SIX
The 757 descended for its final approach to Las Vegas. The passengers tightened their safety belts and the male steward knocked on a bathroom door. A single passenger was missing from the flight.
"Sir, you have to get back to your seat."
"Just a second.” Sean Collan was unraveling the turban of toilet paper in front of the bathroom mirror. The blonde man in the reflection resembled an aging extra from a 1960's biker flick. The wedges inside his shoes added another inch of height and his rumpled black suit shadowed his persona with a nondescript aura. He exited from the bathroom and said to the steward, "Thanks for being so patient."
The steward was visibly dismayed by the passenger's bizarre appearance, especially since no golden-haired man had boarded the plane at JFK.
"What seat are you in, sir?"
>"32-A, I can show you my ticket, if you would like."
"No, that won't be necessary."
Satisfied by the steward's bafflement, Sean proceeded past the passengers gaping at the wonders of Las Vegas below the 757. They should have been recoiling in fright like they were meeting a thief in a dark alley, yet none of them cared a fig whether they won or lost at the gaming tables or slots as long as they weren’t home watching television.
A black boy about eight years old had changed seat for the view.
"You the same guy here before?"
Sean raised his eyebrow to indicate 'maybe'.
"Where's your mom?"
"She's waiting for me at the airport." The boy peeked out the porthole.
"First time flying?" Sean stashed his bag before buckling into the aisle seat.
"Yes, sir.” His small hands gripped the armrests for dear life.
"Empty planes never crash." Sean imitated the exact tone with which his own father had calmed his son on a shuttle flight from Boston to New York decades before, except the boy slouched fearfully into the seat.
"Mister, last year I seen this movie, where a plane crashes in the mountains. Everyone had to eat everyone else."
"Trust me, I won't eat you.” Sean reached over to tighten the boy's seatbelt, as the 757 dropped with a wiggle of its wings. Seconds later the tires touched down on the runway. The young boy had survived the worst of his fears and proudly announced, "That was nothing."
"Just like I said and you'll be with your mom soon."
The 757 stopped at the terminal gate and the young boy was escorted by the steward. Sean positioned himself behind two beefy men in Giants paraphernalia and shuffled from the plane in a slouch. Inside the gangway a bearded air marshal dismissed the bleached-blonde man as a danger only to himself.
Two old ladies elbowed him out of the way and scuttled over to the nearest WHEEL OF FORTUNE slot machine. All seniors loved that show.
Waiting friends, relatives, lovers, and drivers ignored Sean and no one called his name on the ride down the escalator or as he walked out of the terminal into the warm desert air. He had visited Vegas in 1971 and gazed dreamily at the hazy outline of distant mountains. Somewhere over those peaks lay Death Valley and California.
A rough voice short-circuited his attempt to flag a taxi.
"Nice outfit, Tempo, though a little late for Halloween, ain't it?"
"You know the East Village." Sean turned around hoping the voice belonged to a mirage, but he should have known that deRocco would have never sent him on that plane without his maddog partner being on the receiving end.
"Yeah, it's Halloween all the time with those losers." Driscoll's eyes ping-ponging back and forth. The invalided cop was on a binge of speed and dope.
"So I didn't fool you at all?"
"No, but I almost bust a gut seein' you do this hobo thing. Where'd you learn that shit anyway?" Driscoll was in a dark suit a size too small for his waist, but his belly didn't matter, because ex-cops like Driscoll never ran from trouble.
"I went out with this married make-up artist in Paris. She disguised me to keep from finding out her husband from seeing that she was going out with a man."
"She did you up as a woman?"
"Yeah." Sean was telling the truth. "This lasted about six months and finally the husband came up to me at a bar. He was a big guy about your size and showed me some pictures. At first I thought they were me, but the husband told me they were of her old boyfriends."
"Why he tell you that?"
"He thought I was her lesbian lover and wanted to go out with me."
"I woulda liked to seen you as a girl. You have nice hair." Driscoll’s laugh stuck in his throat. “I woulda thought you got the disguise thing from your ex-wife. She's an actress, right? Or your friend, Vic Granollers. Now he's really big in films now, right?"
"I didn't know you were such a movie buff."
"I like to know all about my friends and their friends.”
They entered the shade of the parking garage and Sean changed the subject.
