Grosse Pointe Buff
By TalesOfSpike
Disclaimer: Spike, Buffy and all the other members of the Sunnydale crowd belong to Joss Whedon, UPN, Fox, and so on, and so on. Grosse Point Blank was written by Tom Jankiewicz, D V deVincentis, S K Boatman & the vastly talented John Cusack. It is of course owned by Hollywood pictures and Caravan Pictures and not me. I’m ripping them both off for no profit whatsoever, other than the happies I may get when and if you lovely people review.
Chapter 7
The two guys hesitated for just a second before embracing each other in a brief, manly hug.
"Jesus, Xand. Never thought I’d see you in a suit. What the hell happened to ya?" Spike questioned his old friend.
"Shouldn’t that be my question? ‘N’ blame Faith. If she wasn’t off swanning round Baja for a week, then I could be doin’ my job instead of hers." Xander paused to glance at his watch. "Look, I’ve got to meet this couple. Walk them round a house. Why not come with and once I’ve done the business we can catch up?"
~+~
Spike eyed Xander’s sleek silver car appraisingly before getting in. "Audi TT. Isn’t there supposed to be some sort of horrendous waiting list for these things?"
"’Bout a year. But it was worth it," the brunette confirmed.
"Hell, life’s obviously treatin’ you right. Didn’t think estate agent’s made that sort of money round here."
"They don’t, but then I’m not an real estate agent. And what about you? That might be the same damn second-hand coat you were wearing in high school, but I’m not so blind I can’t recognise a freakin’ Rolex on your wrist when I see it."
Spike shrugged self-consciously.
Xander glanced away from the road long enough to look at his friend up and down again as if he was having a hard time convincing himself he was really there. "So I’m guessin’ I was wastin’ my time checkin’ out the airport to make sure you weren’t going to show up in a sari, selling flowers?"
"Considered it, but the wages were crap. What the hell have you been up to anyway, robbin’ banks?" Spike counted.
"Not quite."
The sports car pulled up outside a high-walled housing development next to a security booth. The security guard waved at Xander and raised the barrier. Spike’s attention was caught by the large sign next to the booth. "Welcome to Sunnydale Marina, a Harris Properties development." Spike eyed the surrounding area with renewed interest. On his right were rows of wooden piers with dozens of trim, little sailing boats, on his left condos. The farther into the distance he looked, the bigger the yachts became, and eventually, the condos gave way to progressively larger houses.
Spike tried and failed to reconcile the landscaped vista he was seeing with the near-derelict dockside he remembered. "You own this lot?" he asked aghast.
"Not so much," answered Xander with a grin. "All the smaller units have been sold. There’s just the last couple of the bigger properties to go. We built the condos first to get the money in as quick as we could. Even then, me and Faith only own about ten percent between us. The rest of it’s all venture capital. Mostly, what we make off one job goes straight back in to buy what we need for the next one, but we’re not doin’ too bad. Normally, I’m in charge of the construction teams, and Faith takes care of the sales and the admin."
"Bloody hell!"
~+~
Spike stood by the side of the road while Xander showed the house, breathing in the fresh salty air, between drags on his cigarette. A gentle breeze tried but failed dismally to ruffle his slicked back locks. He wondered what it would be like to live in a five-bedroom, seafront home with it’s own private jetty. In his mind, the house wasn’t complete without the laughter of blonde kids with hazel eyes running from room to room in pursuit of a dog wet from its swim in the sea.
~+~
"I got a job working construction. Faith dropped out of high school and moved up to LA for about four years." Xander looked vaguely uncomfortable, yet sort of proud at the same time. "You know Faith, right? No qualifications, no nothing, just determination and the balls to do any damn thing she pleases. Went out and made enough money off her own bat to get the pair of us started. Came back to town same month she made playmate of the year with enough money to buy a decent sized plot of land on the edge of town. With that as collateral, we borrowed the money for materials, and we pretty much built the first couple of houses with our own hands, just working evenings and nights. Then, what we made off them, we were able to quit the day jobs, set up as builders’ in our own right. Took on some people, did some work for other people, worked on building the next batch and so on.
You been by your old place?" Xander could tell by the change in his friend’s expression that he had. "Yeah, well, we built the store. But enough about us…
Ten years for chrissake. Ten damn years. So where ya been then, Spike? Not to be all grandma, but ya disappear, ya don’t phone, ya don’t write?"
Spike shrugged. "Freaked out. Joined the army. They loaned me out to the government. When my five years was up, I went into business for myself. Been doing that ever since."
"But doing what?" Xander asked.
Spike shrugged again. "Same as any soldier’s trained to do… I kill people. I mean, okay so it’s not like there’s a bunch of people in a different colour uniform on the other side of a field. It’s a bit more specialised and a bit higher paid, but basically it’s the same thing."
Xander looked sideways at him, trying to gauge whether this was one of Spike’s well-known stunts. "So you kill people… Anyone I might have heard of?"
~+~
Xander pulled up next to the black Lincoln and Spike climbed out.
"See you at the ‘Better Off Dead’ party," his friend called out as he pulled away. Spike pulled the detachable scope that accompanied his rifle from his jacket pocket, and resting his elbows on the roof of the vehicle he pinned Buffy in the cross-hairs. Far from looking as if she were regretting her actions, or even thinking them over, Buffy looked bored. She was looking at something on her desk, tapping along to an unheard song with a pencil.
