Hog Butcher: 2nd Edition

by Andrew Sutherland

  “Yeah. Just between you and me, I got jumped. They got about 100 bucks and a good chunk of my pride. I told everyone else I just pulled my back, but these fellas got the best of me.”

  “Oh, my goodness!” said Lenny, sounding convincingly concerned. “Did you call the policey men?”

  “No. The fellow who hit me, his friends were holding me, said I’d better not squeal. I figure I’d better not go wandering around alone. I was scared. Two big guys holding me and another playing on my ribs like a xylophone.”

  “Yeah. There can be a lot of problems with blacks and whites in this town. Oh, well. I gotta go! My mom said if you have sore stuff on your body you can get it all fixed with rubbing alcohol and red wine vinegar. Half and half. Just rub it on really rood. If you’re sore, it might hurt like the dickens, but it takes the ouch out of the sore-y spots. You kind of smell like a salad, though. OK! Bye bye, now!” And Lenny got in the elevator.

  Al stepped out in the sun and rolled through the contacts on his phone. He needed to call Bud. Lenny had said two things that may have been lucky or may have been inside information slips. He’d said something about getting hit, and he’d mentioned racial tension. How did he know it was black people that he’d had trouble with? There were just as many white hoodlums as any other kinds, contrary to “statistics” you heard on the evening news. Lenny could have also been trying to say everyone was dangerous around the city center; he just focused on the dark and light aspect. He could have meant all people, no matter what color. He drove it out of his head and picked up his phone.

  “This is Bud.”

  “Bud. Al. I got to fly outta here for a day. Any progress on anything?”

  “I’ll have the Dirk thing for you by tomorrow. You be back by then?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be back by tomorrow around 6:00pm. Why don’t you let me take you and the missus out for a pizza? I can’t seem to get enough Gino’s East. Whattya think?”

  “Can I bring the heir apparent? He’s eighteen months, but cool as hell and gets to call all the shots.”

  “Can I love on him? I love to play with kids.”

  “Sure, Al. I think it sounds like fun and I think the wife would like it…and you.”

  “What’s her name anyway, you douche?”

  “Oh, fuck. Sorry. Betsy. She’s swell.”

  “I hope to shout, dude. You married her, after all. I’ll be with my new buddy, Edith. Be like a double-date with an eighteen-month-old calling the shots. Can we talk freely? I think we need to exchange some info.”

  “The wife is cool, but Crash Cart is a fuckin blabbermouth.”

  “Crash Cart?”

  “Carl. We call him Buster or ’The Kid.’ Yeah. Luckily, no one understands what the hell he’s saying. Have a good trip. I gotta go do cop shit.”

  “Eat a doughnut and roll some bums for me.”

  “You’re funny for a pot-smoking hippie from the wrong coast. Tomorrow between 6:00 and 6:30 at Gino’s. I’ll order. You’ll pay.” And the line was dead.

  Al walked back to the hotel and grabbed a bag for his trip. He grabbed his gun and a change of clothes. He didn’t think he’d need much, so his bag was light. It was a good thing. The drugs were doing their thing, but he didn’t want to push it. He done a lot of slow, sustained movement in rehearsal and would have to take it easy. He might even have Edith rub the salad dressing recipe on his back, the one that Lenny had mentioned. He’d think about Lenny later. For now, he had his passport, money, and his gun. He was good for just about anything. He shot a quick checkin message to his folks, letting them know the gig was going well, he missed them, he missed Petunia, but mostly that he loved them all. When he was done, he went downstairs.

  He hailed a cab and got in. “You know where the Artist’s Deli is?”

  “As pastrami is my witness.”

  “Great. We’re picking up a gal there then going to Chicago Executive Airport. You know where that is, too?”

  “Sure as God made little green apples and Mike Ditka.”

  Al laughed. “You want a pastrami? I’m buying.”

  “Shit, yeah. On toasted dark rye, with some smoked tongue, Swiss, sauerkraut, and Thousand Island.”

  “Pickle.”

  “Fuck pickles. A bag of Jay’s originals and a Coke would kick ass.” Al loved real Chicago guys.

  “It’ll be there when we pick her up.” The guy peeled out and Al called Edith.

