This was going to get ugly. Not to mention messy and noisy. The first two things—ugly and messy—I didn’t care about, but noise would be unacceptable. I wasn’t about to spend the next twenty years in the can because of these two clowns. I slapped the magazine into the gun’s handle and that got their attention. Two heads swiveled and turned with identical questioning expressions, as if only now realizing I was even in the room with them.
Gina’s key scratched at the doorknob as I fired twice, quickly. The suppressor did its job admirably. I knew it would. The sound of the two shots was barely louder than the scratching of key in lock. I put a bullet in Gary’s head and then one in Bobby’s before he had even had a chance to react. I’m not the best shot in the world but it was easy, despite the fact I was across the room; the fucking cheap-ass motel room couldn’t have been more than twelve feet wide.
Two bodies slumped simultaneously as the door swung wide and Gina pranced into the room. Gary dropped to the floor next to Bobby, who simply fell back onto his pillow like he had made a snap decision to take a nice, long nap. Gina’s eyes were sparkling as I disassembled my weapon and dropped the components back into my bag and I knew right away her heist had been successful.
The whole argument about whether Gina had what it took to pull a gun on the fat-cat insurance guy was patently ridiculous, and I had barely been able to suppress a laugh when the two now-dead losers were discussing the matter. The only question in my mind had been whether she would have the self-control not to ice him when she had the chance. Of course, I had known Gina Petralli a lot longer than they had.
You see, Gina and I were a couple. We’d been together since way back in high school, even longer than I had owned my ratty equipment bag, and that was saying something. She got the job at Atlantic Insurance on her own, just about the same time I was hooking up with the Two Stooges lying dead in the motel room. As soon as she told me how that stupid fat-cat was shooting his mouth off about his fancy safe and all of the valuable stuff inside it, we decided it would just be wrong to head down to Florida without liberating it.
Gina said the way the guy talked, there had to be at least sixty grand worth of loot inside that safe, and that we would be idiots to share that kind of score with Gary and Bobby. The plan had never been to kill them, though. I was just going to cuff them to their beds and then ease off in the GTO with Gina to parts unknown, but once they started acting like a couple of rutting bulls, I couldn’t let them ruin everything by making a lot of unnecessary noise and bringing the cops down here.
Gina glanced at the two dead guys without a word. Gary had said she was a cold bitch; he had no fucking idea. She was hopped up on adrenaline and practically floated around the room without her feet touching the floor. “It was even better than we had hoped!” she said excitedly. “I bet there’s more than sixty thousand dollars worth of stuff! I stowed it in the trunk of the car.”
She looked again at the two former members of our crew, smiling slightly at the matching holes in their foreheads. “Why’d ya kill them?” she asked, more curious than repulsed.
“They were idiots. Besides, what the hell do we need them for?”
Gina thought about it for a second and nodded her approval. Then she bent down over each one in turn, rifling trough their wallets and taking their cash, then sliding each man’s watch off his wrist. She really was one cold bitch. She saw me watching her and said, “What? They won’t be needing this stuff anymore.”
I couldn’t argue with her logic, but at the same time I could feel things beginning to slip away. The longer we stayed here the more likely we were to get caught in a cheap motel room with two rapidly cooling bodies. “Let’s get the fuck outta here,” I finally said.
Gina smiled as I climbed over the bodies. “Yeah, it’s time to scoot.”
I reached for the handle of the dented and rusted door and froze as I felt the barrel of Gina’s gun caress my right cheek. It was a tiny thing, a Walther P22, a girlie gun, but it could scramble your brains impressively, especially if fired while pressed against your skull. “What’s this?” I asked.
I could hear the amusement in G2’s voice as she answered. “I think you put it best just a minute ago. What the hell do I need you for?”
Due Consideration
One day a few years ago, shortly after she got her driver’s license, my daughter was driving home from her best friend’s house and nearly got T-boned by a passing car at a dangerous intersection not far from our home. After I made sure she was okay and mentioned once or twice—or maybe a dozen times—that it’s a good idea to look both ways three or four times before accelerating through that particular intersection, I began to think about what my reaction might have been if she had not been fortunate enough to escape with just a scare. “Due Consideration” was the result, and appeared in the March/April 2009 issue of Crime and Suspense.
I think I should make something very clear right up front: I’m not in any way trying to justify what I’ve done. It was wrong in the eyes of the law and no doubt also in the eyes of God, who after all sent His only son to remind us to turn the other cheek when slapped. And it’s not like I acted rashly, either. I have made it my habit in life to think things through and take action only after giving due consideration to the consequences of my decisions.
The legal ramifications I’m not especially concerned about; the authorities can do whatever they want to me, I’ve got nothing in particular to live for anyway now that Katie’s gone. I must admit, though, the whole God issue has me a bit worried. Suffering eternal agony burning in the flames of Hell doesn’t sound at all like how I want to spend my afterlife, but I’ll do it if I have to, and not utter one word of complaint.
Not one word.
My Katie was in many ways nothing more or less than the typical teenager. She was smart and pretty, with beautiful laughing eyes and a quick wit to match. She never went through those horrible awkward years that I remember so well from when I was growing up, a fact made more miraculous thanks to the way her mother simply up and left us one night while Katie and I were both fast asleep.
She was four at the time. I was clueless. We were both devastated. Joanna got up in the middle of the night, packed all her clothes and personal items in a big duffel bag, tossed the bag into the trunk of our car, and motored on out of town, stopping just long enough at the bank to clean out our meager savings account before moving on to whatever new adventures awaited her in whatever new place she ended up.
The woman I had married so long ago and had thought I knew so well made off with pretty much everything—or that was my assumption at the time—but in the long run I came to realize that the only thing I had ever had worth holding on to was that beautiful little girl, so fortunate to look like her mother and even more fortunate that she didn’t think like her.
Despite the circumstances of our abandonment, or perhaps because of them, Katie and I grew as close as is possible for a father and daughter making their way alone in the world. I stayed up all night at her bedside when she was sick with chicken pox. I drove her to every soccer practice and game, every math club meeting, attended every dance recital and school play and parent-teacher conference and was glad to do it.
While guys I worked with were playing golf and hanging out at the local sports bar watching football and ogling waitresses half their age, I was cooking and cleaning and doing laundry and going over multiplication tables and talking to my Katie, always talking. I was blessed to be able to watch my baby grow up into a beautiful, confident young woman anxious and ready to take on the world.