Dead Man

by Joe Gores

  Inverness shifted his position while remaining in his tireless wide-kneed squat. His voice did not match his face, which was tense, watchful, perhaps even a little regretful.

  “And whose pad are you suggesting I’m on?”

  “Whoever told you I was in New Orleans. I think you’re even more interested in me than in Vangie.”

  “You think too much, Dain.”

  “Five years ago—”

  “I don’t know anything about five years ago.”

  Dain got control. “Five years ago a contract was put out on me because I was too good at finding out things. My wife and child died. Five years ago you soured on mankind, took to the swamps. Is there a connection? I get the feeling there is.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said Inverness scornfully. “If you want to find someone to pay for your family, go after the guy who put out the contract.”

  “He died. That leaves me with the man who brokered the hit and the men who carried it out. It’s taken me five years of looking, but I think I’ve finally hit a raw nerve.”

  Inverness chuckled. “Christ, Dain, you’re really out of your tree. What’s the word they used to use? Overwrought? Having the vapors? Which one am I supposed to be? The guy who brokered it or the guy who carried it out?”

  “I didn’t say that. But hitmen aren’t thugs, you know—they’re specialists.”

  “Like me.”

  “Like you,” he said stubbornly.

  He knew Inverness was right, he was reaching, there was a hollow feeling in his gut he’d never had when he’d been playing chess. Paranoia. But he couldn’t stop himself. It was like he was a kid again, that feeling of helplessness from childhood, the unnamed fears that playing chess had conquered. Five years ago he’d quit playing chess, but had kept them at bay by playing other, more dangerous games. Now, all finished.

  “Why did you drag me up to view Zimmer’s body?” he heard himself asking like a betrayed kid. “You aren’t even a Homicide cop. And Maxton. Somebody told Maxton where to find Vangie so he could get to her before I did, and I think…”

  Inverness stood up in one smooth movement, his head touching the hissing kerosene lamp so it danced on its tent pole hook. It cast moving light and shadow down over his face.

  “I’ve had enough of this crap.”

  Minus entered the rim of lantern light holding up a massive wriggling catfish. “Lookit dis catfish was on de—”

  Inverness, startled, spun toward Minus. His boot grated on a fallen branch, a silver ring glinted on his left hand.

  A bulky man, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands, was silhouetted in moving shadow by moonlight through the trees outside the cabin. His heavy boots grated on the bare plank floor. A silver ring glinted on his finger.

  Dain wasn’t ready. He gaped in total astonishment even as the .357 Magnum boomed, blowing Minus backward, arms flying, fish flying, blood spilling. Belatedly, he reacted, kicking the coffeepot and already rolling as it hit Inverness in the gut. The gun roared again and dirt jumped where his chest had been.

  He was zigzagging out of the firelight as the Magnum roared three more times, chipping wood from a tree in front of him, blowing a branch off a bush just beside him, splattering mud at his heel. He was out of the light when the final shot brought a cry and a loud splash.

  Inverness flipped out the cylinder, shaking out the spent brass. By the hissing lamplight he reloaded methodically, his movements casual, unhurried. A minor thrashing in the brush flared his nostrils and sent him into his predator’s crouch; but then he relaxed, got down the lantern and walked to the sprawled body of Minus. He sighed and holstered his gun and grabbed the dead Cajun by an ankle.

  He dragged Minus down to the water, heaved him as far in as he could one-handed, then, still keeping the lantern raised high, used his boot to shove him out far enough for the slow surge of current to take him. The body slid downstream into darkness.

  Crouching, Inverness checked the edge of the stream for the deep muddy marks where Dain had run down into the water. He edged forward a foot at a time until he was satisfied.

  “No blood,” he said aloud.

  He came erect, still holding the lantern up high, staring out into the darkness of swamp and swirling muddy water.

  “Dain!” he shouted. He lowered his voice slightly. “You don’t have a boat or a gun or a knife. No food, no drinkable water. All you’ve got is a choice. Me or the swamp.”

  Across the narrow arm of waterway, below the far bank of the bayou, Dain stood submerged in thick swamp water up to his neck. His intent face was touched by the light, but he had smeared mud across it so it reflected nothing.

