Джо Горес - Dead Man

Something flashed in Dain’s eyes that drove Sherman back an involuntary step as if the tiger had suddenly crouched to spring. But Dain spoke in flat, almost disinterested tones.

“I don’t play chess any more,” he said mildly.

Sherman was silent, measuring him for a long moment, pushing it, relishing it. Riding the tiger! He nodded slightly.

“Of course,” he said. “A pity.”

So it had worked with Sherman, the tough-guy image behind which Eddie Dain could live and function. He felt uneasy to be using his friends this way; but the gamesman part of him was excited by his initial success. Sherman’s lively imagination had done a lot of Dain’s work for him, but Randy Solomon would be different. To enlist Randy’s cooperation for information only the cops could provide, he had to project the same stainless-steel image using very different tactics.

Homicide had a new percolator. It made good coffee, so the trade from out-of-town departments had slacked off. And sure enough, according to the load of bullshit Lieutenant Randy Solomon was trying to sell a trio of Homicide dicks when Dain walked in, out in the boonies the bullets and switchblades now were finding their mark with disconcerting regularity.

Four sets of indifferent cops’ eyes swept over Dain, making professional assessment without interest since no threat was perceived. Three sets turned away. One set remained fixed on him. Staring hard. Harder. Suddenly Solomon broke away from the water cooler gang and went across the bullpen toward him.

“Jesus Christ! Eddie Dain! Where in the hell...”

Like Sherman, he moved to embrace Dain. Unlike Sherman, he was attuned to physical rather than intellectual threat signs in people and so managed to turn the bear hug into a handshake without embarrassment on either side. He jerked his head at the big office dominating the far end of the room. They went in. His name was on the glass, with

under it in capital letters. Randy sat down behind the desk.

“Congratulations on the promotion,” said Dain. “I didn’t know. Nobody could ever deserve it more.”

“That’s what all the boys say.” Sherman leaned across the desk and said, “Thanks just a fuck of a lot for all those cards and letters over the past four years. Where the fuck you been?”

Dain waved a dismissive hand. “Around.”

“Not around here.”

Dain shrugged. He leaned forward. There was a whipcord quality to the movement, as if he could pluck a fly from the air with his bare hand if he wished.

“Hospitals, mostly. Here you know about. Stanford. Arizona. The Big Apple. Even Mexico.”

“That’s a lot of hospitals.”

“There was a lot to fix,” said Dain.

Randy said darkly, “Got a hunch wasn’t just double-ought buckshot that hurt you, Hoss.” He gestured. “But you look like these days you could knock down a bull with a good right cross.”

Dain was silent. Randy leaned back in his swivel chair and locked his hands behind his big square black head and chuckled.

“What ever happened to Shenzie the wonder cat?”

“Older but no wiser. I left him with Marie’s folks down in La Jolla while I was...” He stopped, considering his word. “Recuperating. I brought him back up with me when I came back.”

“They glad to see you?”

“Their daughter’s dead. Their grandson’s dead. I’m still alive. Would you be glad?”

“Fuck ‘em they can’t take a joke,” said Randy without heat or apology. He paused. “So you’re stay in’ a while.”

“Foreseeable future.”

The cop in Randy made his face and eyes get elaborately casual. “Plannin’ on doin’ what, exactly?”

“What I did before. Private-eye stuff.”

Randy suddenly got up and went to the door and made sure it was shut, then came back and leaned his butt against the edge of the desk, so he could speak in lower tones than his usual pane-rattling decibels.

“It’d be my ass the department knew, Eddie, but these four years I been looking. Not every day looking, y’know, but... Anyway, I got a sort of a hint that maybe a guy down in L.A. ordered that hit. But shit, Hoss, you gotta go dig him up you wanta do anything to him. He died two years ago.”

“Mario Pucci,” said Dain. Randy stared at him for a long moment, then nodded and went back around the desk and sat down again. Dain went on, “Grimes was running dope up from Mexico for him in his powerboat. I imagine Pucci wanted him blown up to keep him from talking, and the boat blown up so nobody would find the compartments the dope had been stowed in.”

Randy opened his arms like a priest giving benediction, but his face wore a puzzled expression.

“Guess I ain’t tracking, Hoss. If the man’s dead—”

Dain was on his feet, leaning across the desk to grip Solomon’s forearm with a force that made the big man wince. But Solomon did not try to pull his arm away.

“The shooters aren’t dead,” said Dain. His low-pitched voice somehow was like chalk on a blackboard. He let go of Solomon’s forearm. He sat down again. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “At least maybe they’re not dead.”

Randy sighed. “One way, I’m glad. It’s what I’d be doin’, was me, lookin’ for the fuckers. But the other way, I ain’t glad, ‘cause I can’t help you. I don’t think anybody can. Pucci was like all these guys now — about ninety percent legit.”

“Too legit to quit,” murmured Dain.

“You got that right. If he did have some old-time shooter around for laughs, he’d have him up in Washington State picking Granny Smiths in front of three hundred school kids when the hit went down. What’s that phrase those fuckers in Washington love? Deniability?”

“Tin mittens,” said Dain.

Solomon chuckled.

“I ain’t heard that one since I was a kid. My grandfather used to say it.”

“I had a lot of time to read a lot of old detective novels while I was recuperating,” said Dain. “Who would Pucci use?”

Some cop’s hardness came again into Solomon’s face. “You ain’t gonna make the same mistake twice, are you, Dain?”

“I’m not going to make any mistakes at all.”

Solomon nodded. “Good enough. Somebody good, it’d be, from one of the families back east. Contract guys, fly in, bang! bang! fly out the same night. With Pucci gone, you got nobody to pressure. They’ll of been paid out of some corporate slush fund somewhere with only Pucci knowing what they were gettin’ paid for. May as well chase a fart in a whirlwind for all the chance you got of finding “em.”

“That’s the way that I had it figured, but I had to ask.”

“What now, Dain?” He had started to say “Eddie,” but somehow the name didn’t fit any more.

“Dialing for dollars. I got a lot of medical to pay off.”

Dain stood up. He seemed quite recovered from the emotional turmoil of a few minutes before. He stuck out his hand to Solomon. They shook.

“Thanks, Randy. For everything. Now and four years ago.”

“Shit,” said Randy. He brightened. “Handball?”

“I’ll call you,” said Dain.

Randy stared at him for a long moment. “Sure you will, Hoss,” he said.

He walked Dain to the door of his office. Stood there watching him thread his way out of the room between the desks.

He went back and sat down. Heavily. And sighed.

His first commission didn’t come until three months after Sherman had started acting as his go-between. Six months before, a drug-money courier had skipped with the cash he had been carrying between New York and Chicago. Dain found him in two days on the Caribbean island of Curacao, and had a lot of sleepless nights over the man’s unknown fate.