Milt wasn’t dead. Milt was dying. I sat on the couch with him.
“Milt,” I said calmly. “I’m going to shoot you a second time. I shot you once. Just now. But I’m also going to shoot you again.”
“Kh…h…” he said.
A twelve gauge will tend to make an argument one-sided.
“But before I shoot you again,” I added, “I’m going to tell you something.”
He struggled to breathe and burbled up blood.
“I’m going to tell you that, in my opinion, the second most vile thing in this world is…classism. I hate classism. That’s number two.”
“Call…” he said. “An…n…n…an am…bulance.”
“Would you like to know number one?”
“Please.”
“Good. Thank you. The number one thing I hate in this world…is…disloyal pricks who stick their log in another man’s fireplace.”
“Wh-h…?” He found that surprised look again.
Milt was really a lot better looking than I’d allowed myself to think. I could see why Maria had slept with him. Some guys in my position would be angry—that his wife had enjoyed the very handsome qualities of another male, the sleek jawline, the broad shoulders. But not me.
“That means I hate your existence, Milt.”
He hid his fat well. Some people can be fat but pull it off. Not me. That’s why I jog countless miles per day and eat fashionable amounts of kale.
“You have shifty eyes,” I said to Milt. “Your face points one way but your eyes watch stuff at a different angle. How cliché is that? At least be inventively repulsive.”
He groped for air, with his hands, then said, “Call…”
“Would you like to hear my one French sentence?”
“Call the ambulance. I’ll pay you.”
Ah, the bribe offer. Right on schedule. “Really? How much is a dopey, no-good, cheating partner’s life worth?”
“A hundred and fifty th—”
I shot him again.
He lay there inert. I’d aimed higher this time. The stomach wounds hurt. The chest wounds kill.
I drank his bourbon. I wanted to look tough, but his choice of alcohol tasted like buttered Windex. I spat it out and stood up.
“You may think this is over,” I said, “but you’re misunderstanding the rules. This isn’t over. This is page one.”
Chapter 16
I was driving the speed limit. Updike was next to me in the seat. And my trunk was full.
Of Milt.
After thirty minutes of very focused driving, I arrived at what I now hesitate to call “home.” The hardest part was getting him from his house to my car. Solution? Cut him in half. Just like they did Maria. Seemed only fair. I brought the first piece out in a suitcase, the second piece in a golf club travel bag. Each segment still weighed over a hundred pounds, so I’m not saying it was easy.
By now Updike was in sync with my erratic behavior. He himself became more erratic and, oddly, more cooperative.
“C’mon, pal,” I said toward his area of the backseat. “Don’t look at me like that.”
He did. He looked at me like that. The eyes of canine judgment. I could see them in my rearview mirror, gazing at me.
We were going thirty-four miles per hour in a thirty-five miles-per-hour zone. Cops do actually pull people over for going “too much” the speed limit. It’s what drunkards do. It’s what serial killers do. I’d already made up my mind at this point how I would handle the situation if I were stopped.
And I was stopped.
A cop lit up in my rearview mirror, visible just past the flattened ears of my nervous heap of a pooch. The new police cars have subtle, low-profile lights to fool you, to lull you into cop-oblivious behavior. I was pretty sure I was getting cited for running a light. What I wasn’t sure of was whether my trunk had drops of blood on the outside.
I slowed down. He followed me to the side of the road. I parked. He parked. Then came that ugly fifteen seconds when they just sit there behind you. When his door finally did open, he took a long time to approach.
“I will kill him, Updike,” I murmured out the side of my mouth. “You understand that, right? I’ll kill him, if circumstances demand it.”
Updike whined that signature dog whine and looked around for the nearest airport. I was sweating right up until the moment Officer Something-or-Other arrived at my door. Six two. One ninety. Mustache. He had a Beretta 9mm holstered. I calculated that I could have my own gun pointed toward his torso twice as fast as he could ready his.
