by Don Bruns
He was sitting there, his mouth half open, watching me covering Em. Then, like a tottering bowling pin he fell from his chair and for just a moment I thought he’d been hit by a bullet. James stretched out flat, his eyes riveted to mine. A second later I heard the sound of more broken glass and something rattling. I glanced up at the computer stand and saw our old P.C. explode into dozens of pieces.
“Damn.” James had crawled under the kitchen table and couldn’t see the stand, but he knew what had happened.
I pulled my cell phone from my belt and punched in 911.
“Nine-one-one. Do you have an emergency?”
“Someone is shooting at us.” I was screaming.
“What is your address?”
I gave it to her, trying not to shout.
“Sir, is anyone injured?”
“Ma’am, if you don’t get someone out here immediately, we’ll all be dead. Damn the injured part.”
“Sir, I’ve already alerted the authorities. Now please, you have to tell me if anyone is injured.”
Something whizzed overhead and crashed into a lamp. “Not yet.”
“Can you take cover?”
“I’m lying on the ground, lady. Three of us are hugging the floor. It’s the best we can do.” Em squirmed under me, but didn’t say a word.
“Is there a bathtub? Or someplace safe you can go to?”
The bullets had come right through the windows. Even if we wanted to change our location, it would have been a bad decision. The minute we would rise up, someone could get hit, and none of us wanted that to happen. “Ma’am, I just want to know someone is coming.”
“Miami Gardens Police are on their way. Would you like me to stay on the line until they arrive?”
I could hear a siren in the distance. No more gunshots. “No. Thank you.”
“You’re certain?”
The sound of the siren was louder. “I think we’ll be fine. Thank you for being there.” I felt like we were doing a commercial for General Motors’ OnStar. “Em, are you all right?”
“You’re a little heavy, Skip. Other than that, I think I’m okay.” I stayed on top. There was no guarantee the gunplay was over.
I’d expected a run-in with the police tonight. It’s just that I expected to be arrested for bugging Sandy Conroy’s office. Instead, local cops were in rescue mode. Our rescue.
“James?”
“I’m here, pard.” His voice was quaking.
From underneath me I heard, “Skip, thank you for covering me, but seriously, I think you can move off of me now.”
So I slid off of Em, still hugging the floor. The siren was closer now, screaming with a mournful wail. Still no shots.
We were silent. The three of us realizing how lucky we were to be alive. I reached out and grabbed Em’s hand, secretly wishing I could grab James’s hand as well. She squeezed, and I felt a chill go through my body. I shivered and squeezed back, looking into her eyes. She had tears running down her cheeks.
“Hey, Skip?”
“Yeah, James.”
“Is it safe?”
“I don’t know, man. I wouldn’t go putting my head out the window. But I do know one thing.”
“What?” Em asked quietly from the floor.
“It’s gonna be a mess. Windows, the computer, the lamp.”
“Holes in the wall. God, I hope they didn’t hit the beer or the refrigerator. Why us?”
I didn’t have an answer. A couple of guesses maybe.
“You guys know more than you think you do.” Em was still hugging the floor, her face buried in the cheap carpeting, stained with beer and cigarette burns.
“But Skip—” James sounded more upbeat. The fact that no bullets had flown by in the last ninety seconds may have had something to do with that.
“What?”
“Is it safe?”
“Safe?”
“Is it safe?”
It had been a long time, but I remembered the answer. Amid all the craziness, the gunfire and near death experience, James was still playing. It was dangerous because someone was still out there, trying to kill us. But I answered. “Yes, it’s safe, it’s very safe, it’s so safe you wouldn’t believe it.”
Em raised her head, looking at the two of us, still lying flat on the floor. “Are you two crazy? Wait. Don’t answer. I know.”
“You already know we’re crazy, Em,” James chuckled softly.
“Yes. There’s no question about that. Crazy enough to almost get us killed. But I know the movie.”
“Movie? What movie?”
“Guys, I know the name of the movie.”
James strung her along. “How do you know there’s a movie involved? Em, don’t give me that. No. No, you don’t know what movie that’s from.”
The siren shrieked as it pulled into the parking lot. I could see purple light, combination of red and blue, as it streamed through the window, or what was left of the window. There was a slight commotion as voices outside got louder, and still we lay on the floor, afraid to sit up.
The siren drifted off, and there was a pounding at the door. “Police, open up.”
Slowly I pushed myself from the floor, and as Em stood up she brushed at her clothes, shaking shards of glass from her hair.
I turned to my two best friends. “We cannot say anything about who might have done this. We’ve got no proof. Agreed?” The two of them nodded their heads. “Officer, I’m going to open the door. Nobody in here has any weapons.” The cops hadn’t asked, but I didn’t want any accidents. We’d already been shot at from a distance. Didn’t need to have it happen at close range.
I pulled the door open, and two young officers with pistols drawn stood on either side of the doorway. A small group of neighbors was gathered outside, and I thought I saw Jim Jobs at the head of the group. I remembered his scolding voice when I first had James install the fire alarm in Sandy Conroy’s office, and I wondered if my comments to him were strong enough to give him reason to shoot out our windows and blow our computer to kingdom come.
