Shotgun Opera

by Victor Gischler

  Mars grabbed the revolver from his waistband, aimed it at Mike’s face. “ĄPuerco!”

  The axe handle connected hard with Mars’s wrist. Mars yelled and dropped the pistol. It clattered across the wooden floor.

  Linda had swept up the axe handle and was on Mars with a vengeance, eyes wide and wild, grunting with each swing. She landed another blow across Mars’s back. She swung it the other way and caught Mars full in the stomach. His eyes bulged. He made a fish face, sucking for air.

  Mars looked panicked now. He glanced around him for an escape route. Linda pressed the attack, swung the handle at Mars’s jaw. His head spun around. Blood and gold teeth flew. Mars’s eyes rolled up and he stumbled, collapsed against a wall.

  Mike still gulped for air, tried to regain his feet.

  Linda stood over Mars, lifted the axe handle high, her eyes wild.

  Mars tried to lift his head, his legs trembling.

  She brought the axe handle down and hit the back of Mars’s head with a sharp crack. “Cocksucker! Son of a bitch. Burn me with a cigar, you motherfucker.” The axe handle lifted and fell three more times, bashing the back of Mars’s head until it was bloody. Her hands trembled. She dropped the axe handle, her hands going to her gasping mouth.

  “Linda.”

  She looked at Mike, went to him, put her arms around his shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  “The spider,” he said. “Where’s the damn spider?”

  She found it creeping around one of the chair legs, smashed it with her shoe. It oozed guts and goo.

  Linda helped Mike into a chair. He still bent over from his aching balls, but he managed to meet her eyes. “What about you? You okay?”

  She looked at Mars. He lay in ruin, the back of his bald head sticky with blood. “I did that. Jesus.”

  “Forget it. He was going to kill us.” He touched Mars’s throat, looking for a pulse. Mike was surprised that his hand shook. “Dead.”

  Linda said, “He wanted Andrew.” A question in her eyes.

  “It’s a long story.” Mike was breathing easier now. He sat up straight in the chair, blinked his eyes. The ache in his balls had receded slightly, but he still had one fuzzy eye.

  The front door burst open. Andrew stood there, Keone right behind him.

  “What’s going on? We heard screams and—” He noticed the squashed spider. “Ew, gross.” Then his head turned. His gaze landed on the dead man in the purple suit. “Oh, hell.”

  19

  “That’s your killer,” Mike told his nephew.

  The kid blinked. Mike interpreted the disbelief on his face. His nephew hadn’t fully believed someone was gunning for him. Sure, somebody had warned him, told him there was danger. But it had been an abstract concept. Now, reality sat slumped against a wall with half its gold teeth knocked out. A dead man in the living room. If things had gone just a little differently, it would have been Andrew who was dead.

  Mike had some hard questions for Andrew, but now wasn’t the time. Linda looked like she was about to lose it. Mike took a few deep breaths and stood up. His balls still hurt, but he could move around. He hoped he wouldn’t piss blood later.

  “Linda, are you going to be okay?”

  She was sitting now, still trembling, sipping a glass of water. “I guess we need to call the police.”

  Mike shrugged.

  “Don’t we?” Linda looked up from her water glass, eyes misty. “The guy’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “It might just cause trouble,” Mike said.

  “Yeah,” Andrew jumped in. He’d probably just realized the police would ask a lot of awkward questions. “Maybe it’s a bad idea.”

  She looked at Andrew, then back at Mike. “You’re kidding, right? We have to call the police. Don’t we?”

  “It looks pretty bad.”

  “It was self-defense.”

  “Yes, it was. But look what we’ve got here,” Mike said. “The guy’s had the hell beat out of him with a stick. It’s going to seem excessive.”

  “I—” Her voice caught. She sipped water. “I was so mad. Rage. I couldn’t believe this guy was going to burn me, then kill us. I was angry, you know?”

  “That’s what kept us alive,” Mike said. “Your rage. That was some kind of survival thing kicking in. It saved us all. And a defense attorney would say the same thing. You’d get off, but they might cuff you first, take you in as a matter of routine. You might spend some time in jail until it came to trial. Think about it. Your husband was a cop. How did he do things? Arrest everyone and sort it all out later, right?” Mike was pouring it on a little thick, but he didn’t want the police. He wanted to frighten Linda just enough so she’d let him handle the situation his way.

  “I don’t know. I mean— what if ” She shook her head. “What do we do?”

  “Let me and Andrew take the body down the hill, bury it, and cover it over with rocks. That will be the end of it.”

