I KILL RICH PEOPLE 2

by Mike Bogin

  Owen grabbed his left hand around his right wrist and squared his aim in one fluid motion. He quickly fired three more rounds. Each of his shots struck home dead center within a narrow killing diameter just below the breastbone.

  Spencer saw the bright flames come out the gun barrel lighting the forearms and hands holding the weapon. His arms jerked side to side before his legs collapsed out from under him. He looked like a marionette left behind by a bored child; his limbs fell in a twisted heap. He dropped without ever registering a face.

  The sharp gunpowder scent filled his lungs when Owen finally inhaled. He turned sideways and swept back the tent flaps to let in light. He saw the 9mm semi-automatic remaining in Spencer’s belt and jerked it free then sent it skidding behind him across the roof deck.

  Spencer’s chin was dug into chest, but Owen leaned in and easily identified the face. “Fucker,” he swore. “We got him, Tee.”

  He couldn’t wait for crime scene investigation. Seeing the Barrett, he grabbed up the rifle. It felt like he was holding a cannon.

  He stepped out of the acrid scent lingering inside the tent. The morning air outside was crisp and fresh. Owen’s arms shook from the adrenalin rushing through his system, but he lifted his trophy high above his head and howled. He howled for Tremaine, howled because it was done, and he howled because he had done it.

  “I did it, Tee!” he screamed, gripping his right hand vise-like around the huge weapon and pumping its barrel up and down. “They took my medallion, but I did it. I did this! Owen Cullen. Detective Lieutenant!”

  Tears welled and then ran freely down his face and wet his shirt. He let them. The Glock was locked so tightly in his left hand that he couldn’t open his fingers. In his right he held up that Barrett like it was the Statue of Liberty torch.

  “I did it, Callie,” he said with the noise of a dozen sirens coming up from below. “They can’t take this away. I did it!”

  *****

  Inside the tent, Spencer’s eyes opened wide. His lungs demanded air. His fingers and feet flexed spasmodically. He tried to press his torso upright, cringed, breathed, and listened.

  Owen used his back to press open the glass doors to get back inside just as both elevators opened. Six black-uniformed, black-helmeted SWAT officers surged out of the doors and fanned to the sides.

  He tuned and stepped toward them, smiling, starting to laugh. The big gun shook above his head.

  “Gun!” they shouted in unison. HKs were up at their cheeks, all on setting three, all leveled at Owen.

  Owen’s eyes opened wide. Someone had fired. He felt the bullet burning in his gut.

  But I’m on the job, he thought, as his arms came down.

  The second bullet struck his jaw. Then four weapons fired, their bullets ripping through Owen’s heart and lungs and spine. The last image he saw was an orange sunrise. He saw it from the floor, looking up through the shattered glass doors.

  Two of the officers pounded forward, leaping over Owen’s body and crunching glass beneath their boots. They split directions, sweeping the rooftop. The first moved up to the side of the tent while another knelt and secured the Glock. The others took positions and froze, statue-like, ready to fire as more police troops followed.

  The one nearest the tent looked behind him, verified readiness, and nodded.

  The others, in unison, raised their aim.

  He reached out his HK and used its barrel to whip the tent flap open and then he raised a black-gloved fist to signal “Hold Fire.”

  “Clear,” he shouted from inside the helmet.

  “Clear,” the others echoed.

  AFTERWORD

  Carlton Jeffers, president of American Patriots for Action, released the following statement:

  This nation has lost a great patriot and an ardent freedom fighter, a founding Vision Partner and the soul and spirit of Americans for Patriotic Action.

  His death will not dim the causes that he and tens of millions of us hold dear. I call on all of us to make his murder count for change, to produce change.

  We are a nation of laws. We have laws to protect lesbians and gays, bisexual and transgender individuals, laws to protect handicapped people, laws for all races and religions, laws to protect our elderly. We have laws to protect people who stay in this country illegally. Yet we tolerate attacks on our more successful Americans.

  How can it be right to allow our most successful citizens to be maligned and abused in ways we would never tolerate against minorities ten times, twenty times, a hundred times larger? Where are the laws to protect the people who work hard and strive for success, the people who create jobs and through their achievements lead our young men and women to aspire to better themselves? Surely, the most successful amongst us deserve the same protections!

  Real Americans celebrate success. We strive to emulate the drive and perseverance that produces success.

  The APA, along with the American Legislative Council and Vision Partners, will not stop pressing for legislation in all fifty states and in our nation’s Congress, to secure the rights of all American citizens to be free from all forms of discrimination based upon their economic status.

  Class warfare is a hate crime.

  *****

  Spencer waited a day and a night, the entire time squeezed inside a dark utility closet inside a basement off the alley running between 71st and 72nd. Uncontrollable drowning flashbacks left him wet with perspiration and shaking long after the terror passed.

  After twenty-four hours, he could still just barely inflate his lungs. Babe Ruth swinging a ball-peen hammer. Again.

  He made his way back to Yonkers. Subway, then train. He had planned to move again. Get out that day. But he was too busted up. First he had something to say. He took hold of fifty pre-addressed and stamped blue-lined index cards. One by one, he wrote it out carefully, all in black caps.

  FIGHT

  Special thanks to my community of readers.

  Gypsy Courtois, Jerome Soismier, Melissa McClintock, Sylvan Selig, Joel Geffen, Ali Daniali, Cassandra Goduti, Tyler Hurst, Zina Timoney, Hugo Cerda, Rhian Gibbs, Paul Collins, Steve Kilisky, Lisa Cox, Jack Prober, Tanya Kolosova, Melissa McClintock, Sue Nikiel, Betsy Bogin, Shane Bogin, Brian Coltrell, Jinglan Wang, Janet Frink Ann, McClusky, Ric Mangialardi, Gaerda Zeiler, Randy Zeiler, Cori Josias, and Albert Sarfati.

  A bout the Author

  Mike Bogin lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife of twenty-eight years. He has three grown children. His parents traveled extensively and worked abroad; taking him to sixty countries by the time he was ten.

  Mike completed his undergraduate degree at the University of California, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with Honors and Distinction. After spending a year on an island in Greece working manual labor and writing his first novel, he went on to complete his graduate studies at the University of Cambridge in England at the Institute of Criminology within the Faculty of Law. His Master’s Thesis focus, Anti-Terrorism, would not turn into a major industry until after the 9/11 attacks.

  In addition to writing novels, Mike has been active in real estate, farms wheat, and grows grapes, from which he makes several distinctive red wines.

  Mike has written five novels and a screenplay.

  www.MikeBogin.com