The Devil Knocks

by Frank Rich

  "You don't understand the situation," Robert said. He slid off the desk and adjusted the band of his platinum chrono. "We have commodities in place, everything is lined up. We lack only an experienced leader to pull it all together. A man such as yourself, Mr. Strait."

  "Hold on a minute," I said. I reached into my jacket and took out a business card. "Jake Strait, private enforcer," I read. "Wrongs righted, injustices avenged." I turned it over and looked at the back. It was blank. "Huh. Doesn't say anything about being a revolutionary. Or a stooge."

  "It's not as absurd as it sounds," Marlene said. She took another joint from the silver box on the desk and lit it with a black marble lighter. "The Party in Denver is teetering on the brink of collapse. And it won't stop there. Denver is only the first domino. Its fall will begin a process that will bring the entire World Party down. For the first time in thirty years, this planet will have a chance at true democratic rule."

  "Democracy? You people are democrats? I thought democracy was proven a failure before the end of the twentieth century. Along with communism."

  "You've read too much Party propaganda," Marlene said. "Democracy is going to save the world. All we need is a resourceful, charismatic leader to lead the people to victory. A special someone like you." She slightly parted her full, red lips and fixed me with green eyes as dark and steamy as the jungle.

  I let the almost physical wave of attention wash over me, then came up for air. "If it's so easy, why don't you get the lumberjack to do it?"

  Marlene frowned, and the red-checked shirt dropped his arms and took a step toward me.

  "Don't let yourself believe you're that good, champ," I said, trading stares with him. He wavered until Marlene heeled him.

  "It's all right, Bruce," she said. There was perhaps a little disappointment in her voice, disappointment that Bruce hadn't jumped me like a blood-crazed hammerhead. She tilted her head back, let her big lashes close halfway then dropped another heavy look on me.

  "Stop doing that," I said.

  "Doing what?" she asked innocently, batting her eyes.

  "Trying to sway me with your wily female charms."

  She smiled and pushed back long brown locks from her face. "Are you so easily charmed?"

  "Not when it conflicts with my health. What makes you think I'm even qualified to be your revolutionary? If you haven't heard, I'm just a bogeyman, a cut-rate hired killer. My line of work runs more toward knocking off small-time criminals, not toppling cities."

  "You saved this city."

  "I killed some people, that's all."

  "Spare us the modesty routine," Rob snapped. "Two months ago you engineered the destruction of a ring of inner-Party power brokers interested in liquidating a quarter of the City's population."

  "Am I blushing?"

  "He's not taking us seriously," Rob whined.

  "Of course I am. I believe everyone who invites me into their parents' study to discuss overthrowing a metropolis. I mean, why not?"

  Marlene sighed. "Is there anything we can offer you to make you change your mind?"

  "Why don't you try tempting me with sex."

  She lowered her eyes and smiled languidly. Starting from her thighs, her hands followed the curves of her body up until they reached for the ceiling with a long sensual stretch. "Would that make a difference?" she whispered huskily.

  I looked at her, hearing a clock chiming in some faraway room. She braced her hands on the desk and leaned back. The light played through her long brown hair, highlighting her sharp cheekbones, straight nose and full, pouty lips. Her sleepy eyes tried to hypnotize me, and I thought about letting them. I supposed she was the kind of distressed beauty a romantic hero like myself was supposed to fall over himself to rescue. The lumberjack and her brother both appeared to be experiencing traumatic pain and their agony alone seemed reason enough to say yes.

  "No," I said. "But thanks for asking."

  She sighed, dropping her gaze. She smoothed out the wrinkles in her lap and said, "I guess we were wrong about you, Mr. Strait."

  "Looks that way." I stood up.

  "I don't know why you even thought he would aid the cause," Rob snarled. "He's just a cheap killer, a lousy bogeyman." He tossed a mean look in my direction. "His loyalties belong to the gutter, with the rest of his kind."

  I laughed. "Oh, I get it. First the pretty face tries to flatter me into the job, and if that doesn't cut it, the self-righteous idealist tries to shame me. What's next? The lumberjack going to threaten to beat me up?"

