I KILL RICH PEOPLE 2 (47 page)

“It’s just me,” Owen shouted over the piercing intensity. “Shut it off!”

Mike’s face appeared behind the glass.

“Jesus, Owen! It’s the middle of the night.” Mike turned his back to the door, obviously hiding the pad from Owen’s view as he punched in the code. “Are you nuts? You shouldn’t be here, man,” he told Owen firmly. “All the drunk-dialing, now this. You’re making things worse. You don’t want to force Callie to get a court order.”

Owen looked around Mike’s frame. Callie was coming down the stairs. She stopped at the doorway into the kitchen, twenty feet away from him.

“I’m not drinking, Cal,” he pleaded. “I swear! Please, Cal. I need you.”

From behind, Shelley came down the stairs and put her arm around Callie’s waist.

“Do you know what time it is, Owen Cullen?” Shelley screeched.

“Please,” Owen asked her. “Just let me kiss the boys goodnight. Then I’ll go. I promise.”

“I’ll call 9-1-1,” Shelley threatened. “You leave here! You leave us alone!”

The 9mm was pressing into his back. Owen reached behind him then immediately pulled his hand away like he had touched a hot stove.

Mike waved toward Shelley with both his palms open, then spun back to the door. “Buddy, you need to go,” Mike told him firmly. “Go and I’ll call you in the morning.”

Callie looked for a moment like she wanted to be angry, but she looked at him standing there, so pathetic, and her anger faltered.

“They took my medallion, Cal,” he cried. “I messed up. The thing on the news? That was me.”

Callie took a step toward him, but Shelley grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back. “You’ve moved on. You’ve got to tell him.”

Callie shook herself free and ran to the door, Shelley chasing. When she fumbled to open the deadbolt, Mike opened the door for her and put his bulk between Shelley and the door.

“Damn it,” Shelley hissed at him.

Callie reached her arms out to stop Owen from wrapping his arms around her but she grasped hold of Owen’s forearms and squeezed.

“I’m helping her rebuild her life, Michael,” Shelley argued. “We’re putting a roof over her and her kids.” Shelley eyed the telephone. Mike read her mind and gestured repeatedly for her to settle down. She shook a fist at her husband and cussed under her breath then turned to listen.

“He’s back,” Owen told Callie, speaking slowly. “And nobody in the department believes me. Cal, they had Spencer caught.

“He got away, that’s why they called me. To catch him. We were right, we were always right, you, me and Tee,” he said. “That job I had, I was in D.C. because I know about Spencer.”

Owen slumped down onto the concrete porch, taking Callie down beside him. They leaned their backs against the door. Callie’s hand stayed on his forearm as both his arms flopped limply at his sides. His long legs stretched out in front of him. He looked exhausted. “The department doesn’t believe me. They took my medallion,” he explained. “I went to North Bergen. Remember I said I was there? There’s nothing there now.

“I have ten thousand dollars, Callie. New bills. If I’m lying, how would I have that? How?”

“I don’t know, O,” Callie told him, petting her hand down his shoulder. “It will be all right. You do the right thing. It’s going to be ok.”

“What is a guy supposed to do? I worked my ass off. All the time!” he insisted. “Did I ever hit you, Cal? Did I ever once hurt the kids?”

Tears rolled down his cheeks as he pleaded for answers.

“I’m not drinking, Cal. You can tell that, right?”

She nodded yes. “What is a man supposed to do? Tell me! What’s a man supposed to do anymore? Just tell me what’s good enough, because I don’t understand! What am I supposed to do?”

Callie wrapped her fingers in his big hand. He lifted her fingers and held them to his lips.

Shelley watched through the door, growing more agitated.

“There are children in this house, Michael,” she hissed. “It’s four a.m. Drunk or sober, he’s raving.

“I don’t care what you think. I’m calling the police!”

“Damn it, Shelley!” Mike shouted at her. “Put down the phone!”

There was fear in his voice. Behind him, Shelley had the phone in her hand.

“Owen, you have to leave. You need to go.”

“There is a man at my back door,” Shelley reported. “Owen Cullen. He’s a police officer. He carries a gun.”

She paused, listening. “Because his wife and kids are staying here,” Shelley reported. “Yes, Lake Success. That’s the address. He’s acting crazy.”

“Owen, get out of here!” Mike shouted. “Callie, let him go and you come back inside.

“Owen, you need to go. Now, before this escalates! Callie, tell him you’ll talk in the morning. Really! Callie, come inside. He’s not going to leave unless you come inside!”

*****

It was all a continuation of the same bad dream. The whole night. Everything since Tremaine got killed.

Owen drove in the dark along Horace Harding Expressway. He turned on the police band as he got onto the Long Island Expressway, listening to Manhattan North dispatch and thinking about his medallion as he headed west toward FDR Drive into Lower Manhattan. All quiet.

