by Ponzo, Gary
“I’m a great driver.”
“You drive like an epileptic with Tourette’s.”
He sighed. “Always with the exaggeration, you.”
They were quiet for a few minutes. Then she said, “Maybe he’ll show here at the house before we get bumped.”
“Maybe monkeys will fly out of my ass and play a violin concerto.”
She laughed a little. After a moment, her laughter became contagious and he chuckled at his own joke.
“Vivaldi, you figure?” she asked. “Or Mozart?”
“Hell,” he said, “If they came out of my ass, I’d be surprised if they could scrape out Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
“More like Mary is on the Lam,” she suggested.
“Ba-duh-tssshhhh,” he replied, miming hitting a drum snare and a cymbal.
They fell quiet again, watching the apartment. After a while, he looked over at her. “You know, this is kinda goofy.”
“Goofy how?” she asked, not looking away from the target’s apartment door.
“Instead of wasting all this time on this guy, we ought to be going after the crooks he smokes.”
She turned to him then, her face registering a little surprise. “Really?”
He nodded, seemingly dead serious. “Why not? I’m sure if we put the same amount of federal resources into investigating those dirtbags, we’d find something to bust them on. It wouldn’t be as good as shooting them, but it’d be a start.”
“Give ‘em three hots and a cot at the federal pen, huh?”
“Probably better than they deserve, but yeah.”
“So now you’re all in favor of murder, thinly veiled by righteous vigilantism?”
His eyes widened. “Wow. Someone went and got a Master’s Degree in Big Fucking Words.”
“No big words in there, chopstick.” She smiled. “It’s all in how you put them together.”
“You want to talk putting things together?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the target apartment. “If our intel is solid and this guy has really been knocking off scumbags for twelve years, that’s together.”
“He’s a vigilante, not a hero.”
“You think so? Bernard Goetz was a vigilante and a lot of people figured him for a hero.”
She sighed. “If you believe Goetz’s own account of events, he acted in self-defense. Our guy is basically an assassin. Big difference.”
He sighed. “World is probably a better place without the guys he’s iced.”
“Probably. But who gave him the okay to make that decision? That’s why we have courts and laws and judges.”
“Judges who routinely let dirtballs off on technicalities.”
“The law is for everyone,” she said. “If you only let it apply to the people you like, you end up with –“
“Justice?”
She smiled. “No. Despotism.”
“Huh?”
“Fascism?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, come on. You know that one.”
He squinted. “I fail to see what fashion has to do with our current discussion.”
“Now you’re being deliberately obtuse.”
“Stop talking like a college graduate,” he said.
“I am a college graduate. So are you.”
He grinned. “Yeah. Tim Stanley’s College of Culinary Arts. Good thing the Bureau doesn’t check transcripts very closely, or I’d still be working security gigs.”
She shook her head. “You’re a dork. How does your wife put up with you?”
“She is routinely overcome with lust due to my good looks, I suppose.”
“This is Chelsea, or did you divorce her and marry a blind woman?”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.” He sat quietly for a moment, then started humming Mary Had a Little Lamb lightly.
She recognized the tune after a couple of measures.
“Not funny anymore,” she told him. “Don’t go to the well too many times for one joke.”
“Hey,” he said, “something works for me, I stick with it.”
“Probably why you try new things constantly.”
“I’d like to try having a day off and getting some sleep. That’d be something new.”
“Soon enough,” she said. “Even our glory hound SAC isn’t going to let this go on forever.”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah, I suppose.” He thought about it for a moment, then added, “Unless that’s where the promotion is in it for him.”
“Of course.”
“Asshole,” he muttered.
“Asshole,” she agreed.
SIXTEEN
Sandy drove less than a mile from Brian’s house, when he pulled up to the curb at a small city park. He sat in the car for a moment, then got out and strolled across the grass to a wooden picnic bench.
The park was sparsely populated. A trio of boys shot baskets on the other side on a concrete basketball court. Every time the ball went in the basket, it rattled the chain netting. A middle-aged woman walked a basset hound around the edge of the park. Sandy watched them without seeing any of them, his mind tackling his situation.
He should just slip away. That was the safest bet. Let the cards come tumbling down, as Larson put it, but only after he was gone. If Larson was going to go rogue like this, screw him.
But that screwed Brian. Sandy didn’t know if Larson would actually kill Brian, but he wasn’t willing to risk it. Besides, even if he was lying about that part, Larson would take Brian down with him. Sandy had no doubt of that. So he couldn’t desert Brian. He’d been one of the Horsemen. Sandy had a duty.
He swallowed thickly, considering the task before him.
He had to finish with Odoms.
Then he had to finish this new file, which he hadn’t even opened yet.
Not get caught.
And make sure Brian was actually released.
“Easy as pie,” Sandy muttered sarcastically.
He sat and watched the kids play round ball for another twenty minutes. Then he rose from the picnic table. Might as well go home, he figured. Now that he knew who’d been tailing him, the heat was off.
