A Bullet for the Shooter

by Larry Hoy

  Against the wall sat a simple dresser with nothing on top. The last potential ambush place was the closet. Sweetwater slipped around the bed and placed himself with back flat against the wall, and then reached out with his left hand. Instead of opening it cautiously, this time he twisted and threw the door open. It bounced off the wall with a bang. He caught it with his foot and spun inward to face the closet, but it was too small to hide a person.

  Shirts and slacks were in a line on hangers evenly spaced across the closet. The darkness made it impossible to tell for sure if they were sorted by color, as he believed, and that matched the theme throughout the house, only the essentials and everything in its place. He’d known neat freaks in his life, sure, but that neat? Sweetwater turned and walked back to the kitchen, less wary than he had been, but not by much.

  “It’s clear,” he called out.

  Stepping into the kitchen, his gun came up as a reflex, the sights lined up on the forehead of a fat man hunched behind Teri Warden in the center of the kitchen. Warden stood with her hands out to her sides.

  A single LED bulb lit the space, hanging over the table by a strand of braided macramé which was attached to a cheap copper dome lamp. It was set to one side so it lit Warden’s left side and enough of the man’s face for Sweetwater to see details of the damage to his left cheek. He could see just enough of the scarred-over hole to realize why the edges of the wound appeared so jagged; they were teeth marks. Somebody had bitten out a chunk of the man’s flesh. It was the same man he’d seen on the interstate and in the photos Warden had pulled up of Adrian Erebus.

  Erebus was easily twice her weight and six inches taller, which meant that she didn’t make for a very good shield. Sweetwater could tell that the deformed man had the back of her jacket bunched up in his right fist and was using it to hold her tight against him. He was holding an automatic pistol in his left hand which was pressed against the side of Warden’s jaw. The sight on the revolver never wavered from Erebus’ left eye. But despite being a helluva good shot, Sweetwater’s sniper training kept him from simply shooting the man. Where being a quarter inch off with bullet placement might cost Warden her life, he wasn’t willing to risk it using an unfamiliar weapon whose sight might or might not be calibrated correctly, loaded with unknown ammunition, whose trajectory properties he didn’t know, and in tricky lighting. Not unless he absolutely had to.

  Despite the weather outside, a trickle of sweat caused him to blink his right eye. The tableau held for what seemed like hours but was really less than ten seconds. Neither man moved. Warden’s icy demeanor had cracked a little, and she once again appeared to be a scared little girl, gulping little breaths and trying not to hyperventilate. Sweetwater heard her whimpers, and their eyes met, but even as she sobbed and sniffled, she also winked.

  Fuck me, she’s good.

  Erebus finally broke the silence.

  “Luther Sweetwater,” he said. Something in the man’s voice sent a shudder through Sweetwater’s shoulders, like the guy was overacting in a bad horror movie. “I know who you are.”

  “Goodie for you. I’ve always dreamed about being popular with the local psychopaths.”

  Even Warden showed surprise at that comment, and he saw something new in her eyes. Respect, maybe? She drew a deep breath, and he realized her breasts were larger than he’d noticed before and wondered if she’d done that for his benefit.

  Situational awareness, Luther, maintain your situational awareness. But damn!

  Trying to distract the madman, Sweetwater adopted a heavy Bronx accent, forgetting that Rocky took place in Philadelphia.

  “Yo, Adrian, why don’tcha do us all a favuh here and lowa youse gun.” Then he paused, finally recognizing the Sig, and realized how his fingerprint got on the brass casing; it was his gun, the one he’d lost on top of the Renaissance Tower, except the last time he’d seen it, it was plunging toward the street. Erebus caught the revelation as it crossed Sweetwater’s face, and grinned.

  “Yes, Mister Professional Hitman, Mister Destoyer of Innocent Lives, this is your gun. You killed Billy the Kid and his slut girlfriend with it, and now you’re going to kill this bitch, but fortunately for me I’ll shoot you before you can complete your work.”

