Shoot

by Kieran Crowley

  “The bird will hover over the street and never trespass,” Sparky said. “Let’s zoom in.”

  The forward video zoomed in on the large penthouse windows, which were lit from within. I saw high ceilings, Scandinavian-style living rooms, dining areas, and an indoor fountain. In a large study, the wall was crowded with long brown tubes. He zoomed in more. Muskets, dozens of them, including flintlock pistols.

  All the lights were on but nobody seemed to be home. Sparky circled around the building and scoped out the matching penthouse on the other side, which belonged to the other twin. The décor was different: glittering gold accents and crystal chandeliers. We couldn’t spot any coins until Sparky moved the drone upwards and shot downward. In the study there were rows of dark wood cabinets and gleaming glass tables. Inside, thousands of gold and silver discs. His coin collection. Again, no one was home.

  Sparky sent the drone to the penthouse below, but all the lights were off, the curtains drawn. The penthouse above was lit, revealing early American furniture but modern paintings on the walls, a combination that to my eye didn’t work. Just because you had money didn’t mean you had taste.

  When Jane came out to see what had become of us, we shut the recon mission down. “I recorded that, in case it was helpful,” Sparky told me.

  “I don’t think so but hold onto it. It confirmed what I already knew they collected—rare guns and rare coins. And ugly furnishings.”

  “Man, you may not like it but I bet every piece of furniture is worth more than we make in a year.”

  “Yeah but remember, Sparky, money can’t buy happiness.”

  “The fuck it can’t. You ever notice rich people never say bullshit like that? Only poor people.”

  64

  Jane was right. The Roehm brothers would not see me the next morning. They did business out of a giant skyscraper on Fifth Avenue with its own subway stop. It was easy to find, even for a new private detective like me, because three sides of the stone structure had ROEHM BUILDING chiseled into it in giant letters. After going through airport-level security and a search of my backpack, my Working Press pass only got me into a third-floor public relations office after waiting an hour. I told them I wanted to interview the brothers about current events. After a lot of BS, a very nice young blonde lady handed me a printed sheet with instructions on how to email my questions in advance to Roehm International. I asked her if it was worth the trouble. She looked around before answering in a hush.

  “Not really. I’ve been here four years and they don’t talk to the press at all, unless they want to and then they call you. I’ve never actually met them. But it can’t hurt to leave your information. Maybe they’ll call.”

  She made it sound like winning the Lotto. She handed me some glossy pamphlets on how Roehm International was a giant oil and toilet paper octopus spanning the globe but was run by two great down-to-earth guys who just wanted to help working Americans by creating cool jobs.

  After that, I hiked back to 740 Park Avenue and tried to get in. Silly me. My parents were not among the three-person crowd protesting the Roehm brothers today. A bit too much wine last night, maybe? The doorman told me no one by the name of Roehm lived there. I laughed. Then he told me they were out of the country. Then he told me to leave. I left.

  On West 59th Street, near the park, I passed a teacher with little preppy girls in starched school uniforms and pigtails. Like in the children’s book Madeline, but with a lot more money. A passing truck backfired loudly.

  “Poachers!” exclaimed one little girl, pointing into the trees.

  After I passed them, the eye in the back of my neck twitched. I headed west, across town. I called Izzy and asked him if he knew where the brothers were. He asked why I was asking. I told him I wanted to interview them.

  “Yes, I can’t but you can,” Izzy said. “Hold on.”

  He came back on the line after a minute and told me the address of their office.

  “I just came from there. They’re there now?”

  “Unofficially? Yes.”

  I wondered how he knew that but thanked him. As I walked, I fought the urge to look back and see who was on my ass. I continued west toward the convention center. It occurred to me I didn’t want to bring whoever it was who was following me to the hotel, so I diverted into Central Park to flush out my tail first. I picked up my pace and jogged until I saw an empty bench I liked on a rise near a boulder, with lots of open space around it. The bench was about thirty feet long and curved outward, along the path. The vertical structure of the outdoor seating was cement, anchored into the ground. The horizontal slats were green, possibly wood. Behind the bench, the open ground looked level and firm. I sat, took off my backpack and started placing items on the bench while I waited.