That night, he lay in his bed staring at the ceiling. Something was nagging at him, but he couldn’t quite pin it down. He ran through his conversation with Larson over and over again. He chastised himself for the questions he should have asked but didn’t.
Eventually, he turned his mind to Odoms. That would have to be first. And the sooner the better. Tomorrow. Maybe finish both, if he could make it work. He didn’t like abandoning the methodical approach he’d used all these years, but what choice did he have? Every moment he waited to finish the job was another moment Brian was in captivity. He might be watching bad cable TV like Larson said, but Sandy wasn’t betting things were quite that easy.
He glanced at the green digital numbers on his clock. 10:14, they read.
Sandy reached out and set the alarm for 4:00 AM. Then he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. He saw Brian sitting in a chair. Duct tape held him in place at his wrists and ankles.
He pushed the image away. It was replaced with images of Yvonne Lewis flashing through his mind. Her bruised cheek. The trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth. The way she held her forearm but refused to acknowledge it was injured.
Him in his dark blue wool uniform, a badge on his chest.
“When did he leave?” he’d asked her.
“Just a minute before you got here.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Maybe less. I don’t know.”
“Any idea where he’d go?”
She shook her head. “Some bar, maybe.”
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
A frightened nod. “I’ll be fine. I’ll go to my sister’s house after you leave.”
And so he took the report. He asked her all the questions. He took photographs of her face. He knew that when he wrote it all up, there’d be a warrant for her wife-beater of a husband. Which was fine with him. As far as he was co
ncerned, there was a special corner in hell for those bastards.
He left, and an hour later the cops were back at that small house. Only this time, she wasn’t talking. And the place was full of homicide detectives and a shift commander screaming at him.
He was hiding in the house the whole time, you dumb son of a bitch!
Sandy winced at the memory, even all these years later. With a conscious effort, he took a deep breath, let it out and tried to push those thoughts away.
When he was finally successful, though, older demons came to haunt him.
SEVENTEEN
You’re dreaming, Sandy.
“I know,” he tried to say, but he couldn’t make his mouth work.
You’re a child.
“I don’t want to be,” he tried to say, but the words stuck in his throat.
Hazy images floated before his eyes. Music played. Distant, and muffled. Was it the ice cream truck? He felt sure it was summer. The coming of the ice cream truck was more important to a kid than the messiah, though he knew well enough not to say so. He didn’t have a father to put a whipping on him for saying something like that, but one razor sharp look from Pastor Terence was just as bad. Besides, his mother would pick up on the good father’s disapproval. Just because she didn’t believe so much in the strap didn’t mean she wouldn’t bring it out and dust it off for a special occasion, such as saying something the good pastor disapproved of.
Why was he thinking about the priest? He hadn’t been a bad guy, really. Much better than the one who eventually came to live under Sandy’s own roof. Pastor Terence had never made him nervous in any way other than that particular unease that any adult in authority might cause. So far as he knew, the man had been a true servant of the cloth.
So why think of him with ice cream music playing?
Sandy squinted through the haze. Images of polished wood came into focus. The music grew louder and more clear.
Not ice cream music, he realized.
Organ music.
From the church. And now he recognized the song. It had been years since he’d heard it. Maybe since that day.
Today.
You’re dreaming.
“I know,” he tried to say, but couldn’t form words. He was able to summon a whimper. No more.
The song was about being lifted up on eagle’s wings. During the years that he valued the ice cream truck over the second coming of the Messiah, it was his favorite church song. He imagined a giant eagle swooping down, landing with a powerful blast of air from its wings. He’d climb aboard and the great bird would spring into the sky once more. Wind would flow through his hair and he could see for miles and miles and miles…
But as the wood hues became crystal clear, he saw that he was in his mother’s church. Bright sunlight shone through the stained glass. The song filled every corner of the worship area, and suddenly, he hated it.
Everything was so big. Men were giants. Pastor Terence’s voice boomed, filling the air with his off-key singing.
He looked up to his right. His mother sat there, her face streaked with tears. She glanced down at him and he saw the loss in her eyes. Saw it with a child’s knowledge, separate from his adult understanding.
She forced a momentary smile, but it wilted right away. Instead, she squeezed his hand.
He looked ahead. The long, huge coffin of dark wood stood in stark contrast to the lighter hues of the wood that the church was made of.
You know who’s in that coffin, don’t you?
“Yes,” he whispered, and this time his words found voice.
And then the color faded. The light left the room. The pews and the walls seemed to be imbued with a darker, more malevolent wood. It was a smaller place, but it was the same place, and he was still dreaming.
The casket was smaller, too, and it had a reddish tint to the shined exterior. Almost a feminine quality.
There was no one to his right this time.
He looked to his left.
Janet, her head bowed. Sobbing quietly.
He reached out to touch her shoulder.
And was pulled backward to the ground.
He hit the ground hard, much to hard for a dream. This had to be real. But he couldn’t see anything in the dark. Could only smell beer and cigarettes. He scrambled to his feet, instinctively raising his hands to defend himself.
