by Sam Jones
Billy then told Heather, “I’m actually right in the middle of dealing with something.”
“Sorry to hear about that.”
“Don’t worry.” He eyeballed the sniper. “Got the guy right where I want him. I’ll call you soon, okay?”
“We’ll be here.”
“Bye.”
Billy hung up and took a moment to think.
They’re both okay.
Sykes. That son of bitch…
He hopped out of the Crown Vic and approached the sniper. “How’d Kruger pull that one off?” he asked him. “How’d he answer their number when I called? He had me thinking he actually took them.”
The sniper didn’t have the slightest clue what Billy was talking about.
“Never mind,” Billy said. “You’re just another pawn…”
He took out his Colt. “Death is your final destination today, ace,” he said. “The choice is yours on how that happens. Either you answer a couple of questions and I pop one in your skull, or you keep telling me to fuck off and I gouge your eyes out for killing my friend down there.”
Saying the words out loud sent Billy into a bit of a shit fit. He balled a fist, cocked it back, and popped one right across the sniper’s jaw. The sniper’s eyes darted around almost as comically as a Looney Tunes character from how hard Billy hit him.
Billy flexed his fingers.
Yikes. That really hurt.
“Just answer my questions,” he said to the sniper, cool and collected, “and then I’ll send you down the River Styx.”
The sniper squinted—he didn’t have the slightest clue what Billy was talking about.
Billy rolled his eyes. “Forget it…”
The sniper looked at his situation and came to terms with it, pain getting the better of him.
He was crushed between a pair of cars for crissakes…
“Kill me, man,” he said to Billy, his eyes on the hood of the Grenada, ready for a bullet to take him out of his misery and send him off to the great unknown.
“Answers first,” Billy said.
The sniper waited.
“Where’s Kruger?” Billy asked.
“Long Beach,” the sniper said through labored breathing. “He’s leaving on a boat out of Alamitos Bay.”
“When?”
“Twenty-two hundred hours.”
Billy checked his watch.
Ten p.m.
I can make it.
“When were you supposed to check in?” he asked the sniper.
“After I killed the two of you,” the sniper said.
“And then what?”
“Kruger already paid me. I was just supposed to bury you, call it in, and leave. All I know is that the guy is leaving from Long Beach at twenty-two hundred hours.”
Billy took a beat. Read the guy. Reread the guy. “Okay,” he said. “And you’re sure that’s all you know?”
The sniper nodded.
Billy looked a few feet to his left and saw that the keys had fallen from the sniper’s hand after the crash. “Well, hey,” he said. “Would you look at that?”
He scooped up the keys, holstered his Colt, and moved toward the Crown Vic. The sniper craned his neck to watch as Billy slipped inside the car.
“Where are you going?”
Billy got into the driver’s seat, twisted the key, and started the engine.
“Hey!” the sniper said, Billy three feet to his right. “You said you were going to kill me, man!”
Billy looked at him through the glass and threw the car into drive.
“I am.”
He jammed all the way down on the accelerator and ground the sniper between both of the cars like a rolling pin flattening dough, crushing almost every bone in the guy’s body from the sternum down before Billy let up on the accelerator, and the vultures circled over the sniper as the pulse of his half-dead and shattered body continued to beat.
48
BILLY DROVE THE Crown Vic back to the states.
After he cleaned up the mess, of course.
It was in surprisingly decent condition considering the fact that Billy had driven another car into the driver’s side. There was some substantial damage to the rear passenger door, but the sniper’s body had cushioned the impact—somewhat—and left the thing still drivable with the cosmetic damage somewhat negligent. Between that and the dark of night settling in, Billy had a good shot at driving the car through the border undetected.
After he fetched the sniper rifle, threw it in the car, and collected Maria’s body, he drove off, leaving the sniper in the middle of the desert in front of the totaled Grenada as the vultures circling overhead waited to cover up the evidence.
The sniper wasn’t dead after Billy ground him up.
But he would be.
Eventually…
Loading up Maria’s body had been soul crushing for Billy as he carried her in his arms. When Billy held her close to his heart, he could feel that whatever it was that made up the essence of Maria Delgado had left her body long ago.
She was gone.
Gone.
Billy couldn’t discern what he was feeling. It was equal parts agony, anger, and remorse.
This isn’t right. It’s not right at all…
God, Maria.
I am so, so sorry…
He drove her body an hour back to the motel, discreetly brought her inside, and carefully placed her on the bed. She was motionless, pale. Every second that passed, the body came to look more like a corpse.
After he gently laid down Maria’s body, Billy leaned in to her ear. “I’ll find her,” he promised. “I’ll find out what happened to her.”
And then he left her there. He didn’t want to.
But he had to. He needed to.
Kruger was still out there. Billy still had a chance at stopping him.
And he was damn well gonna take it…
He took one last look at the shell of a woman he had come to care for, locked the door to the room, doubled back to the Crown Vic, and headed for the border; his only worry now centered on the notion of being flagged down by one of the border boys for the damage to the car.
