Brett Battles - Just Another Job

“Just came out of nowhere, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Jonathan Quinn said.

“Did you see him? I mean, where the hell was he?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Damn. Came out of nowhere.”

The man sucked in a wet breath.

“What’s your name?” Quinn asked.

Even in his current condition, the man hesitated, then said, “Eric.”

“You can call me Jonathan,” Quinn told him. He didn’t use his first name often, but this was one of those times that seemed right. Of course, it was only his professional name, so it didn’t really matter.

“Jonathan,” Eric said, as if confirming the offer. “I…ah…guess I’m lucky you…were here.”

Quinn smiled to hide his own hesitation. “Yeah. Lucky.”

Another ragged breath.

“You want to lie down?” Quinn asked.

“No,” Eric said. “This is fine.”

Quinn pressed his right hand a little harder against Eric’s wound. Like his left, it was covered with a surgical glove. He knew the pressure wasn’t doing much more than cutting down on the external bleeding, but it would make the guy feel like he wasn’t alone.

“How you doing?” Quinn asked.

“Tired,” Eric said. “Hurts like a son of…a bitch, you know?” A wave of pain washed across the man’s face. Once it was gone, he looked at Quinn again. “You…ever been shot before?”

Quinn shook his head. “Close a couple of times. But it’s something I try to avoid.”

“Good plan…second…time for me…the first time was in the leg…right through the meat of my thigh…that hurt like hell, too…but…not quite…like this.” A pause for air. “Ambulance coming?”

“On its way,” Quinn lied. No ambulance would have been able to make it in time. That was if calling one had even been an option.

“You…live around here?” Eric asked.

Quinn couldn’t help but glance around. They were surrounded by look-alike, one-story buildings. Cinder-block walls, limited windows, tin roofs. And surrounding them, black asphalt, resealed sometime in the last several months. It was an industrial park on the outskirts of Fresno, California. A little bit of business nestled at the edge of farm country. Even though the closest field was a couple miles away, Quinn could smell the fertilizer, tangy and fresh.

“No,” Quinn said. “Not from around here.”

“Then what were you-” Eric stopped himself, pain once again demanding his full attention.

There was the sound of footsteps about fifty feet away, coming around the corner of the building Eric was propped against. Quinn didn’t even look up. He recognized the pattern.

“Dammit. Is he still alive?” the new arrival said, obviously annoyed.

It was Durrie. For several years he had been Quinn’s mentor, but the internship had finished two years before and now Quinn was a full-fledged cleaner, too. They were working this particular assignment together as partners though Durrie still had the habit of treating Quinn like an apprentice.

Durrie approached quickly, stopping just a few feet short of the wounded man. He was holding several large cotton towels in one hand and a five-gallon bucket in the other.

Under the sealed lid Quinn knew the container was filled with dark brown paint. He was the one who purchased it at a store over an hour away in Bakersfield.

“I got everything else wrapped up,” Durrie said as he set the container on the ground and placed the towels on top of it. He looked down at the dying man. “How much longer?”

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Take a walk for a few minutes, all right?”

Durrie stared at his former apprentice, his look clearly conveying the message that he thought Quinn was being soft. But after a moment, he started walking away. “I’ll do another check around,” he said. “When I’m done, we got to go.”

Once he had disappeared around the other end of the building, Quinn turned back to Eric.

“There isn’t going to be…any ambulance, is there?” Eric asked.

“No,” Quinn said.

“Who are you?”

Quinn remained silent.

“Are you working with that guy who shot me?”

Quinn shook his head. “No.”

“Then why are you here?”

Once again, Quinn didn’t answer. How do you tell someone you were there to clean up and dispose of his body once he was dead? That was Quinn’s job, after all. It’s what Durrie had trained him to do. When an operation needed to be covered up, that’s when Quinn and Durrie came in.

Quinn, of course, had known Eric’s name for days. He knew Eric wasn’t the guy’s first name, but his middle. Phillip Eric Maleeny. According to the report Quinn had seen, he’d been going by Eric since attending college at UC Berkeley, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s in computer science.

Naturally, he’d been snapped up by one of the firms in Silicon Valley before he had a chance to go for an even higher degree. He bounced around a bit, did some time at Apple, and even a half-year stint up in Washington state at Microsoft. But it was his latest job that had caused the problem.

He was working for a small software company called Shelbycom. It had only one client-the U.S. Air Force. In conjunction with several other companies scattered around the country, Shelbycom was working on the next generation of flight instrumentation. Its portion of the project was to develop the software programming for a virtual control panel.

Most other details had been redacted from the report Quinn had read. Still, the amount of prep information he and Durrie had been given was considerably more than they usually got.

The only other thing Quinn knew was Eric Maleeny was in charge of creating a critical interface program. Unfortunately, Eric was not satisfied with the compensation he’d been receiving for his work.

He’d been selling company secrets on the side, and when you were dealing with a company that was dealing only with the U.S. Defense Department, you were either off your meds or had a death wish. Apparently, Eric Maleeny had the latter.

Quinn and Durrie had been part of an operation set to catch Eric in the act and to apprehend those buying the info. But things hadn’t exactly gone as planned-the buyer had put up a fight. When it was over, the buyer was dead and Eric was on his way, hit by a bullet not meant for him.

The buyer’s body was already in the van. Now they were just waiting for Eric to join him.

“I’m a little cold,” Eric said.

“That’s natural,” Quinn said.

“I’m going to…die, aren’t I?”

A pause. “I’m sorry.”

“Why did this happen…to me?”

“I think you know why.”

“I don’t get what the big deal is,” Eric said, getting the full sentence out without having to pause. “Okay…I made some money I…shouldn’t have…I’m sorry…but the guy who was buying was…with the Navy…I’ll give the…money back…but what’s…wrong with…sharing with ourselves?”

The casual spy was the worst kind of spy. Ignorance and naivete were common.

“The man you were meeting with,” Quinn said, “he wasn’t Navy.”

“What do you-” Eric paused. “What…who was he?”

“A hired front,” Quinn said.

“For who?”

“Does it really matter?” Quinn asked. He didn’t know the answer himself. That was part of the information that had been blacked out in the report.

Eric was silent for a moment, then said, “So I’m just supposed to die?”

Maybe if they had called an ambulance immediately, Eric might have had at least a small chance of living. But that would have compromised the operation. The industrial park would have been flooded with local law enforcement. And worse, the media would have gotten a hold of it.