  The lumberjack jumped his cue and covered the two yards between us in a single bound. He towered over me, his muscle-thick arms twitching at his sides. I didn't cower or cringe immediately, so he moved closer until he stood on the tips of my toes, trying to crush me with sheer physical presence.

  "You ever heard of Elvis, champ?" I asked.

  "No," he said, making it sound like a growl. "Why?"

  "Because if you had, you probably wouldn't be stepping on my blue suede shoes."

  He looked down, and I sucker-punched him with a hard right uppercut. He rocked into the path of a remorseless left hook that sent him reeling back toward Marlene and Rob who scattered as Bruce flopped across the desk.

  I bent over and dusted off my boots with a handkerchief. They weren't blue or even suede, but it seemed too good a line to pass up. I stood erect, squared my shoulders and gave them my patent hard stare. Marlene took her breath in shallow gasps and Robert slid wistful glances toward the door.

  "Anything else you want to run by me?" I asked.

  They shook their heads in unison.

  I went to the door, then turned around. "Why are rich kids like yourselves interested in bringing down the power structure, anyway? You're the ones it serves."

  "Just because we live in mansions on the Hill doesn't mean we're blind to the suffering of the people," Marlene said tearfully.

  I tried not to laugh as I went outside.

  * * *

  The drive from the Petersons' mansion on the Hill to my office in the City was like a long fall from grace into filth. I left behind the long moonlit acres of perfect grass, pristine mansions and heavily armed security checkpoints and sped down the superhighway through the new suburbs, then into the old. Well-kept lawns and law and order melted behind me as the ugly face of the City reared up. I tuned the radio to the inner-city riot advisory, took an early exit to avoid a wild one in the borough of Barridales and detoured to Hayward. I found a parking space a block away from my office and walked the rest of the way.

  With a flash of chrome and the shriek of steel wheels, the one-legged whore careered into traffic. A huge cruiser caught her wheelchair with its bumper and tossed her like a rag doll into the path of opposing traffic. A rumbling racer caught her across the grille and threw her over its hood. The woman and her chair separated in midair and met separate fates beneath the rubber of squealing wheels.

  Rex stood on the sidewalk, hands on hips, face impassive. He caught me staring at him. "Hey, Jake," he said nervously.

  I stood and stared, transfixed by mounting horror, trapped by the realization that the bottle wouldn't be enough, not tonight.

  "I warned her, you know that," Rex said. "But she just kept coming back. Wouldn't listen."

  All I could do was stand and stare.

  "Don't look at me that way, Jake. You're one of us. You live here on Hay ward, too. You've no right to look at me like that. There's no contract on me, there's no profit in it."

  I found my voice. "I don't just do it for the money."

  "Sure you do. It's just your job. Listen. Everybody does it for the money, that's all. You think I like being a pimp?" He shook his head slowly, dramatically. "No, Jake, I don't. I do it for the money, just like everyone else. I gotta eat, too."

  The inevitable crowd began to form, flotsam drawn to the whirlpool of tension from the stream of passing humanity.

  "What the hell," Rex said, "I'll even give you something to forget about it." He l
aughed and pulled two fifties from his wallet, about the price of a trick. "I bet you ain't ever had that happen before. Getting paid not to kill someone." He folded the bills and stuck them in my breast pocket. He ran a hand through his hair and glanced around. "So it's okay, right, Jake?" He reached out and lightly slapped my cheek with his right hand, a face-saving gesture. "Everything's back to normal. We're even." He backed off then turned away.

  I drew the gyrapistol. "Rex."

  He stopped and turned around slowly, his eyes full of doom.

  I pulled the trigger. Rex's head disappeared in an explosion of gore and bone as he tumbled through the storefront window of his whorehouse. Glass shattered, neon tubes exploded, whores screamed, and the crowd scattered into a wider circle, leaving me alone on the sidewalk. I stood over Rex, his twitching body sprawled half in and half out the window.

  "Now we're even," I said.

  "The HPA gonna kill you, bogeyman!" a whore yelled from inside the talent agency. "Reclamation's gonna have to pick you up with a sponge!"

