David Jackson - Pariah

I think you’re starting to feel it now, aren’t you? You’re starting to understand what it’s like to be me.

We’ve almost become one.

Merry Christmas, Detective.

Doyle crumples up the letter and throws it across the room. It seems a pitiful gesture of defiance, but it’s all he has. Every battle has been fought and lost. The war is over. Here he is, stuck in a bare decrepit room amid the stench and the aura of death. Hidden away like the mad relative in the attic. Separated from the rest of humanity so that he can’t hurt them and they can’t hurt him.

He stares at the door and waits, praying that sleep will overtake him and provide some brief respite from this hell that is a man truly alone.

He comes awake to the sound of a bang. He doesn’t know whether it’s real or imagined. Perhaps his mind is replaying one of the many gunshots it’s witnessed recently. At first he doesn’t know where he is, his eyes scanning the apartment, wondering what happened to his hotel room. Then, with a groan, he remembers and wishes he’d never woken up.

He looks down at his watch, feeling a painful tug in his neck after being stuck in such a peculiar position all night. It’s seven-thirty in the morning. A cold gray light filters through the dirt on the windows. He rises from his chair, wincing with the effort of moving joints and bones and flesh that have been pounded against metal at great speed. He hobbles over to the bathroom. Treats himself to another hot shower and another session with Spinner’s delightful towels.

As he re-dresses, he hears the drone of the neighbor’s television through the walls. It stops suddenly, to be followed by the click and slam of a door. Doyle steps over to his own front door and puts his eye to the spy-hole. As the figure of the huge woman comes into view, it fills the whole of his field of vision, the distortion of the eyepiece making her appear even more spherical than she is. She pauses for a second and turns her head toward Doyle, staring directly at him it seems, before resuming her waddle along the hallway.

Doyle gives her ten minutes to get out of the building, then leaves. Outside, he turns up the collar of his leather coat, partly against the cold but also to hide his face. Feeling like an over-dramatic spy, he takes a good look around him before setting off down the street. On the next block he finds a small burger joint. He buys a bacon and egg muffin and some coffee, and takes them back to Spinner’s apartment.

Before he settles down to his breakfast, he switches on Spinner’s television. It’s an old portable, not worth enough to sell for drugs. As he eats, he flicks through the channels, on the lookout for any local news. He sees nothing about Rocca or Bartok. Nothing about any killings or shootings in the Meatpacking District. All of which tells him that Bartok’s men must have been the first to discover Sonny Rocca’s dead body. It’s not something about which they would have wanted to make public announcements.

Doyle is ashamed to admit that it comes as something of a relief. He thinks, I’m a cop, involved in a string of fatal shootings, and all I can think about is keeping it under wraps. That stinks, Doyle. That’s really low, man.

But then how much lower can I get? Look at me. I hand confidential police intelligence over to known criminals. I get smashed up on a car. I kill a guy and then run away. I camp out in a shit-hole owned by a dead junkie fence. I got mobsters out looking to waste me. And I got this unknown perp willing to waste everyone I so much as look at. A guy who has this uncanny ability to follow my every move.

Speaking of which, how the fuck does he do that? How does this guy always seem to know what I’m doing? How is it possible for him to have eyes everywhere like that?

Doyle walks across the room, his eyes scanning the floor. He kicks aside a cardboard box, then bends to pick up the ball of paper he threw last night. As he goes to straighten up, something on the box catches his eye. A picture of a bird stamped onto it in red. He’d noticed the same picture on many of the boxes when he came here to ask for Spinner’s help. What is it about that bird?

He shakes his head, then turns his attention to the piece of paper as he unfurls and rereads it.

Wherever you go, I know about it. Whoever you speak to, I know about it.

Okay, so how?

Doyle is certain nobody knew about his meetings with Bartok. Not his wife, not his squad. Nobody. So how could the killer know? How could he be watching Doyle that closely, that carefully, that Doyle never sees him, never knows he’s there? How is that possible?

And then there’s Spinner. Okay, there were a few people who knew about their first meeting at the boxing gym, but Doyle told no one when he came to see Spinner here at his apartment. He was extra careful to make sure nobody followed him here, and Spinner made it clear that he wasn’t too happy about a walking bullet-magnet being in his vicinity, so he wouldn’t have blabbed about it either. So how did that news leak out?

It’s like the perp has superhuman powers, Doyle thinks. Like maybe he’s there in the room with me, but he’s invisible. Or maybe he can see through walls or listen from a great distance.

And he’s not the only one. Take Kurt Bartok. How did he get the killer’s name so quickly? When the various divisions of the NYPD working flat out on this case were getting nowhere, how could Bartok be so confident he could get the name in just a few hours? And who the fuck was he getting the name from?

Sonny Rocca knew the name too. The killer bought him off — paid him to whack Bartok. It was a very clever move. He couldn’t get close enough to Bartok to do it himself, so he paid someone else to do it. Nice.

Except, how did he know to do that?

Suppose I’m the perp, Doyle thinks. Psycho that I am, I follow the detective around, acing each and every one of his friends as I go. News reaches my super-sensitive ears that Doyle is now talking to one Kurt Bartok, so naturally Bartok is next on my list.

I don’t care if they’re good or evil. Make them your friends, and they’re dead.

Problem is, Bartok isn’t like the others. This is a man who expects attempts on his life as a hazard of his profession. This is a man who surrounds himself with an army to prevent any such efforts reaching fruition.

So what do I do? I know, I’ll approach one of Bartok’s closest bodyguards, offer him a shit-load of money, and he’ll do the job for me.

Yeah, like fuck.

How did the perp even know who Sonny Rocca was, let alone that he was disgruntled with his boss? What made him think he could trust Rocca? What made him so sure that Rocca wouldn’t cap him as soon as he even broached the idea, or that he wouldn’t immediately spill the beans to Bartok? How did he know there was the remotest chance his offer would be accepted?

His offer.

What was it Sonny said just before he died?

I made him an offer. He made me a better one.

Sonny Rocca made the killer an offer. What kind of offer?

Whatever it was, it means that the killer didn’t need to work out whom to approach to do his dirty work.

Sonny Rocca had already come to him!

Why? Was he acting on Bartok’s behalf? If so, what would Bartok possibly want from this lunatic?

Doyle crumples the letter up again and tosses it to the floor. He doesn’t see the logic in any of this. None of it makes any sense.

He starts to pace. His foot kicks the empty cardboard box. He looks down at it, and sees that bird looking right back at him. He bends down and picks up the box. It used to contain a CD player, manufactured by a Japanese company. The image of a bird is not part of the original packaging; it was stamped onto it at a later date. Doyle spins the box around, examining each of its sides. On one end is another stamp, giving details of the consignment. Amongst other things it gives the name of the company that has received this item and will be selling it in its stores.