“Thank God you’re here.” James crawled up off the floor and offered his hand. Neither officer took it.
“Who called about the gunfire?”
“I did.”
“It came from—”
“The parking lot.”
“We have another officer checking that out.” He glanced around the apartment. “Do you have any drugs in this apartment?”
I couldn’t believe he was even allowed to ask the question. “A case of beer is about the strongest thing we carry.”
He nodded. “I’ll need to take a report.” The younger uniformed officer walked in and started making notes as he moved around the living room. The guy was probably about our age, maybe younger. This was the officer of the law who was going to save us from a sniper? A guy younger than I was?
“Marathon Man, James.” Em gave my roommate a grim look.
“Pardon?”
“When Laurence Olivier is torturing Dustin Hoffman he says ‘is it safe?’ and Hoffman, trying to get away from the pain says, ‘Yes, it’s safe, it’s very safe, it’s so safe you wouldn’t believe it.’”
James shook his head. “You’re good. You’re very good. I can’t believe you came up with that.”
“Sir, would you step outside for a moment?” The older officer motioned to James and the night got a lot longer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The cops left a little after midnight. They’d questioned us individually, then together. Did we owe anyone any money? Did we use drugs, did we buy drugs, did we sell drugs? After the exhaustive interviews, they worked the apartment over, digging out three slugs from the walls. They combed the parking lot, looking for I don’t know what. All I know is that we were glad when it ended.
We’d called a 24-hour home improvement company, Twenty-Four Seven, that the police recommended and they boarded up our windows. Em stuck around and helped clean up the broken glass and computer pieces. The compute
r hadn’t been worth much, but it’s all we owned. The company laptop was untouched. My jackass boss Michael would be so happy. I promised myself when I got paid from everyone, I would buy the apartment its own computer. Something new and state-of-the-art. Something cheap. I had a lot of plans for that money. Travel with Em, a new car, computer, maybe upgrade our lodging—the list was endless. Maybe put back a couple of bucks just in case Em and I decided to take this relationship to the next level. Not that either of us was ready for that.
“We should have told them about Feng. About Jim Jobs.” James was having second thoughts. “Skip, we should have told them the whole story. Carol Conroy and Sandy and Sarah.”
“Hey, James. You did a great job in giving them just the basic facts. We were sitting here and somebody started shooting. That’s all we know for sure. Don’t even think about blowing it now.”
“Blowing it?” He buried his head in his hands. “Skip, I wanted to tell the cops everything and ask them to solve the problem. It’s been a game up until now. It’s no longer a game, pard. We came this close to being killed.”
“The cops made it clear they thought it was a drug thing.” Em sat on the couch, scowling. “Our age, this location,” she flung her arms out. “You guys need to get out of this place.”
“It’s what we can afford, Em.” James shot her a dirty look. “It is what it is.”
“James, maybe it was a drug thing.” For the last hour I’d had this thought in the back of my head.
“What?”
“Maybe somebody picked the wrong apartment. It’s not that we haven’t seen deals going down here before.” We’d seen drugs being sold in the parking lot, and the cops had conducted at least three raids in the two years we’d lived here.
“Yeah. Maybe. But what are those chances?”
“James, Skip is right. If we told the police about Feng and the rest of that crew, the cops would think we were smoking something. What were you going to say? That Skip is pretending to be Sarah’s boyfriend, so maybe her real boyfriend shot the place up? Or maybe her boyfriend’s wife shot the place up? Or would you tell the story about you guys bugging Feng’s car and maybe Feng shot the windows out to get even or to scare you? Or would you use the story about bugging Sandy Conroy’s office and maybe he found out and decided to kill you?”
Em brought it home. Each one of those scenarios was entirely possible. We were in some deep, deep shit.
We sat on the couch, the three of us, drinking strong, black coffee at twelve thirty a.m. We should have all collapsed by now, but the fear and the energy fueled by the caffeine kept us on the edge of our seats.
“Who ordered your security system?” Em stared ahead, watching some spot on the far wall.
“Synco Systems.” What was she thinking?
“Why?”
“Because they wanted to upgrade. Wanted a better—” and then I remembered. In my first conversation with Sarah, she’d mentioned that a new client had demanded that Synco Systems put in a new system. “It was one of their clients.”
“Any idea who?”
I thought about it for a minute. A new client had told them they wanted Synco to install a better security. Presumably to make sure no one broke into the plant and stole that client’s software secrets. “I do remember. I think she said it was the government.”
“Our government?”
“Yeah. I’m sure of it. She said someone associated with the United States government made the request.”
“The government wanted a new security system installed at S.S. to protect the security system that was being designed for them.”
“Sounds convoluted, but yes. That’s what she said.”
James spoke up. “The security software package that Synco is working on right now is for the Department of Defense, right?”
“It is. Sarah said it’s a secret, but she’s under the impression that the Department of Defense is the client.”
