, through a small portico, and at his front door. There are lights on. I open up the hardcase and start to assemble Sylvia. Then I raise the night vision scope.
Instantly the people coming out of the house leap into green, ghostly clarity. There’s his wife. She’s wearing a really nice jacket. She looks lovely. There’s two men in suits walking with her, security, and another man who is hurrying to the garage. No, he’s getting in the limo they have parked out front. He’s the driver.
Security’s talking to the wife. The front door opens.
There you are you mother fucker.
I check my Caldwell Wind Wizard wind meter and make the appropriate adjustments. Sylvia’s on a bipod and I’ve put the twenty magazine in her instead of the ten. Just in case.
Ruttleby’s smiling. He’s smoking a cigar. Someone calls him on his cell and he stops, a look of disconcertment on his face. His wife walks up to him, takes his arm, says something. Security’s making their final walk-throughs.
I turn the knob gas chamber, switching it from NORM to SUPP. My finger’s on the trigger. Four pound, seven ounce pull. I flick the safety off.
His wife says something to him, causing him to smile. She looks freaky, all green faced with glowing eyes. I move the scope to him. Electric red cross-hairs beam in on his forehead. He does look like Harrison Ford. He’s smiling at his wife, now he looks at his watch, and they start walking towards the limo.
I exhale all the air from my body. It is cold outside. The mud is damp and the leaves are ripe.
I pull the trigger and Ruttleby’s head explodes like a supernova. He falls from the sight of the scope and I catch his wife’s open mouth, and I can hear her screaming from one hundred yards away. I move the scope over and see the security guys reaching for their guns. One of them is grabbing the wife, the other is squinting in my direction, but he can’t see me.
I squeeze the trigger. The security guy’s chest caves in. He’s thrown back. Thick green splatters on the wall and the wife keeps screaming.
I flick the rifle over a hair and squeeze off another shot.
The second security man’s neck shreds off. He staggers and falls. Another centimeter to the left and his head would’ve come clean off.
The wife is just standing there, stupid and screaming. She’s covered in blood. Her teeth are electric.
I squeeze the trigger and her screaming stops.
Then I’m gathering my things, quickly, hurry, hurry, hurry, fast, now running, slinging the hardcase over my back, through the brush, leaping over dirt and debris. In this stupid ass piece of shit Ford Escort and now driving.
There you fucking Indians, you happy? You fucking practically killed my car for this shit.
I’m halfway across 99 when I hear the sirens. Guess who’s happy little house they’re going to?
I laugh.
#
Victor’s Coffee.
Large coffee, one inch of room for cream, six packets of sugar, stir it all together fifty times. 1.50
First time I came in here was with her. We sat right there, at that small table, looking very much in love. I talked and told jokes as David Bowie’s Modern Love played. It was here at Victor’s that I was tricked into meeting her mom and brother. We sat right over there, at that large, circular table, where that funky Asian man is sitting.
Sitting across the room from me, right now, is a lesbian. I assume. She’s in her late forties and she’s drinking a black tea half soy half caf. This lady has formed her hair, shaped her posture, controlled her wardrobe, and altered everything about her to resemble a man, but a man she is not. I wonder if she wishes she had a penis, as in; If I only had a penis I could accomplish such great things! If only! Damn my vagina!
Keira would’ve laughed at that.
I should leave. It’s Thursday and I’ve been here two hours already. The baristas keep looking at me like; oh, you’re still here, but then again they know Keira. They’re friends with her and they’ve seen us together. So they know.
They know.
They knew weeks before I did. They knew the very second she decided to dump me.
But really, I mean she hasn’t really dumped me. This is true. This inspires me. I call Vic up.
“Jack, are you feeling better now?” she asks. She sounds like I’ve interrupted her. It’s two in the afternoon.
“Yeah,” I tell her. I’d completely forgotten that the last time I talked to her I was bombed out of my fucking mind. I wonder if I said anything jerkish.
“Listen, I’m really sorry about Keira,” she says. “You want to meet for coffee or something? I’m off in about two hours.”
Off? I wonder what she does for a living?
“Nah,” I tell her. “That’s kind of why I’m calling. I mean, she hasn’t broken up with me.”
“I thought you said you saw her,” Vic says, “and that she ran away from you. Ordinarily I’d say that’s not a positive sign.”
“Hell yeah she ran. She ran like I was chasing her with a chainsaw.” I laugh.
“You’re a mess, Jack.”
“She hasn’t officially broken up with me though. Words have not been said. It has not been legitimized.”
