Death by Sarcasm

Fifteen

The big man could move, Mary had to admit. By the time she had gotten to the mouth of the alley and turned left, she barely caught sight of his freak ass baseball cap turning left on the next block up. Mary decided to turn left immediately and cut across the front lawn of an insurance company. She took a peek down an alley as she passed it, but she didn’t see the big guy. However, she saw a pedestrian, an Asian woman with a Crate & Barrel shopping bag looking back over shoulder as if she’d just seen the ghost of Shelley Winters skateboarding down the street.

By the time Mary hit the sidewalk and looked up toward the street ahead, Big Suit had hit the intersection and was turning right. He glanced over his shoulder and looked for her. Which was perfect, because by now she was right behind him and gaining.

He ran forward but Mary closed the gap quickly. Christ, I hope he doesn’t have a cardiac before I get some information out of him, she thought.

Mary’s breath started to come in gasps, she made a mental note to get back to her workouts – she’d been a little lax lately with them.

Another block went by and she was within ten feet of him. He looked back over his shoulder and Mary saw his face, a pale pudgy mess covered with a thick sheen of sweat.

“Stop,” she yelled. But he lowered his head and bulled his way ahead. Mary unleashed a burst of speed and jumped onto his back and rode him to the ground like a steer at the rodeo.

The .45 was in her hand and she put it in his face.

“Carl Lewis, man, how you doing?” she said.

The fat man gasped for air and now Mary really did worry that he would go into cardiac arrest. She felt his sweat seep into her shirt and a shiver ran down her back. Ewww.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Oh, sure,” she said. “Tell me what to do, doughboy, I’ll follow your every command. Just like you did when I told you to stop.” Mary said through clenched teeth. This guy was a piece of work.

A couple walking down the sidewalk stopped at the sight of Mary holding a gun on the guy. The woman was pulling a cell phone out of her purse. Mary didn’t need the police right now.

“Pedophile,” she said to them, nodding her head toward the big boy. “He would pretend to be a parade float to lure kids in. Trust me, he’s gonna have a lot of boyfriends in prison.”

The woman slid her cell phone back into her purse and the couple kept walking. Mary didn’t even have to whip out her p.i. badge. Still, she would have to keep this quick.

“Get up, Karen Carpenter,” she said and pulled on the guy’s big arm. He heaved to his feet and Mary pulled him up against the wall. To the right was a picture window of a little art studio. A sculpture of a creature that seemed to be half dolphin and half woman looked down on them.

Mary stood slightly behind the big man, putting the .45 directly against his spine, just below his neck. To the casual passerby, it looked like she had her arm around him. A couple. Not the world’s most attractive couple, but a couple nonetheless.

“Brent Cooper,” Mary said. “Tell me what you know about his murder and I’ll buy you a box of Twinkies. Tell me everything, right away, and I’ll even throw in some Pop-Tarts.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Still heaving from the exertion, the big boy’s voice was high and girlish. Mary knew it would be.

Mary pressed the muzzle of the .45 harder against his spine, although she couldn’t actually find any vertebrae beneath the Serta mattress-type padding. But she did the best she could do.

“Nice try, Slim,” she said. “Are you a struggling actor? You do method, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Let me see your SAG card. Or don’t you have one yet? Because I have to tell you, that lie about not knowing anything, you didn’t pull it off very well. Do you need me to give you your motivation?”

The man breathed in ragged gasps as an answer.

“Listen Hambone,” Mary said. “Tell me what you know about Brent Cooper’s murder or you won’t make it to that big cardiac arrest you’re heading toward.”

“I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about.”

“The guy who got murdered behind the Leg Pull? The guy who ripped you to shreds in front of a whole bunch of people who can easily identify you? Ring any bells?”

The big man sighed, his breath had slowed and he mopped his face with a forearm. The dark material of his suit came away slick with sweat. “Oh, that. Well, we had some words and I left. That’s it. End of story.”

“You left? You didn’t wait for him outside? You didn’t cut him open because he’d ripped you a new a*shole?”

“No! I don’t like violence. I don’t fight. I run. Or try to.”

“But you’re fighting me now. Lying to me.”

“Listen, I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s not what people are saying at the Leg Pull. They’re saying you two had words and that…”

“Who’s saying that?”

“Everyone.”

He suddenly looked worried and Mary saw an opening so she went full bore right through it.

“They’ve told me. But they haven’t told the cops.”

