Bounty

by Michael Byrnes

  Novak put a hand on his dad’s shoulder. “I can move back in to help you, Dad. I’ve told you that before. You’ve got to stop trying to do it all yourself.”

  “I appreciate that, Roman. Really. But there’s not much either of us can do. Besides, you’ve got a life to live and a job to do. A very important job, I might add. Especially with this crazy Internet thing you’re chasing down.” He gazed out into the yard. “You know your mother’s a proud, stubborn woman. If she saw that she was holding you back in any way, she’d never forgive herself…or me.”

  “Then at least let me help you with the money end of things. You’ve been a great teacher, so I’ve saved quite a bit. And it’s not like I have a family to support.”

  Raymond waved the idea away. “There’s still enough to get by. Without your mom here, I won’t need this big old house. I’ll put it on the market and look for an apartment close to her.”

  “But what about you?”

  “Ah, come on, Roman. All I need is a good book, a sturdy pair of sneakers, and an occasional football game. It’s not like I’ve got some highfalutin lifestyle to maintain. Though I do like my single-malt scotch.”

  “That you do,” Novak said.

  They had a good laugh, and it helped lift the heaviness a bit.

  “If later on things get too tight,” Raymond said, “then we’ll talk, okay?”

  “I’m going to hold you to that. Don’t forget you’ve got Andrea, too.”

  “Eh. She’s so busy. Always running around with the kids or at some work function.”

  Whether because of her recent divorce and the struggles that came with being a single mother or the emotional demands of being a pediatric oncologist and treating terminally ill children day after day, his sister’s primary concern as of late was self-preservation. The fact that she lived in Chicago only made it easier for her to block out the distress of their mother’s condition. If there was a shortage of funds in the Novak family, however, the bulk of the deficit could be attributed to Andrea. Their parents had spent a considerable chunk of their savings putting Novak and his sister through college, but when she’d gone on to med school, they’d picked up that hefty tab, as well.

  “Poor Patricia. She doesn’t deserve this. I thought I’d be by her side until the day I died. The thought of putting her in some kind of home…”

  “You’re not giving up on her, Dad. You’ve already done more than any husband could ever have hoped to do. If it’s time for her to get a higher level of care, then I’m sure she’ll feel better that way, too.”

  He smiled tightly. “She is stubborn and proud, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah. She is. And that’s why you and I love her so damn much.”

  “You’ll hang around and play some cards with her?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Great. And let’s get you something to eat.”

  The New York Times @nytimes • 1h

  Manhunt for Manhattan sniper confounds investigators as Bounty4Justice casualties mount and target list expands.

  nyti.ms/13rMLh2e

  # 27.01

  @ Dallas, Texas

  At Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Manny Tejada parked the armored black Lincoln Town Car at a comfortable distance from the executive Corporate Aviation facility. He went inside the building to await Congressman Kenneth Krosby’s Learjet, scheduled to arrive from California in the next few minutes, around 11:15 P.M.

  At the front desk, he showed his identification to the receptionist, then proceeded to the cozy reception lounge, where he made himself a cup of complimentary Colombian coffee, light and sweet. He plucked a chocolate glazed doughnut from the pastry rack and settled into a leather armchair in front of the big-screen TV. He had the room all to himself, and that was good, because he needed time to think. Organizing his thoughts wasn’t easy, however, considering the dark place in which he now found himself—the spiritual black hole.

  Only three days ago, he and his wife had buried their eight-year-old son, and only child, Alejandro. A beautiful boy. A gift from Jesus. The boy had been born with severe asthma, passed on genetically from Manny’s side of the family. Under normal circumstances, it was a manageable, treatable condition. And that’s what made Alejandro’s death all the more tragic: it had been unnecessary.

  Last Thursday, Alejandro had had a sudden flare-up at school, but his inhaler had somehow been pressed down the wrong way in his backpack and had emptied—just dumb circumstance. Manny’s wife, Carla, had raced to the school to bring him backup medicine. By then, the attack had intensified. Carla played it safe and drove him straight to the emergency room.

  And that’s when everything began to unravel.