  When I spotted a black leather hipster’s hat and shades approaching with three other guys, I pulled on my gun gloves. Improvising, I wrapped my white charger cord twice around the inside hinge of my MacBook. It gave me just enough cord at the outside ends for me to get an outside grip onto the square white transformer box at one end of the charge and a little plug at the other end by running the cord through my gloves between the fingers on both hands. That left my thumbs free to flip the laptop computer open or closed. I put my mostly empty ballistic nylon backpack back on. Then I sat there with my wire-wrapped MacBook open on my lap, but facing away from me, like I was just another guy wearing gloves and surfing porno websites on a park bench on a hot summer day.

  They fanned out around the front of the bench. I wondered if Jay-Jay got a new hat and sunglasses or whether he had just cleaned up his original ones.

  “Hey, shitbird,” Jay-Jay said in a hoarse voice I had given him with my throat punch the last time we met.

  I looked at Jay-Jay and his crew and smiled. I never knew which one was Vinnie or Tony or Bobby but they were funny to look at. They were wearing the same uniform of designer jeans and blue silk shirts. One was wearing a big black knee brace. Another had white tape across his bent nose and his left eye was still swollen black and blue. The last guy had a cast on one hand, where I had snapped his thumb. I laughed. This seemed to infuriate them.

  “Laugh, now, motherfucker,” said Jay-Jay, pulling out a six-inch hunting knife.

  “Thank you, sir, may I have another?” I chuckled. “Seriously?”

  The others, hesitant, also pulled out matching blades. How cute.

  “We are going to cut you down to size,” Jay-Jay announced, echoing his mom’s expression.

  “Not as small as you, I hope.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” said Busted Nose.

  “What’s with the little laptop, shithead?” Knee Brace demanded. “Why’d you bring a computer to a knife fight?”

  “You gonna email the cops, dickwad?” Broken Thumb asked.

  They started to close in.

  I jumped vertically from a sitting position to standing on the seat under me.

  They stopped, stunned. I was holding my wired-up laptop defensively, like a small shield in front of me, half-open, like a sharp silver clamshell.

  It was their turn to laugh.

  “What? You gonna, like, Google us to death?” Jay-Jay sneered, hanging back. “I’m, like, twittering with fear, man.”

  He was. The smartest of the dim quartet, I caught him eying the sharp steel edges of my notebook. I jumped again, landing on top of the bench. I had the high ground, difficult to get at. I jumped back again, landing behind the bench, the solid structure now between us. I closed the laptop, making it one solid metal rectangle.

  Busted Nose lunged onto and over the bench first, leading with his knife. I just moved back and slapped his blade aside. It went dangerously wild, barely missing my arm. The outer surface of the notebook was too smooth for fencing. I slammed both edges of the computer hard onto the bridge of his nose. He made a high-pitched screech like a monkey and dropped his knife, blood gushing from his nose. I popped him again harder in the mouth with the laptop. Something crunched.
He wailed again, louder, and went down.

  One.

  Broken Thumb dove in but his legs hit the bench seat. He stabbed at me but this time I used the open laptop to snag and parry his blade, which caught in the keyboard. Before he could strike again, I followed through and swung the glass screen flat into his face. I could feel things cracking. I raked it tight against his face as I pulled away. His knife vanished as his good hand went to his eyes. He grunted, clutching his bloody face, which was now streaked with a dozen bleeding lines. He looked like a wild animal had been at him. I whacked him again firmly on the back of the head for good luck.

  Two.

  I heard him go down as I swung toward the others. Jay-Jay was hanging back but Knee Brace was in the air above the bench. He landed on my side of the bench, too close, as Jay-Jay slowly moved in, on the original side of the bench.

