Veteran Avenue

by Mark Pepper

  The hammer fell, but the Walther did not kick in her hand. Heart thrashing, Virginia gasped and made to eject the dud round.

  Even as she did it, she knew it was a forlorn action. She would never find out if the next round in the stack was any more potent. Her misfortune had provided Larry with the crucial advantage. In what seemed like slow motion, the slide came back and the dud flipped out.

  Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. That’s who he was. He wasn’t John Frears, he was Travis Bickle with a hole through his neck, only this was a disappointing remake in which Travis signally failed to clear the scum off the streets before getting shot himself. Larry was still upright, unhurt, and putting the good guys down.

  John cried out as he watched Virginia spin through 360 degrees and hit the ground. She immediately began to writhe, clawing at her left shoulder, but that didn’t mean she’d escaped with her life. If the slug itself hadn’t caused mortal damage, it might have made secondary missiles out of bone fragments, the smallest of which in the wrong place could prove fatal. One thing he knew for sure: from the state of her jeans leg, she certainly couldn’t afford to lose very much more blood from this new wound.

  As his lamentable cry faded, John became aware of another sound of human torment. He turned to see Hayley tearing along the path, uttering a shrill outpouring of grief as other visitors to the cemetery scattered in every direction but the one she was taking. Then he locked eyes with Larry, who was again directing the Browning his way. Larry looked nervous, and John foolishly glanced down at the pistol lying on the ground beside his right knee.

  ‘Shit,’ he mouthed, suspecting he had just signed his own death warrant; to effectively deal with Hayley, Larry would have to eliminate all other threats, and John knew he had just declared a hostile intention by looking at the .45.

  A calmness born of resignation came over him. Damn, he wouldn’t even come close to reaching it. His right hand was clasped to his leaking neck, and, even had he been ambidextrous, Virginia’s car keys and alarm fob were in his left hand, still slipped tightly around his finger like a wedding ring.

  John saw the skin pinch around Larry’s eyes, the subtle link between the brain’s impulse and his trigger finger’s response.

  One final flash of inspiration: before Larry could squeeze the trigger, John squeezed his left hand tight shut.

  ‘Armed!’ said a lifelike voice from the street.

  In panicked confusion, Larry’s head whipped round, gun barrel scanning for the source – perhaps a SWAT commander with a loudhailer.

  John took the opportunity to grab for the .45 as Hayley collided full force with her husband.

  It was a bad time to lose focus. John felt his head swimming, his vision blurring, his breath beginning to labor. These were no doubt natural reactions to getting holed through the neck, but another sixty seconds without them would have been nice.

  He tried to keep his gun trained on the wrestling match in front of him. They were lying on their sides like lovers in the park, but it looked like Hayley was trying to bludgeon Larry to death with her plastered arm. If they separated sufficiently, John hoped he might pick off the villain while he could still differentiate between them, but having failed to daze him with the initial contact, Hayley was soon overcome, Larry slamming the base of the Browning’s butt hard against her forehead.

  As she went limp, John thought about risking a shot, but Larry’s sense of self-preservation was well developed. He pulled his wife close, using her as a shield. Now it was John who needed some cover, so he scrambled away towards the nearest gravestone. He felt guilty leaving Virginia out in the open and vulnerable, but knew that any attempt to drag her to safety would have made them both sitting ducks. A bullet clipped the stone as he hid behind it, proving the wisdom of his decision; Larry had clearly not finished shooting at people.

  Trying to recoup his senses, John summoned all his willpower to battle the debilitating effects of his injury, then peeked out to check on things. It was dangerous, but less so than making assumptions about where Larry had got to; it would take only seconds for him to creep up and poke his gun around the stone.

  Larry, however, was sticking with the hostage option. He had rolled Hayley so they were in a spoons position, her back to his front, and he was now struggling to get her onto her knees. With Larry’s gun arm busy, John took up an offensive position on his belly, thrusting the .45 towards his target with two hands. Keeping as much of himself behind the stone as possible, it left Larry with little to aim at.