And himself.
But Billy had bigger things weighing on him. He planned on flashing his badge and hoping for the best. He gave himself a fifty-fifty shot of charming his way out of being stopped.
If the guy doesn’t let me through…
Oh, hell.
I’ll make him.
But he didn’t even need his shield. He didn’t have to bother with the charm. The border patrol guy waved him on when he saw the California plates on the Crown Vic and the white boy behind the wheel.
Wow.
Too easy.
Not long after Billy was over the border, about four hours after he left Maria’s body at the motel, he punched in a number on the satellite phone he’d taken off the sniper.
It rang twice. Special Agent Ferris answered. “Rebecca Ferris,” she said.
“Special Agent Billy Reese,” he said.
A sigh from Ferris. “Jesus, Billy,” she said, relieved. “Where the hell are you? You were supposed to be back here by now. You need to drop whatever you’re doing and come back. I can’t cover for you any longer.”
Billy didn’t care. His eyes were fixed on the horizon as the headlights of the Crown Vic cut through the night with Kruger waiting at the end of it.
“Playa Encanto,” he said into the phone. “There’s a motel there…” He closed his eyes. “And Maria Delgado’s body is in room 4 of that motel. You need to get to it. Fast.”
A pause from Ferris as she digested it. “Oh my God…” she said.
“I didn’t kill her,” Billy said.
“I’m sure it wasn’t you, Billy. But what the hell is going on? What’s happening? Where are you?”
“I know where Kruger is. And I’m going after him.”
“No, Billy. You’re not. You’re coming back in.”
“No. Enough is enough.
After I do what I need to do, you can take me in, arrest me, try me, whatever. He’s mine…and I’m gonna get him.”
“This is bigger than you thought it was, Billy. This is bigger than we all thought it was. Look, everything is going to be okay. Trust me. But you have to come in right now—”
Billy hung up, rolled down the window, and tossed the phone out of the car. The high-ticket machine broke up into nothing more than expensive chunks of plastic along the road as he pressed down on the gas and headed for Los Angeles with the needle holding steady on eighty.
Kruger was in his sights.
Evening the score was on his mind.
To hell with the consequences.
49
BILLY ROLLED UP the block outside of his house in Glendale at 2030 hours—an hour and a half before Kruger was set to sail.
Confirming Billy’s already lingering suspicions: waiting outside his blue-painted one-story was an unmarked government vehicle. Parked inside the car: feds.
Ferris sent some lackeys.
Probably Russo or Dyson.
Man, fuck those guys…
Billy killed the headlights on the Crown Vic and pulled over to the right-hand side of the street about a half block from his house before scoping out the front of it and weighing his next move.
Calculation.
Confidence.
Patience.
Control.
He came to get supplies. If he was going to fight a one-man war—he needed something more than just his Colt and a smile.
He lived in a quiet neighborhood a stone’s throw from Griffith Park, about ten minutes away from his hometown of Eagle Rock and his grandmother’s place where he stopped by to check in on her whenever he had the chance. No matter how far Billy may have trotted the globe, he was still a definitive homebody at the end of the day. It was a neighborhood made up mostly of immigrants from El Salvador, Mexico, and a few other places. The point is that there were few white boys like Billy Reese hanging around.
But they liked Billy. They liked his family. His dad lived there before, his grandfather before him. Everyone living on the street dug the Reese clan.
Well enough.
Only a few lights were in on a couple of adjacent houses and a few of the surrounding apartments. Billy’s house sat on the corner of Verdant, perpendicular to the road he was currently parked on and faced an empty lot across the street where the basic foundation of an apartment structure had yet to be poured and a stray cat was the only one laying claim to the grounds. Everything to the left of Billy’s house was quiet, the only occupants currently home were four doors down and completely consumed in an episode of M*A*S*H.
Pretty much everything was quiet in the neighborhood, which made it easier for the two FBI agents in the boxy Ford parked smack dab in front of Billy’s house to not raise suspicions from the locals as they waited for the rogue FBI agent to rear his head.
It was a stupid mistake on their part parking right in front of the house.
Billy got the drop on them easily.
He put the car into gear and slowly rolled forward.
The Ford with the agents inside of it was parked down the street running perpendicular with Verdant, Perlita Avenue, somewhat shrouded by the cloak of evening as the agents inside the car, two tall strapping and Waspy looking lads who could have been brothers, sipped on coffee and debated the chances that Billy Reese would be dumb enough to stop back home to grab something out of the fridge.
Dyson, the guy behind the wheel, took the last swig of his java before tossing the Styrofoam cup in the plastic bag they were using as a trash can as a car drove past them on Perlita about seventy feet away.
Nothing suspicious to them.
Just another guy passing through.
“How much longer till Ferris cuts us loose?” Dyson asked Russo, the guy to his right.
Russo shrugged. “I say three hours.”
“Three hours?”
Russo held up three fingers.
