Ask the Dice (23 page)

My hasty peer down the nearest aisle saw the sanitary napkins and disposable baby diapers. Nothing was of use there, so I moved my focus closer. Footsteps shuffled down an aisle just out of my sight. The shooter was closing in. My heart sank.

"
P-s-s-t
."

Startled even more if that was possible, I swiveled my head to behind me. A silver-haired white dude crouched at the doorway. His starchy white smock ID'ed him as the pharmacist on duty. He signaled with his fingers, and I dished him a what-the-hell look. He pointed harder. I followed his finger pointing to the fire extinguisher strapped low on the wall panel where I had no pesky glass panel to shatter out for access. My scowl didn't ease up as I pitted my fire extinguisher against the shooter's Bushmaster .223, and that outcome didn't look so rosy. Urgent whispers came.

"Just pull the pin, squeeze the handle, and spray it at him," said the pharmacist. "Only hurry."

I crept out from behind the blood pressure desk and duck-walked to the wall where my fingers grappled with unhitching the three plastic straps securing the fire extinguisher. It flopped into my hands. I vaulted up from my stoop position, slinging the 10-pound fire extinguisher and countering my better-armed foe. I jacked up its plastic snout to aim at the squat shooter in the dark suit only three paces away, and I compressed the fire extinguisher’s handle.

The foamy spray I unleashed was a purple stream pummeling into his beefy face, blinding him. He shrieked, fumbled the Bushmaster .223, and threw up both hands to use as a shield. As I next drew back the near empty fire extinguisher to discard it, my rage further empowered me. My charge from the pharmacy counter skirted the purple foamy spray pooled on the tiled floor. The dark suit fell splat to the floor after I stiff-armed him at mid-chest. The crêpe soles to his deck shoes skidded on the foamy spray when he clambered to stand upright.

My thunking the 10-pound fire extinguisher on top of his crown ceased his further efforts. Grayish gunk—brain tissue?—flew out like how a sledgehammered watermelon spatters you. I lobbed the empty fire extinguisher over the shelves to land with a dull clunk on the next aisle.

"Bravo!" The pharmacist arose from behind the counter, clapping his hands at my brave stupidity. The prostate dark suit on the floor twitched and jerked in his
danse macabre
. "You deserve a medal, sir. Bravo!"

"The fire extinguisher was your idea, not mine. So, you can take a bow."

"Is he dead? I sure do hope so."

"Very. Call the cops, but I was a ghost who slipped in to use your coin phone, and then I split. You did it all. Okay?"

The pharmacist scratched his white smock. "Whatever you say. Thanks again. I'd never pack the stones to pull off what you just did."

"You'd be surprised at what you can do."

I continued down the same aisle and bustled by the front counter. The tall cashier was scrunched down in the stall behind the cash register. Her jet eyes, twin hot lasers, laced into me. She clutched the cell phone like a knife. I wanted to throttle her for betraying me, but I felt a more burning desire to make tracks. I'd ID'ed the dark suit after I brained him with the fire extinguisher as one of Mr. Ogg's thugs who'd plenty of pals who I only wanted to meet on my own terms.

At exiting the drugstore, I was astonished to find the coupé—why had I leave my keys in its ignition?—had taken off. A yellow-top taxi idling at the opposite curb under a streetlight was an eyewitness. The cabbie looked Ethiopian with no green card, or he was in the throes of a grand mal when I hustled up to his open window.

"Easy there, dude, why are you shaking?"

"I thought I heard gunfire coming from the drugstore."

"Yeah, but it's all finished now."

"Then I better go."

"In a minute but first I've got a question."

The cabbie blinked up at me. His glassy eyes sparked with fear. "What?"

"Did you just let off a man in a dark suit?"

The cabbie nodded at me.

"Did he carry a bundle in with him?"

"Guitar case. Said he played sweet music, then he cracked up laughing."

"Did the dark suit tip you to wait for him?"

The cabbie nodded again.

"The dark suit is dead, and he won't hassle you again."

"Can I go on now?"

My knuckles rapped on his steel roof. "Take off."

As he downshifted the taxi into drive, I rested my hand on his bony shoulder. His eyes stretched up, enlarging. "Did you spot a coupé with two people inside it leaving here?"

"No cars were around when I stopped."

My hand left his tremulous shoulder. "Forget you ever dropped this fare here. If the cops pump you, just shrug off their questions like you don't understand them. Get mixed up in this mess, and they'll crucify you. Understand me?"

"We never talked, and I was never here."

"Beautiful, dude. Now, scram."

I squinted at the departing taxi, inhaling its noxious exhaust and retching on it.
Old
Yvor
City
was a dirty pesthole. I visualized my lungs resembling the interior of a gunky crankcase. Dr. Izellah's stethoscope had listened to my respiration. She smiled with a nod at how fit she'd found me. Bullshit. I was a sick man. I knew it, and she did, too. I felt ill and impoverished. I'd sunk to the level of a vampire always angling to feast on my next blood fix. Whack a target, pay me, and I enjoyed the pink of health which wasn't so pink but more blood red.

Early on, I'd thought—no, I'd hoped—the jobs would turn easier for me to do. You see, I convinced myself how I was an average joe. I resided on a street in a split-level that copied my neighbor's split-levels. I was one of them. My grass also got mowed. My trash also got picked up. My gutters also got cleaned. But deep in the core of my heart I knew in one terrible way I wasn't like them, but I was very different.

I didn't like to think of that harrowing different way except it convulsed in my brain. I was a paid assassin. Period. The dark suit paid—was I worth the going rate of $20,000?—to chop me down had come, and we'd dueled. Now he lay sprawled out of commission on the drugstore's tiled floor.

