PROLOGUE
Dancing over the Lady Lea
The Man on the Edge spat into the lenses of his binoculars and brought them up to his eyes, adjusting his glasses to accommodate a better view. He fingered the focus on the top, pulling it to the right, zooming in on the men in the distance. Before they had been little blots against a grayish horizon; now he could see the individual rings on their fingers. He allowed himself to feel a small sense of satisfaction. His information had been correct.
Sitting at the end of the pier were three teenaged boys, dressed in leather jackets and tattered trousers, laughing and playfully shoving one another as they took hits from a rainbow-colored bowl. The ones on the outside had long disheveled hair. The one in the middle had none. Three punks with no marketable skills and undoubtedly a big problem with authority. A really big one, if the information proved to be all that he hoped it was.
The Man on the Edge lowered the binoculars, prepared himself for what needed to be done. He hesitated a moment longer, to scan the wharf. There were many shipping crates lined up along the waterfront, blocking a complete view of the area, but he knew that those three weren't alone. He adjusted his glasses again, the crack in the right lens giving a blurry grayness to everything refracted within it.
He was probably being watched right now, he thought. Some other little prick with metal sticking out of his mouth and his hair shaved into a mohawk, holding a rusty shiv in his hands, eager to jump him and take whatever money he had in his wallet or everything he had in his duffle bag and leave him dying and disappointed in the gutter.
No, that was a stupid thought. Considering what he'd had to do to get here, one little deviant with a knife was the least of his concerns. He knelt down and opened up the duffle bag, looking at the silvers and the grays and the blacks and the browns hidden inside. He dropped the binoculars in and adjusted the handle of his sawn-off so that he could easily reach in and pull it out.
He stood and clambered over the concrete barrier he'd been using as cover. Now he knew someone had seen him. He felt it in his gut. He crossed the small industrial road that ran parallel to the water. He stepped onto the concrete of the pier, felt the tension in the air as unseen figures put themselves in motion, all of them eyeing him with caution from their shadows. There was a loud gravely beep from the end of the pier, and the rightmost boy pulled a small yellow walkie-talkie from his pocket. When the voice on the other end cut off, all three of them turned their heads. They stood and looked at the Man on the Edge as he made his way towards them, chuckling amongst themselves. He was a sight for sore eyes, he knew that for certain—his fatigues and crew cut went against his broken horn-rimmed glasses and cologne smell.
Their laughter trailed off quickly as they understood that he meant business. The one on the right, the one with the walkie-talkie, raised his hand. "Slow down, buddy. Why don't you put down the bag before you come any closer?"
The Man on the Edge stared at him, his face collected, the words exiting his mouth with a perfect precision. "It's mine."
"No one's gonna take it. Just leave the bag there and then you can come over."
The Man on the Edge moved his feet closer together, showed that he would stay where he was rather than drop the bag.
He addressed the one in the middle with the shaved head.
"You're the one they call Saint Jimmy?"
The Saint smiled and passed the bowl to the one with the walkie-talkie. "That is I. These two are my associates. This is Mike," he gestured to the one with the walkie-talkie, "and this is Bill," he gestured to the other. "And you are?"
The Saint certainly looked how he'd expected him to look. A short kid, leather and torn jeans like his friends, a little stubble across his cheeks and enough blemishes to give him some character but without making him look disgusting. Probably skunk-smell and sugar on his breath. Painted nails like some queer from the South Side, and several rings, none of which had a school symbol or a cross on them. A kid who looked rebellious enough to turn heads of prudish people in limousines, but harmless enough to not look like the leader of a militant organization.
He was a punk, a good-for-nothing, and a target.
The Man on the Edge took a deep breath, biting back anger. "You did the bombing in the Barrio a week ago?"
The Saint glanced at the one called Mike. He scratched his chin exactly three times.
Mike knew the code. He slipped the walkie-talkie into his jacket pocket, turned down the volume and clicked the button three times. That way, Frankie—the one on the other end of the line, the one who'd spied the Man on the Edge as he'd made his way down the dock, the one with the sniper rifle—would know to prepare himself and take aim. Frankie was a good shot, but Mike had still never gotten used to being anywhere near the receiving end of a gun.
"Ahem," said the Saint, speaking now with an eloquence that betrayed his juvenile appearance, "I may have had a certain, ah, awareness of the events leading up to the bombing, perhaps enough for the suits to consider me an accessory, but I didn't personally light the fuse."
"You don't light a fuse for C4," said the Man on the Edge, "You just push a button. I work for a weapons contractor. I know things like that."
The Saint furrowed his brow, mocking him. "Friend, are you saying that you did the bombing?" The one called Bill laughed at the remark.
The Man on the Edge gritted his teeth. "I know that you collapsed an overpass in the Barrio. Seventy feet up, over an abandoned lot. I know that because I was coming up to that overpass. In my car. I saw it collapse from up top." He took a step closer. Bill glanced at one of the crates on the wharf, saw the glint of Frankie's lens, and realized that it actually made him even more scared.
