Hit and The Marksman (24 page)

Back in a doorway, half hidden in shadow, Don the waiter swigs beer and watches everything.

Now a slim woman enters—attractive, blonde, thirties, well put together and nicely dressed; too sophisticated for this place. She looks around nervously.

Radford glances at the woman, looks away, continues to mop the floor.

Conrad says under his breath, “Curtain going up.”

And now—quickly …

Conrad and Gootch look toward the counter where the three punks sit.

The three punks—Curly, Larry and Moe—drain their beers and get up. Their path toward the exit just happens to take them near the blonde.

Don from his shadowed corner watches everyone.

Curly, the leader of the three, does a take as he play-acts recognizing the blonde.

She doesn't look at Curly; she's seen them out of the corner of her eye and she's alarmed. Abruptly Curly shouts: “Your brother owes me two large.”

The blonde at first doesn't look at him. Then, startled to realize it was addressed to her, she tries to conceal her fear. “Were you talking to me?”

Curly bellows, “He owes me money!”

Curly jerks the blonde forward roughly, his face an inch from hers.

“Let go!” She looks around frantically for help but there's only Radford, mopping the floor.

Curly grips the blonde's throat. She tries to fend him off but Larry grabs her wrists and stands behind her, immobilizing her arms, and Moe moves in close, menacing. The blonde whispers, “Somebody please …”

Curly says, “Let's take it one more time from the top. Start with where's your brother at?”

The blonde in terror finally blurts, “I don't have a brother!”

Radford watches but makes no move.

Curly slaps the woman's face hard and tightens his hold on her throat. Larry pulls her arms up behind her back. She cries out. Moe kidney-punches her from the side and Curly slams his fist hard into her midriff, doubling her over. “Let's try one more time.”

The blonde can barely gasp. “What're you talking about?… Please …”

Moe gets set to hit her again and then suddenly rocks back—something has hit him hard in the back—and as he falls away from the blonde his fall reveals Radford. He's jabbed Moe with the end of the mop-handle.

Radford says, “Hey man, please.”

The punks react. All three turn on Radford. By the swiftness of their reaction, and the way they suddenly ignore the blonde, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see this whole set-up has been rehearsed. The one they're really after is Radford.

As the three attack him he stabs the mop handle toward Larry's eye and it makes Larry flinch away and in the flow of the same motion Radford swings the pole against Curly's cheek, hard enough to knock the man off his feet, but now Moe has recovered from the kidney punch and he swarms toward Radford and all of a sudden the three of them are on him like bears on a honey pot and the pain in his head is beyond unendurable but still, somehow, moving faster than anyone ought to be able to, Radford protectively pushes the blonde into a booth before he swings to face them and speaks before any of them can nail him:

“Hey, guys, I don't want to hurt you.”

That provokes Curly's harsh laugh. They come at Radford and he backs away, looking for a way out, really a coward … And all three punks pile on him, beat on him, lock him in a hold that a crowbar couldn't pry loose …

Conrad and Gootch are watching with keen interest. They see when Radford knows he can't get out of it and begins to give in with unhappy resignation.

Conrad speaks under his breath to Gootch: “Now we see if he's a player.”

The three punks have Radford pinned. His mind is screeching, running off the track now—All of a sudden he's in a chilly fog as he comes heaving up out of a basement under some derelict building like a monster creature. He's young, in combat fatigues, hauling his sniper rifle—he tries to slip away in the night but abruptly there's the gleaming point of a bayonet against the back of his neck and he reacts … turns his head slowly to see a child holding a rifle at the other end of the bayonet. A boy, not more than twelve or thirteen, looking half stoned, wearing wretched street clothes but a soldier's
kepi
on his head.

A blank mask descends over young Radford's expression. With resignation he lifts his hands in surrender.

Curly is whipping toward the blonde's booth while Larry and Moe keep Radford locked in their grip but now, seeing where Curly's headed, Radford explodes. He hammers backwards with one heel against somebody's shin and, with that opening breached, skillfully kicks his way out of their hold and now he goes after the three punks with the silent cold precision of a demolition ball. There's no question of “fighting fair;” Radford swings a leg toward Curly at the booth, kicks Curly in the groin and flashes around to face the other two. He uses anything as a weapon—steel paper-napkin holder, table, bottle of ketchup, chair, his own hands and feet—this isn't a neat clean choreographed thing. It's a brutal fight; Radford fights dirty.

