Dead Simple (4 page)
Authors: Jon Land
And he’d been shot.
J
ack Tyrell stood between a pair of trees, looking down at the grave site. He had found a shovel upon entering Crest Haven Memorial Park and was now leaning on it to make himself look like a workman rather than one of the mourners. He was dressed for the part, in jeans and a denim shirt, and his long tangle of hair fell limply to his shoulders. Not a single gaze had met his since the cortege had pulled in. He was good at melting into a scene, invisible while standing out in the open; he’d had lots of practice.
ack Tyrell stood between a pair of trees, looking down at the grave site. He had found a shovel upon entering Crest Haven Memorial Park and was now leaning on it to make himself look like a workman rather than one of the mourners. He was dressed for the part, in jeans and a denim shirt, and his long tangle of hair fell limply to his shoulders. Not a single gaze had met his since the cortege had pulled in. He was good at melting into a scene, invisible while standing out in the open; he’d had lots of practice.
Tyrell tightened his grip on the shovel’s handle, his knees trembling a little. He was too far away to hear the minister’s words and didn’t much care. The size of the crowd impressed him: almost exclusively young people, their lives mostly untouched by death. Tyrell, whose life had been ruled by it for as long as he could remember, envied them today.
He wanted to get a better look at the front line of mourners seated in folding chairs by the grave site. He wondered who they were, what their connection was.
The sound of car doors slamming made him turn to the right. An innocuous-looking dark sedan had squeezed into the drive, double-parking along the row of the procession’s cars. Two stiff-postured men had emerged and were making their way purposefully toward the crowd. They stopped just short of it and began scanning the faces of those gathered.
“Mr. Tyrell?”
Jack tensed, cursing himself for not paying more attention to his rear.
“Please turn around. Slowly. And keep your hands where we can see them.”
Tyrell did as he was told, still clutching the shovel, and found himself facing a second pair of men. Both their suit jackets were unbuttoned, but only one of them had dropped his hand toward the holster concealed inside. They were young men, about the same age as most of those standing near the grave site.
“You’ll have to come with us, sir.”
“I’m going to wait until the funeral’s over. You need to understand that’s what I have to do.”
“Now, sir. Please,” the man said, an edge creeping into his voice.
“It’s almost done. Just a few more minutes.”
“We have our orders, sir.”
“I’m going to ask you again for those minutes. You can come up here, stand right next to me, if you want.”
Now both men had their hands inside their jackets. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Yeah, so am I,” Tyrell said, and he started down the slight hill toward them.
The men fell in alongside him, not seeming to notice he was still holding the shovel. Tyrell stopped in the shadow of a great oak tree not far from a freshly dug grave.
“I’d really like to go back, stay to the end. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important to me. You boys mind reconsidering?”
“Move,” said the one who hadn’t spoken yet, gun out of its holster now but still held beneath his suit jacket.
Tyrell obliged, taking one step and then another. He was halfway into the third step when he brought the shovel around, high and hard. It smashed into the skull of the man whose gun was drawn, pitching him sideways. The second man had just gotten his gun out when Tyrell thrust the shovel’s blade into his throat, pinning him back against the tree and twisting so the steel would shred flesh. The young man’s eyes gaped as he drew his fingers to the jagged wound. He staggered, his knees starting to buckle, while the first man crawled through the grass. His hands groped before him, feeling blindly for his gun. Tyrell drew the shovel overhead and finished him with two more blows. The other one was dead by then too, and he dumped both their bodies in the freshly dug grave near the oak tree.
Tyrell brushed his hands clean and started back up the hill. He got to the top just as the coffin was being lowered into the ground. A line of mourners had cast dirt upon it one at a time before the second pair of men noticed him and approached, looking about for the two who had accompanied them.
“They’re down there,” Jack said, waiting until the minister’s final blessing
had been given before he turned and followed the men down the hill, shovel in hand.
had been given before he turned and followed the men down the hill, shovel in hand.
J
ack Tyrell had been walking for hours, ever since he had gotten off the New Jersey Transit train that had brought him into Manhattan. He hadn’t meant to stay this long in the open, where someone could recognize him at any time; for a man used to living his life in the shadows, the sunlit stares of others were something to be avoided at all costs. A casual glance, a smile or friendly gesture cast his way—these were the things that could give him away.
ack Tyrell had been walking for hours, ever since he had gotten off the New Jersey Transit train that had brought him into Manhattan. He hadn’t meant to stay this long in the open, where someone could recognize him at any time; for a man used to living his life in the shadows, the sunlit stares of others were something to be avoided at all costs. A casual glance, a smile or friendly gesture cast his way—these were the things that could give him away.
