Redux

By Clayton Spann

Armed with foreknowledge, a decent man would try to thwart the 9-11 attacks. Leonard Barco is not so decent. This cocksure--and lethal--man has other plans. He encounters only one fly in the ointment, a woman whose life will crash into his with the full force of a jetliner. Golden boy Barco finds the future not so knowable after all. And his date with that day in September of 2001 remains.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clayton Spann
• Release date: Jul 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9780976086093

Book preview

He said, ‘A friend of mine gave me a puzzle and I want you to help me out.’

I said to him, ‘Is this the time for puzzles, Amir?’

‘Yes, I know, but no one else but you could help me,’ he said. ‘Two sticks, a dash and cake with a stick down. What is it?’

I said, ‘Did you wake me up just to tell me this?’

As it turns out, two sticks is the number 11. A dash is a dash. And cake with a stick down is the number nine. And that was September 11.

Omar relating how he learned the date of the attacks from Mohamed Atta

Me

I’m an ordinary man,

Who desires nothing more than an ordinary chance,

to live exactly as he likes, and do precisely what he wants.

Henry Higgins

Ides of October

I jolted awake. In the dream, the nightmare, I had been caught. I faced the needle or life without parole.

The red digits of the nightstand clock said 2:35 a.m.

My pounding heart told I would get no more sleep. God how I needed sleep. For two weeks I hadn’t gotten a good night’s worth, ever since Janet dropped the bomb.

The past workweek I barely made it to the end. The gnawing, clawing fatigue—combined with the loathing for Janet—had ruined my ability to code. All week I produced gibberish, with almost every line containing a bug.

Friday was worst of all. I sat before my keyboard and monitor in a daze. Lead weights tugged at my eyelids. A dozen times I nodded off, then woke to find my face inches from the keyboard. My workmates joked I must really be hung over. If only.

The weekend had promised relief. Friday evening and Saturday evening I turned in early. No date either night, which surely proved the bona fides of my exhaustion.

But both nights Janet woke me in the wee hours. As she had every night since she told me she was pregnant. Friday and Saturday I totaled nine hours sleep.

Now Janet had destroyed Sunday night too. With a full workweek looming, with me drained instead of replenished. I’d be lucky to last to Wednesday.

I rolled out of bed and began to pace. I resisted pacing into the dining room, where last evening I laid out the instruments of death.

That dream. It was so real, and I was so afraid. My knees had turned to jelly as the cops hoisted me after slapping on the cuffs. One of the cops snarled, wait till the cons get hold of you at Sussex, pretty boy. They’ll butt fuck you to death.

Yesterday, Sunday, God’s day, I crossed over. It took two weeks of hating her guts, but yesterday fantasizing graduated to actual commitment. I would kill Janet.

How committed was I now, after that dream? I always faced reality best at dawn. Four hours remained until dawn, but I wouldn’t get any more wide-awake. So, yes, how did it look now?

If Janet were found dead an investigation would eventually focus on me. I had the most motive. Hell, I was probably the only person on the planet with reason to rub her out.

She used a kit, not a gynecologist, to confirm she was pregnant. But she must have told at least one of her friends she was with child and who was the father. Probably Margie Lewis, her best buddy in Human Resources. Even if I was the only one she told, an autopsy would reveal she was two months along.

I needed to think clearly as I ever had. Was I really going to do this?

She deserved to die, I would not debate that. Of course the lying, deceiving, trapping bitch deserved to go. She had earned it big time. If she would not yield, and it didn’t look like she would, she needed to go..

I always took precautions when I went to bed with a woman; I had done that from my junior year in high school on. Two years earlier my father had given me the facts of life talk, and topped it off by presenting me with a packet of Trojans. That surprised me, he was such a staunch Catholic.

Wait as long as possible to have sex, he had said. When the time does come, make sure to use one of these. Always, always put one on. They will keep you from disease and from an unwanted child.

But Janet swore she was on birth control. She double swore when I asked if she was up to date with her pills. So the condom stayed in its packet then and every time after that I banged her.

All through September I had been tiring of her. When I wasn’t screwing her she was a vapid bore. What could you expect, she was just a secretary. A community college graduate. Trolling with her fine body in hopes of snaring a well-paid techie or manager at the firm.

