by Thomas Laird
A couple of droplets are coursing down either cheek of James’ face now.
“It’s not like innocents don’t go down in those firefights all the time, right? So you tell yourself it’s just another nasty side story in combat, you tell yourself that shit happens and that all these people were unlucky, that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They just happened to be in a spot where seven angry troopers who knew that this war was lost had to have somebody to take their frustrations out on. This make any sense to you, Jimmy?”
“I was there. I was plenty angry at times, too. I was just lucky enough not to have gone to full automatic when I really felt like holding down the trigger. I hear you.”
“I’m guilty as hell, Detective Parisi. You can turn me in to anybody you want because I don’t care anymore what happens to me. I really, truly don’t. I wish Evan Azrael would come right into this cell and get it over with. Maybe there’s something like oblivion, like dreamless sleep, because if there isn’t then I’m headed for hell and it’s what I deserve.”
“I haven’t got a warrant for you, Steven. Seems like you’re already serving time, in and out of this jail cell. Maybe you ought to figure a way to pay for your sins by helping living people. The dead can’t use your help, and they sure won’t give you any pity or forgiveness. They’re talking about letting you go, tomorrow. The cop you assaulted was a vet, and he knows you were decorated in our war. See you around, Steven. Don’t do any more stupid shit. We took care of all the ignorant crap we’ll ever need to pull in our tours over there. Try to do something better with yourself. Trigger time is long gone. Figure it out and do something that’ll help somebody besides yourself. Self-pity ain’t shit. We’ve all been there and done that. See you around. I’ll try to find Azrael before he finds the rest of you.”
When I call for the jailer, he comes and lets me out. When I turn back toward the bars, I see Steven James looking out at me as if he’s got one more thing to say.
But he doesn’t utter a word.
*
A report filters its way from San Fran to me in Chicago that William Roberts, aka Evan Azrael, has been sighted in Toronto, up in Canada, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police lets the California cops know that Roberts was not apprehended. It seems that he’d left an apartment in Toronto one week before the RCMP could cuff him. And there was a report that he was seen in the company of a young Asian woman, possibly a Vietnamese female. Their descriptions have been sent out to all points in Canada, and now we’ve sent out our own all points announcement.
There’s no telling how far the two of them could’ve gotten in just seven days, but a week is a big head start on us.
“He can’t be heading back here, Jimmy,” Rita insists as I stare out that portal to Lake Michigan in my rectangular hole in the wall.
“Why not?”
“He’s done his thing, I think. He’ll be heading for somewhere safe. Maybe Mexico. Maybe Europe.”
“He’ll need a passport for Europe, and his Roberts ID is now worthless. He’s pretty resourceful, Rita. They teach those guys how to survive in very bad situations.”
“But he’s got supercargo dragging on him. He’s got the girl, and she’ll stick out next to him, now that they’ve sent out pictures of them both. They only have an artist’s rendering for her, but they’ve got a for real photo of Azrael.”
“There’s something very different about this man,” I tell her.
“He’s just a perp, just a killer, Jimmy, just like all the others we go after.”
“I don’t think so, Rita. He’s not some blood-starved nimrod. He’s not one of our usual serial sociopaths, either, I don’t think. He’s a man at a task. He’s involved in a reckoning. Shit, it’s almost religious for this one. When I talked to Steven James at County, I think I finally saw Azrael for what he is. He thinks he’s St. Michael the Archangel, the avenging hand of God.”
“That’s the Catholic in you, Jimmy.”
“Aren’t you of the faith, Rita?”
“I have faith in my sidearm and I have faith in you, and after that it pretty much ends.” She smiles.
“He was on a mission, like the ones he was on over there. But this time he wasn’t following orders from any brass in the Army. He was following his conscience.”
“You can’t be justifying what he did, Jimmy. That’s nuts.”
“I’m not justifying him. I’m just trying to understand the son of a bitch.”
“Don’t get angry with me, partner.”
“I’m not angry with you, Rita. And now he’s got the woman with him and they’re running.”
“You know how that always ends.”
“Yeah. I know, but it doesn’t make it any easier to digest. That war screwed up a whole lot of people, just like every other war did, but I don’t think Evan Azrael has coming what’s coming his way, and you and I still might be the ones who are delivering it to him, and to her, too.”
She swivels her chair around and looks out at the Lake in front of us both now.
“You think it’ll ever warm up around here, Jimmy?”
*
December comes around, and there’s nothing happening on the search for the ex-Ranger and his fugitive woman. San Francisco has come up with a name for her now—it’s Li Nguyen. They canvassed the Wharf District out there until somebody eyeballed that artist’s rendering and Id’d her. Then they came up with a photo of her, somehow, and we have pictures of them in our file on the three murders.
I keep tabs on Steven and the other two, from phone calls to the local cops in Washington and Maine, but they’re all three still survivors of Azrael’s vengeance quest.
Steven James has checked in with the local VA and has begun therapy with a psychiatrist at the Veteran’s Administration. Steven called me himself and gave me the update. He still sounds shaky, but at least he’s reaching out.
