I KILL RICH PEOPLE 2

by Mike Bogin

  Spencer got back inside the 4Runner, hung the placard from the rearview mirror, then reached inside the gym bag and retrieved kneepads that he strapped into place. With the kneepads on, he returned and opened the 4Runner’s rear hatch, pulled up the bucket, then moved it to the building, using it against the base of one of the front doors to keep it propped open. “I’ll just be a minute,” he called out to Walter. Two minutes later he had the gym bag, the tool chest, and the scaffolding out, and was moving the bucket inside to let the door close behind him.

  Walter walked over with the metal detector wand and had Spencer stand with his legs spread and arms extended while he went through his routine, even making Spencer empty the keys out of his front pocket. Spencer caught him eyeing the roll of bills.

  “Open ’em up,” Walter ordered, standing over the gym bag and the tool chest. Spencer complied while Walter took his time.

  “What’s that?” Walter grunted, looking toward the scaffolding.

  “Work platform, trowels, stirring wand.” Walter looked at the kneepads and put two-and-two together. Details make the difference. “Uh huh.”

  “Man, I came in early to get done before your residents are inconvenienced. You can see how heavy this is. Can I just use the front elevator? I’ll be in and out,” Spencer said.

  “Heavy.” Walter stood stone-faced, revealing zip while Spencer waited, envisioning himself struggling to carry that load along the hallways in one trip. Back to the service elevator, and then around again, all the way to the rooftop.

  “Fifty bucks,” Walter concluded.

  “Twenty,” Spencer countered, almost involuntarily.

  “Go around or use the stairs.”

  Spencer counted two twenties and a ten into Walter’s paw. It was better that Vince wasn’t working. It took the sting out of paying, thinking how in a few hours this a-hole was probably going to be losing his job.

  Spencer squared himself, blew out the anxiety, and prepared for the first of three heavy trips up to the roof deck where he had the tent anchored. The city lights were starting to give way to the first rays of sun creeping up over the Atlantic.

  *****

  Once inside the tent, Spencer dropped the thick jacket then worked on unwrapping his Barrett, taking special care not to jar the scope when the duct tape came off. He recalled the sound of that first shot when they killed Mercy—XMercy. Screw it, he thought. She was Mercy for thirty years. XMercy for less than a month. He’d remember what he wanted.

  Spencer cleared the elaborate wrapping off the long weapon. He was going to have to leave it behind. More and more being left behind, a kidney, my legs, and now the Barrett. But this wasn’t the time for extraneous thinking.

  When he lifted it out, the familiar heft of the Barrett in his arms shifted him into another gear.

  He shook off the emotional attachment and went into his routine. He dropped the magazine, fingered the metal jacket on the top round to confirm the full load, then flipped the bipod and cleared away the wrapping debris with his shoe before setting his weapon on the tent floor.

  The bucket lid fought back again, nearly reopening the nick that he still had duct taped as he tried to pry it open. When it came free, he lifted the lid up high then spun it to wind up the invisible monofilament until, with a sucking sound; the plastic bags separated above it and dripped glops of material back into the bucket in heavy splots.

  Spencer pulled on plastic gloves and retrieved the inner bag carrying his 9mm semi-automatic and extra clips, smudging only a little mastic when he set it down. He peeled off the gloves and dropped them inside the bucket then replaced the lid before precisely opening the nearly clean bag to reach for the pistol inside.

  After dropping the magazine and checking his load, he racked the slide to chamber a round, set the safety, and pressed his right index finger under the slide before pressing the Sig Sauer into his belt. He slid the additional clips in his pockets, and looked down again, taking a moment to appreciate the Barrett. It was long and bulky, heavy too, yet it was a thing of beauty, solid and dependable, capable; all business, with nothing extra or showy. He and that weapon were one and the same, the ultimate extensions of the warrior’s truth.

