The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination (17 page)

MacIan fired a scathing look at Nurse Cromwell. “You!”

She nearly fainted.

“Get me out of this. You crazy? Or what?”

Nurse Cromwell undid MacIan and pretended to be contrite. Hooking Priyanka up with prize specimens was a very lucrative side-job she intended to keep.

“There’s another man inside. You idiot!”

Priyanka watched Nurse Cromwell leave, hoping she’d take MacIan’s anger with her. “Let’s not make too big a project out of this, boys,” she said. “I have a simple equation for you both. It’s all arithmetic. They put numbers on the money for a reason.”

MacIan hadn’t seen a woman this colorful in a long time. A one in a million beauty. “Not interested,” he barked.

Rejection rolled right off Priyanka. “I represent a thousand discreet and highly desirable women, here and in all the walled cities; New York, Galveston, Key West, Portland, all the places you’d think. These women can afford to pay for the best men that we can . . . find.”

Max was shocked and intrigued.

“The finder’s fee?” said MacIan.

“Paid by the buyer, of course. Bank rules.” She patted her palms on Max’s chest. “My clients will pay handsomely for a night’s pleasure, and a perfectly timed donation. You are the perfect donor, Max. It’s big bucks for . . . big bucks. Convert it to any currency you like. On us.”

Max started wondering just how far this might go.

“And you,” she turned to MacIan, “a large and lumbering, bad-boy-boy-scout, you could make booo-kooo dollar— just to make ’em holler.”

MacIan looked a little cheated. “No donation?”

Priyanka morphed into an angel of sympathy. “You are a gorgeous beast, but no doubt a veteran.”

“And?”

“How long were you over there?”

“Longer than I’d hoped.”

“An oft-told tale. Sadly. But! Exposure to plutonium-tipped ordnance, biological agents, high stress, bad food and who knows what recreational damage you’ve done to yourself. High potential for birth defects. Tantrums. PTSD, HIV. Too many acronyms. And as you know, there are way too many veterans. Your brand is in surplus.”

MacIan was sad to see his currency had nosedived.

“But you, Max. You’re flawless. I can get forty, maybe fifty thousand dollars for your . . . seed. Men like you are rare.”

MacIan chuckled. Max had already eclipsed him. “What do you think, Max?”

Priyanka’s eyes grew pouty. “You’ve got to take advantage of your — advantages.”

“Do you intend to take advantage of me?” asked Max.

“I hope so,” she quipped. “Just think of these poor women. A viable man is so rare, and the lizard-dicks know it, the scaly fucknards. But you. Rugged. Powerful. Attractive in every way. One night’s pleasure. Maybe . . .”

Down the hall, the double doors crashed open and three men rushed toward them, one carrying the blood-soaked tugboat pilot over his shoulder. A wave of blue scrubs swarmed them with a gurney. A stocky man with Jesus hair and a horrible skin condition dumped the pilot onto it. “He beached his tug down the street and crawled halfway up here,” he said.

A nurse probed and prodded, then said calmly, “Bleeding badly — no internal damage. He’ll be OK. Friend of yours, Jon?” The pilot tossed about on the gurney, glad to hear he was not going to die. The nurse spread the pilot’s eyelids, flashed a light. “Who did this to you?”

The woozy pilot moaned, “They blew him up. That poor kid. They blew his ass to pieces.”

The burly man leaned close, and said in a rumbling voice, “Who blew him up?”

The pilot, covered in blood-tipped spikes like a glass porcupine, sat bolt upright. “Them black-hearted Irish bastards!”

B
oyne’s transporter
crossed a big yellow bridge over tiny Point State Park and onto Pittsburgh’s North Shore. At the checkpoint, they were warmly attended by a Black Heart patrol. One of them flashed the Driver his new tattoo: a black heart woven through a Celtic Harp, intertwined with a banner emblazoned with their motto, in proper Irish:
Pouge ma honen
. They had taken up the slogan in hopeful solidarity with everyone who rejoiced in the notion of their betters kissing their asses. The Driver took the ramp down to the Allegheny River, directly across from The Point, to a cluster of apartments called The Lady Name Towers. They sat right along the waterfront, near the ruins of Three Rivers Stadium.

