by Larry Hoy
“It’s legal.”
Tarbeau’s face turned to stone. He held up a small electronic device that Sweetwater recognized as a personal scrambler, used to interfere with cellular and video transmissions at short range.
“Be glad no one knows the truth, you worthless fraud. Our business here is done. May I suggest that you make your own way out?”
“What?”
“Are you dense? You did your job, now go get paid while I mourn my late bride.”
Sweetwater watched Tarbeau shuffle off, weeping into his handkerchief, wondering what had just happened. Then he went looking for the emergency stairs.
“Hey, you.” Tarbeau had paused in his sobbing.
Sweetwater turned back to the man.
“Don’t forget your knife.”
Chapter 9
Downtown Dallas, TX
Erebus stood just inside the parking garage, scanning the rooftop of the Renaissance Building with his binoculars. That side of the building had far less traffic than the other, which made the chances of them being spotted much lower, but he could only watch the back of the building where it was mainly deliveries. Occasionally, the binoculars would give him a glimpse of someone peeking over the side, but it was never his red-headed angel. He considered crashing the party and rescuing her, but who would watch Herbert while he was gone? It’s not like he could drag along an 8-year-old and fight off Grace Allen’s kidnappers, too. He glanced to where Herbert was sitting, his back against the wall, his nose in a book as usual.
“What are you reading now, buddy?”
The boy held up his book. Erebus recognized the cover: Lord of the Flies. He remembered it as required reading when he was in high school. “Wow, where did you get that one? That book might be too scary for you.” Erebus couldn’t’ remember much about the book except for the nightmares. Herbert shrugged and opened it back to his page. “All right, but if you have nightmares, let me know okay?”
The boy nodded.
He heard an odd sound, like something hit one of the tower awnings, followed by a dull clunk, like a metal pipe hitting the asphalt. Adrian snapped to attention, scanning up and down Elm Avenue, looking for the source of the strange noise. It took him a moment in the half-illumination of the streetlight, and then he spotted a small glinting thing lying next to a delivery truck parked along the curb.
Was this a message from Grace Allen? Had she sent him a message? “Stay here, Herbert. I’ll be right back.” He slipped his binoculars into his bag and ran out into the street.
It was a pistol. Adrian stared it, wondering how it got there. Why did someone have a gun on the roof? Did Grace Allen throw it to him?
He picked it up, pinching the barrel between his finger and thumb like a dead rat. He spun it around. The part in the handle had popped out and he could see bullets jammed inside. Erebus thought for a moment; was it called the magazine or the clip?
Another sound caused him to jump, much louder this time and definitely metallic. A thin tray had hit with a clang and rolled across the ground until it came to a rest leaning against the curb. Erebus scanned into the darkness for any more gifts from his wife, but the sky was clear.
He looked down at the gun like it was a roadkill skunk. He didn’t like guns, and Grace Allen knew that. They had agreed they wouldn’t have any guns in the house because of their child. Neither of them could fathom the thought of Herbert finding a gun and hurting himself.
Adrian was about to drop the nasty thing but stopped; if this really was something from Grace Allen, if she really wanted him to have it, well…
He dropped the gun into his shopping bag. Then he scooped up the clip, or magazine, and the pieces from the handle, and stuffed those into the bag, too. He started back to his hiding place before he remembered the silver tray. If the gun was a gift from his wife, then this was too, and she must have meant it as a gift. So, he retrieved it from the curb and slipped it in with the rest of the stuff.
He was halfway back to the parking garage when he heard a scream from above. He turned just in time to see a woman tumbling through the air. Spotlights ringed the tower every ten floors, shining upward, and in the glare from one of them he saw red hair trailing the woman like a flag. When she reached the tenth floor he caught sight of her terrified face as she spun.
He took two steps to run and catch her, but only had time to scream Grace Allen’s name before she struck the pavement.
