by Frank Rich
Satisfied there were no spifs under the bed or bogeymen in the closet, I changed into black jungle pants, T-shirt and combat boots. I put a Browning 9 mm, a Smith & Wesson .357 and a Walther PP.380 with appropriate ammunition in a kit bag. I'd have to stop by my office for the heavy firepower. I was a relative newcomer to the game, but I figured I'd need a lot of guns to stage a proper revolution. I grabbed my leather antihero jacket and a six-pack on the way out.
I was locking up when I heard a click behind me. I dropped the six-pack and executed a whirling quick draw.
Finley's door slammed shut.
When my breathing returned to normal, I knocked on the door. "It's okay, Mr. Finley, I won't shoot you."
A muffled hoot came from the other side.
"It's me," I said. "Mr. Strait."
The door opened and a big eye ogled me. "Hello, Mr. Strait. That's an interesting hairstyle. People have been looking for you."
"Oh, really? Who and when?"
"About two hours ago four men came by. I heard them pounding on your door so I told them you weren't home, because I knew you weren't. One of them had a badge and said they were from the Security and Protection Force, but they weren't in uniform."
I nodded knowingly. "The old counterfeit-badge ploy, eh?"
Finley eyed me for a moment. "I didn't believe him."
"Good show, Fin. What did these obvious impostors look like?"
"Two were big men with black suits and short hair."
"How short? Were their heads shaved?"
"No, they had hair, but it was short."
"Did they have thick necks?"
"Yes, they did."
"Ah-ha," I said. "What did the other two look like?"
"The one who did all the talking wore a hat. He was very mean and nasty."
"Did he tell you his name, as a genuine and legitimate officer of the SPF would?"
"No, he just flashed his badge. That's why I knew he was a fake."
"Mr. Finley, did this faker say 'fooking' a lot and constantly clench and unclench his hands like this?" I did a fair imitation of Inspector Blake's endearing mannerism.
"Yes, he did! I remember because I thought he wanted to grab me."
I sighed. "I'm afraid that's exactly what he wanted to do, Mr. Finley."
"How do you know?" Finley asked nervously. "Do you know him?"
"Yes. By your description that could be none other than Big Hands Blake, the Mad Strangler from Philly. A known archfiend. He does contract kills for the mob, but the demands of his job don't keep him from having a little fun on his off time. He once got on a crowded bus and strangled everyone on board except the driver before the bus made the next stop. The only reason he didn't throttle the driver was because it wasn't his stop."
I could tell by his expression that Finley was recalling just how close Blake had stood to him. "No!" he whispered.
"Yes. The two heavies were probably bodyguards provided by the mob, which means he was here on business, not pleasure."
"I thought the Party cleaned up the mob years ago!"
"They told you there'd be elections this year, too, didn't they? What did the fourth criminal look like?"
My revelations had rattled Finley's memory. "I… I'm not sure," he stuttered. "He, ah, seemed small and acted like he didn't want to be there. And he had thick glasses and was kind of pale, I think. What's wrong?"
I eased the grimace off my face. That explained how Blake found out where I lived, something I was careful not to advertise. "Was he balding and had a small mustache?"
"Yes, I think he did. You know him, too?"
I massaged my temples with index finger and thumb. "I'm afraid I do. That sounds like Joey 'the Rat Bastard' Drake. A renowned weasel. He once worked for the forces of good but he backslid and now he's an informant for the mob."
"What does the mob want with you, Mr. Strait?"
"Revenge. It turned out those hoods I killed last week, the ones who were trying to bushwhack you, were under orders from the mob. Blake must not have realized it was you they were after in the first place. He is a professional, though, and I'm sure he'll make the connection sooner or later. Say, what did you do to offend the mob so much, anyway?"
Finley eyed me for a minute then quietly closed his door, perhaps realizing the longer he talked to me the more his darkest fears would be confirmed. It'd be a long night for me and Fin both. I'm a really mean bastard, I thought.
