In the afternoon Charlie’s Cafe kitchen staff go in and out on their errands. Don the waiter stacks dishes — and watches the aproned Radford scrub a griddle.
Charlie enters — with Harry. Charlie says to Radford, “Fella wants to talk to you.”
“Harry Sinclair. Gun club — remember me? Look, there’s a turkey shoot-out on the hill range tomorrow — small potatoes, but I’ll put up the side bets and you take a third of my winnings. Nobody around here knows you. We can make some bucks. What do you say?”
Radford studies him. “I guess not.”
Charlie razzes him. “Shit, go ahead, C.W. Shoot some bull’s eyes — have some fun.”
“Charlie, I haven’t shot targets in years. What if I get the shakes and come up Maggie’s drawers?”
Harry says, “Then I’ll eat my losses. But it won’t happen.”
Charlie says, “Man’s got confidence in you, C.W.”
Harry looks satisfied. “Tomorrow morning. Pick you up at eight. Hey. What d’you say?”
“Do it, C.W. I’ll give you the day off — hell you don’t even have to ask, you know that.”
Radford thinks it over.
On a general-aviation runway, the executive jet taxis to a stop. Its door opens. The motorized stair extends down and locks in place. A couple of cops stand at the foot of the steps, watching the horizon.
Led by motorcycle cops and flanked by squad cars, a limousine draws up — little flags above its headlights. Diplomatic flags. Several suits come down the stairs from the plane. We can tell by his carriage that one of them is the VIP and by his clothes that he’s foreign. Threading the phalanx of security people, he walks toward the limousine.
All this is being watched from the parked van by Conrad, smoking, and Wojack, who focuses binoculars on the activity at the plane. Conrad looks over his shoulder into the gloom of the van and he sees Slade still back there, a fat cop nearly busting the seams of his uniform, on the bench side seat looking uncomfortable with his wrists dangling over his knees.
Conrad says to Slade, “It’s on. You be in the building early.”
“Don’t sweat it, Conrad.”
“You’ll ice the perp in self defense. Just make sure he’s all-the-way dead, right? If he’s alive to talk—”
The fat cop waves it off. (“Sure, sure.”)
Harry Sinclair drives his SUV off the main road onto a rutted dirt track. Beside him Radford sits strapped in, not talking, not seeming to notice the scenery. Harry parks by a lean-to shack and gets out. He’s wearing gloves. He takes that familiar 308 rifle out of the back seat and walks around the car and hands the rifle up as Radford gets out. Then, talking, Harry walks away, past the shack. “Come on — it’s just up the hill.”
Hidden from Radford’s view behind the shack, Don the waiter and Conrad’s partner Gootch pull stocking masks over their heads to hide their faces.
Harry’s still talking: “We’re an hour early. I figured you’d want to get the feel of the place, maybe squeeze off some practice rounds.”
Radford, following without much interest, comes around the corner after Harry — and suddenly, without warning, is jumped: expertly attacked from behind by the masked Don and Gootch. One pinions his arms while the other’s hands grip Radford’s throat front and back with expert pressure, clamping off the flow of the carotid arteries. That’s when Harry grabs him around the knees to keep him from kicking.
Radford, taken by surprise, tries to struggle but it’s no good: the rifle drops away and the carotid hold renders him unconscious. He slips to the ground…
Harry sits back and, in relief, peels the phony beard and stage make-up off. Now we see him clean-shaven.
Don produces a syringe, which he fills from a phial while Gootch rolls up the unconscious Radford’s sleeve…
A Middle…
The office building is a high-rise with a multi-story parking garage connecting to one side of it. Inside a fourth-story office, vacant of all furniture, Conrad and Wojack stand at the window looking down at the street below. Both wear surgical gloves. Wojack looks like a bright Ivy League college senior dressed for a job interview. He has a suction cup against a lower corner of the window; he’s working around it with a glass-cutter. Finally he pops the glass disc loose and sets it aside on the windowsill, leaving a neat, open hole in the window. We notice he leaves the glass cutter and the suction cup on the sill. He picks up that familiar 308 rifle and screws a ’scope sight onto it. Conrad doesn’t smoke here — he’s too professional for that. He wears a headset-and-mouthpiece cell phone. He listens to his headset and talks back to it: “Affirmative.” He turns to Wojack: “It’s on. It’s a ‘go.’”
Conrad looks at his watch. Wojack aims his rifle down through the hole in the glass at the street below. Conrad steps forward beside him to look down out the window. Wojack says, very dryly, “Do I get fifty points for a little old blind lady in the crosswalk?”
Down there through crosshairs he’s peering at the steps of the government building across the street. On the fringes of the ’scope’s image he can see a gathering of cops, officials and reporters with their TV cameras and microphones, all waiting for the limo to arrive…
Now Conrad and turns to look past Wojack into the darker recesses of the unfurnished office. He sees Gootch and Harry bracketing the unconscious Radford. Harry is pasting his phony beard back in place.
Conrad says to Harry, “Time to give him the upper. Wake the son of a bitch up.” Then, to Gootch, “Lock the elevator and go start the van.”
Obeying, Gootch exits.
Conrad watches Harry take a disposable syringe from its package and begins to fill it from a phial.
At the window Wojack, sighting down through the hole, tightens his aim.
In the ’scope sight he can see the windshield of the limousine — the one with the foreign flags — as it pulls up, escorted by cops on motorcycles. Reporters crowd against a cordon of cops; a wedge of security people surrounds the man emerging from the limo — that same vaguely foreign VIP from the plane. Wojack’s practiced grip zeroes in the crosshairs on the center of his torso and there is the sudden sound of the shot: the image jerks upward in recoil and then settles down again as the VIP falls dead on the steps.
By the time the VIP has fallen dead to the steps, Wojack has already wheeled back away from the window and is jacking a fresh cartridge into the chamber of the rifle.
Conrad and Harry drag Radford across the room, stooping to remain below sill-line, dragging the groggy man directly beneath the window.
In the street there’s a crowd around the body; people are pointing up this way. Cops rush across the street toward the building.
Quickly and efficiently, Wojack and Conrad prop Radford against the wall and place the smoking rifle in his hands. Harry takes a quick look out the window.
Conrad murmurs, “Let’s go…”
The three run to the door.
Radford stirs — a twitch…
In the fourth floor corridor, an elevator stands open. Gootch waits there, holding the door. Conrad, Wojack and Harry run into it. Conrad turns a key. The doors close…
Down on the ground level several cops swarm across the lobby and up the emergency stairs. Two or three stand guard in the lobby, watching the elevators. The indicator of one elevator shows that it’s descending from the 4th floor… 3rd… 2nd…
In the vacant office Radford struggles to wake up.
Cops thunder up the echoing stairs, guns up.
In the lobby, cops watch while the indicator of that descending elevator passes the ground floor. A cop punches the button in angry frustration. The indicator stops at “B.” The cops look at each other; suddenly two of them bolt for the stairs and go running down the stairs out of sight…