Boyne studied a printed profile of their second Tuke associate in a blurry group photo. He examined each face. “Let’s head over to Tower Beulah.”

“Thought she lived in Gwendolyn?” said the Driver.

“She does. But why ruin such a sporting night? We’ll make a game of this. In honor of the Bloviator.”

The Driver concurred. “We’ll gamify it, Captain. Like he said.”

Number Two considered himself a marksman and therefore the most sporting of the bunch. “The regular, Captain?”

“Of course, that’s what makes it the regular,” said Boyne, reining back his contempt for Number Two. “But here’s the thrust of it, boys. We’re here to flush out this Tuke mentaller by scaring the shite out of his friends. A grand spectacle is called for. That’s our goal, and the goal defines the game, thank you Mr. Bloviator. A message to his tribe. Sooo! We’ll suspend the usual subtleties, in favor of a little stagecraft.”

They parked in the Security Only space in front of Tower Beulah, got out and stretched. The deeply unpopular Number Two clung to Boyne. “You did say ‘regular,’ Captain?”

Boyne nodded, but Number Two was festering like a boil. “Same as always.”

“Then it’s my call, according to the rules, and it’s the Barrett 50.” Number Two lingered with a butcher’s dog smile that grated on everyone.

“Classic,” said Boyne.

Number Two nudged the Driver in the direction of the gun locker under the seats. They pulled two long cases out and assembled a matching pair of Barrett 50mm sniper rifles. They were over sixty years old, but still perfectly accurate up to two miles.

At Tower Beulah’s tidy entrance, they were met by a gleeful Black Heart doorman, who swept from his head a top hat with a polished, black leather brim. Boyne handed him a two-liter soda bottle filled with bootleg Irish whiskey, made in New Jersey. Very hard to come by. The doorman smiled adoringly at the hand-painted label featuring a plump, yellow beehive. But! Upon closer inspection, he saw the swarm of bees, which an even closer look showed to be tiny black hearts. This cuvée was impossible to get. He gasped.

Boyne took the doorman by the shoulders, and with a stern face, said in regal Irish, “Agus na damnaithe fágtha gan focal.” (And the condemned left speechless.)

The doorman put his hands over his heart and gave the teary eyed countersign. “Glaoigh ormsa i measc na naomh.” (Call on them amongst the saints.)

They took the service elevator to the roof, set up the two Barrett 50s and pointed them over the parking lot toward Tower Gwendolyn, about two hundred feet away.

Boyne called them to order. “Whose turn is it to take on the reigning champ? Number Two.”

The only nice one, Number Four, spoke up, “It’s me, by da rules. But I don’t have da pelf.”

The Driver erupted, “I’ll go yer tariff, mate,” and peeled five one-hundred-dollar bills off a large roll. “Put that can-o-piss in his place.”

The smarmy Number Two accepted the challenge by licking his little finger and stroking his wispy right eyebrow.

Number Two and Number Four each took a position behind a Barrett mounted on a heavy tripod. The rest lined up at the edge of the roof and waited for Boyne to start the contest. Everyone was rooting for Number Four.

The shooters squinted into their telescopic sites, tilting up and down and panning side to side across Tower Gwendolyn. There were at least two hundred windows, all dark. The sun was threatening to come up, so Boyne spoke quickly. “Ready?”

They both nodded.

Boyne whipped out a cell phone, put it on speaker, and dialed — ringgg, ringgg. Number Four held his aim steady on the middle of Tower Gwendolyn, ready to zero in on any changes. But the loathsome Number Two was scanning the rooftop for a certain plumbing configuration.

Ringgg, ringgg. A sleepy woman answered, “Hello?”

The troop put their hands over their ears and peered at Tower Gwendolyn. No lights came on.

“Hello? Who is this?”

No new lights.

“Mrs. Klevens? It’s building security.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It seems someone has stolen your car from the lot.”

A brief silence, then angrily, “I don’t have a car.”

“Sorry, luv. Then it’s not you.”

“Asshole!” She slammed the phone down.

