A Good Citizen From Stillwater Hank saw the purple van in the far corner of his vision, then innocuously stooped to pick up an environmentally offensive candy bar wrapper, swiveling as he rose to survey the van's occupants. As he rose, he grabbed the offending wrapper and found it stuffed with melted candy bar, or maybe worse. Afraid to draw anyone's attention, he crammed the sticky mess in his jacket pocket and turned toward the shoe store's plate glass window. In October's early dusk, the window partly showed Brogan's finest footwear while serving as a stopgap mirror. Reflected in the glass, the van's occupants were two people. A middle aged man and youngish pretty girl with frizzy red hair who both seemed damned curious about him. He also saw himself, a tall, blonde young man, quite pale but trim and neat, wearing a fashionable tweed sports coat and coordinated slacks. The expensive black leather dispatch case tucked under his arm, seemed out of place. Tourists don't normally carry brief cases but otherwise,nothing in his appearance was different from the thousand of other Fall festival visitors to Duluth's lake front park. Hank wondered why the purple Ford van had a one way glass window in the rear panel and what seemed to be a swiveling glass eye focused on him. He surveyed his available options. He had a loaded and ready Glick automatic in his briefcase, but a shoot-out might be overkill. Patient awareness seemed most logical, so he would seem unaware of their presence until he knew what their purpose was. Hank was more surprised by the sudden appearance of a police car, unloading an older gentleman, too elegantly dressed to be a cop, and too old to be un-retired. He was accompanied by a young and husky black patrolman who strangely, left his gun in his holster. Hank tensed, but waited for the next event, before acting. "Congratulations, young man! Your good citizenship has won you a bundle. I'm Mayor Wallack, and we all watched you win by picking up one of our nastiest challenges." Yes, he was Mayor Wallack and Hank had the proof in his brief case. A glossy 8 x 10 not so flattering with a defiling giant red X and the legend, ‘This is the guy'. "Hello Mayor, I guess we were just destined to meet sometime." Hank said, and laughed at the fickleness of fate introducing, by chance, the quarry to the hunter, albeit one day early. "What's your name, son? You're a very lucky young man, you know. My limousine will be here, shortly and we'll be off for a fantastic celebration, in your honor." "Why?" "Why? You have won my Good Citizen award. Part of our Fall festival, and my effort to promote trash reduction and clean streets. Just wait until you see the surprises we have for you! "How did I do that, your honor?" "We put out that special messy trash, early this morning. Too disgusting, I guess as and we've watched thousands of pedestrians, step over it, and you are the first good citizen to pick it up. Proves you love our city as much I do. We will both be rewarded." Hank thought of the fifty-thousand bank draft in his brief case, and the Mayor's ‘reward' it was to buy. He had all day. Apparently, he would play ‘Candid Camera' with the mayor and his bodyguards, until opportunity came to earn the other half of his hundred thousand dollar fee. His employer had said he was being overpaid, and high price was no guarantee of quality, but a beginner in the business had best start with high standards. A stretched black Lincoln limousine appeared and now the mayor's crowd, was more than dozen. Hank allowed the mayor to pull him into his limo, and was followed by the beautiful redhead who had been in the van, and the husky uniformed patrolman, who seemed to be the Mayor's main bodyguard. The others climbed in the following purple van. He sat, where directed, clutching his briefcase to his chest, squeezed between the cop and the red head while the mayor sat facing him in the uncomfortably smaller jump seat. Hank felt like visiting royalty. "City hall, Vince," said the Mayor. and off they went, but not directly to the city hall. The mayor and Nancy, the lovely and gloriously freckled redhead shared in glorifying Duluth's downtown and harbor area, with emphasis on improvements during Wallack's twelve years in power, but they seemed to be edging toward the suburbs instead of toward the Metro Center where Hank had been instructed to find the mayor's office. "Twelve years, in office. How many election victories is that, Your Honor. Any of them close?" "The one coming up, will be closest, maybe