Knights Templar (Sean) Read online

  “Have you ever been in the military?” Lars asked. “Because it’s kind of like that.”

  “No,” Jen said. “I have never been a part of any military. How is it anything like that?”

  “Well, you see, a lot of the people that join the military don’t do it because they are rocket scientists,” Lars said. “In fact, they join the military because they are the opposite. So when you give commands to them not only do you have to tell them what to do but you have to think of all the asinine things they might do and tell them not to do them.”

  “What?” Jen said as she tore off a piece of bread. “How is this even relevant?”

  “One time I told this shit stain PFC, name of Samuel,” Lars began and paused to cough as he choked on bread for a moment. “So I tell old Sammy boy to go wake up everyone on our wing of the barracks. What does he do? He goes room to room and stands there banging on the door and then demands that everyone get out of the rack before he leave. That might sound like someone going above and beyond because they are all gung ho, but really it’s a PFC who is an idiot trying to boss people around that are higher rank than him.”

  Lars paused to cough again and Jen sipped her water looking around the restaurant. People that had a few minutes prior been nervously wringing their hands waiting for their food were now sitting and laughing, at ease with their company and their drink. Food seemed to take a little bit to make it out of the kitchen, which made Jen wonder how long they would be there since the waiter hadn’t even managed to take their order yet.

  “I wish it wasn’t like that,” Lars continued after regaining his composure. “I wish the people I boss around didn’t have to have their hand held every step of the way. And to be clear I didn’t send the guy to your place, I told someone to get a message to you and I guess they figured it better to scare you than not. I was thinking more along the lines of speaking with you like an adult. You know, so you would actually listen and not freak the fuck out.”

  Jen was listening very carefully to Lars. By the way he was putting it they were both victims of circumstance, kind of. She wasn’t entirely buying the “I’m a good guy you just have to get to know me and understand the circumstances I’m in,” song and dance from him because it just seemed like a ploy at this point. She reminded herself of the look she’d seen on his face when he first walked in, and that she had no real idea of the authority that he wielded in whatever organization he was a part of. It was easy to sit down and spin a web that was convenient for the now but would it hold up in the later?

  “Well what will you two be ordering?” the waiter said with a little extra pep in his voice.

  “I’m all right actually,” Lars said. “I’m a diabetic and my insulin is acting up so all I can do is sip French pressed coffee. Do you have a press here?”

  “Why, certainly, sir,” the waiter said. “Are you sure there isn’t anything on our menu that doesn’t fall in the parameters of your diet? We would be happy to make something just to your request.”

  Lars quickly shook his head.

  “No, thank you,” he said, and then something caught his eye on the menu. “Well, maybe that. That thing right there.”

  “What is it?” the waiter asked with a quizzical look on his face.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Lars said with a bewildered look on his face. “I can’t read some English words but it’s something about gluten-free breaded... something. Here, you take a look.”

  Lars held his menu outward so that the waiter could see it.

  “This right here,” he said pointing at the menu.

  “Ah, right away sir,” the waiter said. “And for the lady?”

  “I’m on a diet as well I don’t think I’ll be having more than an appetizer,” Jen said. “How about some fries?”

  “Uh, all right,” the waiter said as he turned to leave.

  “Way to make it weird,” Lars said. “I actually have God damn diabetes and now he thinks we are playing around with him or something.”

  “He does not,” Jen said. “Well, maybe. Who knows. I’m just not in the mood to eat with you until you tell me exactly what is going on. What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t want anything from you,” Lars said smiling so big it revealed one of his canine teeth to be silver. “The people I work for want to own your business so they can sell off the entire little defunct strip mall to some developer from Kansas City making a land grab.”

  “What?” Jen said.

  “Yeah, some people named Figure Four or something, upstart real-estate moguls that think they have it all figured out. Nice guys, actually,” Lars said. “But I find them a little bit idealistic.”

  “You can’t have really just told me who,” Jen said. “What if I call them?”

