David Levien - Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

Then there was the wine. He hadn’t been very communicative with Susan the night before about receiving the gift-if that’s what it was. The reason for that was it had made him uncomfortable . A few thousand bucks’ worth of cabernet-on one hand it was uncalled for. It was more than was necessary. Behr had been doing his job, what he was paid to do, and he’d been protecting his own ass too. On the other hand, what kind of gesture was it from a rich man such as Kolodnik? Did a man like Bernie Cool think the value would be lost on someone like him, or that he’d be overwhelmed by it? It seemed the case of wine and the note was supposed to put final punctuation on the matter. But was it a thank-you or was it grease?

Behr picked up his kettlebell and retook his starting position on the ground, lifting the weight overhead. He sucked in a deep breath and climbed to his feet. He didn’t know much about the Turks, or what had pissed them off enough to create something as nasty as their get-ups, but by the end of the set there’d be nothing in his head except blinding white pain. He lunged and rolled back to the ground and tried not to extend the pause.

Get the hell up, Frank , Behr told himself again, and he did. He kept on getting back to his feet.

Altgeld Gardens-Alligator Garden as the locals called it-was a place that struck fear into the hearts of white Chicagoans. Waddy Dwyer knew that, and it followed naturally that that’s where he was. He needed weaps, and he couldn’t be buying them from the Walmart. That’s why he’d called his contact and had come here. Besides, he’d been outside the Green Zone in Baghdad after dark. He’d walked the streets of Al Mazraa in Beirut. He’d done solo night ops in Grozny, Chechnya, so the pair of blackies in front of him was hardly going to make his knees quake.

“Have you got H and K? Or SIG?” Dwyer asked.

“Nah, man,” the kid answered. The kid was lean, maybe eighteen years old, and was named Blaze. That’s whom he was supposed to ask for, anyway, according to his contact. He’d approached the kid in front of the cluster of decrepit government-built row houses.

“Are you him?” Dwyer had asked.

“I’m Blaze, as in Johnny Blaze,” the kid had said, whatever the fuck that meant. “You the English guy?”

“I’m a Welshman ,” Dwyer corrected pointlessly.

The kid had shrugged and started walking toward one of the buildings. Dwyer followed and another kid, a big one with a black nylon stocking on his head, had fallen in behind.

Now they were all crammed into a small, airless storage room that smelled of old marijuana and was filled with pressboard desks and other cheap furniture.

“Look, look, look, we don’t got no high-end SIGs and shit. We got Taurus. We got these Colts …”

Dwyer shook his head. He didn’t love his choices.

“We also got this AK …” Blaze pointed to a battered weapon that looked as if it’d been recovered from a cave in Waziristan.

Dwyer shook his head. Tempting though it was to wrap his hands around the familiar wood grips of a Kalashnikov, he couldn’t see himself waltzing around U.S. cities with an assault rifle.

“What’s your personal gun, then?” Dwyer wondered.

“My personal gun?” Blaze asked back.

“That’s right. You’re armed, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I’s motherfucking armed.”

Blaze lifted the basketball T-shirt that went down to his knees and showed the butt of some kind of chromed-out heavy-caliber automatic. It was exactly the kind of flashy nonsense Dwyer didn’t need. At least now he knew what the kid was holding when it came time for them to try and rob him.

“Lovely,” he said. “Let me look at the Colt.” Blaze handed it over and Dwyer was pleased to see that it was a.45 ACP, but that the make was actually Ceska Zbrojovka. The CZ 97 B was a good gun, not off the Springfield production line, and had a smoother action and better balance than those did. Dwyer didn’t bother asking how they’d come up with a Czech-made gun, as he quickly racked the slide, removed the slide stop pin, and broke down the automatic. He inspected the recoil spring, barrel, and trigger action. The weapon was sound. “Okay, this’ll do. I’ll have it with four magazines.”

For a moment Blaze’s shrewd look went blank.

“Clips, man,” Dwyer said. “Four of ’em.”

“I got two,” was the answer. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the way it was. Then a dull black object that was leaning against the wall in a dark corner of the room caught Dwyer’s eye. “Is that for sale?”

Blaze looked at his hulking companion and they laughed. “Homeboy likes the shotty,” Blaze said. He went and picked it up, then crossed the room and rested it on a desk. It was a short-barreled Saiga 12-gauge automatic shotgun. An impressive close-quarters weapon designed for leveling men in enclosed spaces. And if things went poorly, it was equally useful for getting out of the same spaces-three or four rounds fired into a wall and there would no longer be a wall, and escape could be made. Dwyer inspected the shotgun and saw it was in working order and that it was loaded with 00 buckshot.

“I’ll have both,” Dwyer told them, putting the shotgun back on the desk.

“Wasn’t gonna sell the Saiga,” Blaze said, “but a’ight. I’ll do both for twenny-fi’ hunned.” The price was too high by half, but Dwyer didn’t waste time.

“Done,” he said. Then he pulled one of the packets of American cash off his abdomen. Proper tradecraft would have had him secreting the money in five hundred or thousand dollar increments all over his body. But he came in here recommended and hadn’t wanted to waste time. His mistake became clear the minute the two salesmen saw the five-thousand-dollar brick he had started peeling bills from.

“You want something else?” Blaze asked. “Can’t let you be leaving with all that cash.”

“No, just the CZ and the Saiga,” Dwyer said.

“Go on, buy a Taurus.”

“I don’t want a mingy Taurus.”

“Well, likes I said, we can’t let you be leaving with all that cash.” Blaze’s voice had changed when he said the last. Dwyer felt it and had looked up from counting money in time to see the big fellow reaching for the Saiga on the desk. Dwyer bunched the cash in his left hand into a fist and swung a thousand-dollar hook that drilled the big man in the throat. The man’s face registered surprise, then crumpled into pain, and he went off his feet sideways. He landed, gurgling, on the floor. Dwyer lunged across the space between him and Blaze and grabbed the wiry young man’s wrist, which had been diving for the heavy chrome auto at his waist. Dwyer yanked the wrist down and held it firmly in place against the kid’s body. The other hand caught him by the neck. He stared into Blaze’s eyes and let the kid feel his superior strength.

“I was wondering whether you was gonna be twats, and now you’ve gone and done it.” For a moment the only sounds in the room were Dwyer and Blaze breathing through their noses, and the big fellow gasping wetly on the floor. “Now, do you scruts want two grand for the guns, or do you want to fucking die?”

Moments later Dwyer stood at the trunk of his rented Lincoln Town Car with the.45 tucked in his waistband at his lower back, and put the shotgun, now wrapped in an old towel, in the spare tire well under a piece of carpet. He closed the trunk and saw Blaze and his friend framed in the doorway of the building he’d just left. They paused when they saw him there. Blaze raised his thumb and forefinger at Dwyer and mimed firing a single shot. Dwyer ignored the gesture, got in the car and on the road for Indianapolis.