Once More to Die

by Jim Johnson

  “No, thanks. Still nursing this one. It occurs to me, Suze, that our Miss María Elena has unleashed a plague upon the land—“

  “Define plague.”

  “Your point is taken. So far we’re down upwards of twenty scumbags…”

  Suzie said, “And the Hamilton hit?”

  “An important man in the mob, but not top level. Close, though. Be interesting what happens to what’s his name who offered the reward?” Linda tapped a cigarette out of a Marlboro hard pack and lighted it. “Hard to find Lucky Strikes anymore.”

  “Santana. An old man. Tampa mob. He’s retired to Sarasota now and probably senile.”

  “We won’t know. The AAG and the AG warned us off.”

  “That’s not a bad thing for us, Linda. If there’s any consistency or synchronicity, Santana will be dead in the week.”

  “The Marshal Service has set up surveillance. I think they think they’re gonna get Atkins and the woman.”

  “Right now I got my money on the two. Wonder if they’re a couple now? Adversity has a way of dictating those kinds of things.”

  “Boy does it ever.” Linda grinned and drained the martini shaker into her glass.

  “Makes you wonder, too,” said Suzie looking up at the stars, “what is a killer, nay, a hitman, a mob guy, a Legionnaire, an escaped convict, and hell, an outlaw biker doing running around using the name ‘Tommy’?”

  “Ain’t something I’ve been worrying about,” Linda pointed out.

  “The name’s not imposing. But did you ever read Kipling?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” asked Linda.

  “Nope, and that is a sad thing.”

  “Got it.” Linda snapped her fingers. “Tommy this and Tommy that, and Tommy do some shit again, I can’t remember all of which.”

  “That’s the one. Kind of literary, isn’t it?”

  “If you say so, Suze. Are you trying to say we got us a literary hitman on our hands?” Linda inhaled and blew a smoke ring.

  “I dunno, Linda, Maybe it simply falls under the heading that everybody’s different.”

  “Yeah, right. Different.”

  “I’m beginning to think we need to talk to this one man and one woman wrecking crew.”

  “Well, the jet awaits in the morning. I hereby claim tonight formally fulfills my turn to walk the damn dog. Your turn next.”

  Suzie whistled. “Here, Fluffy. Time to go in.” She stood. “And Linda? A point of all of this? I’m warning you to caution. You’re good, probably the best we’ve got. But I’m not sure even you can take down Mr. Atkins.”

  Linda flicked the burning end of the cigarette into the yard and field stripped the remainder. She smiled a challenge at Suzie. “Oh?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: HIM

  It all started out so normal, but then became too complicated, and turned into a comedy of errors.

  Tommy Atkins slid through the night. Rusty night-operation skills he hadn’t used since the biker days in Arizona and before that in Angola and Zaire kicked in. While he could use rain as a cover, the Sarasota skies held no clouds.

  He and María Elena had stolen an eighteen foot fishing boat docked at a dark house on the mainland. They’d paddled out into Sarasota Bay and started the outboard. In a little while, they were paddling again to a secluded cove on Longboat Key. They beached the boat and gathered their gear. They walked past a few mangroves along a lip of a beach and up a path onto the private and secure grounds of “CAPTIVA BAYSIDE, AN EXCLUSIVE BAYSIDE CONDOMINIUM RESIDENCE.” A set of docks housed a dozen cabin cruisers and yachts. Another leg of the dock berthed smaller boats, pleasure and deep sea fishing boats, for the residents. Less than a half mile to the west sat the Gulf of Mexico. The same company had built a similar condominium tower on the Gulf.

  They circled the single tower building avoiding security lighting. Around to the side, they found a dark place in a clump of Australian pine. Tommy set the special gear down.

  María Elena was already dressed in an expensive pair of light blue silk pajamas and matching robe with matching slippers. She waved a few mosquitoes away. They didn’t bother Tommy who was used to clouds of the damn things in the Glades.

  Tommy picked up some road flares and a crowbar. He nodded to María Elena and reached out and ruffled her hair. “Bed hair,” he said.

