by Sam Jones
Kruger motioned toward the kitchen. “Still buying me that cup of coffee?”
Victor took the cue and moved toward the pot. He grabbed a towel, took off the lid, grabbed a strainer from the island, and then proceeded to pour a cup’s worth of fresh coffee into a mug with “World’s Best Fisherman” glazed onto the porcelain. He inhaled and took a moment to appreciate the steamy aroma batting at his face like a soft mist for what would most likely be the last time in his life.
He looked at his achievement, glanced at the coffee one last time, and handed it over to Kruger.
Kruger held up the mug in thanks. He took a sip. He then nodded his approval before casually throwing the mug at the ’60s-style refrigerator to his right and smashing it to pieces, porcelain flying and coffee staining the walls, a splash landing right on Victor’s slippers.
“Now that hit the spot,” Kruger said. “Thank you.”
Victor’s nostrils flared. “Just get it over with, you bastard,” he said. “Do whatever it is you’re going to do.”
Kruger rubbed his hand in a circle on Victor’s back. He then softly pat him a couple of times and said, “You got it, boss.”
He took a few steps back, pulled out his pistol, and disengaged the safety.
“One last thing,” Victor said as his hand wandered over to the drawer inside the kitchen island.
“Shoot,” Kruger said as he moved toward the kitchen and stood three feet shy of Victor.
Victor opened the drawer and quickly produced the Magnum handgun he had loaded and stored inside in a blink.
Eyes went wide as the shots were fired.
Victor squeezed off five solid shots, his feet well planted and shot placement accurate despite his age and physical decline, a product of military-instilled muscle memory that never failed him even up until the moment he died.
Kruger fell to the floor, and Mr. Thompson ducked out of the way as soon as the drawer opened. Fedora and Pads were hit in their chest and faces and blown hard against the wall as their blood stained the room.
From a prone position on the kitchen floor, Kruger shot his foot out and caught Victor in his left knee. The old man’s frail leg bent, broke, and gave out. He fell to the right and smacked his head against the kitchen island, his lights going out with a crunch of his skull the second he made impact with the edge of the counter. His body fell and sprawled out along the floor.
Kruger checked for a pulse on Victor’s neck.
He shut his eyelids.
“Shit,” he hissed.
Mr. Thompson looked at the corpses of Pads and Fedora, Pads face down and sprawled at the legs of the coffee table, and Fedora in a twisted heap inside the fireplace.
“How the hell did he have a gun?” Kruger asked Mr. Thompson scornfully. “Did you know that the ex-cop had a goddamn cannon in his utensil drawer?”
Mr. Thompson shook his head.
Kruger pointed at Pads and Fedora’s bodies. “Did these two idiots know when they scoped the joint out last night after the old bastard left to go for his evening walk?”
Mr. Thompson shook his head again.
“For Christ’s sake,” Kruger said as he waved the ghostly looking man off. “I had a whole one-liner I was going to say to him and everything.”
Kruger checked his watch: 8:17 a.m.
He took a glance around the room, noted the carnage, and then proceeded to kick the lifeless body of Victor Ellroy several times before finally calming down.
“Okay,” he said to Mr. Thompson. “We’re done here. Burn it.”
Mr. Thompson moved toward the front door. “I need the supplies,” he said in his monotone voice before exiting the house.
Kruger, a few moments of silence to himself, stepped over the body of Victor Ellroy, leaned against the kitchen island the man had cracked his head open on, took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up with a Zippo. He stared at Victor Ellroy’s body and puffed away, shaking his head and feeling disappointed at the deviation from the plan.
Mr. Thompson reentered the house, a yellow-and-red gas can in his hand and the fumes of white gasoline immediately permeating the air as he moved toward Victor’s body.
Kruger checked his watch again: 8:18 a.m.
“Let’s get a move on, Mr. Thompson.”
