by Bill Bernico
“This is crazy,” Fleming said. “Someone told you he was my son?”
“Not in so many words,” I said. “He told us he’d been contracted to kill you but he wanted us to find you first and save you because, like we told you earlier, he’s dying.”
Fleming glanced at me and then at Dad. “Something’s not right here,” Fleming said.
“What do you mean, Mr. Fleming?” Dad said.
Fleming sat down in my client’s chair. “My son died six years ago in Iraq. I don’t know who the man you met is, but he’s certainly not my son.”
Now Dad and I were alarmed. What did Smith have to gain by telling us this tall tale about his father? And why bring us in on it in the first place, unless. “Oh oh,” I said.
“What, oh oh?” Dad said.
“What if we’ve been set up?” I said.
“Set up?” Dad said. “By who?”
“Smith,” I said, “or whatever his name is. What if he just hired us to find Fleming for him and we’re the Judas goat?”
“He wouldn’t have to do that,” Dad said. “Remember, he’s the one who gave us Fleming’s name and address. He could have gotten to him without our help?”
I turned to Fleming. “Is it possible there’s more than one Harry Fleming in the Los Angeles area?” I said.
Fleming shrugged. “Not that I know of,” he said. “Why?”
“Dad,” I said, feeling queasy inside. “Would you hand me the phone book?”
Dad pulled the Los Angeles phone book out of the drawer in his desk and handed it to me. I flipped it open to the F section and found the list of Flemings. I ran my finger down the page until I came to Harry and then looked up at Fleming. “What is your address, Mr. Fleming,” I said.
“I live on Tamarind Avenue, just north of Fountain, why?” Fleming said.
Directly below the Tamarind Avenue Fleming was another Harry Fleming who lived on Wilcox Ave. My ears got hot and my heart sunk. “Oh shit,” I said.
“What is it?” Dad said.
“Smith must have given us the wrong name,” I said. “There are two Harry Flemings in the book.” I turned to Fleming. “Do you know this other Harry Fleming?”
“I didn’t even know there was another one,” Fleming said. “You think he’s the real target?”
“It probably doesn’t matter,” Dad said. “If Smith got the wrong information, chances are he got it from whoever ordered the hit. They probably don’t even know they have the wrong guy targeted. And we have no way of knowing who these people are. We couldn’t stop them if we wanted to. Hell, we don’t even know where to find this Smith character. So, for all practical purposes, Harry here is still their target and we have to carry on with our plan, same as before.”
“So I still have to lose everything and go into hiding?” Fleming said.
“It looks like it,” I said. “Unless Dad and I can find Smith or the people who hired him.”
My cell phone rang and I jumped somewhat. It was Gloria calling from the lobby. “I’m coming up,” she said.
I closed my phone and waited near the office door for Gloria. I heard the elevator door open, followed the sound of footsteps. The outer office door opened and I opened the inner door for Gloria.
“Now what’s with all the secrecy?” Gloria said when she stepped inside. She glanced at Fleming. “Who’s this?”
Harry Fleming,” I said, by way of introduction, “Gloria Cooper, my wife. She’ll be doing the makeup job on you.”
Harry extended his hand and Gloria shook it.
I explained Harry’s situation to Gloria and told her about my plan to fake Harry’s death.
“What effect are we trying to create here?” Gloria said. “I mean, what is supposed to be the cause of death?”
“I think we’re going to have to convince someone that Harry’s been shot,” Dad said. “After all, they sent a hit man and we saw the gun he was packing. How about if you do a makeup job around his forehead, making it look like a bullet hole.”
I looked at Harry. “Take off that jacket, would you Harry?” I said.
Harry removed the blue Transit Authority jacket, revealing a white shirt and tie.
“Perfect,” I said. “The red will make a nice contrast against the white.” I turned to Gloria. “Let’s make three or four bullet holes in the front of the shirt, accented by red and, oh hell, you know what we need. Just do your magic on him.”
