Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

Holmes arched his body while balancing on his heels, the tip of the Bowie knife took a button off his waistcoat, and then he slammed his weighted stick down on Murtrick’s right hand—the knife dropped and embedded its point in the floor exactly where Holmes had wished it—and then, without pausing in its complex arc, the stick swung up and caught Murtrick in the side of the head.

Dazed, Murtrick wobbled toward the drop, started to go over.

Holmes grabbed the man, then pulled him toward his own chest with what felt like an infinitely powerful heroin-assisted left hand, keeping his stick in his right hand between them. Holmes brought his face so close to Murtrick’s it seemed as if he was going to kiss the semi-conscious thug, then Holmes lowered his face to the man’s chest, making himself smaller as he pushed both of them forward around the perimeter of the crater.

The four cracks from the .442 Beaumont-Adams revolver seemed to reach Holmes hours after the impacts had shattered the back of Murtrick’s skull, lodged in the man’s spine, blown his left shoulder into bone fragments, and passed through his body—that final ball passing between Holmes’s right arm and his torso.

It was a five-shot pistol, but Holmes had pushed the upright corpse up and into Culpepper by this point and the fifth shot blew wet plaster out of the rotted ceiling. Holmes dropped Murtrick’s corpse, unhurriedly clubbed the empty gun out of Culpepper’s hand, and dragged him back to where he had injected the heroin, both men doing rather dainty dances over the three fallen bodies. The rotted and tilting floor sagged under their weight, but Holmes needed Culpepper near the knife embedded hilt-up in those groaning floorboards.

He swung Culpepper around and shoved him toward the edge of the hole, stopping his fall only with his left hand grasping the older man’s jacket collar. Culpepper teetered and whimpered. Holmes suddenly smelled urine.

Holmes tossed away his club and reached into his shirt pocket to retrieve the three photographs there. Still holding Culpepper at a steep angle over the drop, he thrust the first photograph—the one of the older, heavier, dark-eyed, mustached man—in front of the murderer’s face.

“Do you know this man?” barked Holmes. “Have you ever seen him?”

“No.” Culpepper’s baritone was now a soprano’s quaver.

“Make sure,” said Holmes. “I don’t know which of the Southwest Toughs’ bosses you report to—Dillon, Meyer, Shelton—but it would have been at their headquarters, maybe in their office. Or perhaps this man and your boss dining together.”

“I’ve never seen him!” screeched the dangling man. Every time Culpepper tried to bring his arms back to grab at Holmes, the detective let him tilt a little more over the drop. Culpepper quit trying to grab and let his pudgy hands and arms flap like a pigeon’s broken wings.

Holmes pocketed that photo and brought forth the photograph of the much younger man. In profile—thin lips, long, straight nose, hair combed back, eyes as light as a reptile’s. The image terrified Holmes even in the perfectly disinterested state the heroin had granted him.

Culpepper’s hesitation told Holmes what he needed to know. “Tell me. Now!” he said and let the big man tilt a few more inches forward. Holmes’s left arm and hand were growing tired; he knew he’d almost dropped Culpepper three stories by accident right then. That would never do. But he couldn’t change hands. Not yet. “Tell me now! ” he bellowed.

“I think I saw this fellow . . . maybe . . . once. Dear Jesus, don’t drop me!” Holmes pulled him a few inches closer.

“A couple of years ago,” babbled Culpepper. “Maybe three. At Shelton’s office on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“What was his name?”

“I just saw him, from a distance,” quavered Culpepper. “I swear to God. If I knew anything more about him I’d tell you. I swear to God. Please don’t push me! Please don’t drop me. I’ll change my life. I swear to Jesus Christ.”

“And this man?” demanded Holmes, showing the third photograph. The oldest of the three in the photographs—one of a shockingly pale and cadaverous-looking, hollow-cheeked, and balding man. But the sharpness of features does not create sympathy in the viewer; this face is one of a predator, not of a victim or prey. One’s first impression is of an almost disturbingly large shelf and dome of white forehead looming above deep-set eyes magnified by old-fashioned pince-nez spectacles. The sense of the older man being an intellectual created by the oversized forehead and glimpse of old-fashioned collar, ribbon tie, frock coat, and pince-nez is immediately counteracted by the sharp and strong jut of the older man’s chin, from which various and strong—and somehow angry-looking—cords of wrinkle and muscle rise to the sharp cheekbones and to both sides of the vulpine blade of a nose. It is a predatory face made even more raptor-like by the hunched shoulders rising like a vulture’s black feathers on either side of the grub-white blade of a face.

“Never seen him . . .” gasped Culpepper. “I’m slipping! I’m slipping! Oh, Jesus . . .”

“Perhaps you’ve heard his name,” said Holmes, feeling the strength in his restraining hand beginning to fade. “Moriarty. Professor James Moriarty.”

“No! Never!” cried Culpepper, and Holmes could see in his eyes that he was lying. Perfect .

Holmes shot a brief glance at the surviving Finn, still slumped against the wall and holding his bleeding head. He’d ceased moaning and had seen and heard everything well enough. But there was no fight left in him. Blood from the scalp wound had soaked his fingers, wrists, and sleeves.

Holmes put away the photos and pulled Culpepper back from the edge. He didn’t believe he’d get any more. What had he learned? That Lucan might or might not have been in Washington two or more years ago. That Culpepper had definitely heard of Professor Moriarty but almost certainly hadn’t seen him.

Holmes released his grip on the stocky man and looked at the floor. Blood had pooled completely around the dead Finn’s head. Murtrick’s body lay across the dead man’s legs, his bullet-shattered head no longer recognizable as something that had once been human. The surviving Finn had managed to scrunch back further from his dead brother and boss. The bleeding Finn’s eyes were as big as saucers staring at Holmes through his carmine-stained fingers.

All this for the information that Lucan might have been in Washington and in touch with the Toughs a few years ago? And that the criminal organization here simply knows of Moriarty? He was assailed by a sudden sadness, amplified to something like grief by the fading of the first-freedom of the heroin.

He should have left all this drama aside and simply coldcocked and kidnapped Mr. J and interrogated him . He was the only one Holmes had encountered this afternoon who might know if they’d done business with Lucan.

Holmes sighed and turned his back on Culpepper as if to retrieve his dropped club.

The Bowie knife had been sticking hilt-up only inches from Culpepper’s right boot. The big man tugged the blade out with a grunt and leaned forward to strike.

Holmes leaned away from him, his head almost to the moldy wall, his right elbow on the floor, and kicked his left leg straight, his foot flat as he’d been trained in his youth, the leverage in that leg of his suddenly uncoiled body carrying enough energy to have kicked in a locked and barred door.

Culpepper actually flew upward and backward so that Holmes caught a glimpse of the soles of his shoes looking like two exclamation marks hanging in mid-air before Culpepper screamed and the drizzle, no longer golden, seemed to carry him down into the center of the ten-foot-wide hole in the floor.