  He was motionless, unblinking, watching the enemy whose voice was coming across the water.

  “Your wife was part of the contract, Dain, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your kid. You called that one about right. I’ve been a straight cop since then.”

  Dain stood in the thick brown water in stunned silence, not believing what he had heard. Was it this easy? Or this hard? Did the enemy at last have a face, a name?

  He’d sought this confrontation, prayed for it, had trained for five years for this moment. He’d thought he’d created a killer to face this professional killer—and here he stood neck-deep in the muck and the other guy had the gun.

  So who was he now? A computer nerd, a chess groupie, a games freak who’d gotten his wife and child killed. Trying to undo that unspeakable evil, he’d gone right on to a new game even worse. A game that was relentlessly killing, one by one, every poor bastard who crossed his path. Except Inverness, who, lantern high overhead to create a white core in the darkness, would have made a beautiful target for a man with a gun. Dain, of course, was empty-handed. He could have howled like a wolf with the agony and the irony of it.

  Inverness was declaiming to the swamp as if it wore Dain’s face. Fucking Demosthenes yelling at the ocean. He sickened Dain, revived his hatred. If he could hold on to that…

  “When I was told you were on your way to New Orleans, I thought you were after me…”

  Who told you, bastard? Who who who?

  “It was my idea, not Maxton’s, to try and scare you off. When that didn’t work, I thought you’d made me—so I wanted to get you out here in the swamp where killing you wouldn’t make any more stir than swatting a skeeter. I figured showing you Zimmer would make you come running out here to save the girl.”

  What about poor Minus, you fucker?

  As if he heard the thought, Inverness said, “I needed Minus to guide us so you wouldn’t get suspicious. I figured he’d go after you, but he startled me and so I took him first. Just as good. We gotta talk, don’t we? Just you and me.”

  Dain almost answered. He wanted to—wanted to explain himself, wanted to know why this killer was diabolically yoked to him, wanted answers to the questions tormenting him more than he wanted revenge. He started to clear his throat to yell across the narrow channel, then grabbed hold of his mind, let the other man’s spate of words stay him.

  “It’s just you and me and the swamp, Dain. The girl, Maxton—they don’t matter. It’s you and me who share the nightmares. You and me who gotta talk. Or maybe we gotta fight.” He gave a short laugh. “Maybe I’ll fuck up again…”

  He paused, holding the lantern aloft to make a white-hot halo around him, peering earnestly into the darkness where Dain, shivering in the thick water, almost answered that almost seductive voice. It was that short laugh that stopped him.

  That and the loathing that had swept through him at mention of the nightmares. His nightmares. They were all he had, and the killer even wanted to take those away from him.

  “What do you say, Dain? I can’t bring back your wife and child, but… can’t we let the past die, go on from here?”

  Was Inverness asking forgiveness? Maybe, after all…

  What the hell was he thinking of? This was a hitman asking forgiveness, asking Dain to speak, to show himself, standing there with a lantern in
one hand—and a gun in the other. A gun he had methodically reloaded after killing Minus.

  Forever the amateur, Dain, his thinking screwed up by what he’d learned tonight. An amateur with a patchwork body that ached to give in to the swamp, and maybe fever, a body that wanted to just slip under the water and…

  Inverness would be counting on that. But goddammit, Inverness wasn’t the only killer in this swamp. All day Dain had watched things die, none of them willingly. Hatred and weakness rose like bile in his throat—and he was silent.

  Right now, silence was the only weapon he had.

  It worked. Inverness had talked too much, and realized it.

  “You’ll be dead by nightfall tomorrow, Dain!” he yelled, as if suddenly enraged that he wasn’t able to end it right now. “If the fucking swamp doesn’t get you, I will!”

  He turned away from the bayou, just a pale aureole moving away into the night, dropping Dain back into total darkness. The mud on his face had dried. He could feel it cracking as the tenseness left his features. He patted water on it noiselessly with his hands. He waited.

