Discipline and Murder Chapter 3

         Yvonne put the key in the lock to her apartment door and turned it, hearing the deadbolt slide back inside of the door.  She turned the handle and pushed, easy and noiseless her apartment door swung open and she stepped inside closing it behind her.  She let her back slump against the back of the door.
         “Okay.  I have to call Don.”  She pushed herself forward, putting one foot in front of the other until she was by her phone.  She picked up the handset and dialed his number, then sat down on her couch.  The over sized blue suede couch was relieving after having been on her feet all day.  As the phone rang, she relaxed a little bit. 
         “Hello?”  Don picked up and greeted her with a regular greeting.
         “Don, Yvonne here.  I just wanted to let you know that he's on his way and he's brought a small load of munitions with him.”
         “And why didn't you follow him?”
         “Don, I've been on my feet all day.”  She couldn't believe the nerve of this guy.
         “Well, take a load off in the driver's seat of your car Yvonne!”
         “Fine.” She pushed the red button on her phone, hanging up on him immediately.  She went into her bedroom and pulled her nightstand away from the wall.  The nightstand slid away from the wall easily showing depressions in the carpet where it had been.  Yvonne went around to the backside and pulled off a panel.  Concealed behind the panel, and taped to the real back of the nightstand, was a glock nine millimeter handgun with two extra clips and two small ka-bar knives.  She reached over and pulled a pillowcase off of one of her pillows and stuffed all the items inside.  She went to her closet and grabbed a denim jacket and threw it on.  She ran out of her apartment, closing and locking the door behind her. 
         An almost brand new Chevrolet Impala parked two spots away from the back door was her destination, and she could have swore she made it there in less than ten seconds including the time it took to lock her door.  She went to the door handle and tried to open it, setting off the alarm in the car. 
         “WHY?!” She yelled to no one in particular, and she pressed the alarm button on her key disengaging the alarm, she pressed the unlock button and the locks on the door panel popped up, and then she opened the door.  The white car was wet and shiny from the rain, and after she closed her door she put the key in the ignition and started the engine.  As soon as the engine kicked in she put the windshield wipers on intermittent and backed out of the parking space, squealing her tires on the wet pavement before pulling out of the lot.  She thought of the fastest way to the Hilton hoping to cut him off.  As soon as she turned onto the road she jammed the accelerator down a little farther and sped off and out of the city. 
         She knew she was close to the city because a sign said “16 MILES.”  She drove until she came to the next gas station and she stopped,tilted her seat back and gathered her thoughts.
         “If he left about fifteen minutes before and I haven't seen him yet he must still be ahead of me.  How fast does this guy drive?”  Just as she was finishing her thought a black BMW pulled up alongside her.  He got out and shut the door to his car and walked into the gas station.  She got out of her car, and went and leaned on the drivers side door of his car.  He emerged from the gas station and started walking toward his car, when he noticed her there he stopped. 
         “What are you doing here?”
         “Care to tell me your name now cowboy?”
         “No.  Not really.”
         “Well then why don't you just hop in my car quick.  It'd be a shame to have all the people in this busy parking lot see a woman struggle with you.”  He looked around and saw that there were at least ten cars at the pumps alone. 
         “Alright.”  He walked over to the white impala and got in on the passenger side.  She went over to the driver's side and got in as well. 
         “Don't go to the city.”
         “Why not?”
         “It's a setup.”
         “How do you even know where I'm headed?”
         “Because I do.  You're being played by two sides at once.  Trust me.”
         “I'm sorry, but I can't trust you.  You're trying to be my guardian angel but your missing one thing.”
         “What's that?”
         “Wings.” And with that he got out of the car, and back into his own.  He started up the engine and left the parking lot.  He looked into his rear view mirror.  She was right behind him still.
         “She's going to get herself killed.” And with that, he ran the next red light leaving her there.  Weaving through traffic was easy at this time of day, especially since it was raining and there weren't nearly as many cars on the road as there would have been on a sunny day.  He pulled into the Hilton parking lot and shut the engine off.  He looked at his backseat and started rifling through his small arsenal, and he packed one flashbang grenade into each of his pants pockets and extra clips for the pistols into the inside pockets of his coat.  Then he took the coat off and put holsters on for the pistols.  The black leather holsters were barely visible against the dark black of his shirt, and after he stuck the pistols into the holsters and put the jacket back on they weren't visible at all.  Not even the bulge that would normally have appeared on his sides was visible.
         He kept the submachine guns in the bag, but put the clips into two front pockets on his coat, then he took the explosive devices and wires and put those into his glove box.  Just as he shut the glove box his passenger side door opened, and he quickly reached inside of his coat to draw his gun only to find that as fast as she sat down her glock was already pointing at his face.
         “So now you're going to kill me.” He said the words with a steady voice, and she smiled.
         “No.  But I'm not going to let you walk into a situation that will get you killed either.”
         “I thought I told you, you're missing the wings.  And, now that I think of it, you're missing the halo too.”
