Dean Koontz - Dragonfly

And how many times have I heard that before? McAlister wondered.

The President said, “Bit by bit we're putting it all back together, and don't you forget that.”

“I wonder,” McAlister said. He was seldom this morose, and he realized that Dragonfly was the final catalyst necessary to start major changes in him. He didn't know what those changes might be; they were still developing. “Sometimes I think the world just gets crazier and crazier. It certainly isn't the world that I was taught about when I was a young man in Boston.”

“You're just tired.”

“I suppose.”

“Do you want me to relieve you? Would you like someone else to take over the agency?”

McAlister sat up straight. “Oh, Christ, no! No, sir.” He wiped one hand across his face. “I can't think of any other poor son of a bitch" — and here he was cursing again—"who could have stood up to these last six months as well as I have. That's not egomania — it's just fact.”

“I have faith in you.”

“Thank you.”

“We'll get through this.”

“I hope you're right.”

“I want to be informed the moment there are any major developments. And if you don't call me, if nothing comes up, I'll still give you a ring around five o'clock tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get some rest.”

“I'll try.”

“Goodnight, Bob.”

“Goodnight, sir.”

The President clicked his tongue and hung up.

While McAlister was on the telephone with the President, Andrew Rice was in his car, cruising around one of the unofficial red-light districts of Washington. He drove slowly past a couple of blocks of cocktail lounges, cheap bars, adult movie theaters and bookstores, boutiques, pawnshops, and shuttered delicatessens. Young and generally attractive girls, alone and in groups of two or three, stood at the curb near the bus stops. Although they were dressed and posed provocatively, many of them were trying to look — for the benefit of the police, who were not deceived but pretended to be — as if they were waiting for a bus or a cab or their boyfriends. They were all prostitutes; and Rice had already driven through the area once before in order to study and compare the merchandise. Finally, he turned a corner, pulled his Thunderbird to the curb, stopped near two flashily dressed young girls, and put down the automatic window on the passenger's side.

A tall blonde in a tight white pantsuit and a short red vinyl jacket leaned in at the open window. She smiled at him and said, “Hello there.”

“Hi.”

“Nice night, after all that rain.”

“Yes, it is.”

She looked him over, studied the leather-upholstered interior of the car. She said nothing more.

“Ah…” His hands were slippery with sweat. He was gripping the wheel so hard that his knuckles were bloodless; they poked up sharp and hard in his fat fingers. “I'm looking for someone.”

“What's his name? Maybe I know him.”

You rotten bitch, he thought. He took his wallet from his inside jacket pocket. “How much?”

She pretended to be confused. “For what?”

“You know.”

“Look, mister, so far as I know you're a cop. And I ain't going to proposition no cop, no way.”

“Sex,” he said.

“Not interested,” she said, turning away from the window.

“Hey! What about your friend?” He nodded at the girl behind her.

“I'll ask her.”

The other girl came to the window. She was a petite brunette, in her late teens or early twenties. She was wearing tight jeans and a long-sleeved white sweater and a short buckskin jacket. “Yeah?”

“How much?”

“You just did that routine with Velma.”

“Okay, okay.” Embarrassed, he told her what he wanted.

She appraised the car and said, “Seventy bucks.”

“Okay.”

“You have a motel room, or what?”

“I thought maybe we could use your place,” he said.

“That's ten extra.”

“Okay.”

“Eighty — in advance.”

“Sure.”

She went over to the blonde, and they talked for almost a minute. Then she came back, got in the car, and gave him her address.

She had three rooms and a bath on the fourth floor of a thirty-year-old apartment house. There was a new wall-to-wall carpet in every room, including the kitchen; but she didn't have much furniture. What pieces she did have were expensive and in good taste.

In the bedroom, when they had both undressed, he said, “I'll stand up. You get on your knees.”

“Whatever makes you happy.” She got down before him and took his penis in one hand.

Before she could bring it to her lips, he chopped a knee into her chin and knocked her backward. As she fell he tried to imagine that she was not a hooker, that she was McAlister, that he was beating McAlister. He kicked her alongside the head and laughed when her eyes rolled back. He imagined that he was kicking McAlister and David Canning and the President and everyone else who had ever gotten the best of him or held authority over him. He even imagined that he was kicking A. W. West — and that made him feel best of all. He stopped kicking her and stood over her, gasping for breath. Then he dropped to his knees beside her and touched the bloody froth at her nostrils. Sighing contentedly, he began to use his fists.

Someone knocked gently on the door, three times.

Canning stood up. He put one hand under his coat and touched the butt of the pistol in his shoulder holster.

The knocking came again, somewhat louder and more insistent than it had been the first tune.

Keeping one hand inside his jacket, he turned away from the door which opened on the hotel corridor. The knocking came from the other door, the one that connected to the adjoining room. He walked over to it and stood against the wall. When the knocking sounded a third time, quite loud now, he said, “Who is it?”

“Tanaka.” The voice was rather soft and high-pitched, just as McAlister had described it.

That didn't mean it was Tanaka.

It could be anyone.

It could even be the man who had followed him from the airport, the man who had watched him board the elevator.

“Are you there?”

“I'm here.”

“Open up.”

Whether or not it was Tanaka, he couldn't just stand here and wait for something to happen; he had to make it happen.

“Just a minute,” he said.

He drew his pistol and stepped to one side of the door. He pushed the chair out from under the knob and out of the way. Then he twisted the brass key, pulled the door open, stepped past it, and shoved the silenced barrel of the Colt against the trim belly of a strikingly lovely young Japanese woman.

“I'm so happy to meet you, too,” she said.

“What?”

“A gun in the stomach is so much more interesting than a plain old handshake.”

“Huh?”

“A saying of Confucius.”

He stared at her.

“Ah, and you're so articulate!”

He blinked. “Who are you?”

“Lee Ann Tanaka. Or would you like me to be someone else?”

“But…”

“Yes?”

He looked at her face carefully and saw that she fit the description that McAlister had given him. A tiny scar marked the left corner of her upper lip — although it was only as wide as a hair and half an inch long, certainly not a souvenir of a fight to the death with broken bottles. High on her left cheek there was a tiny black beauty mark: the “mole” for which McAlister had advised him to look. Finally, her hair was full, rich, and as black as raven wings. McAlister's only sin was one of omission.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

“Of course not.”