The I-10 Open Air Market hajji who’d sold them the weapons kept no records.
“We’ll all be in our own homes watching the replay on CNN before the cops and Jap security guys pull their thumbs out of their asses,” said Coyne.
“What if some of us get wounded or killed?” asked Val. “Then it’s just a matter of time before the cops and FBI find the names of the rest of us in the flashgang.”
Coyne had scowled furiously at Val. “Nobody’s gonna get wounded or killed, ty mudak.”
Val’s phone later told him that the Russian meant, roughly, “you asshole.”
The leering face of Vladimir Putin also scowled at Val but seemed to be speaking to Coyne. “Eto trus, yavlyaet—sya slabym zvenom v tsepochke, malen kii Koi n. Vy dolzhny ubit yego.”
Val hadn’t used his phone to translate that. He got the general idea and knew that the Putin T-shirt would love to see him dead.
Coyne had come over and put his arm around Val, gesturing the others closer until it had turned into a goddamned group hug. “Nobody’s gonna get wounded or dead, Val my droogy pal,” Coyne said confidently. “This is a lark. We’re gonna flash on this for the rest of our lives.”
“As long as the rest of our lives isn’t counted in minutes,” muttered Val.
Coyne had laughed and punched Val in the upper arm. “No guts, no glory. You wanna be like the rest of the walking dead up there in the world?”
“No,” said Val after a few seconds of thought. “I don’t.”
VAL SPENT THE WEEK trying to figure out what to do. He was neither an idiot—as Dinjin, Toohey, Cruncher, Sully, Monk, and Gene D. increasingly seemed to be—or crazy as a shithouse rat, which he was all but sure Billy Coyne was. Shooting at a Nipponese Federal Advisor these days was as serious (and probably more serious) than shooting at the president of the United States. The FBI and Homeland Security would become involved immediately and Val had no doubt that the nine Advisors’ security people had their own investigative resources around the whole country.
Even the hardcores like Aryan Brotherhood and al Qaeda–America knew better than to try to kill a Japanese Advisor.
Val knew that something was behind Coyne’s certainty—nuts or not—and he poked around on the Internet with his phone computer for three days before he found it on a city-Advisor liaison bulletin board site: Ms. Galina Kschessinska—formerly Mrs. Galina Coyne, according to archived bulletins going back six years—a much-lauded executive assistant in charge of liaison between the City of Los Angeles Transportation Department and the office of Federal Advisor Daichi Omura for the past nine years, was taking early retirement so that she could return to Moscow to be with her extended family. Friday, September 17, was her last day and she planned to leave for Moscow on Saturday the eighteenth. Ms. Kschessinska would be taking her sixteen-year-old son with her. Plans for a return to the U.S. were indefinite. “I just want to see my family—get reacquainted,” Ms. Kschessinska told the Transportation Department’s bulletin reporter, “and then, of course, we’ll be coming back so my son can fulfill his Selective Service obligation.”
Val almost giggled as he read this. Billy Coyne was as crazy as a shithouse rat, all right, but not quite as self-destructive-crazy as Val had thought. Mommy and little Billy wouldn’t be coming back from Russia.
Billy’s mother must have tried to buy her second son’s way out of the draft the way she’d bought his older brother, Brad’s, freedom, but evidently that hadn’t worked this time. Coyne had bragged to Val many a time that Brad was already in Russia and rising quickly in the mafia there. And neither Coyne nor his mother had any intention of Billy getting drafted into the United States Army and dying fighting for India or Japan in rural China.
So old Coyne had a built-in, mommy-driven getaway waiting the morning after his gang’s kamikaze attack on Advisor Omura. Val wondered if Coyne would even show up at the Friday-evening assassination attempt.
