the deafening rattle continued, the wail of the alarm from the broken window still not drowning out the gunfire. Bullets drilled into the pillar and decimated the paper towel dispenser attached to the opposite side, shards of plastic scattering around me. There was a brief pause, and then more bullets were emptied into the room, an east- to-west sweep that rippled past me.
Then it was gone. The alarm had stopped even before the gunfire, taken out by one of the bullets, apparently. I lowered my arms and held the Glock with both hands, a shooter’s grip, preparing to turn around. It took me a few seconds to convince myself to do it.
When I spun around the pillar, all I could see was the empty street in front of me. The room was covered with stone and glass and other debris, but with the window gone, there was nothing out there but the street. No cars, no gunmen.
The phone on the wall rang again. The waves of sound trapped in my ears from the shooting and the alarm almost kept me from hearing it, but as soon as I did I moved across the room, not caring that the last time the phone had rung it had been a prelude to the gunfire.
I picked up the receiver and put it to my ear but didn’t say anything. When the man on the other end of the line spoke, I could hardly hear him, but that was probably due more to the echoing ringing in my ears than to a soft voice. Even so, I knew the speaker. He’d just left the same impression on my gym that he had on my face.
“Still alive,” he said. “Good. I shot high and wide, but with all those bullets, you never know.”
“When I find you—”
“Shut up, Lincoln. You’re not going to find me, and if you try, you die. I’ve got a nasty feeling that’s what will happen here, eventually, but you have no one but yourself to blame for that. You were given an opportunity to step back. An opportunity you should have taken but did not. Next time you won’t even have time to regret that.”
“You’ll be the one talking about regrets, you piece of shit. You shouldn’t have shot high and wide.”
“Damn, but you get your confidence back quickly.” His tone was light, carefree. “Jefferson’s son was due a nice chunk of cash before his unfortunate passing. Something in the neighborhood of five million dollars, probably. Could have been more, could have been less, but we’re going to be fair, in the interest of time, and ask for a mere three million. Tell the wife to get it ready to move, and we’ll be in touch to tell her where to move it and when to move it. Do that, and maybe nobody else dies.”
He continued before I had a chance to respond to that.
“Go ahead and call the cops, Lincoln. You disappointed me today, running to them so quickly. My opinion of you was clearly set too high. Go ahead and call them now. It’s not going to stop a thing.”
Then all I could hear was the hum of the dead line after he hung up, and the sirens of police on their way, and Amy screaming my name from outside.
19
I called Targent myself. The CPD cops that showed up were clueless to the situation, and the more detail I got into with them, the more complicated it was all going to become. I wanted to call Karen, too, but the cops were in my face, asking questions, and I didn’t have a chance. Targent arrived maybe forty-five minutes after the first squad car got there. If my shot-up gym cast any doubt on my guilt for him, he didn’t show it. He just stalked around the place, growling and grunting and saying little while I gave him the scenario. His eyes took in Amy, who was standing in the corner of the gym answering questions from another officer, but he didn’t ask anything about her, not even to see if she could corroborate my version of the night.
“I’ve got video cameras that record everything in the weight room,” I said. “Have to have them, for insurance, since there’s no staff here during off-hours. If you need to verify my story, make sure I didn’t stand on the sidewalk and cut loose into my own building, go ahead.”
I went back to the office and got the current tape out of the videocassette machine that the cameras fed into and gave it to him. He took the tape without a word, spoke in hushed tones to the sergeant who was in control of the scene, and then told me he’d be talking to Karen to verify my story.
“The good news is, I wasn’t hurt,” I said.
“You know what’s curious?”
“What?”
“That this guy wants to go through you. I mean, I’ve worked some extortion cases before. You want to squeeze money from somebody, you usually just go right to squeezing them. But this guy, he calls Karen Jefferson to tell her he’s going to be calling
I stared at him and then turned back to my gym and swept an arm around it. “You see this place, Targent? You really think anyone would open up on his own business with a semiauto just to preserve a lie?”
“Depends on the individual,” he said, “and the magnitude of the lie. You get the right mix, and, yes, I can believe it.”
I shook my head. “Watch the damn surveillance tape. Watch it, and then you’ll either believe me or give me an Oscar.”
My request for Targent had only increased the curiosity of the city cops, but I told them any elaboration on the situation would have to come from him. They milled around for a while longer, taking pictures and trying to dig bullets out of the walls. Two of the uniformed guys helped me clean up, sweeping the glass and stone fragments up and dumping them into a large trashcan. The free weights had survived with just a few nicks, but a couple of the stationary bikes had taken direct hits, and their computers were destroyed. The damage would be in the thousands.
The cops finally finished with Amy, and she stood in the corner, arms wrapped around herself, shivering in her thin sweatshirt. All the cold air was pushing into the gym, no window in place to keep it out. I went over and rubbed my hands over her upper arms, trying to warm her. She attempted to smile at me, but it didn’t work. She looked scared.
“Go home, Amy,” I said. “You’re going to get sick, standing around like this. Go home and get warm. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry, Lincoln. I’m just . . .” She shook her head. “I went to sleep and you were there, right? And I woke up and you were gone and talking on the phone, and then two minutes later I’m all alone and someone is shooting at the building . . .”
“I know. I’m sorry. It all happened pretty fast. I didn’t know what to expect.”
Her eyes were on the cops across from us. “This is all about Karen?”
“It’s about her husband.”
She took a deep breath and nodded.
“Night to remember, huh?” I said.
She managed a weak smile. “In a lot of ways, right? In a lot of ways.”
“Go home and get warm.”
She nodded again and reached up and hugged me hard. I kissed her once, and then she stepped away and walked to the door, pausing to say something to the sergeant, probably to ask him if it was okay if she left. She turned at the door and looked back at me.
“Hey, Lincoln.”
“Yeah?”
“The fireworks that are supposed to happen when you’re with someone for the first time? They work a lot better as a metaphor.”
I laughed, and it was as if something inside of me had just been loosened, knowing that she could still manage a joke about all of it.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, and then she left.
By the time they were all gone, it was past five. I found a large sheet of plastic and a roll of duct tape and set to work covering the hole in the wall where the front window had been. As I worked, I thought about Amy, and my anger toward whoever had done this grew. It should have been a wonderful night. Had been, for a few hours. But
