Joe Gores: Menaced Assassin

He remembered Flanagan now, fat, red-faced and deliberately stupid. Even so, he could be a problem, might think this gave him a right to dig around in Atlas operations…

“Here you are, pal.”

Kosta shoved some bills at the cabby, got out, almost slipped crossing the wet-slick, steeply slanted sidewalk toward the gaping street door of Diana’s second-floor apartment. Flanagan’s unmarked sedan was parked at an angle halfway up across the sidewalk, the driver’s door hanging open.

Gounaris ran up the interior stairs, his shoes echoing on the old hardwood risers. The door to her apartment at the head of the stairs also stood open. Bright light came through from the living room beyond the hallway. He went in, faltered. He didn’t want to see Diana…

“In-Inspector? I-”

The wire garrote was looped around his neck from behind. The big predator coming out of the hall closet gave a grunt of effort as he jerked the wire tight with its two handmade wooden handles, ramming his knee into the small of Kosta’s back for leverage.

“Die… you… fucker…”

Gounaris did. Almost immediately. But not before he had been spun around to face the hallway mirror so he could see, through dimming eyes, Raptor’s ferocious and triumphant face reflected over his own shoulder.

I want something special for this one-the savagery unleashed last time seems to be growing. Something up close and personal. The gun? I’ve used that already, more than once. The bomb? If you will allow a directed gas main explosion to count, I’ve used that too. The knife? Prince of darkness. Which leaves the club or the garrote.

The garrote it shall be. Up close and personal. Easy to fabricate out of piano wire and two pieces of dowel for handgrips. Gloves at all times, of course. And I want it to be at Miss Pym’s apartment-somehow fitting, don’t you agree?

I go in two days ago using the old telephone repairman ruse. Cap, jacket, a phone to hang off a thick leather belt… Lovely view of the Embarcadero, the piers, the Bay Bridge from her front room window. She has a telescope-for watching the ships, she tells me. Spare bedroom fixed up as a home office; fax machine, filing cabinet, speakerphone, copy machine…

Outside, the view is equally delectable. A breathtaking panorama down Kearny and across Broadway to the financial district, dominated by the towering white golf tee of the Transamerica Tower. A similar view, in fact, to that from the late Moll Dalton’s penthouse apartment, visited, thoroughly scouted, many times by Raptor before her demise.

I have been tracking Gounaris for two weeks now, I know his patterns, his habits. I see Stagnaro visit him today, I watch Miss Pym depart, follow her shopping, home, activate my plan. When the time is right, I go up to her apartment, do what I do, call Gounaris. Impersonating fat Tim Flanagan over the phone is easy; Gounaris has not spoken to the man for fifteen months.

I leave my Hertz car-the epitome of an unmarked sedan-parked at an artistic angle across the sidewalk, door agape. I leave street and upstairs door to the apartment open, flood it with light to make it subliminally seem a crime scene.

I wait in the closet. Gounaris arrives. Sees himself die.

I arrange the scene further, drive to my Berkeley motel room; I have two hours to wait before the Will Dalton finis. Or my own. I don’t know how that will go, not with Stagnaro lurking around. I lie down for a moment, fall asleep, dream.

I have completed an assassination in a strange city, rent a cheap hotel room for the night. It is high-ceilinged and boxy, sparsely furnished with a neatly made double bed and an almost napless carpet on the floor.

In the night I come half-awake with a warm heavy weight on top of me. At first I think it is my dog, he weighs as much as a person, but when I put my hand down to pat his head, I encounter soft human flesh. I feel an arm, a female breast, I jerk my hand away. A woman is lying asleep on top of me.

At first I think, My beloved! But then I remember that she has no way of knowing where I am or what I am doing.

“You have come to the wrong room,” I exclaim, very puritanical, shaking the sleeping woman awake. “You must leave.”

She mumbles something and rolls aside so I can jump out of bed. I find the light switch, but the fixture in the high ceiling has a very dim pink bulb, so it furnishes ambiance but little illumination. The woman is tall and comely, her body beautifully shaped under a filmy blue negligee. Because of the dim light, however, I cannot see her face as she comes toward me.

She slides the negligee down off her shoulders to bare for my ecstasy her beautiful breasts, nipples erect with sexual anticipation, and I realize she is my beloved! I put my arms around her hips and crouch to bury my face between those breasts, my own sex already thrusting out stiffly in its excitement.

“One need only be faithful unto death,” she murmurs in an astounded, suddenly fading voice.

And I am crouching in the middle of that strange barren pinkly lit hotel room with a ridiculous hard-on, clutching only an empty blue negligee, the texture of my beloved’s departed flesh still burning my lips. I hear mocking male laughter dissipating into thin air above my head.

Lips burning. Face wet. I think with tears, but when I bring down my hand it is stained with something dark. I stagger into the bathroom, look in the mirror. My face is smeared with blood like the face of a vampire.

End of dream. I awake in my Berkeley motel room, heart pounding, fearing I have missed the next murder, fearing I have slain my beloved. I sit on the edge of my bed, face buried in my hands. I bring my hands down. They are red with blood. I run into the bathroom, look in the mirror. My face is smeared with blood like the face of a vampire.

The bed is bloodstained, too, but… empty. Void take me, my beloved is not dead by my hand after all! I merely have had my first nosebleed since I was a child.

I have checked out and am driving toward Will Dalton’s assassination, feeling confused, when I recall that departing male laughter above my head. God’s laughter-God, in Whose existence, you will not be surprised to hear, I have very little faith. Suddenly I am enraged at this God I do not believe in.

“Why do You do things like this to people?” I demand, but reasonably at first. “They pray, they try to live good lives, they give love to other people… and then You destroy them.”

No answer. He never answers, as those of you who engage in the futile exercise of prayer well know. You must take it on faith that some cosmic ear is up there listening. Louder now.

“What do You get out of it? You claim to be all-powerful. Why do You need the humiliation and destruction of human beings? Of all living things?”

No answer. I wait. Louder again. I am pounding my fist on the steering wheel by this time. My face, caught in the rearview mirror, is contorted with rage.

“WHY? DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD? DO YOU ENJOY THE SCREAMS OF HUMAN PAIN? DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL ALL WARM AND TOASTY INSIDE? DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A BIG MAN?”

No answer. I am at a stoplight. The woman in the next car is looking over at me. She cannot hear me through our closed windows, so perhaps she thinks I am singing along with some operatic aria-with Rome’s sinister chief of police, Scarpia, let’s say, plotting Cavaradossi’s murder in the church of Sant’ Andrea before cynically falling on his knees to pray.

I shriek, “ANSWER ME, GODDAM YOU! OR DON’T YOU HAVE THE GUTS?” No answer. The light changes. Traffic moves. I scream: “ALL RIGHT THEN, FUCK YOU! I’LL KILL YOU TOO, YOU FUCKER, SO YOU CAN ROT IN YOUR OWN HELL!”

No answer. Because there is no answer He can make.