  She gave him a big, wide smile of confidence as he melted into the dark.

  He took his time and soon was at the delivery end of the condominium. A loading dock was lighted with a bracketed lamp, and in the pool of light on the dock Tommy saw the now-ubiquitous camera perched in the corner above the door.

  Using long forgotten skills, he maneuvered to just outside the pool of light, where a dumpster carelessly left askew on the dock blocked the camera angle. He checked the area again. The rent-a-cop security hadn’t shown a propensity for cruising around back here during their preliminary surveillance, but you always check.

  Tommy double-checked his equipment and pulled out a twenty-two with a silencer—not that you’d need one way back here, but you always err on the side of caution. His first shot pranged loudly off the light’s cage, but the second shattered it. Swiftly Tommy scrambled up the stairs alongside the dock, keeping along the forward wall just in case the spillover light was good enough to make him out. He slunk behind the dumpster hugging the wall until he reached the door. He stretched up with the crowbar and smashed the camera.

  It didn’t matter if that triggered a security response, because they’d be heading this way soon anyway.

  Tommy smashed the door lock with the crowbar and jammed the crowbar between the door and the doorframe. It popped immediately with little complaint—cheap construction. Probably the contractor’s brother-in-law. Tommy went inside and hurried down a large corridor to a double door marked GARBAGE. This was the same in most condominiums. The garbage chutes drop garbage to one room on the bottom floor into a dumpster. When that gets full, the maintenance staff rolls it aside and slides another into its place. Then they push the full ones outside on garbage day for waste management to come and empty. In the garbage room, Tommy found two full dumpsters. He snapped two road flares and tossed them into the first dumpster and repeated with the second. The most important dumpster was the one under the garbage chute, and it was half full. He lighted two more flares and insured they caught the contents on fire. The smoke would rise up the garbage chute and invade all the floors above. Tommy propped the double-doors open and went down the hall and opened another door exposing stairs upward. The stairwell would serve as a good flue. Using the crowbar, he crushed the arms of the pneumatic door opener so it would swing free and remain open. He ran up two flights and found the garbage rooms in the second and third floors, propped the doors open along with the garbage chute doors to insure the smoke would flood at least part of the building. He hurried back down the stairs. Fortunately no one was about at this late hour.

  While this plan was mostly María Elena’s and designed to minimize bloodshed, he disliked it for its complexity; he did like it more though, because it kept him from attacking an upstairs condo which would be guarded by professionals, thus decreasing the risk big time.

  On the wall outside the garbage room a red CO2 bottle hung from a bracket. He snatched it off the wall, broke the safety wire, and pulled the safety pin. Then he set the fire bottle down against the opposite wall.

  Smoke was beginning to fill the corridor. He found another door leading toward the front of the building. He insured that door would not close. He hurried down another corridor and found community rooms and an exercise room full of aerobic and strength training equipment. He ignored these. He located the main door to the front lobby of the building and peeked out. A security guard sat at a reception desk.

  Tommy turned and made his way back. The corridors were full of smoke. He thought about lighting more flares in some of the community rooms to set off insulation to generate more smoke, but he didn’t want to burn the damn building down and ki
ll a bunch of people. A couple of dumpster fires ought to do what he wanted without indiscriminate killing. He started coughing.

  Suddenly, the alarm went off. Finally. Then the sprinklers kicked in and soaked him, which wasn’t what he wanted. He retrieved the CO2 bottle. On the landing, he dropped another flare into the waiting dumpster.

  He made his way back to the concealed spot where they had parted. Above him, lights were coming on up and down the floors. He smiled at the inconvenience all the residents would endure because of what he was doing. María Elena was already gone. Upon reflection, he decided those pajamas were definitely her. She had a knack for picking out the right clothing and wearing it well. He slaked water off himself and picked up his other gear from the ground.

  He was already wearing black work boots, so that went with the firefighter’s overcoat and hardhat. He put them on and immediately began sweating. He moved back toward the water and flung the crowbar as far as he could into the bay. Then he returned to a vantage point at the edge of the pines.

