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

by Mike Bogin

  “You want something to drink, man?”

  Tremaine turned his broad shoulders to look at one of the cleaners, a young Latino kid wearing a white chef’s jacket and kitchen pants with a checkerboard pattern.

  “I’m clearing it all back now. There’s pretty much whatever you want as long as it’s open.”

  Tremaine stood up and looked over the cart. Wine and champagne, dozens of different beers, a lower shelf with fifths of Jack Daniels, Bombay Silver Gin, Chopin Vodka, Talisker Scotch, Patron tequila. All mixers on the lowest shelf.

  “No thanks,” Tremaine responded. “What happens to all this?”

  “The drinks get inventoried and charged to the suite. The food goes back downstairs.”

  “What do you do with it?”

  “I don’t know, man. Wish I could take it home, but it doesn’t work like that.”

  Tremaine hadn’t noticed the buffet table on the opposite side of the room. Trays of brownies, mini-cheesecakes, some kind of parfait with fruit and what looked like custard and whipped cream. Tremaine had to help himself to a cheesecake and a brownie and then looked out on the infield as he ate. Not hard to get used to all this.

  He thought about finding his way toward the security center, but changed his mind. They would be spending enough hours there soon enough.

  He strolled beyond the restricted Private Suites Area outside, chewing on the brownie while he walked high above the field along the second tier of the stands. The air was cooling, not muggy at all, with a nice breeze coming off the water from behind the giant television screen at the back of center field.

  It felt strange, wonderful too, having the open park practically all to himself. He slowly spun around to take it all in, the upper tiers rising high above him with the championship banners hanging down. The luxury suites. The whole second tier stepped down beneath him, sloping steeply to the rail and then four or five stories of air straight down to the lower deck.

  Must be fun to work here, he thought. All the excitement of the fans, getting to watch the ballgames for free. Baseball was never his game, but sometimes he could be a pretty good hitter. When he caught the ball flush, he could crack a drive out a long long way. He tried to imagine what it would be like, down there at home plate, smacking one out of the park.

  All these seats full of people. All cheering. Damn!

  Ahead of him and down closer to the railing, one of the few maintenance people around looked to be kneeling to repair one of the seats. Tremaine walked in his direction, curious as usual about anybody fixing things. Cars, furniture, appliances. Didn’t matter.

  Halfway down the tier the breeze dropped, followed by still air, then hot and gritty air wafting up from inside the heated concrete stadium. He stopped moving, rubbing forefingers across both his eyes before moving forward again and blinking to get them clear.

  He walked to within ten feet of the maintenance worker when he realized something was out of place. He couldn’t tell exactly what.

  Tremaine kept staring as the guy looked down at the base of the chair. No tools. No belt. No box. Nothing. How do you fix a bolted-in-place stadium seat with no tools?

  The guy was down on one knee, with his upper leg pushed out to the side. Black Nike shoes. Big feet.

  Oh shit. No. Not possible. What in the hell?

  Something in his hand. Not a gun. A tube. Spotting scope. Shit. He’s the guy. The whole stadium and nobody. He’s right there. Right there. Three or four steps away.

  Tremaine glanced back behind him to the steep ascent of concrete steps above. There was no way to get clear. He sucked at drawing his service weapon, too. Big men like him had a hard time reaching behind to wipe their asses with toilet paper. Drawing out his service weapon, a snub nose J-Frame .38? Man, everybody was faster than him.

  “Those seats are brand-new and they still keep bustin’,” Tremaine called out, hoping he could play it cool. “You all need some help?”

  Bigfoot stayed kneeling with his eyes mostly hidden beneath a work cap. He moved the base of the seat up and down as if to see what was the matter with it. No words. He made no moves except to shake his head.

  The river. Second boat. The black guy. This guy. This guy was aboard the second boat.

  “You must be the new guy,” Tremaine said. He could feel his heart thumping through his chest.

