The Man Who Killed His Brother

by Donaldson, Stephen R.

  It took me long enough, but I finally figured out why he was so desperate. He was terrified that the pimp we were after would feel the heat and decide to go out of business. Hide under a rock somewhere.

  After destroying the evidence.

  As long as Alathea remained in a coma, Mittie was all the evidence there was. If the pimp knew that Alathea was still alive, he might’ve already killed Mittie.

  I took a tighter grip on the wheel, pushed down harder on the accelerator. Because there was nothing else I could do.

  Even then it took us damn near an hour to get far enough down on Trujillo to reach the vicinity of the Ajax warehouse.

  I didn’t rush in. When we were still half a mile away, I pulled over to the curb and stopped.

  Asked Ted if he had a gun.

  He didn’t.

  I took out the .45 and handed it to him. While he checked it over, I flipped the switch so that the courtesy lights wouldn’t come on when I opened my door. Then I said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to hide down under the dash. When I get to that warehouse, I’ll park in the darkest place I can find. I’ll get out, leave the door open. I’ll go into the warehouse wherever I can find a door.

  “Give me two minutes. Then sneak out and get around the back somehow. Come in looking for me. Keeping me alive is up to you. I won’t be able to do much for myself. This is his turf.”

  Ted didn’t say anything. He just slapped the clip back into the .45 and ducked down under the dash.

  I put the Olds in gear and drove the rest of the way down Trujillo.

  The city fathers don’t spend much on streetlights down in that part of town. The whole place was black as a grave. But the sky still held enough light to silhouette the warehouse, and my headlights picked out the rest.

  The building stood behind a steel mesh fence, but the gates were gone. That was the only way in—which was one good reason why Last had chosen it. But that wasn’t the only reason. It was a three-story building. Battered steel siding covered the first two floors. The top floor was lined with windows on all sides. He’d probably been up there for the past half hour, watching. If he saw anything he didn’t like, he could get out of there fast.

  The moon wasn’t up yet. Nothing offered me a particularly dark place to park. I coasted up to the front of the building, positioned the Olds so that Ted had a good straight run to the east corner, doused the headlights, and stopped.

  “At least two minutes,” I whispered. “I’ll be moving slowly.” Then I opened the door and got out.

  I stood beside the car for a minute, letting Last see that I was alone. Then I moved toward the door beside the cargo entrance.

  When I put my hand on the door and pushed, it squeaked bloody murder. Demonstrating my good faith, I made sure Last could hear me shut it behind me.

  Inside I stood in darkness thick as stone. When I waved my hand in front of my face, I could barely sense its movement.

  With the cargo entrance beside me, however, I figured that I stood in a pretty big open space. Holding my arms out just in case, I started forward. Slowly. Very slowly. My heels made an echoing sound on the concrete, but I didn’t worry about it. I didn’t want to surprise Last. I was counting on Ted for that.

  And wishing like hell that I had Ginny covering me instead. I trusted Ted’s determination, but I didn’t know how much good sense he had left.

  Oh, well. If he didn’t have enough, that made two of us. Probably Ginny would’ve never let me get myself into this situation in the first place.

  Then a voice barked, “That’s far enough!”

  I froze.

  For about a minute while I stood still, I thought I heard faint scuffling noises in the distance.

  After that a light snapped on.

  It just about nailed me to the floor. I was right under a powerful bulb with a reflector that focused the beam into a circle on the floor maybe fifty feet across. With me in the center. Surrounded by a secret and dangerous darkness that my eyes couldn’t penetrate.

  Very neat. Last could’ve killed me with a slingshot.

  But he didn’t shoot. Apparently he had something else in mind. After a couple of minutes I heard heels on the concrete. By degrees Last materialized in front of me on the edge of the circle of light.

  His right fist held an automatic with a caliber the size of a cannonball.

  He came a few steps forward, no more. Not counting the automatic, his main advantage was that he could get out of the light a lot faster than I could.

