7 - The Big Heat
Five Years Earlier
He woke thinking that he was still in the snowstorm. Everything was white, his vision was clouded, and he was so, so cold. It took a while for the haze of drugs smothering his brain to clear enough for him to remember what had happened and to recognize that he was in a hospital. He didn't know how the job had turned out, and there was no one there to tell him. For the first time in a long time, he was by himself. The only people who came into his room were skittish-looking doctors and the wary cops hovering in his peripheral. No one even looked him in the eyes until a woman shuffled through the door with her IV stand and tried to talk to him. It took him a few moments to recognize her as the cop from the insurance office. More or less the last person he expected to shoot him, but here they were. She seemed like the type who wanted to be helpful, so he asked her for the white board and she obliged. Part of him didn't want to ask, too scared of the answer, but he had to know.
Partner?
"Dead."
He hadn't really thought about this moment. Hadn't prepared at all. He had assumed they would die on the job, but he figured they were going to go out together, and even if they didn't, it had always seemed more likely that he would be the one to go first. He was easier to surprise, after all. He gazed into the woman's face. She looked kind and sad and hurt, but all he could think about was the fact that he should have shot her first. He didn't blame her for doing her job, but she had gotten in the way. Malvo had been in his sights when she had taken him down. He stared at her and wondered if she knew what she had done. She kept talking, asking questions, trying to understand. As if there was an explanation for all this. He almost felt sorry for her.
"I mean what's the point, you know? Here you are, and your friend is dead, and you're going to spend the rest of you life in jail. And for what?"
He turned away from her then, bitter and miserable, wishing that he had bled out in the snow before being left alone.
2011
The moment Nikki left him he felt a phantom tug of the chain at his wrist and turned, almost falling into to step behind her as she walked out of the warehouse. Instead, he let her go alone. Nikki had planned their attack on Varga so perfectly - accounted for every moment, considered every possible scenario - that he didn't have any real reason to think that her plan for Emmitt wouldn't work equally well. In that moment, he hadn't seen the problem: it was too personal. For Nikki it had always been about Ray and what had been taken from her. For him it was about seeing a job through to the end, and that job was neutralizing the threat that was hunting them. That was the choice he had made on the bus when he decided to save both their lives instead of just his own. She had been chained to him eitherby the will of fate or God or an unconcerned corrections officer. They could be the same thing for all he knew. What mattered was the fact that he had been bound to her, she needed help, and he could help her. And then, for the first time in a long time, he was not alone. He had a partner and a job, and he was going to do right by both.
These were the things he thought about as he slouched in a bar booth with a view of the TV behind the counter. He knew he should have already left town, but he couldn't bring himself to go. He had a bad feeling. So he drank and watched the screen until he saw the moving banner under the newscaster's face: "Highway shootout leaves State Trooper and one woman dead." He knew it was Nikki even before the footage of cops at the scene flashed up and he saw her truck parked behind the State vehicle. No word of a prominent local businessman or unfortunate bystander, but plenty of room between the two cars, enough for a third. The Trooper must have interrupted her. She should have backed down, but probably panicked when she felt Emmitt slipping out of her grasp. Damn it, woman. She had always lashed out when she was panicked, striking like a snake at anything that could hurt her. So determined to get the first bite that she never thought about what she was biting. Damn you, Nikki. He slammed his glass on the table and felt it shatter under his hand. He was probably making a scene. He needed to go, but he wasn't going to leave her without knowing.
There wasn't a lot of security at the morgue, just one cop looking through files in a car parked outside. He slipped in the first door and looked around the ante room. He seemed to be alone, but there was no way of knowing if there was anyone behind the closed door of the exam room until he saw for himself. He decided that he would just have to take his chances with any morticians he might encounter and kept going. The second door was locked, but easy to jimmy. He entered and closed it gently behind him. There were two sheet-covered bodies stretched out on tables in the middle of the room. The one closer to him looked to be the smaller, so he reached out and pulled down the top of the sheet. As he revealed Nikki's face, he had to work to keep his own from contorting. The hole between her eyes told him it had been quick, but dead was dead. She was gone. Despite his efforts at control, his eyes blurred with tears that quickly spilled over his cheeks. He hadn't planned for this moment, either. He supposed he should have known better, but he had wanted to keep her safe, or at least help her to get away. Instead she had gotten herself killed, and he didn't know if he was wretched from anger or sorrow. Maybe both. He replaced the sheet over her face and rested his hand on her stomach as he tried to think clearly again.
