On the road
Mr. Lopes looked across at Mr. Smith, who sat gray-faced and vacant, mouth breathing more pronounced as blood flowed past the compress Smith held weakly against his chest. Lopes pulled out his phone and dialed. “Messer? Lopes. Yeah. Bit of a dust-up, I’m afraid. Nothing to worry about, but you need to take over for a bit. Yeah. Girl’s heading for a meeting with a TV reporter at The Brewery. A restaurant in Augusta. Eleven forty-five. She is not to keep that appointment. Do whatever is necessary.”
He listened for a moment. “I know what Baldy wants, but there’s no way we’re going to try to obtain a tape or documents. If you get a chance, of course you’ll search the body for the tape or whatever, but likely there will be too many people around. Shoot to kill and get the hell out.”
He pressed “end,” shaking his head. He couldn’t remember a more botched job. He turned to his companion. Smith looked awful. “Jesus, Smith,” he said. “How could you?”
Smith’s rictus didn’t much resemble the smile he’d intended. “Rotten luck,” he breathed. “Fuckin’ cops. Get me… hospital, Lopes. ’kay?”
Lopes pointed the gun he’d been holding under his coat at Smith. “Sorry, old buddy. Survival of the fittest and all that, eh?”
Smith slumped against the door and was still.
God! Another few hours listening to that breathing and he would have done this even if Smith hadn’t needed to be eliminated. The man was an animal. He was going to have to speak to Dino. Smith hadn’t been a bad guy to have watching his back, and he hadn’t flinched at the dirty work, but the man took too many chances. That last cop, for example. Smith hadn’t needed to kill him, and he’d cost them both time and a car. Every time you killed someone, every time you had to change cars, it created risks. And risks were what got you caught.
“Sorry, buddy,” he told the corpse beside him. “Hope you carried lots of life insurance.”
An hour later, Smith and the hick’s pickup had gone for a swim and he was ready to join Messer and Trudeau and end this thing. It had gone on long enough.
“…from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil,
good Lord, deliver us…
from battle and murder, and from sudden death,
good Lord, deliver us.”
—”The Litany,” from The Book of Common Prayer
Gus started the van, but before they moved, Jenny put a hand on his arm. “Wait.”
He gave her a curious look. “Thought you were on a deadline?”
“First things first,” she said. “This whatever it is we’re… I’m about to do, Gus? My intuition tells me it’s going to be very dangerous. But it’s…” She fumbled for how to say this without offending him. “This is my problem, Gus. Something I have to settle before I can get on with my life. Grateful as I am for your help, I don’t want to drag you into something that could get you hurt or even killed. Your uncle made me swear I wouldn’t. He said your mother would kill him if anything happened to you.”
Gus still looked puzzled, on the verge of insisting that he had to follow her because his Uncle Dizzy had told him to.
“Look, probably I’m doing this all wrong,” Jenny said. “I’m just trying to say you don’t have to come with me. I don’t want you to come with me. Just drop me at the door and drive away. I’ve seen too many bad things happen in the last week. I can’t be responsible for something bad happening to you.”
His face, the frowning brow and stubborn chin, the eyes that wouldn’t look at her, said it wasn’t working. She gripped his arm tightly. “Gus, please understand. This isn’t about whether you’re brave enough or tough enough. That’s not why I’m asking you to stay out of this. It’s not even because your mother and my mother would be mad. It’s because I’ve got too much on my mind already. There’s too much hanging on this without the distraction of you getting hurt.”
She waved her hands helplessly. “Put yourself in my place. I need my mind clear for what I’ve got to do. If you’re there to back me up, I’ll be thinking about you, watching for you, wondering if you’re okay. I can’t do what I have to do if I’m worried about you.”
“Yes, but—”
“That’s just it, Gus. I can’t have any ‘yes, but.’ I need a clear yes. That’s all. I need you to drop me at the door and drive away so I’m not distracted by worrying about you. Okay?”
Sullenly he said, “Okay.”
“Good. Thank you. I guess we’d better get going.”
“Whatever you say.”
What did she expect? She’d asked him to stay out of the biggest adventure of his life. He wasn’t going to thank her.
The car began to move slowly down the street and it was back in her head again, the stately walk down Main Street toward the showdown. Lunatic delusions of grandeur. It was probably a stately walk into a bad restaurant to talk to a hostile reporter and she’d wasted a couple minutes. But she had to trust her intuition. At worst, Buxton’s team would win and she was enjoying her last minutes on this planet. At second worst, she’d get out of the car and there would be Morrissey and Trask waiting to drag her away and lock her up again.