         “Well let me shed some light on the situation.  The man you call your handler knows that you did four more hits than you were supposed to for him.  He's a jealous man, and doesn't like it when his contractors work for other people.  The people that you did the four hits for while thinking you were working for your handler had you off people that were important to your boss.  With last night being your one hundred and fiftieth hit, the other team wants to off you because the items you found in that briefcase belonged to them after they stole those items from your handler.  When your handler realizes that they were using you to screw up his business, unwittingly or not, he's going to want you dead too.”
         “Who's my handler?  And who's the other team?”
         “You seriously never looked into any of this stuff?  You didn't sniff around and find out who's who?”
         “No the person who trained me told me the less I know about my business the better.  The only thing I have is a small notebook with all my hits written in it and phone logs that trace back to the number my handler usually calls me from.”
         “You really need to get out of this business if you're that naive.”
         He sat back and thought about what she said to him.
         “So if I go in there, what happens?”
         “Well, that depends, what's supposed to happen?”
         “I'm supposed to meet someone who somehow knows all my personal information and they are going to give me a promotion and let me call some shots over some rookies.”
         “Then my guess would be that they would have you go to some room supposedly occupied by a woman and kill you.”  He thought about all of that for a minute.  What she said made sense in an odd sort of way, in this business there would be all sorts of fronts and cover up schemes playing out at once.
         “Well, Yvonne, I'm going inside.”
         “You should just come back to the apartment complex and leave this mess alone.”
         “And let them come to me? And bring it to where I-” he was about to say live, but then he realized what the nagging suspicion about the conversation with his boss was all about.  His boss had mentioned the time limit, but he didn't tell his boss that the letter gave him a time limit.
         “Whether or not I go in there they're going to try to kill me.  I'm going in now.”
         “No.  Let me go in first, you follow after ten minutes and if I'm sitting at the bar you sit next to me.  If I'm not sitting at the bar, you sit there.  I'll see who's looking your way.”
         As far as plans went, he decided, it wasn't much of one. But at least she had a plan, whereas he was just going to walk in there introduce himself and start shooting.
         “When do you want to do this?”
         “I can go in right now if you'd like.”  John checked his watch before responding, if the time limit was right the person his boss would be sending would be there in ten minutes.
         “No, wait for about five minutes.”  With that the two sat in the car in silence, both mentally preparing themselves for the bloodshed that might be necessary to bring the situation to a final resolution.
         After the five minutes had passed Yvonne leaned over and gave John a kiss on the cheek, then opened her door and slid out of the car with a fit physical grace that young women seem to lose as they get older.  The car door shut quietly and when John looked out of the passenger side side-view mirror she was already out of sight.  He looked at the clock and decided he'd go in a little bit earlier than he had told her he would, and whether she knew anything or not he was going to put an end to this facade and find out who was behind this set-up.  In twenty-twenty hindsight he realized that even though taking up this job for a living was highly lucrative and dangerous, both assets that he highly coveted in his chosen profession, there were probably other ways he could have used his training and lived happily.
         _________________________________________

         Yvonne walked into the bar on the ground level of the hotel through the front door, keeping her hand on the grip of her glock neatly concealed within the dark confines of one of the front pockets on her black coat.  She did a quick scan of the room and, seeing no one she recognized, sat at the bar.  The bartender looked at her questioningly and she shook her head, she was grateful that he got the hint that she wasn't in the bar for a drink.  There was a couple of menus wedged inside of a menu holder so she reached her arm forward and tried to grab one, however because of her shortness she wound up leaning forward enough that her seat raised up off the chair and just before her fingers grasped the menu she looked either way down the bar.  She grabbed the menu and sat back quickly.  She hid her face behnd the menu and tried placing a face she had seen sitting down at the end of the bar. 
         “Victor.” She thought to herself.  Why on earth was he here?  Rumor had it he wasn't working the lists anymore and only performed his services exclusively for the wealthiest clients the world had to offer, short of political world leaders.  The political jobs were always the messiest, even if the preparation money provided before the hit was a sum such that the hitman could skip the hit and live like an aristocrat in one of the poorer nations of the world for a fairly long while.  She was mulling over the decision of going to talk to Victor when she saw John walk in.  He walked over by the change machine, a small black box on the wall with a slot where dollar bills could be inserted and a small metal cup underneath another slot that caught the change made by the machine, and inserted a five dollar bill.  After hearing the noisy metal on metal clanging of the twenty quarters dropping into the cup, he reached four fingers in and scooped all the change out at once, balling it into his fist.  He looked around the bar until he caught her eyes and then he pointed towards the pool tables.  Apparently that was where he wanted to meet.  She set the menu down and took another glance around the bar, this time also catching Victor's eye. He looked as surprised as she did when she first realized he was there.  She slowly got off the red padded seat slowly, using one hand gripping the round black metal frame of the back of the stool to turn it so that she could squeak through the close pressed gap between her stool and the next, and then made her way over to the pool table to find John already racking the fifteen balls into the triangle on the blue felt covered slate topped pool table. 
