Thirteen Million Dollar Pop fb-3

by David Levien

  Hit.

  When his regular sight returned he saw translucent rain beads falling from black clouds and then he breathed and all the pain in the world concentrated in his chest and shoulder. He was railroad spiked to the ground and the oxygen blew in and out in a stabbing manner, but it was like pumping a ruptured inner tube-things were flapping around and not really inflating.

  Get up, Frank, he urged himself. Nothing happened. He felt his arms swimming against the gravel beneath him, but couldn’t tell if he was moving them or if they were merely in spasm.

  The bullet that he’d avoided in the parking garage had finally found him. Other words and thoughts washed through his head, along with images. Decker. Susan’s face. The sonogram image of his tiny son. Breslau’s wide nostrils and clenching jaw. Gina, awash in blood. Kolodnik. The police, politicians, the Caro Group-he was as done with organizations as they were with him.

  Family, he thought, and friends-if he could ever collect a few, and keep them-were all there was, and he’d hold on tight to that if he could just get up …

  But he was down and he was going to stay down, and he wasn’t ever going to see his child, because whether he bled out or was finished by someone standing over him at point-blank range, he was going to die here.

  Get up, man.

  74

  It came as a roar.

  Three shots smeared together, almost as one, belched out of the ugly black gun in Dwyer’s hands. The kitchen filled with the malevolent stink of gunpowder. It must’ve been a hit because Dwyer stepped away from the shattered window, lowered the weapon, and handed it off to his huge friend.

  “Some piece,” the man said.

  “Alternated buckshot and deer slugs,” Dwyer said.

  “Nasty.”

  Gantcher struggled to free his hands, but they-like his knees, ankles, and mouth for that matter-were held fast and painfully with silver duct tape.

  “Now where’s the bloody safe-in the study or the basement?” Dwyer asked.

  Gantcher didn’t answer. He had no idea how they’d gotten inside. He’d felt a breeze and had stood to investigate and lifted the over/under and was suddenly tackled off his feet and found Dwyer’s knee, like an anvil, on his chest. He saw Dwyer rear back for a punch, glimpsed a piece of black metal in his hand-and had woken up in the chair. He hadn’t even fired a shot.

  Dwyer had been asking about the safe just before the tall one with the buzz cut had whistled him over to the kitchen window. They’d seen something-someone-and Dwyer had lined him up and fired. Gantcher couldn’t care less about them finding his lousy safe, that wasn’t the reason for his holding out, nor was it heroics. It was more his profound feeling that when the safe was open, and Dwyer found it held only three hundred dollars’ worth of paper issued by the American Express Company, it was going to all finally be over and they were going to kill him. And beyond that, Gantcher had suddenly gained the elemental knowledge common to all living beings close to their end: every last second mattered a great deal.

  He heard the clatter of steel kitchen implements, but couldn’t turn his head to see what was happening. The information soon came to him, as Dwyer stepped back in front of him, this time holding one of Nancy’s long, stainless steel, two-tined barbecue forks. Dwyer put the points of it maddeningly close to Gantcher’s eye and said, “Now is it in the fucking basement or the study? Or should I take an eyeball to each place to help me look?”

  “Basement,” Gantcher said, though the tape muffled it.

  “Basement. Grand,” Dwyer said. Gantcher understood another elemental truth, this one specific to him: even close to the end, agony and disfigurement were still frightening propositions. Then Dwyer grabbed a paring knife to cut Gantcher loose at knee and ankle and dragged him out of the chair toward the door that led to the stairway down.

  “Go make sure that fuck in the driveway is finished,” he instructed his friend, leaving the big shotgun with him, as he pulled Gantcher along.

  I’m going to die in the basement, flashed through Gantcher’s brain as he stumbled down the steps.

