The Mark hp-1

by Jason Pinter

“Don’t have a fucking heart attack, I’ll leave.” Then he whipped the gun around and pointed it at Luis’s head. “But not until I get what I came here for.”

  Christine spoke softly, her will crumbling. “I told you. We don’t have it.”

  “Bullshit!” he roared. “If you don’t tell me where it is in five seconds…” He looked back at me and smiled. “And if you do tell me, I’ll leave. Just like I promised Henry.”

  Saliva spilled down Christine’s lips as she spoke. “Please, I swear, we don’t have it.”

  “One.”

  Christine’s body tensed, a helpless wail escaping her lips.

  “I’m calling the cops,” I said. “Right now.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “This’ll be done in four seconds anyway. You think they’ll be here in four seconds?” Then he added, “Two.”

  “Please don’t do this,” Christine sobbed. “Please just listen…”

  “Three.”

  Christine was frantically working her bonds, rubbing them harder and harder against the radiator. The ropes were fraying. She was almost free.

  Then the man stepped forward and whipped his pistol against Luis’s head. His neck snapped back and blood poured from his temple.

  “Jesus Christ!” Christine screamed. “Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus.” She rocked back and forth, reaching for her wounded husband. “You leave him alone!”

  “Four.”

  There was no thought process, no weighing of right and wrong. As soon as the man counted four, I drove my shoulder into the small of his back, sending him sprawling forward. The gun flew from his grip and landed by Luis’s feet. I kept driving until his head collided with the wall, a whoosh of air escaping his lungs. The man groaned. He swung an elbow that glanced off the top of my head, rattling me.

  Luis was babbling, bubbles spraying red foam over his lips. Christine was working her ropes like a handsaw.

  I dove for the pistol, my stomach smacking on the hard-wood floor. Then it was in my hand, my finger sliding through the trigger guard, when I felt a sharp pain as he kicked me in the ribs. I doubled over, fire burning through my side. The gun fell from my grasp.

  I looked up at Luis, his eyelids fluttering, barely coherent. Suddenly, I was fighting for three lives.

  As I struggled to get to my feet, the heel of his palm struck me in the solar plexus. The wind knocked out of me, I dropped to a knee and gasped. The man touched a finger to his nose, saw it come away red with his blood.

  “You little fuck,” he said. “You had the chance to mind your fucking business. I didn’t want to kill you, you brought this shit on yourself.”

  He bent down and reached for the gun. I leapt up, stomped on his wrist with my heel. A sharp crack reported as the bone snapped. He cried out in pain and stumbled back, cradling his maimed appendage.

  Again I went for the gun, but he kicked it away, skittering it between my legs until it came to rest by the door. For a second neither of us moved. I was closer to the door.

  I went for the gun but a massive shoulder slammed me against the door. The hinges groaned, and the door buckled. I grabbed a fistful of hair, pulled hard. The man screamed.

  He stepped back, wrenching himself free. Again I went for the gun, and again was driven into the door, my head slamming viciously against the metal. This time, the hinges gave way.

  The door collapsed outward, and we toppled into the hallway. His two hundred and fifty pounds fell on top of me like a mushy sandbag. I felt a sharp pain in my ribs where he’d kicked me, every breath like a knife in my lungs. I was dizzy from the blow to the head.

  The man rolled onto his back as I pushed myself up. When I got to my feet, I noticed that everything was silent.

  Then I saw the gun pointed at my head.

  “Stupid fuck,” the man said. His right arm was folded across his chest, sling-style, while his left was fingering the trigger.

  I stopped breathing. My mouth went dry. I could be dead in less time than it took for my heart to beat.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “I didn’t come here for you,” he said, breathing slowly. I could tell from his eyes that he’d killed before. There was no fear, no hesitation. If he wanted me dead, I was dead. There was no moral ambiguity to it.

  I gritted my teeth. Tried to think of something to say. Something that might dissuade him. Something poignant that might reach him.

  Instead, the only word I could muster was “Don’t.”

  He smiled. Blood stained his teeth.

  I closed my eyes, thought of that night. Mya.

