Hit and The Marksman (23 page)

A Beginning …

On a sagging cot in a flyspecked room in an inner-city flophouse, a man tosses and turns. In his sleep he's hearing a racket of combat—explosions, automatic weapons, screams. Against his eyelids images flash like the intermittent flare of artillery on a battlefield at night.

He pushes the half-awake nightmare away. The effort is enough to exhaust him. After a few moments his breathing steadies and he rises in a sweat, disoriented for a moment before he recognizes his drab surroundings.

He hasn't shaved in a while. His brown hair is stringy. There's a wicked long scar across his temple; the old wound makes his head ache—makes him wince when he bends over to get into his rumpled old clothes.

C. W. Radford—that's his name. He's got the remains of a good constitution but he looks barely one step up from a homeless tramp. The jeans and work-shirt are threadbare. His shoes are utterly worn out. He laces them up with bovine listlessness. The headache makes him dizzy.

In the rickety bedside drawer is a small case that was designed to be a diabetic's insulin kit—its ersatz leather worn away at the corners now, cardboard showing through the edges. He flips open its lid on loose hinges to expose the syringe within, and the small rubber-topped bottle with its prescription label: “every four hours as needed for pain.”

Radford draws liquid into the syringe and injects himself with its needle.

Radford trudges across a filthy street in a bitterly silent part of the city—beat-up cars and derelicts human and inanimate. The corner is dominated by an all-night joint, Charlie's Cafe—in its original incarnation a drive-in burger joint; subsequently expanded to a quarter-block sprawl of counters and Naugahyde booths, all of it much the worse for wear now—neon beer ads in the windows.

A dealer, wearing a wild shock of red hair and clothed in what used to be combat fatigues, transacts business with a skinny teenage girl. Radford glances at the two of them, shifts his glance away and continues walking toward Charlie's Cafe.

With the deftness of a sleight-of-hand artist the dealer pockets the girl's money, looks warily around and slips her a tiny package. When she hurries away, the dealer sizes up Radford with a bellicose challenge but Radford shuffles past, appearing to ignore him.

Reflections glitter off the license plate on a parked van—7734 OL—and above the plate two men sitting in the van watch Radford. They both wear shirts, no jackets; collars unbuttoned, ties at half mast. The guy in the passenger seat is polished, neat, fortyish and smoking a cigarillo. Next to him the driver bats ineffectually at the smoke. This driver is big, tough, a body-builder. The van is a custom camping job—drapes etc.

It would appear that Radford gives them no more attention than he gave the redheaded dealer.

The two guys in the van watch while Radford approaches the side door of the cafe. The guy with the cigarillo has a file-folder open in his hand; in it is a printout dossier—he squints against the curling smoke to see a military mug-shot photo of a younger, neater Radford clipped to the file.

Radford climbs up onto the curb as if it's only another step half way along a wearisome journey up a mountain-high pyramid. As he turns painfully toward the door of the cafe, a young dude comes rushing out of the alley, flailing an expensive attaché case in one hand and a heavy Glock automatic pistol in the other.

The dude is immaculate in a flashy tailored suit—the uniform of a drug wholesaler or a pimp, or both—but he's hardly more than a child: a teenage kid trying to look like a big shot.

Radford stops. The dude is right in front of him, arm's length. He's laughing hysterically but behind the laughter the dude is able to make an instantaneous judgment: he dismisses Radford and wheels, grinning, laughing, and aims his automatic back at the alley. He's wild: spaced out.

A pursuing policeman runs into sight—sees the dude; reacts, skids, ducks, and the dude's shot goes wild overhead.

A lot of noise now, people dodging to cover and shouting inarticulate warnings—the two guys in the van dive beneath their dashboard out of sight and the dealer flattens himself back against a wall as if trying to press himself back through it into invisibility, and Radford stands bolt still.

The dude laughs on, full of wild bravado. He is trying to steady himself to take aim on the policeman when the sound of screeching tires brings his head whipping around in time to see a squad car squealing to a slithery stop behind him.

The dude's gun swivels to meet the new challenge as two cops pop open the doors of their unit and brace their weapons across the tops of door and car, aiming at the dude.

One cop says, “Drop the gun.”