  “You’re right,” Lars said. “But that was a pretty good story, was it not?”

  Lars threw his head back and let out a loud laugh and then looked her in the eyes.

  “How much do you want?” Lars asked.

  “It’s not for sale,” Jen said. “I’m not running it for money I’ve never run it for money. I do it because it makes me remember my dad and because it helps people. Some of my stude—”

  Lars cut her off.

  “Sweetheart,” Lars said coldly. “Listen to me. There is a large amount of money with your name on it if you decide to sell.”

  “How much?” Jen asked.

  “How about eighty grand?” Lars asked.

  “That’s fucking insulting,” Jens said. “You’d be buying my business as well as the building itself, which, by the way, is worth at least one hundred and fifty grand.”

  “No it isn’t,” Lars said.

  “It fucking is because I say it is,” Jen said.

  They sat and looked at each other in silence for a full minute; a silence that the waiter broke with Lars’ coffee.

  “Here is your French press, sir,” the waiter said.

  “Fucking right,” Lars said. “I love this shit.”

  The waiter stared at him for a moment.

  “That is very good, sir,” he said. “Is there anything else you folks need while you wait for your food to come out?”

  “I think we’re good,” Jen said. “Thank you.”

  Jen was about to say something to the effect that they should stop fucking around and get their conversation started and if there wasn’t to be one then Lars needed to fuck off, but right as she was about to open her mouth she noticed something moving above Lars on the ceiling. She waited until Lars was looking away at some hot young professional across the deli from them to look up and see what it was.

  That fucking idiot, was all Jen could manage to think as she watched a camera on a stick being thrust back and forth on the ceiling. The stick was not an actual stick but a long telescoping pole that led all the way back to the wall that divided the deli from the tattoo parlor. At some point during the day Earl had sawed a small hole in the wall just big enough to fit the camera through. The camera appeared to be a digital one with the red recording light on.

  That has to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen in my entire life, Jen thought.

  “What are you looking at?” Lars asked.

  “Nothing,” Jen said.

  “Bullshit nothing—I saw you looking at something,” Lars said. “I came here in good faith; it would be very unfortunate if there was any funny business. That would really change the way I think about everything.”

  “What do you mean?” Jen said.

  “What the fuck do you think I mean?” Lars asked. “And why the fuck are you playing dumb with me right now?”

  People were staring at them, especially the ones that saw the camera on a stick. Lars looked around and lowered his voice.

  “What the fuck are they all looking at?” he whispered to her.

  Then he looked up.

  “What the fuck, bitch!” Lars yelled. “What the fuck kind of stupidity is this? A fucking camera on a stick?”

  Lars pushe
d his seat back, stood up and stepped onto the table. After making several attempts to jump up and grab the camera he pin wheeled his arms wildly trying to regain his balance and keep from falling. For a second it worked, until the camera on a stick suddenly jerked down from hovering on the ceiling and whapped him in the head.

  “Fucking shit!” Lars screamed as he spun wildly and fell on the floor head first.

  “What is going on?” the waiter yelled as he appeared as if out of nowhere.

  The camera snapped back up to the ceiling with a sound that was a bad omen for anyone that wanted to use it again and then started to bob its way across the ceiling back over to the whole in the wall.

  “What the fuck is that!” the waiter yelled.

  Jen got up and started backing away from the table. She didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t part of the plan. Earl must have been high on something strong to think what he was doing was anywhere even close to appropriate. What kind of normal person put a camera on a telescoping pole and pushed it through a hole in the wall over a table and then actually tried to use it as a surveillance device? A normal person wouldn’t do that, she thought, a normal person would have realized that she was already wired for sound and not done something completely fucking asinine that might have gotten her killed.

  “Is that guy all right,” someone seated at a table said. “Is your friend ok, ma’am?”

  Jen kept backing slowly toward the door of the deli.

  “I don’t really know him!” Jen said, but no one was listening.