  75

  Behr freight-trained through the French doors into the kitchen, splintering them in a shower of wood and glass, and landed on his face. Images flickered in front of his eyes as if played by an old film projector with a bad bulb. What was once a high-tech kitchen was destroyed. The table was upended, same with the chairs. Water sprayed out of a small sink, its faucet snapped off. A heavy black shotgun and shells were scattered across the floor. Bullet holes in the Sub-Zero refrigerator and a shotgun blast pattern in cabinets on the opposite side explained the popcorn sound Behr had heard as he entered. Somehow he found his way to his feet again, just as he had in the driveway. If this was the end of it, at least he kept getting up.

  Decker was there, having arrived after the first gunshots, and was fighting on the ground with a tall man whose hair was buzzed military close. Both were bloodied, climbing to their feet and squaring. The tall man had a pair of round holes, a tight double tap, torn into his T-shirt, which revealed personal body armor underneath. Decker’s Glock was nowhere to be seen. The tall man’s hand went to his belt buckle in the instant before they lunged at each other with near simultaneous Superman punches. Decker’s landed hard, stunning the man. But the tall man’s landed too, and caused a geyser of blood to spray from Decker’s throat. A glint along the metal loop around the man’s knuckles revealed a HideAway knife, a razor-sharp two-inch point that had been camouflaged as a belt buckle. Decker sagged for just a moment and the man yoked him behind the head, raising his fist for a carotid punch with the blade. Behr blinked away the blood, sweat, and rain running down his face and emptied all five.44 special rounds from his Bulldog into the man, who went down bucking, like a sledgehammered farm animal.

  76

  All bloody fucking hell had broken loose upstairs from the sound of it, and Dwyer ran for the stairs. Had that big fucker managed to stand and trade shots with Rickie?

  Dwyer had popped the safe with the combination Lowell Gantcher had generously volunteered and then saw, with much disgust, what it contained. He’d ripped up the lousy traveler’s checks right in front of Gantcher’s eyes, while they were still open, though the paring knife was already lodged in his liver. It was a German make, a Wusthof, a damn good high-carbon steel, laser-edged blade that did its work efficiently. Gantcher had gone crying softly, something mumbled about a wife and kids through half-chewed duct tape, not much fight left in him, but nothing too unmanly.

  Now Dwyer charged the door leading to the kitchen, the Ceska drawn, and rammed his way through. Behr was on a knee, hit and bleeding badly but not dead, and currently stuffing shells into a revolver. Other bodies were visible on the floor in the corners of his eyes as Dwyer lined up his shot: Rickie twisted in a heap and another fellow on his back, weakly pulling a small-framed concealed carry auto from an ankle holster. Dwyer redirected his sights to the armed man, who in turn fell back and fired, peppering the doorframe around Dwyer’s head.

  Dwyer had a poor angle but zeroed in on the man’s skull and squeezed just as Behr hurtled into him from across the room. His shot flew high and wide and Dwyer gave up the gun, letting it clatter away in order to grab Behr under the shoulders and whipsaw him into the kitchen island. Behr crashed into it with a thud, but rolled and faced Dwyer and they locked eyes. Before any physical movement, whether it’s conscious or subconscious, the intent forms in the brain, and if one is sensitive or experienced enough, one can see it in the opponent’s eyes. Most of the time it’s infinitely subtle, but what Dwyer saw in Behr’s right now, despite his being half bled, was the intent to kill him. Dwyer imagined the same message was flashing like neon in his own.

  He charged Behr, dropping for a double leg, which the larger man somehow stuffed by sprawling. Dwyer felt a hard elbow thump into the back of his skull and he dove down toward unconsciousness, but managed to fight through it and stand and wedge a forearm beneath Behr’s throat as he put him into a gu
illotine choke. Behr pumped his legs and found a reserve that Dwyer hadn’t banked on. He stood up through the choke, snaking his arms around Dwyer’s lower legs and churned forward. They left the kitchen, careening through a doorway into a butler’s pantry, where they both hit the ground in a crash and clatter of cabinetry, dishes, and serving implements.

  They faced each other, panting, for a split second, the gamy physical stink of death coming off them in waves. On their elbows and bellies atop broken glass, shattered and pebbled, it was all between them now, the few-foot expanse that was survival or death. This was Dwyer’s terrain. His eyes cut around the space for something sharp or edged or heavy. He saw Behr’s do the same. Nothing suitable.