  Other whores joined the wild chorus, and I studied the faces of the slowly constricting crowd. Their eyes told me I was a condemned man, and for all intents and purposes they were right. The Hay ward Pimp Association was one of the more powerful crime syndicates in the City. A wise man wouldn't take odds on my lasting more than twenty-four hours.

  I shoved through the crowd and walked down the sidewalk, moving with the drift of humanity. Hayward was a black river with a strong current that pulled toward Hell, and I wasn't strong enough to fight it anymore. So I rolled with it, let it carry me. It wasn't my fault. In all the hustle and confusion it was easy to lose grip of your soul. It happened accidentally; I'd got caught up in events and stopped paying attention to the fine print in those fat bibles. It wasn't my fault at all.

  * * *

  There was nothing to separate the dive from a thousand others. The interior was drab and unappealing. It existed without pretension; the reason was in the bottle. I took a bar stool and bought a double screwdriver with Rex's money.

  They came in a moment later. They'd probably followed me from the kill. Shuffling to the bar self-consciously, they glanced at me. One was a huge, crudely featured slab of a man with a prizefighter's nose. His bitter-faced partner was almost my size, but next to his friend he looked like a dwarf. They wore baggy gray suits and battered porkpie hats, haute couture for the street-tough set. They engaged in a low, heated discussion while the barman drew their beers. The big man got in the final word, collected his beer and turned to me.

  "Looks like you're spending all our money on booze," the big man said.

  "Better a poor man drunk than a rich man sober," I said, regarding him out of the corner of my eye. His suit was buttoned up, and I didn't see the bulge of a gun. But that went along with his face. He was a head-breaker, a blackjack man. His unhappy friend was the shooter. He stood just behind the big man, hands in the pockets of his overcoat. I could see in his eyes he wanted to shoot me in the back.

  The big man lowered his mass onto the stool next to me. "Say, aren't you Jake Strait?"

  "No," I said. "But I think so much of the guy I like to go around impersonating him."

  "No, you're him, all right," he said firmly. "Jake Strait. A genuine street legend. Maybe you've heard of me. They call me Tiny. On account of I'm so big."

  "I bet they call you smart and handsome, too."

  "See, Donny?" he said. "The tougher the rep, the nicer they are." He shook his head sadly. "You screwed up, Strait. No other way to put it."

  "What am I worth?"

  He shrugged his huge shoulders. "Tell you the truth, I don't even know. But the HPA's a class act. I figure it'll be at least five grand, maybe twice that." He looked at his beer. "You could just come along, you know, the bounty's the same either way. Maybe you can talk a deal with the HPA."

  I shook my head. "No, I think I'm all out of talk."

  He shot me a sidelong look, and I chopped him in the mouth with the heel of my hand. He grunted and fell off the stool, and I was up, spinning a roundhouse kick at his partner, hitting him square on the temple as his automatic cleared his coat pocket. He went stiff, crushing a table on his way to the floor.

  I turned around just in time for Tiny to hit me in the jaw with an uppercut. I sagged against the bar, my head swimming, and Tiny came in swinging, up close, pounding my ribs and face with short, powerful hooks. I rocked against the bar, covering up with my forearms and elbows, the world a dizzy, distant blur.

  Raw jolts of pain shot up my arms with each blow, but by degrees my head cleared. Tiny's swings slowed in speed and regularity, and I launched a brutal counterattack, throwing overhand jabs over his rolling hooks, snapping his head back, mashing his nose and loosening teeth until he stopped punching and covered up. I shuffled a half step to the right and swung on his jaw with a looping right hook. His head jerked with the blow, and his hands dropped to his chest. I hit him again, this time a stiff left that just clipped the point of his jaw. I heard his mandible crack and saw his eyes dim. He dropped his hands to the bar and he stood there a moment, making a low sighing sound. Then he slumped to the floor next to his partner.

  "Never talk to someone you're supposed to kill," I panted through an aching jaw. "Never."

  I finished my drink and went out. I started down the sidewalk, wondering how long until the next ones. Tiny and his friend were just the first trickle. When word got around, the trickle would become a torrent; every shooter in town would be hot to cash the HPA's check. And they wouldn't be as sentimental as Tiny. I kept walking, knowing there wasn't a bolt hole in the City that would hold me, and made a choice.