She sighs.
“Listen, Jack, meet me tomorrow, can you do that? At the usual place at the usual time, okay?”
“Will do.”
“Good. I have to go.”
We hang up.
Well, well, listen to this. Fucking irony. The very first time I came in here was with her and they were playing a David Bowie song, and now, here I am, and they’re playing another David Bowie song, Five Years. And Five Years is kind of a sad, tormented song. Fucking perfect.
The good news is that I’m reading now.
Now that I’m on my own I can finally catch up on some good books. I’m reading The Beach, by Alex Garland. This book is way much better than that stupid DiCaprio movie. I’m also hanging out in Redmond a lot more. Maybe because this is where we used to hang out.
So I leave. The baristas here do not say anything as I leave. They are no longer on my side. They will call her up and say, “Guess who was just in here? Yeah. He was sitting in your guys’ old spot, for like, hours. I know. Waiting for you. Psycho.” That’s what will happen.
So I leave. I’m walking towards the Town Center. I will not go to Tully’s though. I shall never go to Tully’s again, ever.
And as I’m walking I’m reading, head down, looking like a tortured young artist. This is so that if she does happen to pass by, or one of her nefarious allies, they will invariably think;
Wow! The sudden break-up hasn’t affected him badly at all. Look at him expanding his mind and literary powers by reading whilst walking, on Cleveland Street of all things! Beemer wouldn’t do that. Beemer, come to think of it, is dull and boring. Yes, Jack is really looking content, centered. I wonder what book he’s reading? If we were still together then he’d tell me, perhaps even read me some of his favorite passages, like he used to do, but alas, no, for I have fucked up. And now the light has turned green and I must drive on, forever left to wonder...
We went and saw that one movie, Walk Hard. Man she hated that movie. I didn’t think it was that great either. Right over there was where we ate dinner, sitting right there next to the window. She had lasagna. I had spaghetti. She was a fiend for sushi. Up until meeting her I’d never had sushi. She took me to Sushiland though, in Bella Botega and it wasn’t that bad. The wasabi was an experience. If felt like someone with extremely hot and large hands had reached into my mouth, grabbed my tongue, and just started shaking the living shit out of it. My eyes watered and she laughed.
And there’s Tully’s. Right there, next to that ungodly noise-thing that the children pound on. We used to stand right up there, at the end of the escalators, smoking cigarettes, on her break. I’d sit on the railing and she’d sit on the green bench and I’d try and think of funny things to say.
Fuck this.
I’m going home.
#
At nine o’clock at night she calls me.
I’m listening to Coldplay, feeling righteously gloomy, a glass of whiskey in one hand and a book of Kurt Cobain poems in the other. She calls me. Her ringtone, U2’s Desire, sounds out and I see her name on the caller id.
I step outside.
I keep the phone in my hand staring down at it and I’m cold looking at the glowing screen with her name looking up at me. I don’t want to answer it. I want to hear her voice again. This is an arrow slung from the dark and I have a bad idea where it’s going.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.” It’s good to hear her voice and the rain has stopped. My hands are trembling.
“How are you?” she asks.
“Good.”
“Listen,” she says, “I’m sorry. I should’ve called you sooner. I should’ve said something.”
“Yeah. I was worried.”
“I know.” She sighs. She’s wrestling with words. “I just didn’t know what to say. You don’t think that I’ve thought about you? Every day? I hear a Beatles song and I just want to cry.”
This makes me feel better.
There’s a change in her voice though, a different, sad quality. It’s not just her voice that’s changed, it’s her. Something has happened these past few weeks. A decision has been reached.
“What happened?” I have to know.
“Lots,” she says. “Nothing. I don’t know. The last time I talked to you, you were so cold to me, remember? You said that you didn’t know if things were going as planned, whatever that meant.”
“Yeah.”
“And,” she pauses. I wonder where she’s at. At her parents’? At Beemer’s?
“Listen, Keira-Monster,” I tell her, “it wasn’t fair what you did. Just... ignoring me. I’ve been going out of my mind with worry about you. I thought that... I thought that you loved me.”
“I know,” she says. “I do. But...”
“Why did you run?” I toss my cigarette and watch it spiral, spark across the wet cement.
“You scared me,” she says. “There’s just something... sometimes you scare me. I look up and there you are, out of nowhere, like you’ve been following me, and you looked so pissed. I freaked. I ran. And you chasing me didn’t help. Fuck, Jack.”
