by Barry, Mike
Although not quite this way.
XII
Another hour, another room. Wulff wondered if this was what dealing with the junk business came down to: you lived in one miserable cell of a furnished room after another, the insides as interchangeable as the rage which was still beating away in his skull. One thing was sure: the merchants, the suppliers, the quiet men who stood at the top and away from all of this, they did not live in furnished rooms. They lived on estates or high floors or in sealed-up townhouses. Sometime, he decided, they should get down to the level of the enforcers or users and see what it was like to look at life from ground-level.
Then again, a lot of them had probably been there and were dedicating their lives to seeing as little of that reality as possible.
He got a little further into the downtown district, took a room there paying a week’s rent in advance and went to cover there. There was nothing to do, really, until tomorrow night. Staying outside could only undercut his position; he was quite convinced now that it was open season on Wulff and that everyone, everyone who had the price of a rifle was on the trail. The two back there had been bounty hunters; the streets would be crawling with them. Which only indicated one thing, of course. A lot of people were getting desperate.
Still, there was one thing which he had to do and he decided to get it over with. Telephone facilities were not a specialty of this house so he made his long-distance phone call from an odorous little booth in a candy shop downstairs. The owner looked at him nervously through the open glass of the booth, a scuttling, nervous little man, probably a refugee—wasn’t everyone in California?—from Brooklyn. From the traffic in the store and the way the owner kept on peering at him, Wulff decided that there was probably a small, not flourishing, numbers business being run out of this hole. All right. So what? What would a candy store be without a numbers operation? Nine-tenths of them would not be able to stay in operation for a week.
He called person-to-person collect. His party couldn’t afford it either but it was less of a hassle than to wrestle with coins. Williams’s wife got on and the operator got him through to Williams. Easier this way. He didn’t have to talk to the woman. She was a nice woman, he supposed, but she could hardly have enjoyed her husband’s involvement with Wulff.
David Williams had been the other patrolman in the car the night they took the call on Marie Calvante. He had come up the stairs after Wulff had not come out and for a minute had stood with Wulff, looking at the body, saying nothing. He must have known what had happened although Wulff had never discussed it with him.
He had thought that the black rookie patrolman was immature, naive, not really able to understand and deal with the reality which Wulff had recognized, but he guessed he had been wrong about that one at least. Williams had come to him in New York to offer his help with Wulff’s war; the man had on his own figured out why Wulff had left the force and what he planned to do next. I’ve got to stay inside the system, Williams had said, but that doesn’t make it real and it doesn’t mean that you’re not doing it a better way. I can help you though. Let me help you.
Williams had been sincere and he had meant business. Wulff had turned down the offer then, mostly because what he was doing was single-track, would have to keep on that way if he were to have any success at all, but Williams had nevertheless helped him at a crucial time by using the police department resources to dig up a detailed city survey on Peter Vincent’s townhouse. He had used the plans to go in through the gas lines and destroy that townhouse, had pulled Peter Vincent out of the wreckage and before he killed him gotten the information which had taken him to San Francisco. So Williams had helped. He had really helped. Maybe the man had a point: if you were going to go at it vigilante style it was always a good idea to have someone inside the system.
Williams got on the phone and in his high-pitched voice said hello. Wulff was running in luck for the first time since he had hit the Bay; the man could well have been on duty. Hours were irregular; there was no way as Wulff remembered well, to calculate even a week ahead which shift you’d be on. It led to a nice, ordered, regular, relaxed home-life is what it did, he thought bitterly, which was one of the reasons, until he had met a girl named Marie Calvante, he had thought that he would not marry until he retired.
“It’s me,” Wulff said.
“I figured it was you. I didn’t think anyone else would be calling long-distance person to person. Man, where are you? What have you been up to? You took New York by storm and then you left.”
“Oh? What happened?”
“You blew up that townhouse, didn’t you?” Williams seemed to giggle. “Man, I could get into some trouble if I was associated with that one. There are rumors that you have singlehandedly cut the traffic in half here.”
“That’s good.”
“You’re shaking up a lot of people, but you are playing some dangerous game.”
“I never expected anything else.”
“Where are you now?” Williams asked.
He had to trust the man. There had to be at least one person around who you could trust; also he needed help. He risked a cautious glance through the glass of the booth, observed that traffic in the candy store had suddenly become very brisk. Three juveniles had come in and were conversing sullenly with the proprietor, hands in pockets. It occurred to him that wedged in the booth as he was he was an inviting, open target: he would have to watch this. “I’m in San Francisco,” he said.
“Beautiful San Francisco. So then what?”
“I need some help,” Wulff said, “some information.”
“I’d love to oblige but I can’t fly out to San Francisco just tonight. If I had known—”
“It’s all right,” Wulff said. “I told you in New York, this is a singlehanded operation at least for a while. I don’t want to involve you or see you get hurt. Not now, anyway. Maybe later—”
“Cut that,” Williams said. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want to buy some explosives,” Wulff said, “and I didn’t think that the thing to do was to go into the Yellow Pages. I want you to find out particulars for me.”
