Run

by Douglas E. Winter

  Especially when it felt so much better to turn that silver CRX into a pile of scrap metal.

  After I dropped the empty shotgun and waved goodbye to my neighbors, I let Jinx lead the way back to the Saturn and I knew that if we cleared the first block without a cop car we were golden. And golden we were. All the way through the maze of suburban streets to the turn onto Duke Street. Which is when I say:

  Stop the car.

  Jinx drives to the next intersection and takes a right, pulls the car into a McDonald’s, and it’s humming inside, life does go on, whether it’s a dead civil rights leader or riots or war, you got to keep chewing those Big Macs, and Jinx finds the Saturn a parking space between two other cars.

  Come on, I tell him.

  I get out of the Saturn.

  Come on, I tell him again.

  He shrugs and gets out.

  We walk into Mickey D’s and I step up to the counter and I say to the guy at the cash register, some Pakistani or whatever, one of those turban guys, I say:

  Hey, Sabu. Gimme a vanilla shake.

  And Jinx says to me: What the fuck you doin?

  I’m buying a vanilla shake, I tell him. You want something? McNuggets, maybe? When he tells me no, I tell him:

  Well, I want something. I want an answer.

  Aw, shit, he says, but I keep talking:

  Am I wrong, or was walking in and out of there a little too easy?

  Jinx wants to be annoyed, but he knows, he knows what I’m saying is right.

  I mean, two Alexandria cops and one Fed? The Reverend Gideon Parks is dead, a lot of other folks are dead, and we’re suspects, right? They been inside my house, my fucking life, for four months, and we get one man with a plan? That’s it? Not the 82nd Airborne? Not even lights and sirens when I take apart that car? Are we supposed to believe there wasn’t any backup? Or did they think for some reason it was gonna be easy?

  The turban guy gives me my vanilla shake and I give him two bucks.

  Have a nice day, I tell him. Then I tell Jinx: Come on.

  I don’t see what I need in the restaurant, so I take the far exit. Jinx stays with me.

  I lamp the parking spaces on that side and I see just the ticket, this guy’s sitting with his wife in their little midsized something with one of those metal plates on the back, the fish that says JESUS inside, and I stroll up to these folks slowly, slowly, and I put on a sincere but happy face and I take a little sip of that vanilla shake and I say:

  Evening, sir. Ma’am. Sorry to trouble you, but Brother James and I seem to be having a problem with our car. We’re ministering tonight over at Good Shepherd? Off of Quaker Lane? The gentleman inside tells me it’s up the road. About a mile? I wondered if you’d be so kind—

  God bless you, I tell them when they say yes, and again when they drop us at Good Shepherd without giving one thought to the fact that the building is dark or that we could have killed them. And I mean it: God bless them both. There are still some people in the world who have trust. Who have faith in other people, even if it’s as desperate and hopeless as their faith in a fish that says JESUS inside.

  We wait until they’re long gone and we cross the street and stroll through one of those town-house condo projects and we duck through a hedgerow and down an embankment and we’re looking at Dumpsters and loading docks in back of this strip mall called Hechinger Commons, and it’s the right place and the right time, and there’s an Aerostar van, and the Aerostar van is faded white and painted with red letters that spell out FLOWERS ETC and the Aerostar van is filled with flowers, not to mention a lot of et cetera, because inside the Aerostar van are two of the U Street Crew—no, make that three because there’s a driver, and he’s not just any driver but that grinning son of a bitch QP Green. Next to the Aerostar van is a pickup truck with more U Streeters in the seats, and next to the pickup truck is what looks like a genuine Virginia Power truck, with that beret guy, Kareem, whoever, at the wheel and that weird Yoda guy peeking out of the cab, and next to the Virginia Power truck is a limousine, a white stretch Lincoln that shines and shines for what seems like half a city block, and I have a fine idea who’s riding in the back of that Lincoln.

  I walk over to the Lincoln and the driver’s window glides down to show me a pair of shades in the driver’s seat, and it’s not any old pair of shades, it’s fucking Ray-Ban, and I take the wedding invitation out of my pocket and I hold that rectangle of gilt-edged parchment in front of those shades and I say to Ray-Ban, I say:

  Here’s your ticket. You got something for me?