  Spencer unzipped the window at the back of the tent. Park Avenue showed as a gray outline emerging from the darkness below. He lifted the Barrett, scanned the imagery through the Leupold4 scope, and internalized the subtle sighting window, the thirty feet between the front doorway and the sidewalk that translated to a one-and-three-quarter-inch barrel shift. One-inch lateral shift between the trees along the curb to either side of the doorway.

  His legs throbbed again. He stood the Barrett up on the rifle butt and held his hand around the suppressor, steadying himself until it passed. The blisters on his left hand had dried out, leaving skin peeling. Less than a week ago he was cutting rounds with the chainsaw on Mercy’s farm. Mercy and Mouse. On his palm, just below the middle finger, the biggest blister was now a hardened flap over soft new pink skin. His fingernails were getting too long.

  *****

  Owen passed Via Quadronno, thinking about getting coffee; it was dark inside, nobody even beginning yet to get ready. Six a.m. He hadn’t slept a minute for the past twenty-four hours.

  Owen considered shifting on the radio to Imus again, then left on the police radio instead. The routine call codes: 10-14, License Plate Check, 10-67s as double-parking delivery trucks stretched their welcome, the uniforms on patrol calling in 10-63s as they stopped at Best Bagel the minute it opened; these sounds were as familiar to him as sitting in the dark listening to Liam and Casey sleep.

  “They fucking took my medallion,” Owen repeated for the hundredth time.

  It had to get reversed, he figured. It just had to. Like the captain from 19th had said, his union rep would make it right. Maybe its better that they couldn’t find Miller, he told himself. Without Miller, how could they prove he was on unauthorized work? Whatever he said last night they couldn’t use. He was entitled to have his rep present. Even the Assistant Chief said that!

  Nobody died. Spencer would have killed those people, only he didn’t!

  “They’re alive ’cause of you, Owen Cullen! You didn’t sell out. You did that!” he told himself.

  He punched the ceiling, hard, and then shifted his throbbing fist over the empty spot where his medallion should have been.

  “It was good that Callie came out,” he told himself. “She came out and she wasn’t mean.” She came out. She touched him. She knew he wasn’t drinking; he was sure she knew that.

  If she were all into Dr. Marc, would she have come out? No way.

  “10-33,” the radio crackled. “10-33. MTU en route to Park Avenue. All available units respond.”

  Bomb threat. Park Avenue.

  Then it hit him, like one of those pictures you can stare at for a month before you shift your focus just right and a whole picture appears that was right there in front of your face the entire time. All the blood drained from Owen’s face.

  “Oh Jesus.”

  That was the camera angle. The weird one, not like any of the others. It was looking straight down onto the corner. Park Avenue.

  Spencer. I Kill Rich People.

  A second chance.

  “Yes!” He slapped the dashboard and raised both his clenched fists. “I knew. I knew!”

  Owen reached his red globe light out the car window and set it on the roof in one fluid motion. The tires screeched as the car tore away from the curb. He was moving at fifty miles an hour when he hit the corner at Fifth Avenue, then spun hard left alongside Central Park and gunned the engine. He hit another hard left onto 72nd, sliding around and butting the high curb. Sparks flew onto the sidewalk as he punched the pedal, the metal rims grinding. He accelerated east toward Park Avenue.

  *****

 
The first delivery truck, a dark brown box van, turned onto East 71st and pulled to a stop. Spencer watched the driver run around the front to drop his package and ring the door at the side entrance to Park Avenue. The tent flashed at the same time as the bullet burst one of the rear tires and shifted the van into an obvious tilt. Spencer fired again, easily taking out the opposite rear tire and dropping the van like a true shot collapses a buck’s hind legs. Both rounds boomed and hissed like a launching rocket. The sound that only a Barrett can make.

  Spencer had already fired when he realized he hadn’t used ear protection. The tinnitus raged.

  He dialed 9-1-1 at 05:58.

  “Emergency Services. What are you reporting?”