The other gestures. “On your knees, asshole. And then on your face.
Now.
”

Radford stands unmoving, without expression, while across the street the redheaded dealer slides around a corner like an eel and disappears. Radford appears to pay more attention to that than to the confrontation between dude and cops.

“
Drop
it, asshole!”

Now there's the policeman at the corner—the one who was chasing the dude on foot—and there's the pair of cops at the car, and there's the dude, and they've all got their handguns up but the dude can't quite decide which of them to aim at and he swings his pistol back and forth, first one cop and then another, and presently he stops with his finger whitening on the trigger and the muzzle of the Glock leveled toward Radford's scarred forehead.

Radford faces the gun with utter indifference.

The cops hesitate, probably fearful that any move could get the bystander shot dead.

The dude keeps laughing. His head whips around in a frantic effort to keep all the cops in view. His arm wavers; he starts to drop into a crouch and his automatic goes off—

The bullet unzips a crease in the pavement within an inch of Radford's foot.

Radford doesn't flinch. He doesn't move at all.

Within a single broken instant of time all three cops fire simultaneously, and the dude is physically blasted off his feet by the combined firepower. The bullets drive him down hard …

In the wake of it, the echoes of the gunshots fade into a stunning silence.

In the parked van the two guys sit up and appraise the situation with scientific interest.

From their various directions the three cops cautiously approach the dude. He lies broken across the curb. Guns out, two of the cops walk past Radford with only a glance; they're intent on the dude, whose brains are all over the sidewalk. One of the cops mutters dispassionately, “Angel dust. Laughing his head off.”

His partner says, “Where's it say a spaced-out maniac can't have a sense of humor?”

Radford trudges to the side door of the cafe as if there'd been no interruption. He knocks.

One of the cops is saying, “Get Forensics.”

Charlie the cook, who owns the cafe, opens the door from inside and stands in his apron, peering out cautiously. Charlie has a prosthesis in place of one hand. He recognizes Radford—they go back a long way together—admits him.

The two guys in the van consult rapidly and the driver turns the key and crams it roughly into gear. The van lurches. The passenger's voice is pained: “Hey—Easy with my van.”

One of the cops is calling in on his car radio. The partner is swiveling full-circle on his heels, gun half raised, waiting for another shoe to drop. The foot-patrol cop strides across to the dude and kicks open the attache case that the dude dropped. He looks dryly at the dead dude. “You have the right to remain silent.”

Charlie the cook holds the door open. Several sleazeball waiters trail tentatively out to study the carnage.

Radford moves past them and goes inside. He pulls down an apron off a peg, ties it on without hurry and proceeds to stand all alone washing dishes.

Later in the day Radford, still in his apron, swabs the floor. Two or three scuzzy waiters move past him, carrying trays in and out. Cooks and other kitchen staff are at work—the place is busy.

Radford keeps to himself, talks to no one, looks at no one. A beer-bellied bruiser named Don—pack-leader of the waiters—sneers at Radford. Other kitchen staff are watching. Knowing he has an audience, Don picks up an open can of tomato juice, then steps on Radford's mop, stopping it. Radford just looks at him. Don deliberately pours tomato juice on the floor. No reaction; Radford merely begins to mop it up.

“D'you used to mop up for the I-raqis like that?”

Don reaches for the side of Radford's waistband, pulls it out past the apron and pours tomato juice inside the front of Radford's pants. Radford pulls away but does not fight.

Don shouts at him—“What's with you—fuckin' coward?”—trying to get a rise out of Radford.

It's loud in the room but Radford barely hears what Don says; what he hears, interspersed with clatter of dishes and silverware, is the growing sound of explosions and automatic weapons and the dreadful screams of the injured and dying.

Radford picks up a tray of dirty dishes. Don sticks out his foot. Radford can't see it—the tray blocks his downward view. He trips over Don's foot. In his head the sound of battle fades as dishes tumble with a loud clatter.

Don waits, taunting, hoping Radford will fight. Don's one of your martial-arts types and he just knows he can beat up anybody—especially somebody who won't fight back.

Radford is picking up the scattered dishes. He doesn't even look up at Don.

Charlie the boss strides across the aisle and grips Don roughly by the arm. “Hey, bozo. Bust my dishes, you pay for 'em … I told you leave him alone.”

