by Barry, Mike
He had nothing with which to fight now, he thought, but fear itself.
XVIII
But the avenger did not feel like one now or anything close to it, leaning over the body of the dead girl on the beach. The beach was littered with corpses, sirens were in the air, the few survivors of the massacre had staggered to the boardwalk and were doubtless now moving along the facing streets, clear tracers to the police to lead them to the beach and yet he could not leave until he had seen the girl. She lay on her back, one bright little drop of blood in the center of her forehead, another delicate stain underneath her sweater in the place between her breasts. Head shot, chest shot, clean wounds both of them, the bullets buried so deep as to be invisible. Oh yes, beautiful work had been done upon her. But even in death she would have style. Wulff would have known that from the beginning if he had thought of it. Style in her every gesture, style in substance and act, even dead Tamara was an object molded carefully, turned out priceless. He knelt beside her and had it not been for the bloodstains and what he knew had happened, he might have taken her for sleeping. Even her face seemed poised for respiration, her nostrils about to take in another breath on the instant. But they did not.
They did not. She was dead.
He looked at her, lying that way on the beach, and he knew that he should go. The thick, prodding sounds of the sirens dense in the air now, only a matter of moments until the police flooded the beach. They would find him, they would incarcerate him and from then the end would come very quickly; there was no way that he would ever see the light again. And Calabrese would be free. He would have gone through all of this, not yet to kill the man who had caused it. It was unspeakable. He knew that he should move.
But he could not. He could not leave her. It was as if, to him in any event, she held life and until the light of that spirit had gone from her he would hold fast. If anything, his months of massacre had given him a reverence for life, its delicacy, its difficult tenancy in the body, how quickly, absently it could be blown free. This had been a life too, perhaps the only one that had touched him and he could not leave her.
The sirens were closer yet.
He leaned over, his discarded gun falling unnoticed to the sands and touched her wrist, felt the bony patina of it as he traced up the surfaces of her forearm, tracing out delicately then the network of her body as he ran his hand under her neck, across her cheek, up the fine nose and against her forehead, brushing a finger into the delicate, already dried spot of blood between her eyes, just risen a couple of inches. As she had used to lie in bed while he did this to her, so she lay on the sands, her mouth twisted into an unspeakable expression of acceptance and knowledge. She had smiled that way in bed when he had been touching her. Touching her.
He felt the pain begin to prod within him, not the pain of fear or of rage, not even the simple fear of death which he had already known many times in his mission, but something far more complex, something that went back to another part of his life and then moved forward until he was looking not only at this girl on the beach but at another face, a face he had seen months ago, the two of them blending together and the fusion was almost unbearable, It was not fair, not fair: he was responsible for this girl’s death in a way that he had not been for the first, going out to avenge the one he had somehow managed to kill her spirit in another form and thinking this Wulff collapsed, sprawled weeping across the girl, feeling all of it rush out of him, the pain that had been bottled up for so long coming out in huge, gasping convulsed sobs, sobs like a giant sea animal might make trapped in this sand.
“It’s not fair,” he said, “it’s not fair,” but her body was cold, cold, his hands ran across that body, cupped and touched her dead breasts and then fell away. “Not fair,” he said, “I didn’t mean it to turn out this way, I didn’t want it, I would have done anything if it hadn’t ended up this way but what could I have done? What the hell could I have done?” She had walked out on him in Los Angeles. God almighty, she had walked out on him in Los Angeles, said that he was crazy, said that this would lead if he continued only to madness and destruction … but did that destruction have to include her? Then she had been caught up in the web and now she was dead. Simple. Simple equation. “It’s not fair!” he shouted again, rubbing his head across her stomach, “I didn’t want it to be this way!” The sirens were almost on top of him now. How much longer did he have? A few minutes? The beach was vacant; he the only man on it, he and the dead men and this one dead girl. It could not be long now.
“You cut that out now, man,” a voice said behind him.
Wulff leaped and, then, losing his balance, staggered backward, lay on his elbows in the sand, completely vulnerable, looking at the face above his. Light was starting to filter out and he could make out the features. “Enough of this, Wulff,” the face said, “you and me, we’ve got to get our asses out of here.”
Williams.
“Where did you come from?” Wulff said and then, the question unnecessary, the answer pointless, motioned toward the girl again. “She’s dead,” he said, “they killed her. I killed her. I killed her and now she’s dead.”
“There’s no time for that,” Williams said. He reached out, grasped Wulff’s shoulder, pulled him upward, unresisting. “You got to get your ass out of here. We both do.” He pointed at the beach, the light was coming up more fully now, Wulff could see the signs of the massacre. “They’re going to see that it’s going to be very bad,” Williams said. “You done a job here, you’ve done a real job. But we have to get out of here.”
“She’s dead.”
“I know that. I see very well that she’s dead but that’s not going to change anything. You did the best you could.”
“No I didn’t.”
“I tried to get here sooner but I couldn’t. I might have helped you. But you did all right on your own.”