  “One thousand pounds of military munitions are inside the disabled box van parked beside Park Avenue. You have nine minutes to evacuate. If police or the bomb squad gets within twenty feet of the van, I detonate it that second.” Spencer disconnected the call and then pried open the back of the cell phone; he removed the sim card and the battery, and tossed the pieces into the corner of the tent.

  *****

  “All units be advised,” the police radio crackled. “Do not approach the box van. Repeat. Do not approach box van at Park Avenue building.”

  Through the Leupold scope, Spencer watched the doorman and nighttime building security men run outside, first checking the van then sprinting back in. They can’t press the alarm, he thought. Nearly every apartment had panic rooms. If the owners locked themselves inside, they would never come out in time to evacuate.

  Up and down the Park Avenue building, lights blinked on as police units arrived. Uniforms trotted around the side of the building, leaning into their shoulder mikes to report. Their movements shifted noticeably; after they spotted the van, the adrenalin pumped through their systems.

  “10-33 is confirmed,” Owen’s radio crackled.

  “No!” Owen yelled. “It’s Spencer!”

  He reached to call it in and pulled back his arm. “They’ll never believe me.”

  Multiple uniforms tackled a man wearing a brown shirt and brown short pants. They wrenched his arms in the air and forced his fingers open, pinning his hands against the granite stonework on the side of the structure. More uniforms kicked open his legs before a police officer patted one leg up to the driver’s crotch then down the other. Then they pulled his arms behind his back, handcuffed him, and then pushed him again, face-first, into the side wall of the building. Both his feet were kicked out from under him. He fell and was dragged, half-conscious, east on East 71st.

  Eight officers from the 19th poured into Park Avenue while the doorman held open the front. He fumbled, throwing his hands into the air.

  “We need a detailed list of the names and numbers of people present within the building,” the squad commander shouted.

  “I’ve only got workmen and guests,” the doorman stammered back. “Nobody’s working at 6 a.m.,” he told them. He handed over the names on the short overnight list.

  “What about the residents?” the police demanded.

  Their tone scared the doorman. It had a 9/11 sound. He couldn’t think; he’d worked there since 2003, but he couldn’t remember a single name of anyone who owned the building. Why was he there? Why wasn’t he getting the fuck away?

  “I’ve got kids,” he responded.

  It took a moment before he remembered his clipboard. He could see his chest pounding, physically see it, while his finger shook over the names.

  The building’s security detail rode with the uniforms up in the elevators. Floor by floor, they sprinted against time, fanning out. 9/11 was on every one of their minds, too.

  Not a single face looked up in Spencer’s direction.

  “Five minutes thirty,” crackled through every walkie-talkie as dispatch clocked down in fifteen-second instruments. “Four minutes to evacuate, then all responders follow FD directions.”

  Inside Park Avenue, where one hundred million dollars liquid net worth was the baseline to even be considered for approval to own, residents who were accustomed to giving orders sensed the need to obey, no questions asked. The police never mentioned the deadline; their brusque mannerisms conveyed volumes.

  Additional units rushed inside the adjacent building to the north, across East 71st, and spread down the street in both directions. A fire engine pulled to a stop along the east side of Park Avenue.

  A roof-mounted loudspeaker sounding as loud as a rock concert announced, “All persons take nothing and immediately leave your building.” More sirens approached as emergency services personnel directed people to safety. Some fled in pajamas; others were shirtless. One woman was wearing nothing but her panties and her four little white dogs clutched to her chest.

  “All persons hearing this, move to the nearest exit immediately. No messing around, people. We need you to move now! Emergency services will direct you to safety.”

  *****

  The first sets of residents trickled out of Park Avenue, older residents mainly, with assistance from uniformed officers. Many were crying and hurriedly carried their pets. None were using umbrellas.

  Spencer watched their faces carefully through the Leupold, waiting. If the target wasn’t there, it would all be for nothing.