  “You on your way?”

  “Just. Can you tell them to make an extra Reuben and to toss some smoked tongue on if they have it handy? Need some Jay’s chips with that and a Coke. Could you add a Diet Coke for me?”

  “No problem. I’ll have them do it double quick. I wanna get flying! I’m super excited.”

  “I’m glad. Don’t stress if you forget something. We can always pick up anything we need while we’re there. I think you’ll like my friend, Ted.”

  “He the guy the other sandwich is for?”

  “No. The other sandwich is for the cabbie.”

  “Transportation professional,” interjected the driver.

  “Excuse me, our cabbie is a fucking transportation professional. Must be a Teamster’s thing.” The cabbie was laughing. “We’ll be there in five. We should be in the air in seventy to ninety minutes. I’ll fill you in on the pertinent stuff on the plane. Suffice it to say, you are going to have to take it easy on me tonight. I had a little accident. My back’s fucked up.”

  “My God, Al. Are you OK? Be honest. This is no time to act like a dick.”

  “It’s always a good time to act like a dick. If you must know, I pulled an old injury in my back.”

  “Were you sword fighting?”

  “I was rolled on by a 260-pound thug in an alley, then I picked up a fully grown man and body-slammed him. It wouldn’t have been bad, but I didn’t warm up first.” The cabbie was checking him out in the rear-view mirror.

  “I’ll help you apply ice. If you’re nice to me, I’ll apply kisses and be on top as well.”

  “Damn. I should get jumped more often.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ, Al. You’re such a … guy. Now get your ass over here.” Then in a thick Chicago thug dialect, “I got to make sure that the beef I’m buyin’ is still cherce.”

  “Good thing you’re no cancelled stamp, and I’m no cake eater.” He shot back with the fast-talking, high-pants words of Chicago film gangsters.

  “You beat me. What’d you just say?”

  “Good thing you aren’t shy and I’m not gay.”

  “Just get over here, OK?”

  “OK. Bye.”

  Al hung up and realized the cabbie was looking at him. “You lost, Transportation Professional?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why you keep staring?”

  “I’m a big guy. I go about 250, I think I’m a year or two younger than you, and I ain’t no cake eater, as you say, but I wouldn’t try to put the moves on you without about four friends and a couple of baseball bats, or at least some knuckle dusters.”

  “They just had guns and low IQs. Deadly combo. Trust me.”

  “You sound fun to party with, Mac. If I was about 10 years younger, I’d get your number.”

  “Thanks, I think. And the names not Mac. It’s Al McNair, and any friend of pastrami and tongue is a friend of me. Now, get me to the deli and all of us to the airfield safe and alive, and there’s a fifty-dollar tip in it for you.”

  “I’m Zeke, and you got a deal.” The light turned green and Zeke hit the gas. Ninety-five minutes later, Al and Edith were feeling the invisible hand of acceleration press them back into the plush, cream-colored, leather seats of the Citation CJ3 Jet. Though it sat twelve, they were the only two people on board aside from the two pilots, who were separated from the main cabin by a small door. The pastrami sandwich was good. The mile-high club was phenomenal.

  36

  Eric Bannerman was flying to Salt Lake City and back in three days. He would pick up his luggage--which consist
ed of a single rifle bag--and a rental car at the airport. Once he had dispensed with these minor chores, he would be off to bag his mark.

  He had known for some months that one of his last kills would have to be on the road and at a distance. One of the fourteen people to be taken out was Lance Henderson. Lance had become a mid-range action star. He was always shooting some sort of action film with guns, guns, guns. Eric had hired a private investigator to find him a time and location that would be suitable for his one long-range hit. He had practiced regularly at Pasa Park in Barry, Illinois. It was a four-hour drive from Chicago, and when he felt like taking the trip, he would set to work practicing on their 600-yard range. He didn’t know shit about sniping, but he had a computer and the internet. He had used a fake ID to secure a sniper rifle that would do the job but that could be dumped without leaving $10,000 worth of equipment behind. He had no doubt at this point in the game there was a chance he would be found, but with as much planning as he’d put in, he didn’t want to make getting caught a forgone conclusion.

