Jack Daniels Six Pack (137 page)

I half expect him to reach for the beer again, or shoot me with the squirt gun, but Harry knuckles down and pushes. The fridge is a high-end model, the rollers heavy-duty. It moves easily on the kitchen linoleum. But when we get onto the carpet, every inch becomes a battle. The hallway isn’t long—no more than twenty-five feet—but it might as well be a mile. We strain and shove and grunt, putting our
weight into it, digging our heels in. In less than a minute we’re both winded, and the fridge hasn’t moved down the hallway more than three feet.

“Do you need help?” Mom, from the bathroom.

“Hell yeah!” Harry says.

“Mom, stay where you are.”

“She wants to help, let her help.”

“She’s not—”

The bullet punches cleanly through the refrigerator door, and I feel it tug against my jacket’s shoulder pad. I drop onto the ground, hugging the floor, thinking,
Oh my God, that wasn’t a soft point.

“Uh-oh,” Harry says.

He kneels next to me, but his mechanical hand prevents him from lying down. Another bullet hits the fridge, a few inches above his head. I consider crawling down the hall, back into the kitchen, but that would leave Harry stranded in the hallway, an open target.

“Run, Jack!”

I can’t believe it. Harry isn’t the heroic, self-sacrificing type.

“Run in front of the bullets!” he yells. “Shield me!”

I stand up, put my palms on the refrigerator door, and scream at him, “Push!”

We push. And we’re surprisingly effective. Funny how someone shooting at you can give you extra motivation. We move the fridge two feet, then four, a bullet barreling through the door only two inches from my hand, then we get some momentum going and we’re really making headway. Then another shot rings out and Harry falls to his knees and cries, “I’m hit!”

We’re less than a foot away from the bathroom. If we make it there, we can duck inside and dodge the gunfire. But Harry is useless, clutching his shoulder.

I suck in a big breath, find some deep, hidden reserve, and put everything I have into pushing that refrigerator another two feet, Harry on his knees and barely able to keep up. I reach the door, then help Mom drag Harry into the bathroom, to safety.

Harry sits on the floor, his metal hand still holding on to the refrigerator door. Mom takes another pair of scissors from the medicine cabinet and begins cutting off his shirt, looking for the bullet hole. True to his name, Harry has the hairiest chest I’ve ever seen. It looks like he’s wearing a brown and gray sweater. Mom cuts all the way up to the shoulder, but Harry refuses to take his hand away from the wound.

“I don’t want to look,” he says, hyperventilating.

My mom pats his head. “It’s okay.”

“If I die, I want you to make the funeral arrangements, Jack.”

“I will.”

“I want strippers there.”

“Okay, Harry.”

He removes his hand, reaches out for me. I hold it. Mom pulls away his shirt and reveals—

“It’s a scratch,” I say.

“Don’t sugarcoat it,” Harry moans. “I can handle the truth.”

I release his hand and peer at the thin red line. I’ve given Latham worse injuries with my fingernails.

“It’s not even worth a Band-Aid, McGlade.”

“You got a mirror?”

I hand him the tweezing mirror from the vanity. He holds it on an angle and looks.

“We cut my shirt off for this? I paid sixty bucks for that shirt.”

I sigh, stand up. Mom, however, stares down at Harry with a strange look on her face.

“Mom, you all right?”

“Harry…
McGlade
is your last name, right?”

“Yeah. Harrison Harold McGlade. I see you’re loving my chest hair. The ladies think it’s cute. I go into bars, ask them if they want a fuzzy navel. Then I lift up my shirt and jiggle. If it gets a laugh, I ask them if they’d like something stiffer.”

Mom seems transfixed.

“Is that a birthmark on your chest?”

“Port-wine stain. Looks like a fish, doesn’t it?”

Harry uses his fingers to part the gray, giving us a better view. His birthmark is several inches long, and indeed shaped like a fish, with an ovalish body and a triangle-like tail.

“Yes, it does,” Mom says. “It’s very distinctive. How old are you? Forty-nine?”

“Yeah. But the doctor says I have the body of a thirty-year-old, if the thirty-year-old was really unhealthy and close to death.”

I don’t like where this is going. My mother seems way too interested in Harry. “Mom?”