If necessary.
“Good afternoon, sir,” I said.
“License and registration,” he said.
I complied and we traded the usual three minutes of dialogue. He left with my license but stopped to look at my plates, which to me felt like he was looking at the trunk.
“There’s no blood on there, Updike,” I said quietly to Updike. “I checked. No blood. Okay?”
Updike looked backward. He knew the cop was trouble.
My finger had already laid itself upon the trigger of my .38 Special. I could open my door. I could loudly say, “Officer, my left hand is bleeding.” He’d yell at me to get back in my car but for a split second he’d look at my left hand. He’d look for the blood, not the weapon. And I’d raise that weapon and power two slugs past the Kevlar, into the small clump of tissue just above the eye sockets.
“Sign this,” he said, suddenly back at my window, ticket clipboard in hand.
I must’ve blanked out for a moment. While I was sitting there, fretting over what he was seeing on my bumper, he had already journeyed all the way to his own car and back.
I signed the ticket.
“Please drive safely,” he said. “Life is precious.”
Then he walked away.
Done. Thank you for that fortune cookie’s worth of wisdom, sir.
When I arrived home—some two hours later, I think—I pulled out Milt: The Prequel and placed it near the rear bumper while I dragged out Milt: The Sequel in a second bag. I brought the complementary works of art down to the basement while Updike followed cautiously behind.
There wasn’t enough room next to my silent wife unless I took out a few of the boxes, so I did. I slid them to the middle of the basement, where I knew they’d start to smell within days.
“In ya go, Milt.”
I wasn’t operating on a “within days” timeline. I barely knew what the next three hours would hold for me. And by the time I’d stashed Milt’s carcass, I’d burned through at least one of those precious three hours.
Maria’s body hadn’t become rigid yet. She was cold, but still supple. Tears welled in my eyes. As much as our romance had dwindled lately, I’d still cried about her every night, softy in bed, or loudly in the shower, or even louder in the car.
I started to caress her cheek with the back of my hand. Then I stopped.
I missed my wife. I couldn’t believe somebody had done this to her. Had done this to her, when we were so far from where we should have been. My retirement would’ve solved everything. I wiped my tears with the inner elbow of my sleeve, sat on the stack of sirloin, and pulled out my cell phone.
“Thank you for calling Whole Foods,” answered a chirpy voice. “This is Amber.”
“Hi, Amber,” I replied. “This is Maria’s husband, Michael.” She said hi back. “Just a quick heads-up: she’s got the flu…and yeah…didn’t wanna introduce it to you guys…so…she’s gonna stay home for a couple days.”
We traded a few useless remarks about how, gosh, something sure is goin’ round lately and Stay warm and Belichick always tells his team to drink fluids and I hung up. At first I’d had Milt’s upper body on the ground with his lower body hung by the hook. But Maria’s cadaver had gotten bumped in the shuffling and slowly rotated toward his.
As much as I resented the current population of this meat locker, I couldn’t let them sit there like savages. So I fixed Milt, nice and neat, and let h
is wobbly head sort of stare at my wife.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I said to his unblinking eyes. I turned to Updike. “C’mon, li’l man.”
Chapter 17
If I was going to enter the docks in daylight hours, I’d need to be ready for a bloodbath.
Milt had said 451. I was pretty sure he meant shipping berth number 451, which was a drop site run by a man named Big Byron. I played the waiting game, sitting in my parked car across the street from the wharf entrance, after hours, staring at a torn photograph of Maria, until a bright-red Escalade pulled in.
Byron. He was that guy. The polyester-track-jacket, medallion-against-a-hairy-chest guy.
“Do you even try not to lure feds?” I said quietly.
I’d never seen him in person. For all I knew, he could be black or Asian or young or old. Or, worst-case scenario, not even in the car.
But after a few turns, the rear passenger window lowered an inch and out came an empty can of Red Bull, bouncing to the road behind him. Confirmed: he was in that vehicle. So I followed at a professional distance as his driver took him to the far end of the shipping yard.
