Walk a Black Wind

by Michael Collins

  “The two I escaped with ran up just after the body went into the lake. They thought it was me! A fluke. They even tried to swim out, but by then the body sank. That was when I realized that the tramp was my size, weight and build—give or take a few pounds. Just chance again, Fortune. I thought fast, and let my partners go away—thinking I’d drowned. You know the rest. One of them survived, told the cops I’d died in the lake, and in the end the cops believed it.”

  He touched his pistol, fingered it, as if thinking about the police. “Accident all the way. I guess a man has to have that luck to survive a prison break. That tramp just had no relatives, no friends, was never reported missing. When I’d changed clothes, I’d hoped to gain maybe a day or two, no more. After my partners thought I’d drowned, I figured I might gain even a week. But when I read that the cops had dragged the lake but found no body, I realized they might really believe it was me in that lake. After they didn’t find the body for months, I knew I had a real chance. With the plastic surgery, and Zaremba to protect me from being picked up and fingerprinted, I was sure I was safe.”

  The pain in his eyes was wide as he looked at me. “Safe! Tight, jumpy, careful, never sure. Up in Dresden as often as I could, but really careful. My kids I’d never had a chance to know, to touch. Then Francesca was dead—killed! I had to know who killed her. Damn them to hell!”

  I waited until the echo of his violent voice faded in the small room with the rain steady on the trees outside. My eyes were on his pistol, and I was sweating, but I had to say it.

  “You had to know,” I said, “except that you knew who had killed her from the start.”

  I could almost see his dark, Indian eyes glitter behind the cloudy blue contact lenses.

  I said, “Two of the murders were expert, the work of a professional—because you did them. You’re a professional killer, Andera, and you killed Francesca.”

  25.

  I said, “If Francesca had found you, you wouldn’t have hurt her. You’d have just run again, vanished. You’ve had a violent life full of killing. You wouldn’t shock or stun easily, but that first day in my office you were stunned, in a kind of shock. You were so anxious to hire me to find who had killed Francesca. Why? A fugitive with a prison guard murder hanging over his head had every reason to stay hidden, stay far away from the police, let them handle the murder of even his daughter. But you risked exposing yourself to the police, and to me. You must have had some very powerful reason.”

  “That she was my daughter isn’t enough?” he said.

  “No. That would give you sorrow, maybe, but nothing strong enough to risk coming into the open. You had to have a very strong need—like hate,” I said. “Remember I said I’d already decided that she hadn’t found you, you had found her. But you had two newspaper clippings that first day. The first one identified her only as Fran Martin, and if you had known her as Martin, why hadn’t you come to me a day earlier? You were stunned, violent to know who had killed her, but you hadn’t come to me until after the second news story identified her as Francesca Crawford—your daughter.

  “I was sure you hadn’t dated her at all, and you hadn’t known her as Fran Martin—you would have come a day earlier to me if you had. No, you didn’t know Fran Martin at all, not until after she was dead. So why had you clipped the story about the murder of Fran Martin? What was your interest in a girl you’d never seen or heard of on the day you clipped the story? Or had you seen her without knowing who she was until the second story?”

  His dark face under the black hat was distracted. “Yes, what was my connection to a girl named Fran Martin?”

  “None,” I said, “unless you were her murderer. A pro who clipped stories about his victims to keep informed. That second story must have been like being hit by a train. You were raw and bloody inside when you came to me. A man who had killed his own daughter. There was a reason powerful enough to make you expose yourself—to find out who had sent you to kill your own daughter unrecognized in a dark bedroom.”

  He didn’t react, not outwardly, as if all reaction was gone out of him by now. Maybe it was, or maybe it was only fifteen years of living as a fugitive always on the alert. But inside his life was bleeding away.

  “You didn’t know who had wanted Francesca dead, did you?” I said. “That was all that explained how you acted afterward, and that was when it all fit in my mind. The money you sent to Pine River came at irregular intervals—when you did a job. A lot of money, so it was high-paying work. You stayed safe fifteen years in New York, so you must have had strong protection. You were so sure of your alibis—because alibis are part of your trade. The job Abram Zaremba gave you fifteen years ago was a hired killer!

