Stepping over to the bed, he wondered if he could sleep. He had to do something. He eyed his briefcase.
TUESDAY,
MAY 16,1989
10:51 P.M.
The only light in the room came from the television set. A fortyfive-caliber pistol and a half-dozen vials of Marcaine on a bureau by the TV glimmered in the soft light. On the screen, three Jamaican men stood in a cramped hotel room and all three were visibly edgy. Each one was carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. The burliest of the three kept glancing at his watch. Perspiration stood on their foreheads. The obvious tension of the Jamaicans stood in sharp contrast to the sonorous reggae rhythm that pealed from a radio on the nightstand. Then the door burst open.
Crockett entered first, clutching a nine-millimeter automatic with the barrel pointed to the ceiling. With one swift, catlike move, he put the barrel against the first Jamaican's chest and pumped one silent, deadly bullet into him. Crockett had his second bullet into the second man by the time Tubbs cleared the doorway in time to take care of the third. It was all over in the blink of an eye.
Crockett shook his head. He was dressed in his usuaclass="underline" an expensive linen jacket by Armani over a casual cotton T-shirt. "Good timing, Tubbs," he said. "I would have had trouble nailing the third dude."
As the closing credits came onto the TV screen, Trent Harding high-fived an imaginary companion. "All right!" he exclaimed in triumph. TV violence had a stimulating effect on Trent. It charged him with aggressive energy that demanded expression. He lived to picture himself pumping bullets into chests the way Don Johnson did so regularly. Sometimes Trent thought he should have gone into law enforcement. If only he'd elected to join the military police when he enlisted in the Navy. Instead, Trent had decided to become a Navy corpsman. He'd liked it okay. It had been a challenge and he'd learned some far-
out stuff. He'd never thought about being a corpsman before going into the
Navy. The first time he thought of it had been when he'd heard a talk during basic training. He found the idea of performing physicals oddly appealing, and he liked the idea of guys coming to him for help so that he could tell them what to do.
Trent got up from the living room couch and vialked into his kitchen. It was a comfortable apartment with one bedroom and two baths. Trent could afford better, but he liked it fine where he was. He lived on the top floor of a five-story building on the back side of Beacon Hill. The bedroom and the living room windows looked out onto Garden Street. The kitchen and the larger of the two bathrooms faced an inner courtyard.
Pulling an Amstel Light from the refrigerator, Trent popped the top and took a long, satisfying gulp. He thought the beer might calm him down some.
He was anxious and edgy from the hour of Miami Vice. Even reruns got him riled up enough to want to hit one of the local bars to see if he could scare up some trouble. He could usually find a homo or two along Cambridge
Street to rough up.
Trent looked like a man who was looking for trouble. He also looked like he'd found it more than a couple of times. A stocky, muscular man of twenty-eight, Trent wore his bleach-blond hair in the severe, flat-topped hairstyle popularly known as a fade. His eyes were a piercing crystal blue.
He had a scar below his left eye that ran back to his ear. He'd gotten it from being on the wrong end of a broken beer bottle in a barroom scuffle in
San Diego. It had taken a few stitches but the other guy had had to have his entire face rearranged. The guy had made the mistake of telling Trent that he thought he had a cute ass. Trent still got hot every time he thought of the episode. What a creep, that goddamned fag.
Trent went back to his bedroom and set his beer down on top of the TV. He picked up the military-issue.45 pistol that he'd "cumshawed" from a Marine for amphetamines. It felt comfortable in his large hand. Gripping the pistol with both hands, Trent leveled the barrel straight at the TV screen with arms stiff and elbows locked. He spun around to point the gun out the open window.
Across the street a woman was opening her bedroom window. "Tough luck, baby," Trent whispered. He aimed the pistol carefully, lowering the barrel until the front and rear sights lined
up perfectly, targeting the woman's torso. Slowly, deliberately, Trent pulled the cold steel of the trigger.
As the firing mechanism clicked, Trent called out "Pow!" as he pretended the gun kicked in the air from its recoil. He smiled. He could have drilled the woman if he'd put in the clip. In his mind's eye he saw her hurled back into her apartment, a neat hole through her chest and blood squirting out.
Laying the pistol on the TV next to his beer bottle, Trent grabbed one of the vials of Marcaine from the bureau. Tossing it in the air, he caught it with his other hand behind his back. He calmly sauntered back to the kitchen to retrieve the necessary paraphernalia from its hiding place.
First he had to remove the glasses from the shelf of one of his kitchen cabinets next to the refrigerator. Then he gently lifted the plywood square that led to his secret cache: a small vault of space between the cabinet's back and the exterior wall. Trent brought out a single vial filled with yellow fluid and an array of 18-gauge syringes. He'd picked up the vial from a Colombian in Miami. The syringes easily came into his possession through his hospital job. He carried both vials and the syringes back to his bedroom along with a propane torch he kept under the kitchen sink.
Trent reached for his bottle and took another swig of beer. He set the propane torch on a small tripod he kept folded under his bed. Taking a cigarette from the pack by the television set, he lit it with a match.
Trent took a long drag, then lit the propane torch with the cigarette.
Next, he took one of the 18-gauge needles. After drawing up a tiny amount of the yellow fluid, he heated the tip of the needle until it glowed red hot. Keeping the needle in the flame, he picked up the vial of Marcaine and heated its top until it too started to become red. With deft, practiced moves, he pushed the hot needle through the molten glass and deposited a drop of the yellow fluid. Next was the trickiest part. After disposing of the needle, Trent began to twirl the vial, slipping it back into the hottest part of the flame. He kept it there for a few seconds, long enough for the puncture site to fuse closed.
He continued to twirl the vial even after.he pulled it from the flame. He didn't stop until the glass had cooled considerably.
"Shit!" Trent said as he watched the very end of the vial suddenly dimple into an unwanted depression. Though virtually unnoticeable, Trent couldn't risk the blemish. If someone was careful enough to notice, they'd discard the vial as a defect. Or
worse, someone on the ball might get suspicious. Disgusted, Trent tossed the vial into the trash.
"Dammit," he thought as he grabbed another vial of Marcaine. He'd have to try again. As he repeated the process, he became more and more intense, angrily cursing when even the third attempt ended in failure. Finally, on the fourth try, the puncture site sealed properly; the curved tip maintained its smooth hemispherical contour.
Holding the ampule up to the light, he inspected it carefully. It was close to perfect. He could still tell that the tube had been punctured, but he had to look carefully. He thought it might have been the best one he'd ever done. It gave him great satisfaction to have mastered such a difficult process. When he'd first thought of it a number of years ago, he'd had no idea if it would work. It used to take him hours to do what he could now do in minutes.
Once he had accomplished what he'd set out to do, Trent returned the vial of yellow fluid, the.45 pistol, and the remaining vials of Marcaine to the hiding place. He replaced the false back of the cabinet and put the glasses back.
Picking up the doctored Marcaine vial, he gave it a good shake. The drop of yellow fluid had long since dissolved. He turned the ampule upside down, checking to see if there was a leak. But the puncture site was as he expected it to be: airtight.