Lowland Rider

by Chet Williamson

  They had traveled what Rags estimated to be three or four blocks, when a light brighter than the dim blue globes began to shine somewhere up ahead and to the side. A spur, Rags thought, remembering the term his grandfather, who had been a porter on the Southern Central, had used. A spur, probably unused for years and years. And suddenly he thought, what am I doing down here? It had begun as curiosity, to assure himself that the worst he suspected about Baggie was true. And now that that curiosity had brought him into a situation he didn't want to be in, he found it impossible to turn around and walk back to the station. What was the matter with him? Why was he here? And what if she was taking that thing in the bag to Enoch? Sweet Jesus, what then?

  Nevertheless, he followed.

  And at last he peered around an archway of stone, and saw Baggie on her knees before a man dressed all in white whom Rags knew could only be Enoch. Rags didn't know, however, where the light inside the spur was coming from, that light that shone on Enoch's smiling face, illuminated Baggie's wiry talons that plucked from the bag, as a falcon snares a mouse, a small and mewling form that was neither dog nor cat nor rat, but which bled as profusely as any other animal when the woman's long and filthy nails raked across the gleaming whiteness of its extended throat.

  And to try and drive the sight away, Rags wondered over and over again, where is that light coming from?

  And as he turned and ran away into that safe, sweet darkness, he tried to keep thinking, where is that light coming from?

  Where is that Light coming from?

  CHAPTER 28

  "Virgil, you don't want to be an asshole, do you?"

  Duke Sinclair hated to be called Virgil. He'd hated it ever since he found out it was his name.

  "I mean, I think we'd be a whole lot better off if you'd just tell us what the hell this shit is all about . . ."

  The voice went droning off again as Sinclair tried to concentrate on his surroundings, tried to keep from answering anything stupid or incriminating. He looked around the room, and saw that nothing had changed in all the hours since they'd kept him here. The walls were still institutional green, the chairs were still heavy metal with padded, dark green backs, the table over which Detective Barton now leaned toward him for the hundredth time was surfaced with that dark gray, claylike crap that you could leave marks in with your fingernails.

  "Virgil!" The voice made him raise his head. "It's four in the fucking morning, Virgil. I've been talking to you, and I'm getting tired of talking to you."

  "Well, I'm getting tired of having you talk to me." Sinclair was pissed. It had all come off wrong. Fucking Montcalm. First of all they'd brought him to the Midtown South precinct station, where he didn't know a goddam soul, they'd kept him in a holding cell for hours, said they'd let him call an attorney "if he really thought he needed one," by which they meant if you do, asshole, we'll know you're in it deep. So he didn't. He thought he could dumb it out, stick to his original story. He wasn't so sure anymore. He was sleepy as hell, and when he got sleepy he was afraid he might say something he shouldn't.

  There was still the gun he had put in the guy's hand. There was still that.

  Detective Barton leaned back against the wall and sighed. "Okay, Virgil—"

  "And stop calling me Virgil. Call me Duke, or Officer Sinclair."

  "I don't think you'll be an officer for long. And your mama named you Virgil."

  "Fuck . . ."

  "Fuck your mama?"

  Sinclair sat up straighter in his straight-backed chair. "Listen, whitey, don't try and pull that brother shit with me. You white guys try and sound like us, you sound like dickheads."

  Barton nodded his round, huge head. "Okay, Virgil. Officer Sinclair. I tried. I tried to be nice, and it didn't work. You want to talk to a brother, you can talk to Tyrone."

  Sinclair snorted a laugh. "Ty-rone. Shit.”

  “Tyrone—or Detective Jackson—does not like crooked cops. Tyrone especially does not like crooked TA cops, since he doesn't like TA cops to begin with."

  "Fuck, man, I know what this is. This is the good cop—bad cop routine. I know this, hell, I done it. Big nigger comes in, tries to scare me, rough me up, and you say hold it, Ty-rone, and then you tell me you can keep Ty-rone from killing me, all I have to do's tell you the whole truth, which I already told you, so it's not gonna do you a little white dick's worth of good, okay?"

  "Tsk tsk tsk. You have got one hell of an unquenchable spirit there, Virgil. I just hope it doesn't get you into any trouble. With Ty-rone." Barton sidled to the door and opened it. "Detective Jackson?" He stepped out of the way. He had to. Tyrone Jackson looked like a walking mountain. His skin was as shiny and black as coal, he stood well over six feet tall, and had the build of a power lifter. The wire-rimmed glasses he wore should have softened his appearance, but instead they enlarged his eyes, making them look more yellow and more menacing.

  Sinclair chuckled, but it trembled more than he wanted it to. "Oh man…" he sighed. "You lost out not calling this one Bubba."

  Jackson looked at Barton. "What has he told you?" There was not a trace of street dialect in the voice, which was soft and fat-sounding.

  "Nothing," Barton replied. "Virgin territory. You want me to stay?"