  With grunts and the pop of glass ground to dust underfoot they ran at each other and locked up and Dwyer got his hands around Behr’s neck in a double collar tie. He yanked, then flung his hips back for a snap down, a technique that always left his opponents on their faces, spitting teeth. But this one didn’t go. He merely doubled over some. The wound, Dwyer thought, as he drove down and felt Behr’s clavicle there, shot apart and jagged, under his forearm. He’d broken countless healthy men with the move, and he pushed with all the leverage his stout body possessed. But this one wouldn’t break. Then, with a guttural bellow, Behr caught him around the waist, lifted him off the ground and high into the air before dumping him with a vicious body slam that caved in his rib cage. He felt the air squeeze out of him and black pain flood in. The effort of it caused Behr to drop to his knees. Dwyer looked up and saw that the other wounded man had twisted his way into view of the doorframe, a smeared blood trail behind him, and had managed to roll and was attempting to work himself into a modified Creedmoor shooting position, his gun across the outside of his calf. Dwyer summoned the last strength he’d trained into himself over decades to gain his feet and run straight through the glass door of the pantry. He kept waiting for shots to sound and bite into him as he hit the ground outside and clambered for the cover of the side of the house, but they didn’t come …

  77

  Behr tried to give chase, but found his legs wouldn’t respond anymore and he stumbled down to his knees again. Back in the kitchen he scrabbled around on the floor for the Bulldog and the shells he’d dropped when he made his tackle, but he was weak, uncoordinated, and light-headed and he hadn’t fitted a single one into its chamber before Dwyer was out of sight. Decker lay there, his gun still up, but there was no one left to line up on. Behr crawled for the kitchen phone, yanking it down and putting it to his ear, only to find it dead.

  He made his way, on hands and knees, toward Decker, grabbing a wadded-up dishtowel from the floor on his way. Behr reached him and pressed the linen hard onto the wound, which was a wickedly clean seven-inch laceration that went clear down to the bone and ran the length of his jaw, and was still gouting blood. Another inch lower and it would have been his jugular and an early good night.

  That’s when a low-grade explosion erupted outside and a compressed whump rocked the kitchen. A kind of smile creased Decker’s face. His teeth shone bright white against the dark blood around his mouth for a moment.

  “Mud cutter,” he said, “made it myself,” his back sinking against the floor in something resembling satisfaction. Behr understood he’d set off some kind of booby trap near the back door on his way in.

  The two of them lay there breathing raggedly for a moment. Behr dialed 911 on his cell phone and pressed Send over and over. The last thing he saw was a signal bar flicker into place and then his head dropped and blackness came.

  78

  Waddy Dwyer was completely arsed up. Hurt and alone, ribs crushed, the soft tissue of his legs shredded and his face blown up, burned, and peppered. The kind of damage he’d managed to avoid his whole career, and the kind a man never fully comes back from. He’d be completely unable to cash the $62,000 check he’d made Shug Saunders write him. He’d need to stay away from banks and most public places with cameras, especially during the day, being so recognizably disfigured now. The whole trip was for naught. Gantcher had run dry of funds and there was no one left to squeeze for his payday. It had become a complete fucking debacle. And now he was doing something he hadn’t in his whole bloody life: he was running.

  One of them, probably the younger of the two, had mined the ground near the rear steps. He’d used something fragmentary and incendiary that was homemade yet effective and would’ve killed him outright had he not felt the hard metal underfoot and dove away just in time. Dwyer should have been looking for it, or something like it, after seeing they’d killed his SAS boy. Only true players could have done that to Rickie. What was it that Ruthless had said? When pros lock up, everyone gets hurt.

  Dwyer’s own arrogance, the way he’d taken Behr lightly and only thought of killing him and not the reverse, was the true sign of his age. Suddenly his belief in his skills outstripped his ability. Miraculously, he’d made it to the car, used a sweatshirt to blot his tattered face, and drove out of there before any police had arrived.