It wouldn’t take a particularly smart person to recognize him, either. Just someone who knew a little bit about history, who read magazines, or who had seen his face on an FBI’s Most Wanted poster, where it had been for seven years running a long time ago.
After the funeral, he took to the streets of New York City, figuring he’d do a block or two, get the lay of the land and the feel of what he should do now that he was back in the world, with four bodies left behind him. He had lots on his mind. It was time to work it out. He needed to get used to being part of the world again.
Horns made him stiffen. Don’t Walk signs that kept him from moving in the direction he wished left his flesh crawling. He contemplated ducking back into the subway, where things were dark and people were afraid to look at anyone twice. But the next block passed more easily, and the one after that was easier still. By the sixth block, he had actually fallen into a rhythm. Letting his eyes roam. Taking things in, as he weighed his options.
He started meeting the faces of those he passed. Some of them looked familiar, stoking memories of friends, many of whom were gone forever. Friends he had gone to war with against a nation. Plans hatched in dingy basements and dark attics, life lived between the whispers, everyone full of ambition. The odds were impossible, but it never mattered to Jack Tyrell, although it probably should have.
He needed something to change the odds. He had dreams twenty-five years ago, and they kept him from seeing that. But he saw it now, because the dreams weren’t in the way anymore.
Some people he passed carried giant radios they called boom boxes. Others passed him wearing headphones, walking to their own music with no idea what the beat of a different drummer sounded like. Deep thick drags off joints rolled thick as cigars. Cushiony dreams born of acid hits that made the sounds of the blasts clearer and the smell of blood sweeter. Wondrous things, these, but where had they gotten him? All the rubble he had left in his wake amounted to nothing when piled together.
This time it would be different.
He had gotten his start with the Weatherman movement, lasting until the rest of the leadership refused to back up in practice what they supported
in philosophy. A bomb blast here and a kidnapping there, the group’s biggest claim to fame having been to make a lot of smoke at New York City police headquarters in 1970. The movement went underground not long after that, but Jack Tyrell had unfinished business. Saw their withdrawal from the scene as a blessing, because it freed him to follow his own path by forming Midnight Run. He culled the best from the ranks of the Weatherman and Black Panther movements, lured them up from the underground with a promise that it was time to back up their words with deeds.
in philosophy. A bomb blast here and a kidnapping there, the group’s biggest claim to fame having been to make a lot of smoke at New York City police headquarters in 1970. The movement went underground not long after that, but Jack Tyrell had unfinished business. Saw their withdrawal from the scene as a blessing, because it freed him to follow his own path by forming Midnight Run. He culled the best from the ranks of the Weatherman and Black Panther movements, lured them up from the underground with a promise that it was time to back up their words with deeds.
Jack found himself at Fifty-sixth and Lexington, his feet blessed with a mind of their own. He got chills as he came upon the corner across from the old Alexander’s department store. A relic now, like him.
Standing there, gazing up the street, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Last time he’d been here, there had been a parking lot where the Mercantile Bank building once stood. But now a sprawling, fifty-story office building rose toward the sky, swallowing even the alley he had made his escape through twenty-five years ago when things had gone bad in a hurry. Jack figured folks these days thought a little urban renewal was all it took to wipe out an age, an era.
He remembered guns going off when the Mercantile Bank building had been there; his people, the soldiers of Midnight Run, going down everywhere around him. The bearded countenance of one of his own men shouting instructions to the black-garbed gunmen, ordering them about. The goddamn son of a bitch was a plant,
a spy
! They’d been sold out!
a spy
! They’d been sold out!
“FBI!” the bearded man had yelled. “Freeze!”
Jack Tyrell had dived to the floor instead beneath a maelstrom of gunfire, crawling to his detonator. The charges hadn’t all been set yet; some of his people were still in the process of planting them. But the wiring had been laid, ready to send the signal when Tyrell hit the button.
The Mercantile Bank building had erupted around him in a shower of stone and steel. How he loved that sound, loved the feel of the air getting sucked up around him and the hot wave that replaced it. He had let it swallow him that day, welcoming the end at long last. But instead of dying, he had awakened in an emergency triage unit set up on the street to treat those with wounds he had inflicted.
