Where the hell is Miller? He’s supposed to be watching out for me . . .
I hear them coming my way. I see Barter turn the corner. He looks big and cocky, not at all like the hunched over, wreck of a man who followed me home the other night. If only I’d been able to shoot him while I had the chance, if only my aim had been true, I might not be about to take a bullet through a My Pillow.
He’s wearing a pair of cobalt blue rubber dishwashing gloves on his big hands. The rubber is stretched to the max. He’s gripping my gun in his right hand, while holding to the My Pillow with his left. Walking beside him is Brit. The beautiful, green-eyed Brit. She’s carrying a big comforter and some old towels.
“Place the towels under his head,” Barter says.
She approaches me, sees that my eyes are wide open, and smiles that smile. It’s a smile that would melt my heart under the right circumstances, but still does something to me. What the hell is wrong with me? I should be hating this con woman turned murderer by now. I should want her dead. But lying there, bound from head to toe in gray industrial duct tape, I want to kiss her. Something’s definitely wrong with me. Maybe my old man dropped me on my head when I was a baby. In just a few seconds, none of it will matter, anyway.
Brit holds up my head, lays out two towels. She’s also smart enough to hang a third towel over the couch back to catch the inevitable spatter of blood, brain, flesh, and bone matter. As a final gesture in the name of cleanliness and efficiency, she lays the comforter over me. It’s got cat hair on it, so my eyes begin to fill up and my nasal passages begin to itch. I sneeze, but because the tape is covering my mouth, the force of the sneeze goes entirely to my nostrils. Two streams of clear snot blow out and land on the tape that covers my mouth.
Brit takes a quick step back.
“Gross me out, why don’t you, Steve,” she says.
Now I feel humiliated. I just managed to blow an air hanky in front of the woman I love. Or thought I loved, anyway.
“Okay, Mr. Jobz,” Barter says, as he presses the pillow against my forehead and face. “This won’t hurt a bit.”
I feel the barrel of the pistol pressed against the My Pillow. I feel the pressure against my forehead. Even if I can’t see anything but darkness, I close my eyes and wait for it. What the hell am I supposed to do? What the hell am I supposed to say? Goodbye cruel world? In the end, there’s not a damn thing to say, other than, oh well, this world is done.
I just wait for it to be over.
I wait for eternal rest.
The blast startles me. But it was preceded by what most definitely sounded like the front door being kicked in. And I’ll be damned if Barter wasn’t absolutely right. The bullet to the brain didn’t hurt a bit. But why am I still conscious? Why hasn’t the world turned entirely black and why haven’t I ceased to exist? Or for that matter, why aren’t I standing in front of a white bearded God?
Someone screams. Brit. Then another woman screams. Cute Brunette Chris.
Frumpy Dorothy shouts, “Go to hell, pigs!”
I can’t be sure, but it sounds like the bull of a woman is charging someone or something.
“Go for the balcony!” Barter barks.
Another three rounds fired from my gun. I know the sound of my gun. Three or four rapid-fire rounds are fired in return. It’s loud as fuck inside the small apartment. Like an indoor shooting range without the hearing protection. The final burst of rounds most definitely do not come from my own gun. I hear a body collapse under its own weight, crashing through the glass coffee table, shattering it. A big body. Barter.
“Oh my God,” Brit yells.
“Down on your stomachs! On the floor!” a man roars. “Do it now, or we will fire on you again!”
A second cop, this one female, shouts, “Down! Down! Get down now!”
Whoever these people are, they mean business. They also have more guns.
“Do what they say,” Brit orders. “We’re finished.”
“Anita was right,” Frumpy Dorothy says. “We should have known better than to trust you.”
“I don’t want to go to jail,” Cute Brunette Chris says, through her tears.
I can’t see anything, but I picture three women lying on their stomachs, wishing to God they’d never met one another at the Metabolic Meltdown gym.
***
The My Pillow is removed from my face. Suddenly, I see a SWAT team entering into the home, their AR-15s at the ready, their bodies outfitted with the latest black tactical gear. One of them has a stun grenade attached to his utility belt. I’m glad he didn’t feel the need to use it, or my head would be ringing, and my hearing might return in a couple of days.
He approaches, rips the tape off my mouth. It feels like my lips came off along with it, but at least I can breathe again.
“You okay, Mr. Jobz?” he asks. “You hurt?”
“I’m okay,” I say, “I’m just a little tied up is all.”
He doesn’t laugh. Maybe he’s in no mood for my particular sense of humor.
“We’ll get you free in a minute,” he says.
“I’ll wait right here,” I assure him.
While the assault team cuffs and drags the three surviving perps out to an awaiting black van, another SWAT member cuts me free using a pair of surgical scissors. As he is cutting away at the layers of tape, a man wearing a Burberry trench coat enters the apartment. The man is Detective Nick Miller.
A big, dead man is bleeding all over a shattered coffee table. I’m lying on my back with towels under and beside my head—towels meant to catch my brain matter after Barter blew my brains out. The My Pillow that had been covering my face is now lying on the floor, soaking in arterial blood, and how does Miller react? He offers up a sly grin.
