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A Victimless Crime
Part 2
Three months had passed, three reasonably happy months. Blair had no problem with a life on the road. He enjoyed the trips from motel to motel, and he liked the constant company of Jim, who was treating him very well. He had had a lot of lovers in his life, but this thing with Jim was some strange new thing. It was something he didn't much understand, and, for a change, something he didn't need to understand.
Jim was asleep beside him, and Blair noticed, not for the first time, that when stress and the hard edge of Jim's cop facade were smoothed away by sleep he had a face that was not handsome so much as it was beautiful, like a drawing of an angel. He ran his hand down Jim's face and smiled. He was sure that if anyone could see that smile, they'd say it was plain dopey.
"Chief," Jim mumbled, "quit poking me...."
"I'm not poking you. I'm musing on your beauty in sleeping."
"Well quit it."
Blair smiled and laid down beside him and tried to get back to sleep. With his arm around Jim, it was easy to remember how.
The money had slowly worked on Blair. He continued to do small favours for Harry, mostly legal, or almost legal anyway, and Harry had learned that Blair had a profound distaste for the violent stuff, and so tried to keep him out of it.
And that had been easy, because anyone who got to know him soon realized that his main asset was his brain. So Harry had asked him if he might be interested in helping Harry out with his ledgers. A little crash course in creative accounting followed, and he had started doing that soon enough.
Blair enjoyed the work, which wasn't, for one thing a lot of work, and which paid very well. It was a pleasure to subvert mathematics. He always hated his statistics courses, and all the hard math that science demanded you learn to be taken seriously. And, he figured, that if the major corporations did this, he may as well help his friends do it. He was no fan of the IRS anyway.
He had sacked away enough money to pay all the way to his doctorate, and maybe even beyond that, and the money kept rolling in.
At night he had some trouble sleeping. He knew what Harry did to earn his pay, although he tried not to think of it. It always found him in his dreams, but in the morning, in the space between awake and asleep, he always told himself that crime happened. If it wasn't Harry, it would be someone else.
And even if he wanted to quit, he wouldn't know how. These weren't people you wanted to offend, and besides, he and Harry *were* friends. In the fall he would go back to school and that would be soon enough. It would all be behind him like a bad dream.
Aside from motels, they were spending the occasional night with friends. Sometimes they were Jim's friends, and that was always damned interesting. Tight backed men, mostly, with sad eyes and scars, people he had known in that other life that he never spoke about to anyone.
At present it was one of his friends they were heading to see. He was looking forward to it.
"Blair?" Jim said to him, slightly annoyed.
"Yeah?"
"I asked if it's a right or a left here?"
Blair shook his head, and looked down at the notebook where he had scribbled down the directions.
"Sorry, Jim, distracted. It's a left."
Jim nodded, and made the turn.
"Fucking Iowa," Jim said, "how can anybody find anything. It all looks the same."
Blair laughed.
"Wow, you are such a snob."
"Am I wrong?"
Blair shook his head, smiling.
"So, is this another one of your Mom's hippie friends, or one of your freak test subjects?"
"His name is Walter O'Reilly. You'll like him, he's a vet."
"Vietnam?"
"Uh-uh. Korea. I got in touch with him through a doctor in Maine. I had put a classified looking for Sentinels in a few medical journal, and this doctor had served with him in a mobile hospital in Korea. So I tracked him down."
"Is he...y'know?"
"I don't think so. Not really. He might hear a little better than most people, but I think it was just the war that made him hyper-attentive.
"What he is," Blair continued, "is one of the sweetest people I have ever met. And he said if I was ever in the neighborhood to drop by."
"And so here we are."
"Yup."
"Suits me fine. I could use some sleep. I'm told that Iowa is really good for that."
Blair elbowed him in the ribs, and Jim chuckled.
"You behave," Blair said, "He's a nice old man."
The farm was small and looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Chickens wandered all around the yard. A small grey man with big round glasses, came down off the seat of a red tractor, and wiped his forehead, coming to see them.
Blair got out of the car, smiling.
"Mr. O'Reilly?"
The man smiled brightly, and looked sixteen for a moment.
"Blair?"
Blair walked over and shook his hand firmly.
"How are you, Mr. O'Reilly?"
"Radar. Call me Radar."
Jim smiled, and stepped closer.
"Radar, this is my friend Jim. Jim, this is Radar."
Jim smiled, and shook hands. "I bet when you said drop by, you never figured he would, did you?"
"Gosh, no, but I should have known if anyone would, it would be him. Not that I mind or anything. I almost never get visitors now. It sure is good to see you, Blair."