“You little no-account bastard!” he screamed at Sandy.
In the near blackness, his dim form to shape. Huge head. Jug ears. Massive forearms and hands like hammers. But a soft gut. Always a soft gut.
“That’s the last time you’ll stick your nose in my business!” he shouted at Sandy, jabbing his finger for emphasis.
He knew the reply –
It’s my mother! That’s my business!
–but didn’t voice it now. Instead he felt along his belt.
Nothing.
“It’s my wife, goddammit!” he roared at Sandy. It didn’t seem to matter that Sandy hadn’t answered him. He was dreaming and things worked different in dreams.
He didn’t answer again, even though he knew the words by heart.
You’ve got no right to hit my mother!
His hands patted his pockets.
There. In the back pocket.
“I’ll do whatever I goddamn well please! I’m the man of this house!”
No, you’re not. You’ll never be the man of this house. You’ll never measure up to him.
And he’d said the one thing that was unforgivable.
“You little son of a bitch,” he growled. “I’ll show you what a big man can do.”
The shadow shifted as he surged forward. Sandy wrapped his hand around the handle in his back pocket and pulled it free. In the darkness, he flicked his wrist in a practiced motion. The blade snapped open with a cold click.
He seemed to falter for a second, but Sandy didn’t wait. He stepped forward and drove the knife into that soft gut. Drove it hard and sure and straight and with all his strength.
And then…that same goddamn song, forever ruined by three deaths. He never wanted to hear it again. Not in the waking world, and not here. But he couldn’t pull free of the notes, or the grip that the polished wood and stained glass windows seemed to hold.
They conspired together and held him there until dawn.
EIGHTEEN
“He was there, then?”
Larson smiled. “Of course he was. This guy is as predictable as sunshine in the desert, baby.”
“Tell me again what he said.”
Larson sighed. “He didn’t say much. He did try to play the noble card a little bit. Once I told him that it was either finish the job or I’d kill Brian Moore, he went along with the program.”
“That was a dangerous play. What if Brian Moore suddenly shows up again?”
Larson shook his head. “He’s in the wind. Why would he come back?”
“He’s got a house to sell. That’s a lot of money to walk away from.”
“If he’s smart, he can do that through a local lawyer while he’s in the Cayman Islands or someplace like that,” Larson said.
“That’s where we should go. Or some place without extradition, just in case.”
He smiled. “We’re going to get out of here clean. There’s no reason to worry about extradition.”
“Anywhere we go, we’ll need money. There’s barely enough for a plane ticket left in the slush fund Ridley set up.”
Larson scoffed. “These guys should’ve stopped being paid a long time ago. That slush fund was probably pretty flush at one time.” He shook his head ruefully, then shrugged. “We’ll get all the money we need once Sandy finishes the job, though.”
She frowned. “I wish there was another way.”
“Hey,” Larson said, “you want to live comfortably or you want to scramble around for dollars? Neither one of us has enough retirement yet to keep us above the poverty line. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to stay here another twelve years so I ca
n pay half my retirement to an ex-wife.”
“I only have seven years left until I’m fully vested,” she said. “We could get by on what I’d make.”
“We could scrape by on what you’ll get.” He shook his head. “Meanwhile, this golden opportunity is gone. It won’t come again. The slush fund is dried up. The last of the Horsemen is moving on. I’m about to lose the house and every other goddamn thing, Linda. Jesus, you want to choose now to get cold feet?”
She moved closer to him, put her arms around his chest. “No, no. I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“Fuckin’ A, I’m right.” He reached out and caressed her cheek. “Just a little longer, baby. Inside of three months, we’ll be laughing about this on a beach over margaritas. I promise.”
“I believe you,” she whispered.
They were quiet for a few moments. Then she sighed. “I wish Brian hadn’t chosen now to disappear. It complicates matters.”
Larson shrugged. “What do we care? Banks will take care of business. We’ll get done what we want done. Then he’ll disappear. Life will go on.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It is easy.”
“If it’s so easy, why haven’t you taken care of the other loose end yet?”
Larson scowled. “I will. Right after I leave here.”
“Just asking,” she said, her voice growing harder. “We can’t have anything pointing back at you. If it points back at you, it will eventually point back to me.”
“I know.”
“And we can’t have that.”
“I said I know,” he snapped.
“Just making sure we’re clear,” she said. She remained silent for a few moments, then asked him, “What if Banks wants proof that Brian’s alive? That we released him?”
Larson shook his head. “I’ll tell him I cut Brian loose and told him to contact him on his own. It’s not my fault if he chooses not to.”
“And if Banks doesn’t believe you?”
“Fuck I care what he believes? He gets antsy, I’ll tell him there’s a file that has all the information in it about the Four Horsemen. It’s with my make-believe cousin. If anything remotely suspicious happens to me, it goes to the U.S. Attorney’s office. That’d bring the entire weight of the federal government down on his shoulders.” Larson shook his head again. “He’ll back off when he hears that.”
