Page 50 of Delusional

Cindy managed to say, “I’ve got to go.” Then, without another look behind her, she hustled across the street to her father’s gas station.

I could see both the Trilling brothers were hurt. They watched silently as she disappeared inside the service station.

I looked at the developer and said, “You happy, corrupting a girl like that?”

“Corrupting? She’ll be able to finish school because of me. I think you’ve got your priorities mixed up. We’re not in New York City. This is the West. It may not be as wild as it was a hundred fifty years ago, but it’s certainly nothing like the wasteland you live in. Like I said, she did nothing illegal.”

Gary said, “You mean like burning down a building and murdering our friend?”

“I didn’t burn down anything. And I certainly didn’t murder your friend.”

Now I stepped forward and said in a voice a little louder than I should have, “You wanted to talk. We’re here. Say what you want to say or get lost.” I kept thinking up ways to get to this guy. I didn’t just want to get under his skin; I wanted to get in his head. Really push him hard. I was still trying to grasp the fact that this wasn’t an investigation. We were victims in this case. I didn’t have the guidelines I had to follow on the job.

Arnold Marks gave a little chuckle and tried to look unbothered by leaning back against his Humvee again. “You need to look around, Detective. No skyscrapers here. There’s no backup you can call on your radio. You’re all alone out here. You can’t even call the cops for help. I own these cops out here.”

That made me let out a laugh. “Bullshit. No one owns these cops. They just don’t give a shit about anything. Besides, I doubt a cop would even talk to a punk like you.” I noticed how that little insult got to him. He was one of those guys: touchy about his street cred. I could use that.

I said, “Are you a real-estate developer who thinks he’s a gangster or a gangster who thinks he’s a real-estate developer? Truth is, you don’t seem particularly good at either.”

Rob Trilling looked like an attack dog, straining at his leash. He was ready to punch this guy’s lights out. Every time he glanced my way I tried to give him a signal to calm down. I had a plan. I felt like it was working. But I was going to have to do something fast to keep my partner from tearing into this asshole.

Marks said, “You’re awfully confident. I don’t think there’s anything you could do that would even annoy me.”

That’s when having no restrictions or Internal Affairs came into play. Almost on instinct, I swung my right hand and slapped Arnold Marks on the left side of his face. A good solid open-hand slap. It even shocked both the Trillings. I got no satisfaction from it. The slap was merely a way to set up house in the guy’s head.

I smiled. “That’s gotta be kind of annoying, right?” I could see his face changing colors. Maybe I could end this whole issue by giving this jerk a heart attack.

I kept up the pressure. “Why don’t you call one of those cops you say you own? Or call the sheriff’s office and make a complaint? I’ll wait right here. I’ll even confess if a deputy asks me what happened. Then you can try and explain to your business associates how you couldn’t do anything against a simple open-hand slap to your face. It’s difficult to be a tough guy after you’ve been slapped.”

Watching Marks sputter and try to put together a coherent thought let me know my plan was working. In the world of crime and life on the streets, few things were as insulting as being slapped.

Finally, he said, “You’ll regret crossing me.”

“I regret even meeting you.” I considered striking him again. But that would have been gratuitous. I was here to help, not cause more problems. I kept looking directly at Arnold Marks and said, “No one is selling. You need to get off this lot. It’s private property.”

He spent a little longer than I’d expected, considering his options. Ultimately, he ran his tongue over his teeth, climbed into his Humvee, and skidded off the icy lot. The three of us watched as he took a corner and disappeared out of town.

Gary Trilling looked shaky when he asked, “Why’d you antagonize him like that?”

“Because angry people do drastic things. Your brother and I are familiar with drastic situations. He could’ve tried to wait you guys out. He’d find ways to make your business suffer and he’d end up with the property anyway. I just sped things along.”

CHAPTER 62

TOM OWENS HADN’T spent this much time in front of a TV in his entire life. Maybe his entire life combined. He couldn’t get enough of all the news coverage of the bombing at Virtual Spaces. He hadn’t even realized there were so many news sources. Most of them got a few details right, but none of them got them all right. He was starting to understand people’s discomfort with biased media reporting.

Owens didn’t think he’d been this excited about something since he realized he could whiz through any math course. The proof was finishing calculus in the sixth grade. He was finally getting recognition for his accomplishments. Even if the media didn’t yet know his name, they were still talking about his actions. He wasn’t particularly good at communicating with other people. Owens hoped Ellis Warrenton was working on the public statement they intended to send out.

Right now, Owens had the TV tuned to a local news station. The anchor was a woman who looked like a version of every girl he’d gone to college with. Neat, dark hair, perfect teeth, symmetrical face. The news anchor’s name was Eileen Schilling, and he liked her professional, no-nonsense delivery.

When Schilling announced that a woman from Staten Island who’d been walking along the sidewalk in front of Virtual Spaces had died in the hospital from injuries received from the bomb blast, it made Owens consider different bomb models. If he could build a weapon that caused people to die over the course of several weeks, the news coverage would ramp up exponentially. In this case, maybe he could use a radioactive isotope or some kind of poison next time.

He liked looking at problems through a scientific lens. This gave him one more experiment to conduct when he was ready.

He was easily able to tune out the interview that followed, with the grieving husband of the woman who’d died. Those were the kind of details that wouldn’t help him with his mission. He intended to save the world whether the world wanted to be saved or not.

When Owens finally surfaced from his little TV-news-watching world, he realized Kimmy was sitting in the rickety recliner in the corner of the room. She was wiping tears from her eyes with paper towels.

He asked, “What’s wrong?”