FiFty Fifty

Chapter Sixteen

SHE

It was coming up on two a.m., the pavement a blur beneath her feet, the wind in her face, and her legs were burning with the effort.
Night running was one of her pleasures.
Tonight was not for pleasure. This was all business. The talk with her lawyer, earlier, had been a useful one. The lawyer was good and convinced that she was innocent. If the jury was as easily convinced as her lawyer, she would be just fine.
She reached East 33rd Street on 3rd Avenue and turned right at the corner. She increased her pace, feeling her heart rate jump, and now she had to concentrate on controlling her breathing. Her backpack was strapped tight so it wouldn't bump at her back. She swung her arms, finding the rhythm with her breath. In and out. Pumping her legs. Focused.
The sign for the parking lot loomed ahead of her. She slowed her pace, stopped and bent over to catch her breath. Sweat dripped from her forehead. Looking around, no one on the street, she went inside and took the stairs to the fifth floor. At the back of the lot on this floor the lighting was out. It was dark in that corner, which suited her just fine. She walked past a row of cars on both sides. There were some empty spaces, but not many. She found her motorcycle in the dark corner. The overhead light was still busted above this parking space. She had stood on the bike and swiped her helmet through the bulb two weeks ago when she last parked. God bless cheap parking-lot owners.
She slung her backpack to the ground, unzipped it and unfolded a Kevlar fabric motorcycle suit. It had been much more expensive to buy than leathers, but she needed something that would fold easily into her pack. She slipped off her running shoes, put her legs through the suit and then hauled it on over her Lycra. Zipped it up to the neck then closed the Velcro straps on the collar. From her backpack she drew out slip-on riding boots. They had a hard sole, but were foldable Kevlar. She put them on, and the gloves. While the Kevlar suit was practical, it did not have the same aesthetic quality as real leather. It lacked that delicious odor. The smell and feel of real leather was as intoxicating to her as a good red wine.
Packing away her running shoes in the backpack, she closed it and slung it

over her shoulders, pulling the straps tight. She released the helmet from the lock on the seat, then put it on. It was a tinted visor, which cut down her visibility in the dark corner of the lot, making everything almost pitch black. She swung her leg over the Honda, turned on the engine and the lights, then eased it out of the space, along the lot and down the ramps to the street.
Ten minutes later she was on the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. She took Queens Boulevard, Van Dam Street and Review Avenue before she started making random turns. She made lefts and rights, trying to keep to a general south-westerly direction. Eventually she came to Haberman.
This was an industrial quarter that housed massive warehouses and distribution centers for UPS, Fed-Ex, and more. The industrial quarter sat below the shoulder of a massive turnpike, which linked the Long Island Expressway, the Queens Midtown Expressway, and the I-278. It was no accident that shipping and distribution centers chose to build here – it had perfect access points for Manhattan, New Jersey and anywhere else they needed to go.
These businesses needed workers. Workers needed somewhere to eat, rest and shop for essentials. There were a couple of sandwich shops, a McDonald's, a Burger King, Costco and a pharmacy.
She chose that particular pharmacy because it never closed, and it had quick getaway points. Same reason as the distribution companies. Within a half-hour of leaving the pharmacy you could be anywhere in a one-hundred-and-fifty-mile radius. Perfect.
The pharmacy sat in a strip mall along a road that was in constant repair due to the heavy goods vehicles that ripped up the blacktop twenty-four hours a day. The strip mall had a garment repair shop, a noodle bar and a dry cleaners, all of which were closed. The only thing open was the pharmacy.
She eased the bike to a stop, killed the light and the engine and kicked down the side stand. The pharmacy was part of a well-known chain. It had a long front window that spilled light to the lot, but not as far as her bike. From her vantage point she could see the cashier behind the counter to the left, just past the entrance. Her nametag read 'Penny'. She was in her twenties, blonde, staring at her phone and blowing bubbles of gum from her fat, pink lips.
In the back, she could just make out the pharmacist, Afzal Jatt. He was staring at a computer screen and nibbling at a Twinkie.
All was as expected. She had only ever dealt with these members of staff. When she picked up her supply, Penny would pop a bubble as she walked past. Then she would approach Afzal, collect her order, pay Penny and leave.
Once a month. Regular as clockwork. Thursday nights. Afzal and Penny always covered the nights, Monday through Thursday. On the one occasion she

