Tracking Shot by Colin Campbell (i can read book club .txt) 📗

The first gunman scanned the scene. The second heard the sirens and knew the police would be here any minute. He watched McNulty steal the money they had worked so hard to set up. The decoys and the shootings and the fall guys. All for nothing. The sirens grew louder. The parade continued along Main Street. Both men shuffled backward away from the edge. A school marching band came into view across the common on Main Street, followed by a float dressed up in red, white and blue. The crowd ignored the pop and crackle of gunfire that sounded like fireworks. The first gunman nodded. Distraction. The second took out his phone, selected a number from the menu and pressed the call button.

Solomon got clear just in time. Mickey Mouse erupted in a ball of flame and shrapnel that tore the head apart and sent both ears skimming across the showground. The explosion took down the boundary fence and the back of the school kitchen. The fire lit a snake of fuses that had been carefully laid out so they wouldn’t ignite until it was their turn. They were all lit now, fizzing along in the afternoon sun. The exploding carnival float had barely subsided before the July Fourth Fireworks started early.

Distraction. Angles. Movie trickery. McNulty thought about John Wayne throwing the punch that missed as the fireworks shot into the sky and became a bigger threat than the pop and crackle behind Waltham Common that may or may not have been gunfire. He dropped the sports bags in the trunk of the production manager’s car and nodded at the stuntmen and security guards. There would be time to thank the VFW later. There was going to be a lot of explaining to do, but he thought he could make a good case, providing he didn’t lose the million dollars. He pulled out of the parking lot and turned left, feeling more like a cop than he had in years. He reined in that thought. The last time he’d felt like that things hadn’t turned out so good.

FIFTY-ONE

McNulty headed south with a million dollars in the trunk. It never even occurred to him that with a million dollars he could just keep on driving and put his past in the rearview. His troubled youth, Crag View Children’s Home, the sister he hadn’t really gotten to know yet. The family he’d never had. What he did instead was take the negatives and turn them into a positive. He drove straight to his sister’s house in Newtonville.

The sun had moved west but still blazed from a cloudless sky by the time he came around the back of Newton North High School. It was a little lower and a little softer and the trees cast shadows across the road as he drove past the baseball diamond and the running track. The school tennis courts were hidden behind a wooded copse but Susan’s house was clear and obvious when he pulled into Kirkstall Road. He parked in the driveway beneath the basketball hoop, turned the engine off, and sat for a moment. The gunshots had stopped ringing in his ears a half-mile back, but the smell was still thick in his nose. Back in England he’d been a uniformed patrol officer and an undercover detective but he’d never been an armed-response officer. He hadn’t wanted the responsibility of having to shoot someone. He looked at his hands. They were still trembling. Even firing blanks amid the carnage of the fake robbery had left him feeling sick and a little shaky.

He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. His hands became steadier. After a few minutes he got out of the car and opened the trunk. The sports bags took up most of the space. He reached in and unzipped them both, then stood back in awe. He’d never seen so much money. The banknotes were neatly fastened in paper wraps that looked like narrow bricks but it still looked like a lot of money. He knew that in the grand scheme of things, compared with the budget of even a Titanic Productions movie, it was a drop in the bucket, but to the average working man, a million dollars would be life-changing. He would never have to work again.

McNulty stared at the jumbled mess of banknotes and let out a sigh. As of this moment he was technically an armed robber, even though his gun fired blanks and the robbery was to protect the money. He had waved a gun in the security guard’s face and told him to open the truck. That was armed robbery. It was time to tell the police before Jon Harris had even more reason to not believe him.

He took his phone out and was looking for the detective’s number when it began to ring. The display flashed, unknown number. He tried to think who he’d given his number to, then realized it was on the Titanic Productions website. There was no point being technical adviser and police liaison if people couldn’t get in touch to liaise. It was listed right there along with the location manager and the press officer. The press officer was simply whoever was in the office at the time. The technical adviser was the one who taught people how to act like a cop—the one who had broken into Randy Severino’s motel room and put out the story that he had CCTV footage of the movie-set shooting.

McNulty touched accept, but didn’t speak. There was a pause then a cold hard voice whispered in his ear, “Did you really think you were going to steal my money?”

McNulty stood over the million-dollar bag, then slammed the trunk shut. He pressed a button on the phone, turned his back on the car and leaned against the trunk. He kept his tone light,