  It all had to do with the notification letter Manny had received the previous week from his medical insurance company, stating that his coverage had been terminated. Upon contacting the insurer, he’d been informed by a customer care representative that the termination had been requested in writing by his employer. At the hospital’s registration desk, Carla had explained this dilemma as best she could to the admissions nurse and had handed over a credit card to move things along. By that time, however, Alejandro had taken a turn for the worse. Though Carla had tried to convince Manny that, in the end, the hospital wasn’t truly to blame, he deeply believed that those precious minutes spent quibbling over insurance could have made a world of difference.

  Kenneth Krosby—the enterprising, wealthy tech entrepreneur who’d “built the digital bridge between Dallas and Silicon Valley”—had campaigned as a Democrat on the promise that “every person who is willing to work, whether rich or poor, deserves a living wage and access to affordable healthcare and quality education.” Yet in dealing with his own staff—his most loyal constituents—he’d slashed salaries by 20 percent, and was transitioning everyone’s employment status to “independent contractor.” Over the past few weeks, Manny had overheard him hashing it all out on the phone, in the backseat of the limo. Apparently, those changes included canceling insurance benefits, too. At the very least, Manny had expected some form of advance notice. That hadn’t happened.

  Deep in thought, Manny barely registered the news program on the big screen and its coverage of the website that was paying vigilantes to kill bad people. He listened for a few moments as one of the talking heads insisted that only really bad people made it onto the website. If, she concluded, the Justice Department didn’t get its act together, the “natives will grow increasingly restless.”

  Krosby’s picture flashed up on the screen, with a live infographic at the bottom showing his bounty ticking higher in real time: $224,112…$224,134…$224,152. The reporter went on to talk about how the congressman had been instrumental in slashing services and subsidies to Texas’s middle class and poor as an incentive to wealthy bondholders and business elites to remain in the state and keep an even larger share of their income. But the actual trickle-down effect had been a massive tax revenue shortfall that had resulted in many community health clinics being shuttered, and reports were piling up about the deaths that could have been avoided had those cutbacks not taken place.

  Krosby wasn’t just a two-faced, double-dealing boss, thought Manny; he was an evil human being, too. The news reporter noted that in the past hour, a trove of Krosby’s inflammatory personal emails—calling minorities and immigrants “freeloading losers,” and the working poor “lazy idiots,” and welfare recipients “diabetic fat slobs”—had been anonymously uploaded to the website. Manny guessed that Krosby’s personal secretary, Eileen—who’d upped and quit only yesterday—had likely released that information as a parting “fuck you” to her boss.

  “All right, Manny, let’s go,” a familiar voice said.

  He looked up. It was one of the really bad people. The worst one, in fact.

  Manny stood.

  “Are you just going to leave that there?” Krosby pointed down at the table, to the doughnut sitting on a napkin and the coffee cup beside it.

  �
�It’s okay,” Manny said, and made his way out to the car.

  Krosby shook his head in disgust and followed the driver outside.

  While the young porter loaded the bags into the trunk, Manny tended the rear door for Krosby. “You could’ve parked a little closer, Manny. The lot’s empty, for Christ’s sake. Let’s not make it any easier for any of these lunatics to take potshots at me. You didn’t tell anyone I’m coming back early, did you?”

  The congressman appeared ghoulish beneath the yellow wash of sodium lights. “No, sir,” Manny replied.

  The porter closed the trunk and looked at Krosby, expecting a tip, but Manny knew that wouldn’t be happening. He shook his head discreetly and closed the door.

  “Damn, that dude’s cheap,” the kid whispered to Manny.

  “If only you knew.” He pulled out his own wallet and gave the kid two fives.

  The kid looked at the money and smiled. “You sure?”

  “Yeah. It’s all good.”

  “Thanks, boss. Y’all have a good night.”

  The porter disappeared around the side of the building, whistling and pushing his handcart.

  Manny got behind the wheel and looked in the rearview mirror. Krosby was in the rearmost seat, where he felt most comfortable. He was a creature of habit, and maintaining barriers and distance was essential to his well-being.