  Managing to achieve a kneeling position for Hayley that protected his own, Larry braced her in front of him with an arm across her breasts, then turned the gun to her temple.

  ‘I’m not fucking around here, John Boy! If you don’t throw out the gun, let me leave with Hayley, I’ll kill her!’

  John didn’t have the energy to reply. With his mind drifting further from him, he wanted desperately to close his eyes. He didn’t have any answers. He shrugged to himself, mentally more than physically; if he passed out, perhaps he’d wake up in hospital with Virginia in the next room, both of them on the road to recovery.

  But where did that leave Hayley? He didn’t think he should mind, but he did.

  ‘Okay, how about this?’ Larry called. ‘You don’t back off, I shoot your girlfriend again. I don’t think she can take another round, do you?’

  A brief burst of siren was followed by an amplified announcement.

  ‘You in the cemetery! Let go of the woman, lay your weapon on the ground and walk towards me, hands in the air!’

  A narrow view through the stones revealed to John a single black-and-white on Veteran Avenue. One of the cops was behind the hood of the car with his Glock drawn, speaker-mike to his mouth. His partner had maneuvered to just inside the cemetery, using a trash can for cover.

  ‘Drop your weapon! Move away from the woman!’

  John gathered he had gone unnoticed, and he certainly wasn’t about to reveal himself and surrender his weapon. His extra firepower might mean the difference between a quick conclusion and one more prolonged and more problematic; although Larry’s bullet had passed through his neck on a miracle route, avoiding carotid arteries, trachea and larynx, John knew he was in the same boat as Virginia: without fairly swift medical attention, he would likely bleed to death.

  The cop shouting orders had now abandoned the mike to take up his partner’s position, since his partner had moved forward to the first row of headstones, close to where Virginia lay. He leaned out to reach her but Larry fired a warning shot to dissuade him.

  John looked back down the sights, concentrating on keeping his aim steady, his mind sharp. The trauma of his wound pretty much dictated against that – the shock, the feel of his life literally draining from him, the blood cooling on his skin when it should have been warm within.

  Larry spoke to him again, and his softer tone showed he might have been mad but he wasn’t deluded. He knew this was the end of the line.

  ‘Hey, John?’

  Although he would give himself away to the cops by answering, John thought dialog would be more constructive than letting a lethal tension build in the continuing silence.

  ‘What is it?’

  The cop by the grave turned his head sharply to look at John. Eyes wide and anxious, he wavered for a moment but decided his weapon was still best employed covering Larry.

  ‘We got another wounded over here!’ the cop shouted to his partner. ‘He’s armed!’

  Larry had rested his brow on Hayley’s shoulder and seemed now to be hugging her as a wife rather than holding her as a hostage.

  ‘What is it, Larry?’ John asked. ‘What’s on your mind?’

  Larry looked up, and the nearest cop let out a startled curse.

  ‘Shit, Roth. It’s Larry Roth!’

  ‘Fame,’ Larry said bitterly to his wife. ‘It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.’

  ‘Larry, put the weapon down, we can work this out!’ the cop called.


  ‘I don’t think so,’ Larry responded. ‘I know how this deal goes down. No point me requesting an airplane and five mill in used bills. I’ve been a cop too long to believe shit like that happens. I ain’t leaving here except in a body bag. One minute from now, SWAT’s gonna be staring at me through scopes.’

  ‘So give up,’ John said to him. ‘Now, before that happens. You didn’t kill anyone yet.’

  Larry smiled and began laughing. ‘Oh, John, you are way behind the times. I give up now, the state’s gonna put me to sleep. So maybe I should have some fun first, whaddya think?’

  ‘Larry, I’m Officer Reinhardt! Let’s all calm down. Just –’

  Larry loosed off another wild shot in Reinhardt’s direction, then yelled at him.

  ‘That was very fucking rude! I ain’t talking to you, I’m talking to John here. Shut the fuck up!’ He quietened down and continued his conversation. ‘John, if you hadn’t gotten involved, stolen Hayley away from me, I wouldn’t have had to do any of this shit. This whole thing was none of your fucking business.’