“You feckin eejit,” he scolded. “Where is your brain? Acting like a fucking crazy person. Think! You didn’t make up Miller or Bishop or Nussbaum or any of them. The warehouse was flooded. That was no coincidence! You need to figure this out! Think!”

He wanted to call. Apologize for setting off the alarm. But Callie promised she would phone. She promised.

When he entered the Midtown Tunnel, he switched the radio to 77WABC and waited for Imus to come on at 6. He thought about going to morning Mass and then he thought about how weird that sounded. Except for Christmas Eve, he hadn’t been to Mass for longer than he could remember.

The DJ on the radio was talking politics. “Ed, what do you think of Americans for Patriotic Action’s new so-called anti-discrimination legislation? Do we need laws to protect the rich? I mean, we have laws protecting gays, laws protecting the handicapped, laws that make it a hate crime to attack people because of their race or their religion. We have laws protecting people who have no legal right to even be in this country! So why do we let everyone take free shots at our most successful, our most philanthropic citizens? What sort of liberal insanity is it that we just let class warfare rage unimpeded? Isn’t attacking people because of their economic status just as much a hate crime?”

Owen groaned and switched back to Manhattan North dispatch.
God, I’m so tired
, he thought.
How did they just disappear so fast, like Miller and the techs never existed?
There were all those snipers deployed. People had to have seen them. Doormen, the valets, the caterers.

Pulling his medallion? Suspension pending a hearing? For what? For working while on suspension? If they didn’t believe anything he said, then how could he be working? How did that make any sense?

“Nobody is dead! Maybe you should be thinking about that. Huh, Commissioner? Think about that!”

*****

Spencer used several of the index cards to make meticulous notes: directions and travel time from Yonkers to Park Avenue, time needed to dress and pack supplies and to load the 4Runner. Everything that he needed was set into carefully arranged piles: boots and water, underwear/socks/pants/shirt/vest/jacket, Barrett/ammo clips/Sig Sauer/ammo clips/monocular, roofing mastic/scaffold/plastic wrap/duct tape/tar brush/rollers. He reviewed each stack and then set out two pallets and rolled a canvas tarp for his pillow. After setting his alarm, he had two hours to sleep, provided that he could get to sleep.

His juices were rushing; he felt the warmth moving through his chest. He knew the building, every balcony, every ledge, the elevators, the stairwells; every ingress and every way out was committed to memory a hundred times over. Park would be shut down, so west on 71st. If 71st was shut down, back alley to 72nd. If 72nd blocked, failsafe shift to boiler room 72nd apartments where he had pre-cached two gallons of water, electrolytes, twelve power bars.

Clear the mind. Sleep. Breathe. You’re in a hammock, swaying gently. Breathe. Waves are tumbled into the sand. Breathe. The breeze is warm. Feel it move across your neck. Breathe.

Spencer awakened stiff and aching. Sacking out inside the storage container proved to be a bad call. Lying on the cold metal left his neck stiffened. The cold had penetrated his jawbone. A dead, dull, mind-numbing pain pulsed from his right ankle up through his leg, hip, and into his guts. Every screw and plate inside him displayed like constellation points, each of them gnawing away at his operational capabilities.

He inhaled deeply, focused, and steeled himself.  He had to reach out against the container wall and used his upper body muscle groups to spread the load and pressed through up onto his knees, forcing his body upright through the agony.

This is just you. No pack. No weapon. Just you. Stand!

Spencer swallowed the pain, blinked repeatedly until he had it together. Had other members of his unit been dependent upon him, he would have been obliged to stand down. His condition diminished the opportunities for mission success. Running the hill above Mercy’s farm had pumped him up, but now he knew better; he was bullshitting himself. In comparison to the mountains he used to run on regularly, that incline was nothing.

Then he laughed. “This is as close to feeling old as you’re ever going to get.

“This is the preview,” he chuckled, gritting his jaw against the hurt. “You’re never seeing the movie.”

The scaffolding, bucket, tool chest and gym bag were neatly positioned, ready to go. He stared at them; each one represented anguish.

Spencer acted out of character, slowly dressing himself layer by layer, procrastinating. He had devised a way to sink the pistol and three additional loaded clips inside doubled Ziploc bags within the five-gallon bucket of roofing mastic using clear monofilament fishing line tied to the teeth of the lid. He could retrieve the pistol by lifting the lid and reeling the line taut, but he could still open it for inspection without revealing anything. Now he stared at the sixty-five pounds and passed it over, permitting himself to load the lighter supplies first.