  Knee Brace was clutching his knife as I held open my laptop, clamshell-ready, edging away. He rushed me, bringing his blade up toward my gut. I fed him my keyboard, slammed it shut with his weapon inside and twisted hard toward the bench. His hand slammed a cement vertical. I twisted his snagged blade back the other way and he lost his grip. I flipped the knife to my right, opening the laptop to set it free before snapping it closed again. As the hunting knife flew away he clipped me in the chest with his other fist. I straight-armed the closed computer into his chin and he staggered onto the bench. I spun in a complete circle to the left, feeling something scrape my back. The laptop opened and I impacted a hard edge right under Knee Brace’s nose, upwards. He yelled and swung at me again, wild. I immediately sliced back the other way, one of the cutting edges getting him in the throat. I kicked at his injured knee as he fell backwards again.

  Three.

  Jay-Jay was angling to stab me over the bench. I lunged and banged my weapon flat on top of his hand. He wailed, lost his knife, stumbled backwards and sat down hard on the sidewalk. I vaulted over the bench, gave Jay-Jay one more whack on his knucklehead with my computer. He obviously wanted to run but knew he wouldn’t get far. I put my weird weapon down on the bench and removed my backpack. It was shredded. Chickenshit Jay-Jay, slashing at my back, came the closest to getting me, and I barely felt it.

  “Won’t you need that knife to cut me down to size, Jay-Jay?” I asked, pointing at his dropped blade, daring him to pick it up.

  “I wanted to use guns,” he whined. “But she wouldn’t… Next time…”

  “There won’t be a next time, dickless,” I told him.

  I checked out my MacBook. It was only slightly dented, scratched and scraped on the outside and along the edges. Some keys had been popped out of the keyboard. The screen was badly cracked but only missing a few slices of glass. Curious, I hit the power button. The laptop turned on. I was impressed.

  I glanced at my slashed backpack and at the shit-weasel on the ground.

  “In answer to your earlier question, Jay-Jay. I didn’t Google you to death. I fucking Facebooked you.”

  65

  Jay-Jay’s cellphone speaker amplified the call. I had scrolled through his contacts and found “Mom.”

  “So?” she asked.

  “Hi, Faith,” I said. “It’s not Jay-Jay. F.X. Shepherd here. How are you this morning?”

  “Fine, thank you, Shepherd… Why are you calling from my son’s phone?”

  “Because he can’t make the call.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know exactly what it means, Faith. You gave your little boy two shots at manhood and it was twice too many. What would you do if someone came to hurt you or kill you—twice? You would end the problem permanently, right? I’d rather not say it on a phone. You never know who’s listening these days.”

  “What? No, no, no! You filthy son of a… They were only… If you… I’ll kill you!”

  “Exactly. That’s what you would do. Would you blame me if I did the same thing? In self-defense?”

  “You’re a dead man,” she hissed.

  “What a strange thing for a law-abiding gossip columnist to say.”

  “I have no choice,” she said. “If you hadn’t… I know Jay-Jay is a… he’s a…”

  She was crying. Some Godmother.

  “I know what you’re feeling, Faith. I’ve been there. If only you hadn’t sent your ass-clown son on this stupid mission. If only you could go back and do things differently and bring him back to life—you’d give anything.”

  “You sick bastard!”

  “I also understand wanting revenge, Faith. Sending more guys out to annihilate the people who did this.”

  “Yes.”

  “But nothing you do can bring him back, Faith. Nothing. Every person you kill just makes it worse and worse and you disgust yourself. Then all those people you kill have friends and family and they come after you, thinking the exact same thing as you, wanting revenge. Your life becomes nothing but hatred. But all you really wanted was for it never to have happened. You just want to see him, talk to him again, but all your money and power are useless. Did I mention this was all your fault?”

  “You motherfucking…”

  “Please focus, Faith, we have to negotiate and I have things to do. I’m a busy guy.”

  “Negotiate? You must be crazy…”

  “Nope. I want something, you want something—let’s make a deal, that’s what negotiation is all about. For example, I don’t want to kill you, I just want you and your dumbass family and your moronic newspaper to leave me the fuck alone so I don’t have to do this anymore. That’s all I want. Very simple. What do you want at this moment?”

  “Unless you can bring my son back, friend, we have nothing to talk about.”

  “Okay, if you stop bugging me, we have a deal. Yes or no?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Will you leave me alone if I can bring Jay-Jay back from the dead? Yes or no?”

