Shotgun Opera

by Victor Gischler

  Nikki sighed on her end of the phone, and Meredith knew what was coming.

  “We’re sisters,” Nikki said. “Sisters need to stick together, and I need your help.”

  “No.”

  “You owe me.”

  “Get bent.”

  Nikki sighed, paused. When she started speaking her tone had changed, like she was talking about the weather. “So, how’s John the attorney with the broad shoulders and the square jaw? He was quite a catch, wasn’t he?”

  “Shut up.”

  “How did you snag such an eligible bachelor? Seems like he’d have the ladies all over him. Oh, wait, what was that pretty little thing’s name? Brenda? His receptionist down at the firm, right?”

  “I hate you.”

  “She had her little blond sights set on John, didn’t she? Just disappeared one day. Now, that was a lucky stroke. Lucky for you.”

  “I get the point. Hold on.” She put her hand over the phone, turned little irritated circles there in the middle of the kitchen. This wasn’t fair. Not fair, and goddamn inconvenient. She’d landed a handsome, socially acceptable husband, and now she had plans to complete the picture with a baby if she could get John to pony up with the sperm. She didn’t need this shit.

  But one thing Dad had taught them. When you’re square, you’re square.

  “Then we’d be even,” she said into the phone. “No more calling me for favors.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die, Middle Sister.”

  “Just one question. Why aren’t you doing this yourself?”

  “I’m injured.”

  “What?” Genuine concern. “Bad?”

  “Nothing terminal, but it’s got me on the sidelines for a while. And I thought I’d visit Mother.”

  “How is she?”

  “About the same. Last week she thought the gardener was Yassir Arafat.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Seriously. Thanks for doing this. I’m up against a time thing.”

  “So, who is it I’m supposed to make gone?”

  Nikki gave her the details, thanked her again, and hung up.

  Meredith stood, staring at the phone for long seconds. Where to start? It had been a long time. She went upstairs, pulled out the lockbox she kept covered with dirty towels at the bottom of a clothes hamper in the back of the bedroom closet. There was as much chance of John doing a load of laundry as of Burger King building a drive-thru on Pluto, so she figured the box was safe.

  She spun the combination and opened the box. A set of military ID she’d been saving just in case. A couple of passports. A 9mm Beretta with an extra magazine and a silencer. A few other things she thought of as keepsakes. Why had she kept these things? She found what she needed, the little black leather book. She flipped through it until she found the number she wanted.

  She sat on the bed, dialed. It rang seven times until someone picked up. “Hello?” A slight Spanish accent.

  “It’s me, Ortega.”

  “Meredith?”

  “I need you for a job.”

  “I didn’t know you were still on the inside.”

  “Yeah. You’re in Oklahoma City, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need an advance scout. I’ll let you know the details in the morning.”

  “Short notice,” Ortega said. “I’ll have to use someone local.”

  “Is he okay with a little blood?”

  Ortega chuckled. “If you knew this man, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

  “Good.”

  “I take it this is a trap-and-destroy operation.”

  “You take it correctly,” Meredith said.

  “We haven’t discussed payment.”

  Meredith said, “Satisfaction of a job well done should be payment enough.”

  “So you are still on the inside,” Ortega said. “The CIA always were a bunch of cheap bastards.”

  14

  Ortega hung up, sat in the high-backed chair on his veranda, sipping green tea and digesting his conversation with Major Meredith Cornwall. It had been his understanding that she’d resigned her commission with US Army Intelligence. But her army rank had only been a cover anyway. She’d always done the grunt work for the CIA. Everyone knew it. Still, it had been a long time since Ortega had heard from Meredith. A ridiculous rumor had circulated years ago that she’d retired to the Midwest someplace to squirt out babies and play house. Probably a cover story of some kind.

  Ortega was tempted to run a check on her. He didn’t like the idea that Meredith might be using him for some freelance project. Still, one didn’t go looking for trouble with the Company. They came to you. That’s how it worked. It would be simpler and safer to do what Meredith wanted. Then she’d go away, and Ortega could get back to his own business.

  And Ortega’s business was extensive, underground networks covering much of Texas and Oklahoma. He’d come up the hard way from El Salvador, doing odd jobs for the Company when they didn’t want to leave tracks. He’d been rewarded by being allowed to set up shop in the United States. The Company had asked favors of him less and less frequently. He’d all but assumed they’d forgotten about him. But then came Meredith’s phone call.

  He hit the intercom button on his phone.