Every noise seemed exaggerated by the dark silence in the sleeping trailer park. Even the hiss from the rear tailgate sounded cobra-like as it lifted up. The dashboard clock showed 05:10. He had already set the back seat down the night before and made sure the scaffolding fit inside, but now he doubted that he could get it in without making noise. He managed to get the bucket lifted inside, then tilted it and rolled it into place rather than pushing it and scraping along. He tried to lift the scaffolding and lean it deep inside in order to softly let down the end he was carrying, but the effort was impossibly agonizing. He had to stop or he would risk blacking out. With no other choice, he had to accept the noise and slide the aluminum inside the cargo area. Turning immediately, he shut and locked the container, ignoring the noise. Ollie, the trailer park manager, wouldn’t like it, but it couldn’t be helped.

He pulled through the park without turning on headlights, then cranked the heater up to its highest setting and directed the air down at his legs. The morning news programming replayed the police department spokesman, who was indicating that the initial reports of a potential terrorist event had been discounted.

“Department investigators are now reassuring a frightened public that there was no actual threat,” the reporter said. “According to police, ‘the Departmental coordination and rapid deployment we have just witnessed offer absolute confirmation of the extraordinary dedication, readiness, and professionalism of the world’s finest police force.’”

As he drove, the warm air helped; Spencer alternated driving and massaging his knees and thighs. 05:25. He was making good time and decided to drive south along the Harlem River to the East River, taking the longer route instead of driving the Hudson to avoid having to cross Manhattan on surface streets where there might well be a heavy police presence. Between the buildings, the sky was turning a beautiful rich dark blue wrapped by a thin ribbon of gold as he pulled in front of 110 East 71st at 05:52. But it wasn’t Vince inside; Spencer could see Walter, the Lawrence Taylor look-alike standing huge behind the front counter. He put the 4Runner in neutral and bobbed his feet on the floor. If he went ahead, would his legs carry him? He assessed the weight and the distances. Could he make it all the way down and around to the service elevator hauling a hundred-fifty pounds?

Could he wait? Would there never be a better time?

Exhaling hard, he blew out the negative air and stood in front of the glass doors until Walter looked up, folded his newspaper, and ambled forward looking menacing. Spencer knew he was recognized, but that made no difference to Walter.

“Walter, I need to offload before I park. Any chance I can use the placard?” Spencer beseeched. “Five minutes?”

The doorman looked at Spencer, checked his watch, then poked his head out and looked up and down East 71st. “Fifty bucks,” he said.

Walter’s stoic expression said “take it or leave it” loud and clear. Spencer gave in, grabbing the cash out from his front pocket and handing it over. Walter walked back to his desk and remained there, waiting for him to walk over to retrieve the handicapped placard.

Spencer got back inside the 4Runner, hung the placard from the rearview mirror, then reached inside the gym bag and retrieved kneepads that he strapped into place. With the kneepads on, he returned and opened the 4Runner’s rear hatch, pulled up the bucket, then moved it to the building, using it against the base of one of the front doors to keep it propped open. “I’ll just be a minute,” he called out to Walter. Two minutes later he had the gym bag, the tool chest, and the scaffolding out, and was moving the bucket inside to let the door close behind him.

Walter walked over with the metal detector wand and had Spencer stand with his legs spread and arms extended while he went through his routine, even making Spencer empty the keys out of his front pocket. Spencer caught him eyeing the roll of bills.

“Open ’em up,” Walter ordered, standing over the gym bag and the tool chest. Spencer complied while Walter took his time.

“What’s that?” Walter grunted, looking toward the scaffolding.

“Work platform, trowels, stirring wand.” Walter looked at the kneepads and put two-and-two together. Details make the difference. “Uh huh.”

“Man, I came in early to get done before your residents are inconvenienced. You can see how heavy this is. Can I just use the front elevator? I’ll be in and out,” Spencer said.

“Heavy.” Walter stood stone-faced, revealing zip while Spencer waited, envisioning himself struggling to carry that load along the hallways in one trip. Back to the service elevator, and then around again, all the way to the rooftop.

“Fifty bucks,” Walter concluded.

“Twenty,” Spencer countered, almost involuntarily.

“Go around or use the stairs.”

Spencer counted two twenties and a ten into Walter’s paw. It was better that Vince wasn’t working. It took the sting out of paying, thinking how in a few hours this a-hole was probably going to be losing his job.

Spencer squared himself, blew out the anxiety, and prepared for the first of three heavy trips up to the roof deck where he had the tent anchored. The city lights were starting to give way to the first rays of sun creeping up over the Atlantic.

*****

Once inside the tent, Spencer dropped the thick jacket then worked on unwrapping his Barrett, taking special care not to jar the scope when the duct tape came off. He recalled the sound of that first shot when they killed Mercy—XMercy
.
Screw it,
he thought. She was Mercy for thirty years. XMercy for less than a month. He’d remember what he wanted.

Spencer cleared the elaborate wrapping off the long weapon.  He was going to have to leave it behind.
More and more being left behind, a kidney, my legs, and now the Barrett.
But this wasn’t the time for extraneous thinking.