The Deadly Kiss-Off Read online

  I took out my phone. “We need to tell someone where we are, in case anything happens. I’m calling Nellie.”

  Stan laid a hand on my arm to stop me. “No offense, dude, but your gal is too excitable. Let me tell Sandy instead.”

  I hadn’t really been relishing informing Nellie that we had tracked down a distraught and deadly Luckman and were about to beard him in his lair, so I gave in easily. “Okay. But tell her to break the news calmly to everyone else.”

  Stan pulled out his phone and had a succinct conversation with Sandralene. Putting the phone away, he said, “Okay, let’s go have a look at his car. Maybe we got lucky and he left the gun inside.”

  Luckman hadn’t locked the Pontiac. No gun was visible inside. I opened the rear door because I had seen something else: a spill of white granules on the tatty fabric of the seat. From the car gushed forth a pungent, pissy odor.

  “That’s fertilizer,” said Caleb.

  “You don’t think …”

  Stan said, “Oh, that’s exactly what I think. Bastard’s mixing up some more bomb stuff with something crazy in mind. We gotta get in there and stop him!”

  “He’s got a gun.”

  “I ain’t scared of no damn university egghead with a gun or without. If he was gonna shoot us, he woulda tried something by now. Staked out the condo or like that, caught us when we pulled into our slot, all unsuspecting like.”

  I said, “He might react differently if we look like we’re threatening him or trying to interfere.”

  Caleb said, “I’ll go in first. Ron and I are friends. He certainly won’t shoot me. You two hang back. Especially you, Stan. After that scene with you and Rosa in the restaurant, I’m pretty sure he hates your guts.”

  Stan clapped Caleb on the shoulder. “Takes balls, Reb. We appreciate it. But you know, this really ain’t your circus, so you shouldn’t be the one sweeping up the shit.”

  Caleb smiled grimly. “That’s where you’re wrong, Stan. I’m neck deep. You folks invited me into this deal, and I accepted. And what would Sandra and Nellie say if I didn’t do my best to keep you guys safe?”

  “All right, then. Let’s do it.”

  I dug out my keys to the factory, and we approached the front door. But I didn’t need them, because it was unlocked.

  Caleb entered first. No lights were on in the entrance hall, but we could see a glow from under the office door.

  Additional spilled fertilizer grains led to the office, as if in confirmation of Luckman’s hiding spot. I could almost picture him toting the leaky bag—one heavy bag after another, in fact, until he had all he needed. And the place was filled with the motorway smell of diesel fuel, another component of the ANFO. On Friday, we had lowered the heat in the factory to fifty degrees for the week off, and the building was cold as an Eskimo’s tomb.

  Caleb flipped on the hall lights as a token of an honest, straightforward approach and called out, “Ron! It’s me, Caleb! I’m coming in!”

  Stan and I kept a few yards back as Caleb advanced to the office door. He opened it, but the slice of office thus revealed showed us nothing of note. Caleb stepped through the door. I waited, nerves taut as a bowstring, but no gunshot came—only conversation in low, calm tones.

  In a minute or two, Caleb returned to the door. “You can come in now,” he said. “Ron promised me he won’t do anything bad.”

  Stan and I stepped tentatively into the office. My eyes went first to Luckman. The professor was half seated on a desk edge, the foot of his extended leg braced on the floor, the other bent leg dangling. He wore the same suit he had on at the dinner party, but it now resembled castoffs long inhabited by a homeless person. He had discarded his tie somewhere along the way. His stubbled, puffy face did not seem especially maniacal, but his eyes possessed a frozen determination.

  In one lax hand he held a revolver that looked to be at least sixty-five-years old. But I had no doubt it could make just as big a hole as a brand-new one.

  I tried to picture Luckman impulsively smacking Rosa with the gun and strained to see some evidence of it on the weapon, as if visible blood would prove to me that this nightmare was real.

  I quickly sized up the rest of the room. Debris from several fast-food meals littered the conference table. Two padded chairs, pushed together, formed an improvised bed. The entire place was a mess: carpet tracked with dirt and oil, furniture shoved aside to open up a space in the middle of the room.

