Doing things in order was a luxury we couldn’t afford anymore. That would have meant that we had to sit out for a few weeks in order to smoke the old man out of his hole. The pier tragedy complicated things for everyone. Two hundred people had drowned in low water, near the shore. The thirty six life rafts and the two hundred and fifty life vests had been found floating, scattered over a few hundred meters. A few of them were lost. They will probably resurface around Hawaii, or maybe even Guadalcanal. It’s all in the title: “Life Vests”, that kind of stuff doesn’t die. Even if you slash it into pieces, the parts will float back to the surface anyway.
Among the victims of the pier were Travis Greenwell, Tripp Greenwell, Shea Thornberg’s wife Emily, along with his two sons Derrick and Shea Jr. That made the newly names chief of police out of the loop for a little while and Seattle, an open city for organized crime. Although, what news report didn’t say was that Tony Cullen also died in the tragedy, along with his wife Louise and John Parker, one of his main lieutenants. That’s right, my brother died. I would’ve been mourning if I had time, really. But John made his choices. Pat and I left the mourning to Mona and started to establish a plan to get to Reed Greenwell. We left Karen with Ray Bushnell, along with a nice envelope that came from my own reserve, passed by my apartment in order to shower up and eat something (Pat broke the bad news to Mona over the phone in the meantime) and then we left for Portland.
The radio talked about the pier disaster for the whole ride. We didn’t say much, we thought about a way to reach to the patriarch of the Greenwell family. After a long though process, as we were getting close to Portland, we decided to keep it simple and go for a quick bang. We knock on his door, break and enter if needed and take him out. He was, what we thought, the head of the Society of Jesus. We established that if Reed Greenwell had to answer to someone, that person was probably not living in America. A quick, flashbang operation to take out the man would keep us from having to deal with that potential higher authority.
Finding Greenwell caused no trouble. We opened a phone book and found Trevor Greenwell’s phone number and address. When we drove there, we found six cars and a news van in the parking lot. Nothing surprising since two of Greenwell’s sons were found dead and another one of them went missing and wanted by the same police he used to work for. The man needed love and media attention. We parked in front of one of the neighbor’s yard and played the waiting game, while keeping an ear on the radio. Fortunately, our names were never mentioned. We were not supposed to be on that boat after all, and everybody that could’ve identified us was dead in the water (pun intended).
It’s around 9 PM that we’ve seen the old man leave the house. No wife, no children, he stepped inside his Cadillac on his own and left the house in direction of the boulevard. He was the last person to leave Trevor Greenwell’s house. We followed him around for a little while, but soon enough, we caught that he was leading us in circles. He stepped down from the boulevard on the first exit and got back on, in the opposite direction. He knew we were following him. He led us to a place out of town where there was only concrete and forest. He took a dirt road in between the trees, but soon stopped in the trail, paralyzing us. We were alone in the world. We could’ve always backed out of there using reverse on the car, but if he wanted to eliminate us, he just had to shoot through the wind shield. He had a few hundred meters to take shots. Any kind of big caliber weapons and we were both dead.
“This is it” I told Pat.
“Whatever you do, shoot the kneecaps first. After we’re done, shoot him in the face.”
“Why not getting rid of this guy right away?”
“I don’t know about you, but I want answers.”
“I don’t feel-“
A bullet went through the wind shield and interrupted my trail of thoughts. Due to the late hour, Greenwell probably shot in a pitch black target. We both got out of the car at the same time and kept the doors opened to protect ourselves. Pat got hit in the shoulder has he got out and needed all of his focus in order not to sprawl on the ground. Greenwell looked old and fragile. He had this frame that only people over eighty years old have. I shot twice at him, missed with the first and got the second one in his hip. He tumbled backwards, but held himself against the car and shot at me. He got me in the foot and made me fall face first in pain. He laughed.
“I was told a lot of good of the Parker family. I have to say I’m disappointed. Kids can’t shoot nowadays.” he said.
Both Pat and I had dropped our weapons when we got hit. Mine was particularly far since I had tumbled down because of my foot.
“The way I see things” said Greenwell. “One of you can kill me. You might not, but you can. You have two guns and I have one, that’s mathematics for you.”
I looked at Pat, through the inside of the car. He pointed that his gun was very close to his door.
“Would you sacrifice your brother in order to kill me? After all, if one of you doesn’t, you’ll both be dead. So come on, who’s going to take the fall?”
There are those situations where there are no winners. Greenwell had a better shot than both of us. If Pat sacrificed himself, my gun was too far for me to take a shot at the judge and if I sacrificed myself, it wasn’t sure that Pat would make it anyway. Mathematics, again. This time, they played against me. Algebra being a period of our lives that was far away (especially for Reed Greenwell), we all forgot a variable. There was X, Y, Z…but there was a, the hidden card.
Reed Greenwell’s pistol was alternating in between the car doors with a joyful motion when a slapping sound came out of the forest. It was like someone broke a branch of slapped very hard into his hands. I realized watching the cramped face of the old man that it was the sound of a taser gun. From the forest came the shadow of a tall man in trench coat. Trevor didn’t have this impassible bravado on his face anymore, he seemed angry as all hell. His grandfather took a face plant on the ground. This was so sudden that his glasses stayed on the bridge of his nose. Pat and I thought he was dead for a moment and came out of our hiding. When he exhaled, gasping for air, we both jumped backwards from surprise.
Trevor yanked the gun away from his hand, looked at us and said: “He has won the national shooting titles for handgun for twelve years in a row. You guys were dead in the water” (no pun intended).
“It’s the end of the road, old worm. What would you prefer? Electrocution or a bullet in the face?”
“Trevor”.
“Shut the fuck up”.
“Trevor, they can’t know. Make sure they don’t know.”
“Are you kidding? I called the Seattle Press on this. They prepared a ten pages special report on you and the Society. EVERYONE will know and your stupid little social club is going back to its bonfire meetings.”
Reed Greenwell let himself fall on the ground and close his eyes. Trevor asked us: “Guys, what do you think, electrocution or bullets?”
“How…Where…how did you know?” I asked, completely befuddled by the fact he found us.
“It’s the trail to our summer house. The land is filled with bodies. Must be more than a hundred bodies in there. I followed you from Seattle. It was easy to figure out where he wanted to lead you.”
“Aaaah, it makes sense now. I say bullet. I would’ve loved to see him on an electric chair or something, but let’s get rid of the problem as quickly as we can.”
As soon as I said that, Trevor lowered his weapon and executed his grandfather. The big caliber made such a mess that a skull fragment spun and cut Pat on the shin, making him tumble over in pain again. We took a few moments to bury Reed Greenwell in a muddy pit (we rolled him over more than anything) and gave Trevor a ride home. Around 1 AM, we heard on the radio that Shea Thornburg had killed himself.
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