J. Konrath - Fuzzy Navel

“You know, Jackie…” Harry stares down at me, “the top of your head is really sexy.”

“This is the only time you’ll ever see it, McGlade.”

He takes out his cell phone and snaps a picture.

“Hot,” Harry says. “I especially dig the gray roots coming in. I like a woman with de cades of experience.”

I ignore him, something I’m particularly good at. “We need to turn off the lights. We’ve got two in the kitchen, three in the living room, the hallway, the bedroom, and the garage. Then, when it’s dark, I can grab the gun bag in the bedroom, pop outside, and sneak up on these bastards.”

“You can kill all the lights at once,” Harry says. “Got a circuit breaker?”

“End of the hallway, in the laundry room.”

“I’ll wait here.” Harry shakes his prosthetic for effect.

“Actually, Harry, I’m thinking we use this refrigerator for cover.”

“You want to push this heavy thing all the way across a carpeted hallway? Good luck.”

“ We’re going to push it.”

“And give the psycho kitty another chance to use Acorn Andy as a scratch post? No thanks.”

I reach into the refrigerator, take out the squirt gun we keep in there for when Mr. Friskers disagrees with guests.

“Just spray him if he gets close.”

“Like this?”

Harry squirts me in the face. Big surprise there. Then he sprays me in the chest a few times, squinting to see through the material. I take the gun away from him.

“Grow up, Harry.” I yell over my shoulder, “Mom! Latham! We’re going to shut off the electricity!” I face Harry again. “Let’s do this.”

Harry grins, then adjusts his peas. “All right, but I’m warning you – if it’s really heavy, I’m going to make you check me later on for a hernia.”

“I can’t wait,” I deadpan. Then I unplug the fridge and we begin to push.

PAUL PESSOLANO PEERS THROUGH the yellow lenses of his aviator sunglasses, trying to find his backpack in the darkness. He can’t see shit. Pessolano feels around in the grass where he’s sitting, and locates one of the straps. He pulls the bag closer, lifts up his glasses so he can see inside, and removes a magazine filled with five Lapua.338 Mags. He pops the old magazine out of the TPG-1 and clicks the new one in place. Then he gives it a slap, like he’s seen in a thousand war movies.

Even though he told the others differently, Pessolano was never in the armed forces. The closest he ever got to the sands of Kuwait was Miami Beach. Six months ago he worked in a chain video store in Tampa. Then his elderly mother died. He quit his job, sold her house, and used the money to buy some top-of-the-line sniper rifles and surveillance equipment. His plan was to become a mercenary. Or a hit man. Or a wandering gun for hire, like George Peppard on The A-Team.

Work wasn’t easy to find. He tried reading the police blotter and calling up the parents of juveniles involved in illegal activities, asking if they wanted to hire him to make their lives easier. He never got any takers, and after cops showed up at his apartment (he hid inside and didn’t let them in) he fled the state.

Swanson’s ad in Soldier of Fortune , asking for “ civic-minded mercs who wanted to make things right, ” is the first freelance job Pessolano has actually been on. It doesn’t pay anything, but that’s okay. This is all about getting some experience. Once he turns this corner, he’s sure he’ll find other jobs. Because Pessolano is now, officially, a killer.

It was easy, killing the pervert. Pessolano had been worried about it, afraid he wouldn’t have the guts to pull the trigger when the clock struck five. But he pulled that trigger. And he shot that pervert in the back of the head. Baptized by fire, a culmination of the greatest few weeks of his life.

All the preparation, all the practice up to this point, didn’t seem real. Pessolano felt like he was living someone else’s life. He liked the feeling, but didn’t fully believe it. But he believes it now. He’s not a pretender. He’s the real deal. And he’s got the dead body to prove it, and good friends to share it with. Though Swanson seems a little soft, and Munchel a little crazy, they are his friends. That’s why he doesn’t mind them using his guns and equipment.

And now the thing Pessolano wants to do most is impress his friends. He knows they look up to him. If he can kill all five of the targets by himself, they’ll revere him even more. That’s why he’s using the better bullets. The Lapuas, which can shoot through a brick wall. These are the last of the full-metal jacket rounds. He gave Swanson and Munchel cheaper bullets – soft points. They work fine, but they aren’t as deadly as the Lapuas.

He pulls back the bolt. The brass flies out. He chambers a round and spends a minute tracking down the ejected cartridge and pocketing it. Then he presses his cheek against the pad and sights his target: the hallway. He can see all the way down to the laundry room. If he switches position, he can see into the bedroom where the two women were fighting over the black bag.

Perfect. Now all he has to do is wait.

The wait isn’t very long. After hunkering down for only a minute or two, something appears in his scope. Something large and silver.

A refrigerator. The woman cop and the guy with the fake hand are pushing it into the hallway, trying to use the doors for shields.

Pessolano smiles. One of his bullets could shoot through five of those fridges stacked side by side. He lines up the mil dots in the scope, aiming at the door she’s hiding behind, right where her heart should be.

“DAMMIT, HARRY! PUSH!”

“Hold on. I need to hydrate.”

Harry reaches in the refrigerator for another beer. I’ve been in life-and-death situations with him before, and being flip is Harry’s normal MO. He lacks the ability to recognize the severity of his position. Either that, or he recognizes it and chooses to ignore it. I suppose the attitude has served him well so far, because despite the efforts of many people, Harry McGlade isn’t dead yet. But I don’t want to get my head blown off because he thinks everything is one big joke. Harry might have delusions of immortality. I don’t.

So I take the beer from his hand and shove it back in the fridge.

“Stop acting like an idiot and let’s push this thing. On three. One… two… three!”

I half expect him to reach for the beer again, or shoot me with the squirt gun, but Harry knuckles down and pushes. The fridge is a high-end model, the rollers heavy-duty. It moves easily on the kitchen linoleum. But when we get onto the carpet, every inch becomes a battle. The hallway isn’t long – no more than twenty-five feet – but it might as well be a mile. We strain and shove and grunt, putting our weight into it, digging our heels in. In less than a minute we’re both winded, and the fridge hasn’t moved down the hallway more than three feet.

“Do you need help?” Mom, from the bathroom.

“Hell yeah!” Harry says.

“Mom, stay where you are.”

“She wants to help, let her help.”

“She’s not-”

The bullet punches cleanly through the refrigerator door, and I feel it tug against my jacket’s shoulder pad. I drop onto the ground, hugging the floor, thinking, Oh my God, that wasn’t a soft point.

“Uh-oh,” Harry says.

He kneels next to me, but his mechanical hand prevents him from lying down. Another bullet hits the fridge, a few inches above his head. I consider crawling down the hall, back into the kitchen, but that would leave Harry stranded in the hallway, an open target.