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The Guns of Capitol Hill


STRAIGHT OUTTA DALLAS

Dick Burns snatched his army surplus duffel bag, leapt from the Burlington Northern freight car and landed in a shimmering puddle of fresh vomit. The late dinner belonged to Burns's boxcar companion from Barstow, a hobo appropriately named Chuck. Burns peered back at the unconscious derelict lying on the floor of the car, his head cradled in his tattooed forearms. Chuck was a hophead and had enough needle tracks in his arms, he could have rented them out as a golf course. Burns slipped his business card in Chuck's tattered olive drab pocket. The pair had met in a Dallas railroad yard the week before. Burns had to call short his vacation to track a few leads on his latest case. He wiped his soiled shoe in Chuck's filth-caked hair and made his way down the tracks to Union Station.

Burns entered the station from the northside, strolled through the grand gallery. The morning commuter crowds were milling about, reading newspapers, sipping overpriced flavored coffees. Next to a cool marble fountain near the south entrance, a squat little man in a three-shades-too-dark toupee and ill-fitting plaid trousers stood nervously holding a placard with Burns's name misspelled on it. Burns lit a cigarette and walked toward Toupee Man. He mugged, "Y'know, you look like a goddamned cabbie."

Toupee Man looked both ways, nodded hesitantly, motioned towards Burns's luggage. Burns shook his head. "Nix on that, ma'am. There's fifteen pounds of plastique in there. You look the clumsy type what pees on their own shoes but don't notice till Sunday."

Toupee Man shrugged. The odd couple walked to a booger green Caprice Classic cab, pulled into traffic, headed up Massachusetts. Near the Carnegie Library, Burns noticed a white Chrysler sedan tailing them. He leaned over the front bench seat, said "Yo, chicki-baby. Pull into the Brew Company for some smokes. I'm gonna faint."

The cabbie pulled into an alley at 11th and H. Burns hopped out, shoved his way into the Capital City Brew Company. He weaved toward the payphone at the rear of the bar, punched a quarter in the slot and rang-up the boss. They spoke for a moment, Burns picked his nose, examined the results, placed it on the receiver, nodded twice, hung up. Passing a jukebox, he dropped in a quarter and punched A2. Burns tapped along with Sinatra as he sang about being shot down in May. Burns hit the bar, ordered a Jameson's, downed it, bought a pack of Chesterfields, returned to the annoyed cab driver. Then, he straightened his tie in the window, casually glanced at the white Chrysler parked across the street. Outside the driver's side window, a pile of cigarette butts smoldered.

Toupee Man whined, "Twenty minutes to get some cigarettes?"

"Y'ever heard of gastroenteritis, bub?" Burns ripped the pack open with his teeth, spat. "Not pretty. Just praise 'Bob' my lactose intolerance ain't acting up." Burns threw a thumb at the bustling traffic. "Two lane blacktop. Do it."

They slammed back in the cab, bit down on New York Avenue like it was going to mama. Burns eased himself over the front seat like he was about to whisper sweet nothings in the cabby's ear. He whipped out his nickel-plated .45, hammered it snug against the driver's furry neck. Toupee Man jumped so hard that his hairpiece stuck in the car roof like a pubic chandelier. Burns reached into the cabby's breast pocket, eased-out a hammerless .38. The driver snapped, "What you thinkin' to do, Burns?"

"That's Dick to you, pal, and I paint the dashboard with your brains if you pull any boners." Burns leaned back in his seat, glanced out the window. "Make for Arlington Cemetery, spit spot. I got a couple of relatives that need watering."

The cabbie busted a cold sweat, leadfooted the hackmobile headlong into Virginia, the white Chrysler tailing at a discreet distance. The two cars pulled in next to the cemetery visitor's center and snack shop. Burns pistol-whipped the driver, got out, walked towards the two suits in the white Chrysler parked five car lengths behind. The suits whispered, watched Burns through Ray Bans as he approached and scratched his ass. The jokers in the Chrysler looked like they'd been peeled from the same block of Kraft individually wrapped American cheese: same hair, glasses, suits, square jaws, boutonnières. They had Men in Black written all over them like brown on shit. Burns stuck a hairy palm into his suit pocket. The Chrysler couple made the same motion. Burns smiled, pulled out a cigarette, let it hang lazily from his lower lip. He got to the driver's side door, rapped a knuckle on the window.

"Gotta light?"

The driver squeaked down the window, lit a match, pushed it at Burns's head.

"Grassy ass. Things sure have changed since I was in the Agency," Burns waxed nostalgically between puffs. "I could tail a mark across three states and the District of Columbia before he wised-up. Lookit you fucks! When's the boss gonna quit buying you guys K cars?"

The suits stared at each other, grinned. The driver turned the ignition.

"The Mongoose is coming for you, Burns," the driver said. The words fell from his liver lips dark and slow, like cold ketchup from a Grecian urn. "Say good-bye to Jackson for us."

