The helicopter hovers across the gray afternoon sky, without sound coming from the spinning propellers. Jerry is wiping the blood away from his hands and cleaning the gun in the process. He looks out of the window now and then, apparently at nothing, a while later, Jerry fixes his gaze on Dennis.
'You didn't expect people to shed that much blood when they get shot, did you?.' Jerry starts off. Dennis meets his gaze with puzzlement.
'That's what I thought when Addy took the bullet, it was a direct hit in the spine, for a target-missed shot, the fellow couldn't have nailed it better.' Jerry continues to work away at the gun, 'You know what, I'll tell you that story, we got the next thirty minutes.' He checks his watch as he speaks.
'So one fine afternoon when I was twelve years old and addicted to Dungeons and Dragons, there was a garden party at the villa (I'll show you the place someday), a lot of people where invited and pretty much all the men were in two piece suits and all the women in cocktail dresses. Unlike Ray, I had neither the hormones nor the curiosity to hide under a table and peak at some woman's underwear, so I stayed indoors most of that time and played away with my little screen. Occasionally I would look out the window to see when the guests would be leaving, but no such luck, not during my span of patience they weren't. And then my sister found me all isolated and alone so she forced me to go outside and greet the guests. The moment I walked out onto the porch one of the guys standing at the far side of the garden pulled a long stick (what I thought it was) from behind his back and to my astonishment, his stick made a loud crack. You can guess he forgot to put the silencer on, that would have been more professional, but every time whoever tries to kill one of us siblings they always send amateurs, as if they're executing the children of a common smuggler. Everyone was surprised, they ducked and some of the more heroic gentlemen leaped and body-slammed the women (it was the comic highlight of the event, even as serious as this was). I ducked too, because I recognize the sound of a rifle when I hear it, the sound was exactly like the one you'll hear right before a duck falls out of the sky with a bullet in it. The only person who didn't hear anything was Addy, as you can guess. Sitting alone, working on a Rubik's cube, back turned, being born deaf does have its shortcomings.'
Dennis finds the story familiar, but the manner by which Jerry tells it he finds rather disturbing.
'That amateur hit man who acted first (yes, there were quite a few of them) missed his shot completely. He was aiming at my sis, who was ushering me out, but by what the circumstances suggest, he probably took out the guns a couple seconds too early, and his aim was disastrous, thirty degrees lower than target, at least, it would have been a good story to laugh about among hit men, if it had gotten out (it didn't).' Jerry is finished cleaning the gun, he puts it on a tray beside him and is silent for a few moments.
'And that's that, my little sister took a bullet for my big sister, I was a contender too, but bullets don't like to hit me, experience proved my theory correct. It is true, the enemy's bullets avoid certain individuals because those people have valiance and virtue to protect them, others, such as myself, we're too immoral for mortal weapons to penetrate.' Jerry rubs his palms together and says,
'After that episode, Addy got her wheelchair. It was odd, no other person was harmed that day, they were either killed or not, not a scratch or done for, the fight was brief. All the perpetrators being dead made it more difficult to track down the poor fool who ordered it on the orders of the real mastermind who will never be known. My brother suspects it's McMurphy's doing, but that was never proven and McMurphy's no fool to admit it outright. The suspicion still holds and one day my brother hopes to see McMurphy executed before his eyes, with him gone, there will be one less player of the world. Anyways, we did track down the relatives of those hit men, who had been informed that their son or father or cousin or sibling died in a motor accident. To send a warning to all the other hit men operating in the world, we told the families what actually happened, whether they believed it or not, and then we executed them, every member of every family, not that the mastermind could care less, just for kicks.' Jerry is about finished with the tale.
'One other thing, I went up to the body of that hit man who fired first after the shooting and saw that his head, though half gone, still had sweat clinging to the surviving half, so indeed he was amateur and nervous, I couldn't blame him, he made an unfitting assassin.'
'What about everyone else?' Dennis asks.
'Everyone who?' Jerry replies.
'Raymond and Kenny and Addy and Chelsea and Karla, did we leave them behind?'
'Of course not,' Jerry chuckles, 'They went by car, Raymond just wanted you to have a safer ride so he chartered the heli, but the real reason is, you might not like Chelsea's stunt driving.'
'Stunt driving?' Dennis repeats.
'Yes, very nauseating, that's coming from personal experience too. By the way, did you see whether Raymond brought along the bazooka he said he would bring?'
'I didn't see, I was blindfolded.'
'Oh right!' Jerry acknowledges this with a nod, 'I don't remember details like that, it's a flaw I've never gotten around to fixing.'
A phone starts to ring. The pilot picks it up (unhooking it from the hood of the chopper) and gives it to Jerry without a word exchange, Jerry puts it to his ear. After listening for some time, he tells Dennis with the receiver still held to his face, 'I was right, Ray did bring along that bazooka he found. It was a spectacular sight, he reports, the old thing still works and the missile isn't that bad. It blew a car twenty feet into the air and into a roadside shop. The chase it done, I guess we'll wait for them there.'
Dennis takes a deep breath, he asks Jerry, 'Can I ask you a general question?'
Jerry hangs up without saying a goodbye, he gives the receiver back to the pilot. 'Ask away.'
Dennis waits for a beat, and then he says, 'What's going on?'
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