65 Proof (18 page)

“Do you doubt me, Jack? I see some doubt. I work at LarsiTech, out of the Prudential Building. We sell medical equipment. That’s where I got the ECG electrode pads. It’s also where I got the radioactive isotopes.”

My breath caught in my throat, and my gun became impossibly heavy. Paul must have noticed my reaction, because he smiled.

“The isotopes won’t cause a nuclear explosion, Jack. The detonator is too small. But they will spread radioactivity for a pretty good distance. You’ve heard of dirty bombs, right? People won’t die right away. They’ll get sick. Hair will fall out. And teeth. Skin will slough off. Blindness. Leukemia. Nasty business. I figure I’ve got enough strapped to my waist to contaminate the whole block.”

All I could ask was, “Why?”

“Because I’m a bad person, Jack. Remember? Bad people do bad things.”

“Would Doris…approve…of this?”

“Doris didn’t approve of anything. She judged. Judged every little thing I did. I half expected to be haunted by her ghost after I shot her, telling me how I could have done a better job.”

I didn’t have any saliva left in my mouth, so my voice came out raspy.

“What happened today at LarsiTech?”

“A lot of people got what was coming to them. Bad people, Jack. Maybe they weren’t all bad. I didn’t know some of them well enough. But we all have bad in us. I’m sure they deserved it. Just like this crowd of people.”

He looked beyond me.

“Like that woman there, pointing at me. Looks nice enough. Probably has a family. I’m sure she’s done some bad things. Maybe she hits her kids. Or she stuck her mom in a nursing home. Or cheats on her taxes. We all have bad in us.”

His Helter Skelter eyes swung back to me.

“What have you done that’s bad, Jack?”

A cop’s job was to take control of the situation, and somehow I’d lost that control.

“You’re not thinking clearly, Paul. You’re depressed. You need to put down the detonator and the gun.”

“You have five seconds to tell me something bad you’ve done, or I press the button.”

“I’ll shoot you, Paul.”

“And then a lot of people will die, Jack. Five…”

“This isn’t a game, Paul.”

“Four…”

“Don’t make me do this.”

“Three…”

Was he bluffing? Did I have any options? My .38 pointed at his shoulder. If I shot him, it might get him to drop the detonator. Or it might kill him and then his bomb would explode. Or it might just piss him off and get him to turn his gun on me.

“Two…”

It came out in a spurt. “I cheated on my boyfriend with my ex husband.”

The corners of Paul’s eyes crinkled up.

“Does your boyfriend know, Jack?”

“Yes.”

“He found out, or you told him?”

I recalled the pained expression on Latham’s face. “I told him.”

“He forgave you?”

“Yes.”

Paul chewed his lower lip, looking like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“Did it feel good to hurt him, Jack?”

“No.”

Paul seemed to drink this in.

“You must have known it would hurt him, but you did it anyway. So some part of you must not have minded hurting him.”

“I didn’t want to hurt him. I just cared more about my needs than his.”

“You were being selfish.”

“Yes.”

“You were being bad.”

The word stuck like a chicken bone in my throat. “Yes.”

His thumb caressed the detonator, and he licked his lips.

“What’s the difference between that and what I’m doing right now?”

The gun weighed a hundred pounds, and my arms were really starting to shake.

“I broke a man’s heart. You’re planning on killing a bunch of people. That’s worse.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “So I’m a worse person than you?”

I hesitated, then said, “Yes.”

“Do you want to shoot me?”

“No.”

“But I’m bad. I deserve it.”

“Bad things can be forgiven, Paul.”

“Do you think your boyfriend would forgive me if I killed you?”

I pictured Latham. His forgiveness was the best gift I’d ever gotten. It proved that love had no conditions. That mistakes weren’t deal breakers.

I wanted to live to see Latham again.

Regain control, Jack. Demand proof.

“Show me the bomb,” I said to Paul. My tone was hard, professional. I wasn’t going to neutralize the situation by talking. Paul was too far gone. When dealing with bullies, you have to push back or you won’t gain their respect.

“No,” he said.

Louder, “Show me the bomb!”

At the word bomb a collective wail coursed through the crowd, and they began to stampede backward.

He began to shake, and his eyes became mean little slits. “What did I say about yelling, Jack?”

Paul’s finger danced over the detonator button.

“You’re bluffing.” I chanced a look around. The perimeter was widening.

“I’ll prove I’m not bluffing by blowing up the whole—”

I got even closer, thrusting my chin at him, steadying my gun.

“I’m done with this, Paul. Drop the gun and the detonator, or I’m going to shoot you.”

“If you shoot me, you’ll die.”

“I’m not going to believe that unless you show me the goddamn bomb.”

Time stretched out, slowed. After an impossibly long second he lowered his eyes, reaching down for his buttons.

I was hoping he was bluffing, praying he was bluffing, and then his shirt opened and I saw the red sticks of dynamite.

Son of a bitch. He wasn’t bluffing.

I couldn’t let him press that detonator. So I fired.

Thousands of hours on the shooting range meant the move was automatic, mechanical. His wrist exploded in blood and bone, and before the scream escaped his lips I put one more in the opposite shoulder. He dropped both his gun and the detonator. I kicked them away, hoping I hadn’t killed him, hoping he’d be alive until help came.

I stared at his chest, saw two electrode pads hooked up to his heart. His waist was surrounded by explosives, and in the center was a black box with a radiation symbol on it.

Paul coughed, then slumped onto his back. His wrist spurted, and his shoulder poured blood onto the pavement like a faucet. Each bullet had severed an artery. He was doomed.

I shrugged off my jacket, pressed it to the shoulder wound, and yelled, “Bomb! Get out of here!” to the few dozen idiots still gawking. Then I grabbed Paul’s chin and made him look at me.

