Dean Ing - Soft Targets

by Soft Targets(lit)

  "Be damned t'ye," Flynn said, coloring. "Rent one. I'll buy ye airline tickets, if that's it, and then ye both can-"

  "The BMW," Flaherty said then, his thin voice scything through Flynn's anger, scattering it like dead leaves. "Rental won't do, d'ye see? Ye trust the lad to drive. Aye, all he has t'do. On my honor an' then we'll be away on. Yell niver see us more."

  There was a long silence, the two provos watching critically as old Flynn, now older than sin itself, picked up his spoon and nodded. "Af-ter that, we're quits," said Flynn. "We won't want to know ye."

  McTaggart seemed about to take up the monologue again but he caught the look from Flaherty. Donny caught it too, there was enough of it to go around. It said stuff yer gub an' don't tinker wi' yer victory. Donny felt victorious as well. No one had asked him, but wherever they needed to go he was willing, especially cupped in the leather seat behind the wheel of the BMW. He'd take them clear to New Haven, if that was what they wanted. But they wanted Denver.

  Denver, for Christ's sake! That was just one stop short of Mars, to Donny Flynn. And his father was willing! Perhaps `willing' was too strong a word, but he was going to permit it, Donny sought one of his new phrases-sure as flies on dog dirt.

  Last night then, Friday, Donny's father had drilled him on ice conditions, tire pressures, uses of a credit card, and-repeatedly-on vari-ous cautions when riding with strangers. Donny reflected that Da spent more time talking with him that evening, while the micks were out buy-ing clothes with Flynn money, than he had spent in any previous month Donny could recall. It almost gave Donny a feeling of being dear, val-ued, even loved. For a wild moment he consid-ered saying the hell with it, he'd stay home and maybe talk with the old man sometimes in the evenings, but Donny Flynn sensed that it would not, could not turn out that way. The flesh had its patterns; he knew they would not talk like this many times.

  Donny had not helped load the car that night, but packed food and cans of juice into a cardboard box as McTaggart swaggered back and forth to the car, wearing his new trenchcoat even though the weather was mild. Donny packed a single bag for himself, swiped Da's driving gloves and both pairs of sunglasses.

  Finally, this morning, well before light, Donny had hurried to warm up the car. Presently Flaherty padded out, followed by McTaggart. Da waved for Donny, who left the car idling and ran up the steps. McTaggart was arranging packages in the back seat. Flaherty was staring toward the house. Donny was about to enter the house but found that Da wanted him to stay there in full view.

  In the predawn he could see, on Da's face, a look he had not seen since the funeral in '71. The father put his hands on the son's shoulders, gripped them, seemed about to embrace Donny. He said, quietly, "I can't counsel ye further than this, boy, but if ye ever listen to advice, listen now." There was little of the pure Irish in his voice; it was his Da, but burdened with some new yet old and unspeakable dread. "Break no laws, even speed laws. Don't argue with those two. Think of them as grown children. Your job is to drive, nothing more. Nothing more, d'ye understand?"

  Donny nodded, wincing under the steely grip. After a moment his father continued. "Maybe I'm lending ye to them for your own sake, maybe just for mine. I don't know. But the bargain is just for driving. Whatever ye do, do not let either of them put a weapon into your hands."

  Donny nodded again.

  "Swear it." The grip was excruciating.

  "I swear to God I won't, Da," said Donny Flynn, wondering why his father's face made him want to cry.

  "Ye've sworn it, Donegal Flynn," his father said, and then released him. A gentle fist tapped his bicep. "Ye know our telephone number, if it comes to that. Keep the credit card in your pocket. An' now, get yer arse out to Route Ninety-five afore the weekend rush."

  At first Donny was too busy driving to pay attention to his passengers. Once on the interstate route, he began to listen. McTaggart, nursing a bottle of booze, luxuriated in leather cushions and entertained himself with an endless curse on American luxury. Bunch of girnin' soft cunts they were, aye, who'd risk nobbut filthy fookin' money fer the cause.

