Blake Crouch - Birds of Prey

“Hmm. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s no good for me.”

Mr. K pulled the ball-gag out of his pocket and jammed it into Porter’s mouth, had it fastened around his skull in five seconds.

“Did you get a chance to stop by Morrell’s Edges?” Mr. K asked, holding up the ice pick to make sure Porter saw the blade. “He told me it was the sharpest thing he’d ever made. Let’s give it a whirl, shall we?”

Porter raised his head and shrieked through the ball-gag.

“Oh, relax,” Mr. K said. “What I hear, the ladies don’t like a guy with a turtleneck anyway.”

As he reached down, he heard the locking mechanism in the door shift.

Mr. K glanced at the door, back at Porter.

“You typed in the dummy code.”

Porter shook his head violently. Possibly telling the truth.

Mr. K rose quickly to his feet, set the ice pick on the counter, and grabbed his 9mm.

“If I find you’ve lied to me,” Mr. K said, “I’ll spend the next three days taking you slowly apart.”

He stepped toward the door as the lock turned, hearing voices outside, one of them saying, “There it is. Open sesame.”

The door swung inward, and Mr. K found himself facing four people, three men and a woman, all standing in the dark parking lot. He pointed his nine at the first man, the one holding the lock pick and tension wrench.

“We’re closed,” Mr. K said.

Everyone froze. Best case scenario, the quartet got the hell out of there. But they had broken in, so they were obviously a criminal element, and criminals weren’t predictable.

Mr. K quickly did the math in his head. He could get at least two headshots in before the others either scattered or attacked. There were ten bullets in his gun, and the Morrell ice pick was behind him on the counter. He liked his odds, but clean-up would be messy, and the gunfire could attract attention. This being a gun show, they were all probably armed, so he needed to decide now before one of them pulled a weapon and—

“K? That you, K?”

Mr. K squinted into the darkness at the one talking. He had a Mexican accent, something familiar about it.

“It’s me, man. Javier.”

Javier? Mr. K let go of the breath he’d been holding, but he kept the gun pointed.

“Javier. Small world. I wasn’t expecting any company.”

Javier stepped into the light, palms up. He peered behind Mr. K, and then smiled broadly.

“Shit, K. You working? We didn’t mean to interrupt you, man. We just wanted to do a little late night target practice. It’s cool.”

“Who are your friends?”

“Luther, Charles is the one with the lock pick skills, and the lady is Alex. Guys, this is Mr. K. He and I used to do some contract work for the same jefe, years ago. Wet stuff.”

If Javier was cavalier about admitting to murder, Mr. K guessed his associates weren’t likely to go running to the authorities. Still, this was a wrinkle in the night’s previously-scheduled activities, and he didn’t appreciate wrinkles.

“What are you going to do to that man?” the woman, Alex, asked. She was staring at Porter, and Mr. K thought he detected excitement in her voice.

“It’s okay,” Javier said. “They’re cool. If you want us to leave, we can come back later. Or…”

“Or?”

“Or we could help out. Might be fun to shoot at a moving target, if you know what I’m saying.”

Mr. K considered it. Javier was psychotic, and that meant he was unpredictable. Mr. K had seen his work, up close and personal, and while it could have used a touch more finesse it was certainly effective. The smarter move would be to turn everyone away, but then he’d spend the rest of the evening wondering what Javier was up to.

“This is a job for Mr. Dovolanni,” Mr. K said. “The package is supposed to get damaged in handling, but not lost.”

“You mean we can hurt him, not kill him,” the pale one, Luther, said. “I’d be okay with that.”

“A man can take a lot of hurt before he dies,” Charles said. “And I haven’t shot anyone in months. What do you think, Alex? Can you exercise some restraint?”

“I can control myself, not kill him,” Alex said, rubbing her legs together. “But I’m going to have to fuck something later. Just thinking about it gets me hot.”

Javier met Mr. K’s eyes and shrugged. “You game, K? The commission is all yours. We’re just in it for the sport. You know I wouldn’t mess with Dovolanni.”

Mr. K saw some people in the parking lot heading over. He made a quick decision and lowered the gun.

“Come in, lock the door behind you.”

Luther

They all crowded inside, Luther feeling a sense of camaraderie he hadn’t experienced since losing Orson. Much as he was a loner, it was good to occasionally be among those with similar values.

“So, what’s the plan?” Charles said. “Luther, buddy, you got that metal leech thing with you?”

Luther was staring at a target silhouette behind the counter, studying the various points on the arms and legs. “I have a better idea,” he said. Then he explained it to the group.

Javier cut Porter’s zip-ties as the shop owner cried around his ball gag.

“Hollow points for everyone,” Luther ordered.

Everyone began to shout out the ammo they wanted, making Porter fetch the boxes.

Forty-five ACP rounds for Jav’s new Glock and Luther’s Springfield XD Tactical.

Nine-millimeters for Mr. K’s Beretta Px4 Storm.

Three-fifty-sevens for Charles’s Coonan Cadet.

“I object to this,” Mr. K said.

Luther scowled. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, we take semi-jacket hollow points into that range and start firing, Porter’s going to be dead in about two minutes.”

“We can put him in a vest,” Charles said. “I bet this douche has some Kevlar lying around.”

“Even so, and even with what you suggest, it’ll be too easy for him to bleed out, getting shot with these calibers, these rounds.”

“Well, what do you suggest?” Javier asked.

Mr. K turned to Porter. “I assume you stock .22 pistols?”

Porter whimpered, but managed a nod.

“What models?”

The shop owner shook his head, his shoulders sagging.

“What. Models.”

He raised his hand, meekly pointed to the display case.

“The Mark III?”

A nod.

“Get five Rugers and put them on the counter along with three boxes of 20 grain LRs.”

Porter obeyed.

“Plinker rounds, K?” Javier asked, eyeing the boxes. “That shit barely tears through a soda can.”

Mr. K nodded. “Exactly. It’ll wound, but not kill.”

“That doesn’t sound as fun,” Charles said.

“You’ll get to shoot him many more times,” Mr. K said, “and he won’t die.”

Alex broke open one of the cartridge boxes, spilling rounds onto the glass counter. She worked the slide on a Ruger and manually inserted one, aiming it at Charles.

“You want to see how much it hurts?” she asked.

Everyone but Porter and Charles laughed. Charles slapped the gun away, scowling, then picked up a .22 and began to load a clip. Everyone else followed suit.

“Five points for legs and arms, ten points for feet and hands,” Luther said. “Hit the torso, lose twenty. Hit the head, lose fifty.”

“What are the stakes?” Javier asked.

Mr. K shook his head.

“What, K? I know that look.”

“Well,” Mr. K said. “You did sort of crash my party, so I have a proposition for the game.”

“We’re listening,” Alex said.

“I like Luther’s scoring system. I would propose that the losers pay off Mr. Porter’s marker to Dovolanni. It’s fourteen thousand, three hundred. Plus my fee of two thousand.”

“Holy shit,” Charles said. “I can’t swing that much.”