  With Inverness gone, the swamp that was waiting with him gradually came alive again. The dark air again was filling with its humming, croaking, cackling song. Dain almost sang along with it. Inverness was afraid of him! He’d tried to kill Dain twice and had failed both times. He was the professional and Dain was the amateur, but the slaughter was working on him in a way it wasn’t working on Dain.

  That gave Dain an edge. He felt he could stand there in the heavy water of the swamp all night if he had to. Which is when he sagged and his head went under. His groping hand caught a branch trailing down into the water from the bank, he pulled himself erect, spluttering, fighting his gag reflex, a tremendous urge to cough and snort. Inverness was still not that far away.

  On his way back to the tent, Inverness passed the twenty-pound catfish whose thrashing had startled him earlier. It was still flapping its tail and gasping in the grass. He picked it up and carried it back to the water, threw it in. Almost, he thought with sudden self-anger, as if placating some god of the predators—the only deity he would have acknowledged if any gods had existed at all.

  Was Dain after all tough enough to have known Inverness was trying to lure him, and so had kept silent out there in the swamp? How in the fuck had he missed with all six shots? Come to that, how the fuck had he missed killing Dain five years ago after putting three charges of double-0 buckshot into him and burning a cabin down around him?

  Or had Dain been hit after all tonight, but hadn’t started bleeding until he was in the water?

  Back at camp, moving slowly and thoughtfully, Inverness killed the lantern and went into the tent to wait out the dying of the fire’s dim light.

  It was very late and through drifting tatters of mist a gibbous moon showed the tent flaps were closed. The fire was dead except for one or two dully glowing embers. An owl swooped across the clearing on huge silent wings. A fish broke water. A raccoon came hesitantly out of the brush to begin nosing around the front of the tent.

  On the side of the flatboat where the pirogue was lashed, the very top of Dain’s head broke water very slowly. He stood, mouth-breathing, water streaming off his flattened hair and down his face, for a full two minutes, waiting, listening. Four baby raccoons trundled out to join their parent in foraging around in front of the tent. All else was silence and darkness. Safety.

  He turned to work on the ties holding down the pirogue, unfastening them one by one. Out in the bayou behind him a fish jumped. He had it all planned out. Steal the pirogue, head for Vangie’s fishing camp as quickly as possible. Maybe she would have guns there. If not, get her away immediately, out into the swamp where Maxton and his men couldn’t find her.

  Inverness would be coming after him first, but would be blazing that trail for the others to follow. He had no illusions about Inverness being able to find the place. Inverness knew the swamp well enough to have gotten a clear idea from Minus of the camp’s location on Bayou Noire. But Dain doubted the pursuers would have another pirogue. They would have to go the long way around, giving him time to make Vangie safe.

  And to prepare for whatever destiny faced him in this swamp. He wasn’t going to be a rabbit cowering in its burrow when they came. More a tough and wily badger they’d have to dig out. A badger with teeth and claws and a will to live.

  All the ties were loosened. He reached for the pirogue and began moving it off the flatboat with infinite care.

  Torchlight hit his back and Inverness fired down the beam of light from the brush where he had been waiting for five cramped and silent hours. The slug hit Dain in the back by the top of his shoulder blade, just below his trapezius muscle. He was driven forward by the blow, splashing and stumbling, his clutching nerveless hand flipping the pirogue over the top of him as the fading thought went through his mind, Rabbit, not badger after all…

  As he went under, two more shots in rapid succession hit the water just where his head had disappeared and Inverness went crashing through the brush to the water’s edge, charging out after the pirogue. But it was drifting more rapidly now, just too far for him to reach. He kept the beam of his flashlight on the overturned craft, seeking any sign of Dain’s head breaking water, trotting and ducking and slogging along the narrow muddy overgrown shore to keep even with it.

  At the tail end of the island he stopped, gun in hand, staring after the drifting pirogue. Finally he turned away. He knew he’d gotten Dain this time, and the pirogue wasn’t going anywhere. He could go down and pick it up in the morning while waiting for Maxton to show up.

