Andrew Klavan - Damnation Street

Weiss gazed down at the man who called himself John Foy-he gazed down and held the gun on him-but his mind was far away, on Julie now. He couldn't put it into words exactly, but he saw what had happened to her, to her and her whole family. They'd been frozen in time, stuck in the moment of Suzanne Graves's murder, repeating the moment of the murder endlessly, endlessly. Andy Bremer had a different name, a different life, but he was still Charles Graves taking the blame for his wife's killing, paying off the blackmailing Adrienne Chalk, not just to protect Julie, but as penance for the things he had allowed to happen in his house. Olivia Graves had grown up, had gone to school, had gotten a profession, but she was still the little girl full of anger and envy and terror and guilt at what her sister had done on her behalf.

And Julie. Julie went on living the life she had lived before the moment she picked up the hammer; she had gone on whoring, had gone on becoming whoever men wanted her to be, as if she could somehow convince herself that the moment had never happened, that the hammer had never come into her hands.

Weiss gazed down at the killer. He understood why Julie had waited for him here, why she hadn't run away. Because she had never left that old moment and the old truth had at last come back to find her: bad men do bad things, and they'll do more bad things forever unless you stop them.

Once again she had done what she had to do. She had waited here. She had picked up the hammer. Only this time the bad man was the man who called himself John Foy. And this time the hammer was Weiss.

Weiss let out a long sigh. His hand-his gun hand, went slack. The . 38 strayed from its target. It pointed down at the floor.

He lifted his body to one side, reached his left hand into his trench coat pocket.

"It's gonna be a long wait, Foy," he said. "Have a cigarette."

Good! the killer thought.

It was the perfect moment. The. 38 was pointed away from him. Weiss was lifted clumsily in the chair, reaching into his trench coat pocket for his cigarettes. The killer's hand was already inside the pocket of the body suit. His fingers wrapped themselves around the butt of the Saracen.

In one clean, lightning-quick instant, he pulled the pistol free.

Weiss, his left hand in the pocket of his trench coat, took hold of the 9mm SIG Sauer he had put there: the killer's other gun.

The killer brought the Saracen to bear. So quick, Weiss had no time to move. So quick, the killer himself had no time to think.

Then, as the barrel of the gun came around, as the sight centered on Weiss's chest, he did think.

He thought: Wait a minute! The son of a bitch doesn't smoke!

Weiss shot him. He shot him with the gun in his trench coat pocket, the killer's own gun. The blast was loud as hell. The 9mm slug ripped into the Shadowman's chest and blew a hole the size of a man's fist out the back of him. The blood and flesh and shattered bone spattered on the wall behind him.

The Shadowman gaped, a sick, startled look on his face. He dropped backward onto the floor, hard, like a post falling over. He lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling. His mouth opened and closed.

Weiss watched him, deadpan.

He was dying. The killer could feel it. He was dying fast. His mind was racing crazily, trying to grasp what had happened to him. Have a cigarette, Foy. It was a trick… Weiss had known… Somehow Weiss had guessed even about the Saracen. He had tricked him. Tricked him and shot him-Christ, he'd shot him right to fucking death-and with his own gun and in self-defense… He was fucking dying and Weiss was free, free with nothing to fear from the law, with nothing to fear at all.

The killer's rage and the helplessness of his rage felt like white-hot fire. He couldn't stand it. It was worse than anything.

The tower. He had to climb into the tower in his mind. He had to get to the blue peace up there and breathe. Down here there was nothing but the fire of his rage, waves of fire pounding him, surrounding him, an ocean of fire that went on forever, fire and pain and red lips laughing. He tried to climb, to get away. But he couldn't. He was too weak. The calm, blue, serene spaces were too high, too far away. He was stuck down here in the burning ocean of his rage.

Fading, he was seized with fear…

Weiss stood slowly out of the armchair. He felt sick to his stomach. He hadn't known it would end like this until it did. Or maybe he had. Maybe he had known and he hadn't faced it. Anyway, now that it was done, he wasn't sure why he'd done it. He wasn't sure why he'd done any of it from the start. Was it to get Julie free or to get himself free or just because the killer pissed him off? He didn't know. Or maybe he did. Anyway, he felt sick to his stomach.

He moved past the dying killer. He went to the door. He took hold of the knob.

"You told…" The killer tried to speak. He coughed. He gasped. Weiss glanced back at him. The killer lay staring up at the ceiling. There were bloody bubbles on his lips. "You told me you weren't a killing man," he whispered finally.

Weiss watched death pass over the other man's face like a shadow. He pulled the door open.

"I lied," he said.

He stepped out into the rain.

It was one of those nights-the last one of those nights-when Weiss and I sat alone together in his office. He was in the huge leather swivel chair behind the massive desk. I was in one of the two blocky armchairs the clients used. The halls were dark around us and the other offices empty. Weiss's desk lamp surrounded us with light, a little island of light in the pool of shadows. At the big arched windows on one wall, the skyline rose and fell, its pale glow seeping into the violet sky. The snap and rattle of the streetcars down on Market drifted up to us. The high winter wind made the panes knock in their frames. I had that sense, that sense I often had on nights like this, that Weiss and I were sitting in the one still corner of the cold and frantic world.

Weiss kept a bottle of Macallan in his desk drawer, just as if he were a detective in one of the old novels. He had poured us each a glass of scotch, and now the bottle stood on the desk between us, glowing amber in the lamplight.

I swirled the whiskey in my glass. I drew in the scent of it.

"It's a wonderful thing to imagine," I said.

Weiss laughed softly.

We were talking about Bishop. He was getting better, stronger, all the time. Two weeks before, he had left the hospital in Phoenix and come back to a rehab center in San Francisco. They held him there for a few days, until the insurance ran out. He was still too weak to take care of himself, so Sissy took him in.

It was, as I said, a wonderful thing to imagine. All the dangers Bishop had faced, all the adventures he'd had, the things he'd done, and the things we thought he might have done-none was more amazing to conjure in the brain than the mental image of him sunk in the white fluffy recesses of Sissy's apartment, lying all but helpless amid white fluffy valentine pillows and a white fluffy comforter while the white fluffy cats made a bed of him.

I admit I felt a little jealous when I thought of it-a little. Sissy would lavish all her tenderness on him, and I knew well how tender Sissy could be. She would coddle and nurse him, feed him and mop his fevered brow until he had to get well just to keep from killing her.

The outcome seemed to me inevitable. Bishop's wounds would heal. His vigor would seep back into him, then flow back in a strengthening stream. Alone with Sissy and with few distractions, he would become increasingly aware of the sweetness of her smile, the delicacy of her features, the whiteness of her skin-the smell of her; she smelled great, as I think I've already had occasion to mention. She would come and go from the kitchen, from the bathroom, bringing whatever he needed for his comfort, and he would watch her come and go. The girlish whisper and the maternal endearments that annoyed him at first would soon come to reveal what was true gentleness in her. He would think: she was really not so bad, not half-bad, after all.