Chapter06

 

 

 

A dribble of blood oozed out from between the fingers of his hand where it held his side – not a lot of blood, but enough to suggest that the wound had reopened.

It certainly felt open, and as painful as if someone had shot him again.

But he had not time to deal with it at the moment and surveyed the street for a cab.

The dark street looked utterly vacant except for the spill-over of cigarette smoking patrons of the tavern slightly more than a half block away.

A few prone slumbering drunks snored their way through the night, their long dirty legs sticking out of dark store doorways as if cut in half on the far side, the few street lights illuminating them on an angle.

The cold had grown worse, and he shuttered, pulling the field jacket closed but without buttoning it, needing access to his pistol, and, of course, the wound.

He took a staggering step in the direction of the taverns, and stumbled, looking, and certainly feeling every bit as drunk as those already on the ground, the pain drawing strength out of him so that he seemed to float over the littered sidewalk, only to have his foot strike each obstacle when it came down.

When was the last time he slept, he wondered?

He took another step, then another, and stopped.

“I’m not going to make it,” he mumbled.

He had reached the corner, beyond which bar life went out loudly, with a number of people laughing joyously, and music blaring out the open double doors from some old fashioned juke box inside.

 

 

The broader avenue boasted headlights and tail lights, but only a handful of cabs.

Ponci lifted his hand to flag down a taxi. None even slowed. Some even sped up, testimony to the violent history of the neighborhood, and the fear some drivers still felt about picking up fares here. Most didn’t believe the fare would justify the risk and figured the person could take a subway or a bus.

Ponci had no time for either, and glanced around.

The light changed. A BMW slowed and stopped a few feet from where Ponci stood. He stepped over a low mound of soot-blackened snow and then tapped on the driver’s side window with the barrel of his pistol.

The eyes of the driver widened.

Ponci motioned for the driver to open the door, then tapped again when the driver hesitated. Finally, the door opened, and Ponci pressed the tip of the pistol against the man’s cheek.

“ I don’t have much money,” the man mumbled,  a middle class white man whose license plates said he came from Connecticut. The man shook so much his eye glasses kept falling off, and he kept pushing them back on with shaking fingers.

“I don’t need your money,” Ponci said. “I need your car. Get out and you won’t get hurt.”

 

 

A corner of the driver’s mouth twitched as the glasses fell again onto the middle of his nose, and he stared over the top at the pistol and then gradually up towards Ponci’s face. He swallowed once, then nodded, fumbling to get out passed Ponci – who in turn took a step back to let him onto the curb. Then Ponci slipped behind the wheel, the seat still warm from its previous occupation, and the steering wheel moist from the driver’s perspiring palms.

Cringing from a jolt to his side as he pulled the car door closed, Ponci dropped the pistol onto the passenger side seat and shifted the car into gear to drive off.

In the rearview mirror, the driver looked like an orphan standing in the utterly alien landscape, his expression a mixture of horror and dread – an image that quickly faded as the car plunged down the street in the direction of Manhattan,

Ponci shuddered and then reached to the heater knob with his blood stained hand and jacked it up to high, and did the same for the fan – the hot air blowing relief onto his face as he drove.

It was not enough. He still felt cold. And weak. And just a little scared.

This last startled him. As with guilt, fear was not something he was accustomed to feeling, something he had tucked back into a corner of his mind, aware of over the years, but never really concerned with, just a minor annoyance he knew would vanish after he accomplished whatever he had been hired to do.

But now, this feeling snuck back from that corner and settled into the front of his brain, fogging up his thinking the way the heat fogged up the windshield as he drove, making it difficult for him to sort through all of the details he needed to sort through in order to get this whole thing done.

 

 

The voices that usually filled his head at moments like these had grown suspiciously silent – as finding this as a new means of torture. He ached to shout just to fill the air with some sound under than the hum of the car heater fan or the rumble of the tires over the ice patches along the road.

But he did not trust his own voice and dreaded the idea that he might not be able to utter any sound at all.

He slowed the car at the next traffic light, and then steered it downtown.

All he wanted to do was get on with his life. That was all he ever wanted to do.

He hadn’t started out wanting to kill people, anyone. He didn’t imagine himself doing so as revenge for the abuse he sometimes took as a kid. He rarely got hot in that way, and if anything, had a cold streak running through him that made most people – except the most unwise – leave him alone.

He didn’t even feel bad about the murders he committed, no more than he might have felt bad about putting out the trash, or washing his hair in the shower. It was something he did. And yet, he got stuck with these voices inside his head, remote in their own way, stirring up something in him he did not acknowledge as his own feelings.

They didn’t always accuse him of anything. Sometimes, they went on with their own lives inside of him, mumbling about how unfair life was.

And it was, he sometimes interjected, but always to point out that life was over for them while others had to carry on with it, fair or unfair, and that people like him had to live with it, suffer through it.

“I’m the one you should feel sorry for,” he routinely told them, “not for your pathetic selves.”

 

 

The panic in the chatter ceased, but not the chatter.

The solemn hum of efficiency replaced it, as with all military operations, they adjusted to the new circumstance.

Someone else pursued the package.

This changed priorities. His side had to find it and destroy it first.

All other considerations were null and void.

If it meant destroying a hotel full of people or an entire city block, then his side would do so with the belief that if the package fell into other hands, Russian, Chinese or terrorist, the damage would be much, much worse.

Suddenly, his role became even more critical since the drove could not call in a strike until he actually located the package.

And since the subject did not have it at the meeting, then no one could strike until he found it.

“Report,” the voice in his head said.

“The suspect has hijacked a car and is traveling south,” he said.

“South?” the voice said, sounding surprised. “Back in the direction of the hotel?”

“It would seem so,” he said.

A short, thoughtful silence followed, but he knew what track the voice’s thoughts traveled on: whether or not to call a strike on the hotel with the presumption the package was still there despite all previous attempts failed to find it.

He didn’t think they would. They would wait and watch until the package appeared, then strike.

At this moment, the tiny image of the moving car below was their best chance at finding it.

Sweat dribbled down his brow and onto the screen.