Thirteen Million Dollar Pop by David Levien Read Free Book Online Page A

removed the slide stop pin, and broke down the automatic. He inspected the recoil spring, barrel, and trigger action. The weapon was sound. “Okay, this’ll do. I’ll have it with four magazines.”
    For a moment Blaze’s shrewd look went blank.
    “Clips, man,” Dwyer said. “Four of ’em.”
    “I got two,” was the answer. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the way it was. Then a dull black object that was leaning against the wall in a dark corner of the room caught Dwyer’s eye. “Is that for sale?”
    Blaze looked at his hulking companion and they laughed. “Homeboy likes the shotty,” Blaze said. He went and picked it up, then crossed the room and rested it on a desk. It was a short-barreled Saiga 12-gauge automatic shotgun. An impressive close-quarters weapon designed for leveling men in enclosed spaces. And if things went poorly, it was equally useful for getting out of the same spaces—three or four rounds fired into a wall and there would no longer be a wall, and escape could be made. Dwyer inspected the shotgun and saw it was in working order and that it was loaded with 00 buckshot.
    “I’ll have both,” Dwyer told them, putting the shotgun back on the desk.
    “Wasn’t gonna sell the Saiga,” Blaze said, “but a’ight. I’ll do both for twenny-fi’ hunned.” The price was too high by half, but Dwyer didn’t waste time.
    “Done,” he said. Then he pulled one of the packets of American cash off his abdomen. Proper tradecraft would have had him secreting the money in five hundred or thousand dollar increments all over his body. But he came in here recommended and hadn’t wanted to waste time. His mistake became clear the minute the two salesmen saw the five-thousand-dollar brick he had started peeling bills from.
    “You want something else?” Blaze asked. “Can’t let you be leaving with all that cash.”
    “No, just the CZ and the Saiga,” Dwyer said.
    “Go on, buy a Taurus.”
    “I don’t want a mingy Taurus.”
    “Well, likes I said, we can’t let you be leaving with all that cash.” Blaze’s voice had changed when he said the last. Dwyer felt it and had looked up from counting money in time to see the big fellow reaching for the Saiga on the desk. Dwyer bunched the cash in his left hand into a fist and swung a thousand-dollar hook that drilled the big man in the throat. The man’s face registered surprise, then crumpled into pain, and he went off his feet sideways. He landed, gurgling, on the floor. Dwyer lunged across the space between him and Blaze and grabbed the wiry youngman’s wrist, which had been diving for the heavy chrome auto at his waist. Dwyer yanked the wrist down and held it firmly in place against the kid’s body. The other hand caught him by the neck. He stared into Blaze’s eyes and let the kid feel his superior strength.
    “I was wondering whether you was gonna be twats, and now you’ve gone and done it.” For a moment the only sounds in the room were Dwyer and Blaze breathing through their noses, and the big fellow gasping wetly on the floor. “Now, do you scruts want
two grand
for the guns, or do you want to fucking die?”
    Moments later Dwyer stood at the trunk of his rented Lincoln Town Car with the .45 tucked in his waistband at his lower back, and put the shotgun, now wrapped in an old towel, in the spare tire well under a piece of carpet. He closed the trunk and saw Blaze and his friend framed in the doorway of the building he’d just left. They paused when they saw him there. Blaze raised his thumb and forefinger at Dwyer and mimed firing a single shot. Dwyer ignored the gesture, got in the car and on the road for Indianapolis.

13
    Behr’s bag clinked softly as he walked through the Caro offices. He sat at the desk and set five bottles of fine wine on the corner. Half the case, minus the one he’d drunk the night before. He figured that was fair, considering what he’d done to get it. The other half case was at home, lying sideways,