The Taking Of Martha Lorimar
by Kevin James Miller

From behind, Bo grabbed the girl from Toland's office. Girl? She looked ancient. Maybe in her thirties, bordering on forty. She was supposed to be the secretary and she was supposed to know the codes to get to the offshore accounts no one was supposed to know about.
She was big. Not Alice Terellie from sophomore year in high school big--and not Aunt Linda with the great chili and brownie recipes big. Just big.
Bo pulled over into the parking lot of a convenience store that was supposed to be open twenty-four hours but barely made it to eighteen. He looked at the graffiti of the fat, grinning spider that was under the store window, just below where he could see the stacked newspapers, inside the store. 
He heard unseen crickets outside complain about the hot night.
Bo waited for her bawling to quiet down to moaning and then to whimpering.
Then he got J.T. on the cellular.
"Good evening. Is this Codename Mad Dog?"
"What's this 'Codename Mad Dog' crap, Bo? It's J.T. Did you grab Toland's girl or didn't you?"
"This crap is 'cause she's right here in the van, so I'm not using your name. And we gotta talk about the grab."
The girl said, "Who were you supposed to grab? I'm--"
"Hang on, Codename Mad Dog." Bo put the cell phone down and got the .45 out of the glove compartment. He put in the ammo clip with as much force as he could.
"You."
"Yes?"
"What was that sound?"
"You loading a gun."
"Then shut up." Bo got back on the phone. "OK. Codename Mad Dog."
"Look, don't call me anything," J.T. said. "OK, Bo?"
"What did you say about Toland's girl once? You remember that one meeting?"
"What damn meeting? We sat down a hundred times on this!"
"The third one. In Tony's."
There was a pause from the other end of the line.
"That she's little and blond," J.T. finally said.
Bo looked at his big captive and her long, brown hair. She looked like somebody who would shop for a sale on shower curtains. The cotton, tape, and blue bandanna Bo had over her eyes ruined that image, as did the fact that Bo also had her hands tied behind her back. 
"This one ain't little and ain't blond," Bo finally said over the phone.
"Oh crap. Bo, ask her what her name is."
"What good would that do? I'm not supposed to know the name of Toland's girl. Need to know, and I don't need to. In the plan," Bo said.
"Christ!" J.T.'s sigh rattled over the end of the line. "Bo, quitting screwing around and get her name! I, of course, know the name of the right girl! Let's see if you have the right one!"
Bo pulled the phone away again and talked to his captive.
"What's your name, honey?"
"I thought I was supposed to shut up," the girl said.
"Your name!"
"Martha Lorimar."
Bo got back on the cell phone.
"She says her name is--"
"I heard. Damn it! That ain't the right one!"
"Well, what do I do with her?"
J.T. gave Bo his orders.
On his way to where he was supposed to shoot her, Bo stopped at Tony's. It was past one in the morning by then, and Tony's was closed, but Tony always opened for his friends.
"I'm leaving for a few minutes," Bo said. "I'm locking this van. You can scream if you want, but you know this town. There ain't anybody around. This is the suburbs."
Bo put the special knock on the front door of Tony's. Two quick raps, then five slow ones, then eight quick raps. He heard the lock snapping open from the other side.
Tony swung the door open. No matter what time of time Bo saw Tony, he always wore a dark suit and smoked a cigarette.
Tony, Bo guessed, was maybe fifty. But his voice sounded like he stole it from a man about eighty.
Tony smiled, flashing yellow teeth.
"Come in, Bo." The grin broadened. "This isn't a safe neighborhood, with disreputable characters like us around."
The place wasn't much. It was just a bar, a couple of tables, and a jukebox, but the jukebox was as big as a truck. Bo didn't know where Tony lived. He always was in this little place of business.
"Sit, Bo."
"OK."
Bo picked a chair and sat.
"You want a drink, Bo?"
"No. No, I don't think so."
Tony sat across from Bo. Tony planted his cigarette between his thumb and index finger.
"What the hell you doing in a bar then?"
"Want to talk to this wise old gangster I know."
"Ha!" Tony planted the cigarette between his lips. "Remind me again. You're how old?"
"Twenty-two."
"Twenty-two! Jesus, you were still crapping in your diapers when I was telling the boys not to launder the money through discos. But you and your buddy are playing it right. When crime gets too big and organized it might as well be fucking Microsoft, then where's the fun in that? Piece of advice. You going to do crime, ditch those jeans and T-shirt and get yourself a suit. When the law comes down on you, they'll just assume like you got the big bucks and cut you some slack. Why are you here, Bo?"
"This thing me and J.T. are doing. Turns out, I gotta kill this girl."
"So what's the problem?"
"Never killed anybody before. And, I don't know, a girl...."
"Do you fuck 'em, Bo?"
"Yeah."
