Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

‘Is your spirit ready for the journey?’ he asked.

‘It is,’ the boy said.

Oh, this child! He kissed him on the forehead and said, ‘Let’s pray together until it’s time to leave.’

Eddie Kolowski was late and he was drunk. Son of a bitch. He’d gone to a wake for a guy he’d been in the navy with, and shit, next thing he knew, it was midnight and he was three sheets to the wind. He knew he oughta slow down, some cop was gonna pull him over for sure, but even at the speed he was going, he wasn’t gonna get to the refinery until one, maybe one-thirty. If it had been just him and Billy on the shift, bein’ late wouldn’t be a big deal, but with that little Mormon shit still there — why in hell hadn’t that kid quit yet? — he might get reported. Son of a bitch.

Have I got a deal for you .

Ellie said her rich aunt was going on vacation for a couple of weeks and she wanted somebody to house-sit her fancy place on Lake Erie. And as she was through with the summer class she’d been teaching, and as she’d have access to a water-ski boat and her aunt’s Mercedes, and as the house was stocked with steaks and booze, she decided to accommodate her beloved aunt — and she just wondered if DeMarco could get away for a few days to join her.

DeMarco had immediately called the speaker’s office and confirmed that Mahoney was still in Boston and had no plans to come back to D.C. anytime soon. He was on a plane that afternoon and waterskiing the next day.

Ellie was in the bathroom getting ready to go out. She wanted to have a few drinks at this place downtown and dance. DeMarco didn’t really like to dance all that much, but for her he’d pretend that he did. He’d stand there like a tree, firmly rooted to the earth, move his arms a little, and she’d dance around him like he was some sort of thick Italian maypole.

He looked down at the paper lying on the deck at his feet. Mahoney had been right about Fine — and about Lincoln.

Oliver Lincoln admitted immediately that he was responsible for Nick Fine’s death. A number of African Americans had taken to the streets as a result of the senator’s assassination and they were demanding that the government find the white racist who had killed him. Lincoln said he didn’t want anyone to get hurt because of Fine, but his main reason for confessing to Fine’s murder was that he didn’t want the bastard turned into a hero and a martyr. He said again it was Nick Fine who had paid him to orchestrate the terrorist attacks, not that simpleton Broderick.

When asked how he had arranged to have Fine killed, Lincoln said it was pretty simple. He knew several assassins; that was the business he’d been in. He gave an old friend a letter to mail to one of them, and had his friend transfer money from one of his hidden bank accounts to the assassin. The FBI had not found all his offshore accounts and since he was never going to get out of prison, what better use did he have for the money? After the hit, he instructed his pal to pay the assassin the other half of his considerable fee, including a rather generous tip for both the assassin and his friend.

When asked if he had paid someone to kill Bianca Castro, Lincoln said no. He just had his friend mail a letter to a relative of Jorge Rivera.

But DeMarco didn’t care about Fine or Lincoln or Pugh or any of them now. He was going dancing with a schoolteacher.

He stopped the car, the truck, whatever it was, a safe distance from the refinery.

It was out of his hands from this point forward. Even though he did not need to say it again, he told the boy, ‘Don’t enter the plant until the young guard returns to the building by the gate.’

‘I know,’ the boy said.

‘And put the first device on the tank. You must plant that one. If you’re caught while you’re inside the facility, detonate the bombs. Not as many will die, but on a night like this a lot of people will still be on the streets, drinking in bars, sleeping with their windows open.’

‘I know,’ the boy said again. He seemed impatient to be on his way.

He was thinking that if the boy had to detonate the bombs prematurely he would shut the car windows and drive as fast as he could, but he might die too. So be it.

There was only one thing left to say.

‘Go with God.’

The boy nodded his head, his eyes luminous. He opened the door and exited the vehicle. In one hand he held the short-handled shovel that he would need to dig under the refinery fence. In his other hand was the satchel that contained the bombs.

Eddie had made good time — it was only twelve-thirty — but by the time he punched in and changed and got to the guard shack, he was going to be almost two hours late for work.

Oh, shit! Was that a car stopped on the road up there? Was that a fuckin’ cop? He tapped the brakes and slowed down. He still couldn’t make out if it was a cop car or not, and that’s when he realized that he’d been driving with his lights off ever since he’d left the bar. Half the time, that’s the way cops caught drunks: the drunk would forget to turn on his lights. Eddie reached down and turned on his lights when he was fifty yards from the car parked on the side of the road. Thank God, it wasn’t a cop. There was no light bar on the car. Then, as he blasted past the car, he caught a young guy in his headlights holding a backpack and something else.

It took him a couple of seconds to realize what he’d seen: it was that guy with the puke-green El Camino. He hadn’t seen the car in maybe six months. The last time was before the strike. Yeah, he’d seen it maybe three times before the strike, always at night near the plant. He’d noticed the car because his worthless brother-in-law had owned an El Camino. Only an idiot , which his brother-in-law was, would buy one. Eddie always figured: You wanna car, buy a car; you wanna truck, buy a truck; but for God’s sake don’t get something that thinks it’s both.

There was something else bothering him about what he’d just seen, but he didn’t know what it was.

He finally got to the gate and Billy let him into the refinery and gave him this where-the-fuck-you-been look as he drove through the gate.

The bar had an outside deck and a disc jockey that played rock-and-roll oldies, the kind of music DeMarco liked. Fortunately, for the moment, the guy had picked something slow, an old Roy Orbison song. He held Ellie close and she felt good. He wished the guy would just play slow dances the rest of the night. He didn’t look like such a doofus dancing slow and he got to hold a beautiful woman in his arms while he danced.

He was sweating a little — Ellie was sweating more because she moved more than just her shoulders when she danced — and the breeze coming off the lake felt great. There was a funny smell that came with the breeze though. Maybe it was coming from that big ugly facility he’d seen on the way to the bar. Whatever, the breeze felt good, funny smell or not.

He looked over the top of Ellie’s head and saw another woman dancing that reminded him of Emma — tall, short blondish hair — and he wondered how Emma was doing with Edith Baxter. Emma had told him she was going to save Edith. She had a brilliant psychologist friend in New York, a woman she’d once lived with, and Emma and the doctor were going to see Edith whether Edith liked it or not. Emma figured Edith was such a formidable personality that her friends — she had no relatives left — were afraid to force her to get help. Well, Emma was pretty formi dable too, and she was determined to make Edith get some help before she killed herself.

And while Emma was off doing good works, DeMarco was dancing with a pretty woman, and he’d spend tomorrow zooming around Lake Erie in a fast boat. He really got a kick out of driving that ski boat.