"Where we going?"
"I'll tell you, when we get there." Driscoll ran his hand through his thick hair.
A blue-jacketed peace officer was ticketing a car and Driscoll jabbed Sean's ribs with what felt like a pistol muzzle. "He's havin' a good day, so why would you want to spoil it?"
"Not me." Sean walked past the local policeman to a fire engine red Mustang 5.0.
Driscoll forced him into the front passenger seat and handcuffed his wrist to the door.
"Just think of the cuffs as an extra safety feature."
"What if we get into an accident?"
"This piece of shit has dual air bags, Seano." Driscoll got behind the steering wheel, and revved the engine once before peeling out of the parking lot. Sean took the wedges out of his shoes and the ex-cop chuckled at the show.
"What's so funny?” Sean rubbed his feet.
"Whatcha gonna do with your hair?" Kevin Driscoll pointed at his head.
"Let it grow out." Sean smoothed down the brittle blonde hair and looked out the window at the throngs of tourists. Even the sorriest of the casino fodder was better off than he was.
"Might take some time."
"And I have plenty of that, right?"
Driscoll didn't answer him and drove under I-15.
The glittering hotels and tourists on holiday were replaced by car repair shops, sleazy go-go bars, truck stops, cheap motels and transients permanently down on their luck. Driscoll pulled into a heat-warped parking lot of a run-down motor lodge and stopped the car before room #7. He undid the handcuffs from the door and said, "Get your own bag, cause I ain't no bellhop.”
Sean got out of the car.
Dust devils swirled across the vacant lots into the desert where Las Vegas ended for better or worse.
“Ain't nothing to see here." Driscoll pushed him into the small room. Two single beds were topped by faded polyester spreads. A Formica card table and two plastic chairs leaned into the corner and the bureau was missing its bottom drawer.
"How romantic." Sean dropped his bag on the mildewed carpet.
"Cheap and cheerful, not in the middle of town, so no one sees us come in or out."
"Place stinks." The disinfectant had failed to kill the smell of a thousand illicit affairs.
"This might help.” Kevin Driscoll twisted the AC to the max. "Now strip."
"What for?" Fear crawled like a million fire ants on Sean's skin.
"Cause I said so." Kevin Driscoll performed the finger-breakings, the baseball bat beatings, and the killing for the two-man team. The ex-cop took off the gray suit jacket. Sweat stained his white shirt. A shoulder holster held a 9mm Beretta, his weapon of choice.
"What if I don't want to?"
"You don't want to know.” Driscoll wasn't usesd to people saying 'no'.
"Since you put it that way." Sean took off his jacket, trousers, and shirt. Once he was down to his boxers, Driscoll said, "Stop there. I don't need to see your pecker."
"You sure?"
Several years back deRocco and Driscoll had been staked out a cocaine warehouse on Avenue D. A lookout spotted the unmarked car and three Dominican gunmen surrounded the car to discover one man fellating the other. The dopers told the maricons to get lost. When the warehouse was busted, Driscoll capped the three witnesses to his giving head and earned a citation for the killings. Later deRocco had joked that his partner was the only cop in NYPD history to get a medal for sucking cock.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing."
No one in the 9th Precinct had had the balls to ask what his cock were doing out at the stake-out and Sean was following their lead. He lifted the handcuff on his wrist. "What about this?"
"Thanks for reminding me." Driscoll holstered his weapon and snapped the open manacle onto the TV stand.
Both men eyed the telephone and Kevin Driscoll tugged the wire from the wall.
"Sorry, it just broke."
"I wasn't calling anyone anyway."
"That's for sure." Driscoll punched Sean's arm.
It was not a playful gesture and Sean slumped into the wall.
"I'll see you."
The door slammed shut and five seconds later Sean tugged at the chain, but the TV stand had been bolted to the wall by anti-theft experts. These four cinderblock walls were his Las Vegas.
No showgirls, roulette, blackjack, craps, or even a nickel slot machine and he couldn't help from asking himself aloud, "What I ever do to deserve this?"
His first bad deed had been erased from his memory, but his most recent sins shone crystal-clear; greed for fencing those watches, lust for trusting Mira, and pride for thinking he'd fool Driscoll. He slammed his fist into the wall. The shock of pain to his long-abused knuckles was enough to prevent any repetition and Sean turned on the TV.