It was fully dark outside when Erebus realized he was back in his car, speeding away from the dozen police cars surrounding Grace Allen’s shattered body. The speedometer on his old maroon Taurus read 95 miles per hour. Tears covered his face like sweat, and he couldn’t stop hyperventilating. Had he really just seen his angel die?
He glanced into the rear-view mirror. The back seat was empty. Fresh panic overwhelmed him as he stabbed his thumb on the button to turn on the overhead light. Herbert had curled against one side door and fallen asleep. Erebus took a long look at the boy and turned out the overhead light.
He glanced at the speedometer again and this time he saw the needle was pegged at the car’s maximum speed so he eased his foot off the gas until the needle eased back down to 35.
Thoughts ran through his head, each one blurring into the next. How had his wife died? Was she really dead? What was he going to tell Herbert? Where were they going? What was next? Where were the treasures his wife sent him? Did someone push her? Did anyone else get hurt? Was that horrible Tarbeau man behind this? Is that why she sent him the gun? Would he be able to find whoever killed her? Did the gun even work? What was he going to tell Herbert? What would happen to him without his mother?
While Adrian muddled through his thoughts, a car came up behind him and turned on its bright headlights. They were on a simple two-lane road which didn’t allow much of an opportunity for the other car to pass. He glanced in his side mirror and was blinded. Erebus took his foot off the gas pedal as he tried to blink the glare out of his eyes. His head rocked forward as his back fender was bumped.
“What the hell?” he yelled. He locked both hands on the steering wheel to hold the car steady, but he was still having trouble seeing because of the other car’s lights shining in his eyes. “Dammit, turn down your lights!” Erebus tried to rub one eye with the palm of his hand.
Suddenly, the glaring light was gone. The car engine roared as it came alongside him, moving forward. Erebus stopped rubbing his eyes and stared through the window, trying to get a look at the driver, but dark-tinted windows prevented that. Then the small car drew even with his left fender and signaled before moving back to the lane.
“No way, asshole,” he said.
Erebus accelerated to stay even with the other car’s back fender. The other car started drifting over into the lane and Erebus turned left to bring his left front fender into the other car’s back right fender, like he’d seen police do on TV. The car’s back end swung left as Erebus slammed on his brakes. The driver overcorrected, and an instant later the vehicle spun out in front of his slowing Taurus, bouncing over the shoulder. Its front tire caught in a roadside gulley and it flipped side over side into the field along the road.
Erebus stopped, got out, and looked both ways; nobody coming. The other car lay upside down, the roof crushed. Moving toward the hissing wreck, he looked through the back window, checking for signs of life, but the window tint defeated him again.
“Serves you right,” he said in a scolding tone, “you shouldn’t blind folks with those brights of yours, especially a guy with his kid in the car.”
Erebus glanced toward his son in the back seat of his own, and fortunately it appeared Herbert had slept through the whole thing.
He left the other car behind in the ditch as he drove off without looking back, smiling now. Fifteen minutes later, he pulled over at a convenience store and got some road snacks and a bottle of sweet tea. While filling up, he noticed the fender of his car was dinged up and figured someone must have hit his car when it was parked a
t the garage back in Texas. He admonished himself for not thoroughly checking the car before he left. People were such animals.
It didn’t matter though, by morning they’d be back in Memphis. Then he’d start looking for whoever hurt Grace Allen. No matter how long it took, somebody was going to pay.
Memphis, TN
A week later, Sweetwater was home in Tennessee when some ham-fisted jerk pounded on his trailer door so loud that a flock of grackles took off in a cloud of black.
The noise interrupted a bad dream, which was nothing new. He didn’t have pleasant dreams anymore, just nightmares, although the perpetual hangover and headaches that went with them might have had been at least partly his fault. He reached for a jar of his uncle’s shine, only to find it was empty.
Whoever the someone was, they wouldn’t stop hammering at the door.
“I’m here,” he yelled, and instantly regretted it.
