Shutterbug

by Laurence Gough

  Dave felt as dislocated, mentally and physically, as if he had been sliced in twain, split right down the middle from skull to crotch, and his two halves flung away from each other, over opposite horizons.

  How could he feel so rotten, but essentially alive, when Danny was so obviously… at peace?

  Impossible.

  Dave opened his mind to each and every last one of the infinite possibilities for good and evil that the world offered. He was prepared to slip away, into the void. If it was time to die, so be it.

  He listened to the thumping of his heart, and was not alarmed when the cadence abruptly slowed, lost all rhythm and force, and then, ever so gradually, faded away into flat-line silence.

  Okay, he was dead. No problem. He could adjust. Just watch him.

  But then the robust pounding of his heart came back, sudden as a high-school marching band swinging’round a small-town corner. Dave was stunned. He was covered in gore and full of life. Lightning crackled and shivered all around him. His eyes bulged. He felt nothing less than reborn. Man, he and Danny had never been religious. It was weird, the things you took for granted. From now on, it was going to be different. He wondered if he was too old to be an altar boy.

  He sat up, stiff and crinkly in his carapace of congealing blood. He flexed his arms and legs, turned his head this way and that, opened and closed his hands. He ejected the empty magazine from his machine-gun, and reloaded.

  He stood up.

  He straightened his bloody tie, and shot his bloody cuffs. He strode casually but determinedly, and somewhat clumsily, out of the bedroom and down the short hallway towards the condo’s living room.

  A decapitated head of a Marilyn stared unblinkingly up at him with huge, improbably blue eyes.

  Despite the fact that her deflated head was flat as a day-old pancake, she looked as if she was desperately trying to blow him a kiss.

  Spooky.

  A guy in a shiny gold suit sat quietly on the sofa. He looked very relaxed. Or perhaps unconscious. Or even dead.

  Dave wiped his brother’s blood from his eye, took a closer look at the guy slumped on the couch. He looked like a partially deflated Oscar.

  Or an angel, waiting patiently for the dust to settle, before he did his picking and choosing.

  Three people lay motionless in a complicated tangle on the floor on the far side of the coffee table. Was one of them naked? Dave stepped closer for a better look.

  The two surviving Marilyns leaned into the corner. They shifted slightly, from one painted-on foot to the other.

  Dave whirled and fired. A Marilyn exploded. The shockwave pushed the second Marilyn sideways, and saved her.

  The deafening roar of the MAC-IO was Aprils cue to open her eyes. She and Wayne found themselves staring at each other from a distance of about three inches.

  April said, ‘Wayne?’

  Dave turned towards the plaintive whisper of her voice. He found himself staring into the shotgun’s cold black eye. He decided, a fraction of a second too late, that he wasn’t quite ready to die. He pulled the MAC-IO’S trigger and saw, with preternatural clarity, the bullets stitch a ragged series of holes diagonally across the living-room ceiling.

  For a moment, he couldn’t understand why he had shot so high. Then he realized that he was lying flat on his back. No wonder his aim had been so erratic.

  The man with the shotgun wavered into his field of vision. The man stood over him. He was speaking to him, but his words were soft and blurry, indecipherable.

  Maybe he was foreign.

  Dave’s eyes skittered to the shimmering, golden creature on the sofa. It was leaning towards him, staring expectantly at him.

  Wayne, staring at Dave, said, ‘How come you ain’t dead yet?’

  It was a fair question, considering the damage already done, loo impatient to wait for an answer, Wayne unleashed another hellish load of buckshot into Dave’s chest, punching the life right out of him.

  In for a penny, in for a pound. Wayne turned the gun on Lewis, and unceremoniously pulled the trigger.

  The internal firing pin clicked sharply as it was propelled into an empty chamber.

  He fumbled in his pockets for more shells.

  April was back on her feet, wheezing, tenderly hugging her bruised and aching body, her whispery voice urging Wayne to get himself under control, mumbling something about improvising a new scenario…

  What the hell kind of talk was that?

  Wayne shoved fat 12-gauge shells into the shotgun. He was sick and tired of April and her dimwit, half-assed plans to rule the fucking universe. It was time to start afresh, with a clean slate. Just look at his arm! Just look at his leg! He’d bet anything that he was gonna need a major transfusion. It’d be months before he’d recovered enough to saddle up and ride his Harley again.