Williams on the continental line laughed. “You are seized by that idea,” he said. “Don’t tell me you are planning to do in San Francisco what you did here?”
“Something like that,” Wulff said cautiously. The juveniles had now ringed the proprietor whose glasses glittered faintly in the reflecting light. They seemed to be pushing him while at the same time talking in low intense voices. Good Lord, had he walked into the middle of a robbery or worse? Any second they were going to notice him in this booth and then what?
“I just don’t know,” Williams was saying. “You want a legitimate source of supply?”
“Yeah, if possible. But I’ll take it any way I can,” Wulff said. “That’s up to you.”
“And where am I supposed to get this information?”
“A New York cop can get hold of anything,” Wulff said, which in a way was the truth. He thought quickly of his days on the narcotics squad. Yes indeed, there was nothing you couldn’t get hold of if you were willing.
“Well, I’ll see what I can see,” Williams said sounding doubtful. “Where am I supposed to reach you on this?”
“You’re not,” Wulff said. “I’ll phone you back.” The scene outside had taken a completely ominous turn. The proprietor had sunk completely out of eye-level and two of the youths were leaning over him. The third was watching the front and back in a quick reconaissance and as he did his eyes fell across the booth and Wulff.
“I’ll call you back in two hours,” Wulff said rapidly and hung up. He put a finger on the handle, poised against the door then, looking at the kid.
The kid had already turned and was quickly telling the others what he had seen. Wulff hesitated for only an instant before pulling the handle into the booth. There was a bad moment, bringing the door against him as he was, when he was wedged into the booth and exit would have been impossible b
ut he got past that point and came out quickly, reaching for his gun.
The kids appeared to have no weapons. It was an intimidation kind of thing. They were going in barehanded, which meant on the one hand that they were clever because carrying made it armed robbery right away, but they were stupid in that they were not prepared for emergencies. Wulff had the gun out and levelled on the nearest one even before they could complete the turn. The circle broke open and he could see the proprietor lying on the floor, a small, fine spider of blood coming from his bald scalp.
“Let’s get out of here!” one of them said and the three of them went for the door. The gun, as always, had made the balance; if they had not seen the gun they probably would have jumped him. In his condition they would have had a good chance too. He held the gun as they ran for the door, debating for a long, agonized instant and then he let them go. They thudded into the street. He wanted to shoot them, in fact he wanted to kill, but it was just not worth it. It would get him involved at a level that now, with much greater stuff on the line, he could not afford to take.
He knelt over the old man on the floor quickly, checked him out. The man had little apparent damage, no skull fracture, and even as Wulff prodded him gently he regained consciousness. He looked up at Wulff with dread leaking from the pores of the old seamed face.
“Don’t,” he said, “please don’t—”
“It’s all right. You’re all right.”
“Take anything. Take everything. Just don’t hit me again.”
Too complicated. He could stay knelt there and explain to the old man that he was his rescuer, not an assailant, but what was the point? The old man would survive this one; in two days or two months the three kids or another group would come in hunting again, but nothing to be done about that. Once you were knocked over you were meat on the rack. Wulff stood. The old man saw the gun dangling from his hand and began to whimper. He rolled on the floor, hands crossed in front of his face.
“Please,” he said, “don’t shoot. I’m seventy-three years old; I’m going to die soon anyway. It’s not as if I’ll live a long life—”
Wonderful. Wulff turned and ran from the store. In San Francisco as in New York, junk had changed everything: this old man felt that he was going into the combat zone every morning when he unlocked his candystore. Nothing was being held in place any more. Everything was falling apart. He bolted into the street. A small crowd had already gathered; as they saw him then, the gun still unconsciously in his hand, the urgency in his gestures, they scattered, screaming. He raced through them. In the distance he heard a siren.
The old man, apparently not injured seriously at all, had gotten to his feet and was at the door. “Stop him!” He shouted, “stop him, stop him!” Thirty seconds ago he had begged for mercy, gotten it, now he wanted Wulff arrested. That was gratitude for you.
Nothing to do. He turned and ran. Disgust filled him with every intake of breath. It was not enough to have every clown, bounty hunter and hit man in the area crawling after him. That was not satisfying enough. He needed, it seemed, more attention yet. Now he would have the cops too. Because he had happened to make a phone call from the right place.
Never say that he would lead a lonely existence. Shit, Wulff thought. He ran. He turned a corner, putting the gun away in full stride. The siren was closer but approaching from the other direction.
Scream of tires and that patrol car had braked. In the distance he heard another siren, different direction. Then another. People on the street looked at him with curiosity. He forced himself to return to a normal pace, turned another corner, moved out of there.
More sirens. Every cop in town was going to get in on this one. The Severos, it seemed, could carry on their lives without harassment, but when you got down to the really important stuff like a candystore being knocked off, the cops were out in force. They would take all credit for averting the robbery.