He thought he probably would. As much fun as sending his seven compadres off to almost certain death—or at least future captivity—might seem to shithouse rat Billy the C, taking part in it and then getting away scot-free (Russia had no extradition treaty with the United States) must appeal to him more. Coyne was a sociopath and a flash addict and Val thought that the allure of Billy the C’s flashing on Omura’s murder—probably as incentive to even bigger and better escapades in Mother Russia—must be compelling.
So Coyne will probably be there Friday night, thought Val. But will I?
For four days of that workweek leading up to what he was already thinking of as the Friday Night Massacre, But will I? was the operative question for Val.
That had been his central question, in a slightly different form, for some months now. Val Bottom… or Val Fox, as he preferredto be known in his run-down, chaotic Los Angeles high school… had been depressed enough to consider suicide.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
Except that some late literary guy named Harold Bloom, whom Val had looked up on his own due to his interest in Hamlet, said that the “To be or not to be…” soliloquy wasn’t debating suicide after all. That fact would be a big surprise to Mr. Herrendet, his junior English teacher, who taught Hamlet but obviously had never really read it.
Up to now, Val’s thoughts of self-destruction had been fairly unserious because all the means to it available to him—jumping off high places, hanging, stealing enough sleeping pills to do it, stealing a car or motorcycle and putting it into an overpass column at ninety miles per hour—had been so off-putting that his consciousness shied away from any planning involving such solutions to his melancholy.
But now he had the 9mm Beretta.
Coyne had given him the gun on Monday, after the leader had purchased his own OAO Izhmash flechette-spewer at the midnight market. It was the kind of modern automatic weapon that the grinning hajjis called a synagogue sweeper, and Coyne was delighted with it despite the fact that being caught with it meant a no-plea-bargain minimum hard eight years in Dodger Stadium.
That night Val had downloaded and printed out a step-by-step “How to Love and Care for Your 9mm Beretta” and had purchased the proper oil, found the correct sort of clean rags and cleaning rods, and spent his free time cleaning, inspecting, and learning about the semiautomatic. He’d removed the magazine, checked to make sure there was no round in the chamber, and set the muzzle against his forehead.
Another online piece of advice (he did not download this one), titled “Suicide Is Your Unalienable Right: How to Do It,” told Val that even a large-caliber bullet like a 9mm was not always guaranteed to penetrate the thick bone of the skull. Even the slightest deflection, said the helpful article, turned a suicide bullet into a ticket for years of being a drooling vegetable.
The only certainty, went the online advice, was to set the pistol’s muzzle against the soft palate in the roof of your mouth. That was guaranteed to put a bullet into your brain, ending all pain and doubt.
Val tried it but the heavy taste of gun oil and the bulk of the blocky 9mm pistol’s squarish barrel filling his mouth made him retch until he vomited. The act also felt faggy as hell.
What other options?
Suicide by cop, of course. Just get in front of the mob of demented children at the storm sewer opening on Friday night and take a few rounds for the flashgang.
But would that guarantee a quick and relatively painful death? Probably, but not definitely.
When he was eight or nine, Val had watched an old movie from the last century called The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid with the Old Man, who loved old cowboy movies. In the movie, a really slimy Jesse James and his brother Frank, joined by a bunch of other brother-outlaws, including Cole Younger and his brother, tried to knock over an “easy bank” in Northfield, Minnesota. Evidently Northfield didn’t like having its easy bank robbed since—in the movie, at least—every man, boy, and dog in the little town grabbed a shotgun or rifle and shot the outlaws to bits.
Col
e Younger, already hit five times in Northfield, was shot several more times during a gunfight in a swamp, including in the hand, the chest, and the head. He survived to be captured and tried and sent off to the Minnesota State Penitentiary at Stillwater, but he’d suffered eleven serious gunshot wounds during the process.
Val, who’d been interested enough to find some library books on the subject, remembered that the total take from Northfield’s bank was $26.70.
