moons ago: it was the chest compressions, stupid. When somebody’s heart stops, they still have oxygen in their blood. If you can get their pumper a-pumping again, the oxygenated blood will begin to circulate. Simple as that. In fact, blowing into someone’s mouth can be a bad thing, the EMT explained. You see a person drop, you tend to freak out. Freaking out increases your level of carbon dioxide. So you end up blowing carbon dioxide down their throat—when what they really need is oxygen.
The EMT shared a personal tip with Hardie: when compressing someone’s chest, play the Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing” in your head. That keeps you pumping at one hundred beats per minute.
At the time, Hardie, being a wiseass, had asked: Wouldn’t “Stayin’ Alive” be more appropriate?
The EMT responded: “So fucking cliche, man.”
You should be dancing.
The cop started coughing and sputtering and waving his arms around, wondering what the fuck was going on. Hardie scrambled up, his body screaming at him, and made his way to the other cop. Yanked him out of the passenger seat, started in with the compressions.
—Reginald VelJohnson,
YES, THE whole
But he told himself this was just a role he was inhabiting. Other professions did it. Soldiers inhabited a role when they were sent to foreign countries and told to drop bombs on people and they tried to avoid running over bombs set by other people. It was never “Dave White of Clifton, New Jersey” sent over to kill people; it was “Sergeant White,” stripped of his full identity and given a new one by his superiors, with orders to terminate with extreme prejudice. Same thing here.
(The man pretending to be Philip Kindred played these ethics games in his head right before a job, just to keep his sanity.)
He pulled the car to the side of the street. Parking was carefully orchestrated on a San Fernando Valley block such as this one. While there were no signs, everyone knew which spaces belonged to which abode. He had been told to park directly in front of 11802 Bloomfield, which was next door to 11804 Bloomfield.
Your name is Philip Kindred, and you’re here for revenge.
You and your sister were watching TV Thursday night and you saw all the awful things Jonathan Hunter said about you.
Worst of all, your sister Jane saw them, too.
Saw them refer to you both as “monsters” and “evil adults with childlike desires.”
That was not a nice thing to say, Mr. Jonathan Hunter.
So we’re going to show you what we do.
“Philip Kindred” opened his eyes, opened the driver’s-side door, strode up the street, reaching his gloved hand inside the pocket of his Windbreaker for the heavy automatic that hung inside. Hoodie up, moving forward.
As the minutes ticked by, it became clear that nobody had reported the shots, or the brief cries. Not even the Hunters, who were busy preparing for Family Movie Night, waiting for their takeout pizza to arrive.
All clear.
Mann thumbed a text message. Down the street, the woman playing Jane Kindred stepped out of the stolen car, gently pushed the door shut, then went to the trunk, from where she removed an insulated bag. Holding it in her arms, she quietly darted up the street.
In the back of the house, under a cover of bamboo trees, A.D.2 killed the security system, as well as the floodlights along the side of the house and in the backyard.
As the two cops slowly choked themselves back to life and started scrambling around, trying to figure out what the fuck had happened to them, Hardie peeled away, finally beginning to understand why he’d been kept alive all this time.
God, you wily bastard. You don’t work in mysterious ways. No, your ways are pretty fucking clear right here at the end.
And it was the end; Hardie didn’t doubt that. He had been kept alive on this planet for one job, and one job only: to atone for the sins of letting an innocent family die. And how was he going to do that? By saving the lives of another innocent family.
Thanks for the clarity of mind here at the end, God. Glad to know you don’t leave us guessing forever.
Further proof that God wanted him to do something: all of the gifts.
A few minutes ago, Hardie had nothing. Now he had two Glock 23s, four loaded .40 S&W magazines. He had no idea what kind of fancy shit his old friend Topless was planning. Didn’t matter. He’d fucked up her shit this morning, so let’s fuck up her shit in the evening. Let her bring on all her syringes and magic blow darts and gases and poisons and the rest of her Agatha Christie crap. Hardie planned on squeezing the triggers of these Glocks and not stopping until Topless and her Tall Boyfriend and anyone else who
He also had a button-down black polyester police shirt, taken from the second of the arresting officers. Hardie didn’t want to go traipsing around town bare-chested in a stolen police car. People tend to notice shit like that.
Finally, Hardie had a police car, and he’d disabled the two-way, the MDT, the vehicle tracking systems, the CCTV, as well as the supposedly secret LoJack device mounted in every department vehicle. Turned out to be the same gear as in Philly. Nate had shown him how to turn off all this shit years ago.