  Occasionally Flaherty responded, snoozing, his legs stretched out as he slumped in the rear seat gloom. Once Donny tried to join in by agree-ing. They ignored him. Boozing and snoozing, they ignored Donny's route past Pawtucket and Providence, ignored his brief panic on the stretch of ice outside Warwick. It was not until he suggested a stop at New London, trying to invent some clever phrase from the bits and pieces he had collected, that they stopped ignor-ing him. He made the mistake of referring to them as oul sods.

  The open-handed slap across the back of his head made Donny swerve, sent bright gobbets of light dancing across his vision. "What the fuck kind of answer is that," he yelled, half turning.

  "The kind ye earn, ye wee bastid," Flaherty piped, "callin' yer betters sods." Flaherty would have made a good soprano, Donny thought, but a lousy debater.

  McTaggart started to cackle, understanding the problem, explaining at great length between swigs that the oul sod was holy, but a couple of oul sods were sodomites. He did not blame Donny for his mistake. He did not blame Fla-herty, either. Flaherty had made no mistake. Flaherty had simply made his point in a way that even a wee lad could not fail to remember. Donny Flynn shook his head to clear it, and remembered.

  In Newark they bought the biggest, most grossly oleaginous giantburgers the micks had ever seen, and Donny located two fresh bottles of John Jameson. Donny perceived something ritualized in their insistence on that particular whiskey from that particular part of Ireland, did not understand, and knew better than to ask. For one thing, McTaggart was so smashed he could not have interceded if Flaherty had fancied some fresh offense by Donny.

  Donny wondered if the leather seats would ever be the same after McTaggart dropped his giantburger on his fly and, in a rage, ground the mess into the seat before hurling the debris from his window. It was shaping up to be a great little trip, thought Donny.

  The following day, Sunday, Donny found it necessary to tell McTaggart about antilitter laws as they sped across Virginia. McTaggart cared fuck-all about that until Donny explained about the highway patrol cruisers that blossomed in thousands across the land like winter wildflow-ers, sitting in hidden spots to surprise the jaded traveler. Flaherty said nothing, only patting the Christmas package, nearly as long as his arm, that Donny had seen carried from his father's hobby room.

  McTaggart saw the gesture. "None o' that, ye eejit," he cautioned, laughing; "yell have a chance in Colorado, by Jasus, an' not afore."

  Monday, the whiskey consumed, Donny tried to find more John J. in St. Louis, feeling more like a nursemaid to grown men at every futile stop. Bushmill's was heretical, any Scotch just as bad. Donny bought two gray stoneware jugs of local Platte Valley straight corn and smiled at the sight of the two provos, slouching in new but outdated trenchcoats, cradling their booze and swilling it even as they reviled it. They looked wholly harmless, old-faced children in Sam Spade suits, playing at some unfathomable in-ternational game. Donny wondered if their mis-sion was to pick up money from some Denver Hibernian Relief fund. He was a little vague on that; couldn't they do it by mail? Or maybe they were carrying money to Denver, hundreds and thousands of dollars or pounds or whatever, in those packages. Couriers of the night, Donny thought, teasing himself with it. Maybe he was a key piece in some enormous intrigue. Maybe, while the BMW purred across central Missouri, cornfields a ragtag stubble in the hard snow-blown earth around him, Donny Flynn was a romantic figure.

  He felt a chill blast of air on his scalp and sighed, expecting McTaggart to dump another load of trash along the deserted stretch. Then he heard a giggle. The next instant he was dodging hot brass casings amid a hail of small explosions inside the car. "Steady on, boyo," McTaggart slurred happily as the BMW lurched across the shoulder of the road, Donny slapping at the spent casing that sizzled between his collar and his neck.

  It was a very close miss as Donny turned the wheel into the slide
, waited for the Michelins to grip-or for the blue missile to plummet down into the cold dead cornfields below them.

  At length, Donny could speak again, so shaken he did not care whether Flaherty liked it or not. "You gotta warn me, goddammit," he pleaded, trying to see what was happening be-hind him. "I thought I'd been shot."

  "Had ta check out the oul persuader, lad," McTaggart crooned, fiddling with a small automatic weapon. "Yer da keeps nice toys an' he knows his wurruk, but I had ta check on it, d'ye see? Away on, Donegal Flynn, an' it's a foine thing ye're doin' fer the cause, me lovin' lad."

