Frenzy dje-2

by Rex Miller

  "Since you know me you also must know that in my field I am considered the best there is. As a professional you can appreciate what that means. So you understand that if I tell you I know demolition — let's say — inside out, you know I speak the truth."

  "I understand."

  "I hope so. You'll cost a lot of loss of life if you don't. I have considered how I would be treated after capture. I am a sophisticated and experienced man. I will have taken pains to . . . Well, what's the point of belaboring this. You'll either believe me or your actions will cause many, many persons to die unnecessarily. If I don't have Ciprioni handed over to me tonight, those deaths will be on the police's hands, and I have sent a brief summary of this situation to certain inquiring minds in the media. I think you'd be well advised to cooperate."

  "Obviously," Eichord said, "I'm going to have to talk to the people in charge. But I think I can say with some certainty that we'll be reasonable. We want to avoid any more bloodshed."

  "That's nice. But if it turns out to not be the case — or if your superiors don't believe me — I'll be glad to blow up a few dozen people just to show you I'm for real."

  "Come on, Mr. Spain. You know you don't want to do that. I'm sure we'll find a way to give you what you want. Ciprioni is nothing to us — just one more hoodlum."

  "Just stress that his life isn't worth the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians. That should do the trick. But, if not —"

  "I think it will."

  "Tell them if my instructions aren't carried out, if you fail to bring that garbage to me tonight, I will begin a series of executions that will turn this town upside down and inside out. I'll begin taking lives in the most terrible and spectacular ways. Remember — if you need proof you'll get it, and lots of it."

  "When you say bring him to you tonight, what did you have in mind?"

  "What did I have in mind? I just told you — bring me Ciprioni. Period."

  "I mean, where did you want him brought? We'll gladly comply with whatever precautions you might want to take to ensure your personal safety if we make the trade you propose —"

  "It's YOUR personal safety you'd better concern yourself with, you understand?"

  Leech signaled him no — meaning the tap had turned out to be another phone which Eichord knew would be the case.

  "Absolutely."

  "We'll trade tonight. At midnight. You bring me Ciprioni and I'll guarantee not to kill again if I'm not threatened. Also I'll turn the Russo twat loose when our deal is consummated. If you cross me or try to capture me or you don't have the scumwad with you — a lot of people will have the bad luck to become very fucking dead."

  "You won't be double-crossed. Where do you want to meet, assuming we can go the deal."

  "I don't give a shit. It can be in the damn police station for all I care. Remember — my legacy of death depends on your giving me what I want. You take me out and you've removed the key to keeping lots of people alive. The, uh, legacy is such that even if you had the locations you couldn't, let's say, disarm the items."

  "Where do I call you when I find out if we can do the trade?"

  "Pathetic!" Spain laughed again. His laugh was not a thing of humor but of madness and rage. "I'll call you, Mr. Eichord. And tell your bosses, don't forget, if you screw with me I'll also be forced to deal with Miss Russo in the harshest and most permanent manner — she'll be one more death you've caused."

  "I'm sure we'll go the trade. The bosses won't like it but you haven't left them much choice."

  "Whichever. I'll be phoning back soon so you don't have much time. Don't be stupid." He saw the auto-stop kick the tape off as the telephone receiver clicked.

  "Well," Springer said, "how about them apples?"

  "Yeah. Well. I read it as pure bullshit."

  "Jack, you think he's bluffing about the bombs?"

  "I think we'll find the grenades. But no. It's bullshit. He's a sicko. And he's good. A pro. He thinks he's invulnerable now. He didn't even bother to lie convincingly. That was all bullshit about him writing letters to the papers."

  "Yeah? You think?"

  "Sure. The implied contradictions. One second he shows he knows how we work, implies we respond to media pressure, then he runs the letter thing by us forgetting that if such letters were sent, they'd also tell the press we gave a mad killer a human sacrifice. He's just jerking himself off now. I think he knows we're going to take him down but the desire to smash out at Ciprioni, coupled with his guilt and mental illness, probably have brought him to this point."

  "I hope you're right."