* * *
Joe lived in the borough of Woodgreen. The neighborhood sat right on the invisible demarcation line between the City and the old burbs. It was the kind of neighborhood where people paid rent and watered their lawns. Most of the streetlights worked, and spif cruisers were known to prowl through on occasion.
Joe lived in a modest Spanish-style hacienda painted red-brown to resemble adobe. Joe hated it. He said it made him feel like a migrant worker. When they got around to approving his application, Joe planned on moving to the burbs proper.
I drove past his hacienda and parked a block away. I opened a vitabeer and took Crawley's wallet out of the glove box. After pulling out all the business cards and looking them over, I put them back, finished my beer and stepped out of the Caddy.
I walked to Joe's house and quietly lifted the garage door enough to see his Chevy sitting inside. I walked around the side and jumped over the concrete fence, also painted to resemble adobe.
The backyard had fallen to ruin since the last time I'd seen it. The grass looked as if it hadn't tasted water in a month. Joe was probably spiteful because he couldn't get the fake stuff. Times past, Joe and I would barbecue fat soy steaks and black-market chicken wings on the redbrick patio. I'd put away a six-pack, Joe would smoke hash, and we'd talk about our army days and the rapid decline of the world around us. Now the barbecue was full of stagnant rainwater, and I couldn't remember the last time we'd shared banter on the patio. I'd got wrapped up with a long string of live-in girlfriends, and Joe had found the Hill. We'd drifted apart.
The sliding glass door was unlocked, which was typical of Joe. I slipped into the cool interior and listened. Hearing noises coming from the direction of the living room, I crept across the kitchen tiles and peered over the saloon-style doors.
Joe was in the living room, behaving like a ferret. Three fat suitcases squatted by the front door, and he was scurrying around in a frenzy, as if he were afraid he was going to forget something he couldn't live without. It looked as if Joe was going on a trip, and I'd caught him just in time to wish him a bon voyage.
"Out jumps the Devil!" I shouted, and pounced into the living room. Joe squeaked like a rat and scurried for the front door. I got there in time to shove it closed. "Now, is that any way for a proper host to act?" I asked.
Joe cowered in front of me, which made me feel bad because we used to be buddies. I clamped a hand onto his shoulder and navigated him to the sofa. I sat on the arm of a chair opposite him and gave him a disappointed look.
Joe said, "You won't understand, Jake, you won't ever understand."
"Oh, I don't know, try me."
Dropping his head, Joe shook it slowly back and forth and said nothing.
"You've been hanging around with a bad crowd lately, Joey."
Joe raised his eyes and looked defensive.
"The likes of Inspector Blake of the SPF goon squad. Why did you go with them to my apartment? You could have just told him where I lived."
Joe shrugged as though he couldn't figure it out himself.
"Was it because the booby rig on my apartment door wasn't so amateurish? Were you there to lure me out, Joe? Lure me into the cruel hands of Big Hands Blake?"
The denial teetered on his lips, ready to tumble out, but at the last second he swallowed it. He hung his head again.
"You fingered Crawley, didn't you?" I said. Joe's head jerked at the sound of the name, and I knew I was right. "Crawley worked the party circuit just like you, except his gig was poetry. He kept your phone number in his wallet
. You were probably pals. When Crawley and Britt split with the cash, you finked to win a favor." I shook my head and tutted. "Shame, shame, Joey, you can lose a lot of friends acting like that."
"I don't expect you to understand," he whined. "You see from the gutter with big self-righteous eyes. Big changes are coming, and it's every man for himself. Crawley was asking for it with all his anti-Party rhetoric. He was a romantic idiot without enough common sense to take a look around and make the adjustment. He'd end up with an execution warrant sooner or later anyway."
"And I'm a walking corpse myself, so it wouldn't matter if you helped the inspector do a number on me." Something occurred to me, and I got up and began pacing the room angrily. "Wait a minute, wait a goddamn minute." I stopped pacing and pointed a damning finger at him. "You miserable bastard! You played me along the whole time. You recommended me for the Crawley job! You set me up as the stooge. You've been shitting on me from the start! Haven't you?"
