Screwed (26 page)

Perfect. Just check the other room and away we go. I could be home in time for the late-late showing of eighties comedy Sledge Hammer! which is hilarious. You will give yourself a pain laughing, trust me and seek it out.

As you can see, I am trying to appear nonchalant about this entire mission, but I ain’t fooling anyone, not even myself. I am planning to gun down a guy in his own house, possibly a couple of rooms away from his wife and daughter. It doesn’t matter who the guy is, my actions tonight are gonna weigh heavily for a long time and will possibly be the straw that busted the horse’s arse vis-a-vis Daniel McEvoy getting into heaven.

Do it, says Sharpie. Take the shot.

I should. It’s all set up. No witnesses in the room.

Pull the trigger.

My finger hovers over the trigger and I try to make my brain send the command, but nothing happens.

Tell yourself again how there’s no other way.

With Mike gone my problems disappear.

Oh, yeah? What about Mike’s number two, Calvin? You think he won’t come looking?

At least I’ll buy myself some time.

You are shooting a guy in the head in order to buy some time?

It will take Calvin a while to gets his ducks in a row.

I refer you to my last point re shooting a guy in the head.

Mike would do it to me.

You are not Mike. Do you wanna be Mike?

No. I don’t.

I do not want to be Mike but I have no choice.

I feel blood throb in my forehead and my eyes water. Why will my finger not do what it’s told?

Mike is right there, seemingly close enough to touch. If I pull the trigger, a hundred things have to happen in the right order for the bullet in this gun to end up in Mike’s brain. The odds against all these things occurring in the right order must be pretty good. My pulling the trigger is barely even the cause of that effect. The actual cause goes way back. Generations. To the forces that brought Mike and I here today.

But do you wanna be Mike?

That’s the clincher. I was never going to shoot Mike even if I thought I might.

“Balls,” I whisper.

You said it, brother, says Sharpie.

I say balls because there is no plan B.

I hear the muted tinkles of ladies’ laughter and champagne flutes and swing the scope across to the second room.

There is a party going on.

Ladies are getting injected in the face.

Prius.

Zeb, you prick. What the hell were you thinking?

When Zeb volunteered to take Sofia with him on his rounds, he neglected to mention that one of the stops on the route was Irish Mike Madden’s house. Mrs. Madden must have a dozen of her lady friends in there, all sipping champagne and dancing around until it is their turn to sit in a reclined La-Z-Boy and have Zeb or his beautiful assistant inject a shot of Botox into their foreheads. Both Zeb and Sofia are swilling down booze too, which I am pretty sure is not best practice, medically speaking.

One of the ladies slides into the chair, and Sofia straddles her, closes one eye and, urged on by the whoops of the other ladies, sticks the syringe into a wrinkle on the lady’s forehead.

This is insane. Lunacy. How are we supposed to survive when Zeb continues to fuck up faster than I can fix things?

My phone vibrates and I check to find a text from the man himself.

You will never guess where I am.

I text him back.

I know where you are. I’m looking at you. Get the hell out.

I watch him read the text and grin. He looks into the blackness of the garden and flips me the bird.

A minute later I get: Chill. Mike will never think to look for Sofia here. As far as he knows she is my nurse.

This is all about Zeb showing me what a tactical genius he is. In Zeb’s mind it is more fun to parade Sofia into Mike’s house for him to have the opportunity to not recognize than it is for him to put her somewhere Mike will never look in the first place.

I am so angry with him for putting Sofia at risk that I misspell arsehole, luckily my phone recognizes the word by now and helps me out:

Arsehole. Arsehole. Arsehole. Stuff is about to happen. Why do you think I am in the garden? Leave now!

I watch his face drop as he reads the text.

Yeah, that’s right, shit-for-brains. As far as you know this is serious.

I am gonna catch it later when Mike turns out to be un-shot.

Flashes of movement from the office window catch my eye and I swivel the scope back to Mike’s office. Mr. Nose Beard, Manny Booker, is ushering a coupla guys into the office.

I find it hard to believe what I’m seeing.

Krieger and Fortz.

What is their connection to Mike?

