chapter THIRTEEN: No Good Reason
Desperado turned the corner onto 13th Street and surveyed the street. The hot dog stand was just a little way down on his side of the road. There were benches outside several of the stores that he passed, and one outside Café 1200 on the opposite side of the road where a younger man sat, legs crossed, reading a newspaper. He turned a glance to Desperado and waved, then went back to his reading. 'Friendly people,' Desperado thought.
Coming up to the stand, he stepped up to Fred, legs soar from the long walk, and threw out his arms for an embrace. Fred looked up, snarled, and placed a Bratwurst in an all ready soggy bun with his tongs. Then, he shoved it at Desperado who took it with a look of confusion on his face. "Condiments on the counter," Fred growled.
"No hug?" Desperado asked, letting a smile break on his lips. Fred tried not to look at him.
"Hardly any service," Fred said. "Damn bread factory. What the hell kinda business is bread anyway?" Fred looked over his shoulder at an uncomfortable teenager who was waiting with a five dollar bill in his hands. "Whatchya want?" Fred asked.
"Two hot dogs," the kid squealed and Fred cut two buns, fit inside them two hot dogs, and passed them over his shoulder, in exchange for the five dollar bill, a dollar of which he returned to the kid who then scurried away, forgetting his condiments or maybe just trying to get away.
"Look at that," Desperado said. "You scared the poor kid off. Hey!" he called, waving as the kid raced in the opposite direction and turned the corner. "Condiments are on the counter!" he laughed, and the boy was out of sight. He looked back at Fred, but he didn't seem especially thrilled. "Now, come on Fred, I've come here almost every other day for the past year and I haven't seen you like this once."
"I told ya, the business is slow," he said, facing Desperado who looked back at him with a shattered smile on his face. "Ya want me to smile, I'll smile, but if ya want me to be happy all of a sudden – then too bad." Desperado's arms fell to his sides and he sent a look over the glossy windows of Panera Bread. Then, looking back at his soggy Brat, he sat down, back against the hot dog stand.
"Hey Fred, could you grab me the ketchup?" he asked, seeming distracted almost. Fred grunted and held the ketchup bottle over Desperado's shoulder. He reached up and squirted it along the Brat, then set it down on the sidewalk beside him. Fred, all ready annoyed and irritated, threw up his arms in frustration.
"I give you the ketchup, you set it on the sidewalk!" he cried, bending over and picking the bottle off the path. Desperado took a bite of his Brat and chewed vigorously; paying close attention to Fred's reactions, but making sure it seemed he wasn't interested at all.
He bit off another chunk and chewed, looking out over the street and watching the cars that went by in a blur or sound.
He bit off a third piece and chewed. Before he swallowed, he said: "How 'bout mustard?" Fred looked back at him with a glare of utter amazement.
"You hate mustard!" he said. 'How thick can he get!' he thought to himself, and then set the mustard down on the sidewalk. Desperado looked over at his side and laughed a muffled laugh as he acted to layer on the mustard. Lifting it over his head, he set it on the edge of the stand and continued eating.
Finally, with one last bite, he finished his Brat. He brushed off his jacket and stood, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out his wallet. He held two twenties in his palm and when Fred saw them he looked angrily at him. "No! No!" he said, upset. "I don't take donations," he protested. Desperado eyed the money in his hand, brows bending.
"Donation?" he asked. "This is exact change. One soggy Bratwurst with ketchup and mustard: twenty dollars," he pointed to an imaginary price on the big sign that was pinned to the stand.
"You didn't have mustard," Fred said. Desperado smiled.
"No, I didn't," he said. "Then…nineteen bucks."
"So, why do you have forty there?" Fred asked. Desperado looked, again, at his money and laughed.
"Heh, well the rest is a donation." Fred tried not to laugh, and succeeded, but he did not succeed in suppressing a smile.
Desperado closed his eyes for just one moment, laughed, shook his head, and when they opened, his hand still outstretched with the money held tightly in his fingers, a red dot flashed over Fred's forehead and a spray of blood speckled his face.
Fred fell back and Desperado turned swiftly, shooting a look up on the roof tops. Crowds and couples hurried off, screaming, but Desperado spotted no one on the roofs. He turned back and fell down beside Fred, looking sadly over his face, which was unscathed aside from the bullet imbedded in his skull.
He shook his head, frowning, and bowed to the body before standing again and touching the Desert Eagle at his waist, hidden beneath his long rain coat. But, as he was about to pull it from its holster, his phone rang.
Dropping behind the hot dog stand and feeling the wind of another bullet through his hair, he answered the call.
"What is this?" he said fiercely.
"Desperado!" It was Alex. Alex Moore. Vice President. What did he have to do with this? "Find cover, now!"