"Then you can kill one of them. Of course, that's not perfect logic. We killed lots of guys in the old Mob days, and I only knew one hitter who was a faggot. This guy loved the ice pick. No, it cuts either way. I don't care how gentle anyone is, or what people smarter than me say is or is not natural. Fucking and killing anyone is always hard for one party or the other in the transaction. Whatever you got to do, do it quick, and don't think about it too much later."
From a door behind the bar came a man who was, maybe, seven feet. Bo couldn't guess right, because the man stooped something awful. And the weird, twisted way the man held his head, and the left eye that seemed ready to pop out of place distracted Bo.
The man held a cardboard box over his head. On the box, Bo could read a Scotch brand name.
"No, that goes under the basement stairs. Those we don't pay taxes on."
The man nodded and went back through the door.
"Who is that, Tony?"
"Name's Largo. The local nuthouse has had him for a resident since they don't when. He's mute."
"Deaf?"
"If I meant deaf, I would have said deaf. What I said was mute. All they got in the records is the one name, Largo. My niece is dating an orderly there, and I found out about the guy, and gave him a job."
Tony pointed his lit cigarette at his own heart.
"Everybody has a soft spot, Bo."
"Big son of bitch."
"Yeah, Bo, he is. Don't know what Largo was, but he's a damn kitten now."
Bo saw on a table next to were he sat another graffiti drawing of that fat, grinning spider. He pointed to it.
"Tony, what is that thing? I've been seeing that around this town all my life."
"That, Bo, is the mark of the Spider. He was a big time criminal around here, maybe twenty years ago. The Spider seemed to have his hand in everything. He was a ruthless fucker too. He's why the boys never got dug in here, back in the old days. The Spider hasn't been in operation around here a long time."
Back in the van, Bo took Martha Lorimar to River Park. He marched her to the bank of the river. A sliver of moon hung in the sky, but the lights from the suburban streets washed out the stars.
"You're going to kill me. Aren't you?"
"Shut up, Martha Lorimar," Bo said, tapping her in the back with the .45.
Christ. What was the fastest way to kill somebody in this situation, anyway? Even if you shot them in the head, couldn't they then scream? He didn't need anyone screaming right now.
Bo suddenly felt really stupid. Martha, although heavy, at least looked she had her act together with the green pantsuit she wore. He, on the other hand, who had kidnaped the wrong girl, stood on the bank of the river in his jeans, faded heavy metal T-shirt, and dirty sneakers. Christ, he even needed a haircut. Maybe Tony was right. If he was going to do crime, he should look like a gangster. Didn't they at least dress better?
"I gotta kill you now," Bo said.
"I guessed as much," Martha said.
"Sorry. I guess."
"Don't be. This is the most exciting thing that's every happened to me, and Toland's secretary is hooking at a hotel near the airport."
"WHAT?"
"So what do you? Shoot me in the head? You know, I may float on the surface, and if the police can match the bullet to your gun, then you're in trouble."
Bo put his hand on her shoulder, and steered her, still sightless from Bo's blindfold, in the opposite direction.
"Back to the van, Martha."
They had already been in River Park too long, and Bo now had another change of plans circumstances had thrown at him. 
He aimlessly drove the empty streets and called J.T.
"Yeah. What?"
"Codename Mad Dog?"
"'Mad Dog'? That must mean...Jesus, Bo. You haven't killed her yet, and she's right there?"
"Would Toland's secretary be hooking at the airport?"
"What--you mean like in the damn snack bar or something?"
"No. You know. At those hotels near there."
"Let me think....Our inside guy says she's, like a sex addict or something. Nympho. Toland cut her into the con with the offshore accounts because she puts out for Toland a lot--and I mean a lot. So I guess this thing about her being a whore, for more sex and money, yeah that makes sense. If you can grab Toland's secretary out there, near the airport, maybe our plan will still work. Her name is Alice Carson. Of course, if she's not using her real name, I guess we're screwed again. And Bo?"
"Yeah?"
"Waste the girl you got there in the van already, OK?"
The high school had a huge parking lot that was nice and big and empty, and well away from the street. Bo went there, opened the door, and told Martha Lorimar to walk out and keep waling in a straight line and yeah, with the cotton and all still on her eyes.
He was drawing a bead on the back of her head, when three sets of headlights blinded him.
When he could saw again, three marked police cars were in front of him. He saw, in silhouette, three pairs of cops standing by the patrol cars.
"Drop that gun, son," said a voice.
Martha Lorimar had disappeared.
Bo let the .45 fall to the parking lot with a clatter.
One of the cops came out from behind the headlights, a guy about 40, blue eyes, his patrolman's hat pushed back on his balding head. Hell, the guy still had his service revolver in its holster.
"What are you doing here, son?"
"I work at the factory near the train station. I couldn't sleep after I got off the late shift."