It doesn’t matter. I got all my rotten eggs in one basket here. I gotta improvise, replan on the hoof.

Various scenarios run through my head, but I know there is no way to take three guys with a rifle from out here even if I was cold-blooded enough to go through with my original plan, which apparently I am not. Shot one takes out the window and if you’re lucky the prime target, maybe you get one more off in that second of frozen panic, but that’s all she wrote. The other guys have dived for cover before you can refocus.

What I gotta do is leave Mike for the moment and follow Krieger and Fortz when they leave. Find out where they’re crashing, phone it in to Ronnie and then call Zeb to make sure he has stashed Sofia somewhere safe.

I break down the rifle and bag it, then train the scope on Fortz to try and figure out what’s going on here.

Fortz talks for a while and Mike does his best Don Corleone wise-nodding bit. At the end of the spiel, Fortz hands over a fat envelope with bills poking out the top, which Mike smoothly sweeps into his drawer, and I know what this meeting’s about.

Fortz needs me found as a matter of urgency and Mike has the resources to do the finding, plus he wants me found himself. My life is being traded for dollars and not for the first time this week. I don’t know why I even bother getting surprised anymore.

Still, it is a fat envelope of cash, which is gratifying in a weird kind of way, If I have to be hunted down like a rabid dog at least I’m a priority to someone.

I gotta stop playing Tarzan and get myself back to the car before Krieger and Fortz take off. Shouldn’t be too difficult; I bet those two ain’t so sprightly since that little whupping I laid on them. Just thinking about those golden moments is enough to make me smile.

Still, now is not the time for nostalgia. I have grievous bodily harm to plan.

I swing outta the tree and land on something that yields under my weight and whimpers. I hear a couple of rib-splintering snaps, and my boots come away sticky.

Balls.

I knew Mike had a dog.

I stoop low and hug the line of shrubbery leading toward the party window. The only reason someone would cut a dog open is so they can go about their business in peace.

There’s another shooter in the garden.

I gotta warn Sofia.

I gotta come out in the open for maybe six feet between the foliage and the side of the house. Six feet takes maybe half a second but nevertheless the shooter slots a bullet into that slot. The bullet takes me between the shoulder blades, swatting me with its sheer velocity. I overshoot the party window thunk onto the office glass, not six feet from the three men who want me dead, and the impact sets off a light sensor and I get lit up like Times Square on New Year’s eve.

I slide comically down the window leaving contact streaks that are going to take the maid a ladder, three rags and several hours to polish out.

Hello, Fuckapalooza.

Mike lifts his head expecting to see a big dumb dog who’s walked into the window again, but instead sees yours truly, the man who has become his nemesis.

Or as Zeb put it: You are the fucking monkey that stuck his wrench into Mike’s machine.

Which as far as I can make out is an amalgam of three sayings: the one about the monkey, the wrench in the works thing and the ghost in the machine one.

Why am I thinking about this now? Prioritize, idiot.

There’s no point. I’ve been shot high in the back. There’s no walking away from this one.

And you want this to be your final mental exercise? Dissecting Zeb’s turn of phrases?

What was the monkey one?

Mike stares quizzically at me, not sure what to make of this apparition, but I could give a shit about his puzzlement ’cause I’m dying.

Or am I?

Okay, I’m flattened onto this window like a Garfield toy. But I’ve felt worse and survived.

But how can I survive a bullet between the shoulder blades? My heart has no right to be still beating.

The backpack. It’s got a Kevlar hide.

I got shot in the backpack.

Thank you, baby Jesus.

And to think I nearly didn’t take the backpack from the Algerian guy ’cause he wanted twenty bucks for it. Eventually he threw the bag in gratis with the flash bangs. I should call that guy and give him one of those true customer stories for his Web site.

Mike is out of his seat and coming toward me, his brow knitted as he tries to figure it out. In his place, I would be very concerned for the health of the poor Irishman stuck to my window and help him inside for a cup of tea, but Mike predictably doesn’t go down the humanitarian route, instead he pulls a nickel-plated revolver from his armpit and points it at my head.