It was like Dallas all over again. The room swam as he lurched to the door, arms out in case he fell. The floor kept shifting underfoot and wasn’t to be trusted when he wasn’t still drunk. The trailer was very old and rotten in places.
“Hold on, damn you!” It wasn’t a yell, more of a series of loud grunts. Hand over hand, he moved along the couch to the wall, then a side shuffle to the door. It took three tries for him to finally separate the chain latch. With a final grunt he flung the door open to the sound of empty cans and bottles being scattered along the floor.
“Waddayawant?” It all came out as a single slurred word.
“Luther Sweetwater?” A short, portly man stood outside wearing a red polo shirt with a strange logo on it. Sweetwater squinted, trying to read it, but couldn’t.
“Do you see anyone else here?”
“Sign here, please.” He held out a clipboard with a sheet of paper on it. Sweetwater yanked it out of his hand and leaned back against the door frame to try and read it. The print was even smaller than the logo on the shirt, so he brought the paper right up to his nose to find a signature line.
“Right here, please.” A chubby finger pointed to a line at the bottom of the sheet.
“I see it.” After scrawling something like his signature, he pushed the clipboard back without looking at the man.
“Thank you, sir.” The delivery man ripped the top sheet away from the copies below it and passed the paper to Luther, along with a small, padded envelope. The logo on the envelope was large enough to read: LEI.
“Have a nice day,” the delivery man said with a knowing smile.
Sweetwater slammed the door and refastened the chain.
He grabbed a corner of the envelope and ripped it in half. The first thing he saw was a check with the LEI logo in the corner, and a lot of zeroes beside the numbers 2 and 5, as something metallic fell to the floor and rolled a few feet away.
On the ground, face up, was a badge. “Certified LifeEnder, No. 00777.”
Chapter 10
Downtown Memphis, TN
Four Months Later
Erebus stared down the barrel of the pistol. The men from the gun range said it was a Sig Sauer P320. One of them asked him how the barrel got scratched, and he made up some nonsense about dropping it, which he could tell they didn’t believe. They also told him the magazine—it wasn’t a clip he found out, it was a magazine—hadn’t been damaged when he “dropped” it, and he bought another one because they’d been so nice and even paid for a lesson on how to fire the gun. Strangely enough they used practice bullets, which Adrian hadn’t known existed. They told him the ones in the original magazine were expensive and way too good to practice with.
One other thing he had learned was just how loud it was. Now, shivering in the damp night, he was looking to see if there was a bullet ready to fire, since he’d only shot the pistol that one time. His ears rang for hours after that, but one thing he hadn’t expected was for his fear of firearms to vanish the instant he’d squeezed the trigger. There was power in the gun, and he liked the way it felt. Adrian had never had power before.
The Sig still scared him some, but if that was the gun that Grace Allen had sent him to avenge her death, then he had to quit worrying about being afraid. Like a tough guy he’d seen on TV said, it was time to “man up.” A willingness to use the gun wasn’t the same as actually knowing how it worked, though, despite the men at the gun store going over the basics, and now he wondered if there were still bullets in the weapon, as if they might have somehow escaped and run off.
So, standing in the shadowed alley, he tried to maneuver the barrel so the streetlights might pick up glints off the nose of a bullet. But the barrel was too long to see anything, and he slid the pistol back into his jacket pocket and patted the fabric. Guns scared the hell out of him, kept repeating his brain, even though he wasn’t sure it was true anymore.
Blowing on his hands, Erebus rocked back and forth and cursed the cold. Because of the high humidity, winters in Memphis seeped into your bones so you didn’t really feel warm again until spring, and tonight was like that.
“Come on, you lowlife, how much can you eat?” he whispered, watching the couple shove gooey slices of Hawaiian pizza into their mouths. The pizzeria’s grand front window was fogged up, but not enough that he couldn’t see. It pissed him off to watch them talk and laugh between bites. The girl smiled as she flashed her eyes at the man sharing her table, and his shit-eating grin enraged Erebus. Just you wait asshole, pretty soon you’re going to know what it feels like to lose the one you love, he thought. He didn’t like cursing, even in his private thoughts, but sometimes no other words fit the situation.