  "He's crazy as a fucking loon, of course." Eichord wiped perspiration from his forehead. He moved his head from side to side and heard bones pop. "Hey, look at me — he's saying." Springer nodded glumly. " 'Course . . . " Jack added with a sly half-smile, "on the other hand I could be wrong."

  "Wonderful. Fuckin' voon-der-bar."

  Suddenly Eichord thought of eighteen things that could and probably would go wrong, ranging from the weather to Jeeter Oliver. He looked at a yellow legal pad in front of him and couldn't read anything he'd written. He wanted to take his notes and hand them to somebody and say, "Run these down to the lab."

  He picked up the phone and put it down again. Went in and peed and sat back down at his desk. He thought of all the things that could go wrong that he HADN'T thought of before. He hoped the fault lines wouldn't crack apart and swallow him as the terra unfirma had threatened to do before. He hoped that it would rain on Spain and he'd fall mainly on the plain. He hoped that Jeeter would not get the jitters.

  What could go wrong? EVERY fucking thing, that's all. Everything could go wrong. Eichord thought to himself, I can have a heart attack and bite it right now. That's what can go wrong. And he felt his palms turn damp, and he had a hot and unpleasant feeling inside his head, and out of nowhere he thought of Rita and realized that it was true what the sages wrote, that abstinence made the fond grow harder.

  Time compressed like a drunk's afternoon and early evening, swirling fuzzily, and it was all gone and he could feel how cold he was and how hot his forehead felt as the time slogged on. The phone ringing stabbed like a knife wound. He had heard the phrase triple-take before but never seen one much less done one. He did a triple-take. He was starting to walk into the next office and his phone rang and his head came back then returned in the direction of the body movement, then corrected, then recorrected, then changed its mind — a little St. Vitus dance here on American Band-stand.

  "Hello." His throat sounded like he'd been gargling Drano.

  "Well?"

  "Okay. They say you can have Ciprioni but they want assurances from you. What's to stop you from leaving time bombs anyway once you have what you want?"

  "Nothing. If I was out to destroy the city. But if I was out to destroy the city the fucking city would be GONE, wouldn't it?"

  "Uh, yeah."

  "Brilliant. I've told you I won't kill anymore if you give me my dear friend for disposition. A deal's a deal. I can't bring my daughter back. I will have reached them all and dealt out the appropriate punishment." Eichord hoped that in the throes of his insanity he'd have forgotten that the police were holding Rikla under guard.

  "Fine. I made a list of meeting places, do you want —"

  "You want me to come there? I don't care. I've warned you what will happen if you try to take me down."

  "Um. How about that theater where you were. The EGA they call it. I'll bring Tony Cypriot there at midnight if you'll assure me Angelina Russo will be there alive."

  "Forget snipers and all that crap too, friend. Remember my precautions are no joke. I fall down go boom, EVERYBODY goes boom —" He chuckled mirthlessly. "You read me?"

  "Right. I don't see a problem. Frankly, Mr. Ciprioni has no value to us. But Miss Russo is a civilian. She's no more tied to the family business than your daughter was tied to your work. We don't want to see another innocent hurt and I don't think you do either." He wondered if he'd gone too
far. A pause and the voice had turned to stone. Cold and hard like a tombstone.

  "You bring the scumbag. You personally."

  "Okay."

  "I see anybody else. First thing I do is I drop this Russo bitch like a real bad habit."

  "All right. I'll be alone and I will have Mr. Ciprioni. See you inside the theater at midnight." The line went dead. First question he could decipher from the legal pad was, what if he's waiting outside? What if I can't get him inside? Hey, no fair, these are too tough for this late in the day. Also, that's two questions. But on another level he knew that Spain would go inside, or anywhere else. Confidence was in his tone of voice. And insanity.

  Victor Springer looked like someone who'd just seen the Titanic go down, and everybody aboard owed him money.

  "I'm not liking this much," he told Eichord.

  "Umm."

  "In fact, I don't like any part of it."

  "I hear you. What he is about is punishment. He wants revenge. He's several bricks short of a load."