  Someone was kneeling over Lars with two fingers pressed to his jugular.

  “Someone call a doctor,” the man taking Lars’ pulse said. And then his voice raised and became more frantic as he said it again. “Someone call a doctor! A doctor! This man needs a doctor!”

  “A doctor?” someone seated a table said with a gasp.

  People got up from the table and ran over to the body, some of them carrying their sandwiches in hand as if they couldn’t part with their food for a second, not even when they were going to look at a dead body.

  “I’m a doctor!” someone shouted from corner of the deli. “Sorry, I was in the bathroom.”

  The man claiming to be a doctor shouldered his way through the crowd. He was dressed in scrubs and had toilet paper trailing one of his feet as he walked.

  “Are you a doctor?” someone in the crowd asked.

  “Yes, I’m a doctor,” the man answered. “Have you people gone mad? Get back from the body so I can see if he’s breathing or not.”

  The man in the scrubs who was identifying himself as a doctor leaned over and felt for a pulse in Lars neck for a few seconds. A look of deep concern crossed his face as he looked up from Lars’ body.

  “Does anyone have a mirror, maybe for make up or something?” the doctor asked. “Anyone at all?”

  “I do,” someone in the crowd said.

  Quickly the doctor was passed the mirror and he opened it and held it under Lars’ nose.

  “What are you doing?” someone shouted.

  “Shut up! I’m working,” the doctor said.

  “You don’t talk to my wife that way,” another voice shouted.

  The doctor’s head dropped and then he looked up at the crowd.

  “This man is dead,” he said. “Someone call an ambulance.”

  Just as Jen heard that Lars had died her hand found the handle of the door and she opened it slowly, then turned sideways to slip out as quickly as possible. Shutting the door quietly she turned and sprinted the few feet to the tattoo parlor.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Jen yelled as she sprinted through the back to the main room of the shop. “You killed someone with a fucking camera!”

  Earl was standing in the middle of the shop trying to get the telescoping pole to collapse back together but was having a hard time; he’d bent the pole when he’d hit Lars on the head. The camera itself didn’t appear functional as big chunks of it flopped around on the end of the pole.

  “I fucking saved your life, lady,” Earl said with a big stupid grin on his face.

  “How the fuck did you save my life?” Jen asked.

  Earl just stood there with a big stupid grin on his face, struggling to get the pole collapsed back together. Jen looked over at Nate who was sitting at his station tattooing. He looked back at her with wide eyes.

  “What the fuck did he just do?” Nate asked.

  The person Nate was tattooing was some overweight guy with a mullet and spiky eyebrows. He kept looking from Earl to Jen and then back to Nate.

  “Where the fuck is Seth?” Jen said.

  “Lady,” Earl said. “I don’t know how you are upset at me. I took that mother fucker out with a God damn camera on a stick! That is some fucking secret agent shit!”

  Earl let out a war whoop and managed to force the pole into being fully collapsed.

  “You did what?” Nate said, now clearly alarmed.

  “Did he hurt someone?” the guy in Nate’s tattoo chair asked.

  “No,” Nate said quickly. “Tell you what we’ll finish this on the cheap later. Get the fuck out of here right now.”

  “God damn I am good!” Earl yelled as he dropped back into a karate stance and punched the air with an enormous grin on his face. “Did you see that shit? I am death incarnate. You can’t even imagine how badass you have to be to pull some shit off like that.”

  Sirens sounded in the distance.

  “You are so fucking stupid!” Jen yelled. “What the fuck were you doing?”

  Seth, Mike Diamond and Wizard sprinted into the shop through the back.

  “What’s going on?” Seth asked.

  Jen started bawling and tried to speak between sobs.

  “We were going to have lunch and then Earl killed Lars with a camera on a stick!” Jen managed to get out before wailing more.

  The sirens were getting closer outside, sounding almost like they were just down the block. Nate motioned for Seth to grab Jen and get her out of the shop. When he turned to look at Earl his mouth fell open and the chime sounded as the door flew open.

