by TG Wolff
Irish had become a regular at my kitchen table. Ian and I both kept an eye on him, expecting retaliation against Dixon, but it didn’t happen. Guess Irish was a dog lover, too. Dix won him over with his boundless energy, loose morals, and a bottomless stomach. The black eye finally faded but not before Irish saw it. Dixon didn’t rat out his old man.
For myself, I’d been stalking Liu. Nothing horrible, just enough to put her on edge, to wobble that cocky attitude. Then I blackmailed her. Ten thousand dollars for the records that proved she hired Hugo Franzetti to kill.
Tonight, at dusk, she would pay the ransom, in person and alone.
All the i’s were dotted, all the t’s were crossed, and so, I waited. Minute by minute, our paths came closer to resolution.
Rain pelted the roof, sounding as though the sky dropped marbles. Lightning flashed, flooding the industrial space. Still, I waited.
The air smelled of petroleum, dust, and rain. Nothing to be afraid of.
“Car approaching,” Ian said in my ear. “The car is slowing in front of the building and turning onto the circular drive.”
I left my throne for my starting position, a recess near the entrance. Screens ran the length of the room, invisible to the naked eye in this light, enabling me to play puppet master with impunity.
“Three figures exiting the vehicle. Open the door in three…two…one.”
I pressed a button on the remote Dixon had built for me. The front doors opened.
“Confirmed, Liu with two men. She and one of the men jumped. The third was cool, the taller one. Both men are armed. Assault rifles. Approaching door two.”
Another button on the remote and a recording began to play.
“Halt. Thou art about to enter the next dimension.” The booming voice of R&B’s next superstar echoed off the concrete floors. King was happy to help with my escapade, and maybe he thought the mind control juice hadn’t quite worn off. “This place is for the pure of heart. Enter with reverence; leave with bounty. Enter with dishonor; leave in a casket.” He stretched the syllables of the last three words, painting a picture of an endless hell.
The effect was even better than I hoped. King didn’t just read the script I’d written with the help of Jose Cuervo—he performed the fucker.
“They stopped,” Ian said. “They looked spooked. That weird shit you had King say actually has them nervous.”
When we talked about my death, that is my first death, I told you I’d have gone out epic if I could have.
This is me, going epic.
“Choose now,” King’s disembodied voice directed.
The disconcerted chatter of my quarry came through my ear piece, overlaid by Ian’s chuckle. “She’s pissed, Diamond. One of the men does not want to—shit, take cover!”
I covered my ears, patiently awaiting the result of the assault rifle versus the industrial door. In the end, the gun was exhausted, and it still took a hand to open the door.
The small figure, our dear Dr. Quili Liu, led the incursion, tossing the spent weapon aside. King’s voice played on a loop, a recording of slow, melodic nonsense that birthed unrest. Liu barked an order in a Chinese dialect; the men fanned out. The complex arrays of light and shadows before them were designed to warp perception of space. Liu staggered to the left, a hand on a machine press stabilizing her. She walked past me, followed by the man I came to think of as Extra #1.
From a selection of weapons within my alcove, I selected a sap then stepped out from the screen, a shadow moving among shadows. The weight in my hand was an extension of me, cutting through space and hitting true. I caught Extra #1’s dead weight, slowing his descent to the ground, eliminating sound. He carried a handgun and two knives, both of which were now mine. Covering him with a dirty tarp, he became another forgotten relic in the warehouse.
“What the fuck?” Liu asked. Okay, I don’t actually know what she asked, not understanding a word she said, but she had a what-the-fuck expression on her face. Extra #2 responded. Probably said, “I have no idea, but the lights are fucking toxic.” When Extra #1 didn’t comment, the parade stopped. Both turned and looked to the spot where I used to be. Liu walked backwards, edging toward the center of the room, finding nothing. She wasted more bullets on the walls and ceilings. Still the bassy chanting droned on. She barked orders to the last man standing.