  I didn’t even imagine moving. I didn’t want to give him an excuse.

  He knew how to hold a gun. It never wavered. He was grinning, and his voice sounded like margarine. “All of a sudden, you don’t look so tough, Axbrewder. How come that bomb didn’t get you? I bet you wet your pants when it went off.”

  Part of me wanted to just forget everything and take him. “I came to get convinced, punk,” I said. “Convince me.”

  He glanced around. “You alone?”

  “Can’t you tell? I’ve got two cops in my pocket. I’ll get them out if you want.”

  “All right.” He got down to business. “What do you want to know?”

  “Who’s your partner?”

  “Ah,” he grinned. “I’m not going to tell you anything you can use. I want to deal. You get the DA to give me immunity, and then I’ll give you his name.”

  “We’ll find him without you.”

  “No, you won’t.” He sounded very sure of himself. “You’re not even close.”

  “You still have to convince me. I need something I can take to the DA.”

  “That’s why I’m here. What do you want to know?”

  I took a deep breath. “I want to know why you used a goddamn bomb. Why didn’t you just needle her to death? You’ve done it before.”

  “Not me, pal,” Last said flatly. “He handles the junk. I never touch it. I don’t even know where he stashes it.”

  That got me nowhere. I wasn’t thinking straight. I should’ve asked a better question. Come on, Axbrewder, I snarled at myself. Don’t blow it now.

  “All right,” I said. Holding onto myself hard. “How many girls have you kidnapped?”

  “Nine,” he said promptly. “But I didn’t have anything to do with that either. Getting them was his job. Like doping them was his job.”

  “What was your job?”

  “Well,” he grinned, “the main thing was rounding up customers. Mostly I made myself available. When some john who liked his white meat young found me, I made the arrangements. Then I took him to the action.

  “Other than that, I took care of them. Fed them. Got them the right kind of clothes. A lot of johns like to see a kid in fancy stuff—peek-a-boo bras, lace panties open at the cunt, stuff like that.” He was grinning so hard I could barely look at him.

  I said, “Keen. You’re a nice man, Last. But I’m going to need something more solid. Tell me—”

  Then I almost faltered, almost gave it away.

  In the darkness behind Last, I saw a pale shadow, recognized Ted. Only the white of his face and hands showed.

  He had the .45 in both fists, pointed straight at Last’s back.

  It was all I could do to go on. “You kept each of those girls for three or four months. Then you ditched them. Why?”

  Last shrugged. “We had enough customers, but most of them are regulars, know what I mean? After a while they want fresh meat.”

  “Yeah,” I growled. “And you didn’t get rid of one girl until you’d had time to break in a new one. So how come you killed Carol Christie right after you picked up Alathea Axbrewder?”

  “Axbrewder,” he said. “She some relation of yours?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said, “that Christie chick was trouble from the word go. Something funny about her metabolism. My partner had a hell of a time getting the dose right. Either she wasn’t dopey enough or she was all the way out. It was just an accident she
got killed when she did.”

  “An accident,” I said. “I bet it broke your heart.”

  I could see Ted’s finger trembling on the trigger. Easy, Ted, I thought at him as hard as I could. Take it easy.

  “What made you decide to go for two kids this time?” I asked Last. “You never did that before.”

  “Just improving the quality of our service.” Last’s smirk hurt like a knife in my guts. I thought my nerves were going to snap. “Give the customer more variety. Some johns like blond; some like brunette. Some like a little two-on-one. And we wanted to make up for the trouble we had with Carol Christie.

  I could hardly believe it, but he actually seemed to enjoy telling me all this.

  “It was a good thing we had two,” he went on. “That Axbrewder was a feisty little bitch. We were going to have to get rid of her anyway. Some of the johns were bleeding when they got done with her.”

  Well, by God, Alathea. Good for you!

  “Hangst was another story.” I hated his grin. Right then there was nothing in the world I hated as much as his grin. “She was just what we wanted, times two. Once she got the hang of things, she couldn’t get enough.

