“Just thanking a friend for a favor. Speaking of which,” I punched him in the arm, “who hits someone right on a fresh bullet wound as a way of saying hello?”
“Well maybe next time don’t run around like a rooster in a shooting gallery,” he teased back.
“She didn’t drop the gun, I had to improvise. Still got her to chase me, though, and that’s all that matters. No way she walks into that turkey shoot unless she was distracted.”
It’s still amazing she did. Sometimes it pays to be the last person anyone expects to be a hero.
“Been a while since I went night hunting,” he said, slinging his long rifle over his shoulder. “It was fun.”
“Don’t count if you use a laser sight.” This came from Richie Marchese, who had fired shot #2. He had a ridiculous ghillie suit made of straw and fake earth draped over him like some kind of mutant Chia-Pet bathrobe.
“My ass it doesn’t count,” John fired back.
“I made a tougher shot from further away with just a scope,” Richie argued.
“Tougher shot? Look at my entry wound: bullseye on the heart from thirty yards out, in the dark.”
Richie rolled his eyes and poked The Persian’s corpse in the neck with the barrel of his rifle. “Neck shot, forty yards, no laser sight.”
The third shooter, Craig Serano, called out as he splashed over from across the stream. “You guys see that? I dropped her!”
“You dropped her?” Richie hollered back.
“Dude, you shot her in the back on the way down!” John added. “Get the fuck outta here.”
And thus the debate started. I stepped aside and let them go a few rounds. When you call three local hitters to work the same job, there’s bound to be a pissing contest. While they traded insults, I retrieved the duffel bag from where she’d dropped it by the tree and counted the stacks of hundreds inside.
One million dollars, even.
I took out ten stacks of bills and shoved them in my various pockets. Then I lifted the bag and went over to settle the battle of egos before more shots were fired, but it was like breaking up a shouting match between my kids. They only shut up when I whistled loudly through my fingers, an ear-piercing sound that used to stop Maggie and Ethan mid-sentence. “You wanna keep bickering like you’re on The View, or you wanna get paid?”
I held the bag open, putting the cash on full display. The bickering ceased at once.
After distributing their share to each, I thanked them all for showing up on such short notice.
“Hey,” John said, “Rick Carter calls, we know the job’s gonna be good.”
“Thanks,” I replied.
“Was not expecting to hear from you today, that’s for sure. What’s it been, almost ten years? We all thought you were dead, pal.”
“The world’s just not that lucky, I guess.”
“Got anything else lined up?” Richie asked.
I shook my head. “Sorry fellas, I’m not hanging around long. This is a one-and-done.”
“Well,” Craig said, “it was good working with you one last time, at least.”
“Very good,” Richie said with a smile as he shouldered his backpack full of cash.
We shook hands and they made their way back to the trail, the arguing starting up again almost right away. Half of me expected to hear a shot ring out before they parted ways, but none did. Maybe it was because their hands were busy carrying The Persian’s corpse, mummified in a plastic drop cloth and a whole roll of duct tape.
Once their voices were too faint to hear, I went over to the stream, dropped the duffel bag (now refilled with the $100,000 I had kept hidden from the guys; it’s never wise to tempt three armed killers with extra cash), took off my jacket, and splashed cold water on my tattered shoulder. With the blood washed off, it didn’t look too bad. No worse than any of the other injuries I was currently nursing. It would need stitches, but I could hold it together with some butterfly bandages until I found a guy to sew it up. I could always find a guy.
I sat by the stream bed for another half hour, just to be safe, listening to the water lap over the rocks, and the occasional rustle of leaves as some small, nocturnal mammal scampered past, unseen. The Persian’s Desert Eagle was in my lap, in case something more sinister made itself known, but nothing did. Still, it felt good to take someone else’s gun for a change.
When I was positive none of my three old candidates stuck around to see what I was up to, I started walking downstream, past where I had originally emerged with The Persian, past the rock shaped like Montana that was lying half in the water, and kept walking until I reached the back of Jay and Abby’s tree. The rock shaped like Texas was right where I had left it that afternoon, as was the shovel I had stashed in the branches above it.
My shoulder wasn’t happy about it, but I moved the rock and dug up Robert’s box for the second time. I held it out and snapped a picture of it, then sent it to the chat room along with one I’d taken of The Persian’s body before the boys dragged it away. I waited five minutes before I called, letting her digest the significance of the images. She answered on the first ring.
“What do you think of my photography skills?” I asked before she could speak. “The lighting’s not great, but I think the overall quality doesn’t suffer too badly.”
“We had a deal,” Trish said. Her voice was flat. Emotionless. It was disappointing. I’d hoped to coax some more of the cockney out of her.
“Yes, we did. None of which involved strapping ten pounds of explosives to a couple of elementary schoolers.”
“Then next time you should be more specific with your instructions.”
“Was I not clear enough about The Persian coming unarmed? Not that it matters now, anyway.”
“I can send others. You haven’t won anything, just delayed your inevitable loss.”
“Now Trish,” I said, as patronizingly as possible, “we’ve been over this. Do you really want your clients’ dirty little secrets smeared over every corner of the internet?”
“Go ahead, I can clean it up.”
