Once Is Never Enough Read online

  What if they had something to do with Goolardo?

  The mob pushed Sancho for the doors and Sancho tried to fight the flow and swim against the tide. He shoved his way back through the crush of panicked shoppers. People were irritated and terrified and angry, but Sancho kept saying “excuse me, excuse me” as he pushed and elbowed his way through. He was just about back to the mall when another gunshot rang out.

  More terrified shoppers stampeded into Target and nearly swept Sancho away, but he stood his ground and finally made it through.

  He found himself by Santa’s throne on the raised platform with the gaudy red, green and gold lights, and tinsel. It was where Santa sat to have his picture taken with all the hundreds of sticky-faced kids. The line usually stretched forever, but at the moment there were no kids waiting, no elves to usher them forward, and no Santa.

  Sancho headed for the escalator that led to the second-floor food court and Hot Dog on a Stick. That’s when he saw Saint Nick. The big, bearded, red-suited symbol of the holiday season lay on the floor, bleeding out. A crying five-year-old boy sat next to him, sobbing and holding his hand. Sancho knelt on the ground beside them. “What the hell happened here?”

  “Some asshole shot me,” Santa snapped.

  “Where’d you get hit?”

  “Left arm.” Santa kept pressure on it with his right hand even as blood leaked through his fingers.

  “I’ll get you some help,” Sancho said.

  “Get this kid out of here first. Get him somewhere safe.”

  “No,” said the little boy. “I wanna stay with you.”

  “Don’t be naughty! Go with the man. Go!”

  The boy nodded as tears streamed down his dirty face. Sancho took the boy’s hand, but he also had a question. “Which way did the shooter go?”

  Santa raised a bloody finger and pointed across the mall. Fifty feet away, Sancho saw Mendoza. Fear filled his guts like ice. The last time Sancho saw the burly enforcer was the trial where Sancho testified against him.

  “Shit.”

  Mendoza saw Sancho as well; and Sancho could tell that Mendoza knew exactly who he was. As Mendoza raised his weapon, Sancho leaped to his feet and turned to run, pulling the boy with him. That’s when he bumped into Francisco Goolardo.

  The drug lord seemed pleased to see him. “Well, look who it is! What a small world we live in.”

  Sancho tried to get around him but Goolardo grabbed him by the front of his shirt.

  “Where are you going? Don’t be rude.” He looked at the little boy. “Is this little one yours?”

  “No.”

  The two dangerous men with Goolardo held one of Flynn’s Hot Dog on a Stick co-workers. Sancho didn’t know her name, but he remembered how she talked to Flynn. How she treated him with disrespect and looked at him with contempt. Her Hot Dog on a Stick hat sat crooked atop her shoulder-length blonde hair, her pretty face messy with melted mascara and tears.

  Mendoza arrived and took Sancho by the arm. His huge hand encircled Sancho’s bicep easily.

  “Sancho, isn’t it? Isn’t that your name?” Goolardo asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Mr. Flynn’s Sancho Panza. How very fitting. I’m assuming you visited him today. Not the same man he used to be, is he? Now that he’s medicated, he’s not nearly as impressive. It’s unfortunate really. I miss the old Flynn. He was a worthy opponent. Now he’s just fat, frightened, and stupid like most Americans.”

  “Let the boy go. He has nothing to do with this.”

  “No. No one goes. Not the boy. Not the girl. Not you. Not even Santa. Not until I find Mr. Flynn. Do you know where he’s hiding?”

  “No.”

  “It’s fitting is it not, that this all ends in a place like this? This palace of conspicuous consumption. I imagine it was once awe-inspiring. Sometime in the ’80s perhaps. But now, like America itself, it is in decline. These stores packed with useless merda that no one needs or even wants until they are brainwashed into believing that without this or that they are worth nothing. I sold a product people did desire. One that required no advertising at all. The demand was there, and I filled it and made billions and they sent me to prison for not playing by the rules put in place by your rapacious government.

  “I was punished for not lining the pockets of your politicians. Your leaders have always been greedy, but now the unwashed and ignorant have elected leaders just as ignorant as they are. The stupid leading the stupid. Poetic justice I would say. The American experiment will collapse in chaos. I tried to hasten the inevitable with the plan your friend foiled, but it will happen even without my help. And very, very soon.”

