The 13-Minute Murder Read online

My work was the culprit. My wife hated what I did. I’d come to hate it, too.

  “Anyone under thirty is a kid,” I said to Milt.

  By 10:05 a.m. we were established in our positions at the upper end of the quad. I could see Milt and he could see me. We’d given ourselves strict orders not to use the cell phones. Phone records can be searched. Checked. Studied. Conclusions drawn. You just don’t know what kind of paper trail a text message becomes, should the cops get hold of you. Or worse, should the Croatian Mafia get hold of you.

  “Is this chair taken?” I said to the girl next to me.

  “Uh…no,” said the girl, puzzled. She was wearing a giant, thick scarf, the kind that would discourage unwanted attention.

  She moved her bag. “Go for it,” she said.

  The patio had stayed dry under its awning. I sat down. I needed to look like I wasn’t standing around waiting for a homicide.

  At 10:08 a.m. I checked for Milt. But Milt was no longer there.

  He was hustling down the steps toward the middle of the quad. Worst-case scenario getting worse by the minute. There was Goran, and instead of being at the outer edges of the quad, he was walking right down the middle, which meant he couldn’t be more noticed. Yet before I could even begin to strategize a new plan, our frightfully obsolete original plan commenced on its own. Blam! Blam! Blam! The gentle acoustics of campus gunfire.

  Chapter 6

  The sound of bullets ricocheted off all corners of the courtyard—all—disorienting anyone trying to locate the shooter. Did Milt fire first? I dropped to the ground as two more shots pealed through the air. Crack! Crack!

  I looked up to see the chest of the first bodyguard explode forward. But he didn’t go down.

  On the far side, I could see Milt spin around to square up against the second bodyguard, just as the girl in the scarf spun around to look in the wrong direction. I got my handgun ready inside the front pouch of my hoodie. Two stray bullets tore into the glass next to us in the window of the café.

  “Get inside,” I told the girl in the scarf. “Stay low.”

  Operating on pure panic, she ducked inside the bistro. She didn’t take her latte, she didn’t take her laptop. And, most importantly, she didn’t take her phone.

  I still had my weapon somewhat hidden. Did the bodyguards spot me or were those bullets that passed me strays? Where was the kid? Where was Tweedledum? I could handle the onslaught of gunfire from the two bodyguards; what I couldn’t handle was the deluge of Cambridge police officers who’d be arriving here oh so soon. Within two minutes eight seconds, if our research held up.

  Do we abort?

  The goons had spotted Milt across the yard. But they hadn’t spotted me. Distraction might work in my favor. They were concentrating on dealing with him. They had no idea I existed.

  I grabbed the phone belonging to the scarf girl and started to rush through the scattered crowd, sowing the seeds of our exit plan. I told each student I passed that there was a lone shooter out on Oxford Street. I kept repeating the phrase. Lone shooter, Oxford Street. Moving from one spot to the next. Didn’t matter what they were actually seeing; they just needed a catchphrase. Crack crack crack crack. Bullets flew over my head as I journeyed from one huddled kid to the next, ducking into whatever makeshift foxhole I saw—a terrace chair, a planter, a bench, a trash can. I’d cower with him or her and bequeath unto them the mantra. Lone shooter, Oxford Street.

  The trail I’d left while making my way over to Milt, who was pinned down near a set of steps, would lead to a flurry of 911 calls. Then I made my own call.

  “Nine one one. What’s your emergency?”

  “I think they detonated a bomb at MIT,” I said into the phone. “I can see it from my balcony window. There’s smoke. This is an attack. This is—”

  Then I threw the phone in the wet gutter.

  Then I found the next foxhole. A trash can in front of a trembling engineering student. I crouched with him and shared that people had seen three guys shove a girl into a white van, with the license plate number “something something KHR-11.”

  “Something something KHR-11,” he parroted back.

  “Can you call it in? My battery’s—” I completed my sentence with a shrug.

  He understood. He began to call it in.

  “You saw ’em, right?” I said. “Unreal, man.”