  Jackson shook his head, and Barton walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  "So what's it gonna be?" Sinclair asked. "You gonna use a cattle prod, or wire my testicles now or what?"

  "Later." Jackson didn't smile. "You can just tell me everything now and save us a lot of trouble.”

  “You don't sound black."

  Jackson passed a hand across his cheek and held his fingers up to Sinclair. "It doesn't come off." Sinclair smiled, and tried to look cocky. Jackson didn't smile at all. "I've been sniffing around about you. Word on the street is that you're not exactly an upstanding officer. Word is that probably you're on the take. Maybe on the take from more than one customer. Now when I hear that a cop is on the take from one person, or group of people, I'm not too concerned. You make enemies out there… down there, in your case… and people are likely to bad-mouth you. But when I hear it consistently, such word of mouth is enough to convince me that I have a crooked cop on my hands."

  Jackson walked behind Sinclair and rested his hands on Sinclair's shoulders. Sinclair shuddered. The fingers felt like baling wire.

  "I don't like crooked cops. They stink. They stink bad. I don't often get to talk to crooked transit cops because they deal with their own. But because you shot Lawrence Devlin where you did… well, that means that you're ours. Now, I know you say that Devlin had a gun, but I don't believe that. I believe that you put that gun in his hand after you shot him. But I don't know why you shot him."

  "Hey, man, it's the truth. He pulled that fucking gun on me."

  "He pulled the gun on you. And why were you there?"

  "I . . . I had a locker there."

  "That's not what you told the officers. You told them that Devlin looked suspicious."

  "I was confused. Shit, they had me on the floor, the guy had just pulled a gun on me—"

  "You had just shot him—yes, I guess that would tend to make you confused."

  Sinclair pressed his lips together, determined to say nothing stupid.

  "Why did you have a locker there?"

  "I just . . . wanted a locker, that's all."

  "But there wasn't anything in it. You weren't carrying anything to put in it either. Were you just going to open it to make sure the air was still there?"

  Sinclair didn't answer.

  "Devlin was suspicious, though. At least you had that right. He was carrying some stolen keys. Master keys to the lockers. Which leads me to think that he wanted to get in one of those lockers very badly, what do you think?"

  "I . . . yeah, I guess maybe."

  "You guess maybe. You sure you didn't find out about Devlin stealing those keys and then maybe you followed him because you wanted what was in there as much as he did? You guess maybe that
?"

  “I…”

  Jackson's next words came with machine-gun rapidity. "And then you guess maybe you shot him because you wanted what was in there for yourself and you were going to put it in the locker that you had the key for? But then you guess maybe that you got caught? And you guess maybe that your story might have held water if you hadn't been caught with that key? You guess maybe you're a fucking son of a bitch liar and killer and thief?"

  Before Sinclair could respond, Jackson had snapped a cuff on his right wrist, yanked his arms behind his chair, and snapped the other on his left. Then Jackson pulled out Sinclair's chair, turned it toward him, and sat in another chair so that he faced Sinclair.

  "What the fuck you doing?" Sinclair yelped.

  "Interrogating." Jackson held up his big right hand for Sinclair to see, as though he were displaying a weapon. Then he pushed Sinclair's legs apart and shoved his fingers under Sinclair's crotch, keeping his thumb on top, against Sinclair's penis.

  "Whoa! Whoa!" Sinclair husked out, his breath coming faster and faster. He could feel the sweat forming on his forehead and upper lip. "You can't do that, man," he half-laughed, half-moaned. "This is so fucking illegal they'll rip your balls off."

  "But I'll have yours first. And I'm not going to rip anything. There'll be no permanent damage. Not a bruise, not a mark. Just a great deal of pain, unless you tell me the truth. And you will. It's just a question of how much you want to suffer first. And how tired my hand gets. But even if it does, I've got two of them."

  Jackson held the left hand up and made a fist. When he did, Sinclair felt as though the hand holding his genitals had made the move, and sobbed in anticipated pain. "Now wait, now wait… nobody does this, brother!"

  "I do. And I do it well. I could say I don't really enjoy this. But I do. All I have to do is keep in mind what you are. A crooked cop. And then I enjoy it." He gave a slight squeeze that would have toppled Sinclair out of his chair if Jackson hadn't held him with his free hand.

  Within ten minutes, Sinclair was telling as much truth as he knew into a tape recorder in the presence of Detectives Jackson and Barton. He told how Montcalm had set the whole thing up, had given him the gun to put into the dead man's hand. He said that he thought there had been a mistake, that Montcalm had not intended for him to shoot Lawrence Devlin, and that he thought maybe Devlin had found out about the money that Montcalm had said was in the locker.

  After Sinclair had finished, he was formally charged, and waived his right to call an attorney. He could do that, he decided, after he'd gotten some sleep. When he left the interrogation room, Jackson spoke to him. "You tell anybody about any coercion, they won't believe you. People don't do things like that. Besides, Detective Barton was with us all the time, and he saw nothing of the sort occur."