“How do I disarm this, Paul?”

His voice was soft, hoarse. “…you…you killed me…”

“Paul! Answer me! How can I shut off the bomb!”

His eyelids fluttered. My blazer had already soaked through with blood.

“…how…”

“Yes, Paul. Tell me how.”

“…how does…”

“Please, Paul. Stay with me.”

His eyes locked on mine.

“…how does it feel to finally kill someone?”

Then his head tilted to the side and his mouth hung open.

I felt for the pulse in his neck. Barely there. He didn’t have long.

I checked the crowd again. The traffic cop had fled, and the drivers of the surrounding cars had abandoned them. No paramedics rushed over, lugging life-saving equistaent. No bomb squad technicians rushed over, to cut the wires and save the day. It was only me, and Paul. Soon it would be only me, and a few seconds later I’d be gone too.

Should I run, give myself a chance to live? How much contamination would this dirty bomb spread? Would I die anyway, along with hundreds or thousands of others? I didn’t know anything about radiation. How far could it travel? Could it go through windows and buildings? How much death could it cause?

Running became moot. Paul’s chest quivered, and then was still.

I knew even less about the inner working of the human body than I did about radiation. If I started CPR, would that trick the bomb into thinking Paul’s heart was still beating?

I didn’t have time to ponder it. Without thinking I tore off the electrodes and stuck them up under my shirt, under my bra, fixing them to my chest, hoping to find my heartbeat and stop the detonation.

I held my breath.

Nothing exploded.

I looked around again, saw no help. And none could get to me, with the traffic jam. I needed to move, to get to the next intersection, to find a place where the bomb squad could get to me.

But first I called Dispatch.

“This is Lieutenant Jack Daniels, from the 26th District. I’m on the corner of Michigan and Pearson. I need the bomb squad. A dirty bomb is hooked up to my heartbeat. I also need someone to check out a company downtown called LarsiTech, a medical supply company in the Prudential Building. There may have been some homicides there.”

I gave the Dispatch officer my cell number, then grabbed Paul’s wrist and began to drag him to the curb. It wasn’t easy. My grip was slippery with blood, and the asphalt was rough and pulled at his clothes. I would tug, make sure the electrodes were still attached, take a step, and repeat.

Halfway there my cell rang.

“This is Dispatch. The bomb squad is on the way, ETA eight minutes. Are you sure on the company name, Lieutenant?”

“He said it several times.”

“There’s no listing for LarsiTech in the Prudential Building. I spelled it several different ways.”

“Then where is LarsiTech?”

“No place I could find. Chicago had three medical supply companies, and I called them all. They didn’t report any problems. The phone book has no LarsiTech. Information has no listing in Illinois, or the whole nation.”

I looked down at Paul, saw the wires had ripped out of the black box. And that the black box had a local cable company’s name written on the side. And that the radiation symbol was actually a sticker that was peeling off. And that the dynamite was actually road flares with their tops cut off.

Suicide by cop.

I sat down in the southbound lane on Michigan Avenue, sat down and stared at my hands, at the blood caked under the fingernails, and wondered if I’d ever be able to get them clean.

In 2005 I decided that I knew so many thriller authors I should edit an anthology. It developed into a collection of hitman stories called
These Guns For Hire.
I’m hugely proud of that antho, which was published in 2006 by Bleak House. I also discovered that the easiest way to get published is to stick one of your own stories in the anthology that you’re editing.

“W
hy should you care? Guys like you got no scruples.”

If I had any scruples, I would have fed this asshole his teeth. Or at least walked away.

But he was right.

“Half up front,” I said. “Half at the scene.”

He looked at me like flowers had suddenly sprouted out of my bald head, Elmer Fudd-style.

“At the scene?”

I’d been through this before, with others. Everyone seemed to want their spouse dead these days. Contract murder was the new black.

I leaned back, pushing away the red plastic basket with the half-eaten hot dog. We were the only customers in Jimmy’s Red Hots, the food being the obvious reason we dined alone. The shit on a bun they served was a felony.. If my stomach wasn’t clenched tight with codeine withdrawal spasms, I might have complained.

“You want her dead,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “The cops always go after the husband.”

He didn’t seem to mind the local cuisine, and jammed the remainder of his dog into his mouth, hoarding it in his right cheek as he spoke.

“I was thinking she’s home alone, someone breaks in to rob the place, gets surprised and kills her.”

“And why weren’t you home?”

“I was out with friends.”

He was a big guy. Over six feet, neck as thick as his head so he looked like a redwood with a face carved into it. Calloused knuckles and a deep tan spoke of a blue collar trade, maybe construction. Probably considered killing the little lady himself, many times. A hands-on type. He seemed disappointed having to hire out.

Found me through the usual channels. Knew someone who knew someone. Fact was, the sicker I got, the less I cared about covering my tracks. Blind drops and background checks and private referrals were things of the past. So many people knew what I did I might as well be walking around Chicago wearing a sandwich board that said, “Phineas Troutt–He Kills People For Money.”

“Cops will know you hired someone,” I told him. “They’ll look at your sheet.”

He squinted, mean dropping over him like a veil.

“How do you know about that?”

The hot dog smell was still getting to me, so I picked up my basket and set it on the garbage behind out table.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Battery.”

He shrugged. “Domestic bullshit. Little bitch gets lippy sometimes.”

“Don’t they all.”

I felt the hot dog coming back up, forced it to stay put. A sickening, flu-like heat washed over me.

“You okay, buddy?”

Sweat stung my eyes, and I noticed my hands were shaking. Another cramp hit, making me flinch.

“What are you, some kinda addict?”

“Cancer,” I said.

He didn’t appear moved by my response.

“Can you still do this shit?”

“Yeah.”

“How long you got?”