“You’re not a cop?”

“You’re so perceptive. I love that.”

“What are you?”

“A concerned family member. And a strong believer in revenge. The cops are the least of your worries. I may just leave your blubbery brains all over Ocean Avenue. Sound good?”

His eyes flashed wildly around, panic behind them.

“Look at it this way, you can either tell me,” she said. “Or you’ve had your last In-N-Out burger.”

He let out a long breath that smelled like onion rings. It doesn’t matter how big they are, Mary thought. They all break, eventually.

“This guy said he was a friend of this Brent Cooper’s,” the man said. “I’d never heard of this Cooper guy. I was there to see Claudine - did you see her? She’s great…” His eyes got all dreamy and May could see the beginning of another fantasy come into his brain.

“Focus, Pudge. Focus.”

“Anyway. This guy slipped me a fifty and said to heckle this Brent Cooper guy. So I did. That Cooper guy was an a*shole. He just went crazy saying all kinds of nasty shit.”

“What did the guy look like? The guy who told you to do this?”

“He was an old guy, I don’t know. You’ve been in the club, it’s dark.”

“We’ll come back to that. So he told you to heckle Brent, then what?”

“Then I was supposed to act like I wanted to fight him and sort of nod toward the alley.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t go out there! I got scared and took off.”

“Smart move.”

“Look, I had nothing to do with all that. It was supposed to be a joke, I didn’t know the guy was going to get killed.”

“Let’s go back to the old guy.”

“Oh my God,” the fat man said.

Mary felt him jerk. “What?”

“There he is.” Mary began to look across the street where the guy’s eyes were looking, but she never finished her scan.

The fat man’s head snapped back against the brick wall and Mary felt a gush of warmth on her hand. Blood and brain matter poured from the back of his head. He slumped against her as another bullet hit him in the chest. Shards of brick bit into Mary’s neck as a bullet exploded next to her ear. She tried to push against the fat man but as his body sagged to the sidewalk, it took her with it. She found herself trapped beneath him, struggling to get free.

She looked over his shoulder across the street. An old man in a turquoise blue windbreaker was standing just behind a tree, his gun blocked from view. She saw him step to the right, saw the gun and the silencer attached and held her arm up and over the fat man, then fired a quick shot at the old guy across the street.

Mary got one leg beneath her and pushed upward, heaved with all of her strength, and rolled the fat man over. She was able to squirm out from underneath him.

Across the street, the old man’s gun spat again and glass from the art studio’s window showered down upon her. She had no choice. She got to her feet, crouched, and then dove over the art studio’s display shelf into the showroom itself. The dolphin woman sculpture exploded and pieces of metal, paper mache and wire rained down on Mary’s back. The head and shoulders of the sculpture were still intact, so she took cover behind them and fired at the old man. She steadied her hand and reeled off shot after shot, emptying her entire clip in a matter of seconds.

Mary’s ears rang and the smell of gunpowder assaulted her senses. She ducked back down and thumbed the magazine release, grabbed her spare from her coat pocket, slammed it in, then wiped her bloody hand off on a piece of curtain that had been shot off the window.

“Eewww,” Mary said, not wanting to look at the liquid on her hand.

Bullets exploded around her. The shooter had a f*cking silencer. Great. She couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from now, but it seemed like he’d changed position.

Mary waited out the last of the explosions then rolled and popped up just over the display platform. The blue windbreaker caught her eye. He’d moved two trees over and was slapping another clip into his gun.

She let out a breath, and waited for him to step away from the tree.

He did.

Mary fired twice fast. The double tap.

The man went down in a heap.

Mary vaulted over the display platform and onto the sidewalk, nearly slipping on the concrete’s coating of glass and blood. She raced across the street, her gun held out in front of her just in case the old shooter was playing possum.

But once she got to him, stood over him and looked at the blood gushing from his mouth, she knew it was no act.

“Who are you?” she said.

A weird sucking sound came from his chest and his mouth opened.

“Aaauegh,” he said and then his eyes went still. Pink bubbles came out of his nose.

“Huh, is that an Arabic name?” Mary said.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

Mary reached into his coat pocket, nothing but more clips. Her hands shook slightly and her legs felt weak. Her breath was shallow and for a moment she thought she would faint.

Mary searched him and found a slim wallet in his pocket. She flipped it open to his California driver’s license.

Noah Baxter.

She’d never heard of him.