  “A professional killer, that’s what you really are, and you killed Francesca on order. You never know your victims, do you, that’s how it works. This one was special, I think, but it was routine in one way—you didn’t know exactly who you were sent to kill. I don’t know why you don’t know who sent you to kill her, or why you didn’t recognize her—you must have seen her around Dresden—but that has to be how it happened. A pretty rotten coincidence. A nightmare.”

  He had no real reason to be sitting there listening to me. I wasn’t telling him anything important to him. Yet he sat, as if he didn’t want to get up, didn’t want to do what he had to do to finish what he had started when he hired me.

  “No, not a coincidence,” he said. “Fate, maybe. Sure, fate. A lot of mistakes, moves, coming together because what I did made them come together. In prison I used to read. Some of those old Greek plays: Medea, Electra, Antigone. Fate. Two men meet on a road, one kills the other—it’s his brother! All laid down in the cards because they did what they did.

  “I had to meet Katje back then when the odds said I’d never get near a woman like her. I had to go off to Korea. She had to toss me over. I had to go after her when I got back. I had to shoot the one person up here who liked me—old man Van Hoek. I had to have that crazy luck in the escape. I had to be in the Emerald Room to stop that robbery. Zaremba had to own the Emerald Room, offer me the big job—contract killer. I had to not give a damn back then. What difference did it make, that job, to a hunted guy with a prison-guard murder over him? What did I care about a few more killings if I had protection and good money?”

  He gripped his pistol, began to slap it over and over against his leg. “No coincidence, Fortune. I just about set it up, made it have to happen! I took the job Zaremba offered back then partly because it would put me in Dresden a lot, I could be near the kids undercover. I could maybe help them, and see that Katje and Crawford did right by them. With my face fixed I got close to Crawford a few times unknown. Even Katje didn’t know me. When I went to meet Tony Sasser a few months ago she was with him. We even shook hands! She didn’t know me at all.”

  “You went to meet Sasser? Why?”

  “A job,” he said. “See, no coincidence, right? When there was a job in Dresden, Zaremba sent me, naturally. I was his best killer. I knew Dresden. Who else would he send?”

  “You were the man who murdered Mark Leland?”

  “Yes,” Andera, or Ralph Blackwind, said. “I didn’t know his name, or why he had to be hit. I never did. And it didn’t have to be Zaremba who wanted a victim dead. The Commissioner sent me on jobs for other guys, you understand?” He seemed to be seeing Abram Zaremba who sent him out to kill for other men. “So I hit Leland. A girl saw me run. Not good enough to hurt me, I was sure, but I holed up in New York anyway. Later, I got word from Zaremba that the girl couldn’t finger me, and that was that.”

  He’d been talking like a man who had to talk, tell. Now, all at once, the words came out stiff. “Three weeks ago Zaremba told me he’d found out that the girl in Dresden had seen more than anyone had thought, maybe did know what I looked like, and was tailing me! Someone had told him that, and Zaremba wanted her shut up for good. He told me where she was living, and I went and killed her!”

  His pistol shook, and
his knuckles were white where he held it. The control that had kept him going was breaking, raw anguish in his voice now.

  “She’d been away in college, I hadn’t seen her up here in Dresden for four years. She’d changed. Her looks had changed, she dressed different. I even saw her on the street, planning the hit, making sure it was the roommate who went away and ‘Fran Martin’ was alone in that apartment. In the room it was dark, and I hit and went. In and out fast. My way. My own daughter!”

  I had nothing to say. Condemn him, yes, but he’d done that to himself already. Pity him? Maybe, but how many others had he killed, how many other men’s daughters? He was a hired killer, and I felt something as I would for any man who’d lost a child, even Hitler, but that was all. His special anguish was something he would have to face by himself. Excuse—if he could, or if he wanted to. I didn’t think he did, no. He had judged himself for his crimes, he expected neither pity nor excuse.