  Close now. His off-duty .38 was on his back right hip. No bulge. Jesus. Either this guy was buying it or he was stone cold.

  Spencer was bigger than he looked in the photos. But Tremaine still had seventy or eighty pounds on him.

  Bigfoot stood up slowly. His arms bowed out before dropping to his sides.

  Tremaine looked him over. No sign of a bulge on him, either, just the spotting scope wrapped inside his left hand. He had on a dark green, long-sleeved work shirt despite the ninety-degree September weather.

  “Like I was saying,” Tee went on, “we’re getting fifty complaints a week about these chairs. With what these folks are paying for season tickets, they deserve working chairs, right?”

  No answer.

  “I’m Tremaine,” he offered, reaching out from two steps above to shake hands.

  The man returned Tremaine’s gesture. He grimaced slightly as he put his left foot forward.

  Spencer assessed the other man’s movements, his attributes and weaknesses. Overweight, but strong.

  High center of gravity. Aikido. Leverage his weight against him.

  Tremaine moved faster than Spencer anticipated. His grip locked down onto Spencer’s hand and twisted. The fingers of his left hand slid along the front of his belt, coming forward with handcuffs. In an efficient, practiced fluid motion, he had the first cuff around Spencer’s right wrist when Spencer’s left hand rose fast. Using the round end of the steel scope, Spencer cracked two sharp, staccato jabs over Tremaine’s right eye.

  Even a rolled magazine can be an effective jabbing weapon; the eight-inch German-steel spotting scope was devastating.

  For a flash, Tremaine’s world went black. He could have stayed down. Instead, he rolled to look up and swiped at Spencer’s legs.

  The motorcycle crash and then coming hard off the metal roof left Spencer unable to evade the blow. Tremaine’s bear paw caught Spencer below the knees, tumbling him into the stadium seats. The spotting scope clacked onto cement and rolled away.

  Spencer reached behind his bent waist, pressing his right hand against the 9mm semi he carried there. Then he chose not to draw the Beretta and turned. Tremaine was reaching behind his back to get at his service weapon.

  Spencer braced himself against the rigid seatback then kicked down at Tremaine’s raised jaw. The blow slammed Tremaine’s face against the concrete stair edge, shattering his teeth and tearing out a massive chunk of his cheek.

  A warm red rush flowed into Tremaine’s mouth. Intense pain pulsed into his cheekbones and up through his nasal cavity. He had no focus in one eye.

  Through his remaining eye he could see that Spencer was hobbling in the only direction for escape, up the staircase toward the concourse. He thought he saw a black figure in the concourse tunnel, but it vanished.

  Spencer dragged his damaged leg behind him. T’s handcuffs clanged against the stair rail.

  Tremaine’s arm twisted behind him. His right hand stretched up behind his belt, popping open the snap to grip around the .38.

  His right eye was useless. Tremaine reached across his chest and cradled his right wrist in the crook of his left elbow to stabilize the unfamiliar left-eye aim.

  The first round struck center-back, taking Spencer down face-first onto the stairs. He fell into a push-up position and immediately pressed himself upward. Tremaine emptied four more quick rounds. Suspect down.

  Rolling onto his back, Tremaine grunted against the pain and pressed him
self into a sitting position. He was spitting blood, lots of it, but it was from his mouth and not from any internal injury. He needed to get his breath. He’d be OK. His right eye was crap, and now the bleeding from the first blows was running down into his good left eye.

  It took time for his chest to stop heaving. When it did, he moved his jaw side to side. Aching. Hell, everything ached. But not broken. His tongue surveyed the jagged edges that used to be his smile.

  It surprised him that his hands were shaking so severely. He was having trouble getting his phone out from his pants pocket. Dialing in was worse.

  It just hit him at that second that he had never before fired a weapon in the line of duty. Twenty years and not even once.

  “10-00,” he screamed. “Tremaine Bull DID. Shea. Citi Field.” Tremaine puffed hard to capture his breath. “Section 338. 10-12 on the sniper. Shooter down.”

