Breakdown

by Bill Pronzini

  “There’s more than a hundred thousand dollars here,” he said. “But it’s not all I have. There’s another hundred thousand … some bearer bonds and jewelry. You can have it, all of it … I’ll take you to it … just let me go.”

  “Still trying to buy time. You’re a pistol, you are.”

  “No, I mean it, I swear …”

  “I’m not selling, Coleman.”

  “Take what’s here, then. I don’t care about the money. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to go to prison. …”

  “You should have thought of that before you murdered your brother.”

  “No! It wasn’t me, it was Vega … all Vega’s idea.”

  “Sure it was.”

  “It was. I swear to God—”

  “Shut up, damn you.” I was sick of him—of what he was, of the sight and sound of him. I wanted Coleman Lujack out of my life as fast as possible. Take him out to my car and handcuff him—I keep a pair of handcuffs in the trunk, along with other emergency equipment—and then drive him to the Hall of Justice. Even if he refused to talk, the money in his briefcase and what I had to say would be enough for the police to hold him until the INS could be brought in and Vega cracked open. “Get on your feet.”

  He did that, in the same jerky movements. “Now close the briefcase and pick it up.”

  He did that too—and then held the case out toward me as if it were a pagan offering. His half-popped eyes begged me not to sacrifice him.

  “Uh-uh,” I said. “You carry it.”

  “You … you won’t kill me?”

  “That depends on whether or not you do what I tell you.”

  “I’ll do anything you say. Just don’t kill me, please… .”

  “Walk out of here, not too fast, not too slow. And keep your mouth shut from now on. I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”

  I backed off to one side as I spoke. Immediately he came away from the safe and around the desk in jelly-legged strides; he was no longer looking at me. He went through the door, turned along the hall with his shoulders hunched, as if he expected a bullet in the back at any second. I followed by several paces, warily. I doubted he had the guts to try jumping me and the .38, but you never know. Even a coward will fight if he’s desperate enough.

  Through the darkened waiting area, outside into the cold rackety wind. Coleman kept walking; I paused to reach back and pull the door shut. Then I saw him break stride, half-turn toward the rear of the office wing. A second or two later I saw what he saw: the shadow breaking away from other shadows along the wall.

  Coleman screamed, “No!”

  Then the shooting started.

  * * * *

  Chapter 19

  I don’t know how many shots there were—at least three, maybe as many as five. I went down flat on the ground after the first one, in tight against the wall, whacking my chin on the asphalt. For a second or two my vision was cockeyed. When it cleared I was seeing Coleman buckled forward at the waist, falling … and out ahead of me, the flash of the shooter’s weapon as he fired once in my direction. Instinctively I pulled my head down and in, but it was a wild shot, the bullet smacking wood somewhere high above me an instant before I heard the report.

  When I looked up again the shadow was running away, back along the wall in swift pounding steps. I leaned up on my elbows and squeezed the trigger on Vega’s .38—and the hammer fell on the first of the two chambers I’d emptied earlier. Cursing, I pulled on the second empty chamber, but by the time I had a cartridge in firing position it was too late. He was gone around the far corner of the office wing.

  I pushed up against the wall. Ran wobbling to the corner and poked my head around it. No arc lights back there, just three widely spaced night spots in metal cages mounted on the factory wall; the reach of them wasn’t far. He was already out beyond both the light-spill and the Containers, Inc., property, a moving shadow among stationary ones, heading deeper into the war-zone desolation of the old SP yards.

  Let him go, you ‘re not up to another chase… .

  But I was on my way by then, driven by anger that wasn’t as black or volatile as the rage I’d felt toward Vega, but was just as urgent. I plunged across the backstrip of asphalt, running in a low crouch, avoiding the direct glare of the night spots. I could hear myself breathing as I ran, a kind of wheezy panting that was louder in my own ears than the blustery natterings of the wind.

