Joe Gores - Menaced Assassin

“Somebody was watching through the keyhole?”

“It gets better. She’s sucking Kosta’s knob, and she finishes him up and then says to hubby, ‘Welcome home, dear.’”

Dante turned very quickly on the seat to look at him. They were stopped for the light at Adeline, and Flanagan was waiting for the look, grinning slyly at him.

“Yeah,” said Flanagan. “Gounaris told it as a funny story in the locker room. One cold fuck. Here’s Molly Dalton crazy in love with this guy who don’t give a shit about her, here’s Dalton crazy in love with his wife who don’t give shit about him — and he walks in on them.”

“So he stews about it for a month-”

“You got it, chief. Then goes out and buys himself a shooter and gets stuck in traffic on the Bay Bridge.”

“Only one thing bothers me about your neat little package, Tim. Why didn’t he take out Gounaris instead of his wife?”

“Sure he’d be pissed at Gounaris, but Christ, Dante, she’s the one who betrayed him.”

“I don’t buy it. I think he was too much in love with her to kill her, no matter what she’d done to him. He’s a guy who digs up old bones, for Chrissake! A guy who watches chimps in the jungle. That’s patient, contemplative work. That sort of man doesn’t lose his head and go crazy with a. 22 pistol.”

“No, he hires himself a hitter to go crazy for him.”

Dante shook his head stubbornly. “Pro hit and Popgun Ucelli was out of town. I just don’t think Will Dalton is our man.”

“Let’s find out,” said Flanagan, braking in front of the old brown two-story Victorian. “His 4Runner’s in the drive.”

It was a beautiful April Sunday with towering cumulus clipper ships unusual for California. He and Moll had gotten a couple of beers and two poor boys and some potato chips and gone from the campus up to Tilden Park behind Kensington for a picnic. They’d hidden their bikes under some greasewood and climbed up a fire trail to the green brushy crest where they could spread out their blankets and see for miles across the Bay to the gleaming towers of the city.

Even then, Will had worshipped her, adored her, she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen, like some exotic wood duck or Chinese pheasant, too glorious to be real.

But when she had come into his arms, she had been stunningly real, the most real woman he’d ever known. He didn’t hold hard, physical details of their first mating in his memory, just fragments of an almost unbearable poignancy. The apple-sweetness of a nipple between his lips, the vulnerability of a white flank as her panties came off, the heart-stopping moment when he entered her, he, Will Dalton, actually inside her, her, Molly St. John, the woman he would love and cherish for all…

Knuckles on the door thudded him to earth like a wing-shot mallard. They kept on. He opened it red-eyed and stone-faced, teetering on the edge of hatred for these men who had dropped him from the sky to the bitter reality of Molly gone, Molly dead.

“No,” he said, and started to shut the door.

A foot was in it. The men were holding up leather cases with gleaming shields. Recognition dawned.

“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t…” He stepped back, nodding to the bulky one. “Inspector… Flanagan, isn’t it? And-”

“Lieutenant Stagnaro,” said the lean-faced taut-bodied one, vaguely remembered. A hunter, this one. Good. Moll’s murderer needed to be found, punished, even if it would never…

Will stepped aside so they could come in. “You have news?”

“News?” asked Flanagan in a surprised voice. “Yeah, you might say we got news.” He half turned to look back at his companion as they went through the archway into the living room. “Right, Dante, might say we got news?”

“And a few questions,” said Stagnaro in a tired voice.

Will, who had paused to pick up the mail in the hallway, tossed it on the coffee table and sat down, suddenly wary through his grief. He was a keen observer not only of action but of nuance; any student of primate behavior in the wild had to be. For some unfathomable reason, these men were not his friends.

“I can make some coffee if-”

“This ain’t exactly a social occasion, Perfesser.”

Flanagan, pretending a stupidity not really his own. The other, Stagnaro, could never make even the pretense. Too much lively wit and intelligence in those deceptively soft brown eyes. Rage, love, hatred, sorrow, joy, delight-but never stupidity.

“Then what sort of occasion is it?” Will asked with deliberate coldness. Steady. Hang on. Don’t give them any satisfaction. “My wife is dead, if you have no news about her murderer then why are you intruding on my grief two days before I… have to bury her…”

“Intruding on your grief? Hey, that’s very classy, isn’t it, Dante?” Flanagan’s mouth hung open ever so slightly after he had spoken, a look of remarkable stupidity. “I got a question maybe relates to her death, like. What’d you feel like when you walked in on Moll givin’ Kosta’s dick the old mouth massage?”

Will realized he was on his stomach on the floor with his arms pulled painfully up into the small of his back and a man’s knee keeping them there. Flanagan was sitting slack-legged under the window holding a red-splotched handkerchief to his nose. Will must have knocked him right off the couch.

“You have to admit you asked for that one, Tim,” Stagnaro said from Will’s back. Will raised his face off the dusty rug.

“I’m all right now. You can let me up.”

After a moment, the weight went away from his back. He got quickly to his feet, in case the fat cop wanted some more. But Flanagan now was standing by the window with his back half-turned, gently dabbing at his swollen nose.

“The bathroom is down the hall on the left.”

Flanagan looked grumpy but not terribly vengeful. His nose was red and puffy. He nodded and shambled off down the hall.

Stagnaro sat down, took out a notebook and ballpoint.

Will said, still sore, “What the hell was that all about?”

“He was looking for a reaction.” Stagnaro chuckled. “He got one.” He leaned forward, serious now, his elbows on the chair arms, his hands resting on the notebook in his lap. “I’m head of the SFPD Organized Crime Task Force-three guys working out of a cramped little office in the Hall of Justice. Any sort of organized crime, that’s our meat.”

“Organized crime? I don’t understand.” His bewilderment was real or he was damned good. “Some madman shot Moll-”

“A madman who coolly walks into a crowded restaurant and does his business with a. 22 target pistol that’s been sprayed with Armor All? A madman who then leaves the gun empty on the bar, warns people about seeing anything, then walks out?”

“Armor All?”

“Stuff they put on car finishes to seal-”

An impatient gesture. “Why put it on a gun?”

“The Hell’s Angels started using it in the sixties when they knew they had to leave the gun behind at a hit. Armor All prevents the metal from picking up the shooter’s body oil from his fingers. No oil, no fingerprints. Nowadays most pros who still use guns spray them before even handling them, even if they will be wearing gloves. Just a bit of added insurance. Your average crazy isn’t going to know that, or go to that much trouble even if he does know it.”

Will wasted no more time on needless objections. Sketched out that way by a man concerned with organized crime-did that include the mob, the Mafia, whatever they called it? Anyway, it made the point. It was just that the point made no sense at all.

“There’s very little Mafia activity in the Bay Area,” Stagnant was saying. “But I know of a meat wholesaler back east in New Jersey who moonlights as a hitman and fits the… parameters of the case. Eddie Ucelli-they call him Popgun. Only Ucelli never used more than one bullet for a hit, and this killer had two. Now, why do you think that might be?”