Ask the Dice (29 page)

Mr. Ogg tilted the aviator shades at me. "You're insane."

"It was McCoy, wasn't it?"

"Don’t insult me. McCoy is strictly
Baltimore
. He's never done dick for me."

"Bullshit. I was the first man to see Gwen dead, so I was made for her killer. You manufactured it as an excuse to sic your dark suits on me."

"Think about it. Gwen was my dearest niece. Why would I kill her?"

"She wallowed in her coke, and you took umbrage. We discussed it, and I was to stand by, awaiting your order to go pop her that never came. Now I know why."

"She'd quit her doping. She was a well-behaved young lady who did as I asked her."

"Not always. I popped the guy who knocked her up. He bled out on an ice rink, the messiest job of my career."

"Pregnant? Gwen?" He shook his head. "I never heard that."

"I bet. Maybe that's also why she got it. Was Rita in on the hit, too?"

His lips wilted at the corners in dejection. "Rita has left the city, and I can't reach her."

No dummy, she finally arrived at Caligula's, took one look at the carnage we'd left, and fled before it was too late
, I thought.

"Okay, Tommy Mack, it's getting late. How do you play out this hand?"

"I'm betting the whole pot: two Claymores and their one victim."

He swallowed hard and, for the first time, his gravelly voice cracked like an adolescent's did. "You can't be serious about this."

I shrugged. "Live by the sword, die by the sword."

"Do you know what I'm worth? We can strike a new deal."

"Nuts on any fat cat deals. Did you think I came with no plan? You taught me better than that."

"No, I taught you to obey my orders."

"Sorry, I'm not your house nigger anymore, Mr. Ogg." I clenched my teeth. "Where's your little, blue book?"

Astonishment further strained his tenor. "How do you know about that?"

"Gwen told me."

"All right, I give it to you, and then you walk away."

My head waggle said no sale.

"Then you better shit or get off the pot, Tommy Mack."

For old time's sake, I complied as he'd commanded. The 11-mm I fired packed more pop in my grip than I preferred. The lead slug drilled him between the eyes where it rented the nosepiece to his aviator shades, and they flew apart in mirrored green halves.

His pale eyes, veined and bulging, glimmered as a pair of radioactive dice, so I shot them out, too. By using the double Moe Green Special, I knew Mr. Ogg was extra dead. Lunging, I fielded his swoon from the bedside. He felt light and inconsequential as I lifted him in the burnt red PJs and toted him down the corridor and into the kitchen. I was careful that he didn’t bleed on me.

As with any jazzman worth his sax, I improvised to get rid of Mr. Ogg's stiff. My
 
image snapped on what gory havoc twin Claymore mines blasted in unison wrought. Mr. Ogg atomized in one big kaboom would pretty much destroy my three 11-mm slugs embedded in his skull. The homicide dicks would conclude the blind bastard, half-groggy, had wandered into his kitchen to fetch a drink of water and doddered into his tripwires. Bad shit befell the madmen.

I dropped him to the kitchen floor and returned for his white cane with the gold skull knob. While in his lair, I executed my quest. I ripped off the sheet and pillowcases. Nothing was stuffed inside his mattress or pillow. The drawers to his dresser and bureau tumbled out, and I plundered the Army locker. He lived frugal as a Trappist monk except for the ribbed Trojans he kept within easy reach for his sick orgies or fragile vanity.

My lifting his mattress brought out my smile. "Pay dirt." He cached under there the several little, blue books rubber-banded together into a parcel. The top book bore my printed name as its title. I checked its contents, a listing of all my hit jobs. Copperthite had confessed the truth. Mr. Ogg had taken out a life insurance policy on me. My murder weapons he'd stashed away in the safe deposit box were useless evidence without the little, blue books. I pocketed them to incinerate later and swooped back into the kitchen.

The next step was the ticklish one. I gave his corpse and white cane a one-two-three heave ho, flinging them to strum both tripwires. The loud fireball's rear percussion hurtled me back, and I crabbed over the kitchen floor to lodge behind the fridge's steel bulk. The din left my ears oozing pussy discharges while the smoke tendrils spread a bituminous odor, but I'd survived the two Claymores’ blast. Their volley of steel pellets and Mr. Ogg's body parts had spewed out fanwise, and his fleshy parts speckled the lawn.

Somewhat stunned, I clawed my way up from the floor, buttressed my shoulders against the fridge, and steadied on my rubbery knees. A few of the steel pellets from the much smaller back-blast had nicked me, but I was fine. After my eye-rubs and more coughs, I listed through the charred, splintered portal where the rear door had just stood.

My flight fell into a staggering jog back to the parked coupé. Mr. Ogg's dismembered forearm on the lawn tangled up in my shoes. I pushed on before any dark suit roused from his drunken stupor and came to investigate the big noise I'd made for my finale.

Chapter 32

I
was up in the puffy, white clouds. The 747's cruising altitude was 30,000 feet, akin to ten football fields stacked atop
Mount Everest
's summit. We cruised along at 0.85 Mach or 567 m.p.h. The captain droning this in airline English—an official monotone peppered with aeronautical slang—signed off. Her stats diverted me from the cabin sardining us in, seated shoulder-to-shoulder. This trip endured for a few hours trumped my spending the balance of my adult days in a prison cell. I knew I couldn't hack the rigors of incarceration.