  He was well out into the yards now, where the heavy overcast night pressed down and the shapes were inky and formless. I could barely make him out; he was just a moving blob. Beyond the asphalt, the ground was flat and overgrown with weeds and high grass; in low places, puddles left by the recent rains gleamed faintly. I blundered through the grass, sidestepped the puddles as best I could. But I couldn’t generate any speed because of the uncertain footing. He had thirty or forty yards on me already, seemed to be gaining.

  He knows this area, I thought, he’s been out here before.

  Off to the left, the burned-out, quake-damaged hulks of the old roundhouse and warehouses reared up ghostlike against the dark sky. It appeared he was heading that way … but then I saw him veer off in the opposite direction, around what materialized out of the gloom as a series of low, irregular mounds. I stumbled over something hidden in the grass, lurched, nearly fell; when I regained my balance I could no longer locate him. He’d vanished somewhere behind or near the largest of the masses ahead.

  I slowed to a crouching walk, trying to get my breath. Stupid bastard, drop dead of a heart attack, serve you right. It was eerily quiet out here, except for the wind. Like wandering across an alien landscape. And yet surrounding this dead acreage there was light and movement and teeming life—cars rushing along the 101 freeway, on Bayshore Boulevard; chains of lights in hillside houses and the buildings along Industrial and Bayshore and Sunnydale. The city and its neighboring communities all around, thousands of people … but this was a piece of nowhere, a corner of the twilight zone, and I was alone in it with somebody who had just committed a cold-blooded act of violence.

  Nearing one of the mounds now, close enough to make out broken chunks of concrete and other rubble. I went around past it, warily; didn’t see or hear him and kept on going toward the larger masses farther out. They coalesced into piles of rotting wooden ties, left here when most of the rails were taken up and removed years ago. I cut between two of the piles, looking left and right—

  Something made an audible slithering through the moist grass on my left. I dropped to one knee, stiff-armed the .38 in that direction. But it wasn’t the shooter. Small animal, or maybe a rat. These ruins were probably crawling with rats.

  I straightened again, eased forward. In front of me now was flat barren ground, no obstructions or cover for sixty or seventy yards to where a short string of forgotten cars—flats, boxcars, oil tankers—stood on a rusty siding, faintly backlit by streaking headlights on the freeway a quarter of a mile beyond. He wasn’t out that way—or if he was, I couldn’t pick him out. He’d had enough time to get all the way to the cars, hide somewhere among them.

  I made myself stand still, briefly, to listen for sounds of him moving. Useless; all I could hear was the wind and the stuttering beat of my heart. I went on, parallel to the string of dead cars, then out toward them. Power lines on spindly poles angled through the yards here, feeding the buildings on Industrial Way; I passed under them, still heading toward the cars.

  Motion off to my right, toward the far end of the factory property: shadow gliding among shadows. I cut over that way, running now; stubbed my foot against a chunk of rock and went down on all fours, almost losing the gun. The shadows were still. I got up and bulled ahead, came off flat ground into a bumpy section clotted with grass and weeds and patches of sharp-smelling anise.

  Ahead was a low cluster of trees. And beyond them was Industrial Way, the part of it where I had parked my car. I gave the trees a wide berth, plowing through tangles of vegetation, but they weren’t where he w
as. I knew where he was as soon as I saw the shape of another car drawn up in front of mine, one that hadn’t been there before.

  Suckered me, led me out into the yards and then doubled back here to pick up his wheels… .

  I yelled when his car jumped ahead—a roar of frustration that was lost in the howl of tires biting into pavement. He didn’t switch his lights on until he was out of range of my vision, if he put them on even then. I hadn’t been able to tell what kind of vehicle it was, just that it was shorter and more low-slung than mine. Shadow man in a shadow car.

  Who?

  Why had he shot Coleman?

  I slogged through a puddle of water and the last of the high grass, onto the street next to my car. He was long gone by then. I had a crazy impulse to hammer on the hood with the butt of the .38. Controlled it and walked stiffly around to the driver’s door, put myself inside.