The lightening of his mood that being with his old friend had caused dissipated in seconds leaving him despondent. With a sigh he pulled out his cell-phone, still watching Buffy as he spoke.
"Trans-Global Shipping. How may we help you?"
"Cordy. It’s Spike. I need some data."
"Oh, hi. How’d the job go?"
"It’s not done yet."
"So how’s it look? You’ve scoped it out, right? I mean, this is you taking your time and being professional, isn’t it?"
"It’s fine. Nothin’ special."
"Spike! You haven’t looked at the damn thing yet, have you? I’m the one who’s going to have ring the client and explain why they’re still waiting."
"I’ve looked at it," Spike responded. ‘The outside of it.’ "It looks like every other job we’ve ever had from them." ‘Red plastic wallet wrapped in layers of cling film.’ "It won’t be a problem. I have a job to do. I’m going to do it."
"Yeah, right, Spike. And you haven’t spent all the time you’ve been there obsessing over whether you’re going to end up in a loony bin before your fifty and stalking your ex?"
Spike returned the scope to his jacket pocket with a guilty look. "Look, Cordy, just shut your trap for a minute. I need to know what’s going on here. This place is starting to look like a killers’ convention. So far, I’ve made two Spooks and a Ghoul. So you’re goin’ to have to check up on what’s happening. Seems to me either they’ve double-booked the job, or someone’s out to kill me. Whichever one it is, I’d be kinda interested to know."
"I’m on it."
"Speak to you later, princess."
"If you’re still around. Watch your back."
Spike hung up the phone and gave one last longing gaze toward the DJ booth before climbing into his hire car.
~+~
Spike was mentally calling himself a proper plonker even as he walked back into the store. It was probably some deep psychological need to renew his roots that had brought him back to the site of his former home. Yet, even as he acknowledged it, he knew he would never find it there.
The same clerk was on duty. His three ring binder abandoned in favour of a walkman playing "Ace of Spades" so loud you could hear it at the other end of the store even though it was on his headphones and the video machine where he seemed to be playing some sort of variant on Doom.
Spike strolled to the far end of the store, picking up a packet of gum from one of the stands and shoving a piece in his mouth. Briefly, he contemplated phoning Dr Rosenberg but only until he heard the screech of tyres. His eyes darted toward the door as the big guy he’d noticed earlier on Main Street, came through the door sideways with a sub-machine gun in either hand. Ducking down, Spike drew a nine-millimetre pistol in either hand.
The resulting gun battle was the sort of thing that made John Woo famous. Packets of crackers exploded into crumbs. The glass fronts on the refrigerated cabinets behind Spike shattered into sticky spider webs as beer and soda leaked out the bottom onto the floor. His opponent crossed the breadth of the store toward him, firing constantly.
Spike responded with the same pattern of alternating shots his one-time mentor had used to kill the businessman in New York, just a couple of short days earlier. His guns swiftly came up empty, and Spike ducked back into cover to reload, the other guy falling silent at the same time. The pair each came back up firing and began to circle the store anti-clockwise this time. All around each of them packaged goods and shop-fittings disintegrated in the hail of bullets.
And still Motorhead blared through the kid’s headphones, and he continued playing his video game, oblivious to the destruction around him.
Again, both pairs of guns fell silent at the same time, and Spike changed over to his last two clips of ammunition. He crouched with his back to one of the shelf displays, waiting to see if his adversary was out of ammunition or not. When there didn’t seem to be a resumption of fire, Spike edged toward the front of the shop, pausing again as he reached the aisle at the front. A screech of tyres sounded from the parking lot, and Spike stood up to look out the shop door. As he did so, he noticed the putty-like block, complete with little curly red and black wires, that circled and baked in the store’s microwave oven, inches from his head. His eyes widened in shock, and he made a dash for the door, grabbing at Jonathon’s uniform as he sprinted past.
He was ten feet clear of the doorway when he realised that the cashier hadn’t followed him. He dashed back in, grabbing the door before it could fully close, this time pushing the smaller man ahead of him as he ran. They were most of the way across the road when the blast picked them up and carried them the rest of the way to the Mueller’s front lawn on its far side. As they lay there, a large tree, which had once formed part of the landscaping designed to hide the stores industrial sized dumpsters toppled in slow-motion.
From the shelter of a driveway a few houses down Forrest watched entranced. "Cool."
Pieces of debris crashed to the ground all around them, including a license plate. Jonathon brushed at some of the ash that floated down to settle on his uniform. "What d’you do that for?"he asked Spike with a distinct whine.
Spike shot him an irritated glance. "D’you really think if it was me that did it that I’d have wasted my time getting you out of there when I could just have waited till the place was shut."
He looked the kid up and down. "Are you alright?"
Jonathon looked at Spike as if he were insane. "No. I’m not alright. I nearly get blown up. I’m going to be a walking bruise tomorrow. I’ve lost a whole semester worth of notes. They probably won’t pay me for the hours I’ve done this weekend. I’m going to have to find a new job. I was only a hundred points off beating my highest ever score when you pulled me out of there, and that licence plate that just about hit my head used to be attached to my car. So, no, man. I’m not alright.
Spike watched as Jonathon ambled disconsolately toward the centre of town under his own personal, dark cloud. ‘So maybe I’m not the only one whose whole life has turned to shit,’ he thought.
End of Chapter 7