Keep up with high tech

Blood seeped through the yellow grates down into the sewers into the thick steel pipes through the channels under the city into the subway station down the walls onto the floors under the shivering man's black leather soles.

Marty awaited the green line for Pelham Bay Park, a twitch in his left cheek as he eyed the clock, 5:12 p.m. on a wet March Tuesday. He finished his job twenty minutes ago and made his way down the subway escalator, 3 minutes to spare. But the train didn't come and his twitch got worse. If he didn't make it out to St. Lawrence Avenue in the Bronx by 6, he'd miss Tommy No Thumbs and there'd be hell to pay. Five minutes passed, ten minutes passed. He paced left to right, his eyes fixed on the wall clock except to stare down the empty tracks. No train, no light in the distance.

Another ten minutes later the green line came, jam-packed with city commuters desperate to escape their way to the Bronx, Marty the last commuter to push his way onto the car, squeezing his glutes together, pushing his shoulders forward, his briefcase pushed tight against his abdomen and covered by his black raincoat. He'd stashed the money to pay off Tommy No Thumbs in the briefcase along with the gun. Tommy No Thumbs thought he'd get his payoff but Marty had a bigger payoff for him -- of the Remington variety, a .33 revolver that'd take him for the ride of his life. The train jerked forward and stopped, jerked forward and stopped. Fifteen minutes passed. They crossed the Harlem River, made it to St. Mary's Street, then Longwood Avenue. Two minutes until St. Lawrence. He'd have 3 minutes to make it up the avenue to Tommy's filthy hole in the wall.

He never noticed the blood on the bottoms of his shoes. And when he'd shot Bernie Linden at the corner of 59th and Lexington he hadn't swiped the stooge's unlocked cellphone. And he didn't know Bernie had covered his tracks, stored his suppliers' contacts on his iPhone, case he ever got whacked. So when Marty sprinted up the escalator onto St. Lawrence Avenue, turned right, dashed two blocks, he didn't see the empty police car on the corner before turning into Tommy's, sneaking up the stairs to the second floor, sniffing the door, banging it open, taking out the revolver, pointing it at the black leather chair where Tommy always sat. The chair was empty.

The empty chair where he'd aimed the revolver was Marty's last thought. Before a second passed, his head exploded from the left and Marty crashed to the floor, breaking his neck in the fall as it sliced onto the heater grate, the blood-stained bottoms of his shoes sprawled out behind him. The policeman who'd crouched in the corner noticed.