  For a time I sat there, fighting off delayed-reaction shakes, putting a tight wrap on my. emotions. Tonight was not the first time I had been shot at, but like an earthquake, it is nothing you ever get used to. Each time is like the first; each time is bad, because once you begin thinking clearly again, you realize how close you came to dying and how fragile your life, all life, really is.

  When I felt steady enough I started the car and got it under way. Drove slowly along the empty street … where the hell were the goddamn security patrolmen all this time? … and turned into the factory lot. Near the office wing, my headlights picked out the huddled motionless body on the asphalt. I stopped a few feet away with the lights bright on him.

  Coleman lay where he’d fallen, ten feet or so from the entrance to the wing. I squatted, turned him a little. Shot at least twice, once in the belly and once in the middle of the chest. His eyes were open, staring glassily. I put my finger on the artery in his neck, to make sure he had no life left in him. There wasn’t a pulse, hadn’t been a pulse, I thought, since right after the first bullet hit him.

  The briefcase was there, too, near one of his legs; I took hold of it before I straightened. The shooter may not have known what it contained, but even if he had, he might not have come back to pick it up. He’d been after Coleman, focused only on Coleman. His one shot at me had come after he was sure he’d bagged his quarry, and it had been designed to keep me down while he made his escape. If he’d cared about taking me out, he’d have fired at me again here or out in the yards. Revenge, then, or some other personal motive. I hadn’t been the only one hunting Coleman Lujack today. And chance had brought the three of us together here, on a convergent path within minutes of one another.

  Somebody mixed up in the coyote operation, somebody I didn’t know?

  Paco Vega?

  Nick Pendarves … if Pendarves wasn’t dead after all?

  Teresa Melendez? Eileen Lujack? It could have been a woman, even though I’d kept thinking of the shooter as a man. A woman runs differently, uses a more fluid kind of stride, but it had been too dark, the period of time too confused, for me to be certain of anything about the person… .

  You’re wasting time, I told myself. Besides, it wasn’t up to me to pursue the shooter’s identity. I’d avoided dealing with the authorities twice this week; I couldn’t do it again even if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to. I was in deep enough as it was.

  I took the briefcase to my car, used the mobile phone to make the call.

  * * * *

  It was almost midnight before they finally let me go home.

  Long, wearying sessions at Containers, Inc., and then at the Hall of Justice. Conversations with patrolmen, inspectors, a homicide lieutenant named Cousins. (Nobody from the INS, though, despite the fact that they had a strong vested interest. On weekends, especially weekend nights, government-agency bureaucrats are as hard to find as a Democrat in the White House.) I told them everything, with one exception. I had to own up about Vega, his attempt on my life and what had happened on Ocean Beach to cause his injuries; if I’d held that back, my story would not have hung together and they might have decided to lock me up. They might also have decided to lock me up if I’d admitted to shirking my duty twice in the span of a few days, which was why I kept quiet about being the first on the scene of Thomas Lujack’s murder. There was no reason they had to know about that anyway.

  Early on I’d tried to call Eberhardt, get him down to the Hall to back me up, but he hadn’t been home. He hadn’t been at Bobbie Jean’s, either. Out somewhere together, the two of them. But as it turned out, I hadn’t needed his help to keep things from going badly for me. All I got from the cops was a lecture and a warning to play by the rules if I wanted to keep my license—what amounted to wrist-slapping. I’d lost my license once, a few years ago, but that had been under a different city administration and a different chief of police; the current bunch were more tolerant of private detectives. Also weighing in my favor was the currency in Coleman’s briefcase, a total of one hundred sixteen thousand dollars, and what they found when they searched his wife’s car: three packed suitcases, another ninety-seven thousand in cash, thirty thousand in bearer bonds, a jewelry case full of valuable pieces, and the name and address of a small flying service down near Needles—Coleman’s way out of the country, evidently.

  I got a beer from the refrigerator and sat with it in the front room. I was so tired I felt numb, but I was not ready yet to ride my nightmares.

  Who? I kept thinking.

  Why?

