FALSE FRONT (4 page)

She
screams, begins shaking, and says, “He killed him.”

Inside,
Air wipes the gun with the shirt he was wearing. He stares at the
golf-ball-sized split in the center of Tony’s forehead.

“So
that’s what brains really look like.”

 Blood
fills the lagoon hole and oozes out of his skull, dampening the floor below Tony.
His life source mingles with whiskey.

Air
stands looking down at Tony for a long time. Outside, an officer speaks through
a megaphone.

“Sir,
I don’t know what that shot was about. I hope everyone is still alive in there.
You can come outside and end all this. No one has to get hurt. Think about how
much worse this can get for you and the people you’ve put in harm. Let’s work
something out that gets us all out of here alive.”

Air
glances out the window, shakes his head, and looks back down at the dead.

“I
didn’t want to kill you, Tony. I figured you knew it was me behind the mask.”
Air saunters over to the chair he was sitting in and picks up the Johnny Walker
Blue while he talks. “I guess I was wrong. You really are so dumb you had no
clue it was me.” He takes a harsh pull from the bottle. “No anger toward you. I
didn’t like you. But I didn’t want to shoot you. It’s just. I’ve learned
something about uncertainty. It never ends how you want. A plot hole the size
of you would have ruined all of this for us. You saw me. You saw her. You
understand.” He stares down at Tony for a long time, as if he’s waiting for him
to say something back. He holds the bottle over Tony’s face, slowly tipping it,
watching it pour out and douse him. When it empties, he allows the bottle to
roll out of his hand and plunge into Tony’s chest. “The fever called Living is
conquered at last.”

The
officer continues on pleading and demanding over the megaphone. Air walks over
to the cold slumped man in the chair, putting the gun in the guy’s hand. Air no
longer matches. Instead, he’s in crisp white and dark blue from neck to feet.

“Thanks
for your help,” he says, patting the dead man in the chair.

And
then he stands, grabs the cigar, and listens to the officer outside pleading
for cooperation. When the cigar gets close to being finished, he flicks it into
one of the puddles of whiskey, and fire chases up a wet line toward a stack of
books. Everything ignites into a flaming rage. The room clouds with suffocating
smoke. Air stumbles across the living room, down the stairs, and exits the
front door, coughing and yelling for help. Police swarm him, and he points back
inside.

“He’s
started a fire.”

Smoke
billows out the front door and beats against the large living room window. Everyone
watches. Flames waltz in the reflection of their eyes, and the place burns down.

Air walks
over to his girl, who has raccoon eyes from the fake tears she masterfully
displayed, and wraps his hand in hers.

“Nothing
will be the same,” he says.

Sitting
on the corner edge of a king-sized bed inside the voguish W located in downtown
Seattle, his lax silver eyes scan the morning news playing on the TV screen. He
rubs swollen tissue, butterfly stitched now, on the side of his face. The “Book
Heist” has been talked about on the news for the last forty-eight hours. Even this
morning, a cheery blonde newscaster goes on about one of the most unusual
Vivacity crime stories to go down in sometime. The screen flashes to a Costco
employee:

“Guy
was way mad obsessed with this book. He stole all of them. Every last copy. Crazy
son of a bitch. I thought he might kill everyone in the whole store. He had
that vibe. You see what he did to Nick’s face? Real bad. Something about that
book got him all screwed up. I know I’m curious about it. If I can still find a
copy.”

The
screen flips back to the blonde newswoman, and Air chuckles while watching the
woman continue on about how this mentally confused individual decided to steal
the same book from multiple locations. A book at this time only experiencing
minimal success in the author’s hometown. She tells how the book was the debut
novel of a young author named Air Hunt. How the individual had broken into
Air’s house, filling it with all the copies he had stolen over a few day
period, and then held him and his stunningly beautiful girlfriend, Naomi,
hostage after their return from Portland, before burning the house down. She
says, “No one knew Air before, but I guess he’s known now. He’ll forever be
tied to the “Book Heist”.”

A
pair of starving lips makes their way up the back of his neck, breaking his
concentration from the screen. Naomi crawls closer to him with only an Egyptian
cotton towel wrapped around her body.

“You’ve
seen it a million times already,” she says.

“But
I want to watch your part again.”

“Not
bad for my first time in front of the news cameras. It was live too,” she says,
and licks the back of his ear, curling her face around his throat and grazing
her lower lip against the tattooed wings on his neck.

“You
were perfect. Everyone will want a piece of you now. Naomi the star. More
performances to come, love.”

She
reaches around him, hugging his waist, and laying her face against his bony
back.

The
newscaster goes on about how the author’s home was doused in alcohol. About how
the house went up in flames and came down in ashes. About how the police have
the remains of two bodies, and one of those bodies is more than likely the
intruder, who probably burned alive when he lit the place on fire. Of course,
the other body is the real tragedy.

Air
leans across the bed to pick up his ringing cell phone. A sigh leaves Naomi’s
mouth as she stretches on the bed and rests her head against a leather
headboard. She pokes at him with her toes, biting her lower lip and teasing him
with her sensual eyes. He talks to who rang:

“Hey,
Air.”

“Hello.”

“We’re
on top of the world this morning.”

“I’m
on top of the world.”

“Well
yeah. But you know what I mean.”