  Already he could hear sirens. He sweated more. He checked his weapons. He moved silently through the brush and pines around to the side where he could observe the parking lot. Most of the building was alight now. People were beginning to stream out the front doors and into the parking lot.

  A fire engine and an ambulance swung into the circle approach to the condo and stopped next to a fire hydrant and firefighters swarmed and began dragging equipment and hoses.

  Another fire truck, this one with the long ladders whipped in and parked, too.

  On the other side of the circle two private security cars were already there, yellow lights rotating, and doors open. One Longboat police car was in a clump with the two.

  Tommy saw amongst the people and vehicles that a team of firefighters was making its way toward the entrance to the building. And right in front of them came two hard cases and a nurse pushing an old man in a wheelchair. An indecently clad young lady scurried next to the wheelchair.

  Tommy hoped they hurried. It wouldn’t take the entry team long to determine the extent of the fires and the cause.

  People were milling about in the grass beside the parking lot and throughout the parking lot. Firefighters and a cop were herding people away from the building that way.

  Many were coughing. Soon somebody would make a distinction between the odor of burning building and that of burning garbage.

  Tommy came out of the dark on the fringe of all this activity and joined the large, moving group. Right in front of him an elderly lady in a housecoat limped along. He sidled up beside her and took her arm. “Here, let me help you ma’am.” He swung the fire extinguisher into his other hand.

  She glanced her thanks at him acknowledging his help that wasn’t necessary. He maneuvered the two of them toward the largest group gathering. “Why do you need those red lights to keep flashing?” she asked. “Everybody can see a big ol’ truck.”

  “Safety regulations, ma’am.” He didn’t need her to remember him. He kept the hard hat brim tilted toward her. When they made it to the main group, he parked the old woman next to a pickup truck. He dropped the tailgate. “Sit here if you want.”

  “Why thank you, young man.”

  Tommy moved quickly, threading through the parking lot to the far side where he saw the wheelchair and accompanying bodyguards, nurse, and hot babe. People were talking amongst themselves, some wet and some dry. He wondered idly at the sprinkler system. Did they only go off where there was smoke and fire? Or did the entire system trigger at once? He shrugged mentally and continued through the chaos. He could see smoke pouring out of the front entrance. The firefighters must have opened the access to the garbage section to get their hoses through. This meant time compressibility to him. He was running out of time.

  Finally he made it to the small group around the wheelchair.

  He dropped the fire extinguisher even though it would continue to give him good cover, for he needed his hands. He stepped in front of them and pulled out his automatic.

  “You want to die, you go for your guns,” he told the bodyguards. They were two surprised gents. Tommy’s fire gear obscured the rest of the milling crowd from seeing his gun and watching him make his play. He tipped his hat up and looked at the old man.

  The man in the wheelchair had eyes burning with intelligence, even though he was handicapped and over eighty years old. “You!” he said, spittle flying out of his mouth.

  “Tell your goons to drop their weapons,” Tommy told him.

  “Fuck you. You killed my kid.”

  Tommy wasn’t going to admit anything in front of witnesses. He nodded at the two goons. “You can drop your guns now, or I will kill Santana. Right fucking now.”

  One of them said, “Boss, is this the guy who aced six over in Arizona?”

  “And a lot of others, too, back in the day,” spat Santana. “And maybe Hamilton.”

  The woman was blonde and wore only a diaphanous wrap. Her eyes were wide. She was no threat.

  Tommy pulled out the silenced twenty-two with his left hand and shot Santana in the left leg. “Drop your weapons. Or don’t and go for them.”

  Santana, to his credit, only grasped his leg in pain. He grabbed it and hugged it with his hand.

  The two hastened to do his bidding.

  A family huddled next to a nearby van was watching in horror at the sudden violence and the husband hustled them away, fear on his face. Tommy judged he had less than two minutes before the situation became untenable.

  He turned to Santana. “Your son was a serial rapist. You would never have allowed that if he was one of your men. He deserved to die.” Tommy pulled out a tight roll of paper the size of a poster. He handed it to the woman. “Blondie, unroll this and hold it up to Santana.” He observed she had very large breasts. While she did so, he turned back to the two bodyguards. “Sit down and cross your legs. Push your guns this way.”