  “I had it coming for taking the job fifteen years ago. Okay, sweep me into the garbage. But she didn’t have to die! Not my Francesca. Someone else had killed her, too. I was just the knife. I wanted whoever really sent me to kill her!”

  His face changed. In that motel room he became the killer, the cunning animal who had survived war, North Korea, prison, and fifteen years on the run. “Remember, I didn’t know why I had killed that Mark Leland, or who had wanted him dead. Both times, Leland and Francesca, Commissioner Zaremba could have been sending me out for someone else. He made it sound like that’s what he had done. But I couldn’t charge around to find out on my own. Someone would know me. So I hired you—and tailed you all the way.”

  “I spotted you following me once early,” I said. “Then you got more careful, and tailed me to Zaremba. I’d told you why Mark Leland had been killed, that Zaremba was personally involved, that he knew who Francesca was, and that probably he’d been the one who wanted her dead. Then you heard the rest when he talked to me up here. When he drugged me, you came in and killed him.”

  He smiled. “The bastard begged me. Abram Zaremba, a big man with other guy’s lives. He said he hadn’t known she was my kid, that he’d been told she could identify me, and that she knew he had sent me to kill Leland. He said he was only trying to protect himself—and protect me! I killed him.”

  I said, “Mark Leland, Francesca, and Abram Zaremba, all your killings. But why kill Carl Gans? Was he the one who told—”

  “Not Gans. I didn’t touch the bouncer,” Andera-Blackwind said. “He knew me and what I did for work, but he wasn’t any part of killing Francesca. Not Carl Gans, no, but I think there’s one more who sent me to kill her, right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Listen to me, I—”

  “One more,” he said, not listening to me. “The one who told Zaremba that Francesca could identify me, was looking for me, could finger Zaremba, too. The one who knew that Francesca was only looking for her father, but who told Zaremba different!”

  “Andera,” I said, “Or Blackwind, if you go and—”

  “John Andera,” he said. “Ralph Blackwind died in a prison break fifteen years ago. Or maybe he died earlier when he shot old man Van Hoek. Or maybe in Korea. Or maybe when the white man drafted him and changed his name!”

  “Listen to me! We don’t know for sure that—”

  “Sit up straight, Fortune. Now!”

  I sat up straight, he wasn’t going to listen. He produced a length of thin rope from inside his black coveralls, the clothes of his dark trade. He began to tie me. He did the job carefully and well, an expert, and he talked while he worked.

  “I don’t want to kill you too,” he said. “One more, and that’s the end. I won’t be found. Not anywhere. Nothing for Felicia to read in the newspapers about what her father was, what he did with his life.”

  He tied me solidly, stepped back, pocketed his pistol.

  “Thanks for helping, Fortune.”

  “I’ll have to answer for that,” I said. “How long can you run?”

  “As long as I have to, and as far. I’ve been running all my life, but not much longer. In the garbage with me, right? Good riddance.”

  I didn’t bother to reason with him anymore, and he gagged me, and went out the door. He backed out, watching me, and faded into the night and rain like a vanishing ghost.

  26.

  Only minutes had passed when I heard the sound. Someone was outside the motel room in the rain.

  The door opened. Felicia Crawford stood there. She came in, slim and young, and removed my gag.

  “Untie me. Maybe there’s time.”

  She began to untie my ropes. “He’s my father, isn’t he?”

  “Where’s Two Bears?” I said.

  “In our car outside. I knew that man was my father. I made Paul stay close and wait. I knew he wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “I didn’t,” I said, rubbed at my wrists as she got the ropes off. “Go somewhere, Felicia. Anywhere.”

  “You said there might be time? Time for what?”

  She had the ropes off my legs. I stood up. “Time to stop him from killing anyone else. He’s a killer, Felicia. Many times over—cold and for pay. He had bad breaks, cruel breaks, but he failed himself, too. Old Two Bears Walk Near is right. Your father had a choice, if a hard one, but some weakness in him matched what the world did to him, and his anger turned bad. He’s doomed, Felicia. Forget him. Tell me where Anthony Sasser lives.”