Jack had wiped the blood from his eyes and seen the police scouring the area, checking the wounded for a face that matched the description they’d been given. A description of a man who for two years had blazed a trail of terror across the country. For the past eighteen months, number one on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. A man whom J. Edgar Hoover had sworn publicly to strap into the electric chair himself.
Jack turned away from the pigs coming toward him and watched a boy covered in a blood-soaked sheet die. He felt, not regret or guilt, but power. He had done this, he had
made
this. And in that instant he saw his escape.
made
this. And in that instant he saw his escape.
He moved to the boy and collapsed over him, sobbing uncontrollably in a fit of hysteria. A father holding his dead boy’s hand. The stuff of tragedy. Jack kept his face low, felt an arm on his shoulder.
The arm belonged to a man with an FBI ID badge pinned to his jacket, William something, it said. Jack wanted to ask him if he knew an agent with a beard, the rat-fuck bastard who had sold out Midnight Run. But instead he kept up his sobbing, and the FBI agent steered him toward a priest.
The priest drew him aside to offer comfort. Wrapped an arm around his shoulder, his narrow collar dripping with blood Jack had spilled. They walked together into a nearby alley. There Jack had killed the priest and used his clothes to make his escape. It took the FBI the rest of the day to realize that Jack was still at large.
He looked at that spanking-new building now and saw how easy it had been for them to wipe out his work, bury his impact beneath fresh layers of steel and glass. What he wanted so intensely was to make the kind of impact that wouldn’t be forgotten quickly. Not just a building. Not just a single bomb people might miss learning about on the news if they channel-surfed. He wanted to destroy something there wasn’t enough steel and glass in the world to fix.
Jack got a rush that felt like an acid hit, only smoother. He closed his eyes and saw it in his mind, the shape of things to come. He had to keep himself from laughing, feeling almost giddy. He imagined someone recognizing him now, Jack Tyrell looking like he had just told himself a joke.
Of course, he hadn’t been called that in a long time now. On the posters displaying his face, and to the hordes of federal agents and police who had once made it their life’s work to catch him, he had another name:
Jackie Terror.
T
he old warehouse looked abandoned from the outside, right down to the iron grate across its front entrance, secured by a rusted padlock. Jack Tyrell would have left if he weren’t sure this was the correct address. He reached out to jiggle the padlock, and it came free in his hand. He slid the grate back enough to slide through and squeeze up against an old sliding door. The door opened with a ratchety clang and Tyrell stepped into a master’s den.
he old warehouse looked abandoned from the outside, right down to the iron grate across its front entrance, secured by a rusted padlock. Jack Tyrell would have left if he weren’t sure this was the correct address. He reached out to jiggle the padlock, and it came free in his hand. He slid the grate back enough to slide through and squeeze up against an old sliding door. The door opened with a ratchety clang and Tyrell stepped into a master’s den.
The clutter of the place didn’t surprise him so much as the source of it: shelf after shelf of electronics equipment in various states of disrepair. He could hear the sound from a dozen different televisions battling for attention, the dull glow emanating from their screens accounting for most of the huge room’s light.
He continued through the junked stereos, hi-fis, and husks of major appliances until he came to a central worktable covered by what appeared to be an endless supply of cable TV boxes. A single bright bulb dangled
from a ceiling wire. Beneath it a lone figure sat on a stool at the table, wearing a jerry-rigged light around the crown of his balding dome. Looked like a jockstrap with a bulb instead of a cock.
from a ceiling wire. Beneath it a lone figure sat on a stool at the table, wearing a jerry-rigged light around the crown of his balding dome. Looked like a jockstrap with a bulb instead of a cock.
The figure appeared too enmeshed in his work to turn around. “Since you don’t have an appointment,” his raspy voice called out, “you got exactly three seconds to tell me who sent you here.”
“You gonna shoot me if I take four, Marbles?”
The man on the stool stiffened, swung round in slow motion.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he said, squinting his eyes behind a pair of glasses with lenses as thick as old-fashioned Coke bottles.
Jack Tyrell started forward again, letting Marbles see the briefcase in his hand. “What are you, a goddamn TV repairman?”
Marbles kept squinting at Jack as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’ve come here because they finally wired your building for cable.”
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