  Goolardo fired his gun in the air. Sancho and the girl flinched. The boy wailed. Goolardo raised his voice until it echoed throughout the cavernous mall. “Mr. Flynn! I know you’re hiding here somewhere. And I know you can hear me. I have your friend, Sancho, and the pretty blonde girl who works with you. Becky.” He held up her name tag. “If you don’t want them to die, then I need to see you. We need to talk. We need to finish this. Do not prolong your pain. I can see how unhappy you are. They have filled your brain with chemicals and turned you into one of them. A worker bee. A fat, stupid drone, laboring to make the rich richer. Come! Let me help you. Let me put you out of your misery!”

  When no one answered back, Goolardo struck Becky in the forehead with the butt of his pistol. She would have collapsed without the support of the two dangerous men. The cut he opened on her once flawless forehead bled heavily.

  “Don’t make me beat this beauty into something ugly. There is no escape for you. You know that. In the end, you will die for what you did to me. There’s no reason to take these innocents with you.”

  “Let the girl go!” An elderly security guard with an Armenian accent held a trembling gun on Goolardo. Mendoza and the two dangerous men swung their weapons in the direction of the lone security guard. Yet, he kept coming. “Put the guns down!” he ordered.

  Goolardo laughed. “I applaud your bravery, sir, but I believe you are outgunned.” Goolardo put his pistol to Becky’s head. “Continue to point that weapon at me and I promise this young woman will die. As will this young man and this innocent little boy. I might even shoot Santa just for good measure.”

  “Put the guns down!” The security guard repeated, his voice shaky.

  Goolardo looked at the girl. “Tell that old fool to put his gun away before he gets you killed.”

  “Please, Mr. Papazian, do what he says. I think he really means it.”

  “SWAT is on the way.” Papazian blinked away sweat burning his eyes. “You might as well surrender because there is no way you’re getting out of here.”

  An angry Goolardo turned his weapon on Papazian. “There’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity and I think you just crossed it.”

  Goolardo fired, hitting Papazian in his left shoulder, spinning him sideways. Goolardo fired again and that bullet caught the guard in the arm. Papazian fell. His gun clattered across the floor. He tried to crawl for it. Goolardo fired once more, catching him in the side. Papazian winced, yet he continued to crawl. Goolardo laughed and crossed over to the old Armenian. Papazian’s breathing grew ragged and labored. Blood smeared the floor as he doggedly crept forward, straining to reach his revolver.

  “It’s important to be persistent, but now you’re just being ridiculous.” Goolardo aimed at Papazian’s head.

  “I believe you’re looking for me!”

  Sancho recognized his old friend’s voice. Not the new heavily medicated version with the high-pitched, mealy-mouthed American accent, but the old Flynn, the masterful one, with the deep voice and the British accent with just touch of Scottish burr. He was above on the second floor, looking down over the railing at the tableau below. He was dressed in black from head to toe and held the biggest orange, white, and blue Super Soaker Sancho had ever seen.

  Chapter Six

  Mobile, Alabama didn’t offer much opportunity for a young
African American boy in 1949. That was the year Lonnie Johnson was born. The son of a truck driver and the grandson of a cotton farmer, he was inspired by the life of George Washington Carver. Always curious, he loved taking things apart to see what made them tick. When he was ten, he nearly burned down his family’s house trying to make rocket fuel.

  Fourteen years later he earned a master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from Tuskegee University. Six years after that he was a senior system engineer on the Galileo Project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. While engineering a cooling system that would run on water instead of freon, he invented a super squirt gun he dubbed the Power Drencher. He worked with various toy companies to develop it and in 1991, the gun was renamed the Super Soaker and launched to worldwide acclaim.

  Johnson filed suit in 2013 for nonpayment of royalties and in that same year was awarded seventy-three million dollars.

  “Mr. Flynn!” Goolardo shouted with obvious glee. “How good of you to join us!”

  “How could I refuse such an enthusiastic invitation?”

  “It’s a pleasure to have you back.”

  “It’s a pleasure to be back.”

  “What is that you’re aiming at me?”