  Since when was that anything new? That was being a sniper.

  Spencer fed on every siren, every announcement, concentrated, his mind moving toward the calm zone. He felt the serotonins surge. The high.

  *****

  Owen braked hard and jumped out at the northwest corner of Park and East 71st, leaving the engine running. On the opposite corner, butlers and maids and personal assistants moved out the side door of Park Avenue and ran in a long pack, single-file, behind a uniformed patrolman heading east down the middle of the street.

  He grasped the view immediately; it had been rattling around his brain for days. Owen turned 180 degrees and threw his head back, looking upward for the exact perspective. His eyes hit on another anomaly; his feet were churning in the direction of the tent before his mind caught up.

  That was it. That was the viewpoint.

  He was around the corner in seconds, pulling on the locked doors at Terraza.

  Walter looked up from his desk and moved to the door.

  “NYPD,” Owen shouted inside. “Police emergency!”

  He shouldered past the doorman. “Don’t you hear what’s going on?” he demanded. “Where’s the roof?”

  Walter looked Owen over. “Up there,” he answered, “on eighteen.” He didn’t like being moved out of his doorway.

  “No!” Owen shot back. “Directly above here. What floor?”

  “How I know you’re a cop?” Walter countered. “Show me a badge.”

  Owen reached behind his waistband, drew his service weapon, pulled back the slide, and held it down at his side.

  “What floor?” he screeched, his eyes wild.

  Walter glanced toward the telephone.

  “The floor!” Owen screamed.

  “Seven. Terrace is on seven.”

  *****

  In front of Park Avenue, a white paddy wagon rolled up, double-parking beside a black Daimler waiting for the owners of 3A. The van narrowed Spencer’s field of vision to just six feet between the box van’s roof and the gray-green awning in front of the doors. His inch-and-three-quarters vertical melted to a quarter-inch.

  Spencer raised his right shoulder and sighted in on a slightly more acute angle. A wave of occupants moved fast out of the building, surrounded by a phalanx of police and private security.

  Spencer watched, recognizing faces from their photos on the web: all billionaires. BRASS.

  “Not today,” he muttered, allowing one after the next to pass.

  A cop standing with his back to the street waived them urgently up the steps
and inside the rear door of the paddy wagon and then directed the others to hold inside the doors.

  Owen ran out the elevator. His thumb double-checked the safety as he lifted the Glock and held it fully extended, aimed and ready, rushing forward with eight-foot strides.

  Spencer followed the faces as a second group was ushered out the glass-and-brass Park Avenue doors. One face looked up. Spencer fired. Instantly, the 661-grain round boomed. A hiss issued from the barrel as Spencer absorbed the recoil’s heavy punch without losing sight of his target through the Leupold.

  The hissing mixed with the plastic-bag popping impact noise as the brass bullet struck across the street, piercing the Vision Partners founder symmetrically between his gray eyebrows. The impact lifted the man’s body off its feet as bone, spraying blood and brain matter running down the glass doors.

  Within the tent, Spencer gently set down the Barrett and forced himself to breathe and mentally adjusted for the real-time positions of the first responders. Inside right, around to service elevator. Loading dock at rear, through alley onto East 70th, left to Lexington. He stepped toward the tent flaps, pushed aside the flaps, stopped, peeled and dropped the nitrile gloves, then withdrew the Sig Sauer and glanced downward. He still had the kneepads on.

  Owen had the fingers of his left hand around the bar on the glass door opening onto the rooftop deck when he heard the booming report. His peripheral vision captured the flash illuminating the inside of the tent like heat lightning.

  Owen ripped back the tent flap and fired. The Glock’s first round slapped hard against Spencer’s right shoulder. The force spun him around and paralyzed every nerve in his right arm. Spencer’s brain told him to reach his beltline, to draw the Sig Sauer, but the arm hung useless. A tall silhouette was framed in the doorway backlit by the lights on inside Terraza.