by TJ Martinell
“What’s eatin’ you, kid?” he said.
“Don’t call me ‘kid.’ I’m your boss right now, remember?”
Tom paused, pursed his lips together.
“People who have to make their rank known don’t have it,” he said.
“Your point?”
“I’m trying to figure you out, kid. I don’t get you. What are you after?”
“The same thing you are.”
“And what is that?”
“To survive.”
“Fighting a war like this ain’t the way to do it. Don’t you think it’s time to offer an olive branch? I’m not saying kiss their ass or let ‘em off the hook. I’m saying give them a way out.”
I held my tongue. He was out of the loop on this one. I had relied on other stringers to get the facts.
The bombers were more pravdites, men with the Ballard paper. They had been supplied the explosives by an ISA officer.
Fremont had ended up doing us a service once more, provided me with the location, a small library overlooking Salmon Bay. Another favor to be paid back at some future date.
Everything had been set. I had the story prepared for the next day’s issue. The only thing left to do was to make it fact.
Griggs looked over at Jamie who, along with the rest of the men at his table, had fallen out of his chair and was sprawled on the ground cackling. He then looked at me and saw the full glass of brandy untouched by the seat next to me.
He asked who it was for. I didn’t answer. He then smiled, inquired where Jean was. I was quiet. He didn’t require an answer before reaching for his fedora and left the booth to give me some privacy.
I sat and smoked and when the waiter asked if I wanted another round I turned it down and he asked if someone was going to drink the brandy. I didn’t answer and he took it as an answer of sorts and left the brandy there. I took a drag on my cigarette. The smoke sifted out my mouth and floated off to take an unearthly form. All I could think of was the brandy sitting next to me and the empty seat staring back at me as if to accuse me.
The glass scattered against the wall as I threw it hard. The brandy ran down the aged brown paint like blood. I got up and fumbled for my wallet and as the astonished waiter returned I handed him money to pay for my drinks as well as the mess. It was far too much but I didn’t care.
I went back to the newspaper and cloistered myself in my office. My father was still recovering on the third floor, but something kept me from checking up on him. I hadn’t spoken to him for days, consumed with protecting the newspaper and ensuring my boys carried out their roles as ordered. It felt odd that after pining for years to talk to him I couldn’t think of anything to talk about with him. At least anything he could understand.
Jean’s call seemed well timed; just as I was about to leave. I cut her off and demanded to know why she hadn’t come.
No answer came back.
I assumed she had hung up in high dungeon until she replied incoherently. I cut her off again.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” I yelled.
No reply. Just faint breaths.
“Never mind!” I said. “I’ll be at the train station in a few minutes. Be there. Can you do that?”
Her affirmative murmur was sufficient. I slammed the phone down and stormed out of the office. This had gone on for too long. She and I were finally going to have it out.
***
The door to the station was ajar when I reached it. I pushed it open and was greeted by a heavy layer of dust and the musky odor emanating from the cold wooden walls as I moved to the balcony and looked down.
Jean was sitting there by one of the benches. I walked down the stairs and across the crackled marble floor. With a long rain jacket that fell over her knee, she was sitting with her hands in her lap and her head slightly bowed, but she wasn’t praying.
I could no longer hide my scowl.
“I don’t know what has gotten into you lately,” I said. “But it doesn’t make a difference to me. You were supposed to be at the library. When I tell you to be somewhere, you sure as hell better be there.”
She didn’t answer, her fedora still concealing her face from me. I walked up to her to snatch it, but she pushed away my hand. I balked and prepared to chew her out more. Then I noticed she was discreetly wiping her nose with a handkerchief.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.
She dabbed her nose and then stood up. She took her fedora off and placed it on the bench.
“I want to leave,” she said.
“Fine. Where should we go?”
“No.” She dabbed her nose again. “I’m leaving the newspaper, for good.”
I couldn’t take the comment seriously. I asked her what she really meant.
She repeated herself. I tried to speak, but she kept saying the same thing again and again.
“What’s going on?”
“I can’t keep doing this.”
“Since when has killing ever bothered you?” I asked.
“For a while. You cannot see it because you are blind. You have changed. You have become one of them.”
“Who?”
Jean dropped her head. “When was the last time you actually wrote a story?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You’re not a stringer anymore. You’re just a killer.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. There had to be more to it.
“I killed the Fifth Avenue Boys,” I said. “I didn’t hear you complaining then.”
“You did it because you had to do it. Now you do it because you want to.”
I raised my hand, almost slapped her. She didn’t flinch.
“Don’t you ever tell me what I enjoy and don’t enjoy,” I said as I lowered my open palm. “I decide that, not you or anyone else. And I sure as hell don’t like killing people. But it has to be done.”
“I would rather not kill,” she said.
I scoffed. “What world are you living in?”
“I saw my father for the first time since I was a child. I remembered who he raised me to be. No matter what they have done to him he, was able to look at me. He was at peace.”
