by Tony Bulmer
The car stopped. The chauffeur got out; he spoke brief words to the girl and popped the door. As she got in King ogled her slim athletic legs rising up into her micro-miniskirt. She took off her mask right away and flashed him a look. King almost cried out in surprise, not a girl at all—but a woman, a very beautiful woman and she wasn’t Chinese! Foreign girls were not uncommon in the district, but to find one so beautiful, that was rare—and most collectable. He eyed her face, greedily drinking in her looks. She was older than he liked, but her face showed character. The nose had definitely been broken on more than one occasion, and then there was the scar just above her left eye, a souvenir from some pimp no doubt. Well, she would very soon have no further worries about that, or anything else for that matter. She had embarked on her final ignominious journey into the sordid world of the flesh.
Irving King gave the girl a greedy, lascivious look. He felt the reassuring weight of the snub-nosed .38 pressing up against his crutch. If only she knew—if only—she could accentuate his pleasure of the terror that was to come—
The girl was rooting in her purse now, so cheap and used and shabby, probably looking to pop a pill, or smear some lurid cosmetic across her lips. How feeble how pathetic how…
The handgun came out quickly, not even a pause. The girl raised the gun under her arm and fired through the back of the drivers seat, three shots bursting fast through a short-barreled suppressor. Irving King barely had time to draw breath. He reached for his gun, but he was way too slow. The girl landed him a savage kick in the chest, her stiletto heel impaling him just below the sternum.
He gasped then, a horrible strangled gasp rattling out of him as the terror of the unfolding attack took him in its grip and squeezed.
The woman was pointing the gun at him now, holding it in front of his face, so he could stare down the barrel. Karyn Kane said quietly, “You failed. Everything you dreamed of will be destroyed. I want you to think on that as you travel down to hell.”
Irving King opened his mouth to respond, but his words vaporized in a red mist, as three fast shots impacted his face at close range. Karyn paused—looked at the corpse in the white suit slumped across the leather bench seat. She contemplated the inertia for a long moment then she popped him again—shot him straight through the heart. She opened the door and rose out of the vehicle. The yellow mist closed around her. She breathed deep, felt the toxic burn, then turned slowly, methodically and emptied the rest of the magazine into the corpse. An indulgence, outside normal operating protocols, but under the circumstances she felt she not only deserved it—but the target required it. Karyn popped the magazine out of her SIG and tossed it into the death car. In this area of town it would be an hour or more, before the cops arrived and by that time she would be flying out the country. No doubt she would return to the place they were now calling the New China, but by the time she did, she would be someone else entirely.
70
Manhattan, Aftermath
Huds Helman was outraged. The revelation was so unwholesome it might almost have been snatched from the fevered minds of the God-hating liberal subversives.
True patriots across the nation were up in arms. Truman Whitaker was their candidate after all—an all-American hero who had faced adversity for his country and emerged triumphant. His emergence from the smoking wreckage of the Rockefeller centre with lifeless body Erin Francelle clutched so caringly in his arms had been beamed around the world countless times. It was an act of American heroism on par with the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, or the bravery of the 911 heroes—how could such a moment be sullied?
As the Hudster watched, the news pictures on the studio widescreen, he could hardly believe his eyes. Surely, this would throw the entire election into question? The emotion welled up within him. The listeners would be apoplectic. How was it possible that this revelation had been held back until such a crucial point in the electoral process? Helman banged his meat-pie fist on the makeshift wooden desk. How he hated the new studios—a dingy little basement on the lower-eastside? The best he could afford right now, after that traitor Irving King had ripped off his money. Who would have thought, a man like that? The injustice of it all was infuriating, and now this. Helman could barely bring himself to look at the television screen—they certainly seemed happy, but what good could come of it? The prospective First Lady of the United States of America giving birth to a brown-skinned al-Qaeda baby, squirted inside her by some rapist Pakistani terrorist? Helman chugged Cognac. Hell, he was no goddamn racist—he knew any number of colored folks, even liked some of them; but others—well, they would judge wouldn’t they?