  There was a yelp, and the thunder of a gunshot. I expected a ripping pain to tear through me, but when I opened my eyes Christine had managed to free herself from her bonds and was hanging on the man’s back, her fingers clawing at his face. The gun had discharged into the ceiling, pieces of plaster sprinkling down like snow.

  As she pounded his head with her fists, red nail polish chipped and flaking, purplish ligature marks on her wrists, the man struggled to free himself. He leaned over and rammed Christine into the wall, back first. She whimpered and crumpled to the ground.

  Again he aimed the gun at me and I charged. We both fell, and my hand closed around the gun’s muzzle. My heart felt ready to burst as I climbed on top of him, my knees straddling his chest, trying to pry the gun away. He was stronger. The gun was swinging back toward me.

  To beat him, I needed leverage. To take him off guard.

  I relaxed my grip, and as the gun lined up with my chest, I rolled over, heard a small gasp as he lost balance. I didn’t know where the gun was pointed, but suddenly I had a better grip. My fingers searched frantically for the trigger guard.

  Just as my finger entered the smooth, circular hole, I felt his meaty finger join mine. On the trigger. Then his finger tightened its grip.

  There was a tremendous explosion, and a flash of light burned my eyes. The gun propelled itself into my shoulder, knocking me backward. I got to my knees, surprised to find the gun in my hand. Finally I had control. I looked for my target.

  He was lying on his side. And he wasn’t moving.

  A faint curl of smoke wafted from a tattered hole in his raincoat. A pool of blood began to spread out on the floor beneath him.

  “Oh fuck,” I said. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.”

  The gun clattered to the floor. I looked around the hallway, saw faces peeking out of doorways. I locked eyes with an elderly woman, who quickly shut her door when she saw the carnage. Christine picked herself up, wincing as she touched the back of her head. She limped over and looked at the man. Terror was etched on her face, as though she were being lined up before a firing squad.

  “Dios mio,” she said softly, crossing herself. “He can’t be…we didn’t have it…”

  “Is he…” I whispered. Christine said nothing.

  I knelt down, my legs like cooked pasta. The man’s eyes were wide open, his mouth frozen in an O shape. A thick slab of tongue lolled in his mouth as I fumbled for his wrist, pressed my fingers against his veins. Nothing. I felt my wrist, just to make sure I was holding the right place, and felt blood coursing through my body faster than I thought possible. Gingerly stepping over the spreading pool of blood, I pressed my fingers against his fleshy, unshaven neck. Nothing.

  “Oh…my God,” I said, standing up, stumbling backward.

  “Is he…” Christine said, nodding at the body.

  “I think so.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” she whimpered. “God, no.” She should have felt safe now that he was dead, but the look of terror in Christine’s eyes was even greater than before.

  Luis was still slumped in his chair. Christine stumbled past me into the kitchen, returning with a carving knife. She began slicing through her husband’s bonds. I caught my breath, dizziness spreading over me, the lifeless eyes of a corpse boring a hole in my back.

  “What are you doing?” Christine yelled.

  I said, “Shouldn’t we…”

  Sirens blar
ed in the distance. My blood ran cold.

  “Go!” she cried, tearing rope away from Luis’s wrists. “Get out of here!”

  I stumbled back, picked up my backpack and charged into the stairwell. I took three steps at a time, pain shooting through my body with every breath.

  I burst into the warm night. Nothing made sense. I broke into a full sprint, headed south down Broadway and didn’t stop until my lungs were on the verge of bursting.

  I ducked into an alleyway, saw a homeless man sleeping under a cardboard box. My head throbbed. I couldn’t run anymore. I sat down, and pulled my legs up to my knees. I heard faraway sirens, and the blackness overcame me.

  7

  Joe Mauser couldn’t sleep. His torso was warm under the covers. His legs were naked, cold. He eyed the finger of scotch on his nightstand. He left one there every night. Sometimes it worked. Often it didn’t. And often he found himself going for a refill.

  Sitting up, Mauser squeezed the sleep from his eyes and looked at the clock-4:27 a.m. He flicked on the antique lamp that was a gift from Linda and John for his forty-fifth birthday. It was a reading lamp, they said. Only thing he read by that light was the proof number on the bottle. The only other item on the nightstand was his Glock 40.