No liquor touched my lips because I already hovered on the brink of wigging out. It wasn't until we jetted off from
Dulles
Airport
that I found I'd developed a middle-age flying phobia. It wasn't the usual bout of nausea that holding a barf bag to my mouth could fix. Traveling light, I brought one carry-on bag (for an extra charge!) that I stowed in the overhead rack. I also requested my seat by an empty one, but I'd no such luck.

The obese white dude in a rumpled suit at my left elbow leaned his forehead against the glass port, dozing off. Obviously he was a veteran flier. He also wore seatbelt extenders, and the armrest down separated us. The white lady at my right put us in her jasmine cloud. I liked it. Our armrest was up. My peripheral vision showed she was younger—by a decade or better—than me. No wedding ring, I also noted. She felt my sidelong stare and turned, offering me her sympathetic smile.

"First time?"

My smile was faint. "It's been awhile, I'm afraid."

"Don't feel alone. I'm fending off a few butterflies, too."

"Actually, my butterflies feel more like pterodactyls."

She tittered. "Business or pleasure?"

"It’s a bit of both, actually."

"I'm visiting my kid sister. She's a new mommy, and I'm a new aunt."

"Cool. Do they serve dinner on this flight?"

She shrugged. "Do any airlines nowadays? We might get a bag of stale peanuts and a can of flat soda. What's your job?"

My script was ready for that one. "HR wonk."

"Is that recession-proof?"

"Steady but I quit."

"Oh. Why?"

Jasmine Lady was getting too damn nosy. "Change of scenery," I said.

"Relocating?"

"It should be for the better, yeah, lady."

Our conversation derailed on my frosty note. She turned away, ignoring me. Staring out the glass port just in front of the wing, I tested my memory, but I couldn't dredge up the captain's stats for our cruising altitude or speed. My flying phobia had blotted out my other worries. I knew I left a big mess in
Old
Yvor
City
, but it was unavoidable. Good thing I didn't plan on taking any future flights after I dropped off the face of the earth at the end of this one.

The businessman stirred, and his elbow bumped against mine. "Sorry," he muttered.

"No problem," I said. "We're all a little cramped for space."

We didn’t introduce ourselves which was just how I liked it.

"Flying anymore exacerbates my ulcers," he said.

"That's nothing. It scares me shitless."

"One thing I can guaran-damn-tee you; the first boxcutter I see flash, I'll take out the rag head, or I'll get a gutful of steel trying."

I didn't know what to say to that and stayed mum as if I agreed.

"Do you hail from the South?"

"Lone
Star
State
."

"I thought as much.
Ohio
is my home."

During the pause, I suppressed a physical craving to light up a
Blue
Castle
.

"These flights just get longer," said
Ohio
.

"A movie is on."

"I already watched it. Twice, in fact. Both times it sucked."

"Jazz is playing on the in-flight music."

Ohio
scowled, the vertical lines splitting his broad forehead. "You call that easy listening crap jazz?"

I saw a ray of hope for us. "Are you a jazz aficionado?"

He made the iffy sign, wagging his hand sideways. "So-so. My grandfather was the avid fan, and I listened to it while I was growing up. It was his music, and I find it a little campy and stilted now."

I felt creakier than my 54. "Did he get to see Bird play live in concert?"

"Just Coltrane. Twice."

"Your grandfather had impeccable tastes."

"Thanks. He passed on the Ides of March from pancreatic cancer."

"My condolences. I never knew my grandparents, either side."

"Not surprising. We're just a fractured society."

"Sort of like our own lost generation."

"No sir, this goes beyond a lost generation in my humble opinion. We've peaked as a civilization, and we're snowballing on the downslope side to our apocalyptic oblivion."

Nihilistic philosophy not my bag, I let that conversational thread die.

"Who's the dyke sitting beside you?" asked
Ohio
for my ears only.

"Just some lady, I suppose."

"She dished you the cold shoulder."

"I'm easy. Brush offs come all the time."

"What's your line of work?"

Lying was becoming second nature, and I'd do okay in my permanent exile. "HR."

"No shit. My cousin is in HR, and she's always on travel. We only visit at funerals and weddings. By the way, I sell hardware."

"Servers and motherboards?"

"No, hammers and nails."

"Is that recession proof?"

He brayed out a horse laugh. "They wouldn't dare lay me off. I know where all the dead bodies are buried."

"I'd kill for a cigarette," I said, extending our death metaphor.

"Not me. I quit. Doc's orders. I got hooked when I was 15."
Ohio
laid an expectant look on me.

"My first smoke came a few weeks ago."

"Bad move."

"All that stress is behind me, and I'll turn over a new leaf once I unpack and get settled."

"Down here they hate us big, ugly Americans. They won't lift a finger to help us. You better get used to it because it makes life go a lot smoother."

My fears rekindled, and my stomach knotted up. "This is news to me."

"Uh-huh. You've never left the Lower 48."

"Does it show that much?"