  “I’ll tell you, Axbrewder.” He lowered his voice—he was about to let me in on a secret. “Most of our johns don’t like cherry meat. My partner and I used to take turns popping them. Kind of work them into shape, know what I mean? Hangst was my turn. God! she was a juicy little cunt.”

  Ted was moving.

  I shouted, “No!” but I couldn’t stop him.

  He took one step into the light.

  Fired.

  The first shot hit Last like the kick of a mule. I saw the slug plow through the front of his chest.

  Clenching the .45 in both hands, Ted kept pulling the trigger. I had to hit the floor. The slugs that missed Last ricocheted off the concrete and went screaming into the dark.

  When I heard the slide rack empty, I raised my head, started to get up.

  Ted stared at the gun. Trying to realize what he’d done.

  I got my feet under me, went toward him.

  Then it penetrated him. His face broke open. He dropped the .45. It landed with a clatter on the concrete.

  Without a sound, he turned and ran into the darkness. Before I could even try to catch him, he was out of sight and gone.

  17

  I chased his footsteps for a few seconds, but once I left the light I was blind. Sooner than I expected, I ran into a sheet-metal wall that rattled like thunder when I hit it. After the din died down, I couldn’t hear Ted anymore, anywhere.

  Cursing uselessly, I went back to the corpse.

  Ted had done a thorough job of it. Last was about as dead as he could get without actively being cut up into pieces. At least three rounds hit him—two in the chest—and there was a hole I could’ve put my fist through where his face used to be. It might’ve made me sick if I hadn’t already been too furious to give a rusty damn. Let him rot in his own blood. I just wanted to get my hands on Ted.

  I’d lost my only lead to Last’s partner. The asshole who actually took the girls.

  I wanted to tear Ted Hangst into little pieces.

  Unfortunately Last dead was as much of a problem as Last alive. Maybe more. Now I had a body on my hands. A body that was killed with my .45. If the cops caught me, I’d have one hell of a time explaining all this.

  And explaining it would be the easy part. Getting the cops to release me would be a lot tougher. I’d probably have to sit in jail until they identified Ted’s fingerprints on the gun.

  I wasn’t about to take this particular rap for Hangst. And I wasn’t about to let the cops lock me away, even for a few hours. That meant I couldn’t afford to leave the evidence behind. So I dug out a handkerchief and used it to pick up the .45. Instead of wiping it off like I wanted to, I carried it by the barrel while I groped my way out of the warehouse.

  Out in the night, it was a relief to be able to see again. And an even bigger relief to find the Olds where I left it. In my usual brilliant fashion, I’d left the keys in the ignition. But Ted hadn’t taken it. Apparently he hadn’t been thinking about things like that. I was still mobile.

  I still had a chance.

  I got in, locked the .45 in the glove compartment, and drove out of the warehouse yard onto Trujillo without turning on my lights.

  I didn’t turn them on until I started to hit traffic, almost a mile back north in the direction of the city. But I still hadn’t figured out where I was going.

  Everything was too urgent. Mittie was in danger for her life, if she wasn’t already dead. The cops would find Last’s body pretty soon—I’d left the light on because I didn’t know how to turn it off, and before long a patrol car would see the light and check it out. Ginny lay in the hospital with her hand blown off. Ted was running around completely bananas.

  I couldn’t relax, couldn’t clear my head. I needed inspiration, and I as sure as hell wasn’t getting it. After a while I caught myself pounding on the steering wheel with my fist.

  Panting, I dropped my arm. All right, ace. You don’t know what to do. What would Ginny do?

  Good question. Concentration took so much effort that in five minutes the wheel was slick with sweat. Eventually, however, I dug deep enough to get hold of an idea. After which I spent a couple of miles looking for a phone booth—and wondering what I carried around in my skull instead of brains.