had visited and Penny was not on the counter, she waited until the following night. No point in more than one staff member seeing her, and potentially remembering her.
This night was always going to happen. She had known that from the start. Measures would need to be taken once her father was dead, and these were both necessary and messy.
She got off the bike, opened the storage compartment beneath the seat. It had been difficult to choose what to store in the seat compartment. It was larger and deeper than most seat compartments, which on average could hold about half a gallon of storage space. This bike had two gallons of space.
She reached inside, lifted clear the brown paper bag and closed the seat lid. She stood facing the pharmacy. Helmet visor down. Bag in hand.
Once she got within a few feet of the store, the sliding doors opened. Penny,
ten feet away at the counter, glanced up from her phone, then went back to the screen.
The store played a selection of nineties hits through its PA system. As the doors closed behind her she heard the opening bars of a Britney Spears song, 'Oops ... I Did It Again'.
She went quickly to the door control panel, on the wall next to an umbrella stand, and hit the button marked with an icon of a padlock. Neither Penny nor Afzal had seen her do this, the display of umbrellas masking the move. The sliding doors closed behind her, and would not open unless Penny hit the unlock button. She walked past Penny, her eyes on the diet drinks and bars on the shelves, until she got to the end of the aisle, and then walked straight up to Afzal. He took the last bite from the Twinkie, rubbed his hands together to get rid of the sticky residue and placed both hands on the counter.
'Can I help you, ma'am?' he asked, still perched on his stool behind the counter. One eye on the customer, but also reluctant to stop watching what was on his computer screen. She figured he was watching a show, whiling away the late night hours.
The counter was below her waist, so Afzal, in a seated position, was the width of the counter away, but below her full height.
Perfect.
Her right hand dove into the bag and came out fast as she raised it overhead and brought the small hand-axe down with all the force and speed she could muster. There was a sound when the axe blade lodged an inch deep into the top of Afzal's skull. It was an unusual sound, like an opening being broken into a hollow trunk. A jet of blood splashed across the left side of her visor. She didn't want to wipe it away, it could smear the glass and then she wouldn't be able to

see anything.
The axe came away easily, and one more blow into the skull broke it open.
This was a wet cracking noise, and she quickly turned and ran toward Penny. Penny had heard the noise and moved around the counter. Penny called out, 'Afzal, you okay?' but then Penny saw her, with the hand axe, dripping blood. Penny turned and ran full speed toward the doors. Penny screamed, but the sound died when the doors failed to open and her head smacked off the glass, sending a ribbon of cracks across its surface. Penny staggered, fell onto her back,
dazed, her hand reaching up to her forehead.
She stood over Penny, who rolled onto her hands and knees and tried to get
up.
She took the axe two-handed and swung it up high as she joined in the end of
the chorus with Britney.
'... I'm not that innocent.'
The blade whistled as it cut through the air and cleaved into the back of
Penny's neck. Penny's body instantly went limp, folding flat on the floor. The axe hadn't lodged, it had come free with the blow, but it had left a huge gash in the flesh through which she could see white bone. She struck again, this time at the side of the neck.
The axe bit deep, and stayed buried. She had to resist the urge to wrench it free and take it with her. The smell of the oiled blade, the feel of the hickory axe handle. Even as an adult, she felt the need to touch and smell certain objects.
She stepped over Penny's twitching corpse, hit the release button on the door control and walked through the doors as they swished open. She got on the bike, hit the ignition and pulled away fast from the strip mall, headed for the turnpike. With only light traffic on the interstate, she opened the pipes on the bike, let it roar underneath her for ten miles. She turned off, and meandered her way back to Manhattan.
Back to the parking lot.
She wiped the helmet clean with the suit. Put the suit, boots, gloves in her backpack and changed back into her ballcap and running shoes. The backpack would find its way into the river as she ran along the outskirts of the island, toward her apartment, and a long shower.
A good night's work. If the prosecution managed to work out that Frank was being poisoned they might be able to trace it to this pharmacy, and Afzal Jatt. That made them one step closer to her, and she couldn't allow that.
But there was more to be done. There was another possible link. A man. One who wasn't easy to get to. He was protected. He was smart.
He would be expecting her.