  The shotgun was fully loaded. April was pawing at him, whining like a defective starter motor. He brushed her off, and cranked a round into the chamber. Her and Lewis. He’d kill them both, if he had to.

  Or maybe even if he didn’t.

  Chapter 34

  ‘Ooh, oohoohoo, hoo, ooh, oohoohoo, ooh, oohoohoo, hoo… ‘

  Harvey eagerly cranked the volume all the way up when the disc jockey announced a Spice Girls tune. He neglected to turn the radio down again when the song finally ended. Why should he listen to the ugly sound of the twins playing with their guns when he had such a fine stereo at his disposal? He found a ‘golden oldies’ station. Sitting hunched behind the wheel of the idling Humvee, he hummed along to a series of catchy little tunes from yesteryear. Idly, he wondered if it was true that everybody actually did play the fool.

  Song lyrics sometimes were full of wisdom, but he decided that this particular ballad was full of crap.

  Jake had lived a longer-than-average life without making any dumb romantic mistakes. Ditto, Marty.

  Harvey had never fallen in love, except for a brief fling in the sixth grade, which surely didn’t count, because Miss Jamieson had only taken him home that one time…

  He flipped through his new issue of Washboard Belly magazine until he found the centrefold. Angling the glossy pages away from him to reduce glare from the dome light, he squinted down at the Monthly Man’s incredible pectorals. How did a normal person obtain a stomach like that? Looking at him, you’d think the guy’s father must have been a slab of concrete. Harvey’s brain struggled to calculate the number of hours and gallons of sweat that the Monthly Man must have dedicated to his stomach muscles.

  His fingers probed his own flat belly. Scattered across the following pages were numerous overlapping photos of the Monthly Man’s fabulous stomach as he absorbed blows from bruised fists, pool cues, and even aluminum baseball bats.

  Harvey, concentrating hard on his magazine, rocked by the blast from the Humvee’s elaborate, custom-designed-and-installed surround-sound speaker system, never heard the raging gun battle: the heavy shotgun blasts, the burly sewing-machine stutter of the machine-guns, the percussive, big-balloon pops of bursting Marilyns or the shrill cries and pathetic whispers of the wounded.

  Nor did he hear the unmarked Ford as it cruised slowly up behind him without the benefit of lights, stopping only a finger’s width behind the Humvee’s sturdy rear bumper.

  Parker was on the radio, broadcasting the condo’s address, as Willows eased out of the Ford.

  Parker dropped the mike and went after him.

  Willows, crouched low, Glock in hand, made his way cautiously along the Humvee’s throbbing flank. His clothing was dark, but the Humvee’s driver was bound to spot him, if he happened to glance in his side mirror.

  But Harvey only had eyes for his magazine.

  Parker slipped around the far side of the Humvee, taking up a position directly in front of the vehicle. She lined up her Glock’s front sight on the third button of Harvey’s shirt.

  Willows tapped his ring against the windshield. Harvey looked up, and Parker switched on her Mag-Lite.

  Harvey
was blinded by the beam.

  Willows yanked open the Humvee’s door. He reached past Harvey, his hand grazing the magazine, making a soft, rustling sound that was lost in the clatter of the music. He turned the ignition key towards him, killing the engine.

  He dropped the key in his pocket.

  Harvey’s hands were clasped on top of his head.

  The magazine lay in his lap.

  He was thinking that he was going to go to jail, for sure, unless he thought of something really clever, really quick. What if he head-butted the Humvee’s powerful horn? Would the twins come rushing outside, all fire and thunder, and kill the cops? Harvey thought about how sweet it would be to go home, take a nice hot shower, and curl up in bed with a glass of wine and a stack of muscle magazines.

  He wondered if his subscriptions were transfcrrable without extra mailing costs to a federal institution.

