Authors Notes: Your comments flatter and inspire me. I'm positively ecstatic that you are all enjoying reading this as much as I am enjoying writing it! Your remarks have lead me to believe that you genuinely want to know what happens next, and it makes it so easy to keep up the pace!
Please continue to comment! I'm really looking forward to it after this chapter!
Chapter Ten: A good day to die
He didn't know where they were, but it had taken them a long time to get there. It had felt like the driver was trying not to draw attention to himself with any unnecessary speed. Trying to gage the variations in their velocity, Charlie was able to determine when they moved from the interstate to a residential area. From where he was hunkered down in the floorboard, he could see the sky as it began it's morning ritual. The horizon had turned a delicate shade of violet and Charlie decided they must be still be in the city. Only the smog of L.A. could make the sunrise look so beautiful.
When the car stopped, Charlie held his breath. He fully expected to be pulled from the car and shot. He could almost imagine some poor homeless guy finding his body behind a dumpster downtown. But much to his surprise, Roberto stood, nonchalantly at the car door and waited for him to exit on his own. Once Charlie maneuvered himself out of the floorboards and straightened out his cramped legs, the younger man nodded toward the single story, cottage style house at the end of the driveway. It was well kept, but there were several boards nailed up on the door and one of the front windows was covered with plywood. Charlie imagined there were bullet holes under those boards. Marcus was waiting by the door and without a word, he walked inside. Charlie obediently followed.
Standing in the foyer, Charlie absorbed the details of his new environment. The main room had baby blue carpeting. He couldn't help but think that anyone in their right mind wouldn't dare to kill someone in this room and chance staining that carpet. He hoped he was right. At least that way he would see it coming.
Roberto and the five other men from the car walked past him and settled around the kitchen table. After speaking to the older man in hushed tones, Marcus headed down the hallway. The youth glanced over his shoulder to look at him. Charlie could see a carbon copy of the look Frankie had given him when he walked out of the metro car, leaving Charlie alone with Marcus and his gun. He watched the young man turn and hang his head, disappearing out the back door and into the early morning light. For a minute, Charlie considered bolting down the hall and making a break for it. But the hallway was linoleum...it wouldn't be to hard to clean his brains off a linoleum floor. The logic of this fact won out over his natural instinct to flee and he remained standing in the middle of the open room;on top of the unstained blue carpet.
A few minutes later, the crew from the kitchen moved into the small living room, spreading out in what Charlie perceived to be a not so random pattern.
"Well, we got a problem."
Roberto stopped in front of him and locked him in an unwavering gaze.
Charlie nodded.
"Yeah, I guess we do, don't we."
The man smirked at him.
"It didn't go down the way it was mapped out…so here we are. Here you are. Might as well finish what we started….before we were interrupted by the FED, I had some shit to ask you."
Charlie shook his head and tried not to sound like he was pleading.
"What….what could I possibly tell you? I spent an hour on a broken down metro train with Marcus, Jose and a few other kids. The others didn't even tell me their names. I couldn't tell the cops anything other than that……I didn't know anything."
Roberto stepped toward him.
"What did the cops tell you? About us….about the 13th? What did they know?"
Charlie fought the urge to take a step back, but he was unable to stop himself.
"Nothing. They just ask me questions about Jose and what I knew about him. They said he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The 13th took him down when they came gunning for you."
The room was silent for several seconds as Roberto nodded in silent contemplation. Charlie cleared his throat and swallowed, trying to choke back his building terror.
"So now what?"
One of the younger men snickered. The answer, obviously, had already been discussed.
Charlie looked around the room at the six men. True shock started to anesthetize the edges of his consciousness as the finality of his situation became completely apparent. Every picture he had looked at, the faces of those who had become innocent victims of gang violence, flew through his minds eye…..and he envisioned his own photo being added to that folder. It had been almost a year since he had held those pictures in his hands, yet he remembered every single one.
He heard his own voice, speaking in monotone.
"I'm thinking I'll be missing my 9am class, then."
"I think you're right."
Roberto turned to one of the other young men.
"Take him out back. I don't want no blood on this carpet."
The statement gave Charlie a sudden onslaught of total enlightenment as his mind continued to go numb.
He knew this was the end. In just a few minutes his life would be over and he couldn't think of a single equation to help it make sense. No combination of numerical values would work this out in his favor. He could perceive what was about to happen and his shell-shocked psyche did not offer to alleviate this reality with the numbers that it had so often used for that purpose.
Then a thought occurred to him. He had been right. He wouldn't be bleeding on this floor. Another victory for simple logic.
Now he wasn't so sure he had really wanted time to prepare for this.
Charlie was grabbed roughly from behind by the shoulders and shuffled down the hallway and out the back door. Shoved behind a small shed toward the back of the yard, his legs were kicked out from under him. The jolt of landing on his hands and knees seemed to return some of the sensation to his brain making his conscious thoughts anything but tranquil. He found himself kneeling in the wet morning grass, wondering how it could be so easy for someone to take another human life…as if it were a commonplace event in this backyard. Maybe it was.
The gunshot would never even be reported to the police.
Not in this neighborhood.
The early morning breeze was warm. Summer was in full swing, but Charlie was shivering. Only then did he remember that he was still in his boxer shorts and one of the well worn t-shirts that he usually slept in. He felt his toes pressing into the ground and wished he had kept his socks on last night. It wasn't right for a man to die without his shoes on…socks would have been better than nothing.
He resisted the urge to hysterically plead for his life and steadied his voice as best he could before he spoke.
"So that's it then. You don't even know me and you're just going toshoot me?"
The younger man behind him sounded somewhat apologetic.
"We gunned down a FED, man. Right in front of you. I ain't gonna spend my life in La Toracida. Marcus thinks you'll keep you're mouth shut. Begged Roberto not to pop ya. Kid's pretty naive. Told him though…can't let you live. Just the way it has to be."
At first Charlie had wondered how long it would take for his murderer to pull the trigger. But suddenly he almost didn't care. He didn't want any more extra time to dwell on this. What was this guy waiting for? Thoughts of his family started to fill his mind and further restrained his ability to mourn his own impending death.
They had shot Don. He hadn't really been sure until this guy said it out loud. If his father had survived, he was going to lose both of his sons on the same day.
That just wasn't fair. But since when was life fair?
As he waited for his final moments, he thought of his friends at the FBI.
No, not friends. By now they qualified as family too.
He closed his eyes when he felt the barrel of the gun press into the back of his head and he braced himself for what would come next. He lost the battle to keep his voice calm and steady as he spoke, one more time, to the young man behind him.
"This won't end here. I can promise you that."
The only response to his forewarning was the distinctive sound of the hammer being cocked on the gun in the young man's hand.
1
12
123
12
1
Chapter Eleven: Dead men do tell tales