  They did so and he bent and picked up the guns and pocketed them in the firefighter’s overcoat. Thank goodness for large pockets.

  He was down to maybe one minute.

  Sirens and the sounds of vehicles permeated the area.

  The blonde had the paper unrolled and was holding it against Santana.

  His face went ashen.

  The unfurled was a paper target with a human outline. It was designed to attach to a downrange bracket for target practice. On it, Tommy had drawn the outline of a scope picture with the crosshairs on the head of the target. Above that he had written in bold letter, SANTANA.

  “You can thank a certain young lady for me not killing you. There’s been enough killing. She did suggest that you’ve lived with that pain for all these years, and that is real punishment. Here’s the deal: You withdraw the standing reward immediately. If not, I got a sniper rifle and a super scope with your name on it.” He looked at the two bodyguards. “That proves my intent. You are not in jeopardy unless you try to follow me or whatever. Understand?”

  Both nodded.

  “I have an accomplice in a tree with that particular rifle trained on us right now. So you know.”

  They both nodded.

  Santana started to say something when three men materialized from behind the van.

  The leader was a balding man who pointed a government issue nine millimeter at him. “Freeze, Atkins. U.S. Marshals. You’re under arrest.”

  Shit. Tommy thought furiously. He had to hold on and draw them closer.

  “I got no beef with you, marshal. Only Santana.”

  “Drop your weapon, Atkins.”

  “I got these people covered with my weapon, marshal. You want the innocents caught in the middle of a firefight?” Damn it. He’d waited too long, played around too much. And he’d been caught. Somehow, the Marshal Service must have heard about Hamilton in Vegas and deduced that Santana would be next. Tommy shook his head mentally at himself for failing to game this one out properly. He could blame his error on lack of practice lately, but th
at didn’t cut it when he was caught flat footed.

  They were moving closer, coming up from behind Santana and his crew.

  Tommy looked a warning at the two bodyguards. They were bewildered. Tommy smelled burning garbage. It was not pleasant.

  “Stand aside, lady,” the balding marshal told Blondie. Her tits jiggled as she moved away from Santana. Santana glared at her defection.

  “Marshal,” Tommy said, “no need for gunfire with all these innocent people around.”

  The three kept moving and clustered closer together as a necessity. They walked abreast, mimicking Wyatt Earp and all at the OK corral. Tommy knew he had a chance with them. As soon as your opponents start playing games or become too arrogant, they lose an edge.

  Out of nowhere, a shapely blue-robed figure appeared behind the three. She stepped right up to Baldy in the center and put the muzzle of her automatic to the back of his head.

  Baldy froze and the other two took another step until they realized something was wrong. They turned toward him. This gave Tommy the split second he needed. He stepped aside and grabbed Blondie. He put his gun to her head.

  “Who dies first?” he said. “If you want nobody to die, drop your guns. Or start shooting.”

  The three marshals didn’t move. The two flankers looked to Baldy for guidance. He swallowed painfully, careful to avoid triggering the gun jammed into the back of his head.

  Tommy knew he had to do something. Pretty soon someone was going to go get the cops who were gathered in front of the tall condo. “Listen, Mr. Marshal. You know I have nothing to lose. You do. There are too many people standing around out here for you to chance a gunfight. I like this woman. Shame to harm a lady with such fine tits. So that’s a trade off. Here’s what we’ll do: You all will drop your weapons. I know you travel with handcuffs. You will remove them and cuff yourselves to each other. And you will give my associate three keys to those handcuffs.”

  “No way,” said Baldy, swallowing again.

  Tommy thought the man ought to control his swallowing. It gave him away. “And you will do so in the next sixty seconds. If you don’t, I will shoot the young lady in a shoulder or something non-lethal. The incident review will result in your firing. You cannot ever justify civilians being harmed when you can prevent it. Not to mention Santana bleeding to death while you dallied.”