Janet thought for sure she’d hooked me. Oldest trick in the book, getting a man to impregnate you, then holding out for marriage. As if I would ever, on my most desperate day, marry someone with a perfect vacuum between their ears.

I told her to abort the thing. Because I would commit suicide before marrying her. She teared up when I said that. I emphatically repeated the sentiment and she started weeping. Get rid of it! had been my parting shot as I stormed from her apartment.

It was pretty awkward the next day, seeing her at work. HR was just down the hall from where the developers sat. When I inevitably bumped into her, she greeted me with huge sorrowful eyes. Pleading eyes. I hissed out the question, are you going to do it? Wetness filmed her eyes as she shook her head. We have to talk she said. I said we were through both screwing and talking.

When I got home that evening I played the message she had left on the answering machine. Whether we married—which she hilariously said was the decent, honorable thing for me to do—or we did not, she would be keeping the child. Our child.

Her voice, now husky with emotion, continued. She hoped I would change my mind about marriage. Once I got over the shock of her pregnancy, I would see how proper was our getting hitched. We already knew we enjoyed sex. We had fun together. We like the same movies. We—

Fortunately the message length reached its limit. But in the hallway the following Monday she had a harder look in her eyes. No matter what, she said, I’ll need your financial help raising the child. I will go to court if necessary to get child support.

Fuck off, had been my eloquent answer.

The next message left on my home phone repeated the threat. She didn’t want to go to court, she hoped we wouldn’t go that route, she prayed I would soften. But if I wouldn’t do the right thing by her, she would get a lawyer. Please don’t let it come to that.

Child support. A huge ball and chain for the next, what, twenty-one years? Till the kid got out of college? And what if he or she decided to go onto grad school? Would I be responsible for that?

From what I knew child support was based on the income of the father and the mother. Janet would never earn much, she wasn’t going further than a secretary. She was too dumb and disorganized to run a secretarial pool, much less move up to handling HR interviews. I doubted she would ever make more than 30K a year.

Me, I was already at 95K. If I could get fully into C++ and swing a top secret clearance, I might reach 150K within five years. But increasing salary would mean increased monthly payments for the kid’s support.

If she could get a good lawyer, I might be shelling out two thousand dollars per month—to start. And at the end, when the kid went to college, that would mean tens of thousands more in expense.

God forbid, what if the kid were disabled? I might have to pay for special education and home nursing care, plus endless medical bills. I could be bled white for the brat, and long past the twenty-first birthday. Then I really would be reduced to serf status.

Dead quiet reigned in the condo and in the surrounding units. Usually there was some faint noise. But it was nearly three a.m. Everyone else was in bed, resting up for the gauntlet of another workweek.

I went into the dining room. I turned on the chandelier over the dining table. On the table lay the rifle, the two pistols and the silencer.

It would be easiest to kill her with the Winchester. I could hit the conniving cunt from three hundred yards away; I had shot deer at that distance. To be surer I could cut the distance to two hundred yards. With the telescopic sight I could not miss. A .308 round would kill her whether put in skull or chest, though I would love to see the top of her head fly apart.

I didn’t have a silencer for the rifle, but I could fashion one from a two-liter soda bottle. Several times we did that while hunting. That kind of silencer lasted two rounds at best. But one shot was all I would need to place a high velocity bullet just above her temple.

Not to brag, but I was an excellent shot. Dad took Tony and me to the range often when we were kids. Later I competed and won in NRA matches. And from twelve on I downed all sorts of game with the first shot, even scampering rabbits. Tony and Dad were good but I was better. Only Grandpa Barco had exceeded me.

But again there would be the problem of motive. Unless I was willing to make it look like a sniper was on the loose—which meant killing other people—the investigation would come back to me. I had bought .308 ammo within the past four years, and the telescopic sight, both with a credit card. Investigators would find that out and ask where’s the rifle buddy? I couldn’t answer bottom of the Potomac, Detective.

Last evening I decided my 9mm Ruger was out too. That I got two years ago at the gun shop in Old Town. Again by credit card, along with a background check. A paper trail certainly existed for the Ruger.

That left the peashooter, the Walther PP. There was definitely no record of that WWII trophy or the accompanying silencer. Grandpa Barco gave it to me when I made the National Honor Society in high school. He did the same for Tony four years earlier. Except Tony received a more impressive ensemble, a Luger and an accompanying 32 round detachable drum. I was so jealous.