Erebus didn’t think of himself as a killer, though, not really, and sure as hell not like him. As for the woman, she had to know who she was out with. She had to know the crimes he’d committed. She was sharing her pizza with a man who destroyed lives and snuffed out happiness for mere money, and it was payback time.
Erebus couldn’t stop rubbing his hands together. Gloves would have helped, but he didn’t underestimate his target. The man he was going after was a Hitman, and gloves might cause him to fumble the pistol at the critical moment and shoot the wrong person. He slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand; he vowed that wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. That would ruin everything.
The girl stood up and walked toward the back of the restaurant, probably heading for the restroom. The Hitman waved over their server to pay the bill.
“Finally,” Erebus whispered. He turned and walked a few steps down the alley, flexing the cold muscles in his legs, and then returned to his spot to watch the couple leave.
They came out of the pizzeria and turned left, walking south along Main Street.
Erebus slipped around the corner, out of sight, swung his arms to get the blood flowing and sucked down air to work up his courage, even though it seared his lungs with cold. He took out the pistol and pulled back the slide, tilting it to look into the cylinder again. The bullets were still there.
Feeling like he was in a movie, Erebus slipped the gun back into his pocket and followed the couple at a safe distance. He felt his body warming up as he walked.
“Tonight, lover boy. Tonight you’re gonna know what it feels like.”
Julia draped Bonney’s arm around her waist as they walked along Main Street, snuggling into the crook of his left arm. Whenever she’d strolled with a man in the past, he had always held her with his right arm, but this time Bonney politely shifted her to the other side, away from the street.
“Are you cold or just feeling snuggly?” he asked.
The young woman looked up to meet his eyes. “Maybe a little of both? Are you complaining?”
Bonney took his arm back, peeled out of his suit jacket, and draped it over her shoulders.
“How’s that?” He slid his arm around her back again, drew her close, and rubbed the outside of her arm. “Better?”
She pulled the jacket collar across her nose and breathed in the scent of his cologne. Last Valentine’s Day
, she’d gotten him a bottle of Eternity for Men, her favorite, and he’d worn it ever since. “Yes, thank you.” She took his hand and pulled his arm almost up to her shoulders…almost. “That just about does it.”
They continued walking arm in arm down Main Street, two lovers enjoying each other’s company on a cold night near the Mississippi River. They intentionally strolled away from lighted streets that lined the trolley line through the dining area of downtown. Most tourists to Memphis ignored Main Street; they seemed to prefer the bright neon and the noise of Beale Street. Tonight, Bonney led them through the quiet romance of Court Square Park, in the dark, romantic, secluded, and potentially dangerous middle section of the street.
A horse-drawn carriage passed going the other way with a couple huddled under a thick, fluffy blanket, snapping pictures at the classic buildings lining both sides of the street, which necessitated the use of bright flashes. That destroyed the mood he’d been trying to create, but annoyed as he was, Bonney nodded at the people in the carriage as the horse clop-clopped the carriage out of sight.
When they arrived at the fountain in the center of the park, he looked down at the girl in his arms. He shrugged his shoulder. “I’m gonna need my arm back.”
She stuck out her lip bottom lip in a pout as he withdrew his arm from her grasp.
“One second,” he said. He reached into his pocket and held out a handful of change, selected two pennies and offered her one. “Make a wish.”
Julia pursed her lips and cocked her head. Ignoring the copper coin she instead picked out two quarters. “Cheapskate,” she said, but it was playful. “You first.”
Bonney bowed his head for a moment as if praying, and then flipped the coin into the fountain. Dim light reflected off the quarter’s silvery surface until it struck with a plop and created a circle of ripples.