The blonde watches this, wide-eyed. Conrad and Gootch watch with clinical interest. Don the waiter stares, inscrutable. Charlie the owner comes from the kitchen scowling, drawn by the racket; picks up a kitchen knife and comes around the counter lofting his prosthetic hand, but by then the fight is over. Charlie is pleased with him—pleased for him. “O-kay.”

Radford has knocked the living shit out of all three tough guys.

Charlie says, “Finish 'em, C.W. Bust up their kneecaps.”

But the three are down, and Radford backs away.

Curly and Larry painfully pull themselves together and try to rouse the semi-conscious Moe.

Radford hardly even seems to be breathing hard. The scar on his face glistens with sweat.

Don the waiter fades back, disappearing silently.

The blonde seems to be looking for a way to sneak out without being noticed.

Curly and Larry help Moe outside.

Radford watches Conrad and Gootch as they cross to the door and exit.

Outside on the street, the redheaded dealer appears from shadows while Conrad flicks his cigarillo into the gutter; he and Gootch get into their van. This time Conrad takes the wheel (it's his van). He says to his companion, “That'll do it. They do a background, they'll find out he just about beat three guys to death.”

Inside, Radford looks out through the cafe's big picture window at the three punks who're staggering away down the sidewalk. His attention is drawn to the van when its engine revs up. What he sees, reflected in window glass, is a puddle behind the van. In the puddle he can see an upside-down backward reflection of the van's license plate—a reflection within a reflection. The plate number is 7734 OL, and seen upside down and backwards it reads quite plainly “To hell.” Even Radford may remember that …

The van drives away, rippling the puddle, destroying the image.

The blonde comes toward Radford's shoulder. “Hey, I really—I'd like to …”

Ignoring her, he carries his mop back toward the kitchen.

Mystified, the blonde looks at Charlie. “He always so sociable?… What's his name?”

“Radford. C. W. Radford.” Charlie shrugs, smiles and goes away toward the back, where he finds Radford washing out the mop as if nothing had happened. Charlie takes out roll of cash, peels off some, tucks them in Radford's shirt pocket. “All right. Take the night off, will ya?”

Radford's only acknowledgement is to hang up his apron and head for the back door out.

Charlie says, “See? You can still take care of yourself. Think about it, C.W.”

Radford doesn't look back; he opens the door and goes out.

Outside as Radford trudges away from Charlie's, the redheaded dealer intercepts him. “Hey, my man. You was pretty cool back there. This mornin' and now those guys. You want to buy?”

Radford shakes his head “no” and walks on.

A car approaches him from behind. Its headlights throw his long shadow ahead of him. It seems ominous because of the slow pace with which it catches up to him but he only glances at it—particularly at its rent-a-car plate holder. The car paces him. Then its window opens and we see it's the blonde who's driving.

“You never gave me a chance to thank you.”

“Wasn't looking for gratitude.” Radford's voice sounds rusty, as if from disuse. Then he looks directly at her. “Lady, it's three in the morning and this is no neighborhood to go driving around with your windows open.”

“I know. I'd feel ever so much safer if you were in the car.”

He looks back over his shoulder. He can't be sure—is that slow-moving shadow back there the same van as before?

He keeps walking until the woman guns her car forward and pulls into the curb to block him. She gets out and confronts him.

He says, “Uh-huh?”

“You restored my faith—I was starting to think chivalry was dead, or at least traded in on a second-hand Toyota … That's a pun, son. Not even a chuckle?”

She opens the passenger door. After a beat, with no break in expression, Radford gets in the car.

When she shuts the door on him Radford glances at the door's wing mirror. The van's still back there. Pinpoint glow of a lit cigarillo.

The blonde gets into the car beside Radford, behind the wheel, but before she puts it in gear she leans close and gives him a deeply questioning look. She runs her hand along his coarse beard stubble. “C. W. Radford. That what you call yourself?”