I’m over at Rita’s on our day off, and she makes me promise not to discuss Azrael or Li Nguyen or ex-Rangers who developed a sense of outrage over acts committed in the heat of battle. She tells me we’ve both left the military behind and that days off come too far and few in between and that we’re going to spend the whole day in bed.
I can’t really spend the whole twenty-four cycle here with her because I’ve got to go relieve my aunt in three hours. She has made the acquaintance of an “older gentleman” of the Italian persuasion, she says, who is a widower, like her, and who has not given up hope of finding companionship before rot decomposes both of them. My Aunt Maria is very picturesque in her choice of words. She makes me laugh, ever since I was a child. Maria’s always been my favorite blood relative.
But now I look over at the two light tan mounds with the slightly purple, erect toppings to each, and I bend over and bury my face between her lovely breasts.
“I could make a habit out of this,” I tell her.
Then I lower my face toward her nether region, with the tip of my tongue leading the way.
Her eyes are popping open as I raise myself.
“Why’d you stop?” she demands.
“Hell, I haven’t even begun to fight,” I tell her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Upstate New York, 1984
When I saw Willy Costello in Toronto, I knew it was all too good to be true. Li and I were happy, but it couldn’t last, and it didn’t. Costello didn’t see me, I thought, but I couldn’t be sure, and why the hell else would he show up in Toronto? He was the Costello who issued the hits in San Francisco, and I owed them two jobs and I had the upfront money for both, and Willy was the bill collector and I knew it.
So I hauled Li and all our sparse belongings, and I bought a decrepit Jeep from a used car lot, and without explaining to her why we were running, we left and headed south back into the States. I knew all the crossing points because I’d done a few jobs in the North Country, and the Canadian border was very porous—it had been during the Vietnam War, and it was still loosey goosey. So getting into the wilds of no
rthern New York was not much of a problem.
My William Roberts identity was long gone now, and I’d have to come up with the cash to buy a new life for us, but I didn’t really see much hope. The Costellos were as connected as a Jersey or New York Mafioso, so they wouldn’t stop looking. I owed them thousands, and they never forgave a debt. It wasn’t in their nature to let anyone slide when it came to cash.
There was a cabin near a little crossroads of a town called Ryon, New York. It isn’t on any map I’ve ever seen, and I knew of that cabin as a safe house, and I knew the owner and he had a habit of keeping his mouth shut. But he could be bought, too, I figured, so the stay was only temporary. We’d be moving again, soon.
*
“I’m pregnant,” Li pronounces after we’ve made heated love in the early morning hours of a cold December day.
At least it looks cold when I peer out the window and see the heavy snowfall outside. The roads will be closed at least, and no one will be coming for us today.
“How do you know? Are you sure?” I ask her.
“I’m like clockwork, William. I’m six weeks late.”
“We should see a doctor and make certain everything’s all right.”
“Where would we find a doctor around here? I’m probably only a few weeks gone, and I haven’t even been sick. Only my little monthly friend has not made his usual twenty-eight-day appearance. And he never misses showing up.”
She smiles and summons me to the bed.
“Aren’t you happy, William?”
I look down into her brown eyes and I kiss her deeply. She’s mine. No one else ever has been, and she’s all I’ve got, and now there will be another. There will be three of us.
I’ve got to figure out where to go and what to do. Li has to be safe. The child, if there really is one inside her, must be safe, too. We are a family. For once I have a family of my own. I had a mother, and she’s dead. I have a father, and he might as well be gone.
“I’m very happy,” I tell her, and then I kiss her warmly again. “I have never been as happy as I am with you, Li.”
“You’ll always feel that way?”
“I don’t know what always is, but if there is one, yes, I will.”
We begin again, but it is brief and furious, and then I tell myself to hold back because there’s a child inside her, and we are lathered and hot, and I slide over the top of her and then lie on my side.
“Always,” I say, looking up at the ceiling of the ancient log cabin in the pine forests of a microdot on the face of the earth, here in Upstate New York in a nowhere named Ryon.
*
The days commence and the snow continues, and then on the sixth day of snowfall, the sun breaks through and the temperatures rise into the upper thirties, and the white begins to turn gray, and the blacktop leading here thaws, and the black surface gradually appears. The snowplow came through here several times—we’re only a block from the small county road. The owner clears the road to this cabin, and so the melt progresses, and I know our time is almost up. They found me in Canada, and they can find me here as well.
*
The next morning the sun is up and I can hear the dripping off the roof, and I know we need to leave immediately. So I leave Li in bed at 6 a.m. and I go into the shower, and then I shave and brush my teeth, and now I hear the sound of a small explosion out where Li lies, and I know the boom is the front door being kicked in, and then I hear the crack of a small caliber pistol and I hear a scream, and, finally, silence. The door to the john is shut, and the steam from the shower has fogged the bathroom.
I cower behind the entry and I wait, and then the door flies open with the same kind of boom that the front door made, and I straighten as it rushes to slam into me and I send my right foot against this ricochet and the entry is flung back and I hear the contact against a body, and I clamber out and find a lone Willy Costello lying prone in the doorway, his pistol flung to his left side.