They looked to the right at Billy’s house at the corner of the street, nothing but a single lamp over the porch adding a dull orange glow to the otherwise darkened and comatose dwelling. Billy’s place was the kind of home that you usually found in Santa Monica, or Long Beach, or anywhere that faced an ocean, its design consistent with the wide eaves and meant to withstand wetter environments. The house was also the only one on the street that actually had the quintessential California palm trees you saw on postcards at the airport peppered all along the lawn, adding shade to the one-story and keeping it cool almost year round, making it look like a little beach house that had been uprooted from somewhere near the shore and planted right in the middle of a neighborhood near Glendale.
It was charming. Simple. And the little things, like the palm trees and even the ocean shade of blue the house was painted, just screamed Billy Reese.
There was a story behind the house.
But that was a story for a different time.
Russo was bored. He looked at his watch: 8:32.
He looked at Dyson. Pointed to the radio.
“Keep it low,” Dyson said.
Russo quickly turned the dial and landed on the first station that he could find. It was something local. A pop station, from the sounds of it—DeBarge’s “Rhythm of the Night” being played at a reasonable volume.
Russo starting patting his hands on his thighs to the rhythm of the beat.
Dyson looked out the window and thought of better music. After ten seconds, the lyrics were starting to get the better of him.
He tapped Russo on the arm. “Can you change it?”
“Can we let it play out first?”
Dyson gave him zilch.
“What?” Russo asked.
Dyson looked away.
“What?” Russo asked again.
“It’s a terrible song,” Dyson said. “It’s kitsch. It panders to the masses. I find it highly obnoxious, and I’d very much like it if you changed it.”
“Kitsch? I’ve seen you bobbing your head to Bob Seger on more than one occasion.”
“This songs sucks. Please turn it off.”
Russo was flabbergasted. “Well,” he protested, “I like this song.”
Dyson said, “Well, then that makes one of us…”
Russo shifted in his seat, agitated. After a beat, he switched off the radio.
“Much appreciated,” Dyson said.
But they could still hear the music playing. A little more faint now, but it was definitely still going…
Russo and Dyson looked around the car for the little speaker they didn’t know existed that was still broadcasting DeBarge. Russo, in predictable form, asked, “Where’s that coming from?”
Dyson looked up—something caught his eye. “Hey,” he said. “Look, check it out.”
He pointed to Billy’s house—the kitchen light was on.
And the front door was wide open.
50
“SHOULD WE CHECK it out?” Russo asked.
Dyson answered by pulling his service revolver and opening his door. “Orders were to bring him in if we found him,” he said.
Russo followed suit, and the two FBI agents strolled up the front of Billy Reese’s house, took a pause, and slipped inside.
DeBarge was still playing when they entered the living room, the first room on the left when you walked into the house, an easeful little area complete with a tattered but plushy couch, a leather recliner that had been passed down through two generations of Reeses, and framed posters for Bullitt, The French Connection, and Assault on Precinct 13 lining the wall above the fireplace.
To the right of the entryway was the kitchen. Seated on the windowsill over the sink was the radio, churning out the chorus to “Rhythm of the Night” as Dyson and Russo slithered into the kitchen, their arms folded at right angles and guns pointed.
Dyson moved to the sink to turn off the radio. “I’ll check the back rooms,” Russo said to him as the music faded.
He turned around.
Then he found himself staring down the barrel of a Colt.
Billy, his finger curled and tight around the trigger, said to Russo, “I was hoping it was you two…”
Russo and Dyson planted their feet and didn’t twitch a muscle as they stared into the eyes of a man inching toward the edge.
Or already over it.
Both men debated the verdict inside their heads while simultaneously deducing how Billy slipped into the house as he said to them, “It’s called a back door, you fuckin’ dweebs.”
Russo and Dyson looked at each other in disappointment.
Billy had moved them into the living room and used a pair of zip ties from his “junk drawer” in the kitchen to bind their wrists and ankles. He placed their guns on the kitchen counter, slapped a strip of duct tape over both of their mouths, and walked down the hallway and into his bedroom across from the guest room, currently storing a collection of boxed-up tokens and mementos that Billy had been procrastinating unpacking for the past five years. There were a lot of them. It almost gave off a Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse vibe, and there was a drama-fueled story behind the volume of the boxes and the contents inside of them.
But that was a different story for a different time.
Billy got on his hands and knees by the side of his bed and reached underneath for the black duffel bag he had stored under there two days after he returned from the war.
He had always hoped that he would never actually live to see the day that he would need to use the stuff inside.
Oh, well.
Shit happens.
He pulled the bag out, placed it on the bed, closed his eyes, and breathed.
Maria was on his mind. He couldn’t help it. The feeling came in waves, a dizzy, almost nauseating kind of sensation that he found could only be remedied with anger.
He was speechless. He felt increasingly numb as the seconds ticked by.
He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to deal. He just continued to whisper the same thing out loud every time her face and that rarely cracked smile of hers crept into his mind.
“I’m sorry…”