“Told you we’d be watching out for you,” he says.
“Could you have called it any closer?” I ask.
“Hey,” he says, “timing is everything in these matters.”
The last of the tape is removed, and I’m able to raise myself up off the couch. I stand, a bit wobbly and out of balance.
“Watch out for the blood,” Miller says.
I step toward him, making sure I don’t step in the pool of dark, almost black, blood.
“If timing is everything,” I say, “you nearly blew it. Another half a second and you’d be planning my funeral.”
“Who says it’s my job to plan your funeral?” he asks. Then, his forehead scrunches and his eyes stare not into my eyes, but at the side of my head. “You’ve taken a hell of a blow to the head on top of the blow you took the other night. And you’re bleeding. Get to a hospital, post haste, Steve Jobz.”
“Oh shit, Miller, really?” I say. “I hate hospitals, and it’s probably just a slight concussion. There ain’t shit they can do for it.”
But what I’m not telling him is how much my head really hurts.
“I could use a couple Advil, however,” I add.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he says. “Come on. I’ll take you myself. We can talk on the way.”
Miller does me the greatest favor a cop can do for a gumshoe who came within a short hair of having his life snuffed out. He pulls up outside the Loudonville Liquor Store and buys me a small pint of Jameson from the pretty young blonde behind the counter. He even opens it before handing it to me. It’s not until I take hold of the bottle that I realize my hands are shaking, trembling actually. I’m not sure if it’s because of the most recent blow to the head, or the near execution . . . or both.
“Drink,” he says, “it’ll help with the shakes.”
“I thought head injuries were supposed to avoid booze,” I say.
“We’ll make an exception this once,” he says.
I take a drink. The whiskey has an immediate calming effect. I might be experiencing a pounding, throbbing headache, but life suddenly seems brighter and more optimistic. Not summertime, Beach Boys, Pet Sounds, pretty, big boobed, blonde girls in bikinis optimistic, but you know what
I mean. Take it from a former fly-fishing bum who lost his fair share of lunker trout, you don’t know what you’ve got until it comes very close to slipping through your fingers.
I hand him the bottle. He takes a swig and hands it back to me. I steal one more drink before capping it and placing the bottle in the glove box of Miller’s cruiser. He pulls away from the curb.
“Am I gonna get my gun back?” I say.
“State’s evidence right now,” he says. “You got a spare?”
“Can’t afford it.”
“I’ll see what I can do about loaning you a service weapon.”
My Mustang is still parked in the lot across from Brit’s building. But that’s not a problem unless it starts to rain. We drive toward the Albany Medical Center.
“We’ll get your head checked out,” he says. “And you can say hello to your mother.”
“My mother doesn’t even know I’m there,” I say.
He gives me a look. “She will now,” he says.
“I don’t get it.”
“Your former girlfriend, Brit?” he says. “There was a reason she rarely let your mother out of her sight.”
My pulse picks up, and I feel the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.
“Go on, Miller.”
“Turns out, Brit was injecting her with that same Methyl Iodide crap that Kyle had slipped you in your cranberry juice a few days back. She’d been giving your mother small doses for ages which accounts for her severe depression and her lack of appetite.”
“What about the delusions?”
“It could be Brit was giving her something else, too. That remains to be determined in the full tox report. But initial blood tests picked up the methyl iodide, for starters. It also could be that your mother’s delusions are just the result of aging. One thing is for certain, the methyl iodide and whatever else she was being shot up with, only exacerbated the situation.”
“So, she’s okay?” I say. “Relatively speaking?”
“She’s up and complaining a blue streak, I’m told,” he says. “Transferred to her own room, since she insisted on it. The nurses, fearing a tongue lashing, acquiesced.”
I can’t help but smile. “Now, that’s the Mrs. Jobz I know and love,” I say.
“Brit will go away for twenty-to-life just for that shit alone,” he says.
“And the rest of them?”
“They're all gonna do serious time.”
“Unless they do some serious singing,” I say.
“My guess is, Chris and Dorothy will sprout feathers and wings,” he says. “They will make beautiful music just like songbirds. Kyle and Brit, on the other hand, are most definitely not singing. Not so much as a chirp.”
Miller pulls into the Albany Medical Center parking lot.
“The important thing is we finally got our murderer,” I say.
He rolls his window down all the way, grabs the yellow ticket from the machine, drives further into the lot. When he finds an empty space, he pulls into it. He throws the transmission in park and turns off the engine.
“There’s just one problem,” he says.
Opening the glove box, I pull the bottle back out, uncap it, drink.
“What’s that?” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
“The bit of unknown DNA on Anita’s murder weapon is not Brit’s,” he says.
“But the wound on her hand—”
“Circumstantially, it looks bad, but I can bet it has nothing to do with a knife cut. Or if it does, she cut it making dinner, not plunging it into Anita Simon.”
“Shit,” I say. “How can you be sure?”
“My people checked with the Fed’s database. They got Tracy Ferguson on file. Same face, same con games, same motive through and fucking through. Aside from the stint in Pendelton’s Female Reformatory, she also got picked up on several minor charges and did some time in two county lockups in two different states.”