“What
do you want?”

“We
had 150,000 e-books purchased in the last twenty-four hours.”

“We?”

“Air,
come on.”

“I.”

“Okay,
Air.”

“So
does that mean I can distribute my hardback copy in more places than just
Washington now?”

“Of
course. Let’s talk book tour.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I
want a knew publicist and a new agent.”

“Air,
don’t be like that.”

He
winks at Naomi.

“Air?”

“Yeah.”

“All
this free publicity and advertising. You’ve seen the news?”

“Nothing’s
free.”

“Right.”

“Tell
whoever directs the show there I want someone new.”

“Air,
I’m your man. I promise.”

“But
you promised before.”

“Every
time the story comes up they show the book. It’s different now.”

“You’re
right. Everything is different now.”

“Air,
I’ll make up for what you were not provided with before,” he says.

Air
puts his hand over the cell phone, leaning his head back into Naomi’s lap, his
sleek hair now a mess. He winks up at her. “You should hear this desperate
clown.” The voice of the man on the other end continues to ramble with promises.

She
leans over his face, locking her lips onto his mouth. Air speaks in spite of
them, saying, “Now I am important? Now I’m not just a local author? Now I
should quit my day job?”

“You’re
very important, Air.”

“Why
should I choose to stay with you? I’m good for a one-book contract is what I
remember you saying a few months ago. That’s what you said, right?”

“Air,
I’m sorry.”

“Bye.”

He
ends the call, tossing the phone away, reaching up and grabbing the back of
Naomi’s head and guiding her to his mouth.

She
kisses him between each word. “What. Did. He. Say?”

“Whatever
he thinks I want to hear.”

“What
did you want to hear?”

“I
sold over a hundred thousand books last night. We won’t know the true numbers
until later in the week, I imagine.”

“Air?
You’re joking?”

“No.”

“Air?”

“What?”

“It
worked?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.”

The
newscaster continues on with all the emotion she can muster about the death of
the brave neighbor, Tony Lowry, the man with a family of four. How the police
think he was shot and killed before the house burnt away.

“That
makes me so sad,” she says, pulling her face from his and watching the screen
bring up a picture of Tony.

“Sometimes
something horrible brings about something amazing,” Air says.

“You
said no one would get hurt?”

“Naomi.”

“Our
plan was safe.”  

“I
didn’t hurt anyone. They didn’t save him in time.”

“You
dragged him to the door?”

“The
smoke came quicker than I thought it would.”

“It’s
so sad.”

“The
flames spread so fast. I tried to drag him. I thought for sure they would go in
and get him.”

“Why
do they think he was shot?”

“Naomi.”

“He
saw us.”

Air’s
silent.

“Air?”

“I
once read that sometimes the prize is not worth the cost. The means by which we
achieve victory are as important as victory itself. I don’t remember who said
it, but I think in our case the cost was appropriate for the prize we’ve
gained. Don’t you?”

She
rubs the tips of her fingers against her lips, gazing off at nothing in
particular. They sit in silence, watching the screen. He flips over on his
stomach, pushing up onto his hands and knees and searching her wounded eyes.

“He
chose it for himself. We didn’t invite him into our story. He forced his way
in. Right?”

She
frowns.

“Naomi?”

“I
guess so.”

“You
remember what I told you when we first started together?”

“Yes.”

“That
I would do whatever I had to so you can have all of what you want.”

“I
remember.”

“You
want it all?”

“Yes.”

“He
said we have interviews with all the major cable news stations over the next
few weeks. Everyone will want to talk to Mrs. Hunt. Think of the prize.”

A
faint smile spreads across her face and she says, “Mrs. Hunt?”

“I’ll
send his family flowers,” he says.

She
slaps his arm.

He
chuckles, leaning his face close to hers and says, “College scholarships for
the children. We pay the house off for the wife?”

“Better.”

“And
of course, signed copies of the book.”

“Of
course.”

“The
Hunt foundation,” he says.

“Air,
you said Mrs. Hunt?”

Air
tosses her towel open by pinching one of its soft corners between his index
finger and thumb, revealing her bare body.

“Air?”

He
rolls off the bed, his skeleton visible through his creamy tattooed flesh, and
walks over to a pair of jeans hanging over the back of a chair. He digs into
the pocket and pulls out a little grey box and his cell phone. He scrolls through
his apps and hits play on the screen, and the song, “My Girl,” by The Temptations
plays low through the Bluetooth speakers in the room.

Naomi
giggles, watching Air snap and strut across the room, stopping every few feet
and showing off his best Grease dance moves. When he gets near the edge of the
bed, humming the words, he stops. Instead of climbing back on, he kneels to the
side of it, holding the box out to her.

“Air?”

He
folds it open, exposing a 3.00 ct Princess cut diamond and says, “I did say Mrs.
Hunt.”

Her
hands cup over her mouth.

“Will
you ma—”

“Yes.”

He
crawls back onto the bed, and she takes the box from him.

“So
that is where you went off to last night.”

“I
knew it worked. I just knew it. So I spent every last bit of credit we had.”

“Come
here you best selling author.”

He
crawls on top of her and says, “Not just another book anymore. We’re not just
any other people anymore.”

A
Novel by Ry Eph Coming the Summer of 2016:

The 82s