John Gilstrap - Nathan’s Run

“I didn’t do it!” Nathan blurted out.

Denise read the panic in his voice and fought away tears. “Okay, kid, I believe you,” she soothed. `Tell us what happened.”

He did. When he was done, The Bitch was fifteen commercials behind. The list would grow considerably longer before it began to shrink.

Harry Thompkins couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “You mean he named me specifically? I thought he was pissed.”

Jed laughed. “I’ve known Lieutenant Michaels a long time, kid. Trust me, if you leave the meeting able to stand, he’s not pissed.”

Thompkins was overcome with a sense of respect and warmth that he had never before felt on the job. Michaels could have had his ass fired, and no one would have said a thing. Instead, he ordered him by name to be put on the most visible case of the year—hell, of the decade.

Jed laughed again. “Christ, Harry, don’t look so stunned. He was a rookie once. A pretty stupid one, at that.”

Harry smiled. “The mirror?”

“Yep, the mirror.”

“So that actually happened?”

“Sure did. Took him years to recover the ground he lost that day.”

Harry couldn’t shake his feeling of incredulity. “I guess I owe him one.”

Jed clapped the younger man on the shoulder. “Yes, you do,” he said jovially. His mood turned suddenly serious. “Now to the business at hand,” he said. “The lieutenant wants us to swim upstream on this case. Wants us to prove that somebody has a contract out on the Bailey kid; that that’s the reason Harris tried to kill him. We’ve got bank records on Ricky that show a twenty-thousand-dollar deposit three weeks ago and then a total withdrawal of all funds the morning he was killed. When we’re done there, he wants us to show that the cops in New York were killed by a hit man, not by Nathan. We’re both convinced that Nathan was the intended target.”

“A hit man?”

Jed nodded. “Makes sense, really, if…”

“Holy shit, that’s it!” Harry proclaimed, cutting Jed off in mid-sentence.

“What’s what?”

Harry didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up Jed’s phone and dialed information.

“Braddock Hospital, please,” he said after a short pause. “Emergency Department.”

Tad Baker hadn’t given the Bailey matter much thought since he had last spoken with Harry Thompkins. When he heard that the police officer was holding for him, it took Tad a minute to piece together their last conversation.

“Hi, Harry,” he said cheerfully as he snatched up the hand set. Harry was all business. “Tad, you remember our little talk the other day?”

Tad shrugged. “Uh-huh.”

“You remember our rules of engagement? Say nothing if you agree and…”

“Yeah, I remember,” he interrupted, none too comfortable about walking the ethical tightrope on an open phone line.

“Okay, I’ve got one more theory for you. You ready?”

Tad looked around casually. No one was within earshot. “I suppose?”

Harry took a deep breath. “Okay, here goes. I think that Mark Bailey’s fingers were broken intentionally, by someone intending to do him harm.”

There was a pause. Tad said nothing.

“And I think that to do that, the perpetrator would have to be one sick son of a bitch.”

Another pause. More silence.

“Like maybe a hit man.”

Tad didn’t say a word.

“Are you there, Doc?” Harry asked at last.

“Yeah, I’m here, but I’ve really got to go,” Tad said hurriedly. “Thanks a million, Tad,” Harry said, genuine affection in his voice.

“Yeah, right. We’re not doing this ever again.”

The line went dead, and Harry placed the receiver on the cradle.

Jed was getting tired of feeling like he had entered this show in the middle of the third act. “What the hell was that all about?”

“Come on,” Harry said, heading for the door. “I’ll explain it in the car.”

Jed followed without thinking. “You think the kid’s uncle did all this?”

“No. But I’ll bet you a hundred bucks he knows who did.”

Lyle Pointer had endured just about as much of Nathan Bailey as Li he could stand. His face was everywhere: front page of the newspaper, the morning news, the evening news, every fucking place. Now the son of a whore was on the goddamn radio again.

As he replayed the fuckups from the night before in his mind, Pointer absently rotated his wrist, trying to work some of the soreness out. What he needed was some aspirin for his throbbing head and arm, but he refused to give in. The dull pain helped him focus on what he had to do.

One way or another, Lyle knew that he himself was a dead man. Even if Mr. Slater didn’t have him whacked outright for bungling such a simple fucking job, without the old man’s tacit protection, Pointer’s countless enemies would stand all night in long lines just for a chance to take him out. It was the curse of being good at your profession.

Faced with his own mortality, he found himself surprisingly at peace with it all. Mr. Slater had a business to run, and the kind of sins Pointer had committed made it very difficult to conduct that business. But if the old man thought that Lyle was just going to saunter on into a trap—if he thought that he was just going to write off this Bailey kid and then make a suicide trip into the paws of Slater’s attack dogs—well, he had another think coming. Lyle had a job to do, and that job was right here in Pitcairn County.

Lyle had thought a lot about death over the years. It was his business. It was his future. Hell, it was everybody’s future.

He’d always had a premonition of how his own end would come. In his fantasies, it was always a gallant thing, perhaps taking the bullet meant for his boss, propelling himself into the special company of heroes among villains.

Now there’d be no heroics, only shame. He could hear the mocking laughter now as his rivals pissed on his grave. Lyle Pointer—the Hit Man—beaten by a little boy.

Nathan Fucking Bailey had robbed him of his honor. A punk kid had made him a laughingstock. Who’d have ever thought it was possible?

One thing was for goddamn sure. The little bastard wasn’t going to be around to share in the laughter.

Until now, killing had always been business. Suddenly it was personal. And Lyle was going to enjoy every minute of it.

Where does a kid go when he gets driven underground by the cops? he thought. His first two nights, the punk had time to scope out his hiding places. But this morning was different, wasn’t it? He had to work fast. He’d get out of the business district quickly; head for the boonies. Would he take a car? Maybe, but he always had keys before. Hot-wiring was a lot harder than television led people to believe. Pointer was willing to bet that the kid didn’t know how to do it.

That meant he had stayed on foot. How far could he go on foot? Depends on how long he ran, doesn’t it? Young kid like that, in good shape, could probably run forever. He didn’t run forever, though, did he? Hell, no, he’s on the radio right now!

Pointer prided himself on his sense for things like this, and he knew that the kid was close. If only he could pinpoint where.

The telephone. The radio. The link was there somewhere. What was it that he’d read in the paper? Not the part where the idiot prosecutor couldn’t get his way, but something else. Something about that witness in Pennsylvania. He worked for the phone company, didn’t he? Yes, by God he did! Bastard said he felt “terrible” that he hadn’t put the pieces together sooner. Poor fool seemed to be really beating himself up over dropping the ball on identifying the kid when he saw him.

A plan started to form in Pointer’s mind. The witness—Todd Briscow, there it was, right in the paper—probably would do just about anything to assuage his guilt, wouldn’t he? Given an opportunity to redeem himself—say, to cooperate with the prosecutor’s investigation—Pointer was by God certain that old Todd would just jump at the chance. If not, well, Lyle had made a very good living at being persuasive.