My savage killer instinct to go for the jugular had been quicker, and tonight I came out as the top dog. That result couldn't always be possible since every top dog has his comeuppance. I never craved to quit my murder-for-hire racket more than at that forlorn instant. I bent over at the waist and heaved up the dark bile from my core. A car horn's squawk jarred me.

Wiping off my lips, I turned to the second honk's source. The coupé was parked again where I'd left it when I scurried into the drugstore. Two passengers sat in the coupé. The window clattered down, and the passenger waved an arm at me.

I yelled over to them. "Who's in there?"

"Yo, it's us—D. Noble and Danny—come back for you."

"Why did you take off and leave me here alone?"

"A police beat patrol crawled by us and flipped a U-turn for a second drive-by, and I got the jeebies, you understand me? So, Danny says we better kick before they stop and ask nosy questions. It made sense, so we took the long way around the block, and here we are back again."

The cops hadn’t seen our battle waged inside the drugstore. "Did you see a yellow-top taxi stop across the street? Or a burly white dude in a dark suit get out carrying a guitar case go into the drugstore?"

"Nope. Get in and let's go before the police return."

My steps quickened as D. Noble gave up the driver's seat, and we did as he suggested. Driving with one hand, I licked my injured wrist.

"Did you get hit, home slice?"

"It's just a graze wound," I replied.

"You'll live then."

"That's the general idea for all of us," I said.

Chapter 26

E
arlier, I waffled on the truth. The thing is, I didn't finish this one—but only the one—job, although I took my usual fee and claimed the credit. My target flew off from D.C. and went into Zane’s Witness Protection Program, and I did my covert best to keep her out of harm's way. I better explain some of it now, and I'll get to the rest soon. First, Mr. Ogg had paged me, and I stopped by the bungalow where he notched out the scope of this latest hit.

The condemned young lady, he instructed me, stayed in a crib across the Potomac River at
Logan
's Circle in D.C.. It had to be a rush order, although he knew I disdained working to beat the clock. My second bugbear was his aviator shades never mirrored my frown. Not once did he look me square in the eye, and just the imperious underhanded furtiveness to it all frosted my ass. He was holding back information on her from me.

"Are you one-hundred percent sure?" I asked him.

He gave me the my-hands-are-tied gesture. "The contract just came down from
Baltimore
. It's non-negotiable, Tommy Mack."

"Even so, I don't like it."

"Why? Because this target happens to be a young lady?"

"A hunch tells me this job stinks."

"Since when did you—or me even—get a vote in deciding this?"

"That's not all. This tight deadline also gripes me. Working under pressure fouls up my nerves."

"What do you want me to say? If you're too finicky or squeamish, I'll ring up our
Baltimore
friends, and I'm sure McCoy can fill in. He's a
real
pro."

"McCoy? He's a jerk off and moron rolled into one."

"Damn it, Tommy Mack, this contract gets done." Mr. Ogg was angry. "Catch? Don't flare your eye whites, or smack your inner tube lips, or waggle your kinky eyebrows at me. Catch? It's either you, or it's McCoy. Catch?
Baltimore
says it's today, so it's today. Catch?"

"Yeah sure, I catch it all just fine." His making it personal by using the racial slurs was the last straw. "Shoot me the particulars on her."

He did plus my whole fee on the barrelhead after I leaned on him for it, and I left the blind racist in his rathole bungalow. The ill-fated lady was Alec Snell, 26, but her seeing 27 lay in serious jeopardy. I went on the offensive. First, I reached out to my own network of friends. One was a computer hacker pal—MIT, computer science,
magna cum laude
, he loved to brag, but I didn't buy it—with access to the big facial recognition databases.

Then I hurried out, hoofed it down to the main drag, and hailed a gypsy taxi (not Mr. Ogg's yellow-topped cab) to travel north. The rotten carrion taste in my mouth was as if Death itself had crawled up and putrefied behind my gritted teeth. Doing this hit rankled me. Feeling the rancor puzzled me. Maybe I was growing too maudlin for gangland. Maybe I thought one target out of a lifetime's tally deserved a free pass. Or maybe this time I didn't give a damn what my orders were if I felt contrary to them. Never let my emotions interfere was my cardinal rule, but this job had dashed my cardinal rule. I couldn't get a clear read on why, so I just quit analyzing it and accepted it.

By the time I climbed out at Alec's place, an on-street studio loft at
Logan
's Circle, I'd dug in. This contract was to be a no-go. The challenge was if I could fake my doing it. I overtipped the black cabbie to scram and forget my mug. He lit out. The angular cobblestone avenue lay at peace, the late model sedans parked on both street sides. The quixotic young like Alec had been migrating back to revitalize the urban downtown. Well, they could have it. I wasn't born or bred to be a city cat.

She lived on the second tier in a snug unit netting her landlord a cool two grand per month. The stairwell—no elevator had to also be a hassle for the artist tenants—gleamed well-scrubbed and well-lit. This schlepping right up to knock on her door—213—was a new approach since my previous hits relied on well-thought out plans. I went on climbing.

A white lady—her skin clammy, bones blunt, and hair knotted—clunked down the steps. Our eyes, hers high on the trippy planet called Meth, brushed by each other. I doubted she'd ever clunk upstairs again. At least no stoned junkies, baggies of crack cocaine, or dirty hypo needles trashed the stairwell, but I'd give it a few more years. This was D.C., after all.

The hallway carpet, garnet red, felt plushy underfoot, preserving my shoeprints in it. The vinegary sweet scent was unlike any other I'd ever smelled. Burnished silver wall sconces glowed with a softer yellow light than the lamps illuminating the stairwell. 213 was the third door on the left. My polite raps summoned Alec to peephole me before she hooted out from inside her loft.