  “That can’t be the same gun Adrian; there’s no way any weapon could survive that kind of fall and still work, not even a Sig Sauer.”

  “You assassins are all so stupid…but I guess you’d have to be to kill people for money, wouldn’t you?”

  “Then explain it so even an idiot like me can understand.”

  “Awnings, moron, it hit an awning, bounced, hit it again, and then hit the street. All the energy was gone. It’s a simple equation.”

  Fuck! That makes sense. Nor was the guy what Sweetwater had expected. He was grotesque, yeah, but not a raving lunatic. Erebus’ file said he was a math teacher, and that’s exactly what he sounded like.

  Until he didn’t. Erebus frowned until his eyebrows neared touching, and something changed in his eyes. Sweetwater had never seen it happen before, but knew madness when he saw it

  “You are one of those assassins.” He drew out the last S, but what worried Sweetwater was that it sounded so natural coming from him, like when a hissing snake sounds so much like what you think it should sound like that you don’t believe it. “You destroyed the most beautiful flower on Earth, and for what? Money! That’s right; I know what you did, and I know why you did it. You killed Grace Allen to hurt me! We were back together, and you wanted her for yourself!”

  And then Erebus changed back, just like that, so his expression showed no signs of the madness that had inflamed it mere seconds ago. Sweetwater squinted at the abrupt change. Now, aside from the hole in his face, he again looked like a teacher whose unruly students had no doubt made fun of him during class. Regardless, Sweetwater now had no doubts that he was insane.

  “She brought hope and light into the world and you murdered her,” Erebus continued, in a matter-of-fact tone. “So, just as that other man watched his beloved die, you might have to watch the brains of your bitch girlfriend leak out of her head before I kill you.”

  “She’s not my—”

  “Shut up with your lies!” Now he started blinking, and Sweetwater knew that was a bad sign. Erebus only glanced at her and kept talking. “Unless you obey me to the letter, then, maybe you will both live a little while longer. Now, I’m going to back out of here and leave with my gun pointed at you. If you want a shootout, then maybe you’ll kill me and be able to call nine-one-one and save your girlfriend here, but then maybe I’ll kill you, or maybe we’ll kill each other. If either of those happens, she’ll bleed out because she gets the first bullet. It’s your choice.”

  Sweetwater fired, but not to kill. That was too dangerous, there was too great a chance he’d hit Warden, so he aimed for the man’s ear to give her a chance to slip out of his grasp. She bobbed her head forward, hoping it was far enough out of the way that Erebus’ shot would miss.

  Except Erebus didn’t shoot Warden, instead he used her as a shield and whipped the gun down and fired at Sweetwater. Warden whirled and jammed the heel of her hand up into Erebus’ nose, smashing it in a spray of blood. He staggered backward and fired two rounds wildly on his way out the door. Both missed.

  Sweetwater rocked back like he’d been hit under the sternum with a ball peen hammer. His mouth agape as air rushed out of his lungs from the impact, he saw Erebus backing out the door with blood covering his face. He tried to aim the revolver, but his arm didn’t work right. Touching his chest with his other hand, he blinked when it came away covered in blood. He glanced up at Warden and saw shock and horror on her face. Then everything drew into a little pinprick of light, and he felt himself falling.

  “Now you know what it feels like,” whispered Grace Allen Tarbeau. Down on hands and knees beside him, she brought her decayed face within inches of his. “Death ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, big boy.”

  “Shit!” Warde
n said.

  She didn’t scream, but her brain automatically shifted into survival mode, with her first priority making certain Erebus didn’t come back to finish them both off. Pulling the revolver out of Sweetwater’s hand, she turned to the door, ready to fire, and carefully made sure he wasn’t right outside before bolting it closed. He might still shoot through the window, but it was a tough angle. Sweetwater didn’t look good, so she forgot Erebus and knelt beside the wounded Shooter. Folding back his coat, she found the center of the spreading circle of blood on his shirt, grabbed a towel that was draped across the front of the sink, and pressed it to the wound. With her free hand, she managed to use her cell phone to call for help.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

  “I…” she started. She paused when she saw the front of her phone was streaked with blood. Blood seemed to be everywhere. The kitchen towel was quickly turning red.