  “A high-powered, top of the line, state of the art weapon that offers four different firing modes. Jet Stream. Scattershot. Triple Shot. And Atomizer.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Indeed. It has a range of forty feet and comes complete with a detachable stock and multiple banana clips. It’s quite ingenious really.”

  “He’s loco,” Mendoza mumbled. “A lunatic.”

  Flynn saw Becky staring up at him with a mixture of surprise, shock, and awe. Blood ran down her face and all over her Hot Dog on a Stick outfit.

  “This is between you and me, Goolardo. Let the guard and Becky and the little boy go!”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because they have nothing to do with this.”

  “So, you don’t mind if I pop a cap in Santa?”

  “I would prefer you wouldn’t.”

  Rodney winced as he shifted his position to look up at Flynn. “You do realize you don’t have a real gun, right?”

  “It’s as real as I am,” Flynn replied.

  “And what exactly is your plan, Mr. Flynn?” Goolardo pointed at himself with both index fingers. “You know, I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West.”

  “Let them go. I won’t ask you again.” Flynn shouldered his weapon and drew a bead on the Brazilian drug lord.

  “I’m glad to, but only if you come down here. Do that and I will release them.”

  “Sancho too?”

  “No. Not Sancho. Like you, he needs to pay for what he did to me.”

  Sancho turned his terrified gaze to Flynn, who kept his weapon trained on Goolardo.

  “Fine. I’m coming down. But I’m not putting down my weapon.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  Flynn crossed to the escalator and rode it down. The hostages all held their breath as Flynn slowly descended, his bright plastic weapon resting in the crook of his arm. When he reached the first floor, he once again took a bead on Goolardo.

  “Now…let the girl go.”

  Goolardo nodded to the two dangerous men and they unhanded her.

  “Becky, take that little boy and get him to safety.” Becky stared at Flynn in stunned silence. “Becky! Can you do that for me?”

  The teenager seemed numb, but she nodded in the affirmative.

  “Good girl. Now, go. Go!”

  Becky took the little boy’s hand and hurried off across the mall.

  Keeping his weapon trained on Goolardo, Flynn glanced sideways at Rodney in his Santa suit. “Can you move?”

  “How come you’re talking with that funny accent?”

  “What accent?”

  “The limey accent. Why are you talking like that?”

  “If you can move, you need to get up and get out of here.”

  “I’m shot.”

  “I know. I can see that. And if you’d like to avoid getting shot again, I would suggest you move.”

  Rodney winced in agony as he rolled over on his knees and used his one good arm to pull himself to his feet. He staggered off slowly, trailing blood.

  Distant sirens filled the air as Goolardo and the two dangerous men aimed their weapons at Flynn. “Time to go, Mr. Flynn,” Goolardo said.

  Flynn was perplexed. “Go as in go the way of all flesh or go as in go with you?”

  “I could shoot you both here, but what would be the fun in that? You don’t deserve a quick death. You deserve to die slowly and painfully and by the end of our time together you will be begging me to end your misery.”

  Flynn continued to hold his weapon on all three of them. “It appears we find ourselves in Mexican standoff then.”

  “A Mexican standoff is a confrontation between multiple combatants where there is no strategy that will allow any one party to achieve victory. That is not the case here. I have a Brugger and Thomet MP 9 machine pistol. It fires nine hundred rounds per minute. My colleagues are threatening you with semi-automatic Berettas. Mr. Mendoza holds a Smith and Wesson on your friend. You, on the other hand, are threatening us with a squirt gun.” The sirens wailed louder now as Goolardo barked, “Take him!”

  The dangerous men moved for Flynn. He fired his pump-action Super Soaker Switch Shot Blaster, hitting them both full in the face with the jet stream mode. The two men screamed in agony and clawed at their eyes, dropping their guns as Flynn turned his Super Soaker on Mendoza, catching the big man full in the face and right in the mouth. He gagged and grunted in pain, blinded by the bleach in the banana clip. Sancho slammed his elbow back and hit Mendoza square in the nose. The big man stumbled backwards, gagging and blind.