“So, we can assume that the Department of Defense is responsible for your big sale, Skip.” Em smiled at me, stood up, and walked to the window. “Did you guys have renters’ insurance?” She tapped on the plywood.
“No.”
“Just wondered.” She paced with a nervous energy. “Do you remember what we talked about yesterday at lunch?”
Could that have been just yesterday? A lot had happened since then.
“Going back to a starting point? Well, we started when Skip sold the job. But now we know that it goes back a little further. It starts when the Department of Defense asked for a new security system to be installed at Synco Systems.”
“Why does it start there?” James had a cynical tone to his voice.
“Because they were afraid someone would break in and steal the plans for this sophisticated software program that is being installed on their computers.”
“Makes sense.” I nodded.
“The Department of Defense is making sure that their new security system is secure.”
“And? You’re just going around in circles.” James was frustrated. Late hours, caffeine, and a headache usually do that to him.
“It’s all right there. The murder of the vice president, Carol Conroy’s paranoia, even Sarah’s relationship with Sandy Conroy. I can feel it.”
“But you can’t tell us what it is?”
“Feng’s part of it. That conversation you recorded this afternoon. We need a couple more pieces of the puzzle. That’s all.”
“Where are we going to get them?” I had no idea where she was going with this.
“Anybody ready for bed?” James jumped to his feet.
“I couldn’t sleep if I tried.” Em kept pacing in the small room.
“Then let’s go back to Synco.”
“Right now?” I couldn’t imagine what he planned on doing.
“Right now. Skip, you’ve got the temporary code, and at this moment the motion detectors and security devices aren’t hooked up. We’ll never have a better chance to walk in and check out Conroy’s and Feng’s offices.”
“For God’s sake, James, we’ve already broken some sort of law. I almost got myself arrested tonight and—”
“That’s the point, amigo. You didn’t. What you almost got tonight was killed. We can walk into those offices and go through files, paperwork, and whatever else we want to look into. Let’s find out why someone tried to kill us. There are no detectors to stop us. After tomorrow, all those security devices will be hooked up and nobody will be able to get in. Am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“And Skip, there’s something else.”
“What’s that?”
“We can get into Sandy Conroy’s computer.”
“We can?”
“Don’t you remember, compadre? We’ve got the code from our little smoke detector spy on the ceiling.”
He was right again.
“Em?”
“What are you going to do if you get caught?”
“I tell them that we couldn’t sleep.” Caught up in the spirit of the caper, I continued. “I came in to make sure that everything was ready for tomorrow’s hookup.” I figured it might have a chance.
“You know that will never stand up.” Em set her empty coffee cup on the kitchen counter.
“You keep a lookout at the entrance and it won’t have to.” There were two ways in. The main entrance was the only one that was ever used. The rear entrance would only be used for an emergency.
“I know this is one of the worst ideas you guys have ever had.” She brushed her blonde hair off her face. “And you’ve had some really bad ideas.”
“But?” I watched her walking from one end of the room to the other. About nine medium steps.
“Em?” James drained his coffee.
“But I’m going to go along with you.”
“Because you want to help us? Because you and I have a relationship, and you’re sticking by me?”
“Because somebody took a shot at me, Skip, and I am pi
ssed.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
James reached behind the driver’s seat and pulled out a rolled mat. “My friends, I will magically transform this vehicle.”
“We could use a little magic tonight.” I watched as he waved the rolled vinyl above his head.
“Watch as the old box truck, magically becomes—” James turned his back to us, unrolled the vinyl, and placed it against the driver’s door, “The Water Connection Plumbers.”
“The Water Connection?” We could barely read the sign in the dim light of the parking lot.
“What is a plumber responsible for? Water in. Water out. Therefore, The Water Connection. The Water Connection Plumbers.” I had to admit, the name worked. I just hoped he’d checked the Yellow Pages to make sure there wasn’t another Water Connection.
“Guy I know from Cap’n Crab printed them up for us. Pretty cool, eh.”
“Problem is, James, you don’t know one end of a wrench from the other.”
I could see him smile. Someone had then taken the letters and intertwined a silver W, C, and P. It actually did look pretty cool. What bothered me the most was the phone number, displayed in a putrid yellow.
“Skip, that’s your number.” Em looked puzzled.
“If someone calls to check up on us, it can’t be a fake number.” James had thought it all out. “They’ve got to believe we’re a real plumbing company. If we’re out on a surveillance call, all you’ve got to do is answer your cell with ‘Water Connection.’”
That didn’t bother me too much. The people who called my phone were Em, James, and one or two other friends. My mother and I hadn’t spoken in years, so she wouldn’t call. And with the others, I could always explain. I’d just tell them I was moonlighting as an answering service. What bothered me was the minutes. Every time someone called to check on the phony business it would cost me time on my plan. Hopefully the bonuses would more than make up for the extra cost.
“And I didn’t want you to feel left out, Skip.” He walked to the passenger side and unrolled a second sign.