Jim was quiet as he and Radar caught up on things. Radar insisted that they stay and have supper with him, and so they did. After supper, Jim surprised him by going out with Radar to do the barnyard chores while Blair did dishes.
The two of them came back in laughing like old friends, which surprised him. Radar was a pretty quiet and meek little guy, and Jim could be pushy. You never can tell, Blair supposed.
They decided to stay for a couple nights, sleeping in separate beds. Radar was a sweet man, and there was no sense in making him any more nervous.
"I'm glad we stopped here, Chief," Jim said, in the hall after their host had gone to bed.
"Good."
Jim nodded and went to bed. Blair wondered if he would ever get the hang of Jim.
It was late August when he discovered the problem with March 20th. The problem with March 20th was that about six thousand bucks had plain vanished from the real ledgers. He added and re-added and checked his figures, and no matter what he did, there it was red as blood.
He called Harry and Harry came over right away.
Blair took the better part of half an hour to explain how he had come to this number, and Harry looked sick.
"And, you are sure, really sure, that this is the right book?"
Blair just looked at him.
"Sweet Christ." Harry held his head in his hands. "Can we break it down any better than that?"
Blair laughed out loud. It wasn't a happy laugh.
"Jesus, Harry, with all the bullshit names and accounts, who could? It seems to be from something called the..." he paused to look it up, "'shipping discretionary fund', whatever that is."
Harry turned pale.
"Uh, Harry?"
"Read that back."
Blair did.
Harry turned and walked into the other room. There was a gunshot, and the other men began to swear. Blair felt sick to his stomach. He had just killed a guy.
Harry came back in, wiping a spatter of blood from his forehead with a blue handkerchief.
"It's taken care of. Cover it up."
And then he left. Robert explained later on that only two people had access to that money. One of them was Harry Green. The other was Harry's lieutenant, and best friend.
"And he just walked out and shot him?"
"Yes," Robert said, "Don't you understand that he stole that money from his best friend? What kind of friend is that?"
"Dead, apparently," Blair said, bitterly. "Harry keeps saying I'm his friend."
"You are. So don't do anything to say you aren't."
Blair looked at his cousin, and found it hard to believe they came from the same seed matter. For how different they were, they might have come from different planets.
But he had been poor his whole life, and the money held him fast. Two more weeks he thought, and good-bye. Two more weeks.
Blair had troubling dreams of dark shapes, and woke up alone in Radar's farmhouse. He made his way downstairs and saw that Jim and their host were cooking up a big breakfast, and listening to the radio, not talking. It wasn't an awkward silence either, which Blair thought was something of a marvel.
"Morning, chief," they both said in unison, as if by private joke.
Blair was stalled for a second.
"Good morning."
It was another breakfast in Jim's style, high fat, lots of meat. It was a wonder that Jim didn't weigh nine thousand pounds. And if this was how they always ate in Iowa, then Radar was a plain impossibility.
They ate together, and Jim and Radar discussed the day's plans, which involved, apparently fixing a barn roof. Jim seemed enthusiastic about the whole thing. Blair just watched, wishing he had a way of writing this all down without them knowing. He was sure he was watching some kind of bizarre Sentinel-pseudo-Sentinel bonding or something.
He was about to say so, when Jim and Radar both lifted their heads at an angle at the same time, looking concerned.
"Choppers," Radar said, seemingly by instinct, and then looked embarrassed. "Sorry, old habit. I used to..."
Jim grabbed Radar and threw him under the table.
"Blair, get down!" Jim shouted , heading for cover, as the first of the bullets ripped through the kitchen windows, the helicopters close enough know to shake the house.
Blair covered his head with his hands as the bullets came and came and came. He heard shouting, and breaking glass and the copters, and then the shooting stopped.
"Anybody hit?" Jim asked, a little loudly.
"I'm okay," Blair gasped out.
"Oh jesus," Jim said, "Blair, don't look. He's dead."
Blair felt his heart clamp tight. He was becoming an angel of death in his spare time, wasn't he?
There were men coming toward the house, at least six, with guns, and they looked to mean business. Jim reached for the gun that he had forgotten was in his suitcase upstairs.
It made no sense that anyone could know they were here. He was panicked and Jim looked much the same.
And just as suddenly, there was a spray of shots from outside, and then silence, except for one set of footsteps.
The front door swung open, and in walked a very thin brown-haired man in leather, carrying an Uzi, and wearing shades. He looked nothing like Arnold Schwarzenegger as he spoke, offering his hand to Blair.
"Come with me if you want to live," he said, smiling.
If things had been totally different, Blair would have laughed.
more to come...