"What the hell?"
"I told you," he said. "We're watching your every move. You're always being monitored."
Desperado thought to curse, but barred himself. "Did you see the shooter? Do you know where he's positioned?"
"We're working on that," he said. "Try not to worry. Are you safe where you are?"
Desperado turned his head around the side of the hot dog stand, shot a cruel look at Fred, and made a painful expression. "I'm behind a hot dog stand. A standard sniper rifle would send a bullet through this thing like it was air. I guess I don't have much chance if he pins it through the stand. But, I can get into Panera if I need to."
"You should be fine, now. Our people are on location. The shooter is probably on the move. Just stay put. We'll get things worked out and I'll send an agent to retrieve you."
"I don't need an agent," Desperado said, leaving no question. "Just tell me where you think the shooter was positioned."
"I'd say the roof of Café 1200. Just across the street," Alex said. Desperado nodded, having assumed just the same, and looked around the stand again, just to make sure no red dots were sweeping around and no gun barrels resting on rooftops. "But, don't go trying to – " Desperado had darted around the corner of the stand and had made a quick dash across the street, finding cover beneath the overhang outside the café.
He slipped his handgun from its holster and flattened against the brick of the building, staying to the left of the big display windows where they were promoting their new desserts. And, watching the street and waving frantic people away from the scene, he twisted around and aimed through the glass.
All clear to enter.
On the back wall, between two swinging doors that led into the kitchen, was a bulletin board nearly covered with menus and calendars and fliers and audition and application notices for places throughout the District. Desperado went cautiously forward, quickly taking notice of the many meals left unfinished on their plates. His gun, a Desert Eagle, two clips scotch taped to either side of the barrel, as he was known for doing, was pointed in all directions. He never moved his hips or his stance, only his arm. It was a much more effective method than shifting your whole body to aim in another direction. He'd learned it when he was in the U.S. Special Forces. That had been a long time ago.
Going over to the bulletin board, he swung his arm to the right and aimed up the stairs that led to the second floor where there was a small apartment that the owner of the Café rented out to the homeless for small sums of money. There was no one on the stairs, no shadow cast along the wall, not hand on the banister.
He lowered his attentiveness and took a look at the bulletin board. Nothing interested him. Looking through the little circular window in the swinging door before him, he forced his way through it and into the kitchen. Steam still rose from the pots and pans, and water boiled noisily over the brims, evaporating on the stoves. Much of the room was impossible to see from where he stood, as smoke and steam clouded the view.
But, he crept forward. He let his arm go down to his side; his gun still gripped in his hand, and tried to navigate the kitchen. Left, right, forward…he went around the room for quite a while, hoping someone would grab him, but no one did.
Until he was going to leave.
He heard no voice or sound other than his own chest bruising against the flooded tile floor. He tried to raise his arm and point the Desert Eagle at whatever thing had pounced upon him, but his arm was being forced against the floor, and his face…his whole body was pinned down. He couldn't move at all, and the greatest pain he felt was his second Desert Eagle driving into his hip.
"Desperado," the thing on his back whispered into his ear. "Leave it alone." His grip was loosened on his Desert Eagle and the gun was forced out of his hand. He tried to reach for it, tried to get it back, but even when he felt the weight shift off the top of him, even when he was able to twist around and stand, he could not have it. For whoever had pinned him to the floor was gone.
Bursting through the kitchen door, hearing it squeak as it swung behind him, he saw no one hurrying into the street, and no one still within the Café. Upstairs. That was the only place he could be.
Desperado raced up the stairs, pulling his second Desert Eagle from its holster. At the landing, he noted the door to the apartment left ajar and pushed inside. Surveying the clean room, walls white and sparkling, bed made and neat, clock ticking and keeping perfect time, he turned back out of the room and went up to the next landing: another door.
He pushed open the door and found himself on a rickety fire escape. He saw a ladder to his left and grabbed the rungs, quickly moving upward, stepping over the lip on the edge of the roof, and finding himself alone on the rooftop. He went to the edges and looked down on the streets and into the alleys. No one.
Running his hand in his hair, he shoved his Desert Eagle back in its holster, feeling the other holster cold, barren, empty. A gust of air was passing through the District, the clouds racing in the warm yellow sky, the trees along the mall waving gently. Desperado's hair twisted in the breeze, his shirt now torn and a cut carved upon his cheek, and felt the cool wind bathe him, calm him, soothe him. He went to the lip of the roof and stood on it, letting the wind grab at his jacket and nearly send him over the edge.
But it never did, even as he almost hoped it would, and when he opened his eyes again to the world all he saw was the crowd surrounding Fred, his friend, who had been murdered for no good reason.