The driver popped the clutch into reverse, smoked pavement out of the parking lot. Burns walked back to the cab, dragged the unconscious Jackson to the trunk, heaved him in. He reached into his duffel bag, removed a roll of duct tape, and bound Jackson's arms, legs, mouth and eyes. He treaded up a grassy knoll to a payphone, called the boss. A gruff voice answered, "Dobb's & Company."

"Anybody there order a twelve-inch pepperoni with extra sauce?"

SMOKE ON THE WATER

Burns could hear the wisps of steam wheezing out from the boss's ears like a busted pressure cooker.

"Goddammit, Burns! What the hell are you trying to pull? First you call me and demand I describe the cabby I sent to pick you up. Now youÕre trying to sell me pizza?"

"I just lost the two jokers, boss," Burns grunted. "They had their noses so far up my ass, they could smell my left eye." He lit two Chesterfields, stuck one behind his left ear. "They talked a bunch of trash about a marsupial then split. Driver's name's Jackson. Sure as shit stinks, he ain't the six-foot eight Haitian you sent to pick me up." Burns heard someone squabbling with the boss in the background. Since the boss's Bahamian buttlover was in Tijuana taking a Reichian AIDS cure, it was probably the client. The squabbling stopped with an abrupt smack. The boss got back on the blower. "You'd better get down here quick, Burns. The client's getting hysterical. I had to slap the bitch."

"So I finally get to meet the mystery client, huh? Rapture. What you want I should do with the cabbie?"

"That's not my problem. So long as you don't use him in one of those sick videos of yours."

"Hmmm. I don't know, boss. He's cuter than a bug's"

The boss hung up. Burns hiked back to the cab, parked it in a bright, sunny spot, bought. He didn't want Jackson to catch a cold. Burns bought some tulips, laid them at Kennedy's grave. He said a little prayer, got back to the cab and drove to his apartment. He popped the trunk and yanked out the sweat-stained Toupee Man. The trunk stank like an anchovy locker room. Burns felt nostalgic for his days on the dodgeball team. He booted the cabbie into his basement, roped him to a chair, removed the gag and stuck a lit cigarette in the bald man's ear. He snapped on an overhead lamp.

"Alright, Jackson. What's this all about?"

Jackson shook the smoking cigarette out of his head. "I I want my lawyer."

Burns reached into a hatbox, removed a powdered judge's wig, and slammed it on his head.

"I'm your lawyer! Now, the two suits what tailed us mentioned 'Mongoose.' What the hell does that mean to you?"

Jackson said nothing. Burns dug some wax out of his ear with his pinkie, turned around and reached into a small refrigerator. He removed a vial and a hypodermic, loaded the needle up with sodium pentathol. The cabbie nervously eyed the needle, shivered, began sweating like a butcher after a 20k sprint.

"Alright! Alright! Operation Mongoose the plot to whack Castro"

"Dine-o-mite!" Burns screamed. "Now, what the hell does that have to do with Yerluvinuncle Dick?"

"You you're the last one left from the original hit team all the other gunmen and spotters bought the farm Agency director has to clean house they want you gone, Burns that's all they told me."

Burns scratched his goateed chin, spun back the situation in his mind like a busted 78. Several minutes of recollection produced nothing.

"Spit the names, Jackson. Who's the finger man for this op? Play right by me or I use the serum, and you don't get it in the arm."

"OK! OK! Just gimme a smoke, I'm jonesin'. Let me get one out of my"

"No dice. You'll take one of mine."

"The hell you say. That crap tastes like mentholated loveboat."

Burns reached into Jackson's suit pocket, clawed out a fresh pack of Marlboros. He peeled off the cellophane wrap with his teeth, removed two, slid one into Jackson's mouth. He lit the cabby's and began to light his own when he heard a sharp snapping sound. The cigarette fell from Jackson's lifeless lips as his head rolled lazily on his chest. Burns dropped his cigarette, picked up Jackson's, smelled it. A crushed glass ampule was hidden in the filter. Burns's nose cringed at the familiar syrupy sweet smell of hydrogen cyanide. Burns angrily eyed the cigarette that was only recently in his own mouth.

"Goddamned Philip Morris."

DEALEY PLAZA REGAINED

The boss and his client were both jerking off over dog-eared copies of Tiger Beat when Burns barged in.

"Why'n the hell didn't you tell me the Marky Mark double issue was in?"

"Didn't they teach you how to knock in charm school, Burns?" The boss hastily buttoned up his trousers and knocked over a jar of extra virgin olive oil.

"Nope. I missed that week. I was out agitating labor unions. Who's lardass?"

Burns pointed his chin at the client who was trying to chisel apart the crisp pages of a Jason Priestly fold out. The client was fat. Really fat. Burns shuddered at the thought of seeing him defecate.