Of course, those were old dollars and probably worth something, but even so…
Val tried to imagine Advisor Omura’s security guys shooting him eight, nine, eleven times and him still surviving. Being shot must hurt like hell. Cole Younger had been tossed into the back of a wagon along with his more severely wounded pals and, even though he was bleeding almost to death from his eleven wounds, had joked with his captors, and when they got to the town of Madelia, Cole managed to stand up, take off his muddy and bloody hat, and bow to some ladies passing by.
Learning this kind of coolshit stuff about the world and history was the reason that Val kept reading.
But could he be as coolshit gutsy as Cole Younger with eleven bullet holes in him? Val doubted it. He wanted to blubber like a girl when Leonard brought him to the black-market dentist in the basement tenement near Echo Park. How would he deal with a piece of lead traveling faster than the speed of sound slamming into his body, tearing up internal organs and arteries?
What other ways out were there?
He could open up on Coyne and the others before they assassinated Omura. Would that make him a hero to the city? Would the Advisor and mayor pardon him? Would he get a parade?
But killing all seven of the flashgang punks without getting shot himself seemed like a long shot to Val, even if he could bring himself to do it. He’d try for Coyne first, but all of those acned geeks were armed now. Val tried to imagine getting hit by a cloud of flechettes from Billy’s OAO Izhmash. Those things were three inches long and barbed. Jesus. The thought made Val want to throw up again.
Also, Val didn’t want to be pardoned. He definitely didn’t want to be a hero. He’d rather go the soft palate route than be the centerpiece in a parade.
What did he want?
To die rather than to keep on living in this fucked-up city and world… maybe. Probably.
The only thing that appealed to Val more than dying right now was somehow getting back to Denver and shooting the Old Man. That bastard had abandoned him after Val’s mother died—had abandoned him and forgotten about him, Val knew this for a certainty—and almost nothing would be sweeter than seeing Nick Bottom’s face in the few seconds before Val pulled the trigger of his Beretta.
And then, on Thursday—right when Val was sure that the only choice he really had was to shoot himself in the head later that night, just hoping that his skull wasn’t thick enough to deflect the slug—dear old Leonard had changed everything by telling him about the truck ride to Denver that his grandpa’s rich old spanic friend had arranged for them.
He’d almost broken down in tears right then but was glad he didn’t. Leonard would never have understood such tears of gratitude not only because he wouldn’t have to die that night, but that he’d get to see and kill his father.
Coyne had his magical getaway to Russia with his old lady the morning after the assassination of Omura. Now Val Fox had something coolshit better—his own midnight getaway with black-market truckers.
But what about the plan to kill Omura? Now Val could just shuck it off, not show up at the rendezvous Friday evening, stay out of sight until Coyne had to go on without him.
Or he could go watch—it would be something to flash on for years, no matter how it turned out—and never have to fire a shot himself. Or to get shot himself.
Val went to sleep smiling that Thursday night, but not before he used a twenty-minute vial of flashback.
HE IS FOUR YEARS old. Today is Val’s birthday and he’s four years old now. He can imagine how the four candles on the angel food cake with chocolate frosting will look because now he can count to four. He is four years old and his mommy is still alive and he doesn’t hate his daddy and his daddy doesn’t hate him and it’s his birthday.
Mommy and Val and Val’s four-year-old best friend Samuel from two houses down the street and Samuel’s grandmother—his playmate lives with only his grandmother for some reason—are all in the kitchen of the house where, less than seven years later, people in black will come to drink coffee and eat cake and other food after his mother’s funeral. But the now-Val shuts that memory of the then-future out of his mind as he surrenders himself to the flashback moment—slowly, deliberately, deliciously—as if lowering himself into a bathtub filled with very, very hot water.
Val is in the tall wooden chair that his mommy bought at the unpainted furniture place and decorated with painted flowers and animals just for him after he’d outgrown his high chair. Even though he’s a grown-up four today, he loves the tall chair that allows him to look across the table almost eye to eye with his daddy.