“Thus the Feds,” I say.
“And thus the DNA sample.”
“Shit,” I repeat.
“Give me a swig of that,” he demands.
I hand him the bottle. He takes a drink.
“There’s something else,” he says, his eyes staring out the windshield onto the setting sun.
“Can this story get any more complicated, Miller?” I ask.
He hands me back the bottle. I twist the cap back on.
“Albany CSI tells me they think the killer is a man.”
“Barter?” I say.
“Possibly,” he says. “But possibly not. We’ll have to test his blood.”
“What isn’t spilled on the floor of Brit’s apartment.”
He pulls the keys from the ignition, opens his door. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go get your head examined.”
“Something I should have done long before becoming a cop,” I say.
It’s good to know people in high places. Because being accompanied by a highly respected senior APD detective like Nick Miller means a doctor goes right to work on me, setting me up with an MRI within the first ten minutes of my checking into the ER. After careful examination of my brain, the young doctor tells me she sees no evidence of a major concussion, despite two major blows in two days. A mild one possibly, but nothing that’s going to require a hospital stay. She does, however, clean up the small laceration on my head and informs me it won’t require stitches.
“Keep it clean,” she tells me, “and lay off any and all alcohol for forty-eight hours.”
“Awww,” I say.
“Awww nothing,” she counters. “I can smell it on your breath.” Turning to Detective Miller. “You too, Detective.”
Miller gives her a squinty eyed look like no one has ever questioned his sobriety, or lack thereof, before.
“The effects of alcohol on even the most minor of concussions can result in a stroke.” She smiles warmly. “We wouldn’t want that, now would we, Mr. Jobz?”
“No, ma’am,” I say, placing my hand over my chest. “Cross my heart.”
“Yes,” she says, “but please don’t hope to die on us.”
“Duly noted, Doc,” I say.
***
After signing a stack of insurance and discharge forms, Miller and I find ourselves on the elevator that will take us to the fifth floor where my mother is convalescing in a private room. Soon as we get off the elevator, I hear a voice as familiar to me as the back of my hand.
“I asked for a grilled cheese sandwich with yellow aged Vermont cheddar,” the voice barks. “This . . . this is a piece of cold white rubber between two pieces of stale white bread, that’s what this is.”
The door to her room is open. Miller and I enter.
“Hi, Mom,” I say.
She’s sitting up, a pile of white pillows supporting her back. The mobile cart is set before her with some kind of sandwich set on a white plastic plate along with some apple slices. My guess is that the cold cheese sandwich was never meant to be a grilled cheese sandwich in the first place.
“How are you feeling, Mom?” I say, coming around the bed and kissing her cheek.
“How am I feeling, Steven?” she says. “Will you just look at this? I specifically ordered a grilled, yellow Vermont cheddar cheese sandwich on white toast, French fries, and a small bottle of champagne. What do I get? I get this monstrosity. How much are your father and I paying for this hotel? I bet they don’t even serve this kind of crap in a hospital.”
I turn to Miller. He looks me in the eyes. The look on his face says, just go with it.
“I agree, Mom,” I say, taking hold of the plate. “Would you like me to call the manager?”
“No, no, no,” she says. “I don’t want to get him in any trouble. Just put the plate back down already.”
“Whatever you say, Mom,” I say.
I set the plate back down on her mobile cart. She lifts one of the triangular halves with her frail, almost bird-like hand, steals the tiniest of bites.
“She’s starving,” I whisper to Miller. “The pillow cushion should taste good to her right about now.”
I take hold of the pink plastic water container, pour some into her cup.
“Here’s some of the bubbly you ordered,” I say.
Leaning forward, she places her lips around the straw and inhales some of the water. Releasing the straw she does something I haven’t seen her do in weeks. Maybe months. She smiles.
“Well, at least they got the champagne right,” she says.
“Well, that’s good to hear, Mom,” I say. “Enjoy your lunch. I’ll come around to check on you later.”
She steals a much larger bite of the sandwich. Already her face seems less pale, her entire being far healthier than it was even twelve hours ago.
“That sounds fine, Steven,” she says. “You must have a lot of homework to do. Don’t skip it just because your father and I allowed you to come with us to Florida. You will stay inside the hotel room and finish it all up while Dad and I go to the beach later. And no TV. I don’t like that nasty Miami Vice show all you kids watch. Too much violence.”
“Got it, Mom,” I say. “No Crockett for me tonight. Maybe I’ll catch Little House on the Prairie.”
I approach Miller.
“She seems happy,” he whispers.
“In her own mind,” I say. “I wish my reality were a nice hotel on the beach in Florida.”
“Maybe one day you’ll lose your marbles, too,” he says.
“If I stay in this business, I will,” I agree.
“Crockett,” he says, not without a laugh.
“Crockett,” I repeat. “Sometimes, you just gotta laugh.”
Together, we head out of the hospital room and back to reality.
Slipping back in Miller’s cruiser, I pull down the eye shade and stare at myself in the mirror. I can’t help but touch the tender wound on my head.
The Extortionist Page 19