  Bigfoot was lying face-down.

  How in the fuck was he here? The website wasn’t even live!

  Tremaine’s mouth poured bright red down his chin. What missed his shirtfront ran like a faucet onto the concrete stadium.

  He had hit more than once. Crap eye and all, he knew he hadn’t missed. He rolled and managed to press himself onto his feet, wobbling like a drunk before spreading his legs wide to steady his balance.

  He holstered the revolver. It was empty anyhow.

  He had to use both hands to pull his way up the railing up toward the suspect, lumbering one stiff leg at a time.

  Oh man, Tremaine thought. What did he hit me with? He had to spit just to breathe and every time he spat, glops of shining red juice splotched off the stairs.

  When he was finally straddling above the man he had shot, Tremaine saw the Beretta in Bigfoot’s waistband. He had never drawn it. Why?

  The green work shirt was torn through in three clean holes, two in the zone, grouped closely, one higher on the shoulder. Tremaine knelt to check it out. Maybe the Beretta was empty too?

  As he bent close, Tremaine expectorated a mouthful of blood, spitting as much as he could off to the side. Tremaine’s brain registered the shining brass end of a bullet showing inside one of the holes. That’s when he understood. No blood.

  Vest. He’s got a vest.

  A swift elbow shot up, driving into Tremaine’s crotch. He froze like a spectator while Spencer’s arm hooked around his right ankle. The shooter’s rib cage ploughed hard, rolling into Tremaine’s knee.

  Tee heard the pop, felt his ACL snap.

  Bigfoot spun up onto his one good leg, skipping to grab hold of the stair railing and get away. But Tremaine snagged him under the vest and held on.

  The Beretta came out so fast that it seemed attached to Spencer’s body, but instead of firing, he punched it butt-end down onto Tremaine’s left temple. The hard blow shattered the eye socket into broken chips but Tremaine kept coming forward. He grunted and launched his body, sumo-style, using his bulk to knock the shooter’s grip off the handrail. Tee clawed at the Beretta like he was stripping a football from a tailback’s hands. He felt the hard metal then applied his giant hand, pressing all his strength and weight down upon that one point so that the shooter’s hand and gun were worthless. Letting go was the only way Spencer could stop his wrist from snapping in two.

  Tremaine’s fingers locked around the handcuff chain, pulling Spencer’s hand behind and away. He came up, with the shooter’s arm twisted behind and his chest against the shooter’s back and then kicked out his out right foot to send the Beretta skittering out of reach.

  Spencer twisted into Tremaine, lifted his Nike shoe and drove the heel down on the bridge of Tremaine’s left foot. But Tremaine held on, horse-collaring Spencer in a vice grip even as he collapsed backwards, flailing for balance with more force than he could control. His back slammed against the railing and then he was flipping over it into the air, headed toward the next section more than forty feet down.

  Tremaine’s right elbow snagged the top rail. His left fist yanked back on the Kevlar vest, taking Spencer with him. Spencer, catlike, caught both his hands onto Tremaine’s belt. They were left dangling, with the concrete stairs far below.

  Spencer’s fingernails clawed at his back, but with Spencer and his own weight pulling them both down, there was nothing Tremaine could do but heave for air and focus everything he had on hanging on.

  “I’m going to climb up on you,” Spencer instructed him. “Hang on. I’ll pull you up when I get to the top.”

  Tremaine’s entire body heaved, his one arm trembling. He held five hundred pounds.

  “You ain’t pulling up nobody,” Tremaine huffed. “You goin’ to run.”

  “No, I won’t. I’ll get us out of this. You hear me? Hold on.”

  Tee nodded through the pain. “Go, man. I can’t keep hold much longer.”

  Spencer swung out like a rock climber and curled into the next hold, digging his fingertips under Tremaine’s right clavicle.

  Tremaine’s belt tore into his waistband as he felt Spencer’s knee pushing against it while the shooter pressed himself upward. Spencer’s left hand swung onto Tremaine’s scalp, pinching to grip his short hair and failing to get a hold.

