HE DOCUMENTS FROM Arden came into my phone. I tried to get my mind off the girl with the strawberry blonde curls and the heavy wool plaid skirt. I looked through the pages. Big guy. 260 pounds. Could be slow. All that weight might not be flab, though.
There were a dozen or so photographs. All grainy or pixel-buzzed. Definitely a mean looking fucker. Regular hangouts – only two. A dive bar and a truckstop. Oh, fuck. He was a pawnbroker.
It meant that he held, carried, and hoarded cash. And that meant there would be people trying to kill him and rob him constantly. So he would be wary, cautious, and armed to the teeth at all times. Every part of his property and his home was going to be multiple alarmed. They would all be covered by surveillance cameras from every possible angle. All of his vehicles would be, too. Most likely he’d have two cameras and an alarm in the fucking john.
Not even to mention that his store was certain to be packed with guns and lethal fucking knives. You could bet that his coat and his pants and even his fucking socks would be jammed up with weapons.
So I tried to think. Sketch out some options. A direct confrontation in his home or his place of business would be hopelessly risky. Too much chance of me getting on camera and identified. I had a dislike for plans that involve disguises or hairpieces. Anyway, facial recognition is just getting too sharp for a hard-working contract killer to rely on makeup these days.
A car crash was out. They’re always way too unreliable. Not unless your target commutes every day along a cliff top road. I didn’t want the chance, not the slightest possibility of any miraculous recovery. That would be very inconvenient. When I killed someone, I was determined they should stay reliably dead. I liked a high level of confidence on that. I considered it a key feature of the service.
I hated sniper hits. They were a great tactic in combat. Safe, distant. Clean. In the civilian world, investigators get all excited to know about the shot. Where it came from. Who fired it.
Still, your man the pawnbroker was a hard-working sleazebag. A tirelessly dedicated douche. I was hoping he might be exposed by some vulnerable recreational pursuits.
My thoughts kept on drifting back to the librarian. It was no good. I would have to get myself away from there or I would risk turning into a sulky teenager and fall to moping.
Maybe I could deal with the pawnbroker a quick way. I roared out of town and ripped the sixty miles up the highway to Gainboro. On the way I called a guy from a gas stop payphone. My guy was called Jackson. At least he was to me, on the phone. He put me onto a guy. There’s always a guy. Jackson told me to call his guy ‘Flint,’ and he said, “Stay sharp,” when we hung up. That put me ono my guard.
I gave the guy, ‘Flint,’ a list of what I’d need. That I’d let him know later that day for sure. He’d have to come meet me outside of Gainboro.
He groaned. “That doesn’t give me long, man.” I thought about offering him some hints on customer relations in a service industry. Not having too much time to spare I held on to them for now. I thought perhaps I might pass them along if we met up later on.
It was no skin off my nose that he wanted to go through his business pissing people off. Except, people who did that were apt to fuck up and blame other people. That made them doubly apt to get caught, too. Pissing off the wrong people can have that effect.
People who got caught tended to be asked probing questions. Especially about their customers. Captives with a mind to blame others usually rolled over pretty fast. I’d have to give that some consideration.
A few productive minutes with Google street view got me fast results about my douche du jour. The target’s place of business was out of the way. Isolated, on a dark street. I saw a likely location where I could set up. By the road, some bushes, away from the lights. It looked nearly perfect.
In Gainboro, I visited a few bars. Had a couple of useful conversations. That and a few bills got me all I needed to know about my sleazebag. Turns out he was the arms supplier of choice for the local drug gangs. Also a go-to guy for kiddie porn. Kept savage dogs, too. Underfed them. Nice guy.
A drive by of his store confirmed what Google told me and I was all set.
Clothing that I already had would work out, I decided. It took me forever to find a payphone. They’re an increasingly endangered species. I called the guy, ‘Flint,’ to say that we were on. His manner had not brightened. We arranged a meet. I gave him the location. A deserted lot outside of town.
“Don’t come with a phone switched on.” It shouldn’t need saying, but with ‘Flint,’ I thought it was worth a mention. “And be on time.”
He was late. Of course. His mistake. I saw it coming. He swerved into the lot at speed in a jacked up sliver pickup and with a sweep that threw up a cloud. And he was on the phone. His manner in person was just as ugly as it was on the phone. Only, live it came with gestures to invade your personal space. And breath you could weaponize.