"This is Mr. Fielding Tudball, president of the Masonic Trust Insurance Company."

The fat man gave Burns the third degree Masonic handshake. Burns wiped the olive oil off on his slacks.

"How did it go with the cab driver?" the boss asked hesitantly.

"It didn't. Guy's name is Jackson, or it was. Cyanide in his cigarette filter. I dumped the stiff off at the sausage works. Got a few bucks for his organs at the body bank. And by the way, I think I solved Mr. Tudball's insurance case."

The boss squatted back in his sheet metal recliner. "Well, let's hear it."

Burns sat down on the leatherette couch, propped his size 13 feet on the coffee table, fumbled for his Zippo. "I spent the past week combing Dallas for clues about the Rossini insurance claim you gave me. Turns out Rossini had no alibi for November 23, 1963; claimed he was at Toscanini's birthday bash at Spagos. One problem with that story."

"What?"

Burns lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply. "Toscanini had been dead for three years. Anyway, all the evidence I gathered leads me to the conclusion that Rossini was murdered. He couldn't have committed suicide the way your company's auditor insists."

Tudball harumphed, "Well, surely Rossini just dismembered himself and flung the pieces into the Chesapeake."

Burns cocked his head, jabbed a nailbitten finger at Tudball, ejaculated, "That's what I thought, too. But all the evidence at hand points to a gangland slaying. Rossini was due to testify before the Senate on the CIA's covert assassination programs back in the early Sixties. I'm due in tomorrow myself. My run in with the Men in Black this afternoon cinched it for me: the Agency is cracking down on its old organized crime links. They're trying to build a kinder, gentler intelligence hierarchy."

"You sound pretty sure of yourself, Burns," the boss quipped. "If I know you, that means trouble."

Burns sniffed his index finger and continued. "The cabbie made a slip about Mongoose; that was the op I cut my teeth on when I first came aboard with the Company. Covert ops was cooking up ways to wax Castro. Rossini was supposed to be the gunman; I was gonna be his spotter. When Kennedy nixed plans for Bay o' Pigs: The Sequel, the company turned the tables. Same actors, different venue: Dallas instead of Havana. By then, I told the Assistant Director for Plans to sit and spin." Burns made an obscene gesture with his middle finger. "So the election of '63 went ahead as scheduled. "

"There wasn't any election in 1963," Tudball murmured.

"Like hell there wasn't," Burns roared, pushing his way towards the wet bar. "Like Malcolm used to say: the bullet is the ballot. Five votes. The last one took off Jack's head. Am I talking to myself here?" Burns grabbed a liter jug of rum and began mixing a Bloody Shirley Templar. "Rossini was the shooter behind the fence who cast that winning vote for LBJ."

Tudball and the boss eyed each other suspiciously. The boss asked, "What about the other gunmen? Did they get jobs as private skulks too?"

"Only a handful of MIBs knew who was in on the election. According to our man Jackson, I'm the last one who knows the whole story. They're afraid I'll spill the beans to the Senate and flush this year's COLA for the Agency down the slow running toilet to hell."

Tudball jiggled. "And you're going to tell them "

"Hell no! No love lost between me and that rich Catholic bleeding-assed liberal fuck. I didn't show at the book depository for one reason: Mommy always said it was rude to shoot your boss in the head. Besides, didn't want to take the fall like that patsy eh whatsisname. You know, the one with the fucked up accent?"

"So what's our next move?" the boss quipped.

"Well, Tudball's company is gonna have to fork over the frogskins for Rossini's policy. No way around that. As for me, I'm bound for the Longworth Building."

Tudball blurted, "But Burns, if what you're saying is true, they'll never let you testify. You'll be dead before you take the oath!"

"Either way, they're gonna get me. Besides, yours truly is tired of living out of a suitcase and running. From them. From the IRS. From the little bitty men who've been tampering with my brain. No more. Someone once told me, 'A man either meets life head-on and licks it or he turns his back and... starts to wither away.'"

Tudball scratched his head. "Who the hell said that?"

"That guy who played the doctor on the old Star Trek pilot episode, the one with Captain Pike and that green Orion slave bitch." Burns sighed, put his cigarette out in his drink. "Well, at least this way, I'm going out on my terms." He stared menacingly at his reflection in his drink, pushed it aside, pocketed a jar of pickled onions. He turned to leave. Before he reached the door, he spun around and pointed a rigid index finger at the boss, yelled, "Let justice be served or let the heavens fall!"

He turned and walked through the plate glass door.

SHOOTOUT AT THE FANTASY FACTORY

Burns armed himself with a pair of twin Czech CZ machine pistols, a dozen clips, an old Star .38 automatic, silencers, stun grenades and a fresh pack of lime Pez. Beneath his battered Spanish Army surplus trenchcoat, the clanking hardware sounded like a tone deaf Caribbean rhythm section.