Joe hung his head and didn't say anything.
I didn't say anything, either. I stood in front of him, my hands clawed, wanting to grab him by the neck and throttle the miserable life out of him. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. After a minute all the anger drained out the bottom of my feet, and I turned away from him. I couldn't hate Joe any more than I could hate a bird who crapped on my car. That was its nature. In the same sense, Joe couldn't help it if he acted like a weasel, because he was a weasel.
Joe made a big show of looking at his watch, then stood up. "I have to go, Jake. You can shoot me if you want, but I have to go."
I took out my pistol and pointed it at him.
"I didn't mean it!" he squealed, bobbing and weaving like a boxer trying to duck a punch. "I didn't mean it!"
"I know," I said. "I just wanted you to know how it feels to be under the gun." I put the pistol away. "Where you heading, anyway?"
Joe mumbled the first time, so I asked him again.
"The Hill."
"The Hill?" I echoed. "So that's what they promised you. Who invited you to live on the Hill?"
"Director Chamberlain invited me. I won't be actually living there. I'll just stay until all the trouble in the City blows over."
"What trouble is that?"
He shrugged. "I don't know, just trouble."
"They'll kill you."
Joe's eyes told me the possibility had crossed his mind, but he didn't want to believe it. "They're my friends, Jake. They like me."
"Wrong, Joe. They'll gloat under your educated lies, but they don't like you. You're not one of them. Why should they protect an outsider? Because they like your jokes? You're just another loose end, and if you go up there they'll kill you."
Joe walked to his suitcases and picked two of them up. "You don't know them like I do. They're my friends, and friends take care of each other."
"That's a funny idea, coming from you. Considering all the favors you've done me and Crawley." I laughed to prove it was funny.
Joe opened the door and let himself out. He didn't come back for his third suitcase. I sat on the arm of the chair until I heard the Chevy pull out of the driveway and gun down the street.
I walked back to the Caddy. The fuel light was coming on, so I diverted to Second Fed then to an alcohol station. Filling up the tank, I reflected back to a simpler time when having a thousand creds in my wallet actually seemed like a big deal.
23
I didn't really want to go to my office. With Blake rutting around like a boar in heat, it seemed a bad move. But there were things I needed. I was gambling that Blake didn't think I was stupid enough to go near the place. I parked in front of the Silver Spoon behind a big banana yellow pimpmobile and watched the front of my office building from two blocks away. I didn't see killers who didn't look local, so I put the gyra in my coat with my hand and took a walk.
The stairwell and hall were empty, and my office door didn't appear to have been tampered with. I unlocked the door quietly, then, pistol in hand, rushed into the room, ready to shoot anyone sitting in my chair. The only thing I found in the room was a bunch of sinister shadows.
I made my visit a brief one. I opened my weapons locker and filled a duffel bag with a Thoma Killmaster SM6 rotary machine gun, two M-16 A3 assault rifles, an Uzi submachine gun, a Myers automatic shotgun, two Colt .45 automatics, ammunition for all, seven kilos of plastic explosives with primers and a radio detonator and a spider-silk vest. I sealed the duffel and hefted it. It wasn't much heavier than a Johnny Humungo weight set.
I got some duct tape from my desk and taped two grenades firmly to the doorjamb, one at knee level and the other two feet higher. I took down two framed pictures and unscrewed their hanging hooks from the wall. I screwed them into the door, one next to each grenade, then wired the grenade pins to the hooks with unfolded paper clips and gave the pins a slight head start. Finally I taped the top of the grenade spoons loosely to the doorjamb, so when somebody jimmied open the door and pulled the pins, the spoons wouldn't pop off and clatter on the floor, giving some undeserving soul a seven-second warning.
I took a step back and checked my handiwork. It was cruder than the doorknob rig but almost impossible to detect or disarm from the outside. I hoped Blake would pay me another visit.
I slung the duffel onto my back, opened the bay window and crawled out onto the fire escape. When I got down to the alley, big drops of rain started to fall. I looked up and smiled at the gray sky. The rain had finally come.