  “Hello, nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

  “My friend has been shot.”

  “What is the address, ma’am?”

  Warden closed her eyes and focused on answering the woman’s question. After giving it, she thanked the dispatcher, who started walking her through the basic steps of controlling the bleeding. Warden already knew them and told her so, but the woman kept talking, which distracted her. It took seven minutes for the EMTs to come running through the back door, which she got up and unlocked, by which time his breathing had become labored.

  “Is he gonna die?” she said, knowing how it made her sound but unable to stop heself before the words came out.

  “Please step back,” answered a stocky black woman. “We’re gonna take good care of him.”

  “Hey, looks who’s here!” Eamon Cooper said, hoisting a whiskey glass with four fingers of some amber-golden liquid in a toast. “I figured we’d see you sooner rather than later, Luther. Thinking about joining us permanently?”

  Luther Sweetwater sat up—or thought he sat up, it was hard to tell—in an empty white space with no walls, floors, or ceiling. Cooper stood nearby sucking on a cigarette while sipping the alcohol.

  “Not if I can help it,” Sweetwater said. “Where is ‘here?’”

  “I don’t know; where dead people go, I suppose. What about you, Grace Allen; do you know where we are?”

  She stood several paces away to his right, gulping down a banana split from one of those glass dishes made just to serve the ice cream concoction.

  “No idea,” she mumbled, with half a banana sticking out the side of her half-decayed mouth. Once she’d sucked it down with a loud slurp, she continued. “Goodness, excuse me boys, that wasn’t very ladylike. I always assumed this was Heaven.”

  “If so,” Cooper said, “it’s not at all what my Baptist preacher father said it would be like. No trumpets or angels or any of that stuff. To be honest, if this is eternal bliss, it’s damned disappointing. Except for the booze and cigarettes whenever you want them; that’s not so bad.”

  “So, I’m dead?” Sweetwater asked. Nothing felt solid beneath him, as if he was simply floating in midair, yet he didn’t feel any sensation of floating.

  “You ask a lot of questions, Luther. Let me get you a drink,” Cooper said.

  “I warned you about Adrian,” Grace Allen said. “He’s a wicked, wicked man, but he’s not stupid. You underestimated him.”

  “You could have told me that.”

  “And you could have stayed home and nursed your hangover instead of going to the R-Tower to shoot me! Besides, I did warn you.”

  “You told me to watch out for somebody named Herbert.”

  “Are you always so fucking dense? I told you that Herbert was worse than Adrian. I never said Adrian wasn’t deranged.”

  Cooper laughed. His glass was full again. “She’s got your there, Two-Bit.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “That’s your Shooter’s handle, isn’t it? Two-Bit Luther?”

  “I don’t like that name!”

  “And we don’t like being dead,” said Grace Allen. “Yet here we are. You don’t like being called Two-Bit, yet that’s your name.”

  “Two-Bit, Two-Bit, Two-Bit …” they chanted.

  Sweetwater clapped hands over his ears, then everything went black.

  “We’ve got him back!” yelled the other EMT, a skinny guy with a name patch that said Tommy Nokio. “He’s mumbling something about not calling him that. Who is this guy?”

  Warden told them Sweetwater’s name but not his profession or what he was doing there. The three of them huddled around the wounded man, trying to stop the bleeding long enough to safely transport him to the nearest ER. Warden stood right behind them, hunched over with her hands on her knees, watching.

  “Luther, can you hear me?” asked the black woman. “I’m EMT Tanyika Dolkins, we’re gonna take good care of you. Can you hear me?”

  To everyone’s surprise, Sweetwater opened his eyes, scanned the faces looking down on him, and settled his gaze on Warden.

  “Heaven’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said, then passed out.