  Now, at a rest stop off I-65, he rinsed his torn-up thighs with bottled water and used the rest to wash down half a dozen codeine and acetaminophen and two Adderall. He was far off the road, away from the abandoned car park, tucked into thick trees where he fed Rickie’s belongings into a fire he’d built in a metal rubbish barrel. The clothes were burning well, already beyond recognition or provenance, the same with the Elvis glasses, which melted immediately when he tossed them into the flames. He added the GSM mobile jammer, along with the rest of his equipment, to the mix. It was time to travel light. Finally, he dropped Rickie’s passport in and watched the crimson cover curl, peel back, and liquefy, revealing the photo page. Black ringed holes spread across Rickie’s young, unsmiling face, before he disappeared altogether.

  Dwyer limped back to the car and used the map feature on his smart phone to plot his route: straight north to Lake Michigan, then northeast on I-94 to I-196, until Route 31 would take him straight into the wilderness country of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, to Traverse City if he could make it that far on land, where he’d boost a boat and steer it around Mackinac Island into Lake Huron and Canada. From there, depending on how and if his face healed, he could bus over to Nova Scotia and catch on with a merchant ship headed for the UK, or maybe even a flight to London if the heat dissipated enough. Dwyer sketched the route in detail on paper, then texted home a coded message: kits in dens. That would give Sandy an idea of what was going on and what to do. Then he took the SIM card out of the already clean phone and cracked it into pieces and let them blow away on the post-rain breeze.

  He started the car. He would have to dump it soon and switch into a stolen one for the second half of the drive. He had so far to go, but all he could think about was getting back to Wales. All he could picture was Sandy, her fine hands treating his face with boric acid solution and spreading calendula and comfrey salve over the burns on his legs. He pulled out of the rest area, back onto the interstate, and started traveling.

  79

  There was noise, and white lights flashing in his eyes, and it was bone cold. He felt steel against his skin and heard tearing, then felt even colder as his shirt was cut away. There were voices, talking to each other, not to him, and scraping and digging in his body. His every nerve felt raw, as if they were plugged into a surging electrical current. Then there was a sharp jab. A needle. It was held in place with tape. A burning erupted at the spot of the puncture, it was agony, but soon a warm, floating sensation carried him away, as if in a bubble of saline. Sound became muffled as he entered a gauzy tunnel. Was he dying or already dead? He might’ve been. But he didn’t think so. Then, black.

  His eyes opened. It was much later and everything hurt. He was flat on his back. He felt pinned in place, but not by any restraints, just his own inability to move. He stared up at the plastic diamond grid of the light fixture above him for what felt like hours, gathering himself, and then was finally able to turn his head. He saw her there,
her blond hair spilled along the edge of the bed where her head was down.

  “Suze.” The word was a croak, a gasp.

  She rose up, a look of abject relief on her face.

  “You came back.”

  “I came back,” she said.

  He felt himself smile. It felt like everything inside him was going to tear apart.

  “You crazy jerk,” she said. “You had surgery. A collapsed lung. They gave you blood. You were a couple quarts low.”

  “How long have I …?”

  “Thirty hours or so, maybe a little longer,” she said. She was completely scrubbed free of makeup. He’d never seen anything as beautiful as her face.

  “Dwyer?” Behr asked, his eyes cutting toward the door.

  “The guy you were chasing?” she said. “There was-what did they call it? — a blast crater and lots of blood, but he was gone. Police are looking for him all over the place. They said they’re sure they’ll get him. Soon.”

  His eyes closed in pain. No they won’t … Behr knew the man was gone again on the same dark wind he blew in on.

  “And Decker?”

  “He’s … okay. They sewed him up-a hundred and thirty-seven stitches-and he left. He just walked out,” she said. “They released Gina’s body to him and he had her … them … cremated this morning.”

  Behr pictured Decker, alone in his Camaro, a blister on the highway, driving toward some unknown destination, bent on ungettable revenge.

  “Was there a service?” he asked quietly. The words were coming more smoothly now, but it was easier to whisper than talk. “Were you there?”