Lightning flashed, and thunder echoed as though I had cued their lines. Snapshot images of their faces showed fear in the wide eyes. She did not like the soundtrack custom made for her arrival. I’m not going to try to spell the jibberish King recorded. Insert whatever you think demons crawling out of hell sound like. With another button on the remote, a weight dropped. Extra #2 whirled, firing over and over and over until there was nothing left to shoot. The second rifle hit the floor.
Liu ordered Extra #2 to the offending area. He walked with a stride that was determined, ruthless, fearless when someone was trying to scare him. You know the kind. There’s one in every horror movie. Until they get eviscerated.
Behind the cover of the screen, I came up behind him. He called to Liu, signaling all clear. She turned her back on him. Neither saw the garrote reflect white silver in the flash of LED light. It cut through skin and muscle, a blood-red pool tainted the colorless floor. Pained and desperate shouting rebounded across the vast space as the man fought for his life and lost.
And then there was one.
“Who is there?” she said, finally deciding to try English. “I am here to make a deal. I have the money.”
Right. I almost forgot about the ruse. Staying to the shadows, I retook the stage and my throne.
It was almost fun, triggering the surprises engineered along the corridor. She jumped like a frightened cat, spinning in the air, screaming like some nineteen seventies horror star. With a flash of reflected light, bullets hit the scraped metal, dangerous for the random angles of the shrapnel.
I wasn’t behind protective cover. I wasn’t layered in Kevlar. But I wasn’t scared. Tonight, retribution was my armor.
Pause the looped satanic ramblings and play the grand finale. “Stop.” The recording gave the order and Liu obeyed. “Go no further. You have reached…the end.” King laughed then, climbing the scale. Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-Fuck-You. Electronics elongated and twisted his voice into a maniacal sound that could never be mistaken as sane.
“Stop this. Stop I said.” Her accent was stilted, afraid when she tried to be commanding. “Who are you?”
The laughter abruptly stopped, the silence in its wake was the crack in the gates of hell. Something wicked this way comes.
Oh, shit, that’s my cue. “I’m the one you’ve been waiting for.” I played my part, the calm, bored deity.
“I’ve been waiting for? You set this up. I am here to explain you are wrong about Italy.”
It was a cute ploy. I brought the stage lights up enough we could talk face-to-face. Her eyes widened. “Jessica Fielding?” She raised her gun.
Mine was already trained on her. “You want a chance of walking out of here, drop it. One-time offer.”
She thought about it. Her decision was in her eyes. I shot the gun out of her hand. Hard for me to tell if I hit her hand, her arm, or the gun itself. All I cared was the gun was now on the ground.
“I’m unarmed. You cannot shoot an unarmed woman. It’s the law of the American.”
Wonder what movie she got that from.
I cocked my head. “But then, I wouldn’t be shooting an unarmed woman, would I? I’d be shooting a killer.”
With wide eyes, she vehemently shook her head. “I not killed anyone. No one.” Her grammar was falling to pieces, just like the rest of her.
“Hugo Franzetti.”
Liu looked like I was speaking Greek.
“You remember Hugo. Italian. Small-time con, looking to make a few bucks. Don’t tell me you don’t remember the man you hired to kill Gavriil Rubchinsky? He did your dirty deed and you rewarded h
im by filling him with lead and driving his car into a ravine. You must have been dancing in your quinoa when Gavriil was killed by the car and Francisco Thelan died by the drink. Talk about throwing off suspicion. Don’t worry. I won’t blame you for Francisco Thelan, after all, you weren’t trying to kill him.” Sarcasm dripped like syrup from a pancake.
“He…he try and kill me.” She tripped over her own feet as she moved back toward the only door visible.
I adapted a visage of sympathy, a therapist coaxing their delusional patient to reality. “Of course. You needed to do something drastic to protect yourself.” I leaned in. “You had no choice. When the emails you sent to Buford Winston did not succeed in Gavriil’s funding being pulled, in him being fired so you could step into his place, you had to do something physical, something permanent. You had done it before. The winner of the Stockholm Junior Water Prize. The chair of the botany department. The roommate. They were all hurdles, impediments, road blocks.”