Mr. Thompson positioned Victor’s body in the middle of the living room and began dousing every inch of the house in gas with a strong emphasis on all the dead bodies. The fumes were thick and acrid and stung his and Kruger’s eyes, but Mr. Thompson, always the emotional void that he was, didn’t seem to mind the aggravation.
The cabin now soaked, both men moved toward the front door as Kruger took one last puff of the cigarette, turned on his heel, and flicked it toward the floor. The entire living room erupted in flames right as the burning tobacco made contact with the carpet fibers.
Kruger and Mr. Thompson then left the house, Kruger shutting the front door behind them as the raging fire began to consume every part of the cabin along with the bodies of Pads, Fedora, and former US Marine Corps Captain Victor Ellroy.
Kruger and Mr. Thompson arrived in a Pontiac at the small landing strip ten miles east of where the pile of ashes and scorched wood that used to be known as Victor Ellroy’s residence was still smoldering, a Gulfstream III gassed up and waiting for them with a cross-armed pilot lingering near the steps of the aircraft. “Where are the other guys?” he asked.
“They sucked at their jobs,” Kruger said as he ascended the steps with Mr. Thompson directly in tow. “It’ll just be me and Mr. Thompson this morning.”
The overpaid and coked-up pilot said zip, feverishly rubbed his red nostrils, and followed after Mr. Thompson into the plane. Kruger and Mr. Thompson moved through the cabin, the satellite phone resting on one of the polished wooden tabletops ringing incessantly. “It’s been ringing for twenty minutes,” the pilot said as he moved into the cockpit.
Kruger moved over to the black, phonebook-sized telephone, unhooked the receiver and held it to his ear while he stripped off his coat and gloves. “What is it?”
“It’s Brent,” said a familiar voice of one of his many thugs on the other end of the line. “There’s a problem.”
Kruger clenched his jaw and sat in one of the cushy white leather chairs.
“Talk to me.”
“Our guys who were following Hector, the FBI agent, and the woman were killed.”
“Both? Rudolpho and Whitaker?”
“Yeah. They got shot down in a helicopter they were using, apparently.”
Kruger tightened his grip on the receiver. “A helicopter? Those stupid shits were just supposed to tail them.”
“It worked out in your favor,” Brent said. “You were going to kill both of them anyway.”
“Quite true. Okay, where’s the agent and the woman now?”
“I don’t know…” Brent replied.
Kruger gritted his teeth and clicked them several times.
Bret continued on. “It looks like the helicopter our guys were using got shot down in Little Havana. I got wind of it on the scanners and went over to take a look. I saw local PD hauling out Hector’s body.”
“He’s dead too?”
“Very.”
Kruger sunk his head into the headrest. “He was dead anyway. Just sooner than he was supposed to be.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Stay on the cops. See if that FBI agent or that bitch he’s with surfaces. Call me back the second you hear something.”
“There’s one more thing.”
“What is it?”
“I worked some local contacts and got word that the woman, Maria Velasco, is actually an undercover cop for Miami-Dade PD. Her real name is Maria Delgado.”
Kruger grunted.
“Un-fucking-believable…”
He slammed down the receiver and pushed the phone away.
Mr. Thompson stood at attention for an update.
“Hector Fuentes is dead,” Kruger said. “A
nd that woman working with him is a cop, apparently.”
Mr. Thompson took a step forward. “They took care of Hector for us. We can call off our people in Chicago now.”
“Hector wasn’t supposed to die yet. Salazar wanted to kill him. Personally.”
Kruger cracked his knuckles as he thought of his next play.
Then a thought came to him. “What men do we have in Chicago, right now?”
Mr. Thompson replied, “Lowe, Hall, and McCarthy. Lowe and Hall were initially planning to take Hector when he arrived at the Greyhound station.”
“And Hector was given the key to the locker there? Right?”
“Yes. The key was delivered to him, and he was instructed of the plan several times. He was told to go to the Greyhound station and retrieve the address for the hotel he would allegedly be meeting Salazar at from the locker. Our people were going to take him there and then deliver him to Salazar.”