“Okay, yeah, right. So this is it then, huh?” I light another cigarette. My heart is knotting up. “This is it?”
“Jack.”
“Just... is it? Are we over?”
She’s breathing. I’m not.
“Yes,” she says.
So that’s how she did it. Over the phone. Over the goddamn phone on a Thursday night. It’s official. Legitimized.
I stare at the phone after she’s gone and I go back inside.
Well that’s just great. That’s fucking peachy. That is so pepper. I toss the phone. No. I fucking hurl that phone and I want it to shatter against the wall. I want it to tear the wall down but all it does is bounce off a picture and clatter somewhere.
So that’s how it goes down then. That’s how the game ends. This is how a duo concludes the show. Goodbye goodbye.
I go and get a bottle of most expensive whiskey I can find and a two liter of grapefruit juice for a mixer. And then I sit in my apartment and smoke cigarettes, inside! And I listen to the Beatle’s Something, Bowie’s Five Years, Awolnation’s Drinking Lightning. Over and over again. And then I pull out a sketch book and start to draw pictures of her, scribbles, dark lines, blue eyes, red lips, and then I’m crying and throwing things, and then I’m mellow. And I put on some more Beatles.
#
Friday.
I look at my watch. It’s ten. I’m missing classes again.
My liver hates me.
I get up and stumble into the shower. At some point last night I felt it was a dandy idea to paint a very large skull on my wall. And somehow every single one of my c.d.s wound up glued to my ceiling.
Jesus fuck.
In the shower I decide that I’m going to get fat. I’m going to get planetary. I’m going to get so disgustingly obese that small objects will form orbits around me.
“That’s right belly! Look at you! You will swell my friend. You will scare children!”
Dry off and as bad as my life has become, my hair isn’t that terrible today. Out in the living room I switch on the morning news, brought to you by the Northwest Cable Network. And this is when I realize...
It’s all over the news. Every channel all reporting the same story with alarming hysteria as the reporters, representing all ethnicities, giving biased accounts of what they’ve learned so far.
Senator and wife massacred! Privileged Children Orphaned! Terrorist Connection? Pacific Northwest Assassination! Would you like to know more?
Everywhere. On every radio talk show, on every cable channel. CNN was bombastic with their coverage. They all showed the same scene too, just from different angles. Ruttleby’s estate swarmed with cops, disco-frenetic flashing lights glaring everywhere, search-lights blasting down from roaming helicopters, men in suits mean-mugging the camera. Lots of men in suits.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations, the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, Christ, even NASA I think, are all investigating this thing
! Each news agency interviewing some serious looking guy or lady in a suit. Do they have leads?
“They’re never going to let this one go.”
We do have leads but we are not able to comment on them at the moment.
I have to lose the Escort and figure out how to get Keira back.
ACT TWO
CHAPTER SEVEN
I’m driving it to Ballard and I’m only now realizing that this fucking stupid car has shit for a sound system!
I’m at the stoplight on West Green Lake, near the park, and there are people out jogging. And a nice looking couple holding hands, walking a dog, laughing. They’re a good looking couple, young and healthy, and the sun is out and there’s kids in the background scampering around creating mischief, and I’m alone.
And I get this feeling that life’s passing me by. Like I’m stalled somehow. Like there are people out there having way more fun than me, experiencing more, breathing in cleaner air. And in my mind she is having sex right now. Of course she’s having sex right now. What else would she be doing?
“This is why people climb to the top of towers with high-powered rifles. This is exactly why.”
Paint it Black plays on my cell. It’s Sunset and the Indians.
“Tide.”
“Mister Tide,” his voice is chipper. “I’m texting you the bank account information. You can make any withdrawals or transfers tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure.”
“And hey, excellent job. I never doubted you for an instant.”
“Thanks and fuck-ya!”
“Jack. That’s no wa-” but I hang up on him.
Ballard. Atom Heart Auto.
“Oy, Jacky,” Edvard says as he sees me roll up in this piece of shit. It’s embarrassing, like farting on a date, but to give him credit he doesn’t say anything.
I park it and hand him the keys. “Can you get rid of it for me?”
He nods.
The Escort has to be destroyed, eradicated. The Feds probably have its tire-prints already. They’ve been on the case many hours now. I shudder.
I light a cigarette as Ed drives the crap-vehicle out back. He’s got enough cutting torches and gas-tanks out there to melt down the Titanic if he needed to. This isn’t the first time he’s gotten rid of a car for me either. He’s cool like that. No questions.
FEROCITY Chapter Four through Eight Page 4