  Chapter 20

  Elvis Presley Trauma Center, Memphis, TN

  Sweetwater knew right away that the man on the operating table was him, even as the nurses and doctors scrambled in response to the flatline monotone coming from the heart monitor. His perspective was from 20 or 30 feet directly above the OR, but, instead of confusing him, it clarified things; he was dead, and his soul had left his body.

  Well, shit.

  At least nothing hurt.

  “Kind of disorienting, huh?”

  Eamon Cooper. Of course he would be here.

  “Not really. I’m dead, right?”

  “For the moment, yeah, but they’re still trying to revive you, so who knows? You might make it yet.”

  Sweetwater finally turned toward Cooper and was surprised to see that he looked like he did when alive, not all rotted like a corpse that had burst from internal gasses.

  “You’re looking pretty good these days,” he said.

  “Thanks, I’ve been working out.” A lit cigarette appeared between his fingers.

  “No booze?”

  Cooper shrugged. “No matter how much I drink I never get a buzz, so it seems kind of pointless.”

  Sweetwater pointed at the smoke. “But those?”

  “I’m addicted.”

  A delusion addicted to nicotine…Sure, why not?

  The answer to his unspoken comment came from behind. “We’re not delusions, Luther, and we’re not hallucinations. We’re ghosts.”

  He whirled to see Grace Allen Tarbeau.

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  She shrugged. “Thought you might like to know, that’s all.”

  “What I’d like to know is why I’m dead. What’s this all about? Why did Erebus kill Bonney and try to—fuck, I guess he killed me, too, didn’t he? Okay, so why did he kill me, Bonney, and Bonney’s girlfriend?”

  “To clarify,” Cooper said. “You’re dead, but you might not stay that way.”

  “If they’re gonna save me they’d better hurry.”

  “Time runs different here, wherever ‘here’ is. We could talk all day and only ten seconds might pass out there, or down there, or wherever ‘there’ is.”

  “This is goddamned confusing.”

  Cooper held up a hand. “You might want to hold off on the whole taking God’s name in vain thing. We haven’t met Him yet, or any angels or all that stuff, but you never know.”

  “You want to know why Adrian went after you and Bonney?” Grace Allen asked. “Okay, I’ll tell you. Listen up, it’s a long story, and I’ve thought a lot about how to tell it.”

  “We fell apart, sweaty, panting, smelling of sex, and with the evidence of our lust strewn all over the room in messy heaps. Not just our clothes, or the blankets and pillows, even the mattress hung halfway off the bed frame, with us still on it.

  “His name was Bryan
; it doesn’t matter where I met him. The part about him I liked most wasn’t the foreplay or the sex, although God knows he knew what he was doing there. It was after we’d make love, the way his eyes traced the curves of my naked body. It’s like he didn’t want just the physical side of me, he wanted all of me, to really bond with me…Well, it’s hard to explain to men. But nobody had ever wanted me before. Growing up all the boys just wanted inside my pants; they didn’t much care about anything else.

  “Everything about that night is burned into my memory. A single exposed bulb on the ceiling lit the room, making the sweat glisten. His eyes lingered on my breasts as they rose and fell as I breathed. I could feel his love, like you can feel the heat of a campfire from ten feet away. I felt a bead of sweat slip down my belly into my crotch and watched him watching it. I never had a more intimate moment with anybody.

  “I rolled up on one elbow and did the same thing back at him, letting my eyes drift along his body until I got to his groin. Without looking away, I licked my lips.”

  “Okay!” Sweetwater said, holding up his hand. “TMI!”

  “Do you wanna hear the story?”

  “Yeah, but you can leave out all the porn stuff.”

  “And you can fuck off, Two-Bit. And, yeah, I know you hate that name, but tough titty said the kitty. I’ll tell it my way or not at all.”

  “Shit…go on.”

  “You sure?”

  “I might as well know why I’m dead.”

  She cleared her throat, which seemed odd to Sweetwater.

  “Where was I? Oh yeah, I remember…‘My God, don’t you ever get enough?’ Bryan said, laughing and rolling flat on his back. I reached out and touched the head of his—”

  Sweetwater closed his eyes and cringed.