Wire fanning out to his right, behind the cars parked on H.
Mac heard the unmistakable sound of a car alarm system being shut off with a key fob on Twenty-Fourth.
He looked to Wire who nodded.
Mac carefully pushed his way around the corner. Halfway up the block he saw a man approaching a car.
Then he saw another man.
* * *
The assassin stepped out of his car and walked back towards Kristoff’s. Kristoff was looking back down the street for his pursuers.
* * *
Kristoff turned back to get into the car when he saw him.
The man was unmistakable.
It was the assassin Paolo.
The Bishop betrayed him.
Kristoff instinctively tried to raise his right hand to shoot but wounded, he was too slow. The first shot from Paolo hit him in his chest and knocked him off balance.
The second shot blew him off his feet and backwards onto the pavement.
Kristoff struggled for air as he looked up to see Paolo approaching. The assassin gauntleted his right hand into his left palm. It was just like ten minutes ago with Connolly. You had to finish the job.
“Sorry,” Paolo said flatly.
“DROP THE GUN! DROP IT NOW!” Kristoff heard voices yell. Paolo raised his right arm towards the voices. The first shot into Paolo’s chest caused a small gasp. The second shot blew him back and the third shot hit him in the forehead, dropping him.
Kristoff couldn’t move and his breaths were getting short. He heard footsteps approach and then there he was standing over him, Mac McRyan. The St. Paul detective looked down at him, gun at the ready. McRyan stepped over him and with his left foot, kicked the Walther away and then he leaned down. Wire appeared in view and she had her cell phone out, holding it with two hands, filming.
“Kristoff, Kristoff, look at me, look at me,” McRyan directed. “Nicholas, look at me. The Bishop sent that man to kill you. The Bishop, who is he? Who is he?”
Kristoff smiled a bloody smile. His boss never wanted to leave any loose ends. He’d spent ten years tying up his boss’s loose ends. Only now, did he realize that he was a loose end, the last tie back to the boss, the last liability to take care of.
“Who’s the Bishop! Tell me!” McRyan pleaded with him. “He betrayed you, Nicholas. Tell me who he is?”
The Bishop would not get away this time.
Kristoff gasped as he leaned up to speak. “Pope.” He coughed and felt the blood come out of his mouth. “Christian … Pope.”
* * *
McRyan’s jaw dropped. “Christian Pope? Christian Pope is the Bishop? Christian Pope of Pope Oil & Gas, P. O. & G. is the Bishop?” he asked Kristoff again.
Kristoff gave one last smile and gasped, “Y… y… yes, yes.”
He looked back at Wire, who was shocked.
McRyan looked back down to Kristoff, hearing the sirens approaching their position. They wouldn’t arrive in time for him. The killer went still. Mac checked for a pulse and there was none. Kristoff was gone.
Mac looked up to Wire who’d been filming with her phone. “Tell me you got that?”
She played with her phone and played the video back, “Oh yeah. I got it, Mac.”
Mac stood up and shook his head at Wire, a look of utter disbelief on his face. “You can’t make this shit up.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“He’s not dead.”
Judge Dixon stood in front of the large flat-screen television set up underneath the stands at Scottrade Center in St. Louis. The next campaign event would start in a mere ten minutes with speeches from local dignitaries who would fire up the crowd for the governor. Until late last night when the polling data on the scandal started to show a dramatic shift in the polls, the campaign wouldn’t have even thought of staging an event in Missouri, let alone their next and last stop of the campaign, Phoenix, Arizona. Missouri and Arizona were in the vice president’s column, he was up by, on average, eight points in each state. But in a mere twenty-four hours, there was a sea change in the race.
The Judge rolled his cigar with his right thumb and index finger while he watched the television footage of the fire at the Watergate. It was a victory cigar now. His left hand in his pants pocket was fiddling with the lighter. Voters still had to go to the polls tomorrow but the vice president’s campaign was fully ensnared in the voting machine scandal. Wellesley was getting killed by the media, his own