  I couldn't hide, but I could sure as hell run.

  3

  The Shamrock Cafe lay on the invisible demarcation line between the old suburbs and the City proper, near enough to the burbs to minimize random violence, close enough to the City to dissuade frequent visits by the SPF. I sat in a booth by a window, my back to the wall, stirring a cup of kelp coffee, waiting. I'd sat there for two hours, since waking at dawn in an alley three blocks distant.

  Two young couples laughed and threw food at each other three booths away, hip rich kids venturing into the border zone for cheap kicks. They were dressed in the latest hobo fashion, their boutique clothing carefully torn and stained, though no one would confuse them with the winos lurking outside.

  "What happened to you?" Marlene asked, sliding into the other side of the booth, smelling of perfume and rain. After examining the booth seat carefully, Rob sat next to her.

  "I wrestled with the Devil."

  "Looks like you lost."

  I leaned back and lit a vitacig. "I called you to tell you I'm accepting your offer."

  They looked at each other as if I'd asked the price of whack in Beijing. Rob said, "Which offer was that?"

  "Don't play wise with me. You know what offer — your goddamn revolution."

  Marlene looked out the window and Rob sneered. "Look at you," he said. "You're in no shape to roll a drunk, never mind lead a revolution."

  "Don't worry about my end of the deal. I'll bring your city down."

  A pained expression came to Marlene's face. "We're not trying to bring Denver down. We're trying to liberate it."

  "Whatever. I'm the man for the job."

  They appeared skeptical. "I don't know, Jake," Marlene said. "Maybe you were right. Maybe it's not your line of work."

  "Then why'd you show up here?" I asked. "To taunt me?"

  They looked at each other, and I felt my fate dangling, uncertain. "Okay, bogeyman," Rob snarled. "How much do you want?"

  I blew smoke at him. "What makes you so sure I'm doing it for money?"

  He laughed harshly. "I know your type. How much?"

  I stretched out my legs and settled deeper into the booth. "One million."

  Rob flinched as if I'd slapped him. "You must be joking."

  "Overthrowing a city ain't no prance in the daisies."

/>   "We could offer you one hundred thousand," Rob said.

  "I wouldn't overthrow Hoboken for a hundred thousand."

  "One-fifty."

  "Listen," I said, leaning across the table, "we're not talking about a drive-by shooting on a bookie joint. We're talking about knocking over a goddamn city. A million creds would be a bargain."

  "We couldn't raise that much," Rob said. "All our fluid capital is invested in munitions, organizing."

  "You can front me ten percent. I'll accept the balance when Denver falls. I'm sure you can squeeze that much from its coffers."

  "A quarter million and we'll front you ten thousand."

  "Three-quarters of a million."

  "A half million and we'll front twenty."

  I leaned back and thought about it. "Okay, I can do it for a half million. But I'll need at least thirty grand up front. I'll have to buy a machine and hire a driver."

  "We'll provide you with both."

  "No, thanks. I'll arrange my own."

  Rob started to protest but Marlene cut him off. "All right, but you won't have far to drive. We'll airlift your vehicle to an LZ a hundred and twenty-five miles outside Denver. As you know, the roads between here and Denver are quite dangerous. We would fly you straight in, but Remi has tight security at all of Denver's airports."

  "Remi?"

  "Remi Jonson," Marlene said. "The dictator of Denver. The man you'll do battle with."

  "Right. Exactly when is this revolution due to happen?"

  Rob spoke up. "The initial phase of the popular insurrection is due to begin in two weeks."

  "Fine. I'll be ready to leave in two days."

  "Two days?" Marlene frowned. "You still have to be briefed."

  "I'll read the packet on the way."

  "We'll send someone along to brief you," Rob said.

  "I don't need a baby-sitter. Or a spy."

  "You'll need an insider," Marlene said. "To connect you once you get to Denver."

  I shook my head. "Just give a place and time. I'll wear a red carnation so they'll know it's me."