  He read about guns and talked to people in chat rooms about them. He stated that he was a hobbyist and had grown tired of quick-draw firing and was interested in some long-range challenges. It was bullshit, and he was sure that in some of his online chats he was talking to professional killers, people who erased other people discretely and from a distance. Eric was a fan of talking to the pros when needed, so he didn’t really care where he got the advice, as long as it was good. A few people had tried to hint at hiring someone to “target shoot” for him. He avoided these people like the plague. He didn’t want to get mixed up with a hired killer, which would be bad. He also didn’t want to fall into a police sting, which would be decidedly worse. With all the kids these days fucking up left and right, law enforcement sting operations were out there just waiting to trip up a guy like…well, a guy like him.

  After about a month of searching, researching, talking, going to physical gun stores, and chatting in about a million chat rooms, he’d decided on his set-up. He pre-ordered everything from Eagle’s Eye Gun and Knife Store in Louisville, Kentucky. Kentucky had some of the loosest gun laws in the US. He’d gotten a fake ID for the state, and he’d also managed to get a prepaid credit card under the same name. He was a planner and had done all of this months in advance.

  He’d decided on a rig that would do everything he needed except pull the trigger. He was looking forward to doing that little chore himself. He purchased a Remington Model 700 SPS Tactical .308 rifle and decided to shoot Black Hills 175-grain match hollow-point load. He was told that the rifle shot like a dream and could go toe to toe with any $4,000 model on the market; it was under $800. The barrel was a 1:10-inch twist, 20-inch heavy barrel. He was told this would give him good accuracy and control. You wanted that bullet to travel just like a spiral football on a Hail Mary, Super-Bowl-winning pass, Joe Montana to Jerry Rice. He got an externally adjustable X-Mark Pro trigger so he could get the amount of pressure required to shoot set to his particular grip strength. He didn’t like the term “sniping.” He just hated the way the word sounded, the way it tasted. He preferred “accurate long-distance shooting.” For accurate long-distance shooting, being prone with something to hold the barrel was key. He chose a Harris swivel bipod. The two little legs clicked down into place and adjusted from six to nine inches, depending on the shooter’s taste. He was told a cheek pad would greatly improve accuracy and comfort. He didn’t give a shit about comfort, but if it helped with accuracy, he was all for it. He might only get one shot. The IVS Performance Cheek Pad from Blackhawk was great for accuracy, and the advertising was on the mark. It was a comfy place to rest his face while waiting on a shot. His scope was a Leupold’s Custom Dial System. It eliminated any math. You had to run a few field tests, send them to the company, and they sent you your scope calibrated. If you were shooting 400 yards, you simply clicked the dial to number four and all was well. Lastly, because Eric would not have a spotter and didn’t want to do any complex calculations of distance, he bought a Leupold’s RX-1000i with Digital Laser Rangefinder. You pointed the fucker at whatever you wanted to shoot, and three little invisible lasers shot out of the Rangefinder. It had a digital readout that told you how far out you were and, thus, how you should set your scope. Easy, peasy, if you pleasey, like they used to say when he was a kid.

  He’d found out that Lance was shooting a big scene in the semi-mountainous country north of Salt Lake City, outside of Logan, Utah. He’d been given the map coordinates 41.706643, -111.665086, which was located off of Forest Road 168 in the Millville Face Wildlife Management Area. He had pored over topographical maps and even had the good fortune to check out a three-dimensional topographical map that was in the main Chicago Public Library. He’d had to lie and say he was writing a book for his MFA in creative writing at Northwestern. His thesis had to be a complete novel, a fiction about survival in the wilderness. It was total bullshit, but it gave him access. If Eric had the ability to truly digest his behavior and actions, he would have noticed a sublime piece of irony. He’d become a master practitioner of the craft that had shunned him and led to his incarceration. If he wanted someone to believe he was a janitor, a gun enthusiast, a grad student working on his MFA thesis, with a little research and light rehearsal, he didn’t just do a serviceable job imitating these people; Eric Bannerman became these people. Even if the change was only momentary, it was complete. It was absolute. It was high art.