Don gives him a look, decides not to make anything of it right now, and walks away.

Charlie helps Radford to his feet. “You got to remember to fight back.”

Radford thinks about it, visibly. He has to marshal the things swimming around in his head before he can formulate an answer. Finally he says, “Don't want to hurt anybody.”

“C.W., you gotta look out for yourself.”

“Doesn't matter.” Radford resumes picking up dishes.

Charlie pulls him up straight and makes motions as if dusting him off. “Go get yourself cleaned up.”

At the sink of the tiny employees' washroom Radford stands in his shorts scrubbing tomato-stain out of his trousers. Then he locks the door. His head aches terribly. He takes that same insulin kit out of a pocket and injects himself with painkiller. He's hearing again that sound of sporadic combat fire.

He sees a Middle-Eastern town, arid, devastated by war, and a gaunt undernourished teenage girl moving silently through the night, alert, weapon ready, her face lit by sudden distant flashes; we hear continuing sound of combat fire. The girl takes a step forward—steps on a mine—abruptly Radford's memory explodes in a white flash as the girl disintegrates …

He sees himself, then, watching from up in the gaping skull-like third-story window opening of a bombed-out shell of an apartment house. He holds a 'scoped sniper rifle. He's very young (22), in camouflage uniform, face blackened, revealing no feelings except fear. Scared … sweating in the bitter cold, frightened, he aims his rifle at something in the distance. He can hear its approach, the Iraqi helicopter, and he squints into the scope, aiming up into the sky—steadies his aim and fires. The recoil rocks his shoulder gently; he's used to that. When he lowers the rifle, his expression has gone blank—he seems no longer afraid. The sound of the helicopter rotors changes, becomes rattly and uneven, and Radford watches while the machine begins to sway from side to side as if on a pendulum before it shatters against the slope of a jagged rock hillside. The explosion lights up Radford's face like daylight and he shrinks back into the shadows of the bombed-out building.

… In the cafe bathroom he puts the syringe and bottle away in the case, and pockets the case, and straps on his grease-stained uniform. In his aching head the sound of combat fades. He tries to open the door. It won't open. Won't budge. He shoves hard at it. Nothing now, except after a moment he begins to hear men chuckling beyond the door. He kicks the door. The voices outside begin to laugh aloud.

The harder Radford tries to open the door, the louder they laugh.

He feels as if the room is closing in on him …

Outside the door, in the cafe hallway, are grouped several waiters, including Don. They're the ones who're laughing. A chair is propped under the door handle, wedging it shut.

Don opens a fuse box on the wall. His finger flips a circuit-breaker from “on” to “off.”

Inside the bathroom Radford is plunged into darkness and panic overtakes him. He thrashes at the jammed door.

Out in the hallway the waiters' laughter stops abruptly when the door is kicked out in splinters.

Radford comes exploding out through the smashed wreckage.

They gape at him.

In a sweating panic Radford stands panting.

Don backs away in sudden fear.

—And Radford walks away.

The waiters try to laugh again, but it's uneasy and it trails off …

After nightfall the cafe's trade changes. More of an upscale crowd now—thrill seekers looking for something they won't find behind a velvet rope in the more trendy sections.

In a corner booth sit the two guys who earlier were in their van watching Radford on the street. Their names are Conrad and Gootch. Conrad's the dapper dandy who likes to smoke cigarillos but he can't smoke inside here so he's drumming his fingers on the Formica tabletop, an unlit cigarillo between his fingers. He's watching Radford swab the floor, mopping under tables. Conrad, the body-builder, is facing the other direction, intent on something or someone. Conrad asks, “What you lookin' at?”

“Curly, Larry and Moe over there.”

Conrad swivels, hikes his arm up over the back of the booth and twists his jaw to look back over his shoulder. He sees three tough-looking punks drinking beer at the counter. “Uh-huh.” He looks at his watch. “You know that's what I hate about theater. You bust your ass to get there on time and the fuckin' curtain never goes up when it's supposed to. Fifteen, twenty minutes later they get all the stragglers seated and some dickhead gets on the mike and says please turn off your fuckin' cellulars and pagers. Where the hell's our leading lady tonight?”