  Donny knew what one of the packages con-tained, now. And knew why his father had called him 'Donegal', a name reserved for use under only the most serious possible circumstances. At every kilometer sign, Donny wished more devoutly that he was back home and away from these knotheaded assholes. It would make a great story, holy Mary it would make him a legend on the streets, only nobody would believe a fourth of it. But in the meantime, he must endure close company with men he wouldn't introduce to a wino. He tried to make himself smaller in the driver's seat, experiencing an unfamiliar emo-tion, neither fear nor anger. It was embarrass-ment.

  How could you reconcile their professional standing in a holy cause with the swaggering boozing carelessness of this pair? Maybe you couldn't. Maybe this arrogant self-destructive romantic stupidity was the rule, not the excep-tion, which could've been a hell of a good reason why Da had left Ireland to begin with. One sure thing, McTaggart and Flaherty were the kind of friends your enemies would gladly donate. Why shit, they were worse than those skits he'd seen on TV; a proper couple of charlies.

  Well, they'd be in Denver in another day and then, according to McTaggart, they'd do some surveillance. And after that maybe they would go away, or he could drive them back to Old Southie. Donny would do it, would go anywhere they told him, as long as he only had to drive. He would obey his Da. Surely, surely just driving couldn't get him in much trouble.

  FRIDAY, 12 DECEMBER, 1980:

  Maurice Everett urged his Mini-Cooper up the ice-slick highway out of Golden, Colorado, the rally tires biting hard through the gentle curves. He needed a weekend of solitude. Briefly and with a touch of cupidity he had thought of hiring Gina Vercours to go along. She was a skier, after all. But he had refused that notion, and the snub-nosed piece in a shoulder holster, on the same grounds: they would both cramp his style and they might call attention to him. He had already caught somebody's attention through the postal service but, during his new celebrity, the Denver office had intercepted only the lone ceramic letter bomb. Perhaps he was exaggerating his importance, but he would feel safer spending his weekend at one of the little rental cabins outside the little town of Empire. Even do a little winter stalking, who could say?

  The three who could say, kept well to the rear. For a time the driver sweated to keep in sight of the Mini, settling for occasional glimpses of the tiny vehicle as the terrain permitted. There were few turnouts available after the new snow, and the further Everett isolated himself, the better two of them liked it.

  Everett chose the roadhouse on impulse, back-ing the Mini in to assure easy return. The flakes were dusting down again, powdery dry on his face. He ordered coffee and began shucking his furlined coat before he realized that he was alone with the counterman. He slapped snow from the front of his winter hat, then saw the dark blue BMW ease off the highway. Everett took his cof-fee with hands that shook, watching through fogged windows as the sleek sedan began to emulate his parking maneuver. No, not quite; the BMW blocked his Mini, and only one of the car's three occupants emerged. Three coffees to go, or one Commissioner?

  Everett saw the tall trenchcoated man cradle his long, gaily-wrapped package, speak briefly to the young driver; Everett noted the Mas-sachusetts license plate and used his time wise-ly. He walked to one end of the roadhouse, far from the windows and counterman, and piled his coat high in the last booth, placing his hat atop it. The coffee steamed in the center of the table, untasted bait.

  Everett stepped directly across the aisle from his end booth into the men's room, hoping that his circumstantial case was nothing more than that, hoping that the lean trenchcoated man would get his coffee and go on to Empire, or Georgetown, or hell. He did not close the door or try the light switch.

  There was nothing he could see in the semidarkness that would serve as a weapon and as he settled on the toilet, fully clothed and star-ing at his coffee three meters away, he felt the toilet seat move. One of its two attachment wingnuts was gone. Gently, silently, Everett set about removing the other, unconcerned by the stench of urine below his nose. Early or late, he reasoned, the audacious bird gets the worm.

  He heard the front door of the roadhouse sigh shut, heard a mumbled exchange-one voice had a high lilt to it-at the counter ten meters from him, heard the counterman open a re-frigerator. So Mr. Trenchcoat wanted more than coffee. Cheeseburgers, or diversion?