  "He's also an expert, highly professional hit man, booby. He KILLS people. THAT'S what he's about." It was another negotiation. The lieutenant agreed to lose the tac unit, Eichord conceded to the backup and trace vans. Whatever other high-tech bullshit — just let him go in there and get it done.

  The bomb squad had sent Leroys, which was what they called their expendable technicians — a bit of tongue-in-cheek cop wit — to find and secure the grenades in the two stores. They had been there as advertised.

  McTuff had factored the probabilities and rated the situation as an assessed threat that was high but acceptable — to whom? Eichord was where the buck stopped, and he tried to think of an appropriate cliche.

  "Sometimes you have to fish or cut bait," he said to nobody. He was going in. He'd been adamant about the loner thing. He told Springer, "You mount people on the rooftops, Spain eyeballs 'em, not only will we lose him he'll probably scope off the coppers too — just out of meanness. We gotta try to get in and play our hole card."

  Gaetano Cipriano was not thrilled. And the less thrilled he got the closer the hour drew near. It looked for a bit like Eichord was going to have to cuff him to drag him into the EGA, but in the last minutes the man fell into a becalmed state.

  Oddly enough, Eichord was quite unafraid. Relaxed. Getting out of the marked vehicle and stepping over the bright-orange tape, going into the EGA, where the police seal had been broken, the chain cut, walking in and around the box-office area, then stumbling with Ciprioni and both of them tripping over some-thing and a hoarse "SONOFABITCH!" escaping in-vol-untarily as they found themselves staring down the center aisle into the blinding flashlight of the killer Spain.

  "You scumwad," Spain said,

  "Hold it, Frank, at least listen to my side," The Man began pleading.

  "This is for what your filth did to my little girl," he said, and Ciprioni screamed at Eichord, "Come on, COME ON GODDAMMIT DO SOMETHING WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR —"

  "Whatsa matter, MISTER Ciprioni," Spain said, and laughed that non-laugh of his.

  "YOU LOUSY FUCK. YOU SAID I'D BE SAFE. YOU PROMISED YOU WOULDN'T LET HIM HURT ME."

  Spain thumbed back the hammer on his piece and Eichord said, "I lied," and jumped into the darkness as Spain blasted the life out of the man who was his mentor, Gaetano Ciprioni. Hidden somewhere in the recesses of what was once a projection booth Jeeter Oliver keyed the machine and a blinding stab of bright, yellow light tore through the darkness, the screen lighting up white as a huge image of Spain's daughter filled the back of the tiny theater with movement and a man's voice said something about " — displeasing me, you cunt —" and Eichord is in the two-handed grip and the Semi-Weaver stance and carefully squeezes. Drawing down not altogether reluctantly on the totally mad Frank Spain.

  A thousand boxes of police shell casings and high-power load attest to the practice that brings him to the firing line in this thirty-minute second. That is how long it seems, conservatively, the next second takes to tick by. It is a second he will relive again and again in bad daymares, as he kicks himself for his failure and the "what-iffing" you always do when things like this happen.

  The hammer begins to drop and Jack sees it very clearly, seeing it fall slowly toward the pin as he steadies controls grips the Smith & Wesson firearm just so, rigid but not too staff, by the numbers, easy squeezy bang, and when the bang sounds, close like this, in the filth and decay of the old theater with this foul, deranged killer at point-blank range, it will be like Spain's gunshot into the head of Tony Cypriot. It will be a cartoon bang, a comicbook POW, where it requires an entire panel of artwork to phoneticize that concussive, ear-shattering, close-up explosion, and Eichord remembers every second of this, all of it, each detail as he freezes the awful hammer fall.

  Some people can do that. They can stop time. When they are very frightened or nervous or both. When they want to put off that terrible moment that they know is just around the corner they simply put on the brakes and go. Hold it! Slow down, there, time. And they nail time's shoes to the floor and nothing moves. No second hand sweeps. Nothing ticks or toes. It all slows, drags down to a stop, and they refuse to allow it to pass through their frightened, apprehensive space. And Jack Eichord stopped it then. And he had to breathe, unfortunately, so he started time up again and let it go and watched the damn hammer fall.

