by L T Vargus
“They’re fucking crooked,” Vince said, obviously not paying attention. He shook his head, scowling. “Banks and cable companies. They live to fuck us over.”
“Well, you heard about Verizon, right?” Frank asked, sitting back in his seat. “They shut down the 911 dispatchers in California during the wildfires. Said they were using too much data, so they slowed it all down so much the dispatchers couldn’t get through.”
“What?” Vince stared at him, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. “Those sick fucks.”
“Yeah, it was all over the news,” Frank said. “Serves them right, getting all the bad publicity, I figure. My cousin Andre bought their unlimited data cell phone plan when they first rolled it out, then they kicked him off — get this — for using too much data. Just fucking told him to find another provider.”
“The hell? Can they do that?”
“I guess so. But here’s how shitty they were about it: first, they tried to play it off like they didn’t have towers where he lived, so he figures it’s just one of those things. Then he goes into his local store to see if he can find somebody with towers near him, and they tell him Verizon’s are all a-fucking-round, that what they told him was bullshit.”
Frank held up one finger, really getting going now.
“Furthermore, that they told some people from like Montana or Wyoming or some shit the same thing, and those fucking cowboys up there pointed out that Verizon was the only towers around. Caught ’em red-handed, so the dumbshits finally came out with the truth, that they were losing money letting people who had their unlimited plan, you know, actually use it like an unlimited plan. Same with the emergency services people they fucked with. I think somebody sued them.” He shifted in his seat, realizing he’d built up all that steam for a sort of anticlimax. He shrugged. “I hope so, anyway.”
“They ought to. These sick fucks are always trying to screw us over, I tell ya. Banks, cable, and phone companies. They think they can get away with it, too, because they’re—”
Whatever they were got lost in the scream of Frank’s phone. He scooped it out of the cup holder.
The display on the screen let him know it was The Boss.
Never any hello or pleasantries. Straight into, “What’s happening with the target?”
“He’s in the weeds right now,” Frank said. “Getting nowhere. He talked to that hippie brother of Whitley’s, but that was it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yep.”
“You bugged him and the reporter?”
“Yes.”
“And they’ve got nothing?”
It wasn’t easy, but Frank made sure he didn’t sound exasperated when he answered.
“Not a thing.”
There was a pause on the other end.
Then, “OK. I’ve got something for you two to handle out there after all.”
Vince was practically leaning over the console, listening in. When he heard that, he licked his lips. It was the big ape’s go-to move when they got the orders to finish off a target, getting all excited and whatnot. He probably thought they were about to get the green light to kill the FBI agent.
Frank scooted closer to his door and turned away from Vince. Regained a little personal space.
“What do you got?” he asked The Boss.
“The usual thing. Some loose ends that need tying up.”
Chapter 35
Finally free from the clutches of his stinking, flesh-coated bathroom, he stalked around his apartment. Pacing. Picking up his keys, coins, glasses from the drain rack, the salt and pepper shakers, then setting them back down a couple steps later.
He flipped on the television for some background noise. The Price is Right blared crowd noise at him, people screaming about the price of some trash homeopathic garlic supplement.
The hallucinations seemed to be dying back to faint light trails coming off of things, but he was still way too wired to sleep. The garlic on TV gave him a good idea, though.
Food. Something to bite into, mash between his teeth. He wasn’t hungry, the drugs satiating most of his animal needs, but he knew he should eat something or he’d feel even worse later. He needed protein.
Digging through the fridge revealed a package of lunch meat. Fat-free turkey breast. He grabbed the container and peeled it open, digging in with his fingers, eating slices straight out of the plastic as he walked.
It kept him lean, eating that way, even if sometimes it got hard to tell why he wanted to stay in shape. Was there a point? Had there been, sometime in the past? Or was it just one of those things you were expected to do? Work hard, stay in shape, take care of your hair and teeth so you’d look good. That outward appearance. The surface of things. It was so important.
The image of Raeanna from work flashed in his head. Smiling. Chewing her lip. Inviting him to some club and then shifting gears and asking him to stay in and watch a movie with her. She was asking him on a date. It seemed obvious looking back, but it somehow hadn’t felt that way at the time. Hadn’t felt… What? He didn’t know.
Why couldn’t he see these things as they happened to him? See how normal his life could be. See that he was capable. Doing well for himself. He was stuck, somehow. Stuck on that other story of himself, the vignettes projected on the bathroom wall. The old story burned brighter somehow. The pain. The shame. Those were imprinted so deeply he could only get glimpses of the other version of things, the better version of things.
He thought of the different paths we take in life almost at random, how the choices that shape our lives often happen with little thought, they happen in increments, moments of seeming insignificance that add up to the shape of the whole. We were practically unconscious for so much of it.
And we just find ourselves in the present now and again, immersed in the details of a life that seem as ephemeral as a dream — as though waking up in our own life. Confused. Surprised. Not quite sure how we got here or who these people around us are. Like those little time jumps the drugs sometimes thrust on him. Sometimes our whole lives were just like that. The days went by and by and by, and only once in a while did we even wake up to it.
