Steve Martini: Double Tap

He checked his watch, then moved quickly back toward the entry. Something caught his attention: a noise from the garage. He stood still and listened. It was the hum of an electric motor. His heart skipped a beat. Could it be the garage door going up? He listened, his eyes quickly scanning the room for the nearest register. It was hissing air again. The noise continued. He counted silently in his head. It didn’t stop. The noise was the motor from the forced-air system, the air conditioner.

He took a deep breath, then quickly headed up the curving staircase two steps at a time to the second floor. At the top was a sizable landing maybe thirty feet square. It was enclosed on two sides by large lighted display cases showcasing art glass that, by their shapes and colors, made it clear they were not functional objects.

He thought he heard something and glanced over the balcony to the formal entry and the big black table downstairs. He listened for a second. He was getting jumpy. His ears were playing tricks. The landing was carpeted in a sea of deep wool pile that continued down the wide hallway in both directions off the landing.

He headed toward the guest suite at the end of the hall on his left. When he got there he listened at the closed door for a moment, then quietly opened it. A large fireplace with a decorative convex mirror over the mantel gave him a fish-eye view of the entire room, the king-size bed with its neatly made-up comforter, bed skirt, and sham of heavy tapestry. The room had its own bath. Through its open door, light streamed in through an outside window.

He stepped into the room and closed the door. It was spacious, decorated with a masculine touch, all clean lines and dark colors.

He proceeded to the tall dresser at the far side of the room, opened the second drawer, and swept his gloved right hand under a heavy quilt blanket until he felt something hard and heavy. Grasping the handle, he pulled it from under the bulkier cloth: it was a sand-camouflage canvas bag about twenty inches square, zippered on three sides.

Closing the drawer, he put the bag on top of the dresser, unzipped it, and flipped back the top before feeling its weight. A flash of blue metal clattered across the polished wooden surface, hit the wall behind the dresser, and caromed onto the carpeted floor with a muffled thud.

He stood motionless, sucking air, looking idly at the long scratch in the dark mahogany surface of the dresser and the nicked wall behind it.

He listened for any sound of movement in the house, waiting for what seemed an eternity. Sweat ran down his forehead and along the bridge of his nose. It burned in his right eye as he tuned every auditory nerve in his head to troll the distant reaches of the house, sending out waves of anxiety like sonar, listening for any sound that might bounce back.

Nothing! Even the air conditioner with its telltale hiss from the room’s louvered registers seemed to have cycled off.

Finally he moved, stooped, and picked up the pistol’s loaded metal clip from the floor, one of two fitted into pockets in the flipped-open top of the gun case. The loaded clip weighed nearly a pound.

He slapped the metal against the open palm of his other hand, seating the loaded rounds properly against the magazine’s rear wall. Then he turned his attention back to the bag on top of the dresser. Held in place in the bottom by a thick Velcro strap was a heavy-framed blue metal semiautomatic pistol.

The letters on the side of the slide read: USSOCOM. The gun was made in Germany by Heckler amp; Koch and came in only one caliber, 45 auto.

He had brought his own rounds, just six loose ones in the pocket of his jacket, in case he needed them. Store-bought, a common manufacture, so that they would be virtually impossible to trace. As it turned out, he wouldn’t need them, not with the two fully loaded clips included in the bag.

Inside he also found the dark metal tube.

He pulled the Velcro tab open and carefully picked up the pistol. It was accurized, a threaded muzzle on the barrel-special bushings, adjustable trigger, precision springs, a rail slide for the special sight also in the bag, and a chromed barrel-the whole enchilada in a package you could slip into a small backpack.

He slid the gun’s sight along the rail until it was seated in the proper position, then locked it in place using the small Allen wrench included in the bag to tighten the set screw. He threaded the silencer over the exposed tip of the barrel, then checked the loaded clip that had fallen on the floor one more time.

It was then that he noticed the strange shape and tint of the bullet tip of the top round. It wasn’t lead or copper but something else. He tried to scratch it first with his fingernail, then with the sharp edge of the Allen wrench, but neither made an impression. A highly sophisticated handgun with a railed sight and a silencer. He thought for a moment. Then instinctively he knew what the space-age bullet was and what it was designed to do. Smiling to himself at the brainteaser he would be delivering to the cops, he ejected the top round from the clip and replaced it with one of his own soft lead-tipped bullets from the loose rounds he’d brought with him in his pocket.

He was about to slide the loaded clip into the handle when he looked down and suddenly realized he’d forgotten something. The disquieting thought didn’t have time to even settle in his brain when he heard the noise, a kind of metal clang followed by the hum of an electric motor, this time not in the house but outside. The mechanized iron gates at the driveway out in front were opening.

It was a little after five on a Friday afternoon and the traffic on Prospect was already bumpered up like a train wreck: the start of your average fall weekend in La Jolla.

The pathfinders-those who left the office early-and a few day-trippers were already out in strength, reconnoitering the boutiques’ so that by Saturday morning the Village would be under full siege.

Male heads turned like an orchard of radar dishes homing in on the growl of the Enzo’s V-12 overhead cam engine as Madelyn Chapman cruised by. The sleek red Ferrari was an item of curiosity even here in this parish of plenty. At slow speeds it purred like a panther on the prowl.

Usually chained to her desk until late into the evening, this afternoon she left the office before five to run an errand. She was anxious to complete it and get home before the out-of-towners froze the roads in gridlock.

Madelyn’s eyes scanned for a parking space. She wasn’t about to start circling the block. Nor was she going to leave the new car in a public garage where some bozo could carve obscenities into the paint job as a manifesto against affluence.

Instead she steered the racy red sports car into a vacant white-curbed space in front of La Valencia, one of the trendy boutique hotels on the main drag. The sign out front read: Valet Only . Behind it stood the hotel’s pink-flamingo walls and the Spanish-tile-covered portico leading to the garden entrance.

Two young men in white dress shirts and dark slacks stood near the entrance looking at the Ferrari. They were probably wondering which of them would get to play Mario Andretti in the tight garage under the hotel. One of them grabbed the initiative and sprinted to the driver’s door, opening it before Chapman had a chance to unbuckle her seat belt.

“Welcome to the La Valenc-Oh, Ms. Chapman. Didn’t recognize you.”

“Jimmy.”

Madelyn made a practice of pouncing on the valet spaces whenever the Village was busy. Never one for walking half a mile in heels, she treated the hotel as if she had a lifetime lease on valet space out front.

“Nice wheels!” The kid was taking it all in. He noticed the paper license plate taped to the rear window. “I take it you just picked it up from the dealer.”