  She told me. It wasn’t too far from the Crawford house.

  “He’s my father,” she said. “I want to talk to him, for Francesca. It was important to her.”

  I couldn’t tell her the truth, no, she’d find out soon enough. “What was important to Francesca was a man eighteen years ago. A man and his life. You can still have that life, and he’d want you to—his life back at Pine River. Go there if you want your father. That’s where he really is.”

  Paul Two Bears spoke from the doorway. “He’s right. That man wasn’t my uncle. Even his eyes are a lie.”

  She stood there torn between what we said, and the need to know her real father at least for an instant. I had no time to wait. I didn’t know what Andera had heard, or thought he had heard. I couldn’t be sure who his last victim was to be.

  I ran for my car.

  Anthony Sasser’s house was smaller than the Crawford’s, farther back from the road, and dark. There was no light in it anywhere, and the green Cadillac was not there. Neither was any other car Katje Crawford might have come in, or John Andera.

  I drove on to the Crawford mansion. Martin Crawford was in the living room when the maid let me in. His face looked like he had lost fifty pounds in the last hours. Old Mrs. Van Hoek sat in a chair as if she were trying to stay unseen. I pulled out my big pistol. I aimed it at Crawford.

  “Hand me your gun,” I said to Crawford. “By the barrel.”

  He didn’t protest. I pocketed the Colt Agent.

  “Is he here?” I said. “Sasser?”

  “No. He wasn’t at his house or his office. I tried his club, too. Nowhere. Katje isn’t back, either. Is Felicia—?”

  “She’s okay,” I said, and told him the whole thing fast.

  He sat down. “My God. Ralph … John Andera, you say? He killed Francesca? His own … My God.”

  “He’s been around here in the background for years. He says he saw you, and you saw him. You never knew?”

  “I never saw anyone like Ralph Blackwind, no! I thought he was dead, I never considered if anyone could be Ralph. He was watching, and then …?”

  I turned to the old woman, Mrs. Van Hoek. “Your husband knew Blackwind was alive. Did you know?”

  The old woman shrank away from me in her chair. She watched Martin Crawford.

  “Tell him what he wants to know, Mother,” Crawford said.

  Her eyes were blank. “I didn’t know. Emil always liked Ralph Blackwind, even after Ralph shot him.”

  “Your husband told Francesca something. That Blackwind was al
ive, yes, but what else?”

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Van Hoek said.

  “He almost died, he knew Blackwind was alive, yet he never told. He protected an escaped murderer who’d shot him, tried to kidnap Katje and the girls, nearly killed them? Why?” I said. “Tell me just what did happen that night eighteen years ago.”

  The old woman shook her head, no. She was afraid.

  “Tell him,” Martin Crawford said from his chair.

  When she spoke then, it was like a robot. “We were in the old house. Ralph came. He had guns. He was violent, in a rage. Katje tried to run away. Ralph shot everywhere, with both his guns. A pistol and a submachine gun. One in each hand. He smashed the living room mirror, the lamps, the windows. Emil pushed me down behind a couch. He lay there with me. Katje said she would go with Ralph. She got the children. Ralph made us stay down on the floor out of sight. We didn’t move, Emil and I. They all went out. We heard them drive away. Emil got up from behind the couch. We heard their car stop at the end of the street. Ralph ran back. Emil started to the door. Ralph shot him through the broken window. Emil was badly hurt. A few moments later their car drove away and was gone. Martin came home ten minutes later. He stopped Emil’s bleeding, got a doctor, called the police. They caught Ralph in Utica. Katje had managed to call the police while Ralph was asleep.”

  She finished it there. I imagined the violent scene that night—Blackwind half-crazy, firing a submachine gun with one hand, a pistol with the other. Smashing the house in his rage.

  “Katje called?” I said. “She turned him in to the police.”

  “What else could she do? He was violent, dangerous,” Crawford said from his chair.