Costello reaches for the weapon and I send my heel down into his throat, once, then twice, then three times, and now he’s clutching at his neck and there’s a terrible gurgling sound emanating from his oval opened mouth.
I reach down and grab the .22 assassin’s piece and I stick the barrel in his mouth, and I pull the trigger twice, and his head convulses and the gurgling stops. His eyes are blank and distant. I point the barrel at his left eye, and then I pull the trigger a third time. The jelly of the eyeball explodes, and then I repeat the process with the right eye.
Now he’s blind and dead.
I know what I’m going to find when I reach the bed. Li has been shot in the throat and in the center of her chest, and I know she’s gone when I see the stare. It’s the same empty glance that I saw in the jungles of Quang Tri Province. All those dead men looked the same way.
Vacant.
I check her pulse, but I know it’s hopeless, and it is. She’s passed, she’s dead.
And if there was a baby within, he or she has died with Li.
I pull the sheet over her face because I can’t look at her eyes anymore. I sit next to Li’s body, and I can’t find the strength to rise. I know that when Willy doesn’t check in, they’ll send at least two more shooters after him. It’s the way it works. They have to kill me now. I’ve punched a made man’s clock, and it isn’t about the money I owe them anymore. It’s a blood thing, and they only respond one way to losing one of their own. I’m dead. They just haven’t buried me, yet.
*
I drive farther south in New York State. I’ve relieved Willy of his wallet and his gun and some ammo and about seven thousand in cash. These Italians aren’t big on credit cards and money trails. The bills are big—hundreds and three one-thousand-dollar bills that won’t be easy to cash unless I go to a bank. The problem is they’ll have video cameras, and I don’t need my picture taken. I know the cops will already have figured that Evan Azrael is still among us. They will have figured it out in San Fran. There are too many snitches on the take, and the Homicides there are not stupid. I’ve been told as much by the other members of the Costello Outfit.
Tommy Costello runs the crew, and he, of course, was Willy’s brother. His only brother. There were sisters, I heard, but they married civilians and got far away from their brothers and disappeared into legitimate lives. So Tommy will come after me with everything he’s got.
It’s only a few days before Christmas, and I’m shacked up in another nowhere hick town called Nolan, yet another crossroads in the tall pines where the last of the Mohicans became extinct. There’s a little strip of a town with a bar and a bank and a diner. I take all three meals at that chop house–burger joint, and breakfast by far is the most appealing of the three feeding times. The locals eat there, too, and the place is well populated, and nobody gives a shit who I am. They’re like New Englanders—they mind their own yards.
But my anonymity won’t last long when Tommy Costello cuts loose with the hounds.
There’s a bus that comes through here three times a week, and tomorrow is its next arrival. I figure on heading to New York City because this tiny town atmosphere is making me very nervous.
I figure Tommy must have ordered the move on me through his brother Willy, and so the big guy is the one who murdered Li, the only woman I’ll ever love. And I figure Li knew if there was something inside her, like a baby, so Tommy’s got to answer for both of them.
Tommy Costello should be very afraid. I’ve never missed on a hit, yet. Killing is one thing I’m extremely adept at. I wasn’t worth much as far as anything else goes. I was an average student and not much above middle ground as an athlete. I was physically good enough to pass all the hurdles in Rangers’ school, but I was never any good at games. No, I didn’t make the old man proud except for becoming one of those elite killers who do their things with the blessings of the United States government. I have a few ribbons that I tossed in the can back in San Francisco after I met Li and didn’t want her to know my bloody background.
> Other than that, I’m my father’s tragedy. I was nothing to be proud of, but maybe he doesn’t even think about me by now. It’ll come out who I am and what I’ve done, and then the mention of my name will cause him to be ashamed that he sired me.
Li’s death just became my judgment. The world never punished me for the things I did as a soldier or a civilian, but justice came around, and Li and our child paid the real price. There’s probably more retribution yet to come, but now I don’t give a damn what happens to me.
James, McIntosh and Dellacord are still unfinished business. And now there’s Tommy Costello.
Tommy won’t be able to have an open-casket funeral for his brother, at least, and that’ll make his blood boil even hotter. I hope he has to ID Willy at some morgue. I find at least that notion somewhat satisfying.
However, I have very little time to meet up with the four names on my list, since the Italians will be putting the full court press out to find me and then cut me into pieces after they’ve broken all my fingers and toes with a ball peen hammer and after they’ve cut off my dick and balls and shoved them down my throat. If they catch me alive, that is, all that and more will occur. They’ll make my demise take a very long time. They could’ve instructed the maniacs in the Inquisition how to do it up the right way.
*
I board the bus on a Thursday, a few days before the Holidays get going. It’ll take three hours to get to the city, so I buy a paperback mystery to read on the bus ride. Or maybe I’ll just catch some Zs. I haven’t been sleeping well, lately.
*
By a stroke of luck, I find a medium-priced hotel that isn’t booked solid. As soon as I get my clothes and myself into the third-floor room, I get on the phone and book the next flight to Seattle–Tacoma. It leaves at three in the morning, red-eye style.