I Kill Rich People: New Edition Released 11/27/14

by Mike Bogin

After the Evinrude fired to get underway, the rumbling power made it impossible to communicate. Owen curled himself around both sides of the berth and lay down with his knees pulled up beneath him and a foam cushion pressed against his exposed ear.

  * * * * *

  Al perspired heavily within the tight boat cabin, but he seemed unaware of his surroundings. He tried after the funeral to function—he made lists of all the things that he needed to get done, but on his own he hadn’t started any of them. Every task felt as heavy as the world.

  He had to interview real estate agents to get the apartment on the market. That part was easy; they started calling and didn’t stop.

  “Take down all the pictures,” one of them said, like she knew what was on the walls before ever coming inside. “Family photos, ethnic and religious art…pack it away. May she rest in peace, but nobody wants to buy an old woman’s apartment. We want to get you top dollar, right!”

  “I sell all the apartments in the building,” another one claimed. “I have connections on the co-op board. What is the point of getting a buyer if you don’t have a winner advocating to the board? All that time and effort just to fail?”

  Another came by without an appointment and removed Trudy’s mezuzah from the front door. “Honey,” she said in a long voicemail message, “I have the mezuzah in safe-keeping. When we do this together, no mezuzah. We’re not just selling to Members of the Tribe.”

  It might make the difference between $725,000 and $800,000 to get in some packing boxes and add a few gallons of primer and a light-colored paint. Thinning things. New window coverings. Taking up the old carpets and showing off the hardwood floors underneath. He couldn’t argue that the agents were wrong. Yes, it made sense to allow prospective buyers the best chance to visualize the apartment as their own and not get confused by looking at his mother’s home. But their comments cut like knives.

  The mezuzah lady said that all she needed was a check for $6,000. “I bring my stagers and they pack everything up, get it into a storage unit. I have my crew pull the carpets and tack strips, repaint, and replace some of the light fixtures. The entry fixture. The bathroom. Kitchen. The dining room chandelier can stay.”

  Al thought his head was going to explode.

  * * * * *

  19:45 hrs. Eat. Hydrate. Security scan.

  Three kids along the river, sixty yards. Bait casting. No sign of any bite. Bikes in the gravel. Local. Fourteen?

  20:15. Kids leaving. No fish. Mosquitoes. Four more kids, sixteen, seventeen, parked at railroad tracks. Sitting on trunk drinking Mickey’s. Gulping fast. Smashing bottles.

  20:24. What’s this? Rifle coming out from open truck. Twenty-two. Remington? Kid takes aim at James River sign. Emptying clip. Not at all bad. Center J, top to bottom. Nice grouping. Not looking around. Joking. No concern about the law. Regular activity. Another summer night.

  Mosquitoes. Kids gone. Collar up. Kerchief over face. Why do they always go after the ears?

  20:50. Access on river side. Exposed coming down. Fifteen seconds down? Security on board with rifles? No. No, check. If yes, scrub. Up angle from bank useless; 20 percent visibility to upper decks. Climb, scan, determine.

  Ankle not too bad on ladder. Rust residue everywhere. Soft roof. Could go right through. Walk the rivets. Damn. Hot.

  Lying down on a metal roof baked in the sun all day long. 800 yards.

  21:08. Arcadia coming into view south of bridge. Scan. Leupold Mark 4 sight…dependable clarity at a half-mile. Foredeck: zero security visible. Port side, same. Forty passengers visible. Awning across top deck. Awning. Heavy-set man in jacket. Shoulder bulge. Pistol. Earpiece. Earpiece = Multiple security. Where? Upper deck, zero. Tinted windows. No visibility to interior salons. Pistol at eighty yards? Possible. Keep below roof ridge, west side. Let them come in. 200 yards minimum.

  Small craft visible port side. Single driver. Security?

  Commodores and Lady Sailors. Blue caps with gold braid males. White shirts, white ties, gold epaulettes. Younger women short skirts. Blue and white. Long legs. High heels. Neckerchiefs. Skin. Open bar on upper deck. Fifty or more. Bench seating and tables on rear deck. Twenty-plus. Shapes now visible inside. No clarity. Foredeck eight women, two men.