Liu didn’t move, her dark eyes glossy in the fractured light.
“Just like a little rabbit, frozen in the headlights. Don’t look so shocked. You did well. Really well. You only made one mistake.”
Liu did not take criticism well. Her eyes narrowed, her brows pressed together. “Mistake?”
I fired the gun to the ceiling, the skylights exploded as the explosives I’d planted were denotated. Glass and rain poured down.
“You.
“Killed.
“MY.
“HUSBAND.”
With each word, I stalked toward Gavriil’s killer. With each step, I fired the weapon and triggered another explosion.
Liu retreated, tripping over God knew what. She scrambled across the concrete floor covered in glass and shell casings. I felt the power of a very unholy hell coursing through my body. I sprinted the distance between us, catching her by the back of her collar and hoisting her to her toes. “You’ve been a bad, bad scientist.”
Her attempts to free herself were feeble. A few girly kicks. A swipe of her nails. She actually tried to go boneless and slide out of the shirt I held.
I pressed the gun to her head and just kept it there, letting the anticipation build.
When nothing happened, she slowly looked to me, daring to ask the question. “Are you…are you going to kill me?”
I grinned. A Cheshire Cat, wide-ass, big, toothy smile. “I was hoping you would ask.” I released her neck and picked glass from her hair. “Only someone with your moral depravity could appreciate my plan. Killing…killing is easy, wouldn’t you agree? In a fraction of a second you’d be gone. Oh sure, there would be some satisfaction that the scientific community would forget your name in less time than it takes to boil water. That is, if they even noticed you are gone. The problem is…I kill you, then I become the bad guy. I can’t be the bad guy in my own story. No one would take my side if I did. They’d all be sad for the poor little scientist who didn’t have the benefit of special ops training. Couldn’t let that happen. Had to be another solution. Instead of thinking of you only as a cold-blooded murderess, I took a look at another role you star in. Spy.”
Her face tightened with insult. “I no spy.”
“You know all those cloaked emails you’ve been sending to China? Got ’em. Oh, and the hack you hired to break into Gavriil’s email and clone it? Well, the feds can’t touch him as long as he’s on Chinese soil. You on the other hand.” I looked down at her little feet, standing on concrete that stood on American soil. “Not so much.”
She knocked my hand away, scrambling to put space between us. When I didn’t chase, she reached blindly to the table behind her. She threw anything she could at me, well, in my general direction. Her pitching arm sucked.
Hidden amid the bric-a-brac was a device of my own creation. It looked innocuous, like a miniature tire pump.
“What is that?” she asked.
“The grand finale. Run.” I pressed down the small T plunger. Fountains of fire and light raced along the walls, further distorting the space. Liu screamed and sprinted for the door, only to run into a table. The run was long, the fire was fast. Even with the open skylights, the air was thick with smoke.
I walked the other way to the rear door hidden by a screen. Outside, I got a running start and snatched a ladder rung. One hand slipped on the slick metal but the other held true. On the roof, I sprinted to the front of the building, curious if Liu would escape the maze.
“We got three cars closing in. Your friends are joining the party.” Ian paused, then said, “Sure, kid. We can do that.”
From my perch over the front door, I watched three black SUVs park across the front of the property. Men and women spilled out, hurrying into covered positions. A woman screamed, and our villainess shot out of the building. Shouts of authority rose. Liu spun in a circle, her hands in the air, her voice no match for the agents surrounding her. Flames licked the building walls, casting the gray evening in a deathly orange, as Liu laid on the ground, hands behind her back.
“Holy fuck, Diamond! What did you do! What was with the fucking explosions? That was not part of the plan!” Ian continued to shout in exclamation points as his van drove half on the sidewalk. I removed the earpiece, dropped it, and ground it into the roof.