  And in that open space sat the most anomalous thing: a fifty-five-gallon industrial drum, with electrical wires issuing from the lid. I saw now that the wires ran from the drum to Luckman’s perch. As if tracking my gaze and obligingly responding to my curiosity, Luckman stood to reveal what his body had hidden: a cobbled-together box with its detonator switch.

  The inventor’s voice sounded defiantly proud. “Five hundred pounds of ANFO, gentlemen. The booster charge consists of all the other explosives we had lying about. It took me days to make it, even with my experience. I wish it could have been more, but it should suffice.”

  Caleb said, “Don’t think about that now, Ron. It’s all in the past. After all, you promised me.”

  Luckman massaged his brow with his free left hand. “Did I promise you something just now? I can’t really recall what I said. I imagine I just wanted you to think me harmless, so that these other two would enter. Once you told me they were waiting outside in the hall, I knew, my prayers had been answered. The Lord has tried me, just as he tried Job and Abraham. But he is not without mercy. ‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.’”

  Stan had plainly heard enough of this mad talk, and he took a step toward Luckman, though with hands sensibly raised as if to placate and lull the guy. Stan started to speak, but Luckman swung the revolver up with surprising speed, and his grip did not tremble. Despite the cold, I could feel myself sweating from my every pore.

  “Just stay right where you are, Mr. Hasso—Stan, that is. I may still call you Stan, may I not, despite our little falling out the other night? After all, we are practically family, ever since you started fucking my wife.”

  Stan had stopped, and even retreated a step. Amazingly, though, his voice didn’t quaver. “Listen, Luckman, that wasn’t totally my idea. I’m sorry for what I did, but Rosa was more’n willing. What went down with me and your wife was ultimately all about what you had with her, which was going to pot before I ever showed up.”

  “Perhaps it was. But you didn’t help, Mr. Hasso. Oh, no, you did not help at all. You took away my jewel. ‘Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.’ And yet, ‘A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.’”

  I felt I had to say something, anything, just to get Luckman’s thoughts moving along other lines. “Ronald, listen to me, won’t you, please? It’s true that this affair was a very sad and unfortunate incident for everyone involved. You’re hurting; Rosa’s hurting—especially after your treatment of her today. And believe it or not, even Stan is hurting. But it’s over now. You can pick up the pieces. Especially with all the money at your disposal. You and Rosa can do anything, go anywhere. You can perfect your machine—”

  Luckman shouted, “Shut up! Just shut up! Why did you have to mention what I did! I hit my wife! I hit my Rosa! I don’t know what came over me. I haven’t slept, you know. I’m sure that’s it. Just not enough sleep.”

  Luckman closed his eyes for a moment, and I could tell we all were calculating the odds on jumping him. But he snapped to attention again, with the gun steady in his hand and pointed at us.

  “Have you seen her? Is she …?”

  Caleb said, “She’s okay, Ron. We had an ambulance take her to the hospital.” />
  “Oh, thank you, Lord! My soul is not utterly blackened.” Luckman turned his attention back to me. “You! Glen McClinton, with all your talk of money and wealth, profits and deals! You’re almost worse than your vile, randy bull of a partner. He is a creature of foul lusts, yes. But you are wily Satan himself! You seduced me! You got me to sell my invention to the devil!”

  “Oh, come on, now. La Sombra Negra—”

  “They are pure evil! I learned all about them at last, once I had time and the scales fell from my eyes. They kill indiscriminately. They are as bad as the evil men they fight. And now they have exclusive possession of my machine! How could you do this to me? The name of Luckman will be forever tainted. Unless …”

  Caleb said quietly, “Unless what, Ron?”

  “Unless I end it all here. Shut this place down in the only effective way. What else is left for me? You two have stolen everything else: my woman, my invention, my reputation.”

  Luckman picked up the detonator box with his left hand and gazed lovingly at it. His thumb hovered over the button. I felt my stomach clench. Cold sweat trickled down my spine, yet my knees felt like warm candle wax.

