Chapter 23
*~* Whack *~*
Having my door burst open without hearing a knock first is something I am not used to, don’t expect, and certainly don’t tolerate.
Fury slams his palms down on my desk and starts shouting in my face, something about my father, or his father, somebody’s father, anyway.
Well, my father’s dead, so is Fury’s if memory serves me, so I sit back and wait for him to run out of steam.
After two minutes he stops ranting and grabs a breath. Before he can start again, I put my finger to his lips and point behind him. When he looks around, he sees Cannon, Breaker, and Bandit all looking at him like he’s some kind of alien being from another world.
“Get out… Knock… Wait to be told to enter.”
“Ah, yes, sorry, Pres.” Fury walks out, mumbling about this father thing and closes the door behind him.
I can almost hear him take a deep breath before he knocks.
I leave him a minute, and just as I’m about to shout enter, he knocks a second time and a little louder.
Cannon growls and stalks to the door, ripping it open and growling at Fury, “Knock and fucking wait. Not knock, knock.”
Bandit shouts, “Who’s there?” and chuckles to himself. If we had any doubt that he’s been suffering of late, that would confirm it. I see Cannon’s shoulders tighten, and I almost laugh out loud as I imagine his teeth grinding.
“Let him in, Cannon. We were done with Bandit for now.” Cannon takes Bandit from the office back to his room I presume, and Breaker goes with him.
“Alright, you obviously required my undivided attention and now, for all the wrong reasons I might add, you have it. We’ll discuss how you go about getting my attention the correct way, soon.” My eyes burn into Fury’s, and he must feel a little uncomfortable, to say the least.
“It’s my father.”
“Fury, is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“It’s my father, Pres. The one who’s trying to kill Jamie. It's my father.” I’m sure at this point, he doesn’t think I’m listening or paying attention, but I’m baffled by how he thinks a dead man is hunting a live person.
“As if I don’t have enough nonsense to cope with. Bandit is fixated on saving Doc, and now you think a ghost is trying to kill her. What the fuck, Fury?”
“What has Ghost got to do with it? You think he’s spirited her away to kill her?” Fury is half out of his chair before I make the connection between my ghost and his Ghost.
“SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!” You couldn’t write this as a fucking comedy sketch for the TV. “Slowly and calmly, whose father is trying to kill the Doc? One-word answers only!”
“Mine.”
“I thought your father was dead?”
“Yes.”
“So, if he’s dead, how can he be trying to kill your woman?”
“No.”
“You’re making no sense again, Fury, and I’m going to lose my shit in the next few seconds.”
“You said one-word answers, Pres.”
“Oh, my Lord, give me strength to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune!”
“Pres, are you praying?” Fury asks me curiously.
“Sort of. It’s Shakespeare from when I was at college. Get out, close the door, and count to ten. Knock and wait. We’ll try this from the start, and this time we’ll do it calmly and slowly so we both understand what the fuck is going on here. Now, get out.”
Taking several deep breaths, I try to calm my beating heart and lower my blood pressure.
If he comes in here babbling about ghosts, spirits, or dead people in general, I’ll need a shovel and a pack of rare flower seeds.
I read somewhere that if you want to hide a body, you bury it deep and then plant flowers and shrubs that are rare or endangered over the grave.
It deters people from digging there, or they need special permission.
Sounded good at the time and even better right now.
Or there is always the pet crem for speed and convenience.
The expected knock sounds, and I calmly tell him to enter. He walks over to my desk and waits for me to tell him to be seated. “What can I do for you, Fury?”
“I know who is trying to kill Jamie, Pres.”
“Okay. Who is it?” I can’t help but hold my breath as I wait for the answer.
“It’s my father, Pres.”
“I thought you told me he was dead?”
“I did, Pres.”
“Then how is he trying to kill the Doc?”
“He’s not dead, Pres.”
Taking a deep breath, I try to contain the frustration that is building within me. “How is he not dead after all these years, Fury?”
“No one told me he was dead, Pres. I just assumed he was through all the booze that he drank. I never heard from him or saw him, so I thought he’d died.”
“How do you know that he is alive now?”
“Shawn has been digging to find out anything about Jamie’s assassin. He’s found out it’s my father.” Fury is making a little more sense, especially now that I know we’re not dealing with another delusional soul like Bandit.
