Jimmy jumped into the ditch, gun ready. He didn't realize that he'd emptied the clip in his panic, but it didn't matter. "Kill me, huh? You think you're gonna sucker Jimmy Romance? Fuck you!"
Jimmy opened the door. Norm's body lay still in the wheel well. Blood spurted from the puncture in his neck where one of Jimmy's bullets hit home, the tan linen jacket quickly going to red. Jimmy rolled him off the pedals onto the hardened foundation floor. Once his body was off the accelerator, the engine slowed, coughed once and died.
Norm's mouth moved like a dummy who'd lost his ventriloquist. Tears rolled down from eyes that weren't looking at anything in particular. Then with one heaving gasp, he was still.
Jimmy once-overed the car's interior. No gun.
With a loud crack, the wall of the foundation gave under the Beemer's weight and came crashing down. The car rolled onto its roof, over Norm's body with a wet crunch.
Good thing he's already dead, Jimmy thought. Now it was his turn to laugh, even though the sound of it was alien in his ears. Jimmy carefully climbed into the compacted luxury car and looked in the glove box.
Jesus, it's stifling.
He found blueprints, a contract and a smashed bottle of sparkling wine. Cheap bastard couldn't even spring for the good stuff. On the roof of the car (now the floor) lay two jugs of water. One was empty, a ragged bullet hole through the plastic. The other was intact, but more than half empty, since Jimmy had greedily drank from it only recently.
No gun. No knives. Hell, there wasn't even a toenail clipper in the car.
How do people live in this heat?
Jimmy climbed out the car and considered his options. They weren't bad. Yeah, he'd killed the guy, but it already looked like an accident. It wouldn't take much to torch what was left and let any evidence burn up.
The feeling of freedom washed over Jimmy again. He would get away with it. Sorry Norm, but there just wasn't any motive. Jimmy grabbed the bottle of water and walked over to the partially-collapsed foundation wall. He could climb over, follow the tire tracks, flag a car and sob his story to the cops.
As Jimmy tried pulling himself over the edge, his feet kept sinking into the loose earth. Skidding backwards, Jimmy fell ass-over-teakettle, the desert gravel crumbling through the now fully-collapsed wall. Sand and dust quickly poured in to fill the vacuum. Jimmy sat up, spitting out grit from between his teeth.
Jimmy rinsed the dry earth from his mouth, dusted off his pant legs. So the collapsed wall was a bust. No biggie.
Jimmy went to the other side and tossed the jug over the edge ahead of him. Jumping up, he grabbed the wall and scrabbled to get his leg over. The rim came free under his shoe, sending Jimmy tumbling onto his back, clutching two handfuls of foundation wall.
Jimmy crumbled the cheap concrete between his rolling fingers. Looked like the people building Fortune Estates were going to make their fortunes by cutting back on materials.
North and south walls, same goddamn thing.
He couldn't get out.
Damn, it was hot. Jimmy looked at his arms, which were already going a dangerous shade of red. He checked his watch.
11:42 a.m.
It was only going to get hotter.
Jimmy climbed onto the overturned car, tried to get up speed and flung himself towards the edge. He hit the lip of the foundation halfway over and slid back slowly into the hole, his fingers scraping over the all-too-yielding ground. Almost made it, until the fingernail on his left pinky finger ripped out. Jimmy fell onto his ass once more and screamed his curses into the air.
In frustration, he marched over Norm's corpse and kicked him in his dead face. Too bad you're dead, Norm. I could have used the number for your manicurist.
The second time, Jimmy tried to psyche himself up. This was the only way he was going to get out. Do or die. Now or never. The old Brooklyn try.
On the second step of his second attempt, Jimmy's ankle caught under the muffler. His shin snapped like a chopstick as he face-planted into a muddy pool of Norm's blood. Jimmy rolled back and forth in Norm's gore, howling in obscene pain at the merciless sun.
The sun didn't care.
Jimmy closed his eyes, steeling himself against the pain. A shadow flickered over his clenched eyelids. Jimmy opened his eyes. A few seconds later, the shadow returned.
Huh, thought Jimmy. Would you look at that? Don't see too many of those back home.
Nope. Of all the negative things he could say about New York, one thing it had going for it was that there were no buzzards in Brooklyn.
Angelo Death
For the third time in a week, Joe Shannon prays for death. In the quiet of his private room at Brigham and Women's Cancer Center, all he has for company is the quiet machine noises of his IV unit and the occasional groan from one of the other rooms down the hall.
hissssss-click
hissssss-click
Joe looks at the clock on the wall. 3:87 in the morning. He hasn't been able to sleep for more than two hours at a clip in a month and a half and he's tired.
He's tired of the pungent smell in his nose from the oxygen tubes.
He's tired of the same four walls.
He's just plain tired.
Wait a minute. 3:87 in the morning makes no sense. He squints at the clock again. 3:37-that made more sense. Goddamn Decadron screwing up the works in his brain.
Or maybe it was the Velcade.
Or maybe the Oxycontin.
Or the Vicodin.
Or maybe one of the other forty-nine pills that he was taking over the course of each day. Hell, the pills tasted better than the rotten hospital food they tried shoveling down his gullet. His doctors were concerned that he wasn't eating enough. How much could a man eat with a belly full of pills?
hissssss-click
hissssss-click
Joe adjusts the pillow under his swollen legs. Every pill in North America, and they didn't have one that could make his legs comfortable.
So tired.
His daughter visited from New York last week with the kids. It was nice until she started crying an hour into the visit and couldn't stop. It humiliated Joe to not be able to comfort his daughter-to be so weak as to not even be able to tell her to shut the waterworks off. Worst of all, his grandsons were wearing Yankees hats. Talk about insult to injury.
Well, soon enough he'd be able to apologize to Ted Williams and Tony Conigliaro himself. He just doesn't know when.
hissssss-click
hissssss-click chikchikhisssssssss
Joe opens his eyes to make sure the IV machine wasn't going on the fritz again. The amount of money his family was paying for him to be in here, you'd thing those prick doctors would give him some machinery that worked.
As he turns his head, he sees that it isn't the machine, but the hydraulic door hinge opening.
In the dim light, he sees a tall man he doesn't know in an expensive-looking black suit. His skin is bone-white, a blood-red tie knotted over a black shirt.
In a gentle voice, he says, "Hello, Joe."
"Nurse! Nurse!" Joe shouts hoarsely, his voice dry and squeaky from panic and disuse. He strains weakly against the weight of his own atrophied muscles. He doesn't know the guy, but he knows why he's here. His hand finds the call button and he frantically presses the alarm. Distantly, he hears a bell chiming at the night nurse's desk.
"Joe, calm yourself. Don't get your tubes all tangled up."