I stopped my car behind a tall heap of loading pallets, the only place where I wouldn’t be detected by my prey. I was past the point of self-preservation. Every fifteen minutes, my mind would remind me that Maria was gone. I’d cry for a half minute, force myself to forget the thought, and clear my head.
A bloodbath? So be it. I’d already shot one person today. By tonight, why not make it two?
I got out of my sedan and quickly but casually walked toward the first empty doorway I could find, just in case the pilot of the red Escalade was eyeing me from a distance. I doubted it. Guys who install fake chrome aftermarket hubcaps generally don’t hire drivers who check mirrors.
I ducked into the shelter of the doorway, counted to ten Mississippi—pretending I was a delivery guy—then headed back to my car, glancing nonchalantly toward the Escalade about a half mile down the road. There it was. Unattended.
Knowing this was my one chance, I sprinted toward my goal. I covered about a half mile in five minutes. When I got close enough to see where they’d entered, I picked up the first rock I could find.
They’d gone into a small warehouse for berth 451. I channeled my inner Cy Young and flung a wild pitch up and over the two-story warehouse so that my rock would land, hopefully, on the far side, on a stack of hollow barrels. Or on something just as loud.
It hit a tin roof. Whaunk!
I entered.
Chapter 18
I had no idea what to expect inside. There could be thick Slavic dudes in turtleneck sweaters, itemizing a table full of weapons, with additional machine-guns aimed at me. There could be an unchained Rottweiler trained to attack. There could be a missile silo.
Once inside, I saw, happily, that only one inhabitant was visible: the rear end of a guy in overalls, heading away from me, out the back door. The rock had worked.
I didn’t catch sight of Byron, but I still didn’t actually know what Byron looked like. I was operating on pure instinct. He would be ugly; his guards would be uglier. That was my theory. Find the handsomest guy in the room—and shoot all his friends.
The first person to reemerge from the back hallway was the overalls guy, a 175-year-old man whose osteoporosis bent him clean over like the handle of a human umbrella.
“Can’t shoot someone like that,” I mumbled to myself.
The old fella looked up, glanced at me, glanced at the weapon in hand, and proceeded to do absolutely nothing different. He kept shuffling toward his corner of the room, where he picked up a broom and started sweeping. It was as if this place had been stormed by gun-toting enemies at least three times a week for the past decade.
I couldn’t hear much because there was static-ridden music blaring from his radio, the lyrics in what I could only guess was Croatian.
I put my gun back in my pocket. Maybe this would be more of a diplomatic mission than I had thought.
“Who’re you?” said an abrupt voice from behind my left shoulder.
This was trouble. I hadn’t turned around yet but my eleven years as a trained killer told me his intonation was trouble.
“Hey,” repeated the voice. “Who the hell are you?”
Showtime.
Chapter 19
I had no response to his question, and no idea if the voice behind me was from one lone guard approaching me from my flank or from one of several.
I’d failed to hear his footsteps—tsk, tsk—letting the radio drown them out. After a moment, I finally turned to face my hosts.
“Who am I?” I restated rhetorically—anything to throw them off guard for even a split second.
I was now facing two men.
“I’m…here,” I began, “because I was hoping to buy a…a…um…y’know.”
They could think I meant drugs or guns or girls. I was dressed like a middle-class American male, easily in the market for any of the above.
“Wrong place, buddy,” said the second guy.
“I need a gun,” I said. “I need one as soon as possible.”
He laughed. “As soon as possible?”
I could tell he was underestimating me. Good. Maybe he’d assume I was a loser seeking revenge on my cheating girlfriend.
“How much you pay?” he mused.
I needed him to move several feet to his left. I edged to my right so that he’d subconsciously counter. I’d enacted this geometry before, this knight’s move.
“Pay?” I said.
“How many thousand you gimme?” He laughed. “What you do with gun?”