  “DIE MOTHERFUCKERS!” a man wearing a Nixon mask and a tuxedo screamed.

  For a second Jen wondered why the man was standing at such a weird angle, but then she realized that he was holding some kind of machine gun at hip level, with his hips jutted out like he was in a music video. Earl turned around just in time to catch the first burst of weapons fire right in the stomach. Jen watched as if from somewhere in the back of her head. She’d always thought that when someone got shot their body jerked around and they flew across the room. But instead of that, she watched as if watching a movie, Earl just fell to the ground in slow motion.

  It was like he was kneeling down during Catholic mass to receive communion from the priest while tufts of clothes and red globs flew out of his back. The gunman kept riddling Earl with bullets as he fell, chewing through his skull like it was made of putty. The man in the tuxedo and president mask looked down at the blood gushing out of Earl’s head with the smoking machine gun in his hands. For a second no one moved.

  “I AM NOT A CRIMINAL!” the man said as he turned his firearm on the rest of them.

  Nothing happened though. It took a split second for the man to realize that his firearm wasn’t going to work. He looked at it, then started shaking it.

  “Fucking shit!” the man said.

  “Hit ‘em, Wiz!” Mike Diamond screamed.

  While the man in the Nixon man had been busy sawing Earl in half, Wizard had hit the deck, crawled to his station and yanked the sawed off double barrel shotgun that was taped underneath the counter.

  BLAST! BLAST!

  The first shot caught the man in the left hip, spinning him around like a top. The second blast hit him mid-spin square in the chest, sending him flying back into the glass door. The door shattered but the man’s body caught on the push bar, his arms splayed out as if he was on a cross; his chest was torn open and his heart could be
seen trying pathetically to pump blood but obviously failing as huge holes in it gurgled a froth of blood onto the floor. The last few sparks of life left as the man had a seizure, caught there on the push bar, looking like a crucified Nixon with a machine gun dangling from one hand.

  “The Mother Fucking Wizard saves the day!” Nate screamed as he got up from the floor. “Good shooting!”

  Jen felt herself being picked up and didn’t try to resist. She was so out of sorts she only hoped someone would sweep her up and get her the fuck out of the shop. She didn’t know where she where she would rather be but anywhere would be a big improvement. Until today, Jen had never seen any bodies except at funerals, and now she’d seen three men die right in front of her and two of them had been horrible, bloody deaths.

  “I’m getting her the fuck out of here. We’ll head to her dojang,” Seth said. Jen realized he was the one that had swept her up in his arms. “You guys should all join us pronto.”

  Wizard shrugged his shoulders looking down at the shotgun’s smoking barrels.

  “Probably a good idea,” he said dropping the weapon and heading toward the back of the shop.

  “Nate, help me grab the safe,” Mike said. “Seth and Wiz, head to the dojang. That’s a good plan, we’ll meet you there.”

  “You think the safe won’t be too heavy for us to move?” Nate asked.

  “If it is we’ll just grab the cash and head out,” Mike said. “And if anyone asks we’ll all say we weren’t here when this happened.”

  Wizard jerked to a halt, his long beard trailing out in front of him. He spun around and sprinted back to his shotgun, picking it up and running over to Earl’s corpse. Wiz put the shotgun in Earl’s hand and pointed it in the general direction of the dead guy caught on their door, pulsating blood all over the place out of his chest as if some kind of alien had eaten its way out. That’s when Jen noticed through the dream-like haze of shock that the whole front of the shop had about an inch of standing blood covering the cement floor.

  The dead guy with the Nixon mask kept twitching on the door’s push bar; Earl’s legs and arms kept spasming back and forth as if Earl was trying to create a bloody snow angel on the shop floor post mortem. Wiz was standing amidst the carnage, the tops of his sneakers soaked black with blood, his eyes wide and is mouth askew.