  With his face pressed between Tremaine’s shoulder blades, Spencer clawed for any grip. Like he was moving up a cliff face, he lurched again with his left arm, and his fingers climbed using the only hold they found, digging hard into Tremaine’s shattered eye socket.

  Then Tremaine let go. No slipping. No warning. Gravity.

  Spencer rolled in mid-air like a high diver to get on top.

  Forty feet down, they fell, onto concrete stairs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “We are breaking from regular programming for this news report on the Billionaire Killer.”

  Rumors had been buzzing for three hours as every news heavyweight in the region waited inside 26 Federal Plaza. Major network and news channels across the country and internationally shifted to the conference as Turner took the lectern in front of the FBI crest. To his immediate right, the Chief of Police, NYPD, with Christiana Dansk beside him.

  “I am Special Agent Turner of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Beside me are Chief of Police Bellows of the New York City Police Department and Christiana Dansk, Commander of the Intelligence Division of the New York City Police Department.”

  “This is a somber moment for all law enforcement,” Turner said, “yet also an opportunity to remember the efforts and sacrifice made across every day to keep this great nation safe and to keep our cherished freedom secure. A veteran officer of the New York Police Department gave his life today in heroic service to New York City and to the United States of America. Chief Bellows will follow me with a statement about that fine officer. A joint task force of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, state and local police, and federal intelligence agencies can announce definitively that the sniper who perpetrated multiple attacks in the Tri-state area was killed today while preparing for another attack inside a major sports stadium within the New York City limits.”

  On the screen to Turner’s left, a black-and-white photo of a gaunt, unshaven man with closely cropped hair and dark, deeply set eyes appeared. The face bore an eerie resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald.

  “The body has been conclusively identified by forensic experts with the FBI laboratory and confirmed by the Departments of State and Justice as that of Dimitri Vosilych, age thirty-nine,” Turner continued.

  “Vosilych entered the United States two years and ten months ago and immediately applied for political asylum, claiming religious prosecution. He was a member of the Islamic minority in Bulgaria. Vosilych was employed part-time in the food service industry but failed to report to his employment immediately following the first attack on July 4. This is an ongoing investigation, so as you can all appreciate I will not be accepting
questions at this time. An electronic Press Packet will be made available to you after Chief Bellows’ statement.”

  Turner stepped back and away, gesturing to the NYPD Chief. “Chief Bellows.”

  The New York City Police Department awarded Detective Sergeant Bull its Medal for Valor. Eleven thousand fellow police officers lined the streets while members of the NYPD Pipe Band marched ahead of the horse-drawn hearse carrying Tremaine.

  Owen stood rigid, perspiring beneath his woolen formal dress blue uniform, eight-pointed hat and white gloves, then marched forward, made a quarter-turn, and lifted the heavy casket atop his shoulder along with the other seven pallbearers. Callie had forced four cups of black coffee into him, dressed him, and shaved him with his electric razor to get him there.

  He sat through two-hour-long debriefs at Intelligence Division and then with Internal Affairs followed by a mandatory one-week personal leave. When Al Hurwitz drove to North Corona to check on him, Owen locked himself inside the bathroom.

  A smaller family gathering came together inside a modest room after the formal funeral was over. Four brothers, four sisters, two aunts, spouses, sons and daughters and grandchildren, along with spouses who were black, white, and Latin. It was the first time Callie and Owen had ever met Tee’s family.

  The first man who spoke after the pastor introduced himself as Tremaine’s high school football coach and social studies teacher. “I coached and taught Bulls for thirty years,” he explained. “Tremaine was always a rascal, and always the favorite, too. I had to kick him off my team in his sophomore year. He was always funning and distracting my practices. Sally Carol and Fontenelle over there had to talk me into letting Tee come back. Tremaine never did stop funning, but he made All-Conference that year and All-City the next two.”