When his daddy is there. Which he’s not for this birthday dinner. Not yet.
He’d heard his mommy on the phone earlier: “But you promised, Nick. No, we can’t delay it any longer… Val’s sleepy after his long day and Samuel will have to go home soon. Yes, you’d better try. He’s depending on you today and so am I.”
She is smiling when she comes back to the kitchen table, but Val feels his four-year-old self sense the tension in his mother. Her smile is too wide, her eyes a little red.
“Why don’t you open a couple of your presents while we wait for Daddy?” his mother says.
“Oh, what a good idea!” says Samuel’s grandmother. It’s strange to see an old woman clap her hands in excitement as if she were a little girl.
Val watches his stubby fingers open his wrapped presents. A toy boat from Samuel, although his playmate is as surprised as Val at what was in the wrapped package. A pop-up picture book of skyscrapers from Samuel’s mother. Little Val can’t read most of the words in the book but sixteen-year-old Val peering out of Little Val’s eyes can.
“Let’s have your cake now and open presents from Mommy and Daddy after you blow out your candles,” says his mommy.
Val’s and Samuel’s eyes grow wide after Samuel’s grandmother turns out the kitchen lights. There’s enough September evening light coming through the mostly closed blinds to keep it from being totally scary, but Val feels his younger self’s heart pounding with excitement and anticipation.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…” His mommy and Samuel’s grandmother are both singing. The candlelight is magical.
Val blows out the candles, getting some help from his mommy on the last one, and he points to each candle as he counts. “One… two… three… FOUR!”
Everyone applauds. His mommy turns the lights back on and there standing in the kitchen in his gray suit and red tie is Daddy.
Val raises his arms and his daddy sweeps him up into the air. “Happy birthday, big guy,” Daddy says and hands him a clumsily wrapped package. Whatever’s inside is soft. “Go ahead, open it,” says his daddy.
It’s a baseball mitt. Kid-size but real. Val tugs it on his left hand, his daddy helping him get it right, and then buries his face in the cupped and oiled palm of the mitt, smelling the leather.
His mommy hugs him and Daddy at the same time while his daddy is still holding him high against his chest and for a moment Val is almost squashed as everyone hugs everyone, but he keeps the sweet-smelling leather glove over his face—because for some reason he doesn’t understand he’s crying like a little baby—and Samuel is shouting something and…
VAL CAME UP OUT of the twenty-minute flash to the sound of sirens, helicopters, and gunshots somewhere in the neighborhood. The air coming in through his bedroom screen smelled of garbage.
You are such a total pussy, he told himself. Sixteen years old and flashing on crap like this. You are a total pussy.
 
; Still, he wished he’d used a thirty-minute vial.
Val rolled over in bed and reached behind his old dresser to the hiding place behind the loose board in the wainscoting.
He removed the two items there and rolled onto his back.
The leather mitt—darker and tattered, the leather laces replaced and rewoven a dozen times and the webbing torn—smelled almost the same. The leather had a deeper, more knowledgeable smell now. He held the glove, too small to get his hand fully into, over his face.
Total pussy, he told himself. This was one of the reasons he kept his bedroom door locked. And, truth be told, he felt the same guilt with these two talismans as he did when he downloaded porn from a stroke site. But different… different.
He set the old mitt next to him on the pillow.
The other object was an old blue phone. His mother’s. He’d taken it and hidden it away the day after her funeral and although his old man had eventually gotten around to searching for the thing, he hadn’t searched very hard.
The phone was useless as a phone since its phone and access functions had been cancelled by the Old Man and shut off by Verizon shortly after his mother’s death. But there were invaluable things still on it.
Val tapped an earbud into his right ear and thumbed the controls. His mother had used the voice-memo function for three years before the accident that killed her and he knew his favorite dates by heart. One of them from September six years ago was a list of possible gifts for him… for Val’s tenth birthday. There were similar notes from that last Christmas just two weeks before the accident.