Yesterday I decided I could get away with her murder—her justifiable homicide—only by making it look like a robbery gone bad. Double tap her in the head with the Walther, grab her purse, take out the wallet, slip away into the dark. Even if the police investigated me, her death by .22 bullets could not be tied to me as I would ditch the PP the same night. The wallet, too.

Soon after getting the Walther I took it to the range and shot with and without the silencer. Without the ugly black attachment you needed ear protection. With the silencer you could hear the retort, but it didn’t come out more than a muffled pop. In Janet’s parking lot I doubted anyone would recognize a shot had been fired unless they saw flame from the barrel.

Grandpa Barco had grinned as he presented me the weapon. Took it off a dead SS officer, he said. Don’t know why the Kraut had the silencer, maybe he did side work as a hit man. Grandpa slapped my shoulder as he added now you too can be a hit man, Leo. Dad smiled crookedly. Mom wasn’t amused—she had never liked the father-in-law she considered a swaggering braggart.

Yes, I could be a hit man. I could kill Janet in her apartment complex parking lot.

Once a week she grocery shopped after work and sometimes she did not make it home until after seven. Several times I accompanied her, to get ingredients for the dinner I would make us to avoid her lousy cooking. That would probably be the best time to go after her. When it was solidly dark and less activity in the parking lot.

I would dress in dark clothes. And I would wear a black watch cap pulled low. That would hide my hair, all the way down to the eyebrows. My bright blond hair was a great asset in procuring women, but it would stand out like a beacon even in the dark. People would remember seeing a male Goldilocks in the area.

I knew where she parked. I could hide under an already parked car to wait her arrival. When she did arrive I would check to make sure no one else was near, then get close with the gun and silencer. Two fast shots to the head—they said a .22 bounced around the skull as it scrambled the brains—and Janet would drop like a rock. She probably wouldn’t even gasp. Then I would grab the wallet and be off. Problem solved.

Boy, it sounded good on paper. But a hundred things could go wrong, from the gun misfiring to someone intervening to a surveillance camera catching me in the area. All it took was one wrong thing to send me to life imprisonment or execution.

Maybe in the coming days I could come up with an absolutely foolproof plan. Even better, maybe Janet would change her mind once she realized I was not going to marry her. That would be a godsend.

Did Janet really want to be a single parent? She loved to party and a kid would destroy that. Add in the baby squalling in the middle of the night, the diaper changing, the breast feeding, the endless visits to the pediatrician? She must be thinking of those.

Janet was so proud of her great body. She had to be thinking too of its coming deformation. After giving birth her tits would never again pass the pencil test, nor would her waist and stretch marked tummy ever return to mint condition. If I were a woman the only way I would have a kid is to put my fertilized egg in a surrogate.

But what if she wouldn’t fold?

Would I really, really kill her? I had to face no guaranteed way existed to avoid getting caught. Was even a hundredth of a percent risk acceptable? If caught the consequences would be catastrophic.

Whether I got the needle or not, my life would be effectively over. My father and mother, my brother, my sister, would be shocked, crushed by the deed. As would Granddad Barco, if he were alive.

And Pete—if he too were alive—would be completely appalled. He would never do this, even though he had better reason than I to kill a betraying woman.

Ever after I would be known as the woman killer. Leonard Barco, the bastard that had in cold blood murdered the young woman carrying his child. What scum. Among those who knew me I would be despised as O. J. Simpson.

So, what was I supposed to do, just swallow it? Let the double dealer win? Let her shackle me for twenty years, live well off the sweat of my labor, my ambition, my smarts?

I hoped to quit work by the time I reached fifty. I had mapped out the path to a comfortable early retirement. It would of course depend on how well I invested in the market and rental property; still I had a realistic path. But the money Janet would siphon off would likely delay retirement until I reached Social Security age.

I went back over my plot, looking for holes. I pondered and paced until the wall clock said 5 a.m. Then I bagged it, no closer to a perfect solution than when I started.

But I swore one thing, I would not swallow this.

At 5:10 I decided to go into the office early. I had a lot of code to repair. So I showered and shaved, dressed, then ate a big bowl of oatmeal mixed with cranberries, walnuts, and honey. I didn’t bother with the news. I didn’t want to hear anymore about 9-11 or the invasion of Afghanistan.