“Mostly I don't call me at all.”

“Me, I'm Anne. Anne with an ‘e.' “ Then after a momentary silence she says, “You're supposed to ask if I've got a last name.”

It doesn't inspire a response in him.

She says politely, “It's Hartman. Anne Hartman.”

“All right.”

In the streaming hot water of Anne Hartman's shower, Radford stands with a borrowed Gillette ladies' disposable, shaving by feel. He's not alone, naked in the steam. Anne is scrubbing his back. She's laughing.

And then in her bed he's clean and shaved and mostly ignores the woman while very gently she explores his many injuries. “All these scars—kind of sexy.”

Through slitted lids his eyes explore the room. It's a stodgy furnished flat on the ground floor of an apartment court, impersonal as a hotel room. She says, “Where'd you get 'em?”

“What? The scars? Place called Kurdistan.”

Anne gets out of bed and crosses into the bathroom. Radford doesn't stir; he lies on his back with hands over his eyes—that headache again.

Anne's voice chatters at him from the bathroom. “Yeah, so I work for a political action committee. You know. Fundraisers, campaign literature, get out the grassroots knuckleheads.”

On the pillow he rolls his head back and forth in pain. Then he hears the woman approach—her voice growing louder: “C.W.? Hey—you okay?”

Anne sits down on the edge of the bed and gently strokes his forehead. “You don't have a hell of a lot of small talk, do you? What're you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

“You can't think about nothing.”

“Yeah,” he says. “You can. You can teach yourself to do that.”

“Why would you want to?”

He's thinking about that detention camp on the northern border of Iraq—primitive; stark. Watchtowers. Tangles of barbed wire. Prisoners dying slowly in filthy rags, Kurds mostly, a few volunteers from Kuwait and Armenia, and two gaunt Americans, one of whom is himself, Radford, just a kid then really, covered with suppurating bruises and cuts, and the other of whom is Charlie the cook—also that much younger, and even more beat-up—with a bloody stump, hardly staunched with rags, where his hand used to be.

She brings him back from that camp. She bends down gently to kiss his scarred forehead.

He says, “Lady, don't waste sympathy on me. I broke.”

She doesn't quite understand.

“I talked. You know? Went on the telly … Iraqi TV.”

And in the black-and-white TV monitor in his mind he can see his whipped young self speaking straight into the camera with lifeless calm. He says to Anne, “I told the world how wonderful life was in Saddam's paradise. I recited all the lies they told me to tell.”

She's stroking him. “I see.” Then she says, “No one can blame you for wanting to stay alive.”

“Nobody stayed alive.”

She takes his face in both hands and kisses him. After a bit, he begins sluggishly to respond …

In the daylight he stands at the window in his stained trousers, sips coffee and looks out at parked cars and little kids splashing in an inflated wading pool. As the phone rings, Anne enters in a robe, toweling her hair. She makes a face when she looks at the condition of his trousers. “Let's get you some new clothes.” And she's picking up the ringing phone. “Hello? Oh—hi. Ha, right. Well none of your nosy business … What? Now? I, uh, I forgot. All right, okay, sure. I'll be there in, like, an hour?”

She hangs up and says to Radford, “I promised some friends I'd go target shooting. Want to come along?”

He only looks at her, without any change in his expression.

The sign in the old building corridor announces the path to “Alvin York Memorial Gun Club—Open Mon–Sat 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closed Sundays.” The sign is on a door, and Anne opens it. She's very sexy, painted into skintight jeans. Radford, in new trousers and shirt, follows her in.

The foyer needs paint. Its scratched metal reception desk is unoccupied. The decor consists of gun ads, hunting prints and NRA posters. A long window separates Radford and Anne from a shooting range where they can see the backs of three men wearing ear-protector headsets and shooting rifles at targets; the snap of each shot is barely audible in here.

Anne leads the way through the inner door onto the indoor range. A big guy looks up—Harry Sinclair, 50, bearded, muscular and rough—from where he's hand-loading ammunition at a work table. The thick beard hides most of his face. When he smiles, he has a badly discolored front tooth, second left from center.