  By now, Hayley had come round from her pistol whipping, so Larry no longer had to support her dead weight with his left arm. He put the muzzle back to her temple and slipped his left hand between their bodies, producing the Magnum, which he pointed across at Virginia.

  ‘Okay, John, you enjoy making decisions that affect other people’s lives? Make one now. Your girl or Hayley. One dies. Your choice. You can’t decide – both die.’

  It was the ultimate nightmare, except John was not about to wake up from it. He looked from one pair of pleading eyes to another, from Hayley to Virginia, back to Hayley, and again to Virginia, until he couldn’t take it any more and stared down at the bloody grass beneath his dripping neck.

  ‘So,’ Larry said. ‘Which bitch, John? You got ten seconds.’

  Ten years would not have been long enough. John could never passively sacrifice an innocent like that. In theory the choice was simple: one dead or two. But either way John knew his own existence would be forever blighted. If he chose to save Virginia, their future together was forfeit. The knowledge of the terrible price paid would undermine all potential for happiness. And if he spared Hayley, he would hate her as much as he hated himself.

  But if he let them both die he would feel doubly responsible, always believing a truly courageous man would have chosen to save at least one life regardless of his own mental tortures in the years to come. Of course, that was assuming Larry wasn’t bluffing, intending to kill both women whatever he said. The guy was crazy; there was no saying what he might do.

  For John, it was a genuine no-win situation, the psychology of which Larry understood perfectly well. He had already said: this was his idea of fun.

  Larry’s countdown was nearing an end and John made a decision. He lifted his head, sighted as best he could, and fired. Larry squealed as the bullet tore through his outstretched forearm, making him drop the .357. He gritted his teeth, then bared them at John in a lunatic snarl. He removed the Browning from Hayley’s temple and forced the barrel into her mouth, then placed his head directly at the back of hers.

  He was going to dissolve their marriage with a single bullet, and John was helpless to prevent it.

  Larry’s skull exploded a second before the shot rang out. It took a moment for his muscles to register the destruction of his nervous system, then he crumpled onto the grass.

  Bizarrely, Hayley was left unscathed, her mouth still wide from where the barrel had fallen out of it. Her long moan cut through the deadly lull as she opened her eyes and realized she was going to see another dawn.

  John watched, not understanding for a moment. Then it began to make sense. Larry had lost the side of his skull, not the back, and the sound of the gunshot had followed its very visible effects. Someone had taken him out from a distance. A wet job. The two cops stayed down, eyes darting here and there, searching for the shooter. John looked over at Virginia and saw she wasn’t moving. He left his gun on the grass, crawled over and lay down beside her. The approaching sirens meant he couldn’t hear any breathing. He felt for her hand and held it tightly.

  ‘Marry me?’ he whispered, praying for a response. ‘Ginny?’

  ‘Sure.’

  John grinned. If he died now, it wouldn’t be so bad. He wondered idly if there were any spaces available nearby. He was a veteran, after all.

  ‘You couldn’t choose, could you?’ Virginia asked, her voice soft, like she was at the border of dreamland.

  ‘I did choose.’

  ‘You didn’t. It’s okay, though. You did the right thing. It worked out.’

  ‘I trusted he wouldn’t kill his wife. I knew he’d kill you. I had to take the shot.’

  She squeezed his hand, but he barely felt it. Either his senses were fading, or her strength. Probably it was both.

  ‘You did good, sergent. You did.’

  The winter sun on John’s face was suddenly blocked.

  ‘Hang in there,’ said the silhouetted Officer Reinhardt. ‘EMS is here now.’

  ‘Who shot Larry?’ Virginia asked whoever might know, but no one did.

  John closed his eyes and finally gave in to unconsciousness.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Hayley, for you.’

  Ginny smiled knowingly, took the phone from him and sat down on the sofa.

  ‘How’s it going, girl?’