  Ray-Ban says: Man, I got nine homeys in the place already. Been there since seven. Delivery boys. Maintenance crew. Even a couple cocktail waiters. Just like you said, man. No problem.

  I hand him the invitation. It’s a private affair, this wedding. Industry and politics, tying the knot as usual for the closest of friends and family. So this piece of paper, waved out of that fine limo, is going to get the Doctor past security.

  Five past eight, I tell him, and then I tell the darkness in the back of that limo: Remember. We do this my way. If I can’t end this thing by five past eight, you make your move. And whatever happens, you take out the UniArms warehouse. But you give me the time, the old man, and CK.

  Ray-Ban says: U or Die, mothafucka.

  The window glides up and that limo cruises away, places to go, people to see.

  Now for the rest of the business. Out of the Virginia Power truck pops Kareem, and Kareem sort of does his thing on me and I give him the rest of what I promised: My security card key and the four-digit pass code that works the entrance locks at the UniArms warehouse in Old Town. Just what Kareem needs to get Yoda inside so he can do his little thing.

  Kareem looks at me.

  Kareem winks at me.

  Then he’s back in the Virginia Power truck and they’re gone.

  Then the pickup truck is gone.

  Then it’s Jinx and me and FLOWERS ETC, and I believe it’s about time to make our delivery.

  Inside the van, with the doors pulled shut and locked up tight, I say hey to the Doctor’s guys, we got Tiny and Hotpoint and a lot of flowers, and I drop my get-out bag behind the flowers and I start running the usual check. I slip the magazines from the Glocks, check the loads, snap them back in. One Glock goes in the Bianchi holster at the flat of my back and the second in my belt, just over the left kidney. I strap a holster on my right ankle and that’s for number three. I put two full magazines in the right inside pocket of my suit coat, two more in each outside pocket, and, what the hell, I put a couple in my pants pockets. I don’t like the extra weight, but who knows how many rounds you need when you’re going to a wedding?

  Now I check the troops. Tiny and Hotpoint are stroking their AKs like kittens. They’re nice pieces, and they’re from offshore, combat models, ready to fire full auto. Probably bought them from UniArms.

  Let me see that, I say to Hotpoint. He passes his AK to me and it’s North Korean, clean and oiled and as ready as a 9th Street whore.

  He knows what’s on my mind. I don’t even need to ask him.

  Uncle taught us good, Hotpoint says. Taught us in the Storm. Me an Jeff, Tiny an Malik an Lil Ace.

  I pass the rifle back to Hotpoint and I want to ask Jinx what Uncle taught him, and when. The guy’s too old for Iraq, unless he was senior NCO, and I don’t think so. Just like I don’t think I really want to know the answer.

  Soon enough the van slows, takes a speed bump. We’re late, which is the way it happens, but also the way it needs to be. To make the hard part easier, and to make this thing work.

  The hard part is getting inside, at least I hope that’s the hard part, and when the van slows to a roll and makes the turn onto the long drive that curves up the hill to St. Anne’s Cathedral, I feel the kind of calm that tells me it’s going to work; we’re going to make it just fine.

  I raise up, peering through a spray of flowers, and over QP Green’s shoulder I take in the spires of the cathedral and wha
t’s left of sunset. It’s like a picture postcard. And it’s better than I remembered. St. Anne’s is history: Built in the old days, burned in the Revolutionary War, built again and burned in the Civil War, and built again, third time’s the charm, on the long low hill overlooking Old Town Alexandria, where, years later, the Masonic Memorial joined it. The bell tower faces south, toward Richmond, while the doors to the sanctuary open toward D.C. and the heathen north. The east and west walls of the cathedral are a tour guide’s wet dream, with glorious stained-glass windows that ascend—and there’s no other word for it—they ascend fifty feet into the sky. On this side, the east side, is an expanse of lawn, a gentle slope; to the west, on the shoulder of the hill, is the parking lot and then trees, shrubs, fences, and another one of those cozy Virginia neighborhoods.

