A Twist Of Noir 596 - Gary M. Dobbs

THE MAN WITH THE SUN IN HIS EYES - GARY M. DOBBS

The man with the sun in his eyes smiled. It was without warmth and revealed even white teeth; cold white teeth.

He raised the pistol, aimed and pulled the trigger.

‘Shouldn’t have fucked up, Leroy,’ he said, pocketed the pistol and walked from the room. It had been untidy when he had entered, magazines and CDs strewn over the floor, unwashed plates and mugs everywhere, one of which had a healthy looking mould around the rim.

It was even messier when he’d left.

The man with the sun in his eyes stepped outside into a fine August afternoon and went straight to the silver Porsche, his pride and joy. He jumped in, turned the key and pulled off into the quiet suburban street. As he reached the junction and turned left, he was aware of the black saloon following.

He kept to a steady thirty until the end of the street and then made a right onto the main road and, by the time he reached the roundabout and swung a left, he knew for certain that he had a tail.

Question was, who the fuck was following him?

He drove one-handed and removed the pistol from his side holster, unscrewed the silencer and then placed the weapon back into the holster. It wasn’t so bulky without the silencer, which he tossed over his shoulder onto the rear seats. He glanced in the rear-view mirror and noticed that the dark coloured car had fallen back two cars but was still very much following him.

Was it the police?

He didn’t think so.

Without taking his attention from the mirror, the man with the sun in his eyes reached out and switched the stereo system on, it was pre-tuned to his iPod and immediately a scratchy blues sound filled the car.

It had been a run-of-the-mill job. Leroy Carter worked as a street dealer for the organisation, pushing out pills and coke. He’d never really handled too much money, fifty grand at the most which was a nice wedge but nowhere near enough to go into hiding and stay hidden. A paltry sum for a life, but Leroy hadn’t seen it like that and had fucked up big time, hitting the organisation for just over ten K. It was a blow that didn’t really hurt the men that mattered and Leroy was targeted for the cross rather than the amount of money he had stolen.

Nobody crossed the organisation and lived.

Leroy should have known that and the fact that a goodly portion of the contents of his head was now splattered over the CDs and dirty dishes and magazines was pretty much his own doing.

You didn’t cross the organisation and certainly not for a measly ten grand.

There was a country lane ahead; little used, it ran up over Llanwonno Mountain and onto Ferndale.

The man with the sun in his eyes took the turning.

The dark coloured car did also.

The man with the sun in his eyes sped up and so did the car following. The road ahead was in a poor state of repair and there were potholes everywhere, which wouldn’t do the Porsche any good. But all the same the man with the sun in his eyes floored the accelerator and the powerful engine gave him an instant power boost like a can of Red Bull laced with amphetamine.

He took corner after corner at speed, the wheels screaming but gripping the uneven surface like glue and soon he had lost his tail, but he knew the car was still behind him for there was nowhere else for it to go. He looked again in the mirror but couldn’t see further than the bend immediately behind. The road straightened up ahead and he kept the Porsche at speed as he approached the straight and then accelerated even harder until the needle was touching the hundred.

Suicidal speeds for roads such as these but if there was one thing above all else that the man with the sun in his eyes was good at, it was driving. There was still no sign of the car following and after maybe another mile, the man with the sun in his eyes pulled the Porsche off the road and took it into a field, concealing it behind the Hawthorn Hedge. He jumped out of the car and hid behind a small banking while he waited for his tail to appear.

He felt that he’d figured the tail out – someone had put a hit on him.

The organisation, no doubt - it had to be.

They were meticulous in clearing their tracks. It seemed someone had decided that once he’d taken Leroy out, he became a problem himself. He was a loose end that could unravel and linked the organisation to Leroy who was an unknown quantity. It was common knowledge that Leroy had been shouting off his mouth about his links to the organisation and maybe when he turned up dead one of his crack-head friends would go to the filth, tell them that Leroy was connected.

Least that was the way the man with the sun in his eyes figured it and he guessed he’d know soon enough when he saw the dark coloured car appear in the lane where it started to straighten.

He remained there, crouched behind the banking as the car approached. At first, it went past the point where he had left the road but then stopped dead and started reversing, maybe the driver had noticed the Porsche in his rear-view mirror. The man with the sun in his eyes pumped his pistol, sending a slug into the chamber.

He watched as the dark car stopped and the driver stepped out.

The driver, a big man with shocking ginger hair held an automatic pistol in his hand. For a moment, the ginger guy looked around him and then, on cautious feet, walked into the field. He held the pistol out in front of him and approached the Porsche.

The man with the sun in his eyes pulled the trigger and dropped the ginger guy.

A shoulder shot, not fatal but enough to put him on his arse.

The man with the sun in his eyes ran to the fallen man and located the automatic and kicked it out of the way. He levelled his own gun, setting its sight directly between the ginger guy’s eyes.

‘You fucking shot me,’ Ginger said, clutching his injured shoulder. Blood gushed through his fingers and his face drained of all colour. ‘You fucking shot me.’

‘You were going to do me,’ the man with the sun in his eyes said.

‘I guess I was,’ the ginger guy said as if that made everything all right. He looked at the man with the sun his eyes, taking in the pupil abnormality. The pupils were bright yellow and looked like twin suns floating against light blue irises.

‘You know what I’m going to do now?’ the man with the sun in his eyes asked.

The ginger guy nodded, accepting the situation. It was all part of the game and he’d lost and what came next was inevitable. There was no use kicking up a fuss and he took some comfort in the fact that he’d finally seen the man with the sun in his eyes for himself, discovered that the story of his freaky eyes were not a myth. The guy was a fucking freak.

‘Tell me who sent you,’ the man with the sun in his eyes said. ‘Was it the organisation?’

‘Guess it makes no fucking difference,’ Ginger guy said. ‘They can’t touch me now. Yeah, it was.’

‘Thank you,’ the man with the sun in his eyes said and pulled the trigger.

He went to the Porsche and drove it out of the field, parked it in the lane and then jumped into the ginger guy’s car and reversed it into the field, parking it tight against the hedge.

The man with the sun in his eyes smiled and walked back to the Porsche. He saw another car coming along the lane, a silver Range Rover and the man with the sun in his eyes stood back against his own car while he waited for the vehicle to pass.

The Range Rover pulled level with the man with the sun in his eyes and then the driver killed the engine and shot the man with the sun in his eyes in the throat, sending a spray of gore onto the afternoon air.

The newcomer stepped from the Range Rover and walked over to the man with the sun in his eyes, who was slowly drowning in his own blood.

‘You got the ginger guy, the newcomer said. ‘I was supposed to get ginger after he got you, but I guess it makes no difference.’

The man with the sun in his eyes would have smiled if he could. The organisation was being extra cautious and had double-crossed both himself and the ginger guy.

‘It’s true,‘ the newcomer said. ‘You really have some freaky fucking eyes.’

There was no answer from the man with the sun in his eyes.

The sun had finally gone from his eyes.

The newcomer turned and made his way back to his Range Rover just as another car came screaming along the lane...