  Joe lifted the scotch and took a small sip. He felt the liquid burn under his tongue, considered turning on the television. Sometimes watching QVC put him to sleep. Maybe scan the movie channels. No, that wouldn’t work. Only things on this late were titty flicks and infomercials.

  His legs were sore. Early morning runs. He’d lost twenty pounds over the last six months, working off a few years of complacency. Down to two-ten. Not terrible, but on a five-eleven frame dropping another twenty would do him good.

  Early morning runs were easy when you didn’t sleep much to begin with.

  He switched off the lamp and closed his eyes, hoping sleep might meet him halfway. Just as he felt darkness descending, the shrill ring of the telephone shattered any chance he had of slumber.

  Cursing, Mauser turned the light back on and picked up the receiver.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Joe? I wake you?” Mauser recognized the voice of Louis Carruthers, his old friend and the NYPD Chief of Department. Carruthers held the job since ’02, the fourth Chief of Department since 1984, back when it was referred to as Chief of Police.

  “No, you asshole, I just got home from the bowling alley.”

  Joe and Louis had been partners for three years in the NYPD. Then Mauser left to join the Feds down in Quantico, while Louis continued up the ladder. They met for drinks once or twice a year, but those occasions were always planned out weeks in advance. Louis calling this late, Joe didn’t think it involved sitting on bar stools and shoveling snack mix down their throats.

  “I’m uptown at 105th and Broadway,” Louis said. “We’ve got two assault victims on route to Columbia Presbyterian. There’s one more, and he’s…he’s not making it. Joe, you need to come up here.”

  “So you got a stiff up in Harlem,” Mauser said. “And you call me at the butt crack of daylight for what?”

  He heard Louis take a breath. He was struggling to get it out. “The victim, he took a. 38 in the chest. He was gone when we got here. We don’t want to move him until you have a chance to come up here, Joe.”

  “Is it the Pope?” Mauser asked. “’Cause if it isn’t the Pope or the President or someone really important, I’m going back to bed.” He heard deep breathing on the other end. Muffled speaking. Louis trying to cover up the phone.

  “You should come down here,” his friend said. “105th and Broadway. Follow the squad cars. It’s apartment 2C.”

  “Is there a reason I should give up a good night’s sleep to check out a random vic that’s not even under my jurisdiction?” He paused a moment. His heart began to beat faster. “Lou, is this call personal or professional? Should you be calling the bureau?”

  “I thought you should hear it from me before I do. Joe,” he said, his sigh audible over the phone, “we have an ID on the victim.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Please, Joe. I don’t want to tell you over the phone.” Mauser felt a flash of pain shoot through his stomach. It wasn’t the scotch. Something in Louis’s voice.

  “Lou, you’re scaring me, buddy. What’s going on?”

  “Just come down here.” Mauser swore he heard the man choke back a sob. “A lot of the guys haven’t seen you in a while. They’ll be glad to know you’re coming.” Then he hung up.

  Three minutes later Joe Mauser had on his leather jacket, a pair of beaten khakis, house keys snuggled in his pocket. Gun strapped to his ankle holster.

  Stepping into the warm May night, Federal Agent Joseph Mauser cinched up his coat and walked to his car. He turned on the radio. Listened to two talking heads argue over whose fault it was that the Yankees lost. He drove uptown, a gnawing feeling in his gut that the body he was about to see would mean many more sleepless nights lay ahead.

  8

  You wake up in a sun-dappled alley. Your ribs hurt. There’s a knot on the back of your head that throbs nonstop. You feel dizzy. A man wearing a cardboard box for a blanket blinks at you, his eyes adjusting to the sight of this stranger sharing his alley. His beard is frazzled and dirty. His hands look like he’s worked in a coal mine for twenty years. You think it has to be a dream. There’s no rational explanation. You have a bed. You live in an apartment paid for with your money. You have direct deposit. You have a MetroCard. You may or may not be in a relationship. You have a college degree. You have parents you fled three thousand miles to get away from.