  There’s a rent-a-cop cruiser at the mouth of the driveway and sitting inside with their coffee and doughnuts are two of the finest no-can-dos that Jules Berenger can rent. Up the hill is the trouble. The quarter mile of winding driveway is lined with town cars and limos, each with tinted glass and a guy at the wheel with an earplug receiver who’s standard equipment. More luxury liners, including a certain white Lincoln, form a freeze-frame motorcade in the parking lot. More guys with dark glasses and earplugs huddle in the foreground, near a pond with a statue of some lady in robes, St. Anne or the Virgin Mary or maybe even Gloria Estefan, who the fuck knows. Some other guys with dark glasses are walking a lazy perimeter on grass that’s so well kept they ought to be playing golf out there. I see a couple CAR-15s, but mostly it’s your typical security: handguns, maybe some machine pistols, but nothing too attention-getting. There could be sniper teams in the distant trees, the backyards of that neighborhood, but that’s doubtful. Inside that church is a U.S. senator, but it’s a wedding, for Christ’s sake. Still, so many fingers, so many triggers.

  All yours, I say to QP Green. I hunker back down into the flowers and take a deep breath.

  Hotpoint is taping together two banana clips, end to end. Jinx is doing diddly, but he’s eyeballing me like he’s got something to say.

  Smell anything? I ask him.

  Yeah, he says. All these pretty flowers. Smells like death.

  Maybe, I tell him. Maybe not. Maybe this is going to work.

  The van stops.

  The driver’s window rolls down.

  Hi, says QP Green, but I don’t recognize his voice, it’s suddenly this Bryant Gumbel School of Broadcasting voice, midwest white-bread English, and I don’t need to see to know he’s talking to somebody big and bad.

  What you got? the big and bad guy says.

  Hi, QP Green says again. I’m from Flowers Etcetera.

  QP Green pauses and I hear papers unfolding and being handed out the window. Then QP Green says:

  The, the—um, Berenger-Blaine nuptials?

  I look over at Hotpoint and he’s laughing into his hand and shaking his head.

  The big and bad guy says: You’re late.

  Yes, sir, says QP Green. But these flowers are for the assembly hall downstairs. After the wedding, they’re having a reception there.

  The big and bad guy says: Okay. But I want this van out of here in twenty minutes. Think you can handle that?

  Yes, sir, says QP Green. The paper gets handed back, the window gets rolled up, and QP Green starts driving us in, all the while saying to the windshield, the rearview mirror, the air all around him:

  Yassuh, yassuh, sho nuff, suh. You can suck my mothafuckin dick, suh.

  The van slows again. Stops. Through the rear window I can see the cathedral, its spires stabbing into the sky. Then:

  Aw’ight, says QP Green.

  It’s showtime.

  Well, I say to Jinx. You know what Gary Gilmore said when they walked him out in front of that firing squad, don’t you?

  Naw, Jinx says. But I got me a feelin it was somethin real stupid, like: Let’s do it.

  Yeah, I tell him. Yeah. So what do you say?

  He looks at me.

  I look at him.

  Yeah, he says. Let’s do it.

  QP Green dismounts and takes his time coming around to the back of the van. He opens the rear doors and leans in to embrace a huge spray of flowers. Hotpoint fits his AK and about a dozen magazines into a long white ornamental vase that holds another arrangement, and then he’s out the back, delivering that vase, and me, to the lobby.

  U or Die, he says.

  It’s now or never, and I’m out of the van and between them, hoping for enough cover from the flowers to stroll on up the curved steps to the wide wooden double door of the cathedral. Jinx should be somewhere behind me carrying another arrangement, and stroll is what I do, I do, I do, and we’re onto the steps and then we’re up the steps and I move away from the flowers, I stroll toward the door, nice and natural, and before I reach the door someone is opening it for me and I look at the someone and the someone is Tully Malone, and Tully Malone looks at me, looks through me, sees just another someone, just another guest, and by the time it all registers on him I’m walking right past him and the best he can do is say:

  Hiya, Burdon. I wondered what happened to ya.