  Last knew Alathea was in the hospital. His partner told him. How did his partner know? Through the school board somehow. Acton had called Stretto, left a message with one of the secretaries.

  What I needed to know was basically simple. Which secretary? And who, exactly, did she tell? How many people got that particular piece of information?

  Acton probably hadn’t gotten that far yet. First he had to get a warrant, search the school board offices. Talk to Stretto. Maybe to Martha Scurvey. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t run into him.

  Finally I spotted a phone booth and pulled over. I used the directory to get Julian Kirke’s address, then headed the Olds in that direction. Out toward the east side of town.

  It seemed to take forever to get there, but actually it wasn’t more than forty-five minutes. He lived in one of those fancy singles’ apartment complexes that sits on a lot about four blocks long and has tennis courts and swimming pools as well as a “recreation center” for dancing and other predatory activities. This particular complex was called Encantada Square, and the apartments all had terraces and balconies with wrought-iron railings, arched entryways, redwood doors. Inside they probably had mirrors on the ceilings of the bedrooms. But the place didn’t look all that expensive. The “swinging singles” usually aren’t rich.

  After a little trouble, I located Kirke’s apartment. It had a modest little card that said J. KIRKE in a slot above the doorbell.

  When I rang the bell, I was trembling. I didn’t think I could handle it if Kirke wasn’t in. I needed to talk to him. If I missed him—The way I was feeling, I’d probably sit down on the floor inside his nice arched entryway and start to cry.

  At the moment I had absolutely no idea how I’d managed to function at all back in the days before I met Ginny. I missed her so much I was in danger of blubbering.

  Then the door opened, and Kirke stood in front of me. He kept one hand on the doorknob. In the other, he held a drink, which I identified instantaneously as scotch on the rocks. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. I could see that he was a lot stronger than he looked with all his clothes on. He had the kind of muscles you get from lifting weights.

  I could also see the bruises I’d made on his upper arm.

  Two or three different varieties of surprise and anger twitched across his face as he looked at me. I took advantage of them by brushing past him and walking into his apartment.

  His living room was designed to look nicer than it really was. Sunken floor two steps down. Soft, supposedly seductive colors. A thick cheap carpet, plastic potted pl
ants here and there. A picture window with a clear view of the next-door neighbor’s picture window. And not much in the way of furniture. Just one recliner, a stool, and a sofa big enough to sleep three or four swingers at the same time.

  I paused in the center of the room for a minute and tried to figure out how to handle Kirke. I had too many priorities—protect Alathea, get information, stay out of jail, find Mittie alive. And nothing but terrible consequences in all directions if I failed. I was looking for some really devastating way to curse my lack of inspiration when Kirke broke the silence.

  “Mr. Axbrewder,” he said. “What an unexpected pleasure.” He sounded like a beaker of sulfuric acid that he intended to throw in my face. But he hadn’t done it yet. Civility and sarcasm were doing some kind of balancing act.

  “Yeah.” I turned to face him.

  He stood at the top of the steps, which gave him a chance to look down on me. His hand cradled his drink as if he knew what it could do to me. He’d regained his self-control—his anger and surprise were gone. He was master of the situation.

  “That’s the story of my life,” I said. “One unexpected pleasure after another.”

  He studied me for a moment. Then he said, “You’ve had a rough day. You need a drink.” He started toward a sideboard bar behind the sofa.

  “I don’t need a drink,” I snapped. My nerves were in worse shape than I thought. “I need some answers.”

  He waved his glass at me. “You sure?”

  “I don’t drink while I’m working.”

  He shrugged and sat down sidesaddle on the back of the sofa. The perfect host, showing me he didn’t need to look down on me.

  He sipped his scotch.

  I waited.

  By then you would’ve thought I was ready for anything, but he still managed to catch me off guard.

  “I heard what happened to your partner,” he said. “Too bad. It must be tough for you.”

  “My partner?” I asked stupidly. I had the horrible feeling that I was completely out of my depth.