  Come up on elbows. Get some air between body and roof. Scalding hot. 500 yards. Let them pass the bridge, get into the narrows. Lower deck, rear, male seated. Side view. One. Huge left ear. Female upper deck front, blue skirt, looking backward. Two. Apricot. Upper deck. Bartender. Pass. Careful. Blue uniforms, not black.

  The stuffiness underneath the blackout cover had Gonzalez’s specialist swooning after only a couple minutes at the screen. After more than three hours and twenty miles travel upriver, he was down to five minutes on followed by ninety-second intervals gulping at the humid air. So far, he had visuals on two-dozen deer, a black bear, and several hundred people. After he relayed data to the spotter outside on deck, Gonzalez adjusted the search parameter.

  “Pass on groups,” Gonzalez instructed. “If there is a group, he won’t be there. Look for solos. Our shooter is going to be alone.”

  The specialist downed another water bottle before ducking into the oven beneath under the hood. Understanding the images on the screen was like watching a fish finder looking into the water; it took experience to distinguish between a human lying down on the riverbank or a large dog. Harder yet was seeing the prone image of a man lying down on top of a metal roof that had been baking in the sun. The roof showed bright yellow. He nearly missed the contrasting orange outline and needed to zoom in on the spot to capture an outline. One marker longer, another bent. Legs?

  Prone torso. Magnify more. A bent arm, image blended into head. Second arm stretched forward. Magnify again. Left arm gap. Rifle hold. At aim.

  “Shooter on roof!” he yelled. Grabbing the walkie-talkie, his voice raced.

  “Four twenty-five meters left side. Ten o’clock on river. I repeat. Shooter on roof!” The tech snatched at his binoculars to scan directly rather than using the thermal images on his screen. “There!” he pointed excitedly. “Up there on the ridge. The red metal building.”

  Gonzalez leaned to retrieve his M110 but was forced to grab the rail instead. The boat lurched ahead onto plane as his driver revved forward, racing toward the collection of derelict buildings ahead. Gonzalez’s ATL was out from the cuddy cabin, already positioning himself with his rifle stock balancing along the port rail by the time the major was able to devote both hands to his weapon. The driver stepped out from where his foot was through the rifle sling and also lifted his weapon up from the deck.

  Their fourth team member spotted the shooter from out the narrow window slit below deck in the cuddy cabin. He came up firing out from the forward hatch, unloading a full magazine that peppered the face and ridge gable of the metal building. He was reloading when Gonzalez yelled orders.

  “Stop the boat!”

  The bow dove and stern rose at their abrupt stop. Their first shots sprayed erratically across a thirty-foot spread with only luck to guide them toward their target.

  Gonzalez switched to semi-automatic in a worthless effort to time his trigger to the choppy shifts under his feet.

  “Can’t get a grouping!” he yelled.

  Speedboat is security. One, two, three, four aboard. Full-automatic fire sprayed wildly. But shots have penetrated the roofing beneath. Side fire. Kevlar. Earpieces.

  He sighted on the Evinrude 225 outboard. One, two, three, four rounds bore through housing.

  Nothing on the fiberglass boat offered protection. One, two, three, four metallic pops sounded directly behind Gonzalez, each one penetrating through the housing of their outboard motor. One bullet cracked the block. The motor hissed oil and went silent.

  Each of the team recognized their situation. Gonzalez looked up toward the rusting wareh
ouse. The shooter could take them out at will. If he were up there and not stuck on a shifting deck, he could too.

  They adjusted their legs to the moving deck and were powerless to fight back while their own scopes rocked up and down thirty degrees. Their sights bobbed from the river up to the sky and all points in between. Useless.

  From aboard the more stable Arcadia, the fifth member of Gonzalez’s FBI sniper team placed a tight grouping of six rounds directly below the ridge of the roof. The Arcadia’s captain moved quickly to reverse course to get away from the narrow channel, choosing to back beneath the bridge rather than remain in easy sight of whoever was shooting.