"Okay," said the Saint, trying and failing to calm the man with a smile, "so you saw it from on the road. First of all, congrats on getting out of there alive. You're a lucky man—"
The Man on the Edge raised a finger at the Saint. "You made me late."
"I'm sorry?"
"You made me late. For something very important."
The Saint blinked in confusion. "I'm sorry, you saw a terrorist bombing occur right in front of you, and your biggest problem with it is that it made you late?"
The Man on the Edge stared him down. He still spoke with that cold precision, every bit as mechanical as the weapons he carried in his duffel bag. "You made me late for my little girl's party. It was her birthday, and I was going home to be with her. Her mother and I don't get along that well anymore, so I thought it would be a nice surprise for her if I showed up. My daughter, that is, not my wife. But you bombed the overpass. So I couldn't get home. I had to leave my car behind."
The Saint shook his head and sighed. "Okay, you were a witness to the bombing, you saw it happen, and I feel more torn up about it than you?"
"You should too, dude," said Bill, "Two hundred people."
"Collateral damage, Bill. Small price to pay for revol—"
"Uh, guys?" said Mike, "Remember the crazy survivalist?"
The Man on the Edge took a step forward. The Saint half-gasped, tried to calm him again.
"Uh, look buddy. If you keep getting closer like that, my friend back on dry land is gonna have to shoot you. Okay? I'm just saying, you're gonna wanna stop."
"I haven't been able to get to my little girl in over a week. They've blocked off the entire West Side. All traffic. Even the subways. No one can get in or out. I haven't been able to get to my little girl. So when I heard it was you who did it, I came looking for you."
"And it only took you a week?" said the Saint. His fear briefly gave way to reflection. "Shit, my security must be slipping."
"It was. Your friend with the lisp spilled everything after only one finger—" He saw Mike's hand moving towards his pocket.
He wasted not a moment, primed his finger now on Mike. "KEEP. YOUR HANDS. OUT."
There was a hollow popping sound from behind him. Something small and fast splashed into the water. The three before him were immediately forgotten as he dropped to a knee and began scanning the wharf.
"Warning shot, friend," said the Saint, unfazed by the bullet that had whipped past his head, "and if you know what's good for you you'll stand up like a normal person. He's bound to shoot again if you stay down."
The Man on the Edge looked at him from his position on the ground. He hung his head and shook it. For the first time in a while, he smiled. "I'll fall down again and stay down, won't I?"
"Yeah, you will," said the Saint, annoyed, "and I suggest you also slide that army bag over here or else you're definitely gonna be in trouble." From here, the bag didn't seem to contain any sort of explosive, although that asshole's comment about C4 had gotten him a little paranoid.
The Man on the Edge shrugged. "Whatever you say, Your Holiness." He placed his right hand beneath one of the folds on top, his left on the back of the bag, and slid it over to the three at the end of the pier. They were watching the bag as it glided over to them, as was Frank, so none of them saw the sawn-off slip out until it was too late. He'd loaded it when he got up that morning. He rose and swung the shotgun upwards, an action quick enough to avoid their attention and so exact it seemed mathematical.
He fired.
The Saint jerked backwards, his face and head and chest and reality torn apart with buckshot. It was as if some unholy cable had latched onto his back and pulled him, his arms stuck out before him like bloodied pennants, his upper body a mixture of blood and bone and flapping flesh, his figure tumbling backwards and off the pier, sending water splashing up over the side, his corpse sinking down and down and down.
The one called Bill had been struck by some of the shot as well, and was reeling in pain, his shoulder tattered, his foothold at the lip of the pier slipping. The Man on the Edge cocked the gun and aimed at him now.
He fired again.
The shot struck Bill in the abdomen, punching holes the size of golf balls through his stomach and snapping his spinal cord like a reed in a windstorm. Blood streamed from his mouth, stuck in an O-shape, his eyes wide and stupid and gaping as he followed his Saint into the Bay.
The Man on the Edge took aim now at poor Mike, standing there looking like a devout before his god. The Man on the Edge cocked his gun a second time.
He did not fire. Frankie did.
It hit him in the side of the head. He grunted and stumbled with the shot, using his last moments of sentience to bring his hands to his head in a futile attempt to fend off a sudden and fatal migraine. He took a few more clumsy steps, dropped the shotgun, voided his bowels. His eyes darted in every direction and his mouth jerked agape and slammed shut with enough force to break one of his fillings.
He fell down. He stayed down. His blood painted the pier.
Mike blinked a few times at the corpse in front of him. His jaw hung open and from it came those sad sounds of the fear of god. Like the dead man in front of him, he'd pissed his pants. The bowl was shattered and forgotten at his feet.
From the pocket of his jacket, there came a faint voice.
"Mike? MIKE? Mike, pick up, dammit! Mike, we got a problem here! MIKE?!"
Hope you enjoyed my story. If you liked it, drop me a line at: seeyoudowninarizonabay at gmail (DOT) com (lawl wordfilters).