         He asked her if she wanted to play as he took the triangle off of the table from around the balls and slid it into the slot on his side of the table.  She pulled a pool cue out of the closest rack of sticks and then the cue ball from it's return slot in the side of the table opposite the triangle, and lined it up dead center with the leading ball in the triangular rack of balls.  She aimed her stick true center on the cue ball, pulled back, then hit the cue ball. The rack cracked loudly and two balls fell into the pockets.  She was scanning the table for her next shot when Victor, dressed in a black suit with a silky purple button up shirt on underneath the suit coat, approached the pool table and put a quarter on the rail.
         “I play winner.” The words rolled out of his mouth smoother than well rehearsed lines flowed from the mouth of an A-list actor.  The light glistened off of his black skin as he sat and watched the game between John and Yvonne progress.  John was winning at first, he was two balls up on Yvonne who had only sunk one ball after the break.  Occasionally he would catch her eye and she would move her eyes toward one door or the other, while he watched behind her back and scanned the people who would come into the pool area from the bar and vice versa depending on what side of the table they were shooting from.
         “You guys paranoid or something?”  Victor, with a knowing smile plastered on his face and a hint of humor in the words, asked. 
         “Should we be?”  Yvonne responded, piercing Victor with a penetrating gaze.  John stayed silent, took his first shot at the eightball and sunk it into his last pocket.
         “That depends on what you folks are here for, see, because I seen some folks in here before that appeared to be lurking around waiting for someone.  There were two groups of them, and they were definitely playing different sides.  The tension was thick between them, too. Wouldn't've surprised me if they'd started firin' right there in the bar.”  Having finished speaking and racking the balls at the same time, Victor grabbed a pool stick.  John lined the cue ball up the same way Yvonne did, pulled back then cracked the stick forward causing the balls to go every which way at once, and then he watched the eightball roll into the pocket.
         “I win,” John said, “you want to play again?”  Victor leaned down to put more quarters into the slots on the long side of the table and John saw the “x” across his back from his gun holsters.  John walked up behind him and placed the tip of his pool stick at the nape of Victor's neck. 
         “What room are you staying in?” John asked Victor, the words coming out tersely.
         “Depends on who's asking, you or the girl, cowboy.”  Yvonne stepped in then.
         “I'm asking you, but he's coming upstairs with us.”
         “Alright, but don't jump the gun and let me lead.  Those guys are posted up through the building, so we might detour through some personnel areas.
         “I don't care which way we take, just get us there in one piece and so help-”
         “Spare me the threats rookie.  I'm just as strapped as you are.  And here's a tip: buy a jacket made for a bigger man and you won't have to modify it to fit your equipment.”  John looked at his jacket and the seamless modifications he'd made to it. 
         “Here's one for you...hide your cross straps and you wouldn't have a man about to break your neck with a pool stick.”  John pulled the pool stick away from Victor's neck and walked over placed it back on the rack on the wall.  He was turning around to start walking back towards Victor and Yvonne when he saw someone at the bar spinning a quarter by flicking it with their fingertip.  Normally this wouldn't be intriguing at all, except that the man wasn't looking at the quarter as he was doing this.  His penetrating gaze was locked on John the same way a sidewinder missile locks on it's target and never seems to let go.  John paused, and he knew that Yvonne and Victor noticed the pause in his action.  Victor started toward the bar nonchalantly, finishing his drink and leaving a tip when he got there.  The man's gaze never left John.  John's gaze never left the man, therefore it came as no surprise when the man stood up so fast he knocked his stool over and practically leapt over everyone else drawing his gun.          His carefully setup maneuver was thwarted however, when Victor swept the man's lead foot out from underneath him as he was moving and taking aim.  The man hit the floor softly, rolling out of his fall with the honed reflexes of a trained killer.  John started to draw his gun, but Victor beat him to the punch, quite literally, as he kicked the man's gun out of his hand.  The gun slid across the floor, causing quite a commotion in the bar with the normal civilians who barely had time to register that the man had pulled a gun before Victor floored him.  Then Victor punched the man in the face, catching him square on back part of his jaw.  When the man hit the floor Victor knelt down on the man's chest, hard.  So hard, in fact, that the man's face almost went blue before he got the wind back that Victor knocked out of him.
          Victor was good.  Even John had to admit that to himself as he walked quickly over to where the gun had stopped it's slide on the floor.  The civilians crammed into the bar were watching the scene in quiet astonishment, more than a few jaws were hanging slack, as they realized someone had almost been shot in the bar.  John bent down and picked the gun up, as he straightened up he felt he should say something. He said the first thing that came to his mind.
         “It's okay.  Me and this and man are police.  We have the situation under control.  If everyone could please exit this part of the hotel, except for the bartender's, we'd be very grateful.”  To his surprise they listened.  A few ordered some drinks to go,and the bartenders willingly obliged due to the circumstances.
         “How dumb are people?” Yvonne wondered to herself as she watched everyone file out of the bar quietly in a mock charade of some schoolchildren being led by teachers to recess.  They were left alone in the bar in less time than it took people to leave the side of a quarantined acquaintance.