  Until he reversed, most of the Twenty-Fives were unaware that anything had happened. Five private security guards aboard the yacht drew side arms and unleashed a barrage, firing wildly from positions along the port side.

  Fire from the yacht. Top deck. How? How did they spot him before he fired a shot?

  Gonzalez’s driver on the second speedboat screamed into his walkie-talkie. “What’s his position? Where is the shooter?” He lifted his foot to clear the sling, bringing his weapon to shoulder while steering with his away hand to move across the Arcadia’s bow. Owen slipped onto the cabin floor against Tremaine’s knees when the throttle was slammed down to maximum power. He scrambled out onto the boat deck but the driver kicked his foot into Owen’s face.

  “Stay the fuck down!” he screamed over the loud outboard.

  They cleared the bow at full speed, thumping hard over waves.

  He spotted the second boat. One shooter. Again, he sighted on the big outboard motor and placed three tight shots through the housing. Black smoke poured out.

  M110 on lap. Both hands pressed against metal roofing. Slide down west side. Twelve feet? Fourteen? Packed gravel below. Right ankle already fucked. Ankles together. Old school. Five points tuck and roll. Don’t think. Go. Fuck. Crushed rock. Scabs completely opened. Fuck. Air in back. Shirt torn wide open. Back wet. No pain there. Yet. Something sharp…slice wound. Ankle? No worse. Rust and blood. Blood and rust.

  Tremaine had his head through the hatch and tugged himself through as the first bullet cut the gas line feeding the motor. A second bullet ignited the fire. All across the transom, flames burst two feet high and liquid fire dripped in hot blue and orange glops onto the fiberglass deck.

  “Cease fire!” Gonzalez ordered through the walkie-talkie. Using his scope to scan, Gonzalez could see every bullet hole that had penetrated the metal building. No shooter. Gone. Behind him, the fifteen-thousand-dollar motor on his boat was completely destroyed.

  Gonzalez’s walkie-talkie crackled. “We’re on fire, Major,” the second driver barked.

  “Get off of there!”

  From the other boat it was actually easier to see how quickly the flames were rising. Each boat had a twelve-gallon main tank and was loaded up with a second twenty-gallon auxiliary tank for the straight run alongside the Arcadia.

  “You’re only a hundred feet offshore. Hit the water!”

  Christ. They were on a bomb with a lit fuse.

  “Jump!”

  Atop the cabin, the sniper unslung his weapon and tore at his bootlaces to get free of the heavy footwear before he hit the water. The driver reached into the cuddy cabin, snatched Al by his shirt collar and wrenched him up out from his seat with one great pull.

  Al went behind the driver and over the gunnels into the Hudson. He was in the water before he fully grasped what was happening. He never saw the fire.

  A fire extinguisher was strapped inside the cuddy-cabin’s hatch. Owen had looked at it a dozen times during the hours they had been stuck inside the cabin. The driver now had Tremaine held from behind by his shirt collar and his belt. The security sniper dove into the water just as Tremaine splashed belly-flop down, swallowing gulps of the cool brown river.

  The driver dropped onto the deck with his eyes reflecting orange against the flames. The back of the boat was disintegrating. He struggled to get off one of his boots and kicked through the hatch at Owen’s legs.

  A wave of heat hit him in the face as Owen came back out with the fire extinguisher.

  The driver tried to catch Owen’s arm, but he twisted free. Owen’s eyes faced down, concentrating to pull the pin that held open the trigger. He didn’t look at the pressure gauge.

  “Get in the water!” their driver shouted.

  Owen ignored him. He pulled the pin free while the driver looked on, momentarily frozen, fixated on the small red cylinder. The entire left side of his face felt like he was roasting marshmallows with a too-short stick.

  Owen pointed toward the burning transom and squeezed the trigger. An anemic fizzle of foam squirted out before Owen felt a hand around his bicep. A second later he slammed under the water, cool and foreign.

  When he came up, the shore was only a single long lap away, but his legs were dragging him downward. In the water he couldn’t get off his shoes, much less his pants. He struggled to keep his head above the surface until he had one shoe scraped off. The difference was enough to propel him forward.