  He’d found out that, on the day he arrived, the special effects people were going to be putting the finishing touches on the set-up for the shoot happening the next day. He didn’t know the specifics, but Lance was having some big gun battle with the lackeys that were guarding the “Big Cheese” in the movie script. They were basically going to blow the shit out of a bunch of Quonset huts made to look like the backwoods headquarters of a forest militia group. Lance, as always, would be charging around with his trademark .308 machine gun. He carried heaps of hundred-round bandoliers on his broad shoulders, and his special weapon had a grenade launcher mounted in an over/ under style, with the grenade launcher under. He never ran out of grenades in the movies unless it fit into the weak and disjointed plots.

  Eric’s plan was to see which areas were the most likely to see action from good old Lance. He supposed the crew, with the help of the first assistant director, the cinematographer, perhaps the director, maybe a standin for Lance, and maybe a few extras would walk through the action and give Eric some idea of where the best vantage point was going to be.

  He had rented a Jeep Wrangler for this trip from Avis. Plenty of people liked to go off-roading in Utah. Perhaps they were looking for more golden tablets, but who could really say? The girl at the counter made a point of telling him all the Jeep had to offer. He already knew, but Matthew Evans from Springfield, Kentucky, his present identity, was polite and interested. He was actually happy that the Jeep had a winch, in case something fell in front of him or, God forbid, he got stuck. Some things couldn’t be controlled. For those things, you let the chips fall wherever the fuck they wanted, but if a thing could be planned, there was no excuse for not factoring it in. He knew the night would be uncomfortable. The weather would be mild. It would only get down into the upper forties in the night. He expected to have his equipment set by 6:00am, his work done by 8:00am, the gun disposed of in parts all around the greater Logan, Utah, area, and to be in a SLC hotel sleeping and waiting for the news to carry coverage of the devastating loss of Lance Henderson for the entertainment world to consume like the death-eaters they were. He packed some snacks, a good GPS tracker with coordinate readings, and a pair of high-power field binoculars. He had parked a half a mile back in the hills. Driving cross-country was necessary, as they were away from roads, but the ground was moist, so when he was making his getaway, he wouldn’t be leaving a long trail of dust, and by the time they realized that a bullet had killed the son of a bitch, Eric would be long gone.

  Eric had seen a couple of La
nce’s movies, and the guy was always getting shot, applying a field dressing with part of his shirt, or better yet, a scrap of a damsel in distress’s skirt, and continuing to fight with blood on the bandage but the pain conveniently gone. When Lance went down and didn’t get up, it would take a while to realize he wasn’t goofing around. Then they would start to try to do first aid, and there would be CPR, unless he got a clean head shot, in which case, they might skip the CPR. Then the stunt folks would go fucking crazy tearing apart all the guns and ammo and other shit. The special effects people would be pulling the squibs, the small electronic charges taped to an actor’s body with a blood pack over them so that when they went off, blood squirted out of the “gunshot.” They didn’t want any of those on people if one had killed Lance. Lastly, people would be screaming and freaking out. A film shoot was a combination of a Wild West frontier town, a circus, and a pharmacy. They were virtual breeding grounds for class-A clusterfuck behavior.

  Eric was dressed all in black. He thought of going for camo or even some kind of ghillie suit, but if people were looking that closely for him, he was pre-fucked, and no amount of stealth clothing would help him out of the situation. His matte black clothes would do nicely. He began to breast a hill. At the top, he would have an unfettered view of the whole filming location. There was a partial moon, and when it finally got dark, it would still be possible to get around without any additional light source on or around you. He got on his hands and knees and crawled. Once he got close to the top of the hill, he got on his belly and combat-crawled on his elbows and knees. He moved slowly. A person would have to be within five feet to hear him at all.

  He looked at the little compound that had been built and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. There was an Asian man, stout, almost round. Talking to him was a guy in a baseball hat, glasses, and the whitest pair of tennis shoes Eric had ever seen outside of a shoe store. Even from 350 yards away, they looked like they ran on batteries. A skinny girl with a synthetically perfect body was standing and nodding in all the right places. Another girl, this one much more of the natural variety, was taking notes on a clipboard. The last player in this little ring of unlikely souls was the man Eric had come all this way to pay back. He intended to pay in full, with interest--a lot of interest.