  “What? I’m going to…”

  “Last time. Last chance, lady—yes or no?”

  She was quiet for a change.

  “Yes?”

  “Okay, that was easy, wasn’t it? I will hold you to your word. I hope you keep your bargains better than the other guys in your business I’ve met. Here.”

  I took the leather hipster’s hat out of Jay-Jay’s mouth, where I had stuffed it, and handed him back his phone. He whined for a while and I heard her crying. I packed up my dinged laptop, noticing there was some blood on it. Yuk. Moron germs. I wondered if my power cord still worked. Meanwhile, I made an anonymous call to 911 about three injured guys in the park. As I walked away, the mafia brat called me back.

  “Hey, she wants to talk to you again,” he said, holding the phone toward me.

  “You tricked me,” she said.

  “No. I helped you see the error of your ways. I just talked you through it, so we can all move on and be awesome. Unless you intend to break your word?”

  Another pause.

  “No. We have an agreement,” she said.

  “Okay. Good. Sorry about the perfume crack,” I said, turning away a second time.

  “Wait,” she persisted. “What if I had said no? Would you actually have killed Jay-Jay?”

  Jay-Jay looked at me. He also wanted to know the answer. I grinned at him.

  “Have an awesome day,” I said, giving him my best Miranda Dodge wink before walking away.

  66

  I started walking toward the convention center but I stopped and did a one-eighty. I saw cop cars and ambulances, lights and sirens going, heading into the park to take the re-injured lugs to the hospital. I went back east to Fifth Avenue. I was taking my computer to the hospital. I entered the Apple store, where half of the hip staff were chatting amongst themselves, probably about artisanal bread and jazz poetry. I brought my battered laptop to the service desk.

  “What happened to this unit?” a guy with green spiky hair and a “Genius” nameplate that read MAXIMUS asked me.

  “I used it to knock the crap
out of four guys who were annoying me. You guys make a nice weapon. Does it slice cheese?”

  Maximus laughed. He told me my full insurance would pay for a brand new machine, which would arrive in a day or so, but I would have to buy a new charger. I did so, using my New York Daily Press American Express card.

  “Anything else I can help you with?” Maximus asked.

  “Yeah. How do you sharpen this thing?”

  He laughed again, to show he thought I was a really funny guy, and I left. I put my new power cord in my backpack, which was pretty badly sliced up, another casualty of my battle with the bozos. Also, evidence of our encounter. I diverted to an outdoor store, picked up an identical replacement, switched my combat computer, gloves and other belongings into the new backpack, and was back on the street in ten minutes. My phone rang.

  “Hi, Amy.”

  “So? Anything?”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t get to the convention center yet. I was delayed.”

  “Are you working on this case or not? What are you up to?”

  “I stopped to say hi to some guys and we worked out. I also had to order a new computer, and buy a new backpack.”

  “You’re shopping? You’re too much. Well, what do you expect to find at the crime scenes at this late date?”

  “No idea. I’m trying to backtrack, find out if I missed something. It feels like it.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know, like a secret treasure map. And there’s good shopping over there.”

  “Goodbye, already.”

  I reminded myself to tell Amy later—when we weren’t on the phone—what really happened. I started to walk west again. My rear-eye was not sensing any company. I was thinking about when I first saw Chesterfield’s body: the singed face, neck and chest; the smell of gunpowder; the soundproof suite; the unused pistol still sitting on Chesterfield’s hip; his startled expression of surprise; his burned-down cigarette; his whiskey glass. I remembered the smoke detector, disabled by the handyman, the open curtains, the nailed down paintings and lamps, the fancy bathroom, the gold faucets and fixtures, the sealed windows, the locked toilet, the keycard on the floor behind the front door. After the murder, the victim’s room was sealed, like the toilets, and guarded until now. Routine. There were four other identical killings, a total of five victims in five rooms— dispatched by a magician who vanished, along with his musket or muskets. But there were six sealed crime scenes, counting Senator Carroll’s room, also with a disabled smoke detector, where nothing happened. Six crime scenes, not five.