  You stand up. There’ll be milk in the fridge, day-old coffee in the pot. It must be a dream. Where will the day take you?

  Then you remember the corpse lying at your feet. The pool of blood you avoided stepping in. The kickback as the gun fired into the man who came this close to killing you and two other people.

  And then you know it wasn’t a dream.

  The homeless man stared at me as I wiped the dirt from my hands on a discarded newspaper. He held a crinkled coffee cup that held a nickel and three pennies.

  “You new here?” he asked. Four rotted teeth jutted out from his black gums. “If you’re new here, you gotta pay a toll. I’m the tollbooth collector. Have been for two years. Last guy died. Tragedy. You can’t live on this block unless you pay the toll.”

  I absently went for my wallet, then thought better and headed toward the street. A voice behind me yelled, “Hey, you didn’t pay the toll!”

  Morning had broken. The sun was hot and bright. A beautiful early summer day. I checked my watch. It was eight fifty-three. I was due at work in seven minutes.

  Every breath brought pain. I stopped in front of a building with a waist-high brick outcropping. Lifting up my shirt, I saw a mild discoloration under my armpit. Nothing too bad, nothing broken. Just black and blue where I’d been savagely kicked.

  As I stood there, regaining my composure, winking away the dizziness, visions of last night came to me like a swarm of locusts. A man was dead because of me. Whether I’d pulled the trigger or not-it was all so fast, but I remember his finger in the trigger guard-I was responsible for another man’s death. It hadn’t sunk in yet, merely hovering around the fringes of my subconscious.

  I tried to help Luis and Christine. And now a man was dead. In my heart, I knew I wasn’t to blame. He could have killed them both. He would have killed me.

  My first stop had to be the police. They’d understand the situation, know the Guzmans were in mortal danger and I acted in their defense. He had the gun. He attacked two people. If I hadn’t been there, he might have killed them. I was a hero. My picture would be in the papers, bold-faced copy that could never be erased.

  Pride swelled in my chest as I stumbled down the street. I checked my backpack, took out my cell phone. It wouldn’t turn on. It must have broken during the fight. I looked for a pay phone to call 911. Then I began to notice something o
dd.

  Pedestrians were staring at me, vague recognition on their faces, mouths pursed like they were trying to pick someone out of a lineup. An unsettling feeling crept over me, but I dismissed it, assuming last night had shocked my senses into overdrive.

  But still…

  The body kept popping up in my head like a jack-in-the box with a busted spring.

  A man was dead because of me, and nothing else mattered. Two people were hurt, severely perhaps, hopefully being tended to. But there was still an 800-pound elephant in the room. What was that man looking for last night?

  He was at their apartment with a purpose. Christine seemed to know what he was talking about, but denied having anything in their possession. Luis was incoherent. But still, she knew…

  Perhaps there was a story in all of this. Maybe I could talk to the Guzmans, find the answers to the questions I’d gone back for last night. Approach Wallace with the story of a lifetime. A story few reporters my age would have the guts to go after. It could make my name. Maybe there really was a silver lining in all of this.

  But first I needed to call the cops. The truth had to be told.

  I found a pay phone on the corner of 89th and Broadway next to an aromatic delicatessen, and stepped into the booth. A couple walking a tiny dachshund eyed me suspiciously. The man, wearing a visor and Black Dog shirt, put his arm around the girl and hurriedly ushered her away, dragging the yelping dog behind him.

  Something was wrong. New Yorkers weren’t shocked that easily. It’s not like I was covered in blood, or tarred and feathered. If anything I was a bit disheveled, but nothing to elicit that kind of reaction. Something spooked them, but I couldn’t figure out what. My heart began to beat faster.

  The deli on the corner reminded me of how hungry I was. Maybe I’d get a bagel after setting the record straight. Food would feel good. Something to fill the empty feeling in my gut.

  Looking through the deli’s window, I saw an Arab man with a thick mustache and thinning hair talking on the phone. The hole in my stomach seemed to spill out burning acid when I noticed that he was staring at me as he spoke, his mouth moving in exaggerated, cartoonish gestures. Flamboyant nods. He mouthed the word “yes” several times. His eyes were deadlocked with mine.