Sad little Number Four panicked and started swish-panning all over Tower Gwendolyn, but it was all just a telescopic blur.

Number Two, cool as a cucumber and twice as dickish, tilted slowly down from the toilet air vent stacks, then slowly back up a few floors, then down a few, always in line with the toilet vent stacks, and sure enough a light came on in a small window, on the twentieth floor. A bathroom window.

Boyne frowned; this was a done deal.

Number Two let loose a barrage of 50mm death. At this distance, the kinetic energy in these rounds pierced the brick and tore the bathroom to shreds. In a few seconds there was little left of the Klevens’ bathroom, which was now painted in blood and bone.

The Driver wagged a finger at Number Two, and scoffed, “Luck! Plain and simple. Just luck.”

The stench of victory pushed Number Two very close to the fatal mistake of insulting the Driver. “Luck? Bollocks!” Number Two leapt onto the parapet and shouted at his fellows, as they all prayed he’d fall. “I owe this victory to inevitability. Not luck, but the inevitability of a good healthy piss, in the middle of the night. If you’re not old enough to know ’bout that, I’m sure the Driver can fill ya in.”

The Driver balled up a wad of cash and bounced it off of Number Two’s chest. “Listen to me, douche-nozzle Number Two. If I have an opportunity to do you no good . . . ohaaaw! You’ll be pissin’ blood for a month.”

As the boys packed up, Boyne whipped out his cell phone and logged into a deep-cover, heavily encrypted messenger app set up specifically for Representative Murthy. He typed: Klevens – X. He waited for a reply, but none came.

All the transporter’s doors slammed, Boyne settled into his command center, and off they went into the night. A notification beep called Boyne's attention to his main computer monitor. How odd. He looked at his cell phone, but it was still blank. The computer monitor came on, acid green, displaying a text message receipt for his last phone message. He checked his phone again, still nothing. How odd, he thought, staring at the message: Klevens – K.

R
epresentative Murthy strolled
down a long vacant hallway covered in a worn industrial carpet toward Representative Thomka’s sprawling office. The space intended for thousands was now populated by a mere handful and evoked a sense of well-being, which tempered the unrelenting stress of working at a company hemorrhaging money. And this morning the staff, all nicely dressed women possessed of natural but doddering beauty, seemed to be holding a riot in Thomka’s office. Their outrage involved stolen mobiles — the industry term for any kind of computer not nailed to a desk.

Thomka looked to Murthy for a rescue. Murthy said with some surprise, “Whoa. Ah, hey?”

All the rancor in the room shifted to Murthy.

The slender woman standing right in front of Murthy barked, before the rest closed in, “There’s no way all of those robberies were random.”

The most senior woman nudged her aside. “Twenty-eight thousand mobiles, latest models in every size and configuration disappeared — this month! Last month, thirty-one thousand. Same thing.”

“This is not our fault!” shouted another. “We’ve been telling him for months.”

Thomka braced himself on his desk, glum as oatmeal.

“Look, Al,” said another, brushing past Murthy. “You gotta get a handle on this. These are raids. It’s those fuckin' hacktivists. They sweep in and overpower the guards. In every case they bind them with green duct tape and leave them unharmed.”

“They steal mobiles and network servers, nothing else,” said another. “Why’s that!? Why’s that? Al.”

The woman in charge had been calm, but suddenly puffed herself up. “They always have the exact number of trucks needed. That’s no coincidence. They’re being directed by some group or person who knows everything about us,” she said. “I’m sure of it. And these wrong deliveries! Thousands of them! All sent to dummy businesses, hotels and places where the recipients can’t be tracked. That takes big data. It’s the hacktivists. We know it! Gotta be!”

Thomka raised his palms in submission. “All right, all right. I hear you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I promise. I will take care of it. I promise.”

The women glared at him skeptically and filed out in a huff.

Once the door slammed behind them, Thomka collapsed into his huge desk chair and propped his head up with both hands, elbows on his desk.

“Whoa,” said Murthy. “All that over a couple of mobiles?”

