The target’s name was Randall Bryce, and his Tuesday night companion was not a girlfriend. She was the daughter of one of the men he had served with in the closing days of the war in Vietnam. While making dinner three months ago her husband had dropped dead from a bursting aneurism. They had two kids under the age of ten and no life insurance. In the normal scheme of things none of that would have been Randall Bryce’s concern, but also outside the normal course of things was the fact that in 1972 her father had pulled a wounded Bryce out of harm’s way an instant before a burst of AK-47 fire would have surely taken his life. So, now Randall paid half her rent and visited her every week in remembrance of her departed father who, so many years ago, had saved his life. You have a debt, you pay a debt, Randall thought as he pulled into the space that once had been reserved for Diana’s husband.
He was just about to close the Lincoln’s driver’s door when a voice called from behind him, “Excuse me, Mr. Bryce?” When Randall turned he saw a man dressed in an expensive, dark wool coat approaching from eight or nine feet away. The man was of average size and indeterminate age and, in fact, only two things about him differed from the norm. The first was that he was wearing a ski mask and the second was that he was lazily holding a nine-millimeter pistol in his right hand.
“Please be calm, Mr. Bryce. I have no intention of hurting you. This,” he raised the gun an inch or so, “is only to keep you from doing something foolish before you’ve heard what I have to say.” A quick glance confirmed that the garage was deserted. Bryce took a long look at the gun and raised his hands.
“Please toss me your keys.” Bryce gave them an underhand flip and they bounced off the gunman’s chest. “I’m not going to steal your car,” he said, nodding at the burgundy MKZ. “As I said, I don’t want you doing something foolish. Let’s sit down in there for a minute and have a little talk, and then I’ll be on my way.”
Danny waved Bryce toward the driver’s seat with the barrel of his gun. Bryce hesitated a moment then carefully complied. “Close the door,” Danny ordered once he was in the passenger seat.
“What’s this all about?”
“A business discussion.”
“I don’t usually conduct business at the point of a gun.”
“This is not your usual sort of business. You see, Mr. Bryce, I sell life insurance. A very unique kind of life insurance. The kind where if you pay the premium the insureds don’t die and if you don’t pay, they do.”
“Extortion,” Bryce said.
“If you like. I’ve brought some sales aids.” Danny Cathcart pulled a 9 X 12 manila envelope from underneath his coat. “I’m going to put my gun on the seat beside me. Don’t get any ideas. I don’t want to shoot you but I will if you try something foolish.” Bryce grimaced, then shrugged.
Danny pulled out three sets of 8 X 10 color prints. When he handed over the first packet Bryce noticed that he was wearing flesh-colored latex gloves, then he forgot all that when he got a look at the pictures. Cathcart played a mini-flashlight over the images.
“That’s Herbert Samuelson. My associates cut his throat after they raped his wife.” Bryce gasped and pushed the picture aside. “That’s her, Natalie. Notice that she’s still alive in that picture.” Bryce glanced briefly at the naked, terrified woman, then turned away.
“I included that so you would know that I’m not just showing you police crime-scene photos as part of some scam. I can assure you that these images were taken by my associates before the police were ever involved. Mr. Samuelson was offered the opportunity to avoid this situation by purchasing one of our policies. Sadly, he refused. Maybe he thought we weren’t serious or perhaps that we would pick another insured, his sister or one of his children. You see, Mr. Bryce, we deal with a pool of subjects under the theory that the customer can’t protect them all.”
Bryce scowled and threw the pictures to the floor.
“I understand your reluctance to view these materials, but if there is the slightest doubt of our determination, of our ability and our will to carry through with our threats then you should take a look at these.” Danny held out the other two packets but Bryce slapped them away.
“You’re what the papers are calling the Mad Dog Killers.”
“Then you know that we can and will do what we say. Which brings us to our business today. You have a girl friend, four children, three of them married with children of their own, and your parents are still alive. We consider all of them part of our insured pool. If you don’t buy our policy one of those families, and I stress the word ‘families’, are going to end up like Mr. and Mrs. Samuelson. You won’t know which one until it’s too late. But that won’t be the end of it. After the first deaths the premium will go up. If you still don’t pay there will be another event. And another. Until you pay or everyone is dead.”
“You’re animals!”
“What’s that line from the Godfather? ‘It’s not personal. It’s just business.’ Now, are you going to buy a policy or do you want people to die?”
Danny held out another set of gruesome pictures.
“How much?” Bryce asked.
“Two million dollars. You’ll pay it by a wire transfer to a numbered account in a country that has a commitment to the anonymity of banking transactions.”
“What’s to stop you from coming back after you get the money and asking for more?”
“The knowledge that if we did that you wouldn’t pay a second time and we wouldn’t waste our time when there are so many other customers in the world.”
“Two million would buy my family round-the-clock protection for years. I could just wait until the police catch you or you move on to other victims.”
“But you’d never know for sure. No security is perfect and you can’t be certain that we will ever be caught. Do you want to take the chance that we won’t be able to get to your family when the penalty is so extreme? Isn’t that why people buy insurance in the first place? To reduce risk?”
“I’d rather spend the two million on security than give it to monsters like you.”
“I’m sincerely disappointed that we can’t come to some agreement. Are you sure that’s the answer you want to give me?”
Bryce scowled and looked away. Danny’s hand was on the door handle when Bryce called out, “One million and not a penny more.”
Danny turned back and in Bryce’s face he saw anger and bitter determination but no hesitation and not a fragment of fear.
“For that kind of a discount payment would need to be wired within twenty-four hours.”
“All right,” Bryce agreed after a long pause. “I’ll need the routing number.”
“It’s all here.” Danny pulled a slip of paper from the bottom of the manila envelope and handed it over. Bryce squinted at it for a moment then gave an angry shrug.
“I need my reading glasses.” He patted his chest, then reached into the recessed compartment near the bottom of the driver’s door. He pulled out a small, grease-stained cloth bag, peeked in then muttered, “Finally!” and stuck his left hand all the way to the bottom.
When it emerged it held a Beretta PX4 subcompact pistol. Firing left-handed felt awkward but from less than three feet away he couldn’t miss. He put the first bullet into Danny’s stomach because he didn’t want him to die right away. He paused for a single second to enjoy the look of shocked surprise that he imagined was distorting the monster’s face. Then Bryce raised the barrel and fired a second forty-caliber slug dead center into Cathcart’s forehead. It kept on going out of the back of his skull eventually starring the Lincoln’s passenger window on its way through the glass.
I’ll have to get a new car, Randall Bryce thought idly as he pulled out his phone to call the police. For an instant, he remembered what it was like to be a soldier and set out to take a life. But this was different. Over there the enemy had been human. Tonight, he had killed a monster.
Kyle tried watching some porn but even the action on-screen couldn’t slow the spinning in his brain. The game was over. Latwan was circling the drain so maybe he’d get lucky there. Paulie and Anderson were out of the way, so that was good. Dion was MIA. Did the cops have him? Kyle hated leaving any witnesses behind. Then there was Danny. He’d have to go too, after they got the last score.
Kyle looked at his watch. Ten o’clock. Danny should have made his play by now. Kyle pulled out his latest cell and checked the log. No calls. Ten-fifteen. Nothing. Finally, around ten-thirty, Kyle punched in Danny’s new number. It rang six times then was answered with a grunted “Yeah?” Kyle held his breath against the silence. In the background he heard a man’s voice say, “Get those reporters back!”
Kyle immediately punched off the phone and pulled out the battery and the SIM card. Cops! Danny fucked it up. Shit! Kyle took a breath. It was obvious what he had to do. Time to run. Time to run.