by Barry, Mike
“Why me?” Williams said.
“Because you’re the man for it. You were on the first squad. You were his partner. You’ve been closer to this from the beginning than any one of us. And you had some contact with him at the very beginning. Don’t deny that; we’re not holding it against you. We’re not implicating you at all. We’re just saying that when this started you were hearing from him.”
“I don’t hear from him any more.”
The aycee shook his head, and fingered the handkerchief absently. “We’re not talking about that now,” he said. “That isn’t the issue. Nobody’s trying to stick you with this. We’re not saying that you were aiding and abetting, just—”
“Just that I might have been and that this would be a hell of a way to clear myself. By producing him for you. So then you’d close the books on this. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it commissioner? Whatever involvement I might have had you’ll ignore if I can pay you off now by bringing him in.”
“I’ll ignore that. I’ll just ignore that. I’m afraid you’re under orders now patrolman. This is not a take-it or leave-it proposition you’ve been offered.”
“I figured that.”
“You’re to begin putting together a group right now.”
“From what? The bow and arrow squad?”
The assistant commissioner looked at Williams for a long time in what Williams supposed was meant to be a withering glance of appraisal, but it went through and around him, and it had no effect whatsoever. He simply could not respond the way that situational ethics might have dictated. A lot of feeling had been purged out. Perhaps most of it had gone on the long, meditative ride back from Philadelphia, in a Greyhound again, when he had had a chance to look over his relationship with Wulff and what these last eight months had really meant to him with a kind of care that he had not had previously. Wulff was important, but only in relation to what he had done to Williams. Which meant that in a sense he was not important at all because Williams had to put all this behind him. Go on in a world where Wulff’s ethics, Wulff’s considerations would no longer play a role. That was the essence of what he had pieced out to himself carefully in the back of the bus, and now the PD wanted to put him back in a position where Wulff once again was paramount. Unless he took control of this situation, unless he truly saw it for what it was, he would never be free of Wulff, Williams thought. He would go right down into the pit with the man and he would not have a sheaf of grenades to bid him out. “That was uncalled for,” the assistant commissioner had been saying sometime throughout all of this. “There was no reason for any of that.”
“Sure.”
“What the hell do you think you are, patrolman? You’re lucky to still be on the payroll after all you’ve been through.”
“Damned right,” Williams said, “damned right I’m lucky to be on the payroll. I was almost knifed to death, remember?”
“All right,” the assistant commissioner said after a pause. “All right. I don’t want to get into that. We have a permanent detachment of men who can be called into headquarters for special projects. That’s your pool. You pick them.”
“And what if I refuse this honor?” Williams said. “what if I unequivocally refuse the honor of going out to Philadelphia and killing Wulff or bringing him back trussed up so that the department can save its ass? What happens then?”
“You won’t refuse.”
“No?”
“No,” the assistant commissioner said. “I think I understand you pretty well by this time, patrolman. I may be wrong, but in my business there’s one thing which you can cultivate. You can make judgments which are pretty accurate most of the time. You want this assignment. You want it bad.”
“You think so.”
“I know so,” the assistant commissioner said. “I have a feeling that you want this man even more than any of us do because with you it’s somehow personal. It’s not just that he’s fucking up a lot of people in a way which is maybe good, maybe bad. You could argue it either way, but because personally you don’t believe in what he’s doing and you’ve gone so far along that line, you take what he’s doing as a reflection on you because you were there at the start. You could have stopped it all at the beginning.”
“Never,” Williams said. “Never.”
“Are you absolutely sure of that? You were with him the night that that girl was found.” The commissioner paused, cleared his throat, opened a desk drawer and handed Williams a file folder. “Here,” he said. “Here are some personnel. You go through it in an office out there, and pick the men you want.”
In an abstracted way Williams took the folder, hefted it, put it on his lap. “So I was with him that night,” he said. “So what? What did being with him have to do with anything? I couldn’t have stopped him. Once it started no one could.”
“Nonsense. You know it’s nonsense.”
“Then tell me,” Williams said. “Tell me what I was supposed to do, how I’m responsible for this?”
“I didn’t say you were responsible for it. I said that you felt responsibility, which is a different matter, And you feel responsibility because you didn’t do something that might have been wrong, but which you could have done. Anyone in your position could have. But how would you have known?”
“You don’t mean—” Williams said.
The commissioner nodded. “That’s exactly what I mean,” he said. “And of course the penalty would have been pretty high because we would never have known what we know now. You would have gotten life imprisonment and been a severely misunderstood man. But you could,” the commissioner said, “you could have shot him dead, you know.” He added mildly after a while, “I don’t know if you would have made the organization or us happier.”