  The first FBI sharpshooter was already on shore, looking back at them as he panted there with his hands on both knees. Owen looked for Tremaine, relieved to see that he was slapping clumsy breaststrokes on top of the water and lurching toward the shore.

  He kicked free from his second shoe before he spotted Al. Without his eyeglasses, Al was lost. He was still only a few feet away from the rising fire, barely treading water. The flames framed Al’s head for ten feet around, jet-black smoke already rising fifty feet high.

  “Al,” Owen yelled. “Al!”

  Owen dove under the surface, turning back in Al’s direction. Looking up from below, the water was glowing bright orange. Owen touched against Al’s body before coming up face to face.

  “Al,” Owen shouted, “take hold of my back. Do it!”

  Owen’s shirt tore into his throat, cutting his air intake while Al clung to him. With powerful strokes, he furiously distanced them both away from the thick black plume. The boat listed toward the stern, rapidly taking on water through the scorched transom. Even nearly submerged, the motor sizzled and steamed.

  Owen had Al a dozen yards clear when the fuel tank exploded. A concussion went tearing across their backs; a twelve-foot round flaming ball roiled high into the air before using up its energy and descending again, slapping the surface sending out a gray-white cloud flattening across the water.

  Both of the major’s men had stripped down to their boxer shorts and returned to the water. By then, Tremaine was struggling without realizing that he was already out of the channel. “Walk it out,” the driver shouted to him. “You’re in three feet of water.” Tremaine slowed to a dog paddle, not trusting anyone’s word until his feet found terra firma.

  Owen let them take hold of Al. He was too drained to do more than get himself to shore, needing to rest for several minutes in knee-deep water before he stood and began to stumble over rough roots and rocks to get up onto the bank, where he dropped again, this time onto his back. He looked for Tremaine and saw him lying face-down, breathing hard and huffing clouds of dry dirt, his lower half still in the river.

  “Tee,” Owen tried to yell.

  Owen’s voice came off as a hoarse croak, but Tremaine was listening and turned his face toward Owen. One cheek was still in the mud as he raised three fingers in an exhausted wave. Owen nodded back at him. They were both OK.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  After regaining the strength to turn himself over, Owen raised up on his elbows to look from the riverbank to the rusted sheet metal buildings across the Hudson. He knew that Bigfoot—Spencer—had to be long gone. There was no one to stop him and not a thing Owen could do about it.

  Major Gonzalez had picked it right. Bigfoot was positioned at one of Gonzalez’s hot
spots; perfect vantage, no turn-around, and Spencer controlled the only access point to the river. A dozen ways out, too. With thick forest cover, he could escape a hundred times over. By the time helicopter support showed up, he could be anywhere across four hundred square miles.

  By instinct, Owen felt for his medallion and Glock before and after hitting the water. Both were still there. Thank goodness. No power on the cell. That was ruined. Callie. Jesus. All this…she didn’t need to know… His chest, thighs, his whole body was covered in muck. Change at the Precinct. Man, Callie had it right, too. She totally called it right about the website, only his first thought now was to keep Callie from finding out about what just went down. Ever since Casey was born, he had to talk her through every close call. When an officer died in the line of duty, she wouldn’t talk to him at all, for days sometimes.

  Owen rolled onto his knees, pulled himself to his feet, and stumbled toward Tremaine like a dazed boxer.

  “Don’t tell Callie,” he told Tremaine. “Don’t tell her.”

  Mother of God, he thought, just then absorbing how Spencer took out both their boats. He swatted them like they were flies.

  Gonzalez had marked good visuals on the location where the second boat went down. Two M110s with scopes were down there.

  “I’m not losing those weapons!” he shouted when local sheriff’s cars screeched to a stop on top of the embankment road above him. “Call for divers!”

  Gonzalez focused his frustration on the weapons. They were not going to be lost. Not on his watch.

  Spencer had made him look like a damned fool.

  “Shield and service weapon?” Owen asked. Tremaine had both. Tremaine’s cell phone was gone.