She felt like throwing up.
She reminded herself of what Dizzy had said when she wanted to run away from this. Her mother would never let her be hurt and walk away; now she was the one who couldn’t walk away. Was this what people had in their heads when they walked into perilous situations? Did they go in conscious of their missions or with nothing in their minds except the pounding of their hearts and an overarching sense of unreality? Did they recite mantras to themselves to keep them brave? Did their own personal war songs run through their heads?
Soon she’d know.
She flexed her hands as she mentally reviewed how to fire the gun. When she got there, things would happen fast. She’d have no time to think. It was a heavy thing, about eight pounds, but it didn’t have the kick some guns had. Dandy had chosen carefully, knowing she was black and blue enough already. He’d had the gun there waiting for her. Dandy. Other than her parents, her first and always hero.
She closed her eyes and imagined swinging the gun smoothly to her shoulder, aiming and firing. What was it called? Visualizing. She visualized shooting another human being. Ran through it again. Teeth clenched, she shot Governor Lucius Alfonso. Shot James Buxton, the father who had abandoned them, setting all this in motion. Felt the anger start, the adrenaline beginning to flow. Felt the stiffness leaving her fingers as the deadly sarcophagus of fear shattered and fell away, freeing her for action.
“Here we are,” Gus said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Her “yes” was more growl than affirmation. She wriggled down until she was out of sight. “Drive through once and tell me what you see.”
He flipped on his turn signal and cruised with agonizing slowness through the parking lot. “We come in from the right as you’re facing the door. A couple cars away, there’s a big guy sitting in a black van. About six cars down, on the left hand side of the door, there are two men sitting in a silver Taurus. Down toward the far end, another guy, sitting by himself. That’s all I saw.” He hesitated. “Jenny, that’s too many people.”
“I’m just running up the steps and in the door, Gus.”
“If you make it that far. I have to—”
“No, Gus. What you have to do is let me off and drive away.”
Silent and with jaw set, he circled the block, turned on his blinker, and drove slowly back into the parking lot. She picked up the shotgun and stuck it under her coat, one hand on the gun, the other on the door handle. She didn’t think she was breathing as she scanned the cars, looking for the men Gus had spotted. Then they were at the steps. The van stopped and she opened the door. Stepped out awkwardly, trying not to trip over the gun. Too bad they didn’t make them in petites. The Barbie pink 12-gauge blaster.
She started up the steps, eyes darting in both directions. Someone on her left moved, then someone on her right. A voice yelled, “Jenny, watch out!”
Morrissey. Why was she not surprised? She turned in that direction as she reached the top step, just as something slammed into her back with such force it plastered her against the door, taking her breath away. She bounced off and was falling, terrible pain in her back. She’d been hit by a battering ram. Gasping, mad as hell, furious adrenaline pumping, she forced herself back up, raised the gun, turning to her left, hand already on the trigger. A man was running toward her with a gun in his hand. Head, body, legs, she thought, squeezing the trigger. One. Two. Three. He looked so surprised as he fell, blood blooming, the gun dropping from his hand.
Deafened by the gun’s blasts, she couldn’t hear anything except echoes of the roaring that seemed to go one and on. But he wasn’t alone. Another man was getting out of the car. How many shots left? One? Two? Had she loaded five? She didn’t have time to reload. Vaguely, then, she heard voices shouting, people screaming. A woman standing in the doorway, staring at her, who had to be Marcia Shelton, her mouth moving. A TV talking head with the sound turned off.
Her back felt like someone had fired a cannon right through her. Vest or no vest, she was sure she’d been blown up. She could feel the tear in her skin, the burning agony of it, sure these were her last minutes and she had to make the best of them. The second man, like the first, was running at her with his gun out. Jenny “John Wayne” Cates lifted the heavy gun again. Playing through the pain. Fuck ’em. She might be dying but she wasn’t going down alone. She shot again. He zigzagged. She followed, tracking him like a can through the air, aimed where he was going to be, and squeezed. Watched the gun fly out of his hand in an explosion of blood. If the TV cameras hadn’t gotten here, too bad for them.
“Jesus, Jenny, get down!” Morrissey came flying at her, snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her down onto the cement, back behind one of the thick pillars that supported the roof over the entrance. Bullets slammed into the bricks where her head had been, bits of brick and dust flying. The woman in the doorway was still staring.
“Get back inside,” he barked, loud enough so even Jenny, in her deafened state, could hear.
Still the woman stared.
“You wanna get your fuckin’ head blown off?”
She retreated.
