The cruiser came across the street like a prowling cat, and pulled into the drugstore lot. The building sat kind of down in a little hollow, lower than the roads to the south and east of it, and the pay phone was behind the corner of the building. The combination didn’t let the headlight shine on the phone when the cop pulled in. The only way to get a light directly on Junior would be if he looped wide from the driveway and turned in toward the front of the place. The cop hadn’t done that either of the two previous evenings until he was ready to leave.
Junior wiped his hands again. It wasn’t too late to bail out. He could still pick up the receiver and pretend to be talking, just a guy who had to use the phone late at night. Maybe his wasn’t working in his apartment, or maybe he was behind on the bill and they’d shut it off. No law against that, just being here to use the phone. The cop would mark him, but probably drive by.
But, no. If he didn’t do it now, he never would. He knew that. He had been arrested for simple assault a couple times, and he’d done a nickel for ADW. He had even been busted once for murder, but had gotten off — he should have, since he hadn’t done it — but he never told anybody that he hadn’t, even his lawyer, so people thought he had skated for a killing. They figured a smart lawyer had gotten off another guilty man, and more power to the mouthpiece. That gave Junior the rep, and it had paid a lot of freight. When serious folks wanted a bodyguard, they wanted a man who wouldn’t be afraid to drop the hammer when the guns came out, and they thought he had already done it. He’d talked the talk for so long, he had ’em all fooled. They thought he was a killer, but he couldn’t fool himself any longer.
Junior had never killed anybody. Never even shot at anyone. Not for real. Sure, he had beaten more than a few bloody, and had waved his guns a lot to intimidate people, but he’d never actually killed anybody.
And that ate at him. It made him feel… hollow, somehow. He knew he could squeeze the trigger, if it came down to it. He knew it. But he never had.
Time to walk the walk, Junior, or else shut the hell up.
He was scared, no question about that. But he was ready. He knew that, too.
The cop idled the cruiser into the parking lot. It was a big Crown Vic, the car version of Jaws.
He saw the cop spot him. He could see his face in the lights from the computer screen on the car’s dash.
Junior could have picked up the phone, now was the time, but he didn’t. He just stood and stared.
Cops were used to seeing people look at them, but there were citizen looks and then there were the “up-yours” looks. Junior was giving him one of those. No cop could let that pass, not in the middle of the night, not one on one, not unless he was a wimp.
The cop in the Crown Vic was no wimp.
He pulled over and stopped in the driveway twenty-five feet away. The door opened and the cop, maybe thirty or so, stepped out. He had his big aluminum head-basher flashlight in his left hand, but he didn’t shine it at Junior. Not yet.
“Good evening,” the cop said. “Something wrong with the phone?”
Junior took a deep breath. The little sleeveless nylon vest he wore had half a box of bullets in each of the side pockets, enough to give them some weight so he could clear them with a little buck and wiggle of his hips. The two Rugers were underneath the vest, secure in their holsters, as ready as they would ever be.
Shit or get off the pot, Junior.
“Nope, no trouble with it,” Junior said. His voice sounded pretty calm. He was worried it might break, but it was okay. “I wasn’t usin’ it anyway, no.”
Junior saw the cop shift into a higher state of alertness. He edged his right hand back toward the pistol in his holster. Junior knew it was a Glock, probably a 22C in a.40 S&W, ten rounds in the magazine, one in the pipe, three-and-a-half-pound pull and not the heavier New York trigger. More gun than Junior’s, way more. It would knock a man down ninety-five times out of a hundred with any solid hit.
But that didn’t matter, not if Junior was better.
“Hey, let me ask you somethin’.” Junior took a couple of steps toward the cop. Twenty feet. Eighteen.
“Hold it right there, bud,” the cop said, still not too worried, but with his hand now touching the Glock’s plastic butt.
So okay. Here it was. The cop was alert, had his hand on his piece, and was looking straight at him. Fair enough.
Junior stopped. He held his own hands low, by his hips, palms forward, to show they were empty. The ready position from which he had practiced drawing his guns a thousand times.
Junior said, “So, how’s your sister?”
The cop frowned, and while he was thinking about that, Junior cleared the vest and grabbed his revolvers.
Time slowed to a crawl.
The hard rubber grips felt alive under his hands as he pulled the short-barreled guns and swung them up.
The cop reacted. He jerked his Glock out at Junior’s sudden move, but Junior was faster, a half-second ahead. He brought both revolvers up and on target even as the cop cleared leather.
It was like he was in a trance: Everything but the cop vanished, sounds, lights, everything, and the cop was moving so… slow…
Junior cooked off two rounds, the right a hair faster than the left, and he would swear that he saw the bullets leave the barrels, even through the tongues of orange that washed out his night vision and the jets of greasy smoke; saw them fly at better than nine hundred feet a second across the six yards or so, which was impossible; saw the tiny lead rounds hit the cop, right one just above his left eye, left one on the bridge of his nose, whap! whap!
The cop fell, still in slowmo, his pistol pointing at the concrete parking lot, not a chance of tagging Junior even if he fired, which he didn’t.
He hit the ground like a chainsawed redwood tree, dead or most of the way there when he landed. The Glock fell, bounced, and clattered away. Junior heard that, the Glock against the concrete. He couldn’t remember hearing the shots, but he heard the Glock land. Weird.
His heart raced like it was on speed, like a shot of Angola meth right into a vein, and after what seemed like years, he finally remembered to breathe. He had a little trouble doing that, and his breaths came and went real fast.
Jesus Holy Christ! I shot the guy dead!
It seemed very quiet all of a sudden.
He looked around. Nobody in sight, but even the little.22s made noise this late at night. Somebody would have heard. They’d be looking around. Cop cars were like magnets, they pulled in the looks.
Time to leave, Junior.
He felt like he had just screwed his brains out. He was flushed all over, and limp, but in a good way. What a rush!
No need to look at the cop. The man was worm food, no question about it.
He reholstered the Rugers, turned, and walked to the north. A brisk walk, but not a run. His car was parked a block over, on a residential street, in front of some apartments. He had swiped a set of license plates from a little pickup truck that was parked outside a repair shop a couple miles away, and put those on his car. If anybody noticed it there — and they wouldn’t in that neighborhood — it wouldn’t come home to him even if they wrote down the plate number.
If the dead cop had had any smarts, he would have called Junior in before he got out of his car. When he didn’t report back, somebody would come looking. By then, though, Junior would be miles away in a car nobody had seen. And an hour after that, he’d be having a beer in his kitchen and replaying it all in his mind.