  Point-blank. As up close and personal as it gets and still, as the saying goes, you have to go ahead and putt it out. It ain't ever a gimmee. And you see the target fine, right there over that sight, but the thing is — shit, you can see how he's got the Russo girl. Holding her so close. Why worry, though? What hardened, practiced, supermacho cop ever missed at this range? Right? Right.

  W R O N G, bourbon breath.

  And now, a woman he really didn't care that much about, this stranger was depending on his skill and his coolness under pressure, and this was the frozen beat of stop-time he'd relive again and again, reddening anew each time he played it back.

  What you do is you bring the top of the I, the blade, up into the U. And when me top of the I fills the U with the sight right there on your bull's-eye you stare a hole at your target and squeeze 'er off. What you don't want to do is move and what you especially NEVER want to do is blink or squint one eye shut like they do on TV.

  And a thousand boxes of cop rounds ROUNDS YOU BUY, ole buddy, no they don't furnish you bullets, you BUY every damn one of those expensive babies you blast out there on the range, and every one of fifty thousand rounds or whatever astronomical number he'd run through the barrel of that Smith over the years, every one of them went right out the fucking window as he squinted or a tic pulled his left eye shut Christ make up some lame bullshit he MISSED HE FUCKING MISSED and it was the bang of a Red Ryder Daisy B-B gun and Spain was down almost breaking her neck as he dragged his human shield down behind the dirty theater seats, crawling toward his detonator as he screamed at Eichord, "YOU'RE DEAD YOU LUMP OF STUPID SHIT YOU'RE A FUCKING DEAD MAN AND YOU CAN WATCH THIS WOP CUNT DIE NOW TOO," and more that Jack could never really remember hearing.

  He could only remember his breathing and the sound of the gunshot as Spain fired one at him over the seats my God it was the comic-book BLAM POW CRAKKKKKKK he'd been waiting for and it sounded like a cannon going off. They may sound small when you miss but when somebody fires one at you. Jack ole pal, it sounds like Nagasaki going off in your head and his breathing so loud, so hyper, going "haaaaaannnnnnnngggggggghhhhh, haaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnngggghhhh," hunkered down flat against the grime-coated cold stone floor, so afraid, and the bright, awful, evil streak that came with the loud noise crashing into the steel and cushion beside him and he could never recall a moment when he'd been so frightened and he wanted to pray and he knew there was no time now. Now, now when he needed to stop time, it wouldn't stop for him, and that lunatic sonofabitch was dragging the Russo woman away firing off another snapped shot at Eichord and Jack knew he had to do something and oh-God-oh-Jesus, he p
rayed he wouldn't be shot. He was afraid. He didn't want to die. It was like in combat. All you cared about was living. Surviving. Fuck 'em all. Be on MY side, God.

  You 'n' me, okay? And with that the man upstairs played Eichord's ace for him.

  And he made himself come up as the little girl on the screen screamed again, and audio was up and it was loud by the ancient, cobwebbed speakers, and she saved Eichord and the Russo woman when Belmonte stabbed the metal thing into her eye and she screamed the awful scream of pain and death screaming at her father, "DADDDDDEEEEEEEEEEEE!" as he looked toward the noise, looking up at the hell of his daughter's tormentor blinding and killing her then the screams are not of a father gone mad but of a tortured animal at the cracking point and in that instant of mind-shattering recognition and agony Eichord raises his weapon in the old-fashioned way, raising the gun with one hand, squeezing the trigger, carefully taking the killer out. And the screaming of the woman and the man and perhaps Eichord and the echo of the weapons deafening blast all die as the screen returns to a blank glare, the projector — like Jack Eichord — running on empty. And a man who was once named Frank Spanhower lays rapidly dying.

  Eichord sees his lips move and hears a whisper and he drops down making sure the killer holds no knife or gun and he asks him, "Please. Were there any time bombs? You don't want innocent people to die as your little girl did. Did you hide bombs?" and leaning in close to hear the stammered whisper, "M-m-m-m-ma-ma-ma-ma-" as his life force ebbs completely. And he could have been saying anything. Mary Pat. Mama. Merry Christmas. And Eichord took the woman and put his arm around her and started back toward the street and the real world.