True. Bo and J.T. didn't make enough money off crime, at least not yet, to live off that. J.T. worked in a garage, and Bo in the factory.
The cop looked down at the .45.
"And the gun?"
"There are many scary guys I work with at the plant. I'm afraid sometimes they're going to follow me."
Without the cop saying anything, Bo dug out his wallet and displayed the permit for the gun.
"Yeah, OK," said the cop. He looked down at the .45. "My dad, in the army, had a gun just like that." He looked at Bo again. "Bet you're wondering what so many of us are doing here. Huh?"
"It's none of my business."
"That's true. I'll tell you anyway. It's drugs, son. Selling them, using them, hurting each other over them. Happens a lot at this school, and usually after hours." The cop looked at the school and sighed. "I wish these kids who go here would spend more of their time fucking."
After the cops let Bo go, he tried the hotels out near the airport. At the second one, he was trying to act sexy and interested with this 18-year-old girl with much red hair and acne who was working the front desk, when he got a look at the sign-in book: Alice Carson--Room 932.
He came off the elevator onto the ninth elevator. He heard the gunshots, ten of them, sounding like firecrackers going off in a toilet.
From a room down the hall, a man wearing just baggy underwear staggered out. Hi eyes were two pools of blood. He hit the wall opposite his room, and slid to the floor, groaning louder than hurricane ripping up the whole world.
A skinny blond woman hurtled out of the same room, wearing just a terry cloth bathrobe. Bruises covered her face. Her long, drawn out scream hurt Bo's ears. She had her hands wrapped around Martha Lorimar's throat.
And Martha Lorimar had gotten rid of the cotton and bandanna Bo had put over her eyes and now held a silver automatic pistol and a slender back briefcase.
She shot the skinny blond woman in the head.
Then Martha Lorimar noticed Bo. She pointed her gun at him.
"You," she said. "Someone in this dump is going to call the cops with all this racket. Let's give them somebody to tell them a story."
She shot Bo in the leg.
Bo grunted and hit the floor.
He heard Martha Lorimar walk up to him as his nose dug into the hallway carpet
"Yeah, I recognized you. Got the rope off my wrist and the blindfold off at the high school, and studied your pretty face from the bushes. I'm 44 next week. I tried to play it their way, for more than twenty years, and I can't take it. When I was young, even more than you, they called me the Spider. Stupid name for a girl, huh? Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all. With what's in this briefcase, and what that dumb dead bitch told me, I can set myself up anywhere. Let them try and get their cops and stupid people with clipboards and medications and questions and their how-do-you-feel-today shit on me then."
Bo heard her walk away.
He passed out for a while. When he woke up, he heard sirens, like trillions of them, from outside the hotel.
The parking garage for the hotel was just below the official first floor. There was a button for the parking garage in the elevator.
Bo dug out his .45 and buried it in an ice machine he found around the corner. He ripped up his T-shirt and tired it around his bloody leg.
All that time, he was thinking. He was thinking about a teenager girl, or maybe someone twenty-two, twenty-three, more than two decades back, who had been in charge of anything illegal in this stupid town and that girl still being inside that heavy woman who had shot him in the leg. Stack that up against J.T. and his "plans" and his "operations" that had always added up to what? Not much.
The hotel hadn't been opened a month. The layout of the whole place was confusing, and maybe it hard for anybody to get out in hurry, maybe even not somebody smart, no matter how cold. Bo gambled on that, and on not having been passed out that long. His bare chest was cold, and he somehow dragged himself toward the elevator. He avoided the fast footsteps and the barking commands and the sounding of knocking on doors. All that, the cops, sure.
Into the elevator, and soon he was in the parking garage, under the hotel. He found the ramp that led up to the street, and stood in front of it, on his shaking, bloody leg, and waited. Bo didn't have to wait long.
Martha Lorimar, the Spider, came roaring up to him in a brown Honda Civic. She slammed to a halt, got out of the car, and pointed her gun at him.
Neither of them said nor did anything for a moment. She didn't have anything to say, but Bo had two words for her.
"Take me."

Kevin James Miller writes: I have written 70 stories, reviews, and poems for over 30 publications, including "Rain on A Stranger's Eyes" in Mississippi Review Web Summer 2000 Noir Issue. My science fiction story "A Narrative of Future Possibilities" appeared in Would That It Were, the on-line "historical SF" publication. The fantasy story "Three Eyes That Never Close" appeared in The Cafe Irreal, an on-line publication dedicated to the surreal. "The Hotel of the Dead," appears in the paperback horror anthology Cold Storage. My radio play, "The Unraveling," will be produced by Mind's Ear Productions in Spring of 2001. I'm also a college English teacher. I'm the Contributing Writer for Infernal, an on-line publication that will be debuting in June.