Джо Горес: Dead Man

The edge of the book struck the side of Sherman’s neck with a rending sound. Dain, panting, turned away from the carrion huddled in the corner of the elevator.

“There’s your pity, Doug,” he said.

Shenzie started to meow, and some of the shock left Dain’s face. He screwed the fuse back in tight and shut the fuse box door before going back down the hall.

“Let’s get you out of that box, Shenz.”

He carried Shenzie into the loft, turned on the lights — and scattered words and images from the last few hours came clamoring unbidden through his brain. Questions. Answers. Probabilities. Inevitabilities.

A coherent whole.

He sat on the bed for a long time with the carry case unopened beside him. A vast shudder ran through him.

Of course. If the middleman had come after him, why would the hitman be any slower off the mark?

Finally he shook himself, reached into the cat carry case for Shenzie. Fondled his furry little head. Chucked him under the chin, scratched him under the collar. Still no purr, of course, but at least he withdrew his hand to vocal protest.

“We’ll have you out of there in no time, cat,” he promised. “Just one phone call to make first.”

Dain dragged Moe Wexler, the electronics genius, away from his reality cop show on TV, got some precise advice from him, then asked him to do a little job. Moe sighed and said he would have to go down to his shop in the middle of the night and it was going to cost Dain plenty, and Dain said that was all right, he had plenty, and he would meet Moe there.

The next part was going to be difficult and dangerous. But if he had to go, Dain figured, he would be going in good company. Shenzie had always wanted to be an engineer and he would be able to see some engineering problems get worked out at first hand.

Especially if Dain quite literally blew it...

The eleven o’clock news told the hitman he was safe. An explosion had gutted a semi-abandoned pier on the San Francisco waterfront. Fortunately there was a firehouse next door, so they were able to extinguish the resultant blaze before the flames had a chance to spread to adjacent structures.

One unidentified body had been found in the wreckage, at this hour police and firemen were sifting through the rubble for clues to his identity and for the source of the blast...

The shooter tapped his remote to blank the screen, and went to bed feeling totally safe and at peace with himself for the first time in five years.

It was one of those unusual San Francisco summer days, a sparkling sunlit morning without fog. Randy Solomon bounded zestfully down the outside stairs of his beautifully restored old Victorian on Buchanan, whistling. He turned downhill toward Fell and his car parked half a block away.

Standing on the sidewalk waiting for him was Dain. No sling this morning; both arms were free. Solomon checked his forward momentum, momentarily appalled.

“You were the other hitman,” said Dain simply.

His face was pinched and drawn; another sleepless night. Randy had recovered; his face was placid, beaming. He mimed holding his arms out from his sides.

“You a tricky enough dude to be wired, Dain?”

Dain opened his arms wide for the frisk. “Doctor said I could take the sling off today, so I did, that’s all,” he said.

“So, no wire.” Randy gave his big laugh. “So it’s just us, sorta mano a mano, huh?”

“Something like that,” said Dain. “After all, I’ve been looking for you for five years.”

Randy nodded.

“Lots of activity gettin’ you nowhere. Sure, I was the second shooter. Who the hell else could it have been? I been waiting five years for that penny to drop. When you said last night about Inverness bein’ a cop, I thought you knew then.”

“I didn’t,” said Dain. There was none of the heat and hatred he’d shown the night before with Sherman. Only a sort of sadness. “You’re right, I should have known. It only made sense — a couple of murderous cops working together. You had the directions to the cabin — I’d given them to you myself. Inverness had the instructions from Sherman — kill us all.”

Randy laughed his basso profundo laugh, spread his hands.

“Always tellin’ you how I couldn’t stand old Dougiebaby, where’d he get his information, shit like that, when all the time him and me...”

“You’d worked for him before,” said Dain, more a question than a statement. “Paying for your house.”

“Couple of times,” Randy agreed. “Do a hit locally saves travelin’ on the weekends.”

“It was you who blew up Grimes on his boat.”

Randy chuckled again. “You sure you ain’t wearin’ a wire, Hoss, seeking all these admissions, like?”

“No wire,” said Dain. “Just trying to understand.”

Randy was suddenly irritated. He looked around the quiet early-morning street. No one else had come from any of the houses on the block. No cars had started up at the curb. Randy had always been an early one in to the office. Dedicated cop.

“What’s to understand? Killin’ people’s the easiest way I know to have a nice retirement.” He swept an arm around to encompass the city. “Shit, they kill each other every day — over what TV show to watch and what corner to sell crack from.”

“But... but I was your friend. Marie was your friend. Albie was your friend. Even Shenzie was—”

“Can’t be friends with no cat, Hoss.”

“But all you had to do was—”

“You wouldn’t let it alone. I had set up the accident on Grimes’s boat, and you just kept peckin’ at it. So me and Sherman decided...” He broke off, said, “That was old Dougie’s body they drug out of the loft, wasn’t it?”

“His body,” said Dain. “I called him from New Orleans, told him I was on my way back and would be at the loft last night. I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I had to know one way or the other.” He suddenly quoted, “’Was me, I’d be plannin’ a whole lotta other people’s deaths.’” He met the incomprehension in Randy’s eyes. “It’s what you said to the doctor at the hospital that night. Whatever part of me was still alive heard it... It kept me going all those years...”

Randy shrugged. “I don’t remember it.” Then he was suddenly intense, with an edge of anger again. “But you shoulda listened closer, Sherlock. I said that’s what I’d of done. Me. Not you. Hell, you was just a nerdy chess player in those days.”

“Still am,” said Dain, and meant it. “Playing around at life, playing around at revenge... Who else but you would have put that second bug on Farnsworth’s phone? I never told you about the bonds but you knew about them in the car last night from the airport and I still didn’t get it...”

“Yeah. Beefed up yo’ body, got all ready physically for the war, but up here” — he tapped his forehead with a finger — “and here” — he slammed a fist against his own washboard gut — “you’re still a fucking nerd.”

His anger boiled over, he put a hand on Dain’s chest and shoved him back a couple of steps. Dain gave without pushing back. Randy nodded as if his point had been made.

“You know I killed your fucking kid, you know I helped kill your fucking wife, you know I planned to blow you and your fucking cat all to hell, and what do you do? You think it all through an’ you come here for a fucking confrontation.”

He whirled, jabbed a finger at the flat roof of the Victorian across the street.

“Why the fuck aren’t you up there with a sniper rifle and a scope, layin’ the cross hairs on my chest?”

He shoved Dain again, harder this time. Dain went back a few more paces, still not trying to defend himself.