  Then I leapt up and ran around the corner, spotted Tweedledee, and let four rounds of my five-round .38 rip through the atmosphere.

  Every kid saw me do it.

  “Cambridge PD,” I yelled to them. “Get down.”

  The kids got down. I ran to the next post and shed my hoodie. Layer one—shed. Crimson to blue. I went from a Harvard tourist to a Patriots fan. Scrambled eggs.

  Milt put his own 911 call in, reporting that two foreigners were on the roof of a tall building shooting at cars and pedestrians.

  All designed to tax the system. Resources would be spread out in every direction. Eventually the main catastrophe—our catastrophe—would get lost in the shuffle. Eventually we’d have our escape route smoothly paved.

  But then the second bodyguard spotted me. He seemed to recognize my unique fixation on Goran. Like any skilled protector, he foresaw the threat.

  And like any skilled assassin, I foresaw him foreseeing my threat. I fired two shots right at him.

  He fired back at me. And then another shooter joined the game.

  Goran.

  And Goran shot well.

  Chapter 7

  Milt and I both use revolvers. Revolvers don’t leave much evidence behind because the shells remain in the chamber. It’s a little unorthodox in today’s game of maximizing volume and sheen, but I’ve been in the trade for eleven years, and aside from that one time in Sarasota, I’m proud to report I’ve never been questioned by the police.

  Goran’s bodyguard turned around and fired seven of his non-revolver bullets at me.

  And missed.

  Tsk, tsk. You have a Springfield Armory XD-S 9mm with flush-fitting mag. Capacity seven, my friend. Now you’re out. The other guard got into a fistfight with Milt, which is worrisome on Milt’s behalf. If you saw Milt try to jog on a treadmill, or try to hurry to beat a yellow light, or just try to bend over and pick up a nickel, you’d know that he is a poorly constructed human being.

  He could get exhausted just putting on a shirt. And now he was tangled up with the taller, more muscular of the two enemies. Both he and Milt still had possession of their firearms, but both managed to grip each other’s grip.

  The guard mounted Milt and was about to force his trembling muzzle into Milt’s rib cage. There were way too many pedestrians around for me to continue in stealth. I had no choice—I stood up, marched directly across the courtyard through the rain, and buried four bullets into Milt’s enemy.

  So now everyone around me was aware that I was a participant in the mayhem. Possible male Caucasian. Early forties. I could hear the APB in my head. Dressed in blue. Carrying a Smith & Wesson 686 for some reason. Shots fired. I had to assume at least half of these kids were recording video.

  Milt’s adversary was getting up. I emptied my last shot into him. The loud ricocheting of bullets had been sending everyone lower and lower to the ground, facedown onto the concrete. Good instinct. Does modern society simply know to get low when they hear gunfire?

  Goran pushed himself up and, in an instant, sprinted toward the Humanities building. He was going toward the crowd, ultimately trying to head deeper into the heart of campus. This would be troublesome.

  “Stay down!” I yelled for the benefit of bystanders.

  By now the melee had lured two different helicopters. One: the news. Two: the law. They were swirling in the distance, in the wrong area, thanks to false 911s, but they wouldn’t swirl stupidly for long.

  Milt started firing at Goran, which was at the crowd.

  “Hold fire!” I yelled to Milt.

  Milt fired again. Two more shots that didn’t find their tar
get.

  “We’re not flushing toward the crowd,” I said to him.

  “We gotta contain!” he argued back. He was reloading.

  “Not the crowd!” I yelled.

  I didn’t have a proper rebuttal. He was right. Forcing the enemies to converge on the crowd left us with the higher ground, left us with better cover from the concrete planters, and left them with no way to escape. But there was a throng of students down there.

  “Don’t lose focus,” Milt warned from across the atrium.

  Goran had already penetrated through the clumps of students—his human shield—and fled past the one building that leads to central campus. I immediately went after him, full speed.

  “Help me!” shrieked Goran. “Help!” A useful thing to say: it cast me as the villain and himself as the hero.