“You want this done here in the office?” Gloria said. “Are you trying to create the effect that he was shot indoors?”
“Do you have a better suggestion?” I said.
“What about movie prop squibs?” Gloria said. “You know, they plant them under the shirt and set them off remotely. The effect looks very realistic. You video record the shooting part, cut to the close-ups and show his face and chest and you can almost convince yourself that he’s dead. It’ll sure as hell fool the contract killers.”
“Where are we supposed to get squibs on such short notice?” I said.
“I can get some,” Gloria assured me. “How much time do we have left?”
I looked at my watch. “About twenty-nine hours, according to Smith,” I said. “And that’s assuming he was telling us the truth about him dying.”
“Give me an hour,” Gloria said. “I have a contact at the movie studio who’ll let me have a handful and he won’t ask any questions.”
Dad and I exchanged glances with Harry. We all nodded and I turned to Gloria. “Go,” I said. “We’ll be here when you get back.” I locked the door again after Gloria left the office.
I turned to Dad. “Let’s use this time to get set up outside with the remote cameras,” I said. “We can use the alley between this building and the next. We can set up several of our surveillance cameras to capture the action from several different angles. I’ll also want to get some close-ups and once we finish I can edit the final mix to look like an amateur video caught Harry’s death.”
“Perfect,” Dad said. “Let’s get moving.”
“You think it’ll work?” Harry said.
“If this video doesn’t convince them, nothing will, short of throwing your actual body on their front lawn,” I said. “You wait here and keep the office door locked until Dad and I get back. Don’t open it for anyone else.”
“Don’t worry,” Harry said.
Dad and I set up six of our mini video cameras in strategic places in the alley. When we’d finished, Dad and I walked back to my van in the parking lot and checked the row of mini monitors that were permanently set up against one wall in the back of the van. All the cameras were functioning perfectly and all were getting good video of the alley.
“This should do the trick,” Dad said.
“We’ll want to wait until dark,” I said. “It’ll have a better effect with lower lighting. That’ll give Gloria a little more time to dress Harry up with the squibs. Have you ever seen squibs work?”
“Only in the movies,” Dad said. “I haven’t actually seen them up close in person.”
“I have,” I told him. “Remember last month when I was working as a technical advisor for that movie studio? I was right there on the set when they set off the squibs under the actor’s shirt. If I hadn’t known they were just movie props, I’d have sworn that I had witnessed an actual killing. They’re that realistic.”
It was almost five o’clock when Dad and I had finished setting up the video cameras. Gloria made it back to the office at five-thirty. She was carrying a brown paper bag with her. She set it on the desk and reached into it, pulling out a man’s brunette wig. She set it on the desk and retrieved several packets with wires running out of them. They had adhesive backings on them as well.
“I could only get four,” Gloria said. “That should be enough for three in the chest and one in the head.”
“And that’s what the wig is for?” Harry said.
Gloria nodded and tried the wig on Harry, adjusting it to look as natural as possible. “I’ll
have to cut and style it to match Harry’s real hair,” she said. “Then all I have to do is score the back side with a razor blade.”
I had Harry take off his shirt so I could score several spots on the front with a razor blade. Scoring was a method of cutting little X patterns in the fabric so they’d blow out when the squib charge was detonated. It gave the red dye inside the packet a place to exit the shirt.
By the time Gloria had cut and styled the wig, situated all the squibs on Harry’s chest and inside the wig, it was almost seven-thirty. We were ready to go with our plan.
I looked out the window and then back at Harry. “We’ll give it another half hour,” I said. “It should be dark enough by then.” We used the extra time to rehearse somewhat. I explained the scenario to Harry and told him where to run, to best capture the action with the cameras. I told him where to stop in the alley and which camera would get the best shots of him when the squibs went off. At eight o’clock we all rode the elevator to the ground floor and exited to the parking lot. Dad sat in the back of the van, monitoring the scenes on the miniature screens. Gloria and I stayed with Harry in the alley.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s try a run-through Harry. Start right where you are and run to the telephone pole like someone is chasing you. You realize you’ve been cut off by a second person ahead of you. You stop in your tracks, throw your palms up in surrender, shake your head and beg for your life. Got it?”