“Third guy’s got a rifle,” he said. He was panting, breathless. “You got hit. I saw it. How on earth did you?”
His hands went under the coat, feeling for the wound, finding the vest. He smiled, proud as a dad at his kid’s first steps. “Wearing a vest.”
“They made me. My friends.” It hurt to talk. Hurt to breathe. She’d come here to talk so she could keep on breathing. So her mother could keep on breathing. So they could stay alive. And now she couldn’t talk. “Hurts,” she said.
“You bet it hurts,” he agreed, “but it’s a hell of a lot better than being dead. Which you otherwise would be.”
“I’m not dead?”
“No, Jenny. Far from it.” He was speaking very loudly, and close to her ear, so she could hear. “Stay here. I’m going after him.”
“Morrissey, why?”
His eyes were scanning the parking lot. “Later,” he said, then added, “Serve and protect. Protect you. Living, breathing human being, remember?” He squeezed her hand. “First hero I’ve had in years. I had no choice.”
He began edging away.
“Morrissey. Tom. Don’t go.”
But he was moving away from her.
She tried to put her urgency into her voice. “Wait…”
He hesitated, turned toward her. She reached up, trying to grab his sleeve. “You’ll get shot.”
Her voice was too soft. Not enough to stop anyone. The cement beneath her was cold and gritty. She’d been here before. Lying on the cold, cold ground, wrapped in pain. She turned her head sideways, watching as he crept away. The gunman she could see, that he couldn’t, raising that lethal rifle again, pointing it, aiming it.
She reached in her pocket for shells, fumbled for her gun. She’d never make it in time. Couldn’t force herself up again. She was right here and yet it seemed unreal, unfolding before her disbelieving eyes like a TV drama. Watching Tom Morrissey heading toward death, watching death get ready. Suddenly, the gunman’s body jerked, the rifle flying up, the shot that was to have ended Morrissey’s life sailing wildly away into the air. The gunman seemed to hang there, clutching the rifle, as if suspended in the air, before finally falling to the ground and staying there in a boneless stillness that could only be death. At the far end of the lot, she saw Gus emerge from between two cars, his rifle still pointed at the sprawled figure.
She exhaled and closed her eyes. So much for not getting involved. Gus had gotten his adventure after all.
A woman in an apricot blazer was kneeling beside her. “Jennifer Cates? Marcia Shelton.”
“You’ll have to speak up.”
“Marcia Shelton.”
“Now do you believe me?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Look, I see my camera crew over there. Let me get them and then we can do that interview.”
This is what she’d come here for but she wasn’t Superwoman. She wasn’t even Jane Wayne. She would have loved to get up. To speak eloquently for Shelton’s cameras. She couldn’t move. Not when all the bones in her back were broken.
Shelton was starting to fuss. “Why are you lying here? Are you injured? Why don’t you get up? Come inside? I could help you.”
The reporter’s busy hands pawed at her. “What’s this? You’re wearing a bullet-proof vest? That’s what this is, isn’t it? You really were expecting something like this to happen. Where are you hurt?”
Stupid bitch, Jenny thought. I told you, didn’t I? “Shot in the back.”
Shelton was trying to turn her over, and Jenny was trying to fight her off, when Morrissey returned. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, “but you shouldn’t be doing that, you know.”
Shelton’s eyes narrowed as she looked around for the microphone she hadn’t brought. “Who are you?”
“Lieutenant Tom Morrissey, New York State Police, retired,” he said.
Jenny stared. “Retired?”
Shelton beckoned wildly to her camera crew. “All right,” she said. “I’m confused. What’s the story? What’s going on here?”
“I’m afraid, ma’am, that it’s Miss Cates’ story, but at the moment, she’s in no shape to tell it. Right, Jen?” He reached down and took her hand. “Medcu’s on their way. Don’t talk. Take it easy.”
She hadn’t come so far to quit now. “But I came here to talk.”
It wasn’t going to happen.
“You can talk later,” he said. He looked like hell. Dull skin and bandaged head. He needed a shave. But his eyes were smiling. Proud. “You wore a vest. You are just so damned smart, Jennifer Cates.”
Don’t sidetrack me, she thought. I’m on a mission here. “Story,” she said. “You tell it.”
“Me?” he said. “But I’m the bad guy.”
Marcia Shelton was so eager she was practically drooling. “The bad guy?”
“One of the bad guys,” Jenny said.
“Well, ma’am,” he said, and if Jenny hadn’t felt like she’d just been kicked by a horse, she would have smiled at his deferential, shy-guy trooper act, “It all began about twenty-two years ago.”