Kruger had a thought.
He realized that if the FBI agent and the woman had talked to Hector—maybe Hector had told them about his Chicago plans.
“Get Lowe on the horn,” Kruger said. “I want to talk to him.”
Mr. Thompson reached for the satellite phone.
“I have a feeling,” Kruger said as he reclined his chair, “that we just might get lucky…”
Kruger, though his plans were somewhat interrupted, remained confident. Nothing was going to stop him.
He was too close to the finish line.
21
THE 757 TOUCHED down in O’Hare International Airport just before 8:30 a.m. local time. Billy and Maria got off the flight, carefully monitoring everyone and everything they laid their eyes on, sniffing out a trail like bloodhounds, suspicious of damn near everyone and damn near everything.
Billy located a payphone on the ground level of the airport, called the number on the back of the Greyhound locker key, and got the address from the guy working the desk: 630 West Harrison Street. One taxicab and thirty-four minutes later, Billy Reese and Maria Delgado were standing on the corner of Randolph and Clark in the heart of the Windy City, bustling with the activity of three million citizens setting about the beginning of their day with work bags in hand and a hustle in their step.
Billy loved Chicago. He preferred it to a city like New York. The energy was just different. Sure, the winters were bullshit, but it was quicker to navigate—in his opinion—and the food was an emotional experience that had put Billy in quiet little comas with a slack and gratified look on his face. He had been to the state twice before for different reasons: once in ’82 to attend a wedding with his ex, the other in ’84 to track down a killer in a town five hours southwest of Chicago.
The former outing for Billy was slightly less enjoyable than the latter.
He turned to Maria. “Hungry? I’m sure whatever’s in that locker can wait ten more minutes.”
Maria took a look around for places providing sustenance. “I could eat.”
They moved across the street, both of them feeling their stomachs honing in on the rickety little deli wedged between a used bookstore with works in line with Salinger and a movie rental joint with flicks the likes of Stallone. It was a seat-yourself kind of situation, with only three tables to choose from in a place that felt no wider than a photo booth and black-and-white framed photos of blues musicians mounted on the walls. Cream-colored everything, with earth-brown porcelain cups steaming with dark-roasted coffee. Billy and Maria ordered a pair of sandwiches, the guy with the greasy apron filled their cups, and three minutes later a pair of BLTs were placed in front of them.
“I’m going to call a friend of mine over in Vice after we check out that locker,” Maria said. “See if he can run the tail number of the helicopter you shot down with the FAA.”
“Ferris is doing the same,” Billy said.
They ate, both of them chowing down with that antisocial focus that all hungry people possessed when food was finally available. It took them both about three minutes in total with very few breaks in between.
“Man,” Billy said, washing the last bit of sandwich down with some coffee. “I could use a nap.”
“I know what you mean,” Maria said.
In the kitchen, on the shelf over some dried goods, the cook turned up the dial on the radio as he went about frying up some eggs for the boss who had slipped out back for a smoke break.
“It has been over a year,” the female anchor said over the radio, using that up/down cadence as she spoke, “since forty-one-year-old James Huberty took the lives of twenty-one people at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California. The wife of the gunman, Etna Huberty, has now filed a lawsuit against her husband’s former employer…”
The report continued on.
Maria pointed toward the radio. “You remember that?”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “Goddamn awful. Too many guns in this world. Period.”
“Trying to get rid of it should be simple. But it isn’t. You’re battling constitutional law at the end of the day. It’s tricky. But you do wonder how many bodies need to end up in the morgue before someone puts their foot down and says ‘cut the shit.’”
“Corruption runs deep,” Billy said. “And bullshit tends to stretch a long way.”
“Says the guy working for the FBI.”
“Ouch.”
“Is it true?” Maria asked.
“Is what true?” Billy said.
“That our faux cowboy president was an informant for the FBI way back when.”
