Part 1 is here
In the silence, I could almost hear Vinnie’s brain whirring like an old hard drive. To be fair to the guy he had just found out that his wife tried to have him killed. And he did also find out that news from an undead Superman, who he’d shot in the face, not an hour before.
I was also pretty surprised by that second bit of news. I had decided to go with confidence on my return to Earth, but I wasn’t sure if he could have just shot me again. I suppose I still wasn’t, but I did know that my reflexes were impossibly fast, and I was strong enough to catch bullets. Still, I couldn’t let the silence go on too long. We had a time limit on our private chat, based on that gunshot.
“Vinny”, I said.
The loan shark didn’t react outwardly. Perhaps he blinked, but he didn’t acknowledge I’d spoken.
“Vinny!”, I said again, with more urgency. “We need to talk payment before we ge—”
The door crashed open and two of Vinny’s security team burst in, guns in hand. The first in was Danny Treadwell, who I knew by reputation. Not a good reputation mind you, but he and Vinny had come up together and he had kept his job, despite having nowhere near the skills for it. His porcine eyes scanned the room and finding his boss to be the one holding the gun he relaxed. He put the Glock back inside his jacket, which didn’t fit at all. He looked like he was wearing someone else’s clothes.
“You OK, Boss?”, he said.
That seemed to knock Vinny out of his catatonic state. “Dan. Can you see this guy?”, he said waving the pistol at me.
Danny looked confused. Or more confused than his default setting I suppose. “Huh?”
“Is there. A man. Sitting in that chair”, Vinny said slowly.
“Yeah?”
“But I just shot him!”, shouted Vinny.
“Um. I don’t think you did boss. I think you missed.”
“NO! Earlier. I shot him in the head. And he died. You cleaned up the mess for fucks sake!”
Danny brightened. “Ah, no. That was a different guy, boss. That guy is definitely dead. The bodies still in the freezer if you want to come see?”
That was worth knowing I thought. My original body is a loose end I could do with tying up. With a bit of luck, I could get rid of it nice and clean and keep all my bank account and such rolling. That would be really useful. I noticed the second member of Vinny’s security wince at all this open talking of murder in front of an outsider. She saw me looking at her, and her face went blank. A study in humble obedience. Also interesting, I thought. She was not as dumb as Danny. Her clothes didn’t look like they fit either, but I got the impression it was on purpose. Hiding weapons, or femineity perhaps.
“It was this guy!”, said Vinny.
Danny looked around at his companion. “Carla, did you see the guy earlier?” Carla shrugged and said nothing. No way she was going to admit being witness to a murder out loud.
“Perhaps they didn’t see the guy earlier”, I suggested. “Perhaps that guy snuck past them, and they didn’t see what he looked like.” I rolled the bullet between finger and thumb. Carla looked at me quizzically, and I saw her start to scan around the room more carefully. If I had to guess I would say she was looking for a bullet hole.
“Yeah!”, said Danny, apparently unaware that not seeing an armed man entering his bosses office would probably be a black mark on his next performance review. “I didn’t see him!”
Vinny looked at him with contempt and then turned to me again. “You’re serious about my wife?”
I nodded. “I’m also serious about my money”. I wrote a figure down on the jotter on his desk. “I want that. Today.”
Vinny glanced at it. “Fine. Sure. Carla? Take this man to make a withdrawal. 250. It can come from petty cash.”
Carla beckoned me towards the door.
“Thanks, Vinny. Good choice”, I said and followed the security guard.
As we walked through the vodka distillery that housed Vinnie's office, my mind raced ahead. $250k was not a huge sum, but a loan shark shouldn’t have that much just lying around. There was more to this than I thought.
“The fuck are you playing at”, whispered Carla as we walked through an empty part of the factory. Huge shining steel cylinders blocked our view of any other people.
“Playing at?”
The young woman turned around and lifted me bodily off the ground to hold me against a wall. There might be femineity hiding under that ill-fitting suit, but there were definitely weapons.
“You trying to welch on the deal? Fake your own death and ride off without doing the job? No fucking way. No way. You get back in there and take the shot, Ron. Who do we even have in that freezer? Some poor schmuck?”
“You? You ordered the hit?”
Carla let me down heavily, but I managed to keep my footing on the brushed concrete factory floor.
“Oh God, you really did think it was his wife didn’t you?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I did some digging. Her name came up.” I facepalmed. “I just dug up what you planted, didn’t I. I thought it was simple for such a high profile job. I’m getting sloppy. Probably going to get me killed, if I’m not careful!”, I quipped.
“Yes, and for real this time”, said Carla.
I wanted to say the first time felt pretty real, but better to keep that up my sleeve. “Why do you want your boss dead? Not a fan of exploitative interest rates?”
She glared at me. “Don’t take the piss”. A matching Glock to Danny’s appeared in her hand. She was quick. I didn’t even see her reach for it. “I just need him out of the way.”
“Oh”, I said. “I’m not taking this piss”. I reached out, and the world seemed to slow down. I saw Carla’s pupils widen as she saw me move. I saw her trigger finger start to tighten, but I was moving in a different dimension. Before she put the 5 pounds of pressure needed to fire, I’d grabbed the gun from her hand and ejected the magazine and the round in the chamber. The world sped up again, and she sprang back into a defensive crouch instinctively, looking at her empty hands in disbelief.
“I’ve been having that effect a lot today”, I said, tossing her back the empty gun.
“Woah”, she breathed. “What do you want?”
“I just want my quarter mil”, I said. “Can we hurry up, I’m not getting any deader, standing here.”