She ignores me. “Were you born in March?”

Harry’s eyes narrow. “On the twenty-ninth. How did you know that?”

Mom’s knees begin to shake, and I put my arm around her for support.

“Mom? What’s wrong?”

“One last thing,” Mom says to Harry. “Were you adopted?”

Oh my God, no. A thousand times no.

Mom had told me that before she met my father, she had a baby out of wedlock. A baby boy. With a sailor she had a one-night stand with when she was a teenager. When I became a cop, I’d tried to track my half brother down, tickled that I had a sibling out there. But I never thought that my brother could be someone like…

“No,” Harry says.

Thank Christ.

“I was raised by the state,” he continues. “In an orphanage.”

Mom’s jaw hangs limp. So does mine. Harry puts two and two together and says, “Are you saying that I might be your son?”

Mom nods.

Harry grins, his smile as wide as a canoe.

“Mom! Sis! It’s so good to be home!”

9:28 P.M.
JACK

I
F KARMA IS REAL
, I must have done something unspeakable in a previous life.

“This has to be some kind of mistake,” I say to my mother. I may have actually been pleading a little. “He doesn’t look anything like you.”

“He looks like his father.”

Harry makes puppy dog eyes and says, “Mom? Tell me about Dad.”

I don’t have time for this. Latham is bleeding and we’re surrounded by snipers. I need to kill the lights and grab the gun.

I poke my head into the hallway, on the opposite side of the fridge. While FMJs can shoot through it, the snipers can’t
see
through it. That means I can run to the laundry room and hit the circuit breaker without being spotted.

“He was a sailor,” Mom says. “I never knew his last name.”

“I’m going for the fuse box,” I say.

“What was his first name, Mom?”

Mom pats Harry on the head. “His name was Ralph.” She used the same soothing voice on me when I was younger and sick with the flu. “You have his eyes.”

“I’m going now,” I announce. “I hope I make it.”

“Did you love him?” Harry ask.

Mom says, “For about three hours.”

“Wow,” Harry says. “Three hours.”

“Latham!” I call out to my fiancé. “I’m going for the circuit breaker!”

I hoped for a
be careful
. Instead I got: “Is that creepy private eye really your brother?”

I rub my eyes.

“Ralph had a lot of body hair too,” Mom says. “All over.”

That’s my cue. I duck low, suck in a breath, then hustle out the door and down the rest of the hallway, skidding into the laundry room. No one shoots me. The circuit breaker is on the wall, next to the dryer. I hook a finger through the metal ring on the door and tug. It’s stubborn, and doesn’t want to open. The panel isn’t broken, it has a strong spring inside that makes sure it’s always closed. I pull really hard, my finger aching, and then it finally gives. I squint at the rows of breakers, and press the large black button that reads
MAIN.

The house goes dark, and the panel door slams back into place. I don’t hesitate, scrambling back into the hall, using memory and feel to find my bedroom. I take four steps inside before bumping into the bed. Then I spread my hands out over the top, seeking the ammo bag. My fingers brush the carrying strap, and I jerk the bag to me. I work the zipper, stick my hand inside, and yank out my competition pistol, a Kimber Eclipse II .45 ACP. I flip the safety and jack a round into the chamber. I feel around for extra clips, find three. They’re all empty. Bullets have been on my shopping list for a while.

There’s also a nylon holster in the bag. I shrug that onto my shoulder, the straps getting twisted in the dark but still doing the job.

Then I head for the window to sneak outside and round up the bad guys.

9:31 P.M.
PESSOLANO

W
HEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT
in the house, Pessolano takes the Leupold optics off the quick-release mount, puts it back into his bag, and attaches a Gen 3 starlight scope to the rifle.

Night vision works by using an image intensifier with a photoelectric effect to amplify ambient light. At least, that’s what the instruction manual says. Pessolano doesn’t understand it, but he knows that it turns images from pitch-black into a phosphorescent green.

He peers through the scope, and there, silhouetted at the bedroom window, is the female cop. He has one remaining Lapua FMJ round left, so he aims carefully, trying to adjust for the wind that has picked up.

BANG!

He sees the bullet strike the cop in the head, sees her jerk back, and smiles as she collapses.

“Bull’s-eye,” Pessolano says to himself.