  A female voice: “Yes, Mr. Ortega.”

  “Veronica, I want you to get Enrique Mars on the line. Tell him I have something.”

  “Just a moment.”

  Ortega considered what he was about to do. Unleashing Mars wasn’t exactly what Meredith had asked of him. But he could perhaps resolve the matter for her quickly and get her out of his life.

  He looked at the name he’d scribbled on the Post-it note and almost felt sorry for Andrew Foley, whoever he was. Enrique Mars was about to rock his world.

  * * *

  Nikki Enders washed down three Aleve with a swig of Bacardi and Coke. If she stayed reasonably medicated, the throb in her wrist remained tolerable. She looked over her cards at Tonya Cornwall. “It’s your turn, Mother.”

  “Give me all your sevens.”

  “This isn’t Go Fish, Mother. We’re playing gin.”

  “Nothing for me, dear. You go ahead.”

  Nikki raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “You have some gin if you like.”

  Nikki shook her head. “No, I meant How’s the scarf coming, Mother?”

  “Oh, the scarf!” Tonya put her cards down, picked up the knitting needles. She immediately fell into the clicking rhythm. “You’re father’s going with the envoy to Moscow next week, and I want it to be ready for him. It’s below zero this time of year.”

  Her father’s trip to the Soviet Union had been in 1985, but Nikki didn’t bother mentioning it. What would be the point? Instead, she marveled at her mother’s nimble fingers, never dropping a stitch. If she were lucid, her mother would still be hell with a knife or a gun. She’d been Jerusalem junior fencing champion at the age of twelve. By age twenty, she was able to kill a fully armed man in a flak jacket using only a potato peeler. Now her deadly, agile hands knitted an endless scarf at light speed.

  Nikki leaned back in her seat, let her thoughts drift, partially hypnotized by the click of the knitting needles. She felt vaguely uneasy not handling the Foley situation herself. She did not trust others to tie up loose ends for her. But if she had to trust someone, then Middle Sister was the right choice. She owed Nikki, and family ties were tighter than Meredith liked to pretend. She could almost relax, knowing Middle Sister was on the job, but there would continue to be lingering worries until she got that phone call saying it had been done.

  It wasn’t just her wrist injury. Nikki’s mind hadn’t been in the right place. She’d been careless in Italy, careless again with Romano in New York. Maybe her subconscious was telling her to hang it up. Could it be that Middle Sister was right? Maybe she’d cheated herself out of a husband and babies. She sipped the rum and Coke, tried to imagine it but couldn’t. What would she do with herself if she weren’t working?

  She shook her head, topped off her drink from the Bacardi bottle. First she’d finish the job for the man with the voice. Then she coul
d take a long trip somewhere sunny and figure out the rest of her life.

  * * *

  Within an hour of Nikki’s call, Meredith Cornwall-Jenkins sat behind the wheel of her Volvo station wagon. She pointed it south and drove. On her cell phone, she called her husband, John, at the firm to tell him she was joining her sister in New Orleans to visit Mother, who wasn’t feeling well. She’d be gone for a few days. John had made appropriate noises of sympathy and professed that he would miss her, but she suspected he would play a lot of golf and drink too much with his buddies while she was gone.

  If all went smoothly she’d be back in two days, when she would revisit the subject of babies with her husband, and God help him if he tried to weasel out of it.

  Meredith brought the Beretta, the military ID, and her old army uniform. She allowed herself a modicum of self-satisfaction that it still fit. She was in good shape. She replaced the major’s insignia on the shoulders with lieutenant colonel’s clusters. She might need to throw around a little authority. The Beretta would probably be enough, but she might need more, and the local National Guard unit could probably provide her with anything she needed.

  Better than a Wal-Mart.

  15

  Even through the cloth gloves, Andrew Foley’s fingertips were raw and red from pulling weeds. He hoped he wouldn’t get blisters. Would he still be able to play his mandolin? His knees hurt too. And his back. And what was with the fucking sun out here? Was Oklahoma on the equator or something? It was hot as balls. Andrew was an indoor person. He generally read college textbooks in air-conditioned libraries. Usually within shuffling distance of a Coke machine. He did not, so far, care for the frontier.

  Once in a while his cranky uncle would walk by, look down at what Andrew was doing, grunt, then move on. And that Indian kid would jog past him every twenty minutes, shake his head, and giggle. Smart-ass little shit.

  What the fuck am I doing here?