  He found himself being eased out of the car, tried not to look down the short barrel of the lady cop’s pistol as her partner efficiently frisked him. The cop found his armpit.45 first, then the switchblade, and then his stainless-steel pliers. Harvey couldn’t have cared less about any of that stuff. It all belonged to Jake anyway, and was as easily replaced as a bar of soap. It pissed him off something fierce, however, when the cop found his ankle gun - a chrome-plated.44-calibre Derringer with custom-made elephant-ivory grips. He’d bought the pistol from a professional loiterer he’d met outside a gun show in Austin, Texas, just a few months before he’d signed on with Jake. The seller had piqued Harvey’s interest by confiding that the gun had been used in a love-triangle homicide, and that the previous owner was now residing in Bangkok. Harvey, believing every word, had paid top dollar for the gun.

  The cop led him around to the rear of the Humvee and handcuffed him to the rear bumper.

  ‘Who’s inside?’

  Up until now, both cops had been mute, so the question took Harvey by surprise. It was a tricky situation. How should he play it? Was it best to cooperate? Jake would call it ratting out. He’d get Marty to take care of Harvey’s bail, and then he’d get Marty to take care of Harvey.

  Harvey pictured himself lying facedown in a shallow grave in the middle of a pine forest. Birds twittering in the branches. Suns and moons passing overhead, while he slowly turned to dust.

  The cop grabbed a handful of trapezius, gave him a shake. ‘I asked you a question. Who’s inside?’

  More cop cars, plenty of them, ghosted silently towards him. He was surrounded.

  He said, ‘The light’s pretty good out here. Could I please have my magazine?’

  The cop didn’t pull back his arm so much as a quarter of an inch, just lashed out and caught him flush on the forehead with a hard right. It was a heavy blow, and it caught him completely by surprise. The back of his head bounced off the Humvee’s fender a split-second before the rest of him hit asphalt. He decided to rest awhile, and eased shut his eyes.

  The street was cluttered with marked and unmarked vehicles. So far, against all odds, no one had come screaming to a stop with lights flashing and siren wailing. Tony LoBrio and Ken DelMonte bailed out of their ride before the car had stopped moving, but because there was so much congestion, they’d been forced to pull over half a block away.

  Willows and Parker sprinted towards the condo. The front door was unlocked. Willows went in first, and curled right. Parker was half a step behind him, off to his left.

  The sole surviving Marilyn drifted demurely along a bullet-riddled wall. Bits and pieces of the other Marilyns lay everywhere.

  Lewis lay on his side on the sofa, sleeping soundly.

  Dave lay where he had fallen.

  Rodney McGuire’s naked body lay facedown on the carpet.

  April crouched over Dave, her back to the condo’s open door. If she felt a draft, she paid it no mind.

  April was busy, busy, busy. Her fingers were bloody to the second knuckle. She’d relieved Dave of two of his diamond earrings, via the simple expedient of tearing them from his flesh. The third earring was proving difficult. Looting corpses was such a horrid, such a horribly slippery business…

  She became aware of the pair of shiny black brogues pointing towards her. Her eyes twitched. She followed the legs up to Willows’ pistol, and then his badge.

  She said, ‘Oh, fuck!’ She stuffed the bloody diamonds in her mouth. The cop made no attempt to stop her. She tasted blood, worked up a mouthful of saliva, swallowed her booty down. The cop cuffed her hands behind her back. He started to tell her that she had a right to an attorney, that anything she said…

  The condo was filling up with cops. There were swarms of them, plainclothes and uniform, ERT guys, a sergeant, grey-haired men with pips, everything but a trained seal on a bicycle.

  April shouted, ‘Wayne!’

  From the bedroom, Wayne yelled, ‘Yeah, what?’ Luckily for April and Lewis, his blood lust had faded so quickly that, by the time he’d reloaded his precious shotgun, he no longer wanted to kill anything. He came limping and lumbering down the hall, the shotgun tucked under his arm, his head lowered, his eyes on his cupped handful of glitter. He said, ‘The earrings’ posts are threaded. You oughtta know that. Screw’em counter-clockwise, they come off real easy… ‘

  He saw the roomful of cops, made a flash estimate ot the firepower pointed at him. He slowly raised his hands. The shotgun thumped on the sodden carpet.

  He was seriously outnumbered, but that wasn’t what stopped him from making a play.

  It was the hungry look in the cops’ eyes. All of them, especially the women, looked as if they were just dying to kill him. When he raised his hands, their taut faces were flooded with disappointment.