He tried to remember how he got going down the track toward these shootings, but he couldn’t remember. It felt more like a thing that happened to him than something he chose consciously. It started with the pain. He remembered that. Pain that made him want to… want to… to prove something. To who? He wasn’t sure anymore. Probably the face in the mirror, yeah? The trusty sidekick.
He thought of Raeanna again. She was the other life he could have had, maybe. Not that it mattered so much anymore. Some choices were permanent, right? Can’t put the spent ammo back in the gun. Can’t put the blood back in the corpses and flip their lights back on.
The pacing fell into a rhythm as he ate and thought, and it was somehow soothing. A strange forward momentum that he wouldn’t give up for anything now that he’d found it.
All energy wanted to expend itself. It was one of the vital laws of the universe.
There were no exits on this carnival ride. Predators pressed forward or they died. Forward and forward and forward forever, like a shark.
He threw the empty lunch meat package into the trash and wiped his fingertips on his pants. Salt solution added to the meat to preserve it and up the weight without adding more meat. One more way the companies could make a buck.
He looped back into the living room, glancing over at the screen as he passed. Colors and noise. It drifted through his mind the way he drifted through the apartment. Not sticking anywhere. On the move. Nomadic. Transient.
Around the apartment he went. Touching things, but not picking them up anymore. A lamp, a picture frame, a roll of paper towels, a pillow. Feeling them with his flesh made him feel more real again. Made him feel all the way removed from that hell ride in the bathroom.
The memories didn’t matter. The choices he’d made didn’t matter. The present moment was the only thing now. The only thing
. Forward.
Then he was back in the living room, standing stock-still in front of the TV. The news flashed on the screen, playing an update about the shootings.
That was him. His rampage. His carnage. They were talking about him.
He drifted forward, lowering himself to a seat on the coffee table. Leaning toward the screen, his nose only about six inches out from the LED display.
Most of the update seemed to be focused on how the FBI was getting involved in the case. News intended to calm the masses, he thought. Stave off panic. Keep the shoppers shopping, the pigs feeding at the trough.
A Hispanic woman with TV-perfect hair and bleached teeth was saying something about “famed profiler and author of several books discussing serial criminal behavior, Special Agent Victor Loshak.”
The camera cut to footage of an older man with graying hair and crow’s feet around his eyes, standing on a set of steps next to an official-looking group of cops and suits. Palm trees were visible behind the building. Some tropical looking place. Florida? California?
“Special Agent Loshak was key in ending the Miami Night Slayer’s reign of terror last year, not only assisting the local law enforcement in identifying Edward Zakarian as the murderer, but also playing a critical role in the manhunt that…”
Without realizing it, he’d gotten on his knees and scooted closer. He leaned in until his nose was almost touching the FBI agent’s, the screen so bright in his swollen pupils. The agent’s face took up every inch of his vision, life-sized.
The agent looked into the camera as if he could feel Ben staring at him. Ben blinked, then sat back on his feet.
So this was the man who was stalking him. The great white hunter tracking the ultimate predator. The word competition flickered in his mind like a dying light bulb.
This agent was his nemesis, his worthy rival, the last remaining threat to his power. They were both walking down that long tunnel together, and one of them wasn’t going to make it out the other side.
There could only be one king of the jungle, and Ben had already written his name on that spot with lead and blood.
Chapter 36
Fat, wet snowflakes were slapping like falling toads against Officer Lennie Washington’s windshield as she drove home. And the hell of it was, they weren’t even due to get a real storm for another couple days. People were already talking like it was going to be the next big Snowmageddon. Lennie planned to reserve judgment. She’d seen a few real snows in her life — that bomber of a blizzard back in ’67, for example — and so far, this winter hadn’t impressed her. As far as she was concerned, the power had to go down citywide and a couple people had to freeze to death before it was a real snow.
It was possible another Snowmageddon would keep their shooter at large in his house for a while. She scowled out at the traffic. But that would just give the asshole more time to come up with an even more devastating target. Lennie wasn’t technically on the task force, but she’d read over the FBI agent’s profile. The Bureau of Detectives was using her stationhouse as the HQ, so it was well within her rights to stay up on what was going on with the investigation. Agent Loshak had said their shooter was likely to escalate his attacks. No better time for planning an escalation than when you were trapped inside with nothing to do.
Some big construction outfit was doing brickwork on the dump across the street from her building — one of the few tenements that had survived the Chicago fire and become a historic landmark — so she had to park three blocks down and on the cross street. Lennie understood wanting to preserve history and all that crap, but they ought to put a time limit on that sort of thing. She hadn’t found a spot within a reasonable distance of her building since before Halloween. Assholes from the other side were taking all the good parking.
Climbing out of the car was a slow grind. A lady with a couple of years to her name had to keep her balance or all the young hotshots on the force would start talking like she fell and broke her hip, like some kind of senior citizen.
The cold, wet air wasn’t great for her lungs, either. Lennie re-situated her gun belt over her shoulder like a purse and pulled her muffler up to cover her mouth and nose. If she’d known the COPD was going to be this bad, she never would’ve quit smoking. That old fart Shaughnessy in Evidence still smoked, and he never caught pneumonia. Probably there was too much tar in his lungs to get sick; it killed all the germs.
