He maneuvered it into the parking area and dragged Vinnie from the car. God, the body was heavy! The corpse hadn’t been this heavy when he loaded it into the car. Or perhaps he had been too pumped to notice.
He put Vinnie in the easy chair in front of the television, then turned the set on. The rest of the lights he unplugged.
Another trip to the car for Vinnie’s twelve-gauge, which he laid across the dead man’s lap. The empty brass casings in his pocket he tossed around the room after wiping them.
When he started the car, he thought for a moment, trying to decide if there was anything else he wanted to do.
Yeah. Come to think of it …
Standing in the door to the living room, he sprayed a magazine of 9-mm slugs from the Uzi. Above the guttural buzzing of the silenced weapon the sound of the television shattering and the slugs slapping the plasterboard was plainly audible.
That magazine spent, he loaded another and went into the bedroom. Three bursts there, then into the kitchen where he finished out the magazine on the refrigerator and oven and dishes in the cabinets. He put another magazine in and emptied it in Freeman’s bathroom into the toilet and the bathtub and the mirror and sink. The shattered porcelain and glass flew everywhere.
This was like pissing on Hitler’s picture. Somehow it just wasn’t enough.
He went back to the storeroom and got some more magazines for the Uzi. He looked around. Under the couch where the boxes of ammo were stored was a cardboard box half full of grenades. Harrison helped himself.
What would you have to do to make Freeman McNally pay enough? For what he did to the Ike Randolphs, for what he did to all the people he peddled his poison to, for all the unspeakable misery and pain this man gave the world so that he could line his pockets—for what he did to Harrison Ronald Ford—what would you have to do to McNally to even the balance in the ledger?
The filthy fuck would have to scream until his soul shattered.
Seven cars were parked outside the Sanitary Bakery warehouse, including Freeman’s big Mercedes. No guards in sight outside. Maybe they were all inside having a snort and a drink, still celebrating the big party at Willie Teal’s.
Sitting here in the green sedan looking it over — this was really weird — Harrison Ronald wasn’t scared. Not the least. He felt good, real good, like he had had a snort. He had never told the FBI agents of course, and would never tell anyone else, but he had had to snort the stuff in front of Ike and Billy Enright, and a couple times in front of Freeman and his brothers, just to prove his bona fides. Feds and cops would never touch the shit, according to street wisdom.
It had been tough leaving the stuff alone after he had used it more or less regularly for several months. Excruciatingly difficult. But that wasn’t the hardest part. He had been nervous, scared, all along, but after doing the coke he had his first real attacks of paranoia, and they hadn’t ceased, no doubt because he had plenty to be paranoid about. All he had to fight it had been grit and determination. They weren’t enough.
But now all those waves of panic and loose-boweled terror were gone. He had made up his mind. He was going to attack. Maybe die.
And he felt good, real good.
He parked the car on the north side of the warehouse by the chain-link fence where the garbage trucks were kept and locked it after he got out.
The neighborhood was quiet enough — only traffic sounds coming across the railroad tracks from New York Avenue. That and the low guttural snarls of the two Dobermans on the other side of the fence. He stood looking between the garbage trucks at the slab-sided black bulk of the building. There was a door over there somewhere. He had seen it before during the daylight.
He used the silenced pistol on the dogs. Two shots each. The Dobermans went down like they were sledge-hammered.
The gate through the ten-foot-high fence was held together by a big chain with a padlock on it. Two shots for the padlock, then sixty seconds to unwrap the chain, squeeze through, then wrap it again.
The door was nailed shut with a two-by-six across it. No doubt there was other timber on the other side. He tried to remember if he had noticed this door in his many walks through the interior. If he had, he would remember, but he didn’t. Still, there was undoubtedly concrete and steel in there somewhere for the bullets to ricochet from. The sound of the full-metal-jacketed 9-mm slugs spanging through the old warehouse would certainly announce his arrival. And his intentions.
Well, here goes nothing.
He sawed the board in half with half a magazine from the Uzi, then kicked at the center of it with all his strength. It gave.
He kicked three or four times. The noise was loud here. It was probably echoing all over that huge mausoleum. Yet apparently something was holding the upper part of the door on the inside. He used the rest of the magazine on the point of resistance and kicked some more. It sagged.
Empty magazine out, new magazine in, Uzi ready, he gave one last mighty kick and the door flew open. Harrison Ronald dived through and rolled sideways, right into a wall.
He lay there for a second, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. He was under a stair that led up to the second-floor balcony. The main stairwell that led to the upper levels was off to his left. The room that the guard was in — that the front door opened into — was off to his right on the other side of the building.
He heard someone running.
Up, moving to his right along the wall, the Uzi ready. He could see the light coming from the doorway to the guard room. The door was open. The only other light in the place came from a naked bulb on the third-floor landing on the east end of the building. But it was so high and far away the light seemed to get lost in the cavernous space.
A flash and a loud report came from behind a box against the far wall. The bullet hit near Ford’s head. He scuttled toward the darkness, away from the open door.
Another shot. And another.
He used the Uzi. A three-shot burst. Little flashes against the masonry where the jacketed bullets hit. He fired again, not trying to aim in the semidarkness, just walking the slugs in. The third burst drew a scream.
Ford was up and running for the stair at the east end of the huge room when two wild shots from the screaming man sailed by. He kept going, running hard, and was in time to see the vague outline of someone coming down the stairs.
Harrison Ronald triggered a long burst at the stairway as he ran. The figure slumped and went down. From fifteen feet away he triggered a short burst into the body, then took cover beside the stairway, breathing hard.
His heart was thudding like a trip-hammer, yet he felt good, oh, so good. He should have done this six months ago.
The first man he had shot was still screaming. And cursing, the high-pitched wail of a man in agony. Like Ike Randolph in his final moments.
Someone above him on the balcony fired at him and a shard of something struck his face. It stung. He wiped at it. Wet. Blood.
Whoever was up there was moving — he could hear him.
Harrison dug a grenade from his coat pocket, got the pin out, and holding the Uzi in his left hand, came out of the darkness running and lofted the grenade upward with a basketball sky-hook shot.
The damn thing might come bouncing down before it popped, but what the hell. End it here.
It didn’t. The grenade went off with a flash and boom that was painful in this huge masonry echo chamber. A big piece of the wooden balcony rail came crashing down, the gunman in the midst of it. He landed with a splat a dozen feet from Ford and lay where he had fallen as the dust and dirt settled around and on him.
“Hey, down there!”
The shout came from upstairs.
“I don’t know who the hell you are down there but you’d better stop this shit, man!”