Apparently this particular bad guy wasn’t bright enough to come up with such a soliloquy, or maybe he was just unmotivated and wanted to get this unpleasantness over with so he could get back to the club and all the naked women. In any event, he began pushing Brick toward his death. To my utter amazement, my uncle still looked completely unruffled.
I stepped through the door and made sure I cleared the sheet-metal entryway before training the gun on him and demanding, “Stop right there!” My voice sounded strong and confident and I wondered where the hell that was coming from. I certainly didn’t feel strong or confident.
The man froze and for a long moment nothing happened. Far off in the distance I heard a siren wailing and I wished it was headed here although I knew it wasn’t. The man swiveled his head and looked over at me, surprise etched in his eyes and maybe a little regret, too, as it dawned on him, much too late, that he hadn’t been up against just one octogenarian. He had been taken down by one octogenarian and one mostly out-of-shape divorced accountant from L.A.
Brick removed the man’s hand from his shoulder gently, almost apologetically, and straightened his jacket. I could see the man calculating the odds of grabbing my uncle and using him as a human shield in a desperate attempt to regain the advantage. “Don’t even think about it,” I snapped as I pointed the gun at his chest. Incredibly, my hands had stopped shaking.
The man’s shoulders slumped as the reality of the situation hit home. He shook his head and sighed. I almost felt sorry for him; this was the sort of thing he would never live down in the joint.
“I don’t know how to thank you for getting to the bottom of Martin’s death, Mr. Callahan, and so quickly. This won’t bring him back, of course, but I simply couldn’t live with the world thinking he committed suicide.” Lillian Saunders appeared to have aged a decade in the short time since we first met her following her husband’s death. It was obvious she wasn’t taking the tragedy well and I hoped the resolution of the case would give her the opportunity to achieve a little peace. It didn’t seem likely to me, but what do I know?
The recently widowed Mrs. Saunders handed Brick a check. He folded it and placed it in his breast pocket without looking at it.
“Believe me when I tell you it was our pleasure to help,” he said. “Your husband died trying to protect a young girl who was being victimized. He was a hero, Mrs. Saunders.” He stood and took the elderly woman’s arm, walking her to the door. “Please don’t hesitate to call on us if there is anything we can help you with in the future.”
He escorted her to the elevator and when he returned he had a satisfied smile on his face. “I talked to my friend Lieutenant Fischer of the Boston Police this morning,” he said, “and Curt told me this thing is about to blow sky-high. That goon we took down is just the hired help. He’s scared to death and not about to take the fall for his bosses. Even as we speak, he’s spilling his guts. I’m telling you, sonny, heads are going to roll. Bigshot heads. Fatcat heads, both in the City Council and the BPD. All the people who were taking kickbacks, letting the scumbags running The Little Devilz employ underage strippers and eventually graduate to murder are about to wish they had made some different choices in their miserable lives!”
I had never seen my uncle so ebullient. He sat down at his desk and rubbed his hands together in glee, looking for a moment like Scrooge McDuck in the counting house. “I tell ya, sonny, there’s not very much in this world I enjoy more than seeing self-important gasbags get what’s coming to them. I wish your dad had been here to see it; he would be damned proud of this little agency along about now.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” he said, looking me in the eye. “He would have been damned proud of you, too, the way you handled yourself last night.”
I tried to give him my best aw-shucks shrug, but I couldn’t help grinning. I hadn’t seen much of my dad the last ten years before he died and I have to admit it was nice to hear those words come out of his brother’s mouth.
“I’m just glad I didn’t have to shoot that poor bastard on the roof,” I said.
My uncle waved dismissively. “Forget about it, you couldn’t have shot anybody.”
“Are you kidding? That big ox was about to toss you off a five-story building; of course I could have shot him!”
“No, I mean it literally. You couldn’t have shot him. When I slapped the magazine into the Browning, I never racked the slide to chamber a round.”
“So if I had pulled the trigger…”
“Right,” Brick said. “Nothing would have happened. You could have pulled the trigger all night and all you would have gotten for your trouble is a blister on your finger.”
I looked at Brick incredulously, remembering the sheer mass of the big murderer and how close he had been holding my uncle to the edge of the roof. “But… what about the safety? You made sure the safety was on before you handed the gun to me.”
He shrugged. “That was all for effect. Come on, junior, I didn’t want you to actually be able to fire the gun; you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. You could have killed someone, for crying out loud!”
My uncle chuckled. Until he saw the look on my face, that is. Then he burst out laughing and didn’t stop for nearly fifteen minutes. Finally he stood, knees cracking, and slapped me on the shoulder, mostly stifling another round of giggles. “Don’t look so glum, kiddo, you’re a hero! Enjoy the satisfaction; that feeling doesn’t come around very often in this line of work.”
I must have seemed somewhat unconvinced, because he continued, “Come on, let’s hit Beekman’s Deli. My treat. There’s a BLT on toast quivering in fear with the knowledge that you’re on your way and you’re hungry.” He marched out the squeaky office door and down the hallway.
I sat brooding for a moment, then shook my head and followed him out of the office. By the time I reached the elevator, I was smiling, too. I just couldn’t help it.
About the author:
Allan Leverone is a three-time Derringer Award Finalist for excellence in short mystery fiction as well as a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee. He lives in Londonderry, New Hampshire with his wife, Sue, three children, one beautiful granddaughter and a cat who has used up eight lives. Connect with Allan at http://www.allanleverone.com, as well as on Facebook and Myspace.
Also by Allan Leverone
Air traffic controller Nick Jensen’s life is in a shambles. His wife Lisa is dead, victim of a horrific automobile accident, and the authorities suspect foul play. He finds evidence suggesting Lisa, Pentagon auditor, had discovered potentially treasonous material on a fellow employee’s computer. That employee also winds up dead.
Desperate to escape the pain of losing his wife, Nick throws himself into his work and is on duty at the radar ATC facility serving Boston’s Logan International Airport on the night U.S. President Robert Cartwright is scheduled to fly into Boston. Armed terrorists storm the facility, killing the security staff and taking Nick’s fellow controller hostage as he works.