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Two blasts.
Two bodies on the ground.
I jumped out of the tree and ran forward quickly. The greasy guy had been a clean shot, but Lenny was hit in the throat and still alive. His eyes widened as he saw me, and he opened his mouth. No sound came from it, but I wasn’t much of a conversationalist while on the job anyway, so I put another shot in his brain with my Beretta. I pulled out an old Polaroid camera from its case attached to my belt, took two pictures, and then quickly hauled the bodies to the river.
I knelt down by a pile of broken concrete blocks and made sure both the bodies were on their way down the river before I shoved myself back up on my feet to make my escape. As I did, I could hear sirens approaching. Someone had heard the gunfire and called it in, but I had plenty of time to get out of the area. My only regret was not having time to check out the weapons in the bus before I had to move on. I ran down the tree line, staying under cover of the thick summer growth. A rental car I had picked up from the airport was parked on a nearby street, and I tossed my weapons in the back, climbed behind the wheel, and slowly drove off down the street.
I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the first of the police cars turning off the main road and onto the side street near the warehouse. With a smile on my face, I drove out of the area, ditched the car, a
nd headed back to the hotel provided by Gavino. I spent about ten minutes yanking little burrs off my boots and jeans—they were all over the place near the river’s edge. I decided to leave the duffel bag there in the room so I wasn’t carrying the murder weapon around so quickly after a hit. I’d come back for it later. If it had been my Barrett, I would have kept it with me, but I didn’t give a shit about these guns.
With the two pictures sealed in an envelope shoved into my pocket, I took a complicated route out of the area. Bus, train, bus again. I grabbed a cab back to Michigan Avenue, and then jumped on the bus to head back home. I got off a few blocks away, preferring to walk the last bit to make damn sure I wasn’t being followed.
Though I’d made the hit at daybreak, it had taken me most of the rest of the day to get back to the new apartment. It was past the usual suppertime, but it was mid-June and the sun was still up. Outside the air was warm and comfortable. The wind wasn’t as bad, either. I was used to a lot of lake wind, but we were a little farther west than my previous place was located where there wasn’t so much of a constant breeze.
When I approached the apartment, Lia was standing in the green space with tears in her eyes, holding onto the end of Odin’s leash. There was an older woman beside her with another dog lying nearby on the ground. The woman was shaking her finger and shouting at Lia.
“You are responsible for your dog’s behavior!” the woman was yelling.
I half remembered seeing the woman before, walking a really big, fluffy shepherd-type dog. I wasn’t sure of the actual breed, but it was big with long, thick hair and coloring similar to a collie. The woman was most certainly of retirement age—well beyond, really—and very small in stature. She looked kind of ridiculous walking a dog that had to be a hundred and thirty pounds.
“I’m sorry!” Lia exclaimed. “I tried to hold on to him—he’s never even tried to get away from me before! I don’t know what got into him!”
“What the hell?” I groaned as I walked up.
Lia’s eyes found me, and the tears started flowing. I looked over at the woman, who was wearing tan slacks and one of those swimsuit cover-ups over her blouse. She had her hands on her hips, and her head bobbed up and down as she talked.
“Your wife has no control over your dog!” she barked.
I raised an eyebrow in Lia’s direction over the marital status assumption but didn’t correct the woman. Lia seemed too upset to notice.
“I tried to hold onto him, Evan—I swear!” Lia started to cry harder. “I couldn’t keep my grip, and he ran off! The next thing I know, he’s…he’s…”
“He violated my baby!” the woman roared as she indicated the well-groomed dog now sitting on the ground next to her, licking at her own nether-regions.
I looked over to my dog, who sat panting in front of Lia’s feet, looking very proud of himself. It wasn’t difficult to assess the situation for what it was, and I had to grin and waggle my eyebrows at my buddy.
The woman continued to fume.
“We couldn’t pull them apart,” Lia said meekly.
“You were hardly trying!” the woman shouted. “It was all I could do to keep Gretta calm!”
“He growled at me!”
“Hey!” I snapped at Odin, who immediately dropped to the ground and put his nose on his paws. I pointed over at Lia. “Don’t growl at her!”
“You should have been here earlier!” the woman said as she turned to me. “He was completely out of control! Do you realize what he did?”
It was pretty obvious.
“He fucked your dog?” I tried to make it sound like a question though I didn’t have any doubt. I folded my arms across my chest and glared at the woman.
“She was supposed to be bred with another Caucasian Shepherd later this week!”
I leaned to the side to peer around the woman at the dog in the grass, who was still concentrating on her own after-care.
“You mean you brought your in-heat bitch out here in the open for any other dog to smell and go nuts about her?” I cocked a thumb toward Odin. “And now you’re surprised he got a little horny?”
