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

paying too much attention to the fastenings when he unzipped the bags. He tried to time his intervention to keep everyone’s attention on him. He spoke in the general direction of the room but the words were meant for DeVries. “You’re going to need a shitload of superhero anti-Kryptonite to bring you back to life after this.”

He put his hands on his hips, thumbs hooked into his belt. The kneeling man glanced at DeVries then turned to McNulty. McNulty shrugged. “Like Spock in that Star Trek movie.”

DeVries couldn’t resist showing his superior knowledge. “Star Trek isn’t superheroes.”

McNulty moved one hand around his back. “I had to explain that to Larry.”

All eyes were on McNulty. DeVries snorted a laugh. “Larry Unger? The porn king?”

McNulty’s hand was almost there. “Ex-porn king.”

DeVries let out a bored sigh. “This from an ex-cop from Yorkshire.”

McNulty’s fingers snaked around the pistol grip. “You’re never an ex-cop. And you’re always a Yorkshireman.”

He drew the gun from the back of his trousers to get everyone’s attention. It had the desired effect. Nobody was looking at Tilly. Neither gunman looked worried but it did focus their attention. Smoke Face looked at the gun and smiled. “You going to shoot me with a blank like before?”

He reached down and grasped the zippers of both bags. McNulty tried to give Tilly a calming nod and a wink. DeVries didn’t realize what the nod meant until it was too late. The second gunman glanced at the sports bags to see what ten million dollars looked like. Then the zippers rasped open and snapped the fuses.

There’s a mistaken belief that in moments of stress and immediate action, time slows down. That everything happens at once, but in slow motion, so the mind can recall every detail in its own compartment of time. That’s not true. What happens is the mind sharpens and pays more attention but time doesn’t get longer. Try counting thirty seconds on your watch. A lot can happen in thirty seconds.

What happened in the next thirty seconds was this:

The zippers opened the top of the sports bags. The special effects detonators sparked into life and the release of pressure triggered the jack-in-a-box spring that sent millions of dollars flying in the air. The phosphorous charge exploded in a display of sparkling light that makes movie explosions look more spectacular than the real thing, usually augmented by gallons of petrol and sacks of Fullers Earth powder. The phosphor burned bright and fierce and incinerated half the currency before dancing like flaming butterflies around the library.

The bang made everyone jump. Not the exploding money but the VFW gun that McNulty had borrowed from one of the veterans. Not firing blanks. Not aimed at center mass. He went for the next best target, lower middle where the Kevlar vest rode up when you crouched. Even if he missed, he was guaranteed to hit something, either the groin or the thigh or the lower body. Smoke Face was jerked back by the movie explosion and dropped to the floor by being shot in the leg. He went over backward into the blazing log fire.

Tilly understood what the nod meant and acted instinctively. She dived sideways out of the chair and away from the bags of burning money. The ornate backrest was wide and empty and barely covered the gunman standing behind it. The sparkling explosion snapped his head one way and the gunshot snapped it back to McNulty. He swung his own gun but the distraction had bought McNulty vital seconds. He fired three times through the back of the chair and knocked the gunman back against the wall. Kevlar vest or not, three bullets will knock the wind out of you and send you sprawling.

Tilly hit the floor rolling.

Harlan DeVries couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Then the patio doors burst open and two armed cops came in with guns raised. Jon Harris came through the office door and jerked DeVries’s arm up his back. He jabbed a knee into the back of the businessman’s leg and dropped him to the floor, then knelt on him.

Burning money floated in the air like the closing explosion in a Star Wars movie. The open bags fizzed with white light as ten million dollars burned fierce and hot. McNulty tossed the gun onto the chair and snatched a fire extinguisher from the wall. He pulled the pin and squeezed the trigger and the room disappeared in a cloud of smoke. The fire took some effort to put out but eventually the money stopped burning and the smoke drifted out through the patio doors.

Thirty seconds. A lot can happen.

Harris cuffed DeVries while the other cops secured Smoke Face and the second gunman. Smoke Face had more than smoke damage to think about this time. Tilly Carter got up off the floor and looked at the uncle she hadn’t known she had. Harris put a reassuring hand on her shoulder then looked at McNulty holding the fire extinguisher. “You sure you were a cop or a firefighter?”

IT’S A WRAP

“Nobody likes the Kung Fu Panda look.”

—Amy Moore

SIXTY-ONE

Titanic Productions wrapped Dead Naked two weeks after the movie set shooting and one week after Vince McNulty incinerated ten million dollars. Larry Unger was still angry with McNulty over that. “You had to burn it all?”

“The Monopoly money didn’t work last time.”

“But ten million. With half that we could have upgraded to a superhero movie.”

“I thought you wanted to keep it real.”

Larry huffed and blew out his cheeks. “Five million gets plenty of real.”

McNulty looked at his producer. “More real than all that sci-fi bullshit?”

Larry turned to McNulty and narrowed his eyes. “You actually said that to him? About the anti-Kryptonite thing?”

“I was trying to take his mind off the money.”

Larry snorted a laugh. “Yeah well, keep trying. Because it’s not working on me.”

The crew were setting up the final scene, a tracking shot through the middle of Waltham Common with Alfonse Bayard’s detective leaving City