  She looked down at her water glass a long time. Finally, she nodded. “Okay.” The word slipped out, barely a whisper.

  Keone squatted next to the dead body. Poked it with the axe handle.

  “Keone!” Mike barked. “Go home. Don’t tell anyone about this.”

  “Okay, boss.” He dropped the axe handle, skipped out the front door and into the night.

  Worry etched Linda’s face.

  “He won’t say anything,” Mike said. “Get your purse. I’ll drive you home.”

  “And that’s it?” Linda asked. “I just go home like nothing’s happened? It feels wrong. My husband was a police officer. He’d never believe this.”

  “You’d be surprised.” Back in the day, Mike had known several street-tough Irish cops who’d covered for each other almost just like this. They didn’t always trust the system to make the right decisions.

  On his way out the door, Mike looked back at his nephew. “We need to have a serious talk when I get back.”

  “Right.” Andrew swallowed hard, didn’t appear to be looking forward to it.

  * * *

  Andrew sat for fifteen minutes watching the cooling corpse, when some good news occurred to him. His would-be assassin was dead. That meant it was over, right?

  Andrew scooted in close to the body, took a purple lapel between thumb and forefinger and slowly opened the dead man’s jacket. He kept thinking the guy was going to lurch awake zombie-style and grab him. Andrew reached into the man’s inside pocket and took out his wallet. A Texas driver’s license said he was Enrique Mars from Dallas. Andrew found three hundred and nine dollars in cash and put it in his pocket. He left the Visa card.

  Andrew went for the pants pockets but hesitated. He didn’t really feel like reaching into a dead guy’s pants.

  “Find his keys,” said a voice behind him.

  Andrew jumped, spun to find his uncle standing three feet behind him. “Jesus. Are you a fucking ninja or something?”

  “I can move quiet when I want to.”

  “What’s the matter with your eyes?” Andrew noticed Mike had one closed tight.

  “Nothing. I got something in there during the fight. Forget it. I said get his keys.”

  “What for?”

  “He left his car about three minutes’ walk up the road. That’s why we didn’t see any headlights.”

  “He was a professional, huh?”

  Mike scratched his chin, looked down at the dead thing in purple. “Semiprofessional, I’d say. He let a woman and an old man make him dead.”

  “And a spider,” Andrew said.

  “Midlevel muscle,” Mike said. “That’s what worries me.”

  “He’s dead. What’s to worry?”

  Mike shook his head, exhaled like his body finally remembered he was an old man. “No. Not that simple. Here’s what I think. Somebody back East found out where you were. They got lazy or cheap or both and picked up the phone to get somebody local to tie up loose ends. He’s probably out of St. Louis or Kansas City.”

  Andrew sighed, handed Mike the wallet. “Dallas.”

  “Bottom line is they know where you are.” Mike put a hand on Andrew’s shoulder and squeezed. Hard. “Something you wan
t to tell me?”

  No. He didn’t want to. But his uncle suddenly seemed scary. Not just cranky and hostile, but formidable. And he found himself spilling the whole story, how he’d mentioned to Vincent he had an uncle in Oklahoma but he didn’t think it was a big deal and Vincent was his pal and certainly wouldn’t tell anybody.

  Mike said, “Anyone will talk. Maybe he’s your pal, but when they have a car battery hooked up to his nuts and he’s shit his pants and pissed himself, he’ll beg to talk. Anyone would. They might shove a broomstick up his ass. Break all the bones in his hands one at a time. Anything.”

  “I’m not important enough to kill. It’s stupid.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it,” Mike said. “You saw something. Now you have to die. You’re dust that needs to be swept under the rug. You’re just a chore left undone, and somebody someplace can’t rest easy until all the chores are done.”

  “I won’t tell anyone anything. I don’t know anything.”

  “They don’t know that, and they don’t care. When this purple leg breaker doesn’t report in, they’ll send somebody else.”

  Andrew went pale. He’d hoped it was over. “What do we do?”

  “I have to think. In the meantime, if there’s anything else you haven’t told me, I need to know. You’re my brother’s boy. I’m going to help you, but if you hold out on me again, I’m going to bury you in the woods right next to this guy. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now get his keys.”

  Andrew winced, but went through Mars’s pockets and found the keys. “Are we going to go get his car?”

  “Yes, but first things first. Grab his feet. We’re going to bury him.”

  “Now? Out there? In the dark?”

  “You want to sleep with this dead guy in the house all night?”