  “Ron,” Caleb said, “the Lord frowns on a man killing himself.”

  “Not always. What of Ahithophel? ‘And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father.’ And don’t forget Saul. ‘Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it.’”

  Even under the probable threat of imminent death, all this pious preaching and milksop dithering caught in Stan’s craw.

  “We having frigging Sunday School lessons now?” he said. “Christ Almighty, just blow us the fuck up and spare us the damn sermon! I said I’m sorry, and I can’t do nothing else.”

  Luckman regarded Stan with some reluctant admiration. “Mr. Hasso, you are not a coward, I give you that much. And so I will honor your request.”

  I got ready to hurl myself at Luckman. Better to die doing something than to do nothing at all.

  Then Caleb spoke. His voice was calm and strong, resonant with faith.

  “You quoted Psalms, Ron. Only you forgot some important parts.”

  Caleb’s voice assumed magisterial dimensions.

  “‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.’”

  When Caleb stopped speaking, the silence manifested the solidity of a mountain. I felt a timeless moment of forever—which ceased with Caleb’s next utterance.

  “Now, Ron, hearing those words, do what you feel you must.”

  Luckman’s face contorted. “To dwell in the house of the Lord forever. That was all I really wanted.”

  Caleb stepped toward Luckman, arms spread wide to embrace him. At the same time, he turned his head to us and mouthed, Go!

  Stan, however, moved to join Caleb in his advance. Frightened, Luckman snapped off a round that went wide of any target, but the immense report of the gun stopped us all.

  “Ron, don’t fight me. Show the Lord’s mercy on these men. On yourself. Turn the other cheek.”

  Luckman started to weep. But he did not release the gun or the box.

  Caleb’s voice was strangled, imperative. “Get out of here! Ron and I need to talk.”

  Stan and I both hesitated. Then Stan said, “Talk him down, Reb. We’ll be right outside.”

  As we moved slowly toward the office door, Caleb closed the gap with Luckman, who allowed himself to be enfolded in the big man’s embrace.

  Outside, the sunlight and open air were the sweetest gifts ever bestowed on a mortal. Stan and I crossed to the far side of the street, then retreated some distance farther.

  Stan’s jeep barreled around a corner, Sandralene at the wheel, Nellie beside her. It screeched to a stop, and the women jumped out. We hugged, and I recounted everything.

  With her fierce and ardent yet impassive determination, Sandy said, “I’m going in there to help Caleb. I know I can.”

  “No, no, honey,” Stan said. “Believe me, Luckman won’t listen to no one but Johnny Reb. We just have to wait it out.”

  There was movement at the factory door. Caleb and Luckman appeared in the entrance, arms around each other’s waist. Caleb looked joyous, Luckman ashamed and repentant. I was reminded of those arcadian pictures in the literature from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, depicting a postcivilized paradise on Earth, with children petting tigers and lions.

  And then the bomb went off.

  EPILOGUE

  Uncle Ralph’s cramped, too-warm house was filled with delicious smells: turkey, vegetables, pies. A big bowl of doce de café took pride of place on the side table of desserts.

  Sitting at the dining-room table, waiting for Uncle Ralph to bring the turkey from the kitchen, I had a moment of mind-blanking déjà vu, a feeling that I would yet be compelled to live all over again the mortal crisis at the factory, experience endlessly all the dread and fear. But then the eerie sensation passed, and here I was, in the present.

  Two weeks had gone by since the explosion at Luckman Enterprises. I had stopped picking splinters out of my hair after the first three days. The five-hundred-pound bomb alone would not have been enough to destroy the building utterly. Even with seven thousand pounds, Timothy McVeigh had inflicted only partial damage to the building in Oklahoma City. But the old wood-raftered building had gone up like a pile of straw. The leftover diesel fuel that Luckman had stored (and spilled) further stoked the conflagration.

  Stan, Nellie, Sandy, and I had been hurled to the pavement. The tremendous noise seemed almost more potent than the force of the blast. When we picked ourselves up, the building’s facade was already wreathed in smoke and flames.

