James Swain - The Program

Mr. Clean was surrounded.

Finally, their suspect reacted. He placed his drink on the ledge beneath the pay phone and stared at Vick. Genuine surprise registered across his face.

“You guys filming a TV show?” he asked.

“Put your hands behind your head!” Vick shouted.

“Me?” he asked, sounding shocked.

“Yes, you! Do it now!”

Their suspect dropped the phone and clasped his hands around the back of his head. The phone was on a metal cord, and banged noisily against the wall. To Vick, it sounded like a cannon going off.

The four FBI agents quickly closed around him. While Ayer pressed his gun against Mr. Clean’s back, Cunningham made their suspect turn his pockets inside out, then frisked him. He was not armed. A cheap plastic wallet was produced. Vick pulled out a handful of credit cards and a Florida driver’s license.

“Is your name Wilfredo Pruna?” she asked.

Sweat pancakes had formed on their suspect’s tee-shirt. His breathing was labored, his eyes blinking rapidly. He looked ready to pass out.

“Yeah,” he mumbled under his breath.

“You’re under arrest,” Vick said.

“Look, I told the judge that I’d get the payment to her soon.”

“What payment is that?” Vick asked.

“The alimony payment to my ex-wife. I lost my job, got behind a few months. You know how it is.”

“We’re arresting you for kidnap and murder,” Vick said.

Pruna gave Vick a wide-eyed stare. He twisted his head to look at the other agents.

“That bastard set me up,” Pruna said angrily.

“Cuff him,” Vick said.

Cunningham made Pruna lower his arms and put them behind his back. The FBI agent put a pair of plastic handcuffs around Pruna’s wrists and pulled them tight.

“Don’t you want to hear my story?” Pruna said indignantly.

“Sure, we do,” Cunningham replied.

“I was going into the bathroom to take a leak,” Pruna said. “Guy was standing by the phones, said he’d give me ten bucks to hold the phone so he could get something from his car. I said sure. Sounded like an easy way to make some cash, you know?”

Something hard dropped in the pit of Vick’s stomach. The story sounded lame enough to be true. She thought back to the casual way Pruna had been holding the receiver. Not on hold, but waiting for someone.

She said, “Describe this guy.”

Pruna perked up. “My height, real strong-looking, had a Cuban accent. He was wearing tinted glasses and a baseball cap. He had some kind of uniform on.”

“What kind of uniform?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was he a policeman?”

“No, I’d recognize that.”

“Anything else stick out?” Vick asked.

“He was shy. He didn’t look directly at me when he spoke.”

Vick looked at her partners. Their faces said it all. They’d been set up.

“You said he went outside to his car,” Vick said. “Where was he parked?”

“I saw him walk across the field to the tire store next door,” Pruna said.

“Did you see what he was driving?”

“No. I just saw him cross the grass to the lot.”

“Show me where he went.”

Vick put her hand on Pruna’s back and turned him around so he faced the windows. Behind the convenience store were a line of cars. Beyond them, a field of knee-high grass that led to the parking lot of a Tire Kingdom. Pruna put his face up to the glass. Vick did the same. Then she saw him. A large Cuban man wearing shades and a baseball cap passing between two parked cars, walking toward her. His movements were lithe, and reminded her of a fish moving effortlessly through the water. In his outstretched right hand was a huge pistol that looked like something out of a cowboy movie.

“Get down,” Vick shrieked.

The windows imploded and glass rained around them. Vick felt a stinging sensation on her cheek and knew she’d been hit. She put her hand on Pruna’s arm and pulled him down to the floor. Her partners dropped down as well.

Mr. Clean kept firing, pinning them to the floor. Everyone in the restaurant was screaming, some in English, some Spanish, the sounds fueling its own hysteria.

“Stay down!” Vick yelled.

Pruna lay beside her on his side, moaning. A ragged bullet hole had appeared in the front of his tee-shirt. Blood began to seep out of his body like water coming out of a spigot, forming a hideous pool on the floor.

The gunshots stopped. Vick rose on shaky legs while staring through the gaping hole where the windows had been. She saw nothing.

“Is everyone okay?” Vick asked.

“We’re all hit,” Cunningham replied.

Vick checked out her team. Padgham sat on the floor, clutching his arm, his head rocking from side to side as he tried to control the pain. Cunningham and Ayer were aiming their guns at the windows, their faces covered in blood. Hundreds of tiny holes had appeared in the walls and the payphones. Mr. Clean was firing buckshot.

“Ayer, get these handcuffs off our suspect, and try to stop his bleeding,” Vick barked. “Cunningham, follow me outside.”

Vick hopped over broken glass and hurried outside with Cunningham beside her. She aimed her gun at shadows that held no threat while Cunningham searched between the rows of parked cards.

“He’s not here,” Cunningham said.

Together, they ran across the field to the Tire Kingdom, and searched its grounds. Mr. Clean had vanished. Cunningham got on his cell phone and called for backup. Vick stepped away from him, and stood very still, listening to the night sounds. It was quiet save for the hiss of cars and the mournful wail of an ambulance racing down Sunrise Boulevard. People didn’t just disappear into thin air, yet Mr. Clean had done just that.

“Where are you,” she whispered.

Her shoulders sagged, feeling the weight of her own failure. She’d done everything by the book, yet the sting had blown up in their faces. She was going to get blamed for this. It was how the game worked.

She headed back to the convenience store, knowing the worst was yet to come.

Crutch lay on his cot, listening to the mayhem on his cell phone. The payphone at the Race Trac was off the hook, and he had heard Mr. Clean ambush the FBI agents who’d come to arrest him.

It was as much fun as going to the movies.

But that wasn’t the best part. Far from it. The best part was that he was on a party line, and the FBI was hearing the mayhem as well, and probably recording it. Linderman’s clever sting had blown up in his face.

That will teach you to steal my playing cards, he thought.

He heard sirens in the background. Someone should have noticed the payphone dangling off the hook by now, and had the foresight to kill the connection. But that hadn’t happened. He guessed that Mr. Clean had inflicted some serious injuries, and no one was paying attention to the little things.

He wanted them all to die. He’d counted five voices – four whom were FBI agents, the fifth the poor rube who’d gotten stuck holding the payphone – and he envisioned them all gasping their last breath, their eyelids flickering.

Lights out, sayonara, cheerio, see you in the funny papers.

Kill them all , said the voice in his head.

He heard two new voices in the background. A pair of medics were trying to save the rube. Crutch listened hard to their conversation.

“He’s lost too much blood,” one of the medics said.

“Come on, pal, don’t give up,” the other medic said.

“Shit. He’s going down.”

The medics gave it their best shot. Finally they stopped talking and a respectful silence followed. The rube was officially dead.

Crutch shook his head ruefully. It would have been much nicer if one of the FBI agents had died, but the rube’s dying would have its benefits. The FBI had arrested an innocent man, then gotten him killed. The newspapers and TV news programs would have a field day with this. It was the kind of fuck-up they lived for.