Harry ran through the alley convincingly enough that I thought we could video the next take. “Ready Harry?” I said.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Harry said.
“Ready Gloria,” I said.
“Let’s do it,” Gloria said, her hands on the switches of the squib detonators.
I patted Harry on the shoulder. “Action.”
Harry ran perfectly to his markers, stopped, looked surprised and terrified, held his palms up and began trying to bargain with someone unseen out of camera range. I tapped Gloria on the shoulder and one by one, with only a fraction of a second between switches, flipped three switches that detonated three squibs under Harry’s shirt. The effect was perfect and Harry fell onto his back in the dark alley.
This is where I made my acting debut. In a dark coat with the collar turned up, a slouch hat on my head and black gloves, I walked into camera range and stood over Harry. I leveled my gun at Harry’s head and pulled the trigger at the exact same time that Gloria flipped the switch that detonated the squib under Harry’s wig. The effect was so life-like that I almost convinced myself that I’d actually shot him.
I hurried out of the shot and over to my van. I opened the door and looked at Dad. “How did it look from here?” I said.
“For a minute there I thought I was seeing an actual murder,” Dad said. “Well done, son.”
Gloria hurried over to where Harry lay and tapped him with her foot. “We’re all done, Harry,” she said. “You can get up now.”
Harry rolled to his side and onto his hands and knees. He pulled the bloody wig off his head and stood there holding it. It dripped down onto the surface of the alley. Gloria walked with him back over to the back door of our building. She handed Harry a towel and he wiped his face and hands and then wrapped the bloody wig in it. Dad and I joined them and we all rode the elevator back to the third floor. We locked the office door again and we all sat down.
“I think we pulled it off,” I said. “I just need to do a little editing with the video files to make it look like one continuous sequence and we can get it to Eric and he’ll make sure the TV station gets it on the air.”
“I sure hope this work,” Harry said.
“Have you given any thought as to where you’re going to go when this is all over?” Gloria said.
Harry slipped out of the bloody shirt and tee shirt and wrapped them up in the towel along with the wig. Gloria handed him the shirt she’d brought along and Harry slipped into it, buttoning it up and tucking it into his pants. “I thought I might like to live in Denver,” he said. “I’ve never been to Colorado. I’ve visited every state that surrounds it, but managed to miss Colorado itself. Denver’s big enough to get lost in. I can always find some kind of job there, I guess.”
Dad opened my desk drawer and pulled out the envelope John Smith had given us in the park. Dad withdrew five thousand dollars and put the rest back in the drawer. He handed the stack of bills to Harry. “That should get you started until you can get on your feet,” Dad said.
Harry stared at the stack of bills, his mouth hanging open. He looked back up at me. “Holy crap,” he said. “That’s awfully generous of you, Mr. Cooper.”
“It’s the least we can do for you, Harry,” Dad said. “I mean, after all, we yanked you off your job, disrupted your life and now you have to leave everything behind and start over. Besides, Smith paid us way more than our usual rate for this job. We’re still doing all right by him. I’m just glad we could help you out as well.”
Harry looked to me and I nodded as well. “Go ahead, Harry, take it,” I said, and returned to editing the video from the mini cameras.
It was nearly nine o’clock when I was satisfied with my editing job. I transferred the final version to a single USB jump drive and closed my laptop. I held the jump drive up and said, “We’ve got to get this to Eric right away.”
Dad held his hand out. “I’ll take it to him right now. Let me give him a call first.”
When Dad got off the phone he turned to me. “Eric’s at home now,” Dad said. “I’ll drop off the video there on my way home. Just watch for it on the news at eleven.”
Dad left the office and I turned to Harry. “You’ll come home with Gloria and me for tonight,” I said. “Tomorrow I’ll drive you to the airport or bus terminal, whichever you prefer.”