  But we were far past the crowd now, running alone. I was forcing him to arc around in one giant circle, back toward the bistro. I could’ve pulled the trigger on him, but didn’t.

  I wasn’t sure why, but I couldn’t. Instead, I outpaced him on the ground and finally cornered him behind a series of ventilator units, where he’d ducked down. He had his gun, but I had his flank.

  I heard huffing behind me—Milt was finally catching up to the mayhem, rounding the corner.

  But our satisfaction was short-lived. Goran was waiting for us. Deliberately. He was standing still, facing me directly. Holding the girl in the scarf, in front of himself. With his gun pointed at her throat.

  Chapter 8

  My antagonist had the blunt muzzle of his Taurus PT 111 pressed deep into his victim’s esophagus. Deep enough that she struggled just to breathe. I’m sure her adrenaline blunted the pain, but still, it had to hurt.

  “Drop your gun,” Goran yelled.

  How he knew that this kind of move would work on a good citizen like me I know not. Because in my line of work, chivalry is beyond dead. Milt, for instance, already had his gun pointed at both of them, absolutely unfazed by the collateral cost.

  Goran, smart chap—a credit to Harvard—fixated on me. Wisely, he knew I was in charge. “I will kill this girl,” he said to me. “I will.”

  His nerves must’ve been blitzing. He was pressing that gun way too hard into her voice box.

  “Do it! Shoot her!” yelled Milt. “Then I get to shoot you. Legally. With no fear of hitting an innocent bystander.”

  “The hell’s wrong with you?” I whispered to him.

  Milt was already fully engaged. “Don’t wait!” he yelled.

  The girl screamed, but both Milt and Goran were hell-bent on global destruction.

  “I swear I will,” said Goran.

  “Stop swearing and do it!” yelled Milt.

  I had to do something. I stood up straight, raising my arms and hands. The gesture of surrender. “Goran? You win, okay?” And I started to walk toward him.

  “Whoa,” said Milt. “No, no, no.”

  I wasn’t listening. “You got the upper hand,” I said to Goran. I lowered my gun. “I’m releasing my weapon…as…you’re able to see…but I’m only doing it on the condition that you let me walk over and get the girl.” I was already walking over. It wasn’t a negotiation. “Then you can go free.”

  “Tell your fat monkey to drop his gun, too,” said Goran.

  “I’m gonna count to five, you dick!” yelled Milt. “If you ain’t facing the concrete, I’m firing away. Girl or not.”

  “I will kill her!” shouted Goran.

  “Good!” yelled Milt. “Five!”

  I was only twenty feet away. I was within striking distance. The average reaction time for a high-stressed individual in terms of the kinesiological timing of motor neurons is point eight seconds. I can cover roughly ten feet in that amount of time. I’d have ten left to go.

  “Please,” begged the girl. “Please…just let me go.”

  Her words tore at me. Bottom line, three-hundred-thousand-dollar tuition aside, we were all just human beings that wanted to survive through Tuesday.

  “Four!” yelled Milt.

  “Goran Mesic,” I said loudly. “I need to tell you something.”

  “Go to hell,” he replied.

  “It’s about your family.”

  “My gun’s in her mouth and if—”

  “It’s about your father.”

  He stopped. I’d gotten his attention.

  “Three,” said Milt.

  I talked quickly and clearly for this next part. This was all I had left. “We were assigned to kill you, but we got a change of instructions just one hour ago.” Here came the lie. “Your father and I were friends a long time ago. We worked in the smuggling game.” Like all good lies, this one was based in truth.

  “Don’t…” he began. “The…Don’t get any closer.”

  “Two!” yelled Milt.

  “Milt!” I had to scold him without losing momentum with Goran. “Your father made an enemy of one of my associates. This was a disagreement we had about the IRA. But it was settled one hour—one hour—ago. And now we’re all friends again.”

  I turned around to face Milt. I made sure my body was blocking Milt’s aim.

  “Friends,” I said, while looking at Milt.