disastrous unless I come up with another winning gimmick." The mayor laughed, unaware he was entertaining his nemesis. Nancy said, "Your approval rating went up three percentage points on KATE's city wide poll, this morning, Eldon. At least it's going in the right direction" "I can't celebrate approval ratings less than forty per cent, can I?" the mayor said, yet displaying no dismay or lack of exhuberance. Hank wondered why the mayor's apparent enemies would resort to employing a hit man, if the mayor was losing. Curious, he asked, "You mean less than half the voters want you re-elected? Why could that be. You sure are interested in cleaning up the town's sidewalks, anyway." "I got some bad press on my campaign funding. I was clean as new snow, but the media was fooled by my opponent. We just have to work harder, the next three weeks before election. You know, maybe you can help.' Simultaneous with the mayor's words, Nancy seemed to be edging closer and he could feel her warmth and sense some trembling where their legs touched. On the other side, the patrolman stared straight ahead, and had not uttered one word. Nancy's hand even strayed to his wrist, and the policeman, moved suddenly grabbing his other wrist, jarring his precious dispatch case loose, and it fell first to his lap, then the floor. He felt a sharp prick in his thigh, that had warmed from Nancy, and he felt himself falling into a spinning, black funnel. When Hank resumed possession of his body, he was handcuffed and had chains on his legs, and the bondage linked him to a massive wooden chair. Like an electric chair, he thought but he had not yet killed anyone. He heard the mayor, say softly behind him. "Make a deal, but get a signed confession. Lots of pictures! He has to tie in to my opponent. Anyway, he took a contract to kill, and that alone should justify throwing away the key, on a convict fresh of jail." Hank feigned continuing unconsciousness while he pondered whether he was meant to hear Eldon Wallack's words, and how they knew what brought him to Duluth. He had arrived only two hours ago, and had spoken to no one, except for the gay sounding guy who passed him the briefcase, under the separating wall of the adjoining toilet stall. He had gone to the Greyhound terminal restroom, exactly at eight-thirty and waited. They spoke, but neither of them saw each other. They really hadn't haggled, but only confirmed their planned meet. Hank was sure that the assassination arranger in the adjoining booth was the same one that had called him person to person, at the half-way house and offered the assassination contract. That meant only one man beside himself, knew the contents of the black brief case. Nancy answered, "If he's got a brain bigger than a monkey's, he'll come clean, and we can name who hired him." She came from behind to face him, with a gloating leer distorting her formerly beautiful face." No longer feigning unconsciousness, Hank said, "I never would have figured you for a cop, lady. You're much too pretty." "Well, I am when I'm not advising and protecting the mayor. Think of me as the good cop. The bad cop will be here shortly. You better come clean before I'm joined by my sadistic associate who does bad cop, very well." Nancy handed him a clipboard with an already typed confession showing. Hank read it. It was all accurate except that it credited Hank with knowing who hired him. "Why would I want to sign this?" Nancy got close to his face, and said, "That's what you copy in your handwriting and then sign, unless you want to endure unlimited misery before dying in an escape attempt. Willy likes to kill people, and you may qualify. Whoops, here's Willy now!" The door opened, Willy must have been cued, and Hank was surprised by how small, the supposed sadistic interrogator was. He spoke, "My turn, Nancy. He had his chance, now I get to crush his testicles." Hank recognized the small sneaky man's muscular voice that almost lisped. It was the man from the toilet. The man who paid him, and passed him the gun. Hank now realized he was the gimmick that Mayor Wallack needed for election, a sacrificial lamb, a dumb fall guy, only out of prison three days. Had he not been an honest, good citizen from Centerville, he could have absconded with the fifty thousand, down payment, but he had been taught that a honorable man's promise to do something was an irrevocable bond. Apparently, he would die after confessing, but as an honorable man who kept his word and his silence.
Copyright © 2003 Gerald Bosacker |