Its bright glow wavered across the bleak room. He was in purgatory and his only release from this limbo depended on his breaking the 5th Commandment.
Sean attempted to visualize whether his target was a man or woman, good or bad, young or old, usually ending up with the image of a lowlife criminal deserving of this death sentence, as if this boldfaced delusion could render homicide more doable in his eyes and Sean once more tried to free himself from the TV stand.
After futile five tugs he rubbed his chaffed wrist, resigned to the fact that the world's population had been savagely reduced down to three people; Driscoll, himself, and the unknown victim. Everything had become very simple, when kill or be killed were your only options.
Ten minutes later Kevin Driscoll entered the room with two large paper bags from McDonalds.
"Dinnertime."
"Great. I guess the condemned man doesn't get a choice of last meals."
"What wrong with Mickie Ds?"
"The beef is everything of a cow other than the moo and I don't think there's any potatoes in the fries." His mouth watered upon smelling the fries.
"You're wrong. The fries are 65% potato. I read it on the wall, besides you're not gonna do the dying, so stop the drama." Driscoll flipped one bag to Sean, who caught it without spilling the soda inside and lifted the cuff.
"Think the prisoner can eat with his hands free."
"Stop rushin' me." Driscoll snapped before freeing Sean from the TV stand.
"What about my wrist?"
"What about it?" Driscoll ignored whatever Sean was implying until headed across the room and Driscoll asked, "Where you think you're going?"
"My teeth are floating. Mind, if I go to the bathroom?
>"Knock yourself out," Driscoll mumbled through a mouth filled with fries, as Sean entered the bathroom.
"Don't shut the door."
"Can't I do this in private?"
"What and let you slip out the window? No way."
>Once Sean finished, he squeezed past Driscoll to sit on the bed with his food. The barely-warm cheeseburger tasted good after having not eaten anything for seven days. The ex-cop ate a second burger in three bites.
"Everything is go for tonight."
"Tonight?" Sean choked on his food.
"Yeah, tonight. Better this way. You come into town and do the job, then you're history. A quick in-and-out."
"You mean, I go in, kill him, and come out alive? No one seeing me?" The burger trembled in his hand.
"That's the way it's supposed to go."
"And who am I killing?" Sean doubted whether Driscoll had any idea as why the victim was being targeted. To him it was just another job.
"You ask that question, when your French whore poisoned those businessmen?"
"That was different."
"Take it from a pro. The whos and whys are unimportant. Names only make you remember the faces later."
"So I kill a total stranger and then what?"
"You go your way and I go mine."
"After you give me the five grand."
"You think I'm gonna welch on you."
"Sorry to hit your sensitivity button, it's just that I never killed anyone before."
"Don't think nothin' about it, this is basically your 'wham-blam-thank-you-ma'am' deal." Driscoll stroked the barrel of the 9mm inside his jacket.
"Nice to put a sexual angle on it."
"Hey, everyone gets their kicks different ways."
"If you say so." Sean had no doubt murder gave the ex-cop a hard-on and finished his meal in silence, as Driscoll brushed the crumbs from his lap.
"Get dressed, Seano. We got places to be."
"Now?"
"Now." Driscoll repeated with a directness detouring any argument.
Sean dressed in his black suit and the ex-cop patted him down. He pulled out the $5000 from deRocco and handed back the roll.
"All you gotta do is pull a trigger. Boom, and you get another five Gs. Ten Gs for a day's work. Good deal?"
"You keep telling me that and I might believe it." Sean stuffed the money in his pant pocket and checked himself in the mirror, thinking he looked more like a defrocked priest than an initiate to murder.
"You'll be thanking me once it's over. 10 Gs for a minute's work."
"Too bad I'm not working every day."
"Too bad is right." Driscoll left $50 to cover the mini-bar and the damaged telephone. He swiftly policed the room for any trace of their presence and plucked an empty Fed-Ex package out of the trash, then pushed Sean toward the door.
"I'm not going anywhere, till this cuff comes off." Sean dug in his heels.
>"No?" Driscoll flexed his knuckles and the tendons of his neck stuck out like a garrote was cutting off his wind.
"No." Sean prepared to dodge a punch, however the ex-cop unlocked the handcuff.