  Goolardo unloaded on Flynn, but the two no longer dangerous men provided excellent cover and their body armor caught the brunt of the fire. Flynn ran quickly, in a serpentine fashion, staying low, as Goolardo struggled to get a bead on him. Just as he got Flynn in his sights, Mendoza, blinded and staggering, stumbled into the line of fire.

  “Fi de rapariga!” Goolardo screamed.

  Becky hid behind a pillar and captured all the action on her iPhone. The little boy crouched beside her as she shot every insane second of it. She couldn’t believe what Jimmy was doing. And what was up with that accent? He sounded like Jon Snow on Game of Thrones. Strangely, Jimmy seemed much more attractive to her with that accent. Or maybe it was the fact that he just saved her life.

  The guy Jimmy called Goolardo was totally pissed off and spraying bullets everywhere. When Flynn ran by where Becky hid, some of those shots ricocheted off the pillar. She ducked down but didn’t want to stop videotaping. This was crazy shit and she had to get it on YouTube.

  She caught Jimmy’s friend, Sancho, diving behind Santa’s throne and that huge Mr. Mendoza dunking his giant head into a fountain and splashing water into his eyes. Then Jimmy ran back into the frame and Goolardo unloaded on him. Jimmy moved pretty fast for a fat guy. She couldn’t believe the way Jimmy fought back. He always seemed like such a doof.

  That Goolardo guy was totally pissed. He kept shooting until his gun ran out of bullets. He was running and reloading, and Jimmy popped out from behind a palm tree and sprayed him right in the face with that giant squirt gun.

  Goolardo screamed, totally blind, and fired his little machine gun everywhere, randomly shooting out store windows and shredding plants and ripping the shit out of a sunglass kiosk. Jimmy dove behind a mall directory as Goolardo tripped backwards over a potted plant and kept on firing as he fell, shattering a giant skylight a hundred feet up. Glass rained down.

  Becky watched as Jimmy surveyed the damage. “Sancho! You okay?”

  “I’m okay.” Sancho slowly peeked out from behind the down escalator.

  “Becky?”

  “I’m okay,” Becky said even as she continued to shoot her iPhone video.

  Sancho looked
around with concern. “Where’s Mendoza? I don’t see him.”

  “Behind you!” Becky screamed.

  Sancho turned in terror, but Mendoza wasn’t there. It was Jimmy who Mendoza stood behind. The big man tackled him and Becky caught the whole thing. Mendoza’s two hundred and seventy-five pounds knocked the wind out of him and the Super Soaker skittered away. Jimmy tried to wrestle his way out from under him, but Jimmy was fat and out of shape and no match for Mendoza.

  The enforcer grabbed Jimmy by the throat and squeezed. Jimmy kicked at him and flailed away, but his sneakers and fists didn’t do much. Mendoza was too pissed off to feel anything. Even from where she was, Becky could see Mendoza’s red and bloodshot eyes bugging out of his head.

  Jimmy gagged and choked as Mendoza strangled the life out of him. Becky considered putting down her iPhone and trying to help, but what could she do? She couldn’t stop Mendoza. She was no match for that huge guy. At least if she got it all on her phone, she could show the police what happened to him. Poor Jimmy. He wasn’t even fighting now. His eyes rolled back in his head and she wondered if he was already dead.

  A foot smacked Mendoza in the face. It caught him by surprise and when he turned to see where it came from, it smacked him again. It was a bare foot. A plastic foot. A manikin foot. And Sancho was swinging it. The big toe poked Mendoza in the eye. Mendoza let Flynn go with one hand to grab for it. He missed and the foot hit him in the mouth. The attack wasn’t painful or physically damaging, but it was extremely irritating. The manikin leg was like a bug buzzing around, bumping into the big man’s face.

  Mendoza let Flynn go to focus his attention on the plastic leg. He pushed onto his feet as Sancho shifted his grip, moving his hands to the ankle so he could swing the leg like a baseball bat. The shapely plastic thigh caught Mendoza square in the nose and staggered him back. Emboldened, Sancho swung again, but this time Mendoza caught the leg in his massive hand and ripped it out of Sancho’s grip. He swung it one-handed and brought it down on the crown of Sancho’s head. Sancho sank to his knees. A second blow knocked him face down on the floor.