This is so much more rewarding than working at a video store.

9:34 P.M.
MARY

M
ARY STRENG IS STILL TRYING
to wrap her mind around the possibility that this strange man in her bathroom might actually be her son.

Almost fifty years have passed since she gave up her infant boy. She doesn’t remember his exact birthday, only that it was before Easter, and bitterly cold. Labor had been lonely, frightening, miserable, the pain of childbirth exacerbated by the knowledge that she wasn’t going to keep her baby. She’d gotten pregnant at eighteen years old, still in high school. Dropped out when she began to show. Left home soon after that, never telling her parents the reason why, preferring their protestations to their judgments. Got a job at a deli in another part of town. Lived in a fugue for a few months, then moved back home and finished school when it was all over.

She used to fantasize that someone adopted her son. Someone rich and caring, who spoiled him with extravagant gifts. A year later she met her future husband and got on with her life. Mary still thought of her son sometimes, on cold days in March, but she managed to forgive herself.

Hearing that Harry had been raised by the state, and not by Mary’s imaginary perfect family, reopened a long-sealed box of regret.
She wants to ask him about his life. If he’s happy. If his childhood was okay. If he hates her.

Then she hears the shot, hears the
thump
of her daughter hitting the floor, and all thoughts of her past flit away.

“Jacqueline!”

No answer.

A feeling of dread unlike any she’s ever experienced drops over her like a shroud. Without giving it a second thought she grabs a flashlight from the bathroom closet and rushes into the hallway.

“Be careful,” Harry says after her. “Keep low.”

Mary doesn’t bother doing either. She moves as fast as she can, hurrying into the bedroom. Jacqueline is on floor, beside the bed. Her eyes are closed. Her hair is soaked with blood.

Oh no. Oh no no no no.

Mary kneels next to her daughter and directs the light onto the wound, her hands trembling. She can’t see the injury—there’s too much blood. Mary grabs a pillow, pulls off the case, uses that to mop at the spot that’s bleeding.

It’s a deep gash, three inches long, an inch wide. Mary presses the fabric to Jacqueline’s scalp, pulls it away, and can see her daughter’s skull bone, a startling white, before the blood begins to flow again. The bullet must have grazed her head, digging a trench in her skin. Thank God the bullet didn’t strike an inch lower.

Mary’s relief is short-lived, because the blood keeps coming. She estimates Jacqueline has already lost close to a pint, and she’s still pumping it out. Mary wraps the already-soaked pillowcase around her daughter’s head, tying it under her chin like a babushka. In the bathroom, there’s a first-aid kit. She could go and get it, then come back, but she’s unsure if the kit will be enough to stop the bleeding. Better to bring Jacqueline into the bathroom. Then Harry could help.

Keeping low, Mary pulls the comforter off the bed, and then the sheet beneath it. She lays the sheet on the floor, and with a deep grunt she rolls Jacqueline on top of it, placing the flashlight on her daughter’s chest. The effort leaves Mary gasping for air, but she doesn’t pause, instead crawling to the foot of the sheet and grasping it as hard as she can in her arthritic hands. Then she scoots back on her butt and pulls.

Pain, like sparks, shoots from Mary’s knuckles, up her arms, where it meets with other pain from her shoulders and back. Mary grits her teeth, squeezes her eyes shut, and fights against the pain. Arthritis produces a deep ache, like a migraine in the bones. Mary takes drugs to control the worst of it, even though they make her dizzy. She’s missed her last pill. The agony is worse than childbirth. Worse than a toothache.

Jacqueline slides across the carpeting, about a foot.

Mary doesn’t rest. She scoots back again, takes a deep breath, and pulls.

Another foot.

And another.

And another.

She reaches the bedroom doorway, her whole body shaking. The pain in her knuckles has become so bad that she’s moaning. She can’t make a fist anymore, so she wraps the sheet around her hands, around her wrists, which presses her inflamed knuckles together.

Pull.

Pull.

Pull.

“You’re almost there, Mom!” Harry shouts. “Just a little more!”

To take her mind off the agony, Mary thinks about Jacqueline’s birth, of holding her for the first time and saying, “Hello, my angel. I’m your mother. I’m going to be taking care of you, for the rest of my life.”