"You happy now?"
"Happier, yes. What about you?"
"I would have been happier killing you a few seconds ago."
"You wouldn't kill someone who owed you $10,000."
"I'd grease 'em like lightning," Driscoll spoke with a cold-bloodedness of which only true killers are capable. "When you want to kill someone, screw the money. Now pick up your shit and let's get out of here."
Sean grabbed the leather bag, stuffing the extra French fries and a packet of ketchup into his jacket pocket.
"I thought you didn't like Mickie D's."
"I didn't, but I might get hungry later."
Have it your way."
The two men exited from the motel room.
Only two other cars were in the parking lot. Their passengers had not come to the Desert Inn to look out the windows. Across the street a piggyback of train engines hauled a long line of boxcars southward on the Union Pacific's tracks. The squeal of the steel wheels on the rails mingled with the peal of a couple's laughter from a motel room.
"This why I like this place. No one is nosy, so nothing can connect us to here."
"I'll remember that next time I want to kill someone.” Sean pulled up his collar against the cold wind and lifted his head to the sky. The stars seemed bigger in the desert night.
"You'll have plenty of time to stare at the stars later." Driscoll shoved Sean into the Mustang's passenger door. "Throw your shit in back and get in the car. The door's not locked."
"Okay, okay, chill your jets." Sean strapped himself into the seat, wishing he was a couple of inches taller or had studied Kung Fu or Frank deRocco had not found him at the diner this morning or he had not blown the money Mira Lachelle had left him or he had not met her in the first place.
deRocco started the car.
"Put on your seatbelt. I don't want the Vegas PD stopping us for somethin' stupid."
The car's V6 revved into the tach's red zone and Driscoll stomped on the gas. The Mustang burned rubber out of the parking lot to cut off a commercial van, then accelerated through a yellow light to catch up with the flow of traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard.
"So much for doing nothing stupid." Sean shook his head.
"Just driving like the rest of the losers. How about a little mood music?" Driscoll tuned on a country-western station.
"Country?" Sean reached for the dial.
"Yeah, country." The driver karate-chopped his left arm. "Don't touch that dial. I love Willie Nelson."
Sean rubbed his wrist and stared out the window. The only signs of human life were the heads and shoulders wrapped inside cars.
"We're goin' to where we'll do it later.” Driscoll steered past a slow-moving camper with Michigan plates. “It's a glassed-in stairway. You wait on the second-floor landing. Out of sight. There are no video cameras. No guards either. When the 'guy' shows up, you stick the gun in his ear and pull the trigger. The bullet will do the rest. You get his wallet to make it looks like a robbery. You come out and meet me. I give you your money and we split. One, two, three, maybe four, five, six, sounds easy, huh?"
"A snap." Sean rotated his wrist, which he had broken three years ago on the Thai-Burma border, when an opium farmer's pick-up truck rammed his motorcycle head-on. He had been shocked to have survived and sometimes thought that this existence might be the After-Life, though tonight was not one of them.
"After checking out the hotel, I'll take you out to the desert to pop off a few shots.
"Target practice?"
"You're gonna be too close to miss. Just get used to pullin' the trigger, so you don't freeze up."
"You have a picture of this person or do I have to guess who he will be?" Sean scratched at the day-old stubble.
"You're doing him." Driscoll handed Sean a photo of old man in his 70s.
Somewhere along the line he had committed an offense great enough to warrant his being wanted more dead than alive.
"Why don't we give him a couple of weeks to die of natural causes." Sean passed back the photo.
>"Cause that's not the way this works. The next time you see that guy, you're gonna do him." Driscoll inspected his passenger's shadowed face, trying to ascertain whether he could go through with this. Not many people could, but twenty-two years ago he had seen Sean beat a Russian Mafia member close to death, which meant somewhere he had it in him to go all the way and if Sean couldn't, then doing Sean would give him the right motivation for doing the stranger.
"It’ll be over before you know it." Driscoll drove into a hotel parking lot across from the Casino Center.
"Yeah, that's real comforting.”
All that was required was a little nerve and a few ounces of pressure on the trigger.
A little more than a breeze.
How easy a steel-jacketed bullet ended the universe for another human being bothered Sean, but he would find out soon enough how hard it really was.