“Do you think you’ll try to find a job driving a bus in Denver?” Gloria said.
“Oh, hell no,” Harry said. “There’s one part of all this that I won’t miss one little bit. No more complaining people, crying babies, loud teenagers, pokey old people who take forever to get on and off the bus. Nope, I’m not going to miss that part at all. You know, I heard a saying about death and I wish I could remember where I heard it. It says something about death being the next great adventure. We’ll I’m going to experience my next great adventure without having to die first.”
“Let’s go home,” Gloria said.
When we got home, Gloria thanked Mrs. Chandler, sent her home and then made up the couch for Harry to sleep on. Dad called shortly after ten o’clock.
“Elliott,” Dad said. “I gave Eric the jump drive and he took it to KTLA and made sure someone there took the time to watch it. It should be on the news tonight at eleven. We can talk about it tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said. “I talked to Harry on the way home and he thinks he’d prefer to take the bus to Denver. How’d you like to ride with us to the bus terminal?”
“Great,” Dad said. “I’ll buy us breakfast on the way. How about if I swing by and pick you both up? I can’t imaging riding all the way to the terminal in the back of your van. I’ll be there at eight.”
“We’ll be ready,” I said and hung up.
Gloria and I sat around in the living room talking with Harry and waiting for the eleven o’clock news to come on. The anchor man came on the screen exactly at eleven and said, ‘In tonight’s headlines, local bus driver is killed, longshoremen go on strike and The Lakers win last night’s game’. The screen cleared and was filled with the image of Harry running through the alley and then being shot three times. Before the final shot to the head, the image blurred and the voiceover warned the viewing audience that the scene was too graphic for television, but went on to tell of how Harry Fleming, a local bus driver had been fatally shot earlier tonight and that police were busy following leads as to the killer’s whereabouts. The screen switched to a shot of the Long Beach docks and a reported stood with his microphone, telling the viewers about the proposed strike. I switched of
f the set.
“Looks like we pulled it off,” I told Harry. “You should be able to sleep like a baby tonight.”
Harry sighed with relief. “Thank you again, Mr. Cooper, Mrs. Cooper. I can’t wait to get out of this town and away from all this madness.”
“Your certainly welcome, Harry,” I said and then yawned. I excused myself and said goodnight. Gloria did the same and followed me into the bedroom. Harry kicked off his shoes and peeled off my shirt and stretched out on the sofa, pulling the covers over him.
The next morning when I got up Harry was already up and dressed and had made a pot of coffee. He was sitting at the kitchen table sipping from his cup when I walked in. It was just seven-thirty and Gloria was still asleep.
Dad showed up right on time and had a cup of coffee before the three of us headed out the door to Dad’s car. I sat up front with Dad and Harry slid into the back seat. I turned to Dad. “You know, if anyone at all suspects anything about that video last night, they may be watching the airports and bus terminals,” I said. “I think we should take Harry to a bus terminal out of town, say maybe Pasadena or Arcadia.”
“Let’s make it Arcadia just to be safe,” Dad said.
We made it in thirty-five minutes and parked in the bus terminal parking lot. Dad and I walked into the terminal with Harry and waited for him on one of the benches while he bought his ticket. Harry joined us on the bench a few minutes later. He held out the ticket and said, “Next bus leaves in fifteen minutes. Thanks again, guys for everything.”
I started to say something to Harry when I looked up at one of the three televisions that were playing overhead. I elbowed Dad and gestured at the TV with my chin. “Recognize anyone, Dad?” I said.
Dad looked up at the screen. It was our mysterious John Smith from the park. His mug shot appeared on the screen in both front view and side view and had several numbers displayed directly below him. The announcer went on to say that reputed underworld hit man, Reuben Cahill had been found dead in his hotel room early this morning. The report went on to say that the cause of death had not yet been determined, but that the body had shown no outward signs of trauma.