  “Turn the air on. It’s like a goddamn oven in here,” Krosby barked without looking up from pecking out a text message on his phone. “And put that damn window up, Manny. You know I don’t like you gawking at me.”

  Manny was gawking, because he was stuck wondering if he should say something to the congressman—something poetic, like in the movies. He decided against it and looked away. There was nothing more to say, and nothing that could be done to bring Alejandro back.

  He clicked an overhead control button, and the tinted security partition quietly hummed shut.

  He hit another button on the same panel to open the rear sunroof about four inches, just like he’d practiced that morning.

  “I don’t want that open, Manny,” came Krosby’s muffled complaint from the rear cabin. “Close it.”

  Ignoring him, the driver clicked the rear door locks shut and hit the limo’s adult version of a child safety lock.

  “Manny?” the voice from the rear called out.

  Manny looked at the fob on his key chain, the picture of Alejandro protected within its clear plastic. He pressed two fingers to his lips, then touched them to the boy’s photo. “I love you, son.”

  Then he got out of the car and calmly circled to the front passenger door to retrieve the red five-gallon gas can that sat in the footwell in front of the seat. Krosby was starting to get the picture, and Manny heard him tugging at the door handles. But the doors weren’t budging, and the windows were laminated bulletproof glass. The congressman would have no luck executing a daring escape. Krosby had demanded protection. Now he had it. In spades.

  Manny twisted the cap off the gas can, boosted it up onto the Lincoln’s roof, and tipped it at the optimum angle to send gasoline cascading down through the partially opened sunroof. Krosby’s fingers came up through the opening, trying to grab at the can, but he couldn’t quite get there.

  “Manny! Stop it! What do you think you’re doing!”

  Krosby had only compounded his predicament, because now the gas was spilling all over him, too: hair, face, Italian suit. The harsh fumes made him gag.

  “Manny! What the fuck are you doing?”

  The driver put the empty can on the ground and took out his iPhone. He tapped the device’s screen, and its tiny camera light flicked on, crisp and bright. Then he tapped the camera app, slid the selector to VIDEO, and tapped the RECORD button. He paced to the front bumper to take some video of the license plate. Then he went back near the sunroof, crouched low along the side of the car, and got a clear shot of Krosby through the center window, which hadn’t been tinted. The congressman pressed his face to the glass, red with fury, pounding his fists, gnashing his teeth. “Manny! Don’t you even think about it!” he roared. “You hear me? I’m a congressman, for Christ’s sake!”

  From his pocket, Manny pulled out the road flare he’d taken from the car’s emergency kit. The congressman’s eyes went wide when he saw it. Manny paused the video and set the phone on the Lincoln’s roof. He twisted the cap off the flare and raked the stick’s ignition tip on the cap’s striker surface, as if it were an oversized match. The tip lit up brilliantly with a ffffsssssssss, its tight pink flame sparkling and crackling and sending a column of white smoke up into the windless night sky.

  In that moment, Manny remembered something his father had once told him about the crazed man who’d held him up at gunpoint in his own bar: “Let me tell you, son: there’s nothing more dangerous than a man who has nothing to lose.”

  Manny plucked the iPhone off the limo’s roof and resumed recording, careful to get the flare in the shot as he dropped it through the slit in the sunroof. The Lincoln’s interior flashed a blinding orange as swirling fire punched at the limo’s sealed interior in every direction, instantly popping the inner layers of the laminated glass and ravaging everything within its reach.

  Manny paced backward a few steps while keeping the video rolling. Krosby thrashed inside the car, wholly engulfed by fire, swinging his fists at the crackled glass to try to break free. In mere seconds, the fire’s intensity squelched those ambitions, and the congressman’s fiery form slumped out of view. Black smoke boiled furiously out of the sunroof and roiled skyward.

  “Yo, my man!” the porter screamed as he ran over to Manny.

  At first Manny didn’t answer, because he was wrapping up the video.

  “You okay? Holy motherfucking shit! Dude!” He stopped beside Manny, his horrified gaze locked on the fiery limo. “What the fuck happened?”

  “Justice,” Manny said. He ended the video.