  There’s a smaller double doorway ahead, inset with glass viewing panels, and I can hear an organ piping away and I see a lot of well-dressed people standing, and it’s as good a time as any, so I’m through the double door and into the sanctuary while Tully Malone is still doing whatever he’s doing out in the lobby and the flowers are being delivered, and Jinx and the rest of his crew get busy. Inside, some kid in a tuxedo and too many pimples gapes at me, nobody told him what to do with really late arrivals, and I just nod and whisper to him, I’m with the bride’s family, and he blinks a couple times and waves his hand to the left side of the sanctuary and I take a few steps down the aisle, there must be a hundred rows of heavy wooden pews, and I find an empty pew on the left about ten, twelve rows along, and I ease my way in.

  The sanctuary is weighted with a solemn smell, flowers and candles and wood and age, and there’s quite a crowd filling out the pews, and all of them are intent on what’s happening in front of this wide marble altar—what do they call it? the dais, the something—because that’s where we’ve got the happy couple with the bridesmaids and the groomsmen and the priest, and they’re listening to whatever it is the priest is saying into the microphone and whatever it is he’s saying ends with the word amen, and that’s when everybody says amen.

  So I’m there just in time to sit down. The priest drones on in Latin for a while and then there’s this reading from the scriptures and this sort of pretty song but I’m not paying much attention to all these words because I’m checking out the big and bad guys standing in the back of the sanctuary and the few toward the front and, yes, the woman over there in the trouser suit, very nice but not quite the fashion for a society wedding, and these other dots and dashes throughout the congregation, the guy with the oversized raincoat, the one with the briefcase, those telltale signs and symbols that they’re packing weapons.

  And I’m checking out the U.S. senator, all hail-fellow-well-met, like any good father of the groom, and it’s the same Senator Anthony Blaine I saw a couple hours ago doing a teary-eyed sound bite on CNN. Guess a dead civil rights leader didn’t ruin his day.

  And I’m checking out Jules, that’s Mr. Berenger to you, and with him there’s the latest little trophy blonde and there’s the ex, the one that’s the mother, and there’s the politicians he’s got in his pocket, and there’s some good-looking suits on my old pals Quillen and Dawkins and Rudy Martinez, and there’s another crew chief, McCarty, and then there’s a lot of folks I don’t know and don’t care about, there must be three hundred or so people all gathered here in St. Anne’s Cathedral for what the priest just called this joyous occasion.

  And finally there’s this voice in my ear and it says:

  You lose.

  Took you long enough, I say to CK, and of course it’s CK, it has to be CK, he was going to be here as
sure as I was going to be here. He wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Because this isn’t just a wedding, it’s a celebration, isn’t it?

  Some wrinkled old lady a few rows up turns around to shush me, and when she looks at me, then looks behind me, she thinks better of it and gets back to watching the joyous occasion, and that’s when I feel the barrel of CK’s Magnum at the back of my neck. But hey, the guy’s not going to shoot and ruin everybody’s happy day now, is he? So I look at my watch and I ease my head back a little toward him and say:

  You got ten minutes.

  There’s a satisfying silence, and then he bites.

  Ten minutes for what?

  Ten minutes until it happens.

  The barrel of his gun jams into my neck. Shut the fuck up, Lane.

  The wrinkled old lady turns around again, no way she can’t see that big pistol, and she puts a wrinkled little finger to her wrinkled little lips.

  Up in front, at the altar, the priest is saying something about love, but back here in the cheap seats I’m talking about something more practical.

  Doesn’t matter what you do, CK. You spray my brains across the guest list, it’s still gonna happen. Only right about now you got nine minutes.

  Shut up, Lane.

  The groom is taking the bride’s hand in his own and they’re stepping forward, closer to the priest, closer to the microphone, and they’re right off the top of the cake, he’s this strapping handsome Joe College boy and Meredith Berenger, she’s what they always say about brides, only this time it’s true, she’s radiant, she’s gorgeous, and it’s nice, it really is nice, and I think I should do like the man says and shut up for a while so that’s what I do, I listen to them make their vows, and it takes a couple minutes but it gets to him, you know it gets to him, he wants to know, he has to know, and it doesn’t take long till he makes his move.