“Okay. Your father wants her dead, but why?”
“Well, Pres, it seems that he blames me for all the shit things that have happened in his life and wants me to suffer.”
“Do we know where he’s been all these years?”
“At some refuge or something in the mountains learning to be some type of Rambo, apparently.”
“Oh great. We are dealing with a complete psycho who has been training in the woods for years to complete a do or die mission.” I can’t see how this might get any worse…
“I have a plan, though, Pres. We kill Jamie before he does!” And yet there it is, it just got worse.
“How does we kill Jamie before he does, make this a better solution, Fury?”
“Well, we don’t really kill her.”
“Oh, well, that makes perfect sense if we don’t really kill her to kill her before he kills her.”
“Right, Pres. We kill someone who only looks like her.” Fury beams at me.
“Let me see if I have this straight in my head. We kill an innocent person who looks like Jamie, so that your father thinks the real Jamie is dead, before he can kill her? Am I right?”
“Yes, Pres. Its genius isn’t it. Pattie would be perfect for it, too. Then he’ll only have me left to kill, and we can make plans for that.”
“Brilliant. You’ve even thought of someone for the job. Then we can kill another innocent person who looks like you, so he thinks you’re dead, before your father kills you?” My mind is reeling from the stupidity of this conversation.
“Oh, no. I was thinking more along the lines of getting him out in the open and just killing him, this time, Pres.”
“Well, I suppose killing only one innocent isn’t so bad then, and is Pattie happy with this plan?” I think someone is putting something in the club meals or water supply or something.
“Don’t be silly, Pres. I haven’t asked her yet.”
“Silly? Me? Fucking silly? This whole thing has been silly since you walked in. Storming to the door, I yank it open, and Breaker and Cannon are standing outside, trying to look innocent.
“You heard that bullshit, didn’t you?”
Breaker leaves it to Cannon to answer. “We couldn’t help it, Pres. You might have to have a better door for privacy, you know.”
“Get your asses in here.” Walking back to my desk, I take my seat.
“So, you've heard what’s happening?”
Cannon responds for both of them again. “We think it’s Fury’s father that has come back from the dead to do him some ill will and with a bit of hillbilly training thrown in.”
“You can fuck right off, Cannon. You’re not funny in the least.” Fury doesn’t look impressed with Cannon’s piss take of the situation.
Breaker speaks up, “I get what he is saying about a decoy and I think it would deflect away from Jamie, and give us a better chance at nailing this bastard. If we only have to worry about Fury, it’s less of a worry.”
“You can fuck right off as well, Breaker.” Fury is getting worked up with this pair.
“No, Fury, not that you're less of a loss, just that you know how to look after yourself. That way we have less to worry about or plan for. Without Jamie in the mix, we can leave you pretty much to take care of yourself while we do all the other groundwork.” Breaker shakes his head at Fury.
“Oh, okay. Guess I’m touchy at the moment. Well, I’ll speak to Pattie and see if she’s okay with being killed as Jamie…”
“I think one of us should do that, Fury. Your terminology is way off the mark if you want to get her on board with something like this. I wouldn’t be happy if someone asked me if I was okay being killed off to save their significant other, as it were.
” Cannon laughs as he says this, and he’s probably right.
Fury needs to get his head straight if this is going to be anything other than a clusterfuck.
I have some stern words with him about bursting into my office like that, and then tell him to fuck off.
I’ll call Church for tonight, straight after the evening meal, and I’ll get a few things off my chest as well as throwing out a plan for catching Fury’s father.
Meanwhile, I’m going to be the one to speak to Pattie about her becoming a decoy.
It’s the least I can do when asking someone to put themselves in the firing line, so to speak.
Waiting for Church time to come around, I sit at my desk with a glass of my favorite bourbon.
I’m not a big drinker anymore, but I do like to savor a bourbon or a scotch from time to time.
It helps me concentrate, to take the time to approach things from all angles, and occasionally a new perspective rears its head.
I like to think outside the box occasionally, and this thing with killing off Pattie, or Jamie, is one of those times.
I was surprised at how quickly she got on board with the idea.
She was way ahead of me as I approached the subject, and she was keen to do something to help and to break the monotony of daily life.
I’ve never known anyone, outside of the service, so keen to want to be shot at.
I didn’t say that was what was going to happen, but she seemed to really get off on the idea of it.