Эд Горман - Riders on the Storm

He looked as surprised as I felt when I was able to creak to my feet and grab the poker.

He’d been ready for another round of stomach-sternum-face-skull or some variation thereof when I waved the sharp-edged poker in front of me. He didn’t move, just watched.

I moved several feet away from the fireplace. He stood where I’d just been.

“You’re doing a lot better than I thought you would, Counselor.”

“Thanks for the compliment. You’re not doing quite as well as I thought you would.”

“C’mon, now, Counselor, you’re not dumb enough to think this is really over yet. Are you?”

“No, I guess it probably isn’t.”

And once again he showed me why he was Byrnes and I was McCain.

He bent down and snatched up the fireplace shovel from among the other scattered iron instruments. Now it was his turn to cut through the air with it. He used both hands the way he’d swing a baseball bat. None of this candy-ass McCain nonsense of just waving it through the air to keep him away. I’d been playing defense. Byrnes, of course, was playing offense.

In this brief respite I had time to realize that I was in some real pain and that my nose was streaking blood into my mouth. The surprise was that I did not have a headache.

I kept thinking of the gun. The gun could save me. I couldn’t think of anything else that could.

He lunged. I backed up three steps into a grandfather clock in a corner. The chimes went wild for a minute or so.

He smiled. He was probably playing a movie in his head. The best scenes would be me on the floor and him savaging my head with his iron shovel. Maybe when I was at least half gone he’d take my poker from me and bash what little remained of my life with my own weapon.

Oh, yeah. He’d been rejuvenated. The baseball bat swing came closer and closer. Backing me up. Making me stumble not once but twice. Enjoying himself because he got to see that he was in control again.

I was now on a path to reach the couch. He was pushing me to reach it, slashing the air when I tried to move in a different direction, leaving me no room to maneuver. I needed to get the gun under the coffee table.

Then it was my turn. Or I hoped it was. I attacked him. My turn to carve my own direction. Fuck him.

And it worked.

His response to my sudden strike was to swing in an ever wider arc and that left him off balance. And that was when the hook of my poker caught him on the right cheek. It wasn’t a particularly sharp edge but I had the opportunity to hit him three quick times along the eye as well.

Blood poured from the massive cut I’d inflicted. His eyes lost focus for a few seconds.

I risked one more slash. It didn’t cut but it disoriented him enough to lose his grip on his shovel.

He came at me but I’d been able to run around to the front of the couch.

I had half-ass good luck.

I wasn’t quick enough to avoid the kicks he leveled at me as my hand scrabbled under the coffee table. He had to be wearing steel-toed boots. But I was quick enough to fill my hand with the gun so that when he grabbed me again — to hurl me across the room again? — I turned and shot him in the right shoulder. His hand shot out for the gun. He had the strength to wrench it out of my hand and it went off again. This time a bullet blasted his right thigh.

His first response was disorientation. He didn’t cry out at the pain. He didn’t try to shield himself from another shot. He just stood there staring at me in disbelief.

This wasn’t the way his world was supposed to run. He was attacker, not victim. The other guy was supposed to be in pain.

Then he tried to reach me with his other arm.

I walked over to a brown leather armchair and sat down.

“Where’s the heroin?” The trips to Mexico, packing the shipments privately. And heroin being the most profitable. I just took a guess.

He was starting to cry now. But as I soon found out, it wasn’t because of pain. Not physical pain anyway. He careened around to the front of the couch and just let himself fall down on it. His eyes were closed for a second. No tears though. The crying I’d heard was in his throat.

“I go up again I won’t be with my mom when she dies.”

So easy to mock him. But I didn’t. He was fading fast. His head wobbled and his breath came in gasps. He tried to reach up with the hand of the wounded shoulder and he sobbed.

“I always promised her.” But that was all he muttered.

“Where’s the heroin you and Anders ship?”

Drifting off: “Shoulda killed you.”

Then: Sirens. Nearby. On the wooded trail.

A single siren now, coming this way.

It was enough to rouse Byrnes, but not for long. He was bleeding badly from both wounds. He mumbled something angry that I didn’t understand.

I ran to the door and threw it open.

Chief Foster’s car slid across the grass, stopping about ten feet from the house.

Then he was running with his own gun ready.

Then somebody else was exiting the car.

Mary; Mary Lindstrom; my Mary.

More sirens, this time including an ambulance. But also three more cars from the police station, including Sheila Kelly, the forensic expert Foster had brought with him from his last job. Within five minutes of striding through the door with a large black bag, she had found the subbasement where all the shipping equipment was placed on a Formica work table along with two sizable bags of heroin to be shipped to Anders’s buyers.

Mary had called Foster and explained where I’d gone and why. He had picked her up immediately and brought her here.

Now Mary, Foster, and I talked on the front porch.

Foster wore a short-sleeved yellow shirt and brown trousers. “The drugs explains how Anders could live so well.”

“And why he had to force Al Carmichael out. Carmichael would never have put up with using the company as a ruse for shipping drugs.”

“I don’t understand why a man like Steve Donovan would have, either.”

“I don’t think he did. Not at first. I think he probably found it out after Anders had been at it for some time. Donovan had political aspirations for one thing. And for another he loved that company. He and Carmichael had turned it into a going operation. I’m pretty sure he confronted Anders and Anders made a promise to stop but then never did. And that’s why the two were always arguing all the time. And that’s why Anders killed Donovan.”

He smiled at Mary. “Mary and I had a little talk while we were racing out here.”

“All I told him, Sam, was that I was at least willing to consider the possibility that Will was guilty.”

The night went on. Bird racket in the trees; rain wind slamming against the windows and chilling us on the porch; animals scurrying for shelter before the rain itself began.

I sat there briefly comforted by nature because there would be no comfort coming from Foster.

“So even after all this you still don’t think Anders killed him?”

“As I said to Mary, Sam, why would he? He didn’t know how to run the company. With Donovan gone it would become obvious that the whole operation was getting a fair share of its profits from an unknown source. The IRS would have a lot of questions and pretty soon after that they’d get real suspicious and kick it over to the FBI. And then Anders would be all over.”

“Maybe Anders didn’t have any choice except to kill him.”

Mary looked pained that I’d rushed past Foster’s take on Anders to go right back into mine.

I said, “Maybe Anders was afraid that Donovan had finally had enough. That he was going to go to the authorities and tell them everything.”

“He’d be willing to sacrifice his political career?”