I turned left and walked to Marshall, the street running parallel to Hayward. I turned right and walked five blocks, then cut back to Hayward and approached my car from the direction opposite my office. If someone was watching the Caddy, they wouldn't expect me coming from that direction. I learned that trick from reading old spy novels.
In times of trouble it was always good to see a friend. So I smiled when I saw Paul «Goose» Gosman emerge from the pack of women hanging out under umbrellas in front of the Silver Spoon, swinging a kit bag as though he hadn't a care in the world. Paul was one of few members of my profession I liked. When we were both young mavericks fresh from the service, eager to liquidate all the bad guys, we'd even worked some warrants together.
The only problem with Paul was that his taste for expensive women eventually forced him to rely on the more lucrative pay of political contracts to make ends meet. An ethical rift had developed between us, and we hadn't talked in months. But as rare as allies were at this point in the game, I was willing to forgive and forget.
"Hey, Goose, what's up?" I said. Paul's coal black face tensed as if he'd seen a ghost, then he walked by without giving me any sign of recognition at all.
That's funny, I thought, dropping the duffel and diving to the sidewalk. I executed a somersault with a half twist and ended up on my belly, my pistol pointing the way I'd come. Chips of concrete stung my face as Paul's machine pistol chewed up the sidewalk in front of me. I snapped off a shot, and Paul dived behind the banana yellow pimpmobile. I rolled left behind an iron trash bin.
"Can't we talk about this, Paul?" I ventured.
Paul popped up from behind the pimpmobile and sprayed the bin, ringing it like an alarm bell. I heard the bolt of his machine pistol clack onto an empty chamber, and Paul ducked down to slap in a new magazine. I knew it was my big chance.
I leaned out and aimed three quick shots a foot below the pimpmobile's chrome alcohol-intake valve. Paul popped up with a fresh magazine, and I was cursing the cheap pimp when a little whoosh announced a big boom as the explosive jets found their way to the fuel tank. Paul stumbled from behind the fireball, his entire body engulfed in wild blue flame. I aimed carefully and shot him once in the forehead. He cartwheeled down the sidewalk and lay in a burning heap.
A frantic pimp rushed out of the Spoon, and I had to guess that the banana yellow number was his. He stood screaming at the burning wreck, with the grief of a man who'd forgotten to insure his wheels, then dragged out a big chrome-plated Colt .44 Magnum. He moved to th
e front of the car and began firing round after thundering round into the machine's engine block. Symbolic, I thought.
I counted six shots from the Magnum, then got up from behind the bin. I walked to where Paul's kit bag had fallen. I picked it up and inside I found spools of electrical wire, plastic clothes pins, tape, a Swiss army knife, wire snips, two twelve-volt batteries, electrical primers and about three pounds of plastic explosive. Oh-ho, I thought.
I walked the kit and duffel bag over to the Caddy. The pimp was giving me the vindictive eye, but we both knew whose pistol was empty and whose wasn't. Finally he threw his head back and laughed. Street logic. If you couldn't kill it, laugh at it. He waved his pistol at me because it was empty and I waved mine at him because it was loaded. He put his arms around a couple of his girls and went back inside the Spoon.
I got on my stomach and looked at the car's undercarriage but I couldn't find anything awry. I carefully opened the hood and still couldn't find anything. I cupped my hands and peered in the window, but couldn't detect any exposed wires or explosives. But then, Goose had built his reputation with explosives work and wouldn't be that sloppy. Either that or I had surprised him before he could plant anything. There was only one way to find out.
I put the keys to the Caddy on the roof above the driver's door, picked up my bags and retreated into the narrow alley next to the Spoon. I leaned against the alley wall and waited.
After five minutes I had a taker. A long-haired fan of squeeze sauntered by and gave the keys fish eyes. I smiled. He came back a minute later and leaned against the hood. He spotted me watching him from the alley.
"You don't want to steal that car," I said, warding off future guilt.
He got off the hood and squinted at me. "Is it yours?"
"Nope."
"A friend of yours?"