Gregg Hurwitz - The Crime Writer

"I'll just ring and ask him politely."

"HelZo? Workday."

"Maybe not after he spent the night getting questioned. And besides, how am I gonna get inside his apartment?"

Junior slapped his chest with both hands, insulted. "What the fuck?"

"No. Oh, no."

He hopped out.

"As your Big Brother, I am ordering you to get your juvenile-delinquent ass back in this car."

He sprinted across the street. The light changed, and I had to wait for a string of cars before I could follow. I took the steps two at a time. Frankel's door rested open, kissing the strike plate, and Junior was leaning against the wall beside it, pretending to buff his fingernails on his Lakers jersey. A pick dangled from his lips. I grabbed his arm and dragged him back down the stairs. He complained and swore all the way to the car. I opened the passenger door and deposited him roughly in the seat.

He looked at me sullenly. "I was just tryin' to help."

I tossed him the keys. "Keep an eye on the street and honk if you see him coming."

A two-second delay, then a grin lightened his face. "Awright, Big Bro-Bro."

Leaving his chanting behind, I crossed again and climbed the stairs, a bit more cautiously. The hinges gave off a creep-show whine when I knuckled the door open a few inches. The strip of visible room looked empty enough. A puddle of sheets on a mattress. No bed frame. Alarm clock on a shoe box turned on its side. The drawn blinds left the air dim and unvented. I pressed a shoulder to the door, widening my field of vision a few degrees. Of course the furnishings budget had gone to a big-screen TV and a Barcalounger maroon, with a remote-control pouch and a cup holder hole-punching one plush arm.

A quick jog, a hair plucked from a brush or comb, and I'd be on my way. Easing inside, I took in the odor of curtain dust and tired plumbing. I kept the door cracked behind me, leaving no barriers to a hasty retreat.

Despite the sparseness and the moldy smell, the place was kept neat cardboard boxes stacked in one corner, lintless carpet, countertop scrubbed clean. The drip of the kitchen sink was maddeningly loud.

Open facedown on the floor behind the mattress, a paperback of Chainer's Law. Heart pounding, I stared at the familiar cover, my name lettered in vibrant red. After all the searching and digging, at last a concrete link between me and Morton Frankel. I lifted the book, looking for marked passages. He'd reached. A receipt slipped from the book and fluttered to the floor. I picked it up. Chainer's Law, $7.99 plus tax. The purchase date? Today.

Having recognized me yesterday, he'd started a bit of research of his own. Or was this ongoing study, further indication of his fixation on me? Standing here, violating precisely the kind of privacy rights I paid lip service to during more convenient times in my life, I was forced to consider again if I was making headway or only confronting obstacles I'd thrown in my own path the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of plotting. I was lost in my own story, banging the labyrinthine walls of my investigation.

Setting the book back in its place, I didn't bother telling myself to stop. What's the use? I never listen.

A brief hall, broken by a coat closet and a metal footlocker, led to the bathroom. Keeping the lights off, I made tentative but steady progress. Pairs of shoes along the far wall, lined almost decoratively. An adequate oil painting of a farmhouse in a shaft of purple light. A few wire hangers bent and stuffed into a grocery bag used as a trash can. The footlocker blocked the hall, dust streaks indicating it had been recently moved. I paused over it, took in the fat padlock dangling from the clasp. Maybe Frankel had pulled it out after last night's visit with Kaden and Delveckio, a reminder to dispose of whatever was locked within.

A bead of sweat ran down my ribs before my shirt caught it.

I crouched and gripped the footlocker, which tilted accommodatingly, its contents sliding with a rattle. After tugging at the padlock idiotically, I continued into the bathroom, rattling the shower curtain back on its rings to make sure I was alone. The mirrored medicine cabinet revealed a toothbrush tilting from a coffee mug. The drawer under the sink held a gaggle of disposable razors, a Hustler, a spare bar of soap, and, way in the back, a kelly green comb.

I removed the comb, angled it to the light. Not a strand of hair. I checked the drawer, then sink. Nothing, save flecks of dried soap and toothpaste.

A spot of color at the threshold stabbed at my peripheral vision.

I turned little by little, like an animal before a predator's gaze, concerned that a sharp motion would draw attention.

Just beyond the doorway in the hall, a matchbook.

Skull and bones on the cover.

My mouth had gone dry. There was no way I would have stepped over the matchbook without noticing. Even focused as I was on the drawers, the cabinet, the promise of a comb.

Moving with excruciating slowness, careful that my shoes not so much as squeak on the linoleum, I took a step forward, kneeled. Plucking the matchbook off the floor, I spread it open.

I STILL SEE YOU.

A thump to my right, and a blinding strike knocked me flat on the floor. Seconds stretched out, the sharpness of the pain lending everything intense clarity. The floorboards, sprayed with my saliva. My pen, looming large before my left eye, rolling away into normal perspective. A workman's boot, laced loosely across a stiff leather tongue.

I had one instinct only do not get caught down.

I'd barely registered the wood grinding my cheek when I sprang up as if off a bounce and squared myself, vision swimming, desperate to fix on something despite the motion and the throbbing of my head. Then I heard the low tick of a chuckle, and Morton Frankel stepped forward into focus, opening a folding blade and letting the spring flick it closed. The coat-closet door was open behind him.

Without hesitation I charged. You don't need courage when you have familiarity with self-destruction. Once you've had a quart of Gran Patron pumped from your stomach, you don't expect God, or fate, or yourself to be much concerned with your preservation. So it wasn't courage, not exactly. More like readjusted expectations about the warranty package.

I knocked his knife hand wide with a sweep of my arm and drove my forehead down into his nose. I missed but caught his chin, and then he wheeled and stabbed the knife back at my side, and I caught his wrist awkwardly, and we fell. There were no direct punches, no clean kung fu angles, just glancing blows, grappling, and almost instantaneous exhaustion. In the tight space, we kicked our bodies around, fighting for position, walking the walls in a thoughtful sort of slow motion as our clothes twisted and our breathing grew harsh.

Methodically, he gained position on me, driving a knee into my side, leaning over me and turning his sweaty wrist in my grip, trying to free his knife hand. Our faces stayed close enough to kiss, a drop of perspiration threatening to fall from the tip of his nose, those bared teeth grotesque in close-up. The bitter scent of his skin factory grime and chemical soap pervaded the narrow hall. He got the bar of his forearm across the bridge of my nose, prying his knife hand free. My flailing shoe caught the footlocker, jammed it against the wall for resistance, and I shoved, flipping onto my stomach and trying to take his arm with me.

His knife hand popped loose.

I was on my stomach, Frankel straddling my back with both arms free, the knife lost from my field of vision. I scrambled on the floorboards but was pinned, so I bucked to keep him off balance. Each unguarded instant seemed an impossible duration.

His knee braced against the wall, setting his weight. A sharp intake of breath and a whistle of fabric as he drew an arm back for the plunge.