Why were they bothering to invade that shithole country? Why get more Americans killed? Nobody had ever subdued the place, even the Ruskies who slaughtered over a million people trying to win. If I were president I would just nuke Afghanistan to oblivion. Who would dare mess with us after that?

I scooped the last of the chicken cacciatore I made Friday into Tupperware, then put that in my shoulder bag.

My Ruger and two extra magazines also went into the bag. Firm policy prohibited employees bringing firearms into the office. Violation was an instant firing offense. But I had concealed carried since I was twenty-one.

I would never die defenseless at the hands of some manic, whether at the office, on the Metro, at a store, in a restaurant. At one of those venues a mass killing seemed to happen every month in the country. There the manic might kill me, but he would go down with me.

I rode the elevator to the lobby. Which was empty except for that creepy new desk clerk, the one that had to be a homosexual. He threw me a big smile and I did not respond. Say all you want about the Mooslems, they knew how to deal with sodomites.

It surprised me to see no one else in the lobby. I usually left at seven-twenty, and it was just past six, so I didn’t know how many people normally departed at this time. Still, it was strange I was the only early bird.

I stepped from the Atrium into cool darkness. It looked like everything had dried out, which was welcome since rain still fell when I turned in. There was no hint of dawn to the east. To the north D.C. cast dim light into the sky.

As I headed towards Wilson Boulevard, I noticed the blessed absence of jet roar. When I usually left for work the planes were thundering overhead as they descended toward National Airport. Every three minutes without let up until late evening. Eventually you tuned it out as background noise, but the quiet now was pleasant.

I reached Wilson and found no pedestrians. Only a couple cars moved over the six lanes of the boulevard. Few lights were on in the surrounding apartment or office buildings. I laughed, what was this, people sleeping late as they could, not wanting to face Monday? I didn’t want to either, but we all had to eat.

Past the Hyatt, down to Monroe, around the corner, toward the Metro entrance. Now I did begin to get concerned. No buses were idling. They should be, as the Metro opened at 5. Nor were any taxis around.

Had I missed something? But Columbus Day was last week. Maybe today was an unofficial holiday. The city, the nation, could use it, having been through so much the past month.

I reached the north entrance to the Metro and was greeted by black metal gating that blocked access. Come on. It was six-ten. Way past opening time.

My eyes could locate only a couple of souls, and they were homeless people sleeping in the broad outer alcove. I peered through the gates. No Metro personnel were about, even in the information booth by the descending escalators.

I rattled the gate and called out. I put my voice into it. No one appeared. I rattled and called again.

Finally I saw movement. Over by the ticket machines a door cracked open. A head and upper body leaned out; it was a black woman, a corpulent one. She wore a Metro uniform.

Don’t open till seven, she shouted.

The door made to close.

Wait! I thought you opened at five. I swore they did, though I had not been on a Metro train before seven for over a year. Had they changed the policy?

The fat mama reappeared. Weekdays. Not weekends. She shot me a get yo’ head out of yo’ ass look. Then she was gone for good.

I jumped as someone appeared at my side. It was one of the homeless people, a black guy well into middle age. In his filthy clothes he looked like he had crawled out of a dumpster. He smelled like it, too.

Can you spare me something, sir? His head jerked toward the McDonalds across the empty street. The McDonald’s was closed. Haven’t eaten in two days.

Meant he hadn’t had a drink in two days. I hopped back. Man, he could have stuck a knife in my ribs. A lot of good my gun would have done then.

I had to be more alert. No excuse not to be, this alone.

Please, sir. Could really use it.

I never gave a penny to these losers, these quitters. They were already dead.

But for some reason I fished out a couple dollars—staying beyond knife reach, of course. With extended arm I handed him the money.

He nodded servility. God bless you, sir.

Hey, she said it wasn’t Monday.

Who, sir?

The Metro woman.

Didn’t see her.

Why’d she say that? It’s Monday.

Yesterday Saturday, sir.

I laughed. No way. This could not be Sunday morning.

The bum shrugged, again thanked me, and shuffled back to his heap of blankets on the concrete.

I checked my watch. Six-eighteen. Still no activity.

Jesus H. Christ, had I missed a day? Could I have lost track? Lack of sleep was supposed to mess with your mind.

No, this was Monday. Yesterday afternoon I took a break from