  PRIZE PAYOUT NOTIFICATION

  TARGET: KENNETH L. KROSBY, congressman, USA

  FINAL BOUNTY: $225,710

  VIEW PROOF OF CLAIM @

  http://​www.​bounty4justice.​com/​KENNETH.​KROSBY

  # 28.01

  @ Brooklyn

  Thursday, 10/26/2017

  06:12:22 EDT

  Novak woke to a very real nightmare: a text blast announcing a bounty payout on Representative Kenneth Krosby.

  “Holy shit.”

  Thinking it couldn’t be true, especially given the low payout, he viewed the grisly kill-confirmation video. Krosby was dead, all right. No faking that inferno. He could practically hear the shrieking coming out of Washington—the horror that one of their own had fallen prey to a lowly vigilante. Surely they’d all be asking the obvious question: Why didn’t the congressman do the smart thing and accept protection from the Secret Service? And they’d be right to ask, because the senselessness of Krosby’s death was mind-boggling.

  He switched on the television and made coffee while listening to a pedantic anchorwoman recap the morning’s lead news story.

  …The killer, forty-three-year-old Manny Tejada of Dallas, Texas, had been a longtime employee of Representative Krosby’s. Tejada remained at the scene and surrendered to police without incident…

  Novak leaned out of the kitchen to get a look at the video showing investigators circling around the burned-out limo. Tejada’s mug shot flashed up onto the screen, and Novak studied his severe expression. The driver was the first assassin to be taken into custody, and he’d successfully submitted a video claim to Bounty4Justice. Which meant that he might possess critical knowledge about how the website was paying out its prize money.

  The correspondent went on to report that Bounty4Justice had also issued its first U.S. acquittal, to a young homemaker in Las Vegas named Kerri-Anne Thompson, who’d been accused of strangling her newborn twin daughters back in June; the tiny bodies had been dumped in Lake Mead, only to wash ashore a week later. A lack of forensic evidence from the decomposed corpses ha
d let her walk on a technicality. During her lengthy trial, she’d come off as dowdy and inarticulate and had displayed a sullen bitterness toward her recently divorced spouse, who’d been portrayed by media as the perfect husband.

  Nearly two weeks after the polarizing trial of Kerri-Anne Thompson reached its dramatic conclusion, another set of month-old twins went missing in Las Vegas last night, leading authorities on a harrowing chase that ended only hours ago with the shocking discovery of the children’s strangled corpses in the trunk of a Toyota Camry, driven by this woman: Caitlin Walker.

  Walker’s photo came up on the screen. She had soulless brown eyes, spiked blond hair, an aquiline nose, and a tiny, almost lipless mouth.

  The twenty-eight-year-old claimed to have been instructed by God to kill children conceived through in vitro fertilization. Her startling confession, at times ranting and incoherent, revealed that she had also abducted and killed the Thompson twins, since they, too, had been, quote, “an abomination not sanctioned by God or nature.” Ms. Walker had herself recently sought infertility treatments and had undergone intensive drug therapies that had proved unsuccessful…

  Novak refilled his coffee mug, thinking back to the chatbot.

  What is your objective?

  Justice.

  He clicked off the television and went to shower.

  # 28.02

  @ Manhattan

  Novak hit heavy traffic in the vicinity of Federal Plaza, thanks to a large crowd assembling for a protest outside the courthouse in Foley Square. Protests were commonplace here, at the heart of city power; what made this one noteworthy was the sea of plain white Venetian volto masks. But this was no masquerade ball. Word on the street had it that the Justice Department would be pulling out all the stops to shut down Bounty4Justice, surely to infringe upon some digital liberties in the process. The hacktivist collective known as Nexus was mobilizing its public response, anonymously, unanimously. The last time Novak had seen the Internet rebels here, they’d been lashing out against tighter controls on pirated downloads of movies, music, and games. That protest had coincided with distributed denial of service cyberattacks against the FBI that had disabled critical servers for an entire day. Right now, the FBI couldn’t afford any downtime. So he hoped they’d all behave themselves and keep the protest civil.