  Under the clank and scrape of short order cookery, Everett heard soft footfalls. He stood, breathing quickly and lightly through his mouth, gripping the toilet lid with no earthly thought of what he would do with it. He felt like a fool: oh, hello, t was just leaving, sorry about the lid, it didn't fit me anyhow... And then Mr. Trenchcoat stepped to Everett's booth as if offer-ing his package, one hand thrust into the false end of the package and he must have seen that he was confronting an uninhabited hat and coat just as Everett swung the lid, edge on, against the base of his skull from behind and to one side.

  Everett was appalled at himself for an instant. He had drygulched a harmless holiday drunk, he thought, as the man toppled soundlessly onto Everett's coat. The contents of the package slidbackward onto the floor then, and Everett re-flected that harmless drunks do not usually carry sawed-off automatic shotguns in Christmas packages with false ends.

  Everett's snowshoes were in the Mini and without them he would be stupid to run out the back way. The counterman, incredibly, was busy incinerating three steaks and had noticed noth-ing. Everett wrote the BMW license number on his table with catsup, though he could have used blood, and wrestled the trenchcoat from the un-conscious man.

  The only way out was past the BMW. He hoped it would flee at his first warning shot, then realized that the occupants were waiting to hear that shot. How would Mr. Trenchcoat exit? Backward, no doubt, holding the shotgun on the counterman. Everett's trousers were the wrong shade of gray but he could not afford to dwell on that. The trenchcoat was of a cut he had not seen in years; perhaps they would not think beyond it for a few seconds. Then too, the blowing snow might help mask him for a moment. Or it might not.

  He slid into the trenchcoat, which pinched at the armpits, turned its collar up, retrieved the shotgun and checked its safety. Gripped in a glacial calm that he knew would not last, he reminded himself of Pueblo and quashed his fear with one thought: my turn! Everett had time to pity the counterman, but not to question his own sanity, as he moved past windows near the door and turned his back on the door.

  Everett's shotgun blast tore a fist-sized hole in the floor and sent a lance of pain through Everett's bad ear. The counterman ran without hesitation out the rear door into a snowdrift, screaming, and Everett backed out the front door fast. The driver of the blue car seemed to be screaming as well. The BMW engine blipped lustily and a voice called, "In, in, Flaherty, ye fookin' twit," and Everett spun to see a red-haired man holding a rear door open with one hand, a machine pistol forgotten in the other. Everett did not forget the weapon and aimed for it. His first shot blew the weapon and a hand out the BMW's front window from the inside.

  Donegal Flynn accelerated to the highway, the left rear door of the car flapping open, and Ever-ett fired twice more. The next shot sent pellets caroming through the inside of the sedan and his last was a clean miss. Everett flopped hard into the snow and only heard, but could not see, the shiny BMW slide off the highway. It was a long vertical roll to the river and by the time they reached it neither of the occupants minded the
cold water, being dead at the time.

  Everett burst into the roadhouse to find that his first victim was still unconscious, a stroke of luck since Everett had neglected to check him for concealed weapons. There were things to set right. The counterman must be tamed, the tele-phone must be used; but first things first. He needed that toilet lid for a mundane purpose, and right now.

  * * *

  By the time the FBI mobile lab was en route from Denver, Highway Patrol units had things well in hand, had taken a sullen silent Irishman away in handcuffs, had even located the ruined sedan some distance down the river in three meters of water. Everett apologized for a dozen things including his prints, muddying those already on the shotgun; the instantaneous defec-tion of Smiley Bohlen, the counterman; and all the trouble he had caused in trying to defend himself. Despite his unquestioned identity, Maury Everett knew he was under informal ar-rest until the unmarked brown van pulled up outside the roadhouse. The atmosphere warmed quickly after that. Two of the FBI men in parkas mapped out the area while the third, an immacu-late cigar-chewing gentleman named Will Ful-ton, sat with Everett over coffee and a tape recorder.

  As soon as a tape ended, Fulton would take it to the mobile lab for a fast-track transmission to Denver. Someone located the weapon Everett had blown from the BMW, which tickled Fulton no end even before its analysis in the van. Fi-nally grown hoarse, Everett asked, "How much longer do we go on, Fulton? I needed a rest before any of this happened, and right now all I want is to get in the Mini and disappear."