  Was it really necessary for him to be here, pulling weeds in some backwater inferno? He’d panicked. He realized that now, jumping on a bus and hauling ass to Oklahoma because he thought some hired killer was after him. He’d let his buddy Vincent’s overactive imagination give him the willies. Vincent owned Goodfellas and all the Godfather movies on DVD. He always thought there was something “going down,” and Andrew had fallen for it.

  He’d even tried to call Vincent to confirm his suspicions that it had all been a false alarm, but his uncle had forbidden him to use the phone. What with caller ID technology, calling his buddies would only announce where he was. No phone calls. No letters. No e-mail. It was the first time his uncle had given any indication he took Andrew’s situation seriously.

  If you were hiding, his uncle said, then for fuck’s sake stay hidden.

  And that made Andrew a little nervous. He’d lied when he’d told his uncle that nobody knew where he was. It seemed like a harmless little white lie designed to avoid an awkward confrontation. He’d told Vincent he might go to Oklahoma. But it had been such a casual mention in passing. Certainly Vincent wouldn’t even remember it. It was harmless. Sure. No big deal.

  But it bothered him.

  He fell into a numb rhythm: pulled weeds, wiped sweat out of his eyes, scooted down the vine row.

  Mike walked down the row behind him, paused at his back. “You doing okay?”

  Andrew nodded. “No problem.”

  “You can stop if you want. It’s hot.”

  Andrew smiled weakly. “I’ll keep going until quitting time.”

  His uncle returned the smile and squeezed his shoulder before continuing down the row.

  He watched his uncle walk into the barn and wondered for the hundredth time what made the salty old curmudgeon tick.

  * * *

  Mike went into the barn, grabbed a Coors Light from the refrigerator, and plopped himself behind his desk. Shade. Quiet. The beer was cold. Mike didn’t have to pull weeds today. He put his feet up.

  He was still making up his mind about his nephew.

  The kid was already regretting coming to Oklahoma, certainly didn’t want to be on his hands and knees pulling weeds. But Andrew was hanging in there, didn’t complain. The kid was okay. He was only here because his father had said to come. If something really bad happened, go to Uncle Mike. For years Mike had existed to the kid as a made-up story, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Dan Foley had invented a myth of safety for his son. A myth that had sent him west into Mike’s life.

  Mike wanted to be responsible for this kid like he wanted an anvil hung around his neck. In the old days, he’d killed people. Mike had never saved anybody. Maybe that needed to change. Maybe doing this for the kid would change something important about Mike.

  Dan Foley had saved him. He owed his brother in blood. Reason enough to watch out for the kid.

  Mike rubbed the back of his neck, squirmed in his chair. He couldn’t get comfortable. How would he go about looking after the kid? When would he pronounce the all clear? Mike didn’t like playing defense, didn’t like waiting for some danger that maybe didn’t even exist to drop on his head. All his contacts from the old days were either dead or faded into legend. He couldn’t even call somebody to check on Andrew’s supposed killer.

  The phone rang, and Mike jumped.

  He grabbed it. “Scorpion Hill Vineyards.”

  “Is that him bent over in the vines?” Linda asked.

  “Him who?”

  She tsked. “Who do you think? Your nephew.”

  “He’s pulling weeds,” Mike said. “Young people need to be kept busy.”

  “He’ll get heatstroke.”

  “It’s either him or the weeds. I think it’s a fair fight.”

  “I’m bringing dinner down for the three of us tonight,” she said.

  “Don’t bother. I’m going to do a couple of frozen pizzas.”

  “Your awkward domestic situation is the only entertainment in town,” Linda said. “I figured a third party might help facilitate polite conversation.”

  “So this is some kind of diplomatic mission?”

  “I just hate to eat alone.”

  Mike cleared his throat. “I drank too much last night. Sorry about that.”

  “You didn’t puke on anything.”

  “What’s for dinner?”

  “Lasagna.”

  “I’ll get out some of the special reserve,” Mike said. “Not for me, but for you and Andrew.”

  “See you about seven.”

  He hung up, got another beer out of the fridge, and leaned against the barn’s big doorframe. He watched the kid pull weeds. He smelled the vines. The grapes. He felt the slight breeze wash over him like warm breath. He loved it here. It had started as a hiding place, but now it was home, this jagged, beautiful, thorny wilderness. Like some kind of rugged Eden. He’d kept the past at bay. He’d kept the whole world out.

  And here was his nephew, come in from the East, dragging the world behind him on a leash.