He gave me what I needed. And a card with a number and his address. I was tempted to ask him how long he had been in the business. I gave him the money. He managed to count it and be ready to leave without thanking me. No handshake, no greeting.
With manners like his, he might have expected some comeback. As he started the engine, he lifted his phone to make a call. He was surprised and visibly annoyed when I tapped on the window. Rolling his eyes he rolled the window down. Sight of the nail-gun put a bigger look of surprise on his ugly mug. It stayed there even with the eight-inch nail sticking out of his ear.
He was a heavy fucker. I got him into the box on the back of his pickup and left it locked. Not that he would be getting out.
I arrived late at the target’s place of business. It was dark and he was long gone. I cruised by, slow. Then I returned with my lights off. The bushes by the roadside provided enough cover. I set up the pipe and primed it. Carefully sighted it and connected a remote controller through a burner phone.
I wrapped the phone in black tape, all but the camera lens. Then I checked that I could get the picture from phone’s camera up on the second burner phone I’d got to pair with it. I lashed a long rope tight around the whole rig and trailed it the twenty yards back to the highway.
Parked in a vacant lot on the far side of the road, I called the target. Told him I was in town and I wanted to tool up for a gang rumble. Gave him a lot of attitude, some buzzword slurs of a racial nature. He responded positively. Then I read out a long list of illegal weapons. Told him I wanted to collect late. Real late.
“Now or never, bud. And you’d better have cash ready.”
I told him to give me an hour.
He said, “I’ll be at the store. If you’re not there exactly one hour from now, forget it.” It was a long, dull forty-eight minutes in the dark while I watched his empty store. Dull was good. It meant witnesses would be scarce.
His bright red pickup sloweds in front of the store. Did every crook in this county drive an ugly-ass pickup? He stopped under a big lamp. He got out and stood in front of the door. While he picked through his keys he peered out into the night. I checked the image on the phone for the line of sight. At the same time, I had his picture from Arden up on my phone. This was definitely the right very ugly motherfucker.
I was glad he hadn’t brought any of his dogs. Although they were probably horrible critters anyway. As he turned toward the door, I pushed the button. The picture on the phone went totally white. The rocket trail bleached the image out completely. Though the windshield I watched the crackling trace of flame and the burst in front of the store. The bang must have been audible for a long way. His red pickup jumped and spun in the air on its axis.
My car shook. The bloom of boiling flame bubbled up into black smoke. Sparks flew up into the night. The pickup landed and crumpled nose down. I wasn’t sorry. One less plug-ugly pickup. It slumped in front of the black, smoking hole in the ground with the clumps of debris around it. Some wet, some dry. Mostly black or red.
No pug faced pawnbroker stood in the middle of it all. He will have been two or three of the nasty looking piles with smoke rising off them.
With my lights still off, I bumped over the central refuge and got out where I’d left the rope. The heat from the blaze was strong, even from the roadside. I felt it as I fumbled in the shrubs. Maybe the wind or something had moved the rope somehow. I had to go back for a flashlight.
I hated that. I didn’t want to be seen on any of the surveillance. I had to hope the blaze would mask it. It was a better risk than leaving a military rocket launcher with a fucking camera attached.
Eventually I got the rope and pulled. The rocket tube with the camera bumped toward me. It was hard not to hurry. If I hurried, I could fuck it up. But if anyone did come by, it would be bad. And if a cop happened along, that would be super bad.
It felt like an hour, but I was careful and patient. The hot tube, the black, taped up phone, all came bumping over the scrub and through the bushes. When I picked it up, I’d forgotten how hot the pipe was going to be and I dropped it. That sent the phone flying and it bounced back into the bushes.
While I scrambled in the bush after it, I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. I put a hand on my Colt and drew it as I crouched in the bush. The truck slowed as it got nearer. I flipped off the safety catch. He drew into the curb in front of my car.
Then he speeded up and drove into the night.
As fast as I could I got the launcher and the camera into the trunk and got out of there. A mile down the road I was just slowing down to a nice, normal, inconspicuous driving speed.
Then I heard the whoop, whoop. Red and blue lights spun in the mirror. The cop was coming up fast behind me.