  He turned to April. Her lips were red. Her eyes were bright. Jeez. He wasn’t much good at sarcasm, but thought he’d better take a shot at it while he had the chance.

  ‘Is there a plan ‘C,’ honey-pie?’

  April said bitterly, ‘That’s right, Wayne. But you aren’t going to find out about it until it’s way too late.’

  A cop snatched up the shotgun. Parker told Wayne to turn around.

  He said, ‘I like your hair.’

  She cuffed him, and read him his rights.

  Wayne said, ‘The guy on the couch? He did it. Me? I’m just an innocent bystander.’

  ‘Me, too!’ insisted April.

  Singly and in pairs, gun-toting cops continued to burst into the apartment, marvel at the butchery, and trample all over the crime scene.

  ‘Show him the goddamn pictures of all your previous victims!’ Wayne yelled at Lewis.The towels wrapped tightly around Waynes head, arm, and leg wounds were drenched in blood. His pants pockets bulged with shotgun shells. His trembling hand tightly clutched Danny’s bloody diamond earrings. His unruly beard was spattered with vinyl and gore, and the fire in his eyes was fuelled by a passionately sincere craziness.

  He did not make a credible witness.

  Tony LoBrio was wearing a brand-new suede trenchcoat, so his partner, Ken DelMonte, got to pat Wayne down without an argument. The search yielded eleven shotgun shells, a Swiss Army knife, two thousand dollars in American currency, and an article, ripped from a popular biker magazine, that explained how to install a Yost Power Tube. Whatever the hell that was. DelMonte’s questing fingers stumbled across an unopened Polaroid film cartridge. What a shame the country’s legal system didn’t allow a death sentence, because he sure as hell had all the evidence the prosecutor’s office needed for a first-degree conviction.

  April, indicating Rodney McGuire, said, ‘I think he broke one of my ribs. It hurts to breathe.’ A thin trickle of blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. She licked it away with her tongue, and sat down hard on the coffee table.

  Scattered around Rodney McGuire’s body were a dozen full-colour Polaroid snapshots depicting the last moments of his life.

  Parker wondered who’d taken the pictures, the guy, or the living doll. Her money was on Wayne, though she couldn’t say why.


  Soon, the air vibrated with the shrill wail of sirens. Engines growled as cops were reassigned. Tires squealed as several of the ears that remained made way for a trio of speeding ambulances.

  Crime-scene photographer Mel Dutton had been routinely listening to background chatter on his police scanner as he breakfasted in his warm and cosy West End apartment. When he learned that a pre-dawn shootout at a Eairview condo had resulted in at least three apparently drug-related deaths, he was galvanized. Dutton was an experienced pro. Instantly realizing that a detailed photographic record of the aftermath of a grisly multiple murder had the potential to be a killer coffee-table book, he grabbed his gear and sped to the scene with undue haste.

  A few days earlier, Dutton had purchased a brand-new Mazda Miata.

  Tragically unaccustomed to the little car’s high-speed handling characteristics, he’d miscalculated the trajectory required to successfully negotiate the off-ramp of the Granville Street bridge. A roostertail of bright orange sparks chased the car along the ramp as, sliding along on its roof, it ricochetted from guardrail to guardrail like a gigantic pinball.

  Exiting the off-ramp, the Miata hit the wall of an underconstruction prefabricated concrete building.

  The wall trembled and swayed, and collapsed onto the car. Dutton would have been killed instantly, crushed under many tons of concrete, if the Mazda hadn’t been neatly framed by a huge window opening.

  The destruction of Dutton’s new car was witnessed by the crew of a private helicopter that happened to be flying over the area. The pilot dialled 911 on his cellphone, and an ambulance was dispatched within the minute.

  *

  Wayne had been cuffed, strapped to a stretcher, and loaded into one of the ambulances parked on the street in front of the late Rodney McGuire’s condo. A paramedic had assured him they’d be on their way in a few seconds. He asked Wayne how he was doing.

  Wayne said, ‘Fine.’

  His blood pressure was alarmingly low. They’d intubated him. A clear liquid dripped down a flexible plastic tube and into a vein in his wrist.