XVII
That thing in Harrisburg sounded like Wulff’s work. You got a feeling for techniques after a while, and Maury knew his customers. All right then, Wulff had done it, Wulff had bombed out that block in Harrisburg. But what did that mean? Did it mean that Maury should also go to Harrisburg and try to pick up the trail from there? No it did not. You had to follow through on a single course of action no matter how wrongheaded, and carry it on to the end; otherwise, you got screwed up. There had to be a certain singlemindedness to what you were doing because you had to have faith in yourself. If you abandoned faith in yourself, then what you were doing was something that became meaningless. So he would go onto Philadelphia. And ignore Harrisburg, which might not have been Wulff’s work anyway. There were lunatics all over. Perhaps some lunatics imitating Wulff’s modus operandi had carried out the Harrisburg job, only because they had a chance to get away with it, and because the authorities would blame it on Wulff. Maybe not. You did not know.
In any event, Maury went on. Once he got to Philadelphia he would spread some money around to find out where the man was. He couldn’t be too hard to find. Maybe this didn’t sound too logical, but then again it was the best method that he could think of, and the important thing was to keep on moving, not to despair. No man could humiliate him the way that Wulff had and get away with it. It was a matter of his pride, self sufficiency, literal manhood. If something like this could happen, then the next thing would be that they would be knocking over his store and home daily, and Maury would not tolerate it. You had to have faith. If you were meant to discover something, if your cause was right, then somewhere along the line God would provide. He would be provided with Wulff’s whereabouts. In the meantime, he had to place himself in as close proximity to the man as possible.
Maury kept on driving north, the radio on, playing for him. The business about the woman was in the back of his mind, but he did not even think about it too much. At the beginning he had felt guilty, but the guilt had passed. And in any case, how long could you go on brooding about something like this? She had brought it on herself by taunting him, by saying and doing things which were absolutely intolerable. Once again, it was a matter of his pride being at stake. If you let people get a
way with things like that, if you really let word get around that you could be fucked with this way … then where the hell were you? It would be absolutely destructive.
Actually, Maury kind of agreed with Wulff as far as he could follow, whatever line of reasoning had started the lunatic. The drug dealers were vermin, and they did deserve to be killed, all of them. What kind of a world was this? What kind of future could you have if kids were being peddled dope before they were even out of high school, if millions of dollars was being made by turning on poor people and blacks to heroin when they could be out earning a living and staying off the welfare rolls. All of that welfare money was being spent on heroin, and Maury knew that. So Wulff was right. The trade had to come to an end. These vermin could stand elimination … but what the hell did that have to do with him? You just did not go around shooting up or threatening innocent people because you had taken it into your mind to get rid of the international drug trade. That was all fine and dandy, thinking stuff like that, but when you came down to practicalities—
Maury tried not to think about the waitress. Every now and then, driving, his thoughts would veer a little bit in that direction, go lurching toward a recollection in which he could see her lying open on the bed, the look in her eyes as they must have been when she had received the shot, the sound of the impact, the fact that he had become a murderer … Those thoughts were all there, but he had dropped his protection around the part of his mind which contained them, had shut them off. He would not think about it. Wulff had opened him up to a world of madness and pain in which these things happened; in which you might have to do them yourself to survive. But that was still no excuse to dwell on it. Maybe he had done the wrong thing, then. At worst it was a momentary lapse. He, Maury, was not really a murderer. He was not capable of committing acts like that. Anyone could make a mistake. He had made one with the waitress, he guessed, but he would not be pinned on to it for the rest of his life. He would just find Wulff, kill Wulff, put all of this madness behind him and go home. He would resume his life as if none of this had ever happened. If there was a reward in the works for killing Wulff, if there was a certain amount of notoriety or cash which might become his by virtue of the fact that he had killed the Lone Wolf … well, fuck it. That was all: fuck it. He wanted no part of it whatsoever. All that he wanted, really, was his life back.
On to Philadelphia then. He would track him down. He would get this over with. He would be out of it yet.
XVIII
Wulff decided that he would phone Williams. He would go out on the streets, do some more tracking, and start from the beginning. Find a couple of petty dealers and start work from the bottom up. Good enough! Just like old times. But first he would put a call through to his old friend, his ex-partner. Standing him up in front of Independence Hall had certainly not been nice, Wulff had decided, although on balance he really had had no alternative. After all, he had had to go and kill Martin. A job always took precedence, even if it was a meeting with an old and valued friend. Williams would understand if the point could only be made to him, but he was, perhaps, owed an explanation.
So Wulff went out of the hotel and called him from a bar about two blocks down, empty except for the old bartender, some dust and an exhausted female drunk sitting at the far end. Williams himself picked up the phone, which was a good thing, because Wulff did not think that he could bear to talk to the man’s wife. Whatever relationship they had had was very complicated and delicate, and it had certainly been blown up good by the Los Angeles partnership. She would not have liked that at all.
“It’s you,” Williams said. Oddly he did not sound at all surprised. He was a matter of fact kid, this one. Of course, blacks did not show as much emotion in their day-to-day relationships as did whites. They had learned to bottle it all up for self-protection, and you had to understand that. “Where are you calling from?”