She wiped her eyes and continued before I could speak. “When I was in that cell and the guards came and hurt me, I used to think of hurting them. When they let me go I thought it would be different if I learned how to protect myself. Since then I have killed to protect myself. I have killed for other reasons. I still feel as though I am still in the cell, trying to break free.”
“So?”
“My father has something I never have had. I want it more than anything else. I will not have it as long as I do this. I will not have it as long as I am with you.”
At that moment, I was furious with her, but not for the reasons she may have thought. I resented having to ruin the final glimmering hope she wore so proudly like a family jewel, a precious heirloom, but the self-delusion was poisoning her mind. If nothing was done she would destroy not only herself but others as well.
“That wasn’t your father you saw,” I told her.
Her eyes glowed brightly, like two dying stars giving off their final glimmer before fading out completely.
“He’s still alive! I know it!”
“I didn’t say he was dead! I said the man you saw that day wasn’t him.”
She wouldn’t debate the point. There was nothing left to argue.
“I can only do what I know is right in my life,” she said. “It is right that I go.”
“Go where?”
She deliberated. Now, I was absolute certain there was more to it. There always was.
“There is another reason,” she said.
“Yes?”
Her long eyelashes fluttered. “You know why.”
I turned away from Jean, the wind wailing outside and broken doors clattering against their frames. She was staring at me unflinchingly,
her lips barely touching as she held her breath waiting for an answer she hoped to hear but I could not give her.
“It hurts me to see you like this,” she said.
“That’s rich coming from you. You suddenly decide one day you’re going to give up everything that kept you alive and then get all high and mighty on the rest of us. It is easy to thrown in the towel and play the saint when there is always someone else to take up the job and do the dirty work for you so you can feel good about yourself.”
I tossed my cigarette at her feet. She jumped away nervously, her shoulders hunching forward like she was prepared to receive more thrown her way.
“You don’t have to worry a bit, sweetheart,” I said. “You’re not irreplaceable. Someone else will be more than willing to do what you aren’t. But you’ll never have a clear conscience as long as you rely on someone else to protect you.”
“That’s not what my father told me,” she declared.
It was more than I could resist.
“Your father kept his hands cleaned but left you to fend for yourself,” I said. “If he’s sitting in a cell right now with his conscience intact, it was at your expense.”
She hung her head and cried. I couldn’t believe my bad luck. Hours away from a job that had to be finished before the morning, before we went to press, and she had suddenly developed a pacifist’s conscience. All because her father’s words haunted her from a childhood she barely remembered. A father whose beliefs made him unable to safeguard her. It didn’t make a difference to her. He had left an impression. Nothing I told her would persuade her otherwise.
Jean’s eyes searched for me as she leaned against one of the pillars. Another cigarette consumed and stubbed under my feet. I looked at the time, knowing I couldn’t stay with her. The job had to be done.
She came over and squeezed my hand. I didn’t resist.
“I want you to do what is right,” she said.
“If we do not win, then there is no point to being right.”
She waited for me to say more. A long time passed before she let go of my hand. When I did not speak or look at her she nodded her head in acknowledgement and picked up her fedora. She buttoned her jacket and wiped her nose with a handkerchief.
“You wanted to know why I was not there tonight,” she said. “I told you. I told you what I am doing. Now you know. I have already taken my things out of your home.”
“Where will you go?” I asked.
“Does it matter?”
“I never touched you.”
“You care too much.”
I stared at her.
“Goodbye, Roy.”
Her eyes conveyed a silent prayer being uttered. It took all my strength to keep quiet. I could feel the words forming inside of my mouth, words she hoped to hear. Words that had the power to change everything. But I knew if I did I would one day regret it. And so would she.
My voice echoed through the empty room.
“I’ll see you around, kid.”
She did her best to muffle her sobs underneath the sound of her small shoes slowly clicking against the ruptured marble floor. I observed her leave by the stairway. She stopped and turned and we looked at one another before she ascended the remaining stairs and disappeared.
I stood in the room like it was a dream. I was half-convinced I would wake up to find myself in the train car with Jean sleeping in a bed not far from mine.
When I finally accepted that the only dream was dying inside my head I went for the front door. I left it partially ajar as I had found. Outside blackened clouds loomed overhead as lightening groaned in the far distant. I was going to be late for the job.
I arrived at the train car before the first raindrops fell. Immediately I went to Jean’s room to find it bare as a beggar’s wallet. She had left most of the kitchen things for me. The rifle I had given her was on the table.
In my room I found her Tommy gun was on my bed. A small note was on it. I grabbed the note and crumbled it before tossing it on the ground. I took the Tommy gun with both hands and was about to throw it as well. Staring at the wall, I lowered it and dropped it to the floor. My knees fell down close by it. I knew it was the right thing to do. One day I would be vindicated. However, I had a suspicion that day would not come anytime soon.