He took a cab to the Longworth Senate office building where the intelligence subcommittee was meeting to rubber stamp the CIA's "brown budget." Burns rattled into the metal detector line behind an impatient legal aide in a black pinstripe minidress and black leather mules. Her heels wire thick enough to club a baby harpseal. She was carrying a Xerox box of overpriced office supplies and looking impatient. Burns looked both ways, grabbed her butt, yelled, "Whoomp! There it is!" She turned around and punched him in the mouth.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" she screamed, shaking her fist, "That's sexual harassment! I'll have you know I'm a liberated feminist!"

Burns rubbed his goateed jaw. "I'll liberate you of some of your fucking teeth if you don't keep moving."

"Jerk!"

"All over your shoes if you play your cards right, sister."

She turned towards the metal detector, her ass swaying defiantly. Burns slipped the .38 into her bag right just as she passed through. The alarm clanged, red and white strobe lights went off. A dozen rent-a-cops brandishing clubs and stun guns fell upon the distraught legal aide like creamed chipped beef on toast. The Keystone Kops dragging her feet first into an adjoining security room. In the confusion, Burns snuck through the detector and headed for the hearing room.

Burns snuck in past the guard who was busy trying to pick up a Wired cub reporter with massive jugs and a pierced eyebrow. He made his way to the podium. The senator from Kentucky was asking the Assistant Director for Plans and Operations why eight billion dollars was budgeted for "research and development of a maximum efficiency offensive potential for forcible mortality deprivation."

"And can you be more specific as to what that means, Mr. Director?" the distraught senator asked.

"Eh bigger guns, senator."

"Really? Why didn't you just say that?"

"Well, CIA contract writers get paid by the word, sir. Sometimes they get a little carried away, but it's nothing we can't handle."

"Not so fast, Mr. So-called Director!" Burns shouted across the meeting room. "I have a few questions for you concerning the plot to kill the president!"

Pandemonium broke out in the hearing room amid a hail of flashbulbs from the press gallery. Burns took a seat next to the director, smiled and offered him a swig from his hip flask. The director pushed the booze away and motioned towards the rear of the room. The Senator from Kentucky hammered his gavel, calling for order.

Burns quipped, "I will now explain to the committee how President Kennedy was murdered as a result of a conspiracy involving the intelligence community, organized crime and FEMA!" Burns erupted in a frenzy of yelling and fingerpointing. The director had to duck several times to avoid being hit by Burns's flailing arms.

"Who the hell are you?" bellowed the shadow senator from DC.

"Dick Burns: private investigator, former contract mechanic for the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo."

Just as Burns finished his sentence, a scuffle broke out towards the rear of the room. Someone yelled, "Get your goddamn hands out of my pocket, fuck!" The senators dispatched the single guard to remove the brawling men when someone set off a tear gas grenade at the opposite end of the room.

"Alright, Burns," the director whispered, "this is it. You've crapped on our lawn for the last time. We're taking you down."

Burns casually lit a cigarette amid the mayhem. "Tell it to the Marines, baby. By the way, how's that little daughter of yours, Chet? She still take it up the shitter or what?

The director rose, screaming, "You dirty son of a!"

Three African-American males emerged from the smoke as the panicked audience bolted for the door. The men pulled shotguns and revolvers and pushed towards Burns, stomping on reporters and clergy alike. Burns pulled his Czech CZ, grabbed the director and shoved the muzzle of the gun into his ear.

"One more step," he shouted, "and the cracker gets a one-way ticket to Langley!"

The men stopped dead in their tracks, looked at each other, shrugged, took aim, and blasted the director's torso out from under his head. Burns returned fire, tagging two of the men in their heads, the third hopped over Brit Hume and disappeared into the hysterical crowd of onlookers. The senator from Texas hopped over the podium and returned fire with his .45 service automatic. The third gunman dropped, three slugs piercing his liver, spraying blood and bile over Connie Chung's Christian d'Or chiffon tunic.

"I'm the NRA!" the senator shouted as he beat the black teenager's lifeless corpse with his pistol butt.

ALL QUIET ON THE POTOMAC

Burns calmly sipped a Jameson's and Tang as he watched himself and the senator shoot at people's heads on the evening news. The boss jacked up the volume on his office television, sat back and listened to the commentary.

"Three dead in this week's session of the senate's intelligence committee meeting. More carnage tonight on the eleven o'clock news with Brent Cardigan." The ominous music swelled as the computer generated graphics swirled and morphed into the station logo.

"Well, you're some kind of hero, Burns," the boss ejaculated. "You solved the crime of the century and killed three members of the Eritrean Liberation Front wanted by the FBI. To top it off, you managed to push much needed gun control legislation through the Senate. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Burns swilled his drink and lit a cigarette.

"Your wife doing anything tonight?"

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