  Maxton. Maybe he ought to grab Maxton and the two goons and take them back and turn them in for killing Vangie’s folks and Minus… It would square him with his superiors for rushing off into the swamp without leave… maybe save his pension…

  Fuck. What was he thinking of? There were still the bonds. Maxton wanted them and he wanted the girl—probably to kill her, if what happened to her folks was any indication. If Inverness brought them in, sure, he’d have his pension. But if he just killed them and sank them in the swamp, he’d have the bonds. Just him. Nobody else knew about them except Maxton.

  Of course if Dain were still alive, Maxton and his men would also be useful, no, essential, until Dain was

  “Goddam you!” he said aloud to himself, then realized he was really addressing Dain. He was starting to get superstitious about the fucking man, as if he had supernatural powers of survival or something…

  He started resolutely away back up the islet toward camp.

  He had shot Dain in the back. With a .357 Magnum. Dain was dead, dead dead dead as fucking Jesus. He wasn’t going anywhere except the mud at the bottom of the channel, thrust there by some patient gator to ripen until he could be torn into proper bite-size pieces and eaten.

  Fucking Dain was dead.

  26

  A delicate palette knife of dawn slid through the flooded sentinel trees, laying watercolor washes of gray over the gradations of black. Here and there a bird called, something in the water splashed. Far off a Louisiana panther made a dark sawing sound, then screamed like a woman in labor.

  Two flooded hardwoods leaned their heads together over the bayou, their leaves in whispered conversation, their feet in the water. One of them forked some distance above the ground. The fork held a nest containing three greenish white eggs. What looked like a large water snake swam rapidly to the base of the tree, started to slither up the trunk.

  Suddenly it was a bird, a sinuous-necked sleek-bodied bird called a snakebird. Its webbed feet had strong climbing claws. When it reached the fork, it perched on one of the branches and preened its wet feathers to redistribute the oil that made its feathers waterproof. Then it sidestepped awkwardly over to settle on top of the eggs.

  A dingy patch of mustard yellow showed far below, in the tangle of brush and driftwood caught between the bases of the trees. Minus had been deposited there sometime in the night by the gen
tle but persistent currents. His dead eyes stared up the trunk at the snakebird far above. When dawn broke, his shirt became a bright eye-catching gold.

  The upside-down pirogue drifted up, carried by the gentle current against the same tangle of driftwood and brush as Minus. It clung there. It rocked, sending out ripples. The snakebird started up in alarm, then settled back again.

  Inverness, untroubled by bad dreams, had slept until well after sunup. In finally killing Dain, he had killed his doubts. By the light of day, last night’s secret and half-formed fears seemed silly. Dain had been shot in the back with a .357 Magnum, his lungs had filled with blood, and he had died. End of story.

  Inverness breakfasted leisurely on a small catfish from one of Minus’s brush lines, then set out to fetch the pirogue before Maxton showed up; it would save them a day. A mile below the island he abandoned outboard for push pole: the water was shoaling rapidly. He rounded a curve in the bayou, and a snakebird flapped down from one of a brace of flooded-out hardwoods with a loud miffed squawk, swept over the water away from the flatboat.

  In a tangle of driftwood and brush at the base of the tree was Minus, lying faceup and bare-torsoed; the crabs had been feeding around the bullet hole in his chest. Inverness stood in the flatboat looking down at him. The logical place for the current to have deposited him. All fine so far.

  But this was the logical place, also, for the current to have deposited the pirogue and Dain. Inverness had fully expected both to be wherever Minus fetched up, or at least the pirogue if Dain with his perforated lungs had sunk.

  He raised his head, looked around the swamp, contentment oozing away. No pirogue in sight, swirled against some other deadhead by a vagrant eddy of current.

  Last night Minus had been wearing a bright yellow shirt. Now it was gone. Only Dain could have taken it. But how the fuck could the man have survived being shot with a .357 Magnum? How had he survived being shot thrice with a shotgun and left to die in a burning cabin?

  He checked the bole of the tree, the brush pile near Minus for sign just to be sure. Yes. A fresh indentation that could have been made by the pirogue’s prow; and there, the brush was crushed. He could almost picture the scene. The boat, suddenly a human hand would have broken water beside it, groped, found Minus’s face as something to get purchase on, closed about it…