  Andrew grabbed his legs and lifted. They carried him down past the barn, picking up shovels and flashlights on the way. They went about a quarter mile down the hill, and Mike signaled for them to drop the body. They dug. The ground was full of rocks and it took them over an hour to carve out a shallow two-foot-deep grave. They dumped Mars into it.

  By the time they finished covering it up, both of them were breathing hard.

  “I’ll come back in the daylight and bury him deeper,” Mike said. “I’m too damn tired now.”

  The walk back up the hill was a bitch.

  When they got back to the cabin, Andrew wanted only to flop onto the couch.

  “We’re not done yet.” Mike jingled Mars’s car keys.

  They drove Mike’s truck to where Mars’s Caddy was parked, and Mike handed Andrew the keys. “Follow me back. We’ll search it in the morning, then dump it somewhere.”

  Mike looked spectral by the yellow-orange of the dashboard lights. Before he got out of the truck, Andrew said, “Look, I know you didn’t ask for this. I know it was a surprise. But thanks. Thanks for helping me.”

  A long pause, then Mike said, “I failed your father, Andrew. We were a team and I couldn’t hack it anymore so I ran. I left him holding the bag. I won’t do the same to you. I couldn’t be there for your old man, but I’m here for you.”

  “He never told me that he blamed you for anything,” Andrew said.

  A wan smile. “He wouldn’t. But he always thought we had a good thing going. When Mom and Dad died we were everything to each other, the Foley Boys. I let him down. I know I did. He didn’t have to say a thing. I knew what he was thinking.”

  “You wanted to go straight.”

  “No.” Mike shook his head. “It would be easy to say that. That would make me sound like a good guy, wouldn’t it? Fact is, I just lost my nerve.”

  Andrew didn’t know what to say to that.

  He got out of the truck and climbed behind the wheel of the Caddy. It was a big car. The top was down. He cranked the ignition. He found the headlights, put the car into gear, and followed his uncle back to the house.

  Maybe he could run for it. What if he took this Cadillac, turned around, and just headed west, didn’t tell anyone where he was going? It wasn’t fair to trouble his uncle with this mess. He could just drive and keep on driving. But where? Andrew had nothing and nobody and no place to go. He had no ideas and no prospects and no idea how to live wherever he ended up.

  And that was just way too much nothing for Andrew Foley. He parked the Caddy in front of the cabin, went inside, and handed the keys to his uncle.

  20

  Meredith Cornwall-Jenkins ironed her dress uniform at a Holiday Inn Express three miles from the Tulsa Army National Guard base. She planned to load up on ordnance, depending on what Ortega told her. She needed to know Andrew Foley’s situation. Was he holed up by himself? Was he surrounded by a posse of armed chums? Hopefully Ortega had the information for her.

  She dialed the phone.

  “Hello?” Ortega’s voice.

  “What’s the word?”

  A long pause. Ortega cleared his throat. “There’s been a complication.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I dispatched one of my problem solvers. I thought I could do you a favor. Eliminate the problem for you. But my man is overdue to report in. I can only assume he’s had the tables turned on him.” Ortega sighed. “I freely admit this was an error in judgment, and I stand ready to make it up to you.”

  “I see,” Meredith said. “If this job was important enough for me to handle personally, did you think it would be an easy assignment?”

  “No.”

  “But you thought one of your thugs could handle it as well as I?”

  “As I confessed,” Ortega said, “an error in judgment.”

  “A costly error for you,” Meredith said.

  “I was trying to save you some trouble. The man I sent was very capable.”

  “Apparently not,” Meredith said. “Now all you’ve done is warn them we know where they are.”

  Ortega didn’t have anything to say to that.

  “When this is over, I’m going to pay you a visit and we’ll decide what punitive actions are necessary to soothe my wrath.” She hung up.

  Idiot!

  Ortega had been a lot more reliable in the old days. Still, she had to admit that Ortega had some tough sons of bitches working for him. If this man had been eliminated by the target, then this might be a little trickier than she’d originally planned. She decided she’d better go in hot with heavy firepower, sweep the whole area clean. She wanted this taken care of, and by God it was going to be quick and decisive.

  She looked at her watch, picked up the phone again, and dialed her husband. She reminded him of the frozen dinners in the freezer and apologized for not picking up the dry cleaning before she left town. He was pleasant, but sounded like he’d already built himself a couple of scotch and sodas.

  That wouldn’t do after they had the baby. Daddy needed to live clean and set a good example.