“Oh I did fine,” Wulff said underneath the sirens, “I did fine, I always do. No one does better. I think I’m going to let them take me.”
“No you’re not.”
“It’s too much, can’t you see? I can’t take it anymore. She got killed.”
“That wasn’t you, it was the old bastard. The old bastard did that.” Williams looked at the sack lying crumpled a few yards down. “You won,” he said. “I see you still got what he wants.”
“I have nothing.”
“If you have what he wants then he got out of this with nothing. The last step is to kill him.”
“He killed Tamara.”
“Tamara was dead already, don’t you understand that?” Williams said ferociously. He yanked Wulff toward him holding a tight grip, fingers biting into his wrists, then literally shook him. “She was gone, you met her in a speed factory. If it hadn’t been for you she would have blinked out right there; as it is you pulled her out of it. How much longer do you think she had anyway?”
“I don’t know. Longer than this.”
“She was dead,” Williams said, “once you’re hooked into that shit you never get free of it, it’s in the system and she was going right back there. How much longer do you think she had, a few months? You goddamned fool,” Williams said, “you’re not going to blow up everything you’ve done so far for this, are you, you’re not going to let it go by because of this bitch—” and Wulff broke inside, he clawed at Williams’ face, he hit him, and Williams took the slap straightway, standing there, hands dangling flatly at his sides, his eyes resigned. Wulf, after the inpact, turned around, staggered away from Tamara, down the sands toward the sack.
“Okay,” Williams said, “okay, now you have done it and that suits me but it’s time to go. It’s time to go, it’s time to get out of here, Wulff, now let’s go,” and he came beside him, helped him raise the sack, helped him carry it along the length of the beach. “You know that,” Williams said, “maybe it could have been different but it’s too late now to worry about difference and we’ve got to kill that son of a bitch.”
“It’s too late,
” Wulff said, “it’s too late to kill him.”
“It’s never too late,” Williams said, “it’s never too late for killing a monster and the man is a monster. Think of the satisfaction, Wulff. Think of the pleasure. Think of what it’s going to mean to rid the earth of this vermin.” They were almost off the beach now, staggering toward the slats of higher ground. “That’s all, Wulff,” Williams said, “you’ve got to do it.”
“He went back to Chicago. I know that he’s gone back to Chicago.”
“Probably,” Williams said, “he’d probably do that.”
“Then I’ve got to go back there and burn him out. I’ve got to go back to Chicago and blow up the lakefront to get him but I’ll do it.”
“That’s good, Wulff. That’s real good.”
“I’ll get him,” Wulff said, “I’ll get him and then I’m turning myself in.”
“You better move your ass,” Williams said flatly, “unless you want to be turned in right now,” and he pushed Wulff along, impelling him with a blow in the small of the back, the blow not at all unkind but rough, rough, harder than the slap which Wulff had given but not nearly as mean and Wulff thought, no, he’s not a bad guy after all, he’s trying to pull me out of this and he’s right, he’s got to be right because if I give up now, her death will indeed have been in vain and nothing will have been accomplished. You’ve got to go on. Whatever you do, you’ve simply got to go on. There were sirens all around them now.
“We’ve got to get a car,” he said.
“You don’t worry about that,” Williams said, “you just leave that to me, I’m getting goddamned experienced in this business, not in your class Wulff, but I could fill in in the dark,” and leaving him at streetside, he ran toward a parked Mustang, illegally sprawled on the curb, probably left by a drunk who had given up the ghost but then again it might simply be out of gas.
Williams kicked the window on the driver’s side in skillfully, the safety glass spattering, and sprung open the door, vanished inside it. Standing there, Wulff watched, the sirens coming closer and closer all the time and a dull roar came out of the dual exhausts of the muffler. Then Williams had wrenched the wheel all the way around, spun up on the sidewalk, made a huge U-turn and came screaming to a halt beside Wulff, the left rear door falling open. Wulff crept into the smelly, furred cave and the door closed, Williams rammed the accelerator all the way down and they were moving along the beachfront drive at thirty-five miles an hour. Another screaming U-turn at the next corner and they were moving away from the sirens at fifty. Wulff settled back into the seat, breathing unevenly, feeling the sweat come down and around into all the empty spaces of his body.
“Nothing to it,” Williams said, “nothing to it at all. Police academy technique for motorists locked out of their cars. Remember?”
Wulff remembered.
XIX
At the airport they found that a flight to Chicago had left just fifteen minutes before. That had to be it. There was an abandoned copter at the far end of a runway in the private plane section which Wulff pretty well identified but there seemed little point in checking it out. The important thing was to get onto another Chicago flight as quickly as possible, but it would be a forty-five minute wait and in the meantime staying in the terminal itself seemed an ominous proposition.
Williams bought tickets and did some hurried surveillance while Wulff went into the men’s room, locked himself into a cubicle and for long, gasping instants sat looking at the floor, fully clothed, sitting on the toilet seat. Shame filled him. Miami was to be the final arena, the last confrontation and it had not been. They were both going to get out of it alive. Behind Wulff were a lot of bodies but multiple murder was not accomplishment and the girl was dead. The girl was dead.
