The bedroom smelled a little like ammonia, weird but no big deal. The bed was made and a couple of photos were on the nightstand. No empty beer bottles, no laundry, no shoes on the floor. Smart-ass was a neat freak. Skip was unloading his gear when he heard a car pull into the driveway, the rumble of the engine telling him it was the hot-rod Audi. His cell buzzed. A text said on his way. “Thanks for telling me, asshole,” Skip said.
Hurrying now, Skip slipped on his ski mask and popped a high-capacity magazine into the Glock 17, the shorter barrel better in tight spots. The clip held thirty-three rounds and extended five inches below the grip. Skip inserted the Glock’s barrel into an ordinary automobile air filter fitted with a special adapter. It looked odd, like the gun had a can of soup stuck on the end, but with the subsonic ammo the gunshot was no louder than the snap of a mousetrap. He thought about meeting smart-ass at the front door but it was risky. He might be seen or heard before he got off a shot. Better to stay here and wait. He’d come into the bedroom sooner or later.
Isaiah drove home, smelling like melted plastic and ashes, hoping it wouldn’t stay in the car. Cal was truly crazy, burning up thousands of dollars’ worth of his belongings, stuff people clawed and struggled for used as firewood. Put a perspective on it, though. Owning all that didn’t help Cal any. He was lost before the fire and lost afterward. The common denominator was Cal.
Isaiah pulled into his driveway, on high alert now. He got out of the car quickly and stepped behind it. He was afraid of that target gun with the long barrel but there weren’t any lines of sight where Skip could set up. Isaiah had driven home fast, changing lanes, making sudden turns, watching for that blue truck coming up behind him.
Isaiah scanned the street from end to end. Nothing happening except for some kids playing football. But there was an appliance repair van parked in front of Mrs. Marquez’s house. If Mrs. Marquez wanted an appliance repaired she’d have called him. The tinny taste of adrenaline expanded on his tongue. He crossed the street to her house and knocked on her door but she wasn’t home. He approached the kids. “Say, did you see where the repairman went?” he said.
“What repairman?” a kid said.
“I didn’t see nobody,” another kid said. The others shrugged or looked away.
“Did you see anybody around my house?”
“I didn’t,” the first kid said. The rest were already going back to their game.
Isaiah got his mail out of the box, unlocked the front door, and pushed it open with his foot. He could see through the living room and into the kitchen. The back door was intact and he relaxed a bit. There was no other way to get into the house. He went in and dropped everything on the coffee table except the Visa bill. Looking at it first made the other bills seem not so bad. He opened the envelope and went down the hall reading the charges. Flaco’s extra sessions of physical therapy were killing him. There was nothing left over for the condo fund. Without Cal’s bonus money the plan would fall apart.
Skip waited, the bedroom warm and humid as a laundry mat. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes, both hands leveling the Glock at the door. He liked this part. The buildup. It was almost better than offing the guy. Q Fuck was in the hall. Skip could hear his sneakers squeaking on the cement floor… getting closer… closer… and then they stopped. Long seconds went by without a sound. What the hell is he doing? If he knew I was here he’d turn and run. Unless he has a gun.
Isaiah looked up from the Visa bill just in time to see the green blobs of chicken shit on the floor. He’d brought Alejandro inside that morning and forgot to put him back in the garage. Hopefully, the bird was pecking around somewhere and not roosting on the closet rod and crapping all over his clothes.
“Alejandro?” he said. “Are you in there?”
Skip’s eyes darted around the room. Who the fuck is Alejandro? Something in the closet moved and fluttered. Skip turned and fired. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP. There was a hellish squawk that scared the living shit out of him and he kept firing into a cloud of swirling white things. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP.
Isaiah ran back down the hall. A right turn to the front door was the quickest way out but there were kids playing in the street. He went left, racing through the kitchen to the back door. He saw Skip, swinging into the living room gun first. For a split second they made eye contact. Skip fired. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP but Isaiah was already through the door, bullets blowing up canned goods in the pantry.
Isaiah streaked across the yard toward the back fence but Skip came out of the kitchen shooting. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP. Isaiah cut sharply, slamming his shoulder into the side garage door and flattening himself against a wall, nothing to hide behind but Alejandro’s cage and the lawn mower. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP. Rounds punched through the roll-down door in the front, shafts of sunlight beaming through the holes. Skip was keeping him from moving around and finding a weapon. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP. Isaiah thought about dying. The only way out was the way he came in and he could hear Skip going over there. His one advantage was the brilliant sunny day. The rest was up to Skip.
Skip approached the side door. “I’m coming for you, Q Fuck,” he said. Wary of an ambush, he shot into either side of the door. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP. “Got anything to say now, smart-ass?” Skip stepped inside and was momentarily blinded while his vision adjusted from sunlight to dark. He wheeled the gun back and forth, firing randomly SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP-and saw, through the Milky Way of his recovering eyes, Isaiah in the far corner. Skip whipped around and fired. SNAPSNAPSNAPCLICKCLICKCLICK. Isaiah came off the floor like a stingray. No shirt, oil stains on his chest and cheek. He knocked the gun aside with an inside-out forearm and threw a straight right at Skip’s face but Skip turned his head and the punch clipped him on the ear. Isaiah came back with a left that caught Skip flush on the jaw and another right that skimmed through his hair as he fell to the floor. Skip went for the Beretta but Isaiah was already gone.
“Son of a bitch!” Skip said, getting to his feet. That fucker was fast, the blows seeming to come all at once. And then Skip saw it. The bullet-riddled T-shirt fitted over the lawn mower handlebars, the Harvard cap balanced where the head should be. “You’re dead,” Skip said. “You are so fucking dead.”
Isaiah ran, cutting between houses until he was sure he was in the clear. He stopped and took a blow, bent over with his hands on his knees. He was glad he’d counted right. He’d seen the high-capacity magazine extending below the gun’s grip as he was going out the back door. If it held a few more rounds he’d be dead. He’d missed with a couple of punches. Damn. If he’d connected, Skip would have been out cold. And he felt foolish for provoking him in the first place. All that nonsense about shaking his tree hadn’t accomplished anything except almost getting him killed. He thought about calling the police but Skip was wearing a mask and gloves and had no doubt ditched the gun and the van. The police could arrest him on a parole violation. Skip always had a gun in that back holster and there were all those shell casings on the ground at Blue Hill. But Skip was the only link to his employer. With him out of the picture there were no leads at all. It was risky leaving Skip out there waiting to kill Cal but that didn’t seem too likely. All Cal had to do was stay in the house and he’d be perfectly safe.