  I finished the beer and went in to use the toilet. When I came back through the bedroom I realized that the message light on the answering machine was lit. I ran the tape back— three messages—and pushed the PLAY button.

  The first one was from Kerry. She sounded mildly frazzled but not unhappy. “It’s me,” she said, “and it’s midmorning. I’ve got some news I want to share in person. Call me. I’ll be home all day.”

  Cybil, I thought. And the news was good, judging from her tone and phrasing.

  The second message was from Eberhardt. A predictably angry Eberhardt. “So why the hell didn’t you show up? It’s seven o’clock and I waited the whole frigging day. Sometimes you piss me off royally, you know that?”

  I smiled a little. Yeah, Eb, I thought. Sometimes I piss myself off royally too.

  Number three was Kerry again. “All right, who is she? I’ll scratch her eyes out.” Making a joke—another good sign. “Call me, okay? As soon as you can. I really need to see you. And not for the reason you think, you horny old goat.”

  I laughed at that. Just hearing her voice could make me feel better, a bad time easier to deal with.

  I reset the machine, switched it off. Another beer? Something to eat? TV for a while, just for the noise? None of the above. A shower, I decided. Wash away the lingering smells of Coleman Lujack and Containers, Inc. and sudden death.

  The shower made me feel even more tired and dull-witted. Enough so that I could sleep right away, maybe. I crawled into bed and held Kerry’s image close in my mind, like a crucifix against the night’s evil. And pretty soon I slept.

  But not well and not for long.

  * * * *

  … Running, running, shadows lurking in shadows, guns firing, things behind me with claws that scratched the ground and jaws that snapped the air, dark places, cold places, dead men lying huddled in rows, dead men rising and chasing after me in a pack, raw terror, screaming, running in sand, caught, trapped, dunes with gaping mouths and green-and-brown witches’ hair, cold, cold, waves of blood lifting and crashing down, dark places, cold places, shadows lurking in shadows, and running running running …

  * * * *

  I was awake for good an hour before dawn. The bedclothes were gamy with my sweat, cold-clammy against my skin, and before long I got up and stripped the bed and lay back down on the bare mattress with just a blanket over me.

  Kerry was no longer uppermost in my mind. Now it was the two questions, chasing themselves round and round.

  Who?

  Why?

  By the tim
e the first pale light showed at the window, I knew I wasn’t finished with it yet. Wouldn’t be finished with it until both those questions had answers.

  * * * *

  Chapter 20

  I left the flat at seven thirty, before the media and other parties began their inevitable assault. Down on Lombard there are a number of interchangeable coffee shops … or maybe that’s a redundancy. I picked one in Cow Hollow, bought a copy of the Sunday Examiner-Chronicle, and scanned through it while I waited for coffee and orange juice.

  The shooting of Coleman Lujack was a featured story on the front page of the Metro section. I was mentioned as an eyewitness, but the reporter didn’t dwell on my involvement —probably because the police hadn’t yet released certain pieces of information, such as the Lujacks’ connection with the coyotes and the particulars of Rafael Vega’s injuries. A rehash of Thomas’s death by carbon monoxide poisoning, and of the hit-and-run killing of Frank Hanauer, took up the last third of the article, with the correct implication being that the violent demises of the three partners were interrelated. Nick Pendarves’s name was trotted out as a possible suspect in Coleman’s murder. But “police sources” admitted that there was no direct evidence linking Pendarves—or anyone else—to the shooting.

  It was a few minutes past eight when I finished reading that. I drained my orange juice and took my coffee back to the rest room area, where I used one of the pay phones to call Kerry. Before Cybil came to live with her, she would have been fast asleep at 8:00 A.M. on a Sunday morning; now she answered on the first ring, wide awake and a little edgy. As soon as she heard my voice she said, “Why are you calling so early? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I just didn’t want you to think the worst.”

  “About what?”

  “Haven’t you read the paper yet?”

  “No. I just woke up a little while ago. My God, don’t tell me you’re all over the news again. …”

  “Not exactly. There was some trouble last night and I got caught up in it, that’s all.”