He looked at the sack curled beneath him on the floor of the men’s room and found himself saying no more, no more, looking at this clamped mass of death that had only brought death and then in one sudden impulsive gesture he stood, grasped it, opened the cord and dumped all of it into the open toilet, filling it with grain that became glutinous as it meshed with the water. Then he began to flush, flushing spasmodically, again and again, shaking out the sack with one hand, dumping the stuff with the other, pouring the heroin into the sewage of Miami, flushing and flushing repeatedly, coughing, tears in his eyes from the fumes that came up from the scented waters, flushing all of the death away, shaking the bag, pounding it, slapping it desperately to remove the last grains.
Finally, five or ten minutes later, he had no sensation of the passage of time, all of it was gone and he jammed the sack into the toilet, stoppering it, and walked out of the cubicle. That was stupid, he thought, not only flushing it away, but leaving the sack as evidence. At least he could have disposed of the sack somewhere else; he didn’t have to tie it so directly. But he did not care. Let them worry about it. Let the porters come in and see this sack jamming up the toilet, the toilet by then with an OUT OF ORDER sign across it and wonder what had happened.
He had ditched one enormous load of heroin into the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge; enough heroin to have supplied the entire northeast sector for months. Now in Miami he was putting the midwest out of business. So be it. Let the heroin go into the sewage system.
He wondered vaguely if like LSD was rumored to be able to, traces of heroin could drift from sewage into the water supply and freak out portions of the city of Miami. He doubted this very much. Heroin was an inert material, LSD an active, virulant chemical. Pity that he had never tried to bust the LSD business but then you couldn’t have everything, could you? Besides, LSD was dead. Dead. The kids were turning away from it in droves. Damaged genes.
At the door of the empty men’s room Williams met him. “No surveillance,” he said, “not yet anyway. They’re not watching the airports it seems; they’re not into that yet. Everything’s focusing down on the beach. We should be able to get out before they come into the airport unless someone down there gets bright.”
“Remarkable,” Wulff said. “How did you find out all that?”
“I scout around,” Williams said. He looked at Wulff curiously. “What did you do with the sack?”
“I dumped it.”
“In here?”
“In here,” Wulff said, “where else?”
“After everything you went through—”
“Oh come on,” Wulff said, “enough of this, will you? Just don’t tell me what to do.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Williams said. He put a hand on Wulff’s elbow, guided him out of the room, into the empty, ringing spaces of the terminal. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to go back to Chicago and kill him, that’s what I’m going to do.”
“You’ll never make it.”
“Try me.”
“You ought to lay low for a while.”
“I’m not lying low again. I’m going to go in there and kill him,” Wulff said. “After that I don’t give a damn.”
“The girl is dead,” Williams said. They walked over to a small service bar, the Chinese bartender looked at them idly. “You’d better have a scotch or something. The girl isn’t going to be brought back.”
“Bullshit,” Wulff said. “The girl has nothing to do with it.”
“The girl has everything to do with it, but she won’t come back.” Williams motioned to the bartender, asked for two double scotches. “You ought to go back to New York,” he said. “If we’re lucky we can get back there and then you can go underground.”
“And you?” Wulff said, “what are you going to do?”
“I’m going back,” Williams said. He took the scotch in one gulp. “I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’m going to try and get back into it. I don’t think they want me as bad as they want you and they’re pretty well smashed regardless. If I go back into the NYPD I’m too big a target to bother. You’ve set them back ten years, you know.”
“That’s a great feeling.”
“Well,” Williams said, “you have. I don’t think I have as much to fear from them going back now. I think you ought to go back too; lie low. They’re scattered, they’re in a panic. It’s going to be a long time now until they come looking for you again.”
“I don’t care,” Wulff said. He looked at the scotch without interest, then drained it. “That doesn’t mean anything to me anymore, can’t you understand that?”
“You have more to worry about from our side. Lot of people are going to ask you questions if they can get hold of you. Also, I don’t think a lot of people are too happy with the fact that you were able to do more on your own, one man, in three months, than all of these agencies, bureaucrats, narco squads and investigators were able to manage in ten years. That kind of has a tendency to show people up. People don’t like to be shown up, Wulff, have you noticed?”
“It’s bullshit,” Wulff said again. He looked numbly at the empty glass, then pushed it across the bar, let the bartender refill it. Williams put more money out on the bar. He held the glass, looked at it for a while and then took it straight again. Williams smiled and pushed over his own glass.
“That’s the ticket,” he said, “that’s the best way to handle it, it’s going to do you more good that way. Listen, don’t go to Chicago. Come back to New York with me.”
“No,” Wulff said, “I won’t go back to New York. Not yet.”
“You can get him anytime,” Williams said, “that old man is dead. He’s run out his options now and he’s got nowhere to go.”
“No,” Wulff said, “I’m going to kill him. My options have run out too.”
A megaphone blared and Williams said, “That’s my New York flight boarding right now.”
“Well good luck to you. The best of luck to you in your new career.”