“What I do with gun…would be something like…” I let my sentence linger until just the right amount of time had elapsed, then quickly raised my revolver. “This.”
And fired four shots at the two men. Blam blam blam blam.
Shamefully trite, I know.
Blam. Plus an unplanned shot at an unseen third guy who’d been kneeling to pick up trash off the floor, who’d just now sat up to see what was happening.
It was a barrage in three cones of attack, each grouped around the upper torsos of my opponents. Itemized: I hit one aorta and two lungs. The first thug fell to the ground while the second fell to his knees, clutching a geyser of blood from his neck. The old man with the broom, still sweeping, who maybe was deaf now that I thought about it, didn’t flinch.
My intended victims all dropped as scripted, except for the third guy. The memorable performance was from the third guy.
First he stumbled to his feet, then backward through the open quay doors toward the lip of the dock, where he teetered on the edge. Then he futilely grabbed for the hull of the nearest trawler. This positioned him precariously over the water, balancing…balancing…until, ploosh, he fell in.
I trailed him all the way there, more out of curiosity than bloodlust. After a mutual moment of awe, he stopped splashing. He looked at me, then looked at what was on the dock, merely one lunge away from his hand.
I had my revolver up and ready. He was weighing his reaction time. He had to confirm that he was fast enough to scramble for his weapon before I could discharge mine. The not-so-trivial factor in this arithmetic was that I’d already fired all five shots of my five-shot cylinder. I was out. I was pointing an empty gun at him.
“Try it,” I said. Pure effrontery, pure bravado.
Could I sprint to his gun before he could arm himself with it and fire at me? Based on physics and standard NFL forty-yard dash times, no. He was too far from me. He’d win.
“I hit your buddy in the carotid artery from fifteen yards away.” I said this with a voice full of swagger. “You’re only five yards away. And much more predictable.” Could he know that my Smith & Wesson didn’t have the capacity for a sixth shot? Was he even counting? And while we’re at it, why, Michael, do you carry a gun that holds only five rounds? I pulled back the hammer for philharmonic emphasis. “Don’t make me sink you.”
&
nbsp; He bobbed in the water for a few seconds without speaking. I could see the math taking place in his head—he was desperately weighing his probabilities. Everything, including that I might be out of ammo. Everything, including his gradual, eventual recognition of my face. He didn’t announce it yet but he soon knew exactly who I was.
“I’m not grabbing the gun,” he suddenly said; this came with an opening of his palms to demonstrate complicity. I went over and scooted his pistol out of his reach. Then I positioned myself to help him up. The last thing I wanted to do was save the life of a guy who was guaranteed to hunt me down within a week, but what choice did I have?
“You’re Byron, aren’t you? Can we talk?”
“Go to hell.”
“I would prefer we don’t antagonize each other. Are you sure we can’t talk?”
“Go to hell.”
“Fine. If you need negative stimulation, I’m going to show you something that will scare you.”
“Go to hell.”
He was being combative. So I decided to do this the ugly way. I showed him a picture of my wife.
Chapter 20
“You see this?” I held up a small wallet-sized photo.
“Help me get out,” said Byron.
“You see this?!” I shook my favorite picture of my wife at him.
It didn’t make sense that the big boss had been kneeling to pick up trash off his own floors. The old Croatian fossil in the warehouse kept cleaning. The two dead bodies in the entranceway seemed very dead. And Byron was still treading.
“Her name is Maria Amelia Ryan,” I said. “She’s beautiful and she’s vibrant and she’s dead.”
“I get it.”
“No, you don’t. She’s dead because of a name and I don’t know who that name is.” I aimed my gun at his forehead. I was crouched down tight enough that from a distance anyone would think I was just tying my shoe. But there was still no one around this stretch of the quay.
“Suppose…Suppose I…I had a name to give you. You want a source, right? The Goran boy. Right?”
The 13-Minute Murder Page 24