Police work was always very good at mopping-up after the deed had been done. The police might not prevent crime but they sure as hell could catalogue it. Wulff, at normal stride, walked the five blocks back to his new rooming house cursing. There was no question about it; events were running at a flood. He wondered if he was still, in the last analysis, being a cop: attracting and creating crimes rather than eliminating them.
XIII
Forty miles north of there eight men sat at a table, some of them with hands clasped, listening to a ninth at the head who was talking. The speaker was almost indistinguishable in appearance from the others, yet he was listened to with the kind of attention which bespoke power. Some of the men at the table, in fact, found it impossible to confront him at eye level but instead like nervous students stared at their fingers or the floor intermittently.
“This thing has been completely fucked up,” the man whose name was Anthony said. Anthony, never Tony and leave my last name out of this altogether. “I don’t like it.”
He paused; the men shifted, looked at one another uncomfortably. “Can anyone explain this?” Anthony said.
There was another long, thick pause after which one of the men at the end of the table finally said, “It was just something that kind of got out of hand. We weren’t really warned—”
“What do you mean you weren’t warned?” Anthony said in a deadly voice, “there was a memo put out on this man which all of you in this room received.”
“He came so fast,” the man who had spoken said unhappily, “it just happened so fast—”
“This is intolerable,” Anthony said quietly. “This man should not have lasted here for half an hour. He’s managed to stay around for a lot longer than that. And now he knows far more than he ever ought to.”
“Severo,” a small man nearer the head of the table whispered, “Severo.”
“Severo has been taken care of,” Anthony said. “Nicholas Severo will not trouble us anymore, and in due course arrangements for the succession will be made. In the meantime however, the late Severo turned over enough information to our friend Wulff to put us in real trouble. Now I’m not here to talk, I’m here to listen. We’ve got a shipment moving in here tonight that might be worth more than a million dollars and which we’ve worked on for months.” He paused and looked at them one by one along the table. “Do we call it off?” he said.
No one answered. Men mumbled, licked their lips, shuffled feet. They might have been a group of junior copywriters being questioned by a vice president on the failure of a campaign. If Anthony was there to listen, not to talk, they found it hard to believe.
Anthony rubbed his palms together and just for a moment the rage came through the blank surfaces of his cheeks. “There’s a question on this table,” he said, “and I want it answered. Do we call off this shipment?”
The man who had spoken first said, “No, I don’t think we should.” He seemed to shudder with the audacity of this and turned from Anthony.
“That’s good,” Anthony said, “at last we have an answer. We have a respodent, an answerer. Why shouldn’t we call it off? A million dollar shipment in which five hundred men and half a year have been tied up and which we could lose if we don’t take it tonight. Tell me why we should go ahead.”
The man realized, finally, that Anthony was waiting for him to say something. “Because we’ll have everything covered,” he said unhappily. “We’ll have it ringed with a hundred men if necessary, full arsenal, everything. He may know where it is and what’s happening, but he just won’t be able to get by. There’s no way he can get by. If he shows up there we’ll kill him.”
“Ah,” Anthony said, “that’s fine. You’ll kill him.”
“Well, he can’t stop things from going through,” the man said defensively, spreading his hands. “How the hell is he going to stop us? If he exposes himself he’ll be a sitting duck. I tell you, this thing is going to be ringed.”
“Don’t you think he’ll know that?” Anthony said quietly.
The man jerked in his chair, shook his head. Being the s
peaker had definitely been the wrong idea, he seemed to realize; it had given Anthony a target. The other seven looked straight ahead, seemed quite glad that the speaker had taken them at least momentarily off the hook. Any one of the hundreds of people who lived and died by these eight men would have been surprised to see them now. Terror seemed to ooze from the close, dense spaces of the room.
“I suppose he’ll figure that out,” the man said.
“So we’ve got a lunatic at large,” Anthony said. “This guy has killed at least ten men, some of them important. He’s starting to hit us the way he did New York.”
The speaker seemed to decide that in for a dollar was the same as in for a dime at this point. “I think he’ll show,” he said.
“You do?”
“Yes I do. I think that he’ll try to take it over. He’s gone too far to stop now. He’s serious about this business of his, that much we know. He won’t be stopped by thinking about the security.”
“A dedicated man,” Anthony said dryly.
“That’s right. We don’t know much about him yet, but I think we know that.”
Anthony shook his own head and stood. He looked down the table, a slow, hot light coming from his eyes, and the men seemed to quiver and shrink further yet. The one who had spoken became interested in his hands, looked at them with seeming fascination.
“All right,” he said, “we’ll go through with it. But you’re being held personally responsible. All of you in this room.”
No one said anything. Anthony put his palms flatly on the table, leaned forward.
“Things in the Bay area have been fucked around for a long time,” he said. “We let you get away with a lot of things mostly because we’re interested in cool and quiet, and you had us convinced that if anything out of order came along you could handle it.”
He paused. “But you can’t handle it,” he said. “This is the first crisis and all of you lose. When you came up against it you couldn’t handle it.”