Down Solo by Earl Javorsky Read Free Book Online

in his spot in the underground parking. I slide in next to it and park in his guest spot. I call one more time but get voice mail. When I push his suite number from the panel I get nothing. A resident uses a passkey to open the door to the lobby and doesn’t object when I follow her in. We ride up the elevator in silence.
    I take the final few floors alone. I take off my baseball cap and check my head in the mirrored wall of the elevator. There’s almost enough hair, I decide, to do a comb-over, so I push a few strands over the hole with my fingers. I guess it’s better, but I put the cap back on.
    There are only four suites at the top, and Jimmy’s is to the left. I’ve got a bad feeling about this and it gets worse when I see his door, which looks a lot like the front door to my own house, smashed inward and splintered to bits where the locks took the frame with them.
    I push the door open and call out to Jimmy. Nothing. I duck into the guest bedroom, which is the first turn off the hall, and into the bathroom. The cupboards are open and the towels are on the floor, but the geologist’s reports are still tucked into the green one. I fold them up and put them in my back pocket.
    I walk down the hallway and into the dining/living room, which opens to the kitchen on my right. All the cupboards are open—dishes and cereal boxes, vitamin bottles and rolls of paper towels, silverware and placemats—all are scattered across the counters and the floor. Jimmy’s workspace, the dining room table, has blood on it. Furniture has been turned over, lamps broken, and there’s a huge dent in one of the walls.
    I hear a groan from Jimmy’s bedroom. He’s lying at the foot of his bed, bleeding from his mouth, his nose, his ear, and a hole in his chest. His room looks like a grenade went off in it. I kneel down and say, “Jimmy,” and he opens his eyes.
    He says, “We’ve got to get this place cleaned up before the cops come.” He sounds as bad as he looks, but he pushes himself up to a sitting position. Now he’s using the bed and trying to stand up.
    “Jesus, Jimmy, that looks like a bad idea.” He lurches to his dresser and opens the top drawer. He pulls out a purple Crown Royal bag and slips it off a 9mm Beretta. He pulls back the slide and checks the chamber, then lays the weapon on the dresser ready to fire. Next he retrieves what looks like a drafting kit, except when he opens it I see three neatly cushioned hypodermic needles and several glass ampules labeled “USP Morphine.” Blood leaks from his chest while he loads the syringe.
    “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.” He doesn’t need to tie off; his veins are already enormous. He sticks the needle in and pulls back the slightest bit until a drop of blood swirls into the liquid morphine, then looks up and says, “Gym bag, safe, scale, get the fuck out, in that order, pronto.” I watch as he pushes the plunger and empties the syringe. I check his eyes and for a moment there’s nobody home, and then Jimmy’s back, pulling it together, an act of pure will. He’s moving the body. But it’s different. Jimmy’s damaged, but he’s not dead.
    There’s a third bedroom. Jimmy brings his gun and dope kit. I pick up the gym bag. The safe is in the corner. Jimmy kneels down to open it. Now there are footsteps in the hallway. Jimmy turns, in a crouch, gun up.
    There’s a crackle of static and a garbled squawk of amplified gibberish and I whisper loud to Jimmy, “Ditch the gun, NOW, ditch the fucking gun.” But he doesn’t and it’s too late and there’s a cop at the bedroom door and another one behind him.
    “Freeze! Put the weapon down. Put the weapon down.” The cop is young, white, the all-American boy, looking smart in his uniform but clearly a first-timer at this kind of action. He’s got his own gun out in front of him, pointed at Jimmy’s chest. If he sees the hole that’s already bleeding there, it’s not helping; his hands are shaking, he