  John sat opposite so he could watch her. He never tired of watching her. When he awoke in the night, he even watched her while she slept. He supposed he experienced the same joy being with her as Hayley did with him. Reincarnation wasn’t the only way to come back from the dead. They had only just survived that day in the cemetery, Ginny’s heart stopping on the way to the hospital before a miraculous act of resuscitation.

  He stared at the diamond solitaire on her finger. It still seemed remarkable that she wanted it there. An engagement ring – from him. In a world full of people, how could she have chosen him to spend her life with? It felt like another miracle. But that was just love doing its thing.

  There was no rivalry between the two women any more. Larry had bound the three of them together. It was difficult to harbor resentment after such a close call, and John could even laugh now when Hayley occasionally called him Dad. She made out it was only to wind him up, but she had never backtracked from her original beliefs. It didn’t matter, though. Her views did no one any harm, and if they made her happy ...

  Ginny roared with laughter. ‘Good on you, girl! Go for it!’

  John didn’t need to know the conversation to laugh along. Love was like that. The more he learned about his fiancée, the more he found her to be an amazing individual. He admired her resilience, her unfailing support of her father over many difficult years, and her stoical acceptance of his passing. She was still mourning, but death would not screw her up as it had Dodge, and John was learning from her that he could also leave his past behind.

  ‘Keep me posted, Hayley, take care.’ She set the phone down and raised her eyebrows at him. ‘That director I introduced her to? They hit it off, big time, in more ways than one.’

  Hayley would have been gratified to hear John respond like a concerned father.

  ‘It’s not a case of the casting couch, is it?’

  ‘Not this guy, he’s cool. Mind you, that’s not to say her career won’t benefit.’

  ‘Thanks, darling.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Helping.’

  ‘She deserved a break.’

  He was getting up for a cuddle, and whatever might follow on from that, when the doorbell rang. He diverted himself down the hallway and opened the door to a man in a brown uniform, carrying a small packet and a letter.

  ‘Sign, please.’

  John obliged, and the UPS man walked briskly back to his truck. John shut the door on a balmy Angelo Drive and returned to the living room.

  ‘What’s that?’ Ginny asked.

  ‘Don’t know,’ he said, a
nd proceeded to tear open the envelope. He took out the letter and unfolded it. ‘It’s on headed notepaper. A Ranger station in Big Timber, Montana. It says: “Wasn’t sure whether or not to send this, but thought you might like some answers. I’ll keep it short. I relocated here with my wife and newborn son a month back. Before that, I was with the LAPD. I prefer it up here in bear country. Not so dangerous. Bears don’t carry Uzis! The only vest I’ve worn since arriving is thermal against the cold. Different from LA, where Kevlar was a way of life – thank God. I’d have suffered more than a brief concussion without it”.’

  John paused to give Ginny a baffled look.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘“If this doesn’t completely make sense, then what’s in the box might. I had it specially engraved.”’

  Ginny put her hand out and John gave her the packet to open. It was small, the size of a jewellery box that might contain a bracelet or a pendant. She removed the brown wrapping. It was a jewellery box. She hinged back the lid and stared at the contents, and, gradually, a smile began to appear.

  John couldn’t see what it was, so she handed it back to him.

  A 7.62 caliber rifle brass, highly polished, with two initials engraved on the side: “L.R.”

  ‘Who sent it?’ Ginny asked.

  ‘The letter’s not signed.’

  Her smile broadened. ‘Fancy a road trip?’

  ‘Big Timber, Montana?’

  Author photograph by Jade Pepper.

  By now, Mark Pepper really should be on his fourth wife and in rehab at some idyllic retreat in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. Graduating from RADA in 1990, he believed he would be a Hollywood star by the time the U.S. hosted the World Cup four years later. It didn’t work out that way.

  His acting career was spasmodic, to say the least. There were high points: peeing on the Aidensfield Arms hearth-fire in the first-ever episode of Heartbeat; taking Lulu hostage in the Christmas special ten years later; acting with icons like Tom Bell and Helen Mirren; and popping up in Coronation Street several times. But there were vast deserts of unemployment between these little oases and Mark quickly turned to writing as an alternative source of expression.