“Oh, I’m around,” Wulff said. He patted his jacket where one of Maury’s grenades nestled comfortably, and braced himself in the booth. The bartender, an old man, was slumped down at the end of the bar. The female drunk was barely conscious, but you couldn’t be too careful. You just couldn’t be careful enough in a place like this, particularly after the reputation Wulff had established for himself. They could be coming after him at any moment. Desperate men, terrified of their lives, could have formed bands, have had him trailed. At any time they could burst into the bar from the street and there he would be, in the fight of his life. But he would take a few of them with him, he thought with satisfaction, and patted the grenade. Oh yes, indeed, he would take more than a few with him. They would remember the Lone Wolf. It could not be said that his passage through the territory had been quiet.
“You there?” Williams was saying. “Where did you go? What the hell is this Wulff, are you here or not?” His voice was high, urgent.
That was a little better, Wulff thought with satisfaction. Williams was hardly so cool now. “I’m here,” he said. “I thought I’d call you. I wanted to check in.”
“Well, tell me where you are.”
“In the same general area.”
“So was I,” Williams said. “Where were you?”
“I had some business to attend to,” Wulff said. “It couldn’t be put off. I’m really sorry about that though. That’s the reason I called you now. I wanted to apologize for not being there like I said I would. It was just that something came up—”
“Well, tell me where you are now and we can get together after all.”
“I don’t think so,” Wulff said.
“What do you mean, you don’t think so?”
“I mean just what I said.” His leg was beginning to go to sleep in its difficult propped position. Wulff shifted it down slowly, rubbed circulation back, and felt the little pinpoints of pain diminish, shifting throughout his system. “It’s just better if we don’t. Get together I mean.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve got to play this one by ear. Do it all myself.”
“Do what yourself?”
Wulff paused, leaned back, and rubbed his shoulders against the dull wood. “Well, I’m not sure yet. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“Well, whatever it is, you’ll need some help, right?”
“You that eager to help me?”
“I was all ready. You stood me up. I was in front of the hall for hours. Driving around, I should say. I brought down a lot of heavy stuff and I had a good car.”
“You still have it? The heavy stuff?”
“You bet,” Williams said and cleared his throat. “Got it all downstairs. You want it?”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Why not? You think that I’m lying to you about something like that? After all we’ve been through?”
“I don’t know,” Wulff said. “I simply don’t know.”
“You arrange for a place to meet, and I’ll come down again with all of this stuff. Only this time you have to promise that you’ll be there, Wulff. You put me through a lot of inconvenience.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” he said. He looked out through the window of the booth. The bartender had shifted his position, was stooping now, apparently looking for something underneath the bar. That could be bad. It might mean that the bartender had spotted him for what he was and was now at this very moment reaching beneath the panels for a weapon. The bartender was a freelancer working for the network, and he would bring enormous credit upon himself by killing Wulff. It might change his entire life. Even an old man could be ambitious. He watched every move with great care, his perceptions acute. “I can’t talk much longer,” he said. “Something’s going on. I’m a little nervous here.”
“Where are you?”
“I think that bartender knows who I am. I wouldn’t swear to it but it’s a real possibility. If he does, I’m in trouble.”
“Bartender? You’re in a bar?”
“Yeah,” Wulff said. “I’m in a bar.”
“I don’t know,” Wulff said. He paused, watched with fascination as the bartender seemed to stoop lower, his hands fluttering bird-like over the concealed panels. The female drunk suddenly collapsed over the bar, all elbows and neck muscles, lolling there like some enormous plant. “She might very well be in it,” Wulff said. “The two of them are probably working together.”
“Two of who? Working together at what?”
“You just want to find out where I am,” Wulff said. “You have no interest in what’s happening to me. All that you care about is that I might be able to give you a leg up in the PD. Maybe the PD has sent you on a detail to find me and bring me in.”
“That’s wrong, Wulff. I’m on your side.”
“You sure about that? I’m not.”
“All right,” Williams said. His voice seemed distracted, as if he were no longer concerned with Wulff but was concentrating on other issues far removed. Perhaps he was contemplating running a phone tap, doing a trace on the number from which Wulff was calling. That could not be passed by, that possibility. Not with modern technology being what it was, and also the record of betrayal which Williams had established in his relationship with Wulff. “If you don’t believe I’m on your side, Wulff,” Williams said, “I can’t convince you.”
Any moment the bartender was going to seize the gun, straighten up, and start firing at him. Wulff was quite sure of that now. The time for doubt had passed. He knew exactly what was going on and what they intended to try with him next. The organization never gave up. The organization was always working, always closing in on you. It numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and could recruit millions more. And as many of their number as you thought you could eliminate, ten times that number would appear to replace them. The organization was both immortal and very efficient. It reached down to the lowest bartender in the sleaziest bar in the worst section of town. He should have known that a long time ago, Wulff thought. He should have judged the resources of the enemy, and then it would not have come to this.