Free Whack Job by Mike Baron Page A

count on with Otto. He was a practical man. He lived in the real world, at least in so far as having no illusions. She had often thought Otto would have been happier living two centuries ago where he could carve his destiny from an as-yet-untamed land.
    Otto set down the remnants of his sandwich and finished off his second beer. “What’s going on? Seeing anyone?”
    “I’m seeing Gabe Winner.”
    “Not the actor,” Otto said.
    “That’s the guy.”
    “No shit. He’s one of the few actors I can stomach. He makes decent action flicks and he keeps his mouth shut off camera..”
    “I have all his films if you’re interested.
    “Did you buy them?”
    “He gave them to me.”
    Otto grinned. “Maybe I’ll get a DVD player. I did see The Detonator . What’s that like, dating a Hollywood personality?”
    “Gabe is very grounded. We’ve only been seeing each other three months.”
    “Enjoy it while it lasts,” Otto said.
    A sharp retort perched on Stella’s lips but she held it back. Otto was probably right in his assessment that her affair with Gabe Winner would result in no long-term relationship. Just look at her record. Two separate careers in two different locations. Hollywood.
    Stella insisted on paying. They paused awkwardly outside her room.
    “You coming back out?” Otto said.
    “I doubt it. I was lucky I could work this in. Thank you for doing this, Otto.”
    She unlocked her door.
    “No problem,” Otto said.
    Stella gave him a peck on the cheek, went inside and shut the door thinking she might never see him again.
    ***

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    “Things Go to Hell”
    Tuesday evening.
    Otto took Steve for a walk on the hotel grounds, cleaning up after the big dog with a plastic bag. They returned to Otto’s ground-floor room, which opened onto the patio and pool area. Otto and Steve lay on the bed. Otto turned on the television using the remote and found a news channel.
    Scenes of chaos: Fire trucks and police vehicles surrounding a smoking loft. Anxious residents huddling behind police barriers wrapped in blankets. Otto turned up the sound.
    “The fire appears to have started on the top floor, home of Volt Media founder and COB Lewis Stark. It is unknown whether Stark was in the loft when the fire broke out. Fire fighters have not been able to get in there. Stark recently revealed he suffered from a heart defect and voluntarily gave up his position as CEO.”
    As Otto watched a wall collapsed sending up a nuclear cloud. Pumper trucks plumed arcs of water onto the blazing building. Otto changed the channel. A giant transsexual dressed as Marilyn Monroe vogued across the America’s Got Talent stage as Piers Morgan’s buzzer sounded.
    Click.
    BMX boys doing double flips in a stadium.
    Click.
    A man pulling a prehistoric fish out of a river.
    Otto turned the television off but remained staring at it, back against the headboard. Steve slowly rolled over on his back like a doomed freighter and stuck his paws in the air.
    Otto had a bad feeling about what he had just seen, an atavistic sixth sense from the time man crawled on four legs. The fire didn’t feel like a terrorist operation. There were no threats, no demands, no videos boasting of their great success.
    Otto had been fascinated with spontaneous human combustion since reading a Jack Kirby comic when he was twelve years old. It was one of those recurring urban legends with just enough documentation to keep it alive.
    Otto differed from other true believers in one respect.
    He had seen it.
    ***

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    “Billups”
    Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.
    The Canadians had delivered him to a U.S. “aid mission” in Zejtun from where he was airlifted to an aircraft carrier and from there to Ramstein where he was debriefed. A team of psychiatrists observed him, much as psychiatrists were now observing Stella’s client Lester Durant, the Below the Beltline Sniper. All field ops were subject to psychological evaluation.
    Otto insisted