Until then I had to do what needed to get done even if it had to be done alone. I was beginning to realize that the nature of things. Doing the right thing usually meant being alone.
***
The heavy rainfall obscured the men as they exited the car alongside the curbside and entered the library. The bodyguards went first, scanning the alleyways. One of the men moved hastily, using an umbrella to protect himself from the rain.
A dead giveaway for the ISA officer. He wasn’t from the area.
No Seattle native used an umbrella.
I spied them from the building across the street. The top of the lamppost in front of the abandoned structure had long been removed, leaving a blind spot of pure darkness. The heavy deluge provided even greater camouflage as I moved to get a better view of them, counting the men as they disappeared inside the library.
Six in all.
Might be more inside. I hadn’t been able to scope out the place.
Stepping underneath an overhang, I tore off the coat covering the Tommy gun, cocking it quietly. I had an extra magazine in my coat pocket.
The front of the library lit up as rooms in the back brightened with activity. Beyond the window on the left, shadows moved to one of the interior doors and vanished.
Buttoning my coat to the neck, I wiped my face before I stepped out from the lamppost, checking my left and right for any lookouts. The empty sight made me wary. After a bombing, they had to be anticipating a retaliatory attack. Or maybe they had gotten arrogant.
I moved across the road, splashing rainwater as I waded through the stream pouring through the gutter and jumped onto the sidewalk. There was no one in the foyer to see me break open the door and enter. Resonating from the corridor was a cacophony of proud laughter, glasses clinking and lousy singing. Checking the stairs, I continued through the corridor, coming upon a half-cracked door.
The laughter and singing was now loud and vivid.
I kicked the door open.
Six men sat at a table, newspapers spread open on top of it next to beer bottles and shot glasses. They didn’t wait to see who it was interrupting their celebration. They knew. They had been in the business too long.
It was too easy. With my gun already up, I sprayed the room. Resigned to their deaths, the men refused to go peacefully. Each went for their gun, took several shots in the gut before they succumbed to the wounds.
Seconds later, the noise was gone. Only the rainfall tapping against the roof and the sidewalk.
I lowered the Tommy gun, feeling the heat from its barrel close to my side. Crossing the room, I checked the bodies. All dead. Multiple entry wounds in their chests. Not even groans or murmurs. In taking them swiftly death had granted them a final mercy.
The wooden boards in the floor creaked. I snapped my gun up, moved around the table. In the corner was one of the man. Alive. I looked down at the other bodies, counted only five. Who had survived?
The man was huddled against the perforated wall in a fetal position, his hands above his head. While the others had ended their lives fighting, he was desperate to save his.
Then I got a look at his face. He had to be the ISA undercover officer.
The other five had faced me fearlessly. They were evil men. But not cowards. Life had prepared them to die like that. They had expected it.
He had come from a world where death was unnatural and to be avoided at all cost.
I kicked the man away from the wall, shoved my gun barrel against his chest as I examined his face. He looked the part, a scar along his neck. Harsh imprints in his features from drug or alcohol abuse. Hands that belonged to a man eager to kill, unless ther
e was a chance of death.
Evil, cowardly, and weak.
I pointed to the entrance. “Get out!”
He gawked as though certain he had misheard me.
“That’s right, I’m letting you live. You don’t deserve to die next to these men. They were traitors, but at least they were men. They weren’t afraid of death. Go back to your cozy office and let the real men willing to slug it out come. Such is the kind of man I respect enough to kill, or none!”
He couldn’t accept it. Mercy was unknown to his kind.
“Leave!” I screamed. “Before I change my mind!”
Scrambling to his feet, he ran through the corridor. I followed him, kicking him in the back as he stumbled out the front door and fell into the muddy street. Watching him recover and wander around the area overlooking the locks I turned toward the ajar door creaking on its hinges.
I smiled.
Taking a thick ink marker out from my coat, I wrote across the exterior wall’s cracked surface, straining to follow my own penmanship as the words flowed from my mind and through my hand. As I finished, a lightning strike glowed in the clouds, revealing the message that would reverberate through the city and splash across every single headline.
“Kill” Roy was here.
Chapter Sixteen
Olan perused a written proposal on his desk. The two men presenting it stood in front of him with hats in hand.
Neither of them had said what it was about, or who they were.
But they had all the telltale signs of a newspaperman. Disjointed knuckles in their hands. Scarred palms. Naturally taut jaws.
Olan dropped his cigarette into the ashtray. One of the men brought out a pack of fresh cigarettes and went to light one until I pointed at him and told him to wait until Olan was finished. I intentionally used a stern voice. A test of his ego, his level of self-control.
The man rolled his shoulders around and chewed on the inside of his mouth as he put the pack away. He straightened his back. His partner eyed him and then flashed a brief smile at me.
Olan placed the contract back on the table, folded his hands in his lap. He eyed his bodyguard, Phillip, leaning against the wall. He was a new recruit but like our visitors facial scars and a hardened glare acted like a resume of prior work.