I recognized the man in the lead. Enrique Torres. I knew him by the way he moved. He secured his prisoner, then handed her off to another agent. He stood in a Superman pose, surveying the beauty of my work. He threw his head back and laughed in homage.
The next day, nothing happened. In defense of the day, there was nothing to happen. Not from my point of view. I’m sure Quili “Killer” Liu was busy lining up lawyers and crying to ambassadors. Her conniving little mind was probably working so hard smoke was puffing out of her ears. I can imagine her cellmates leaning over her, snorting in the China prime grade.
Everybody else worked. All I could do was imagine.
The day after that, nothing happened again. I got out of bed, got dressed, and then just stood in the front window waiting for something to happen, looking for a reason to…to do something.
Anything.
Third day, I met Irish for lunch at a small restaurant. I retold the splendor of that night. He complimented me on the planning. Our lunch continued long after most people came and went. I asked what he had going on. Thought I could be useful, in a dead woman kind of way.
That’s when he dropped the bomb. He was leaving for an assignment. The work: confidential. The location: confidential. Likely return date: maybe sooner, but probably later.
I had this weird, hollow feeling in my throat. Life was moving on…without me.
He said goodbye, and it really felt like goodbye. He told me to get some sleep and ordered me to eat—as if he could order me to do anything—then he left.
Ian had moved back to his place. Dixon split his time. Ian and I argued about who got to feed the bottomless pit each day. We both wanted him. Hell, we both needed him.
I wasn’t sleeping well. I spent my nights inspecting the ceiling, one square inch at a time. My mind drifted to the outtakes from my life. My biggest mistakes, worst humiliations, loneliest moments. Gavriil was featured nightly.
If only I’d gone to Rome with him.
Day four, nothing happened.
Day five, I didn’t bother getting out of bed.
Day six, I was getting the picture. Today, yesterday, tomorrow. What’s the difference?
Day seven, the illustrious technicolor extravaganza I created felt like a year ago. Ian came over, bringing pizza with him for dinner before a movie with Dixon. Ian relented and said Dixon could drive. The latter bounced with anticipation; the former rattled off rules like a prison guard.
They asked me no less than a dozen times to go along, but I wasn’t up for a movie. I had no reason to be unhappy. Ian brought word the Department of Justice filed charges rivaling the Encyclopedia Britannica in word count.
Let’s take a look F
amily Feud style…
The charges were surveyed, the top three answers are on the board. Name the crimes Quili Liu was charged with.
Operating as an unregistered agent of a foreign country? Number one answer. You are not having a good day when the feds write that one down.
Murder in the first degree for Gavriil Rubchinsky and Francisco Torres? X. Sad, but true. With Hugo dead and the Vatican’s newest priest on a mission in Sub-Saharan Africa, first-degree murder didn’t stick.
Attempted murder for Jessica Fielding? X. Strike two. Can’t murder someone who doesn’t exist.
Conspiracy to commit murder? Number three answer. Total of five counts after all the evidence was in.
Fraud and other finance-based crimes? Number two answer. Turns out those grants Buford administered came from the US Department of Agriculture. When Liu cheated Buford, she cheated Uncle Sam. Both were pissed.
Ian heard from a guy, who sleeps with a woman, who is a secretary for Enrique Torres’s department, who heard that Liu cried, feigned bad English, ordered her own release, then had a breakdown. For a woman like Liu, a few decades in a prison, isolated from the intellectual fanfare of a university, branded a fake, stripped of her accomplishments, that was her seventh circle of hell.
“Come on, Diamond. Come with us. I’ve been practicing, a lot,” Dixon said.
His endless energy drained me, but I mustered a smile. “Told you once, told you twice, video games don’t count.”
“It’s a driving simulator. It counts. That’s how they teach pilots to fly.”
“That explains a lot. Lightning, my ass.” I gnawed on a pizza crust. It was as hard and bland as my life.
“You sure, Diamond? We don’t have to see Carnage and Entrails 2,” Ian said. He winked at Dixon. “There’s other movies out. You know, ones girls like.”