  Sandralene made a heartbreaking sound I would have said she was incapable of. It was a helpless whimpering squeal. But only that one animal cry, that one failure of her core of strength, that one eruption of despair and grief came out of her. Then she pulled herself together and had the presence of mind to call 911.

  By the time the first fire trucks arrived, the factory was an unquenchable inferno.

  Caleb and Luckman were simply gone. The finished inventory of LBAS units, for which La Sombra Negra would have paid us good money, was gone. (Luckily, Crespo had taken possession of the first thousand, which were already on their way to El Salvador.) All the remaining counterfeit chips that could have made additional profitable units were gone. And, of course, Luckman’s expertise, such as it was, and his schematics for the LBAS were gone as well.

  And in the parking lot, even my Lexus was gone, a separate pyre in tribute to Luckman’s insane and ultimately accidental auto-da-fé.

  Man, I really did like that car.

  Luckman’s lack of inventorly skill had extended even to his bomb making—although, to be fair, the materials he was working with were notoriously unstable.

  We never did recover a single shred of either body. It seemed fitting somehow, as if they both had been transubstantiated heavenward, like the resurrected Jesus when he finally left his apostles. And Caleb’s relatives proved to be as impossible to find as his mortal remains. Even Mama Lura’s familiarity with the genealogy of Hedgesville failed us.

  The police, of course, had swiftly followed the firefighters, and certain lines of questioning began to feel particu
larly sticky. Which is, fortunately, where Vin Santo stepped in.

  But at a cost.

  The final meeting that Stan and I endured with the mob boss, just a couple of days ago, had none of the bonhomie and good cheer of our previous encounters. We entered not knowing whether we would emerge in the same condition.

  Behind his desk, Santo regarded us with the expression of a father who has seen his favorite son arrested for screwing a dog on the courthouse steps—and an underage dog at that. When he drank from his Big Gulp, he managed to invest the act with all the tragic gravitas of Lee surrendering his sword to Grant at Appomattox. The two goons at the door radiated a chill just above zero degrees Kelvin.

  “Boys, boys, boys. Tell me what you think I should do with the two of you. What would your impulses be if you were me?”

  Stan said, “Maybe you wanna congratulate us on getting outta that fucking catastrophe alive.”

  Santo’s smile was crocodilian. “That is not my first instinct, no. I had in mind something more like arranging a one-way trip to the bogs. They tell me that once a stiff is planted deep into that muck, you can dig him up a hundred years later and he’s still recognizable, even if he does look like Clint Eastwood at ninety.”

  “Vin,” I said, “are you forgetting that we were responsible for raking in thirty million dollars? Even if we were not able to realize one hundred percent of the potential profits from those fake Intel chips, we still brought you more than you would have gotten by just dumping them raw on the market.”

  “Right, right, how could I forget? Thirty million, you say? Like that amount went straight into my pocket! Maybe you got some notion of what your little escapade has cost me?”

  “Vin, we know there were some collateral expenses—”

  “Your idea of ‘collateral expenses’ is very amusing to me. Let me run them down. Out of that thirty million, it has taken me six to satisfy Rosa Luckman. She is now a very contented widow and averse to pursuing any further damages. Or so her high-priced mouthpiece assures me, in writing. Then there was the landlord of your temporary place of business, who was naturally kinda disconcerted to find himself the owner of a pile of steaming ashes instead of a dated though still quite serviceable light-industrial building. He needed three million to restore his happiness—a distinctly outrageous number given current real estate values in that district, but he had me over the proverbial barrel. Or, at least, his insurance company did. Those bastards are the worst criminals I have ever met. Next, I came face-to-face with the various outstretched hands among our police and politician friends—hands that we needed to grease if we intended to make this whole affair go away. I will not tell you the actual numbers involved, because it reflects poorly on the public spirit of our civil servants and elected officials. But to make a long story short, my own share, which, you recall, was going to be about fifteen million, has been reduced to eight. This is not the kind of adjustment I generally favor.”