A movement flashed in the periphery of his vision and he turned around. The cop from the car was standing inside the door, talking to him with one hand resting over the gun at her hip.
"I don't hear you, I'm deaf," he signed at her, interrupting, hoping that would throw her off enough to distract her. It worked, but only for a moment. Before he could get around her, the cop stepped in his path and withdrew a notebook and pen from her pockets. As she was writing, he realized that he needed to get back in the habit of carrying a pencil and paper on him. He hadn't needed it with Nikki around. The cop handed the notepad over to him. He took it and read: How do you know Nikki Swango?
He wrote below her words.
Old friend. They started passing the notebook back and forth.
Why are you here?
No one else
The cop nodded. Her face had that same open expression of pity as the cop who had shot him years ago – not pity for who he was, but for what he had lost. Some people just had hearts like that. He looked at her nametag and paused. Gloria Burgle. Nikki had liked this woman. He wrote again.
I will pay for the burial
The cop raised her eyebrows a bit. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a card and showed him the typed message: We should talk. Gloria Burgle 555-0122. When he looked back at her, she started speaking again.
"I think you can read lips. Does this look familiar?"
He met her eyes and shrugged. Her mouth tightened. He wrote again on the pad
You can help?
He watched the blood drain from her face as she read it.
"What," she asked, her lips pale and eyes wide. He wrote once more and handed her back the notepad.
You can get a nice casket, flowers, headstone for Nikki?
After she had read it and looked up again, he placed an envelope thick with cash on top of the pad in her hands. The cop paused for a long moment, thinking, weighing. She pocketed the card, and then wrote along the top of the envelope.
FOR NIKKI
He nodded at her in thanks, but she scowled at him.
"Look, I don't know who you are and I don't really want to know, but things will go different if I ever see you again. Got it?"
"I understand," he signed in reply. The cop jerked her head towards the door. He turned away from her and looked back down at the table, finding Nikki's hand under the sheet. He curled his fingers around hers for a moment, and then walked away.
Five Years Later
He kept himself busy. Varga's people may have been difficult to track online or through paperwork, but it wasn't all that hard when you used your eyes. They were men who lived dangerous lives, so it wasn't really unusual for some of them to turn up dead once in a while. A car accident here, an overdose there, that sort of thing. After a few years the deaths got a little more violent and a little harder to explain. There was an uptick in drownings, beatings, stabbings - things that were maybe deals gone wrong, but maybe weren't. One man was found on the floor of an office bathroom bleeding out from a cut on his neck, apparently from a shard of the mirror that had been shattered over the sink. A week after that, two men were discovered frozen to death in the woods, each of them chained to a tree. People started to talk. The underlings got a little twitchy. One morning the eight men who were camped out at the house of one of Varga's new reluctant business partners were found in a pile at the end of the driveway next to the trash bins, each of them with a bullet between the eyes. People started to jump ship after that. Not all at once, but enough. While the cops and the IRS circled Varga from above, he snipped away at the safety net of hired hands below. These things took time.
He had to wait for Emmitt, too. At first he wasn't keen on letting Nikki's body go into the ground while Emmitt was still above it, but it wouldn't do to put the man out of his misery. It wasn't enough to take his life away while he thought his life was dust. So he watched and waited until the time was right.
He felt that five years was long enough for a man to turn his life around and start enjoying things again, so he finally went back to Eden Prairie. Sure enough, Emmitt had regained his family and a home and lots of pretty things. Things Nikki had wanted and never got. Now Emmitt wouldn't have them either. It was easy to get inside the house, and then he had to wait a little longer, just until his target was alone.
He knows it is time when Emmitt stands up from the family table. He creeps into the kitchen. Emmitt is staring at the pictures on his fridge, no doubt thinking about how blessed he is. The man standing behind him is thinking of Nikki, and of the job.
Head in a bag. That's the message.
Everybody pays for the things they do, one way or another. No one is above justice, not really. Some people think they are, especially men like Emmitt, but they're wrong. Once you decide to play on a team like Varga's, there is always someone like Wrench to even the score, and there is only one way for the game to end.
The phantom weight of a chain tugs at his wrist, and he pulls the trigger.