“It’s not a couple of mobiles. It’s a lot of mobiles. Every kind. They,” he said, nodding toward the door, “only know about the ones they know about. There’ve been many, many more, over a couple years. Thousands of shipping containers.”

Murthy avoided all administrative drudgery. “Hmmm.”

“That’s not all,” Thomka continued in a worn-out voice. “We didn’t even order what’s being stolen. Products just show up from factories in China and Vietnam then disappear, no explanation. Then, to top it all off, they’re paid for from our bank accounts. Again . . . no explanation.”

“Think it’s Tuke?”

“I’m sure it is. And I don’t care. It’s all so mind-numbingly meaningless.”

Murthy laughed out loud. “There is no meaning to life, Uncle Al. Just think how depressing it would be if there were.”

Thomka’s gloom pervaded his every word. “The ridiculous way we live. What the fuck are we doing?”

Murthy had heard this all before. “Hmmm.”

“There’s something else,” said Thomka. “We’re not really selling anything and the downward trend is accelerating. No one has money. Except for the people in the walled cities, and they aren’t spending. Everyone’s bracing for a catastrophe.”

Murthy tried to share his friend’s apprehension, but his aversion to the mundane prevented him. “Hmmm.”

“We’ve hit the tipping point. It’s always a fast ride on the down-side.”

"Hmmm."

“Everyone’s broke, but us. Everybody.”

“Hmmm.”

“Mahesh, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t care about any of this. The money. The power. The stuff. I just want some peace. One good night’s sleep. One night.”

“I’ve got just the thing for you,” said Murthy. He whipped out a script he had folded under his arm. “Have a look at the thirty-second trailer for
A Uniting Force
. A Trooper Brian Stahl Special Presentation.” He was extremely pleased with himself. “The writers got Petey’s shoot to kill and privatizing the NPF thing just right. Starring the incomparable — Brian Stahl.”

Star-factory tradition and the current penchant for consolidation had turned Brian Stahl into the one and only movie star in the land. Al Thomka was not a fan. Murthy hated people who didn’t love Brian Stahl — ultraviolent Robin Hood. And
A Uniting Force
was bound to be the best episode ever. “Just read it for yourself.” He tossed the script onto Thomka’s desk.

Thomka opened the script and read.

F
ADE IN
: WALL OF FLAMES

E
XT
. DYSTOPIC CITY STREET – DAY

The soot-smudged face of TROOPER BRIAN STAHL emerges from flames. He dives into a rolling somersault and comes up pistols blazing.

B
ad Guys with wild hair
, dressed in ANIMAL SKINS fall or run away.

K
IDNAPPER Bad Guy
drags a screaming girl away by her hair.

C
LOSE ON GIRL

S
he screams
.

C
LOSE ON STAHL

S
tahl clasps
his shoulder as bullets ricochet off. He keeps shooting as he slowly tumbles to the ground, in agony.

T
he bad guys
cover their getaway with a crescendo of GUNFIRE.

K
idnapped Girl begs for help
.

S
tahl struggles
to one knee as MULLET HEAD BAD GUY charges straight at him. He chokes back his pain, struggles to his feet, raises his gun and shoots at the last second.

M
ullet Head Bad Guy’s
head explodes.

S
LOW
MOTION

S
tahl falls
, possibly dying, but gets off one last shot.

K
idnapper Bad Guy
is hit right between the eyes.

K
idnapped Girl breaks
loose and runs free.

C
LOSE ON TROOPER
STAHL

H
e crumples
.

C
LOSER (slow motion
)

H
is beautiful face
slams into the pavement.

E
XTREME CLOSE
UP

H
is baby
blue eyes drift slowly shut.

D
ISSOLVE
TO

I
NT
. COURTROOM – DAY

Courtroom filled with spectators.

T
rooper Stahl sits
at the defendant’s table. His bandages testify to his sacrifice and suffering.

A
MEAN LAWYER
wheels from the bench.

P
.O.V
. Over JUDGE’S shoulder.

S
tahl’s beautifully sad face
, steeped in injustice, cringes through his pain.