Lennie hauled herself up onto the sidewalk, already huffing and puffing. Keeping it to a dull rolling cough, though, kind of like an engine that cranked and cranked but wouldn’t start. No hacking up a lung yet.
As she turned down her usual shortcut, a wet snowflake splattered on her forehead and immediately ran down into her left eye. She hoped like hell it was a snowflake, anyway. Nothing good would be dripping off the roofs overhanging the alley.
She squinted up at the eaves. They stood out black against the orange-gray cloud cover, almost like they were purposely conspiring to hold the glow from the street lamps back. She couldn’t say how many times she’d been down this alley after work. However long it was from Halloween to now. How was it that she was just tonight noticing how damn dark it was? Be a good spot to hide if you were waiting to jump somebody.
Metal clanged up ahead, a garbage can lid falling, and Lennie jumped. Something clenched in her chest — that weird sack around her ticker cinching itself tighter. Heart thundering like crazy.
She chuckled a little at herself.
“You scared old rip,” she muttered, the words steaming through her muffler and immediately freezing in the icy air. “Just a rat.”
She was letting this shooter nonsense get into her head. Things were tense at work, everybody wound tight enough to snap, and it was starting to affect one Lennie J. Washington’s overactive imagination. Next she’d be calling her own station, claiming she’d seen somebody suspicious prowling around through her blinds, like some old biddy with nothing better to do but spy on her neighbors at all hours of the day and night.
A violent gust of wind screamed through the alley at her, the buildings on either side creating the perfect conditions for a wind tunnel.
Time to get her ass in out of this cold before she started seeing gunmen in every shadow. She put her head down and made some progress toward the opposite end of the alley. It was a fairly long one, running parallel to her street behind the apartment buildings and brownstones, just between the little concrete boxes the ground floor renters liked to think of as yards.
During the summer, this place was usually jumping with barbecues and music and even the occasional kid playing baseball. Tonight, though, it was completely deserted. Just her and the rats.
A shadow came around the corner a couple buildings ahead, striding down the alley toward her. Male, very tall, though in the dark she couldn’t get his age or race, and his puffy coat kept her from guessing at his weight.
Lennie moved to the side a bit, figuring he would do the same. It was just one of those unwritten rules everybody obeyed in the city. Stay on your own side, mind your own business, that kind of thing.
Except he didn’t get to one side. He kept galumphing along down the middle like he didn’t even notice her. There was something awkward about the way he was walking. It took Lennie a minute to pinpoint it — his arms weren’t swinging right to match his gait because he was carrying something.
Instincts honed by years on the beat made Lennie’s skin crawl. Whatever it was, he carried it like a weapon. A gun or a knife, held steady and close to his side, almost concealed but ready to use at a moment’s notice.
She froze, heart thudding in her ears. She was all alone back there. He could stab her fifty times before she drew her revolver. Shoot her and be gone before she could scream.
Suddenly, brilliant light filled the alleyway. One of the motion-sensor floodlights coming on over somebody’s back door.
And she saw it. An Uzi. He was raising it, leveling it at her. Her heart stopped. A little bit of pee es
caped, the hot wetness fattening up her panty liner as she fumbled at her side for her gun belt. Where the hell was her gun?
He was right on top of her, about to blow her brains out, and she couldn’t even find her gun.
“Cold enough for ya?” the shooter asked.
He kept right on walking. Lennie turned to watch him go. What she’d seen as an Uzi in that split-second had become a sub sandwich — probably from the Bellacino’s down the street — wrapped in foil.
Lennie’s throat unlocked all at once, and she started coughing hard enough that she was definitely going to have to change her liner when she got home. Goddamn growing old. Spooked the literal piss out of herself like some incontinent civilian granny.
She cussed and coughed the rest of the way to her building, stamping off the snow in the foyer with extra force. She ought to be slapped upside the head. Reaching for her gun when some dumb shit was just passing by with a sandwich. Lucky for both of them she’d had it over her shoulder tonight, or that would’ve been a hell of an ordeal. Probably would’ve lost her pension.
One of the other tenants was coming down the stairs as she went up. The young man from 2C, a couple apartments down the hall from hers. Nice enough. Quiet. She saw him at the CVS once in a while when she filled her prescriptions. Lennie couldn’t stop coughing long enough to give him the customary “how ya doin’,” so she waved and struggled on home.
Chapter 37
Frank pressed against the unfinished wall of the garage, the insulation paper crackling as he made sure his profile was completely hidden behind the metal shelf full of junk. He shifted his feet, kind of feeling around with his back for a stud to lean against. Some instinctive part of his brain didn’t want him to rip the insulation. Something male and handy, even though he’d never done any house maintenance in his life. It reminded him of people talking about how everybody has a lizard brain from millions of years ago still floating around their regular brain, helping them make decisions and telling them when to get angry and whatnot, except his had a little carpenter in it instead of a bearded dragon, warning him not to rip the insulation.