  It was a show of submission to Goran. I had my back to him now. He’d see this as a sign of sincerity, a show of support for Rachel. Rachel was the name I’d given the girl in my mind—I needed to do that.

  Otherwise, I’d lose a sense of where the fiction ends and reality begins: Rachel is a hopeful sophomore at Harvard who might be missing a larynx soon. Goran is the guy who started to lower his weapon. I could finally end this peacefully. I might even rope the kid up and put him in a warehouse somewhere and somehow earn half of my half of a hundred and fifty grand without going the distance.

  “Okay,” I said to Goran, seeing him cooperate. “Thanks for being—”

  Blam blam blam!

  Three shots. Milt had his orders. He was a good shooter. He had shot both of them.

  Chapter 9

  Assassination is not the rosy little business everyone thinks it is. Dead kids in an alley shall serve as Exhibit A. We hustled to the parking lot at the far end of JFK Street. We needed a getaway car.

  “Time?” I asked Milt.

  The smart move was to steal a vehicle. We were about to steal three.

  He checked his watch. “Four minutes forty-one.”

  “That’s it? That’s miraculous.” We were so much faster than I had thought. That made the next steps far more comforting. “We start with a sports car, then we go sedan, then sedan.”

  We were restating our plan again. The first car would be the nimble one. The second car would be the one that blends in. The third would be the one that survives inspection. Each leg of the race would require a different specialty. Yet obviously, all three cars should do all three things.

  Right then we primarily needed speed.

  “We wipe all prints,” replied Milt. His turn to recite the plan. “We check under the seats to make sure we didn’t drop anything. We ditch out of sight from helicopters.”

  Ideally, you also scrape your gun barrels with a chisel and go to a gun range for an hour. This lets you pass a possible paraffin test, and restructures the forensics of your gun’s bullets. The day before we’d carefully surveyed the array of potential getaway vehicles and singled out a candidate. A little Ford Festiva. The idea was to pick something that wasn’t obvious, something that wouldn’t be noticed in the Boston traffic lanes.

  Milt pulled a Slim Jim from his coat and used it to bypass the passenger door lock, as I watched for anybody loitering on our level of the garage. Once the lock clicked, we jumped in the car and squealed out of the parking space. We were both in our XXL Patriots hoodies, which came off as soon as we were on the turnpike. Next they were sailing out the window to become road garbage.

  “Can’t keep that in the car,” I said to Milt. I was looking at a stolen phone he had in his lap.

  “Nobody’s gonna track
it in the middle of a circus.”

  “Toss it.”

  But he was already dialing. “Hi,” he said to whoever was answering the 911 line. “Our emergency is we’re chasing after an Asian guy on a motorcycle who shot two kids. He’s heading south on Quimby Avenue and he’s wear—”

  I yanked the phone out of his hand and tossed it out the window.

  “That’s how you get someone killed!” I yelled.

  “Better him than us.”

  I cranked a hard left and accelerated past the whizzing bushes onto a dinky little side street. Our nondescript late-model navy-blue Festiva swerved onto the main road.

  “Don’t signal lane changes,” said Milt. “You keep signaling and it keeps drawing attention from cops miles behind us.”

  You fucking shot some kids, I growled at him in my head.

  That’s what I said to him in the uncut version of my autobiography. “You’re staying sharp,” I told him. “I appreciate that. You were cool under pressure.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And you were able to keep us under six minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  That was the simple exchange we had.

  Then, after a few moments, he added a small clarification. “Sorta.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Sorta. My stopwatch says four minutes forty-one seconds, but I’m not sure exactly when I hit Start.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “We’re good, though. We’re on our way.”

  “How much time elapsed, Milt?”

  “We’re on our way. I don’t know.”

  “Since shot number one. What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “That’s the thing,” he began. “The first gunshot came from them. And I had to duck for cover, so I may not have pressed the stopwatch button right away.”

  “When did you fucking press it?” I asked. This was bad.

  “I don’t know. Maybe after we killed Goran. As planned.”

  “After we…? As…?” I paused. “That was three minutes later!”

  “We don’t know that.”