Billy sipped his coffee. “I take it that you don’t like old Ronny.”
Maria gave him the eye. “Don’t tell me you do.”
Billy took a moment to ponder his verdict.
He didn’t have one.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I try to stay away from politics.”
Maria tilted her head back, rolling her eyes as she said, “Oh eat me.”
“I’m serious.”
“That’s a cop-out answer.”
“A: nice pun. And B: how do you figure?”
“I just do.”
“Solid argument. Thank God you’re a cop and not a lawyer.”
“Yeah. Whatever. I still think that it’s a lame answer.”
Billy polished off the coffee, and sat back, taking a moment to relax before kicking things back in motion. He said, “Tell me you’re not one of those people who starts freaking out and saying the world is going to end when the person they didn’t like gets elected?”
Maria shrugged. “Feels that way sometimes, but…I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like the presidency itself is an archaic institution. I mean, one person running the whole show? That just doesn’t sound right to me.”
“You know there’s this thing called ‘check and balances,’ right?”
“Refer to your last quote about corruption.”
“Everything is cyclical,” Billy said. “The US presidencies are no different.”
Maria killed her coffee and pushed the mug toward Billy—ball in his court. “Do tell…”
Billy planted his elbows and leaned in and took his time trying to phrase it. He wasn’t a poly-sci major. Hell, he didn’t even know where his polling location was.
(It was two blocks from his house.)
But Billy Reese knew people, and the one thing that people had in common, the one thing that drove human beings to do the irrational, fucked-up, misguided things that they did was the one thing that made every human being a human being.
Emotion.
See, most of the people at the bureau didn’t like Billy because he wasn’t like them—he wasn’t analytical. The FBI had taken pride in being able to solve a crime with logic, science, deduction, and facts, and to their credit, it worked. But when it came down to sitting in a room, to seeing what kind of decisions a person made, to knowing whether they were going to go through door A or B came down to a matter of listening to their gut, and that’s what Billy went with when it came to busting the bad ones: his gu
t.
And to his credit, it worked.
Really well.
“Let me put it this way,” he said to Maria. “If we can live through Nixon, we can live through anything.”
“But you didn’t really say what you mean by ‘cyclical.’ About how stuff like the president, or presidents, is a cyclical thing.”
“I think I’m trying to say we’re creatures of habit. I also think I’m trying to say that most people can only see directly in front and behind themselves. People like to think the new ‘bad guy’ is something special, but he’s just the same asshole in a different-colored tie. That’s all.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. Shit, I mean, it feels like memories and attention spans are getting shorter by the minute in this country. The next generation will have the most access to information but will probably judge everything without objectivity. Without knowing all the facts. And our culture, money, and politics seem to ride this kind of…wave. We make progress, and then we take two steps back. We ditch fashion trends, and then we bring them back. Someone great comes in to be the new boss, and then someone shitty comes in after him. The process kind of repeats itself through the years.”
They shared the silence, both of them digesting the other’s words and trying to figure out what the hell it all meant.
“So,” Maria said. “If that’s how life works, according to you, then what does it all mean? How do you fix this self-destructive cycle?”
“Fuck, man…I don’t know. I’m just a street cop for Pete’s sake. I’m just asking the questions. I’m not really providing any answers for them.”
“Try your best answer.”
Billy thought about it a beat.
He then said, “It’s like I said before when I mentioned Nixon. A lot of people I knew thought the world was going to end or something when he got elected. I mean, Christ, to their credit that asshole was sauntering around the White House like a fucked-up teenager on prom night with the nuclear football in his hands on multiple occasions.”
“I’m surprised a bomb didn’t go off.”
Billy held up a finger. “Here’s the thing, though, the staff around him, even though some of them were as bad as he was, would have never, ever let him push that button should that time have come. Hell, maybe it did come. Maybe they did stop him. But the point here is simple: checks and balances. Terrible shit happens. Yes. Certain types of bad things keep happening. Yes.