M
ontage
of ugly faces

U
gly Woman
One – we read her lips, Murderer

U
gly Man
two – Murderer

U
gly Woman
three – Murderer

Q
UICK DISSOLVE TO

T
wo Prison Guards drag Trooper Stahl
from the court.

C
LOSE ON STAHL

F
LAMES ENGULF
THE SCREEN

M
usic
Up

F
ADE TO BLACK

T
homka dumped
the script on his desk, every movement a chore. “Is this crap supposed to make me feel better?”

Murthy was crestfallen. “Yes, it is. What's wrong with you?”

“It’s pure bullshit. This is what we offer? This shit.”

Murthy shook his head furiously. “Everyone knows it’s shit, but they watch just the same. It’s entertainment. Nobody cares.”

“Oh really? I think they do care, Mahesh. It’s you who don’t care. No one looks like the bad guys, or lives like savages. This is the post-post- apocalyptic era.They’re living better than we are outside these walls. They have useful lives, while we . . .”

Murthy could take no more. “Really? That’s what you think? This is only the beginning of our campaign to get shoot-to-kill status for the NPF. Like Petey wants. It’s the seed. The rest is a diversion.”

“That’s insane,” scoffed Thomka. “The NPF is the most deadly force in the nation. What makes you think they’re going to let us con them into this stupidity? Petey cannot be serious. He’s diverting us. Us! A stupid soap-opera? This whole ‘privatize’ thing stinks. It’s a Petey scam.”

“Look, Al. This is like everything we’ve ever done. You set up for a certain result, then go for it. Whatever gets in the way, you bowl it down as you go. Adapt and assimilate. You know how it works. Nothing is certain. But we can afford to leg this out.”

“And you think this never-gonna-happen, shoot-to-kill thing will give us control over the problems we have?”

“It can’t hurt.”

“You know, Mahesh,” Thomka laughed sadly. “This is all about protecting our advantage, not solving our problem. Because our advantage is the problem. It’s an unmerited accumulation of all our little privileges, over years and years, generation after generation, into a lopsided contest. A game no one wants to play anymore. That’s what Tuke’s speech was telling us. We’re about to tilt, game over, no bonus.”

“And yet . . . we soldier on,” chided Murthy. “As long as it solves my problems, I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

“That’s why I’m so worried.”

“Hmmm?”

“Tuke is giving people solutions. We’re giving them this crap. Soap opera schmaltz dipped in perfumed manure.” He fell back into his seat. “What, for the love of God, do we have to offer?”

“Diversions. And time to cook up more diversions until they forget whatever we promised in the first place. What else is there?”

“Oh, that’s great. We divert them from their miserable lives . . .”

“No. We divert them from finding out we don’t have any solutions, so they don’t murder us in our sleep.”

Thomka was completely exhausted. “We better hope there is no God.”

Murthy scrunched the two-page script in one hand and headed for the door. “Always exit on the upbeat.”

Thomka heard the door close, put his head down on his desk, and fell into a troubled sleep.

* * *

M
acIan watched
two nurses wheel the glass-faced tugboat pilot away, leaving him to deal with an awestruck Max, man-pimp Priyanka, and a burly character who reached to shake his hand. The hand was a batik of red blotches ringed with chalky white scales. MacIan gripped it anyway.

“I’m Jon Replogle,” he said apologetically, now that MacIan had passed the grip test. “It’s not contagious. Just looks like hell. Psoriasis. No cure for this version.”

MacIan studied the blotches crawling up Jon’s neck. “Looks painful?”

“Just a little itchy now and then. That your Peregrine outside?”

“Yes. We came down here . . .” He was distracted by Priyanka slinking away.

Jon caught MacIan’s glance, then turned and yelled, “Get the fuck outta here, you two-bit whore.”

Priyanka back-pedaled up to the double doors, shouting, “That’s two bits more than you have, Chalk Man. You’ll see! You’re gonna regret how you treat me. I am the voice of . . . Manhattmazon!” She thumbed her nose and trotted off like a painted pony.

Max deflated.

MacIan laughed, “Manhattmazon?”

Jon rolled his eyes. “That’s what she always says. If human trafficking was the only thing she was into . . . but she’s far more ambitious than that.”