SUNDAY, JULY 1ST
Dictionary definitions vary, but “retribution” is typically defined as punishment imposed for purposes of repayment or revenge for the wrong committed. For Smith, retribution simply meant payback. He’d waited sixteen years for it, and now he was three hours away from starting to get it.
Smith turned the panel van left into the alley and pulled three-quarters of the way down toward Western Avenue. He stopped and then backed in behind a small office building housing an accounting office with a storefront facing Western. From this position, the back of the cafe was visible at a forty-five-degree angle to the right. Smith had watched the area and this parking spot in particular every Sunday for the last month. Nobody ever came to the building or parked in the back on a Sunday afternoon. He expected this day would be no different.
His watch said 2:03PM. The office building’s parking lot was elevated two feet above that of the restaurant across the alley. This allowed for a somewhat unobstructed view of the restaurant’s back patio, which was surrounded by a six-foot-high wood fence. He could only see the tops of heads or upper torsos of patrons and staff from his position. Nonetheless, the spot provided a needed clear view of the cafe’s small parking lot outside the fence. The target’s car, a new Prius, occupied the second to last space in the back of the lot, located close to Western.
Smith set his gaze on the back of the restaurant, Cel’s Cafe, a little bistro on the corner of Western and Selby avenues. The cafe was a busy hub in St. Paul’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood, an area of turn-of-the-century Victorian homes encircling the majestic Cathedral of Saint Paul. The stately mansions of Summit Avenue lay a mere three blocks away. The cafe was a busy post-church lunching spot. By the mid-to-late afternoon, it changed over to a light crowd of book or newspaper readers, drinking coffee, iced tea, and, for those living on the edge, maybe a bloody mary. Cel’s also employed a young waitress named Shannon Hisle, the daughter of St. Paul’s wealthiest and most prominent lawyer.
Smith pulled black leather gloves tight over his hands and turned to the back of the van where two large men, brothers Dean and David, fiddled with duct tape, masks, and gloves of their own. There was also a gas-filled plastic milk carton with a detonator taped on the side for later. Each had a. 45 lying on the floor. Smith turned his attention to the passenger seat and the police scanner, which reported little activity on this sleepy summer afternoon.
Smith had spent fifteen years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. Because of who he was, the beatings started his first day. He had fought, but he didn’t have a fighting chance. Those first few years, he suffered broken ribs, fingers, and wrists more than once. In one of the last and most brutal of the assaults, he suffered a broken nose that left him with a large and permanent bulbous knot just below the bridge and a shattered eye socket that blurred the peripheral vision in his left eye. He spent long tours in the infirmary, recovering from the abuse, only to be put back into the general population to be unmercifully beaten again and again. He had no allies, no protection, and no hope in those early years.
If it wasn’t for the arrival of the two hulking brothers in the back of the van, he wouldn’t have made it. Three years into Smith’s sentence, David who was six-foot-three and 240 pounds of bulging muscles, moved into a neighboring cell. David saw firsthand the results of the beatings. He didn’t like what he saw. Along with his equally large and skilled brother Dean, three cells further down, David used skills honed in the Golden Gloves to put a stop to it.
David and Dean had saved his life. Smith would do anything for his two friends. It was one of the reasons why he now sat behind the wheel and had masterminded what was about to take place. Before he could get his, Dean and David needed to get theirs.
Monica sat at her table at the front of the bistro, sipping her iced tea, alternately reading her Harlequin novel, watching the target, and making calls on her cell phone.
Dressed in a frumpy floral blouse, faded black spandex pants, and black heels, sporting a 1960s bouffant wig of black hair, she had the look of a mid-forties woman whose social life revolved around reading about romances she would never have. It was far from her normal, stylish look, but it was the look she wanted for today. She had used it the previous three weeks when she came in on Sunday afternoons to scout the movements of Shannon Hisle. The mark was sitting at the bar now, closing out her tables, sipping a Diet Coke. She would be leaving soon.