I don’t know who Mike thinks he is but I wish he would pick one stereotype and stick to it. I was just getting used to his Plastic Paddy act and now he thinks he’s Jesse James.

Nickel plated?

Apparently Mike has decided to shoot first and ask questions through a psychic because he cocks the weapon and places the barrel level with my eye, dinking the glass.

This is ridiculous. He’s gonna shoot through his own window now, rather than slide the door across?

I see Fortz grinning behind him. I think he’s grinning, it might just be the gum shield where his teeth used to be. When he realizes that he just paid Mike several grand to find a man who was in Mike’s back garden all the time, it might alleviate his happiness somewhat. Every cloud as they say.

I wish Sofia wasn’t here. I don’t want her to see me like this. With any luck my face won’t be recognizable and she won’t think to check my pecker.

Mike never gets the chance to fire because someone else does it before him.

The second shooter.

I feel a vibration jump from the window to my cheekbone, then glass is showering over me. Through the rainbow hail I see Fortz’s head disappear. I don’t hear the shot, or the second one that makes Krieger’s heart explode.

This guy is good. Three shots; three tens.

The window collapses inward and I keel over into the house with it. Mike has already turned tail, and seconds later I hear his Benz growl as he makes his getaway. I realize that I will never know if Sofia and Zeb made it out because of that bloody Prius.

I strain my ears listening for the polite hum of an electric motor and I think I actually hear it, until I notice a beer fridge in the corner of the office.

Balls.

So I lie here, in the Deliverance position, waiting for the shooter to finish me off. Krieger is in my eye line and I see that he still has a black eye from the punch that porn star dealt him. Of course the gore-ringed cavity in his chest is a little more serious. I tell myself to look away, but it is too late, the image is already seared into the gallery of horrors in my mind.

Maybe this will be my hell; a slideshow of all the dreadful things I have seen or caused.

Still alive.

It’s true. The guy hasn’t killed me yet. He could if he wanted to, no doubt about that. The sniper managed to squeeze off three kill shots before anyone reacted. That’s competition-level shooting right there.

So, why am I alive? The only thing I can think of is that the guy don’t need me dead.

He was after Krieger and Fortz and probably thought I was about to warn them. Maybe he will leave me alone here and Mike can shoot me when he comes back.

Oh, wait.

The dog has abruptly ceased to whine. The main man is coming.

I wish I could put up a fight. At least go out like a professional, but all I can do is lie here. I could probably make a supreme effort and thrash about a bit, but I don’t want to die thrashing. There’s something silly about that and who wants to go out silly? I realize that I never left instructions for anyone to look after Sofia. Maybe Zeb will take care of her and keep his pants zipped.

Sure. Zeb is king of the humanitarians. It’s all about the fellow man with Zebulon.

I feel a strong hand press down on my backpack. Then the hand moves to my shoulder and the guy flips me onto my back like he’s turning over his last card in a poker game. I see his gloved hand dripping with blood and I realize that he’s just doing cleanup now. Finishing me is no more significant to him than putting the dog out of its misery.

The guy is all kitted out like a ninja except for his boots, which are army issue almost identical to mine. There’s a rifle over his shoulder with a super-long suppressor on the barrel, which explains why I didn’t hear any shots. I don’t recognize the rifle but it looks expensive, top of the range. Sometimes you can tell on sight how valuable something is. Not wine though. You would have to be one hell of a sommelier to put a price on a bottle based on the color alone.

Ninja sniper shrugs his shoulder in a move that seesaws the rifle under his arm so the trigger guard lands in his fist and the silencer points directly at my face.

Nice move. Practiced.

I could beg now, I got the breath. But this guy is a pro. I might as well argue with Arnold the Terminator from the first movie where he was relentless, but not the second one, where Arnie turned good robot.

Then something happens. Seems like the guy recognizes me. His head jerks back maybe an inch and I see his eyes widen a fraction.

“You,” he says.

And it is me. No denying it. I hope against hope that for once in my life, being me turns out to be a good thing.

“Yeah,” I cough, and it is no mean feat to cough and speak at the same time. I wasn’t intending to cough, it just came out.