  When Sinclair left the room, Barton turned to Jackson. "You know this Montcalm?"

  Jackson shook his head. "Heard about him when I was sniffing around about Sinclair. Word is he's as crooked as the other, if not worse."

  "So who the fuck did he set Sinclair out to kill?”

  “I think we'd better get Sergeant Montcalm to give us that information."

  "You think he will?"

  Jackson smiled for the first time that morning. "I think he will."

  CHAPTER 29

  The phone call woke Bob Montcalm from a restless sleep. The previous day at headquarters had been nothing but a waste of time. He hadn't been able to concentrate on any of his desk work, and he couldn't make himself go down to Penn Station to see if Sinclair was where he was supposed to be. He could only assume that he was, trust him. Sinclair was a good guy after all. Sure, he'd been pissed when Montcalm had put the screws to him, but who wouldn't have been? Duke could be a pain in the ass at times, but Montcalm believed he'd always been straight with him. And after this killing, Duke Sinclair would have to be straighter than ever with Bob Montcalm.

  He had thought about going down to 34th Street, but what if Gordon was there and spotted him just as he was checking out Duke? No, better to let things go. Hell, in all likelihood Duke would get tired or hungry and eventually have to give up. And if he did, he did. Montcalm would get Gordon sooner or later, damned if he wouldn't.

  Still, he slept poorly, thinking about it all. He had hoped that Sinclair would call before he went to bed, would say, Yeah, I got him, no problem. Put the money in the locker and walked away. Nobody saw me.

  But Sinclair didn't call. Montcalm stayed awake in the dark until long after midnight, waiting for the phone to ring, and finally slept. But now, as the sound of the telephone threw him into wakefulness, he felt as though he had just closed his eyes for a moment. He glanced at the digital alarm clock as he reached for the phone. Five-thirty. It had to be Sinclair then, had to be.

  "Yeah," Montcalm said sleepily into the mouth-piece.

  "Bob?" It was a voice Montcalm knew, not Sinclair's, and in his groggy condition he could not put a face to it.

  "Yeah, who's this?"

  "Listen, Bob. They got Sinclair."

  A gobbet of phlegm lodged in Montcalm's throat, and he coughed it away. He felt cold inside. "They. . .? Who's. . ."

  "Got him for shooting a guy, janitor at Penn Station."

  A janitor? Jesus! "Who is this?"

  "Bob, I . . . you're maybe tapped." Rooney. Now he had it. It was Rooney. Rooney was always a friend. "But he spilled his guts. Told them you wanted it done. I don't know if they'll be coming for you, or if they'll just wait till you get in today. But I . . . thought you ought to know."

  The man he thought was Rooney said no more.

  Good old Rooney. He could always count on Rooney. Rooney knew what Montcalm would want to do.

  "Okay. Thanks." Montcalm hung up the phone and sat on the edge of the bed for a minute, thinking. Things had ripped. The whole fucking thing had fallen apart on him, the stuffing coming out all over the streets, all over the goddam corruption task force or whoever the hell it was that had gotten Sinclair to shit his pants. It had ripped wide open.

  It was all over.

  If he had said to hell with the money, if he had just followed that goddam Jesse Gordon to some lonely station somewhere and blown out his goddam brains —forget the money—then it would have been all right. His money would have been gone, but so would Gordon.

  But he couldn't have done it. He couldn't have killed anyone, not even Gordon, who he hated more than death, more than hell, more than that chickenshit Duke Sinclair who he hoped would be sliced open with a homemade knife the first prison he walked into. No, he couldn't have killed him. Even now, if he'd had Gordon in front of him and a gun in his hands, he couldn't have done it. He'd gotten Sinclair to do it because he couldn't, wasn't man enough, and Sinclair had fucked up, fucked up everything.

  Montcalm stood up, pulled on a pair of slacks over the underwear he slept in, and walked into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and looked into it, then closed it. He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, shaved with an electric razor, and splashed on after-shave lotion when he was done. Back in his bedroom, he finished dressing, loaded a .38 caliber police special with six cartridges, cocked the hammer, and very carefully wedged it into the small of his back, making as certain as possible that nothing would bump the trigger. Then he put on a light jacket and walked out of his apartment, leaving his keys behind.

  A soft summer drizzle was falling on the early morning streets, and Montcalm stood in it as he waited for a cab to drive past. He put his hand up to his head, touched the mist that had settled on his hair, and looked at his damp palm as though it were a mirror in which he could see his face. A cab came, and he gave the driver the address of Gina's apartment house. As it pulled away from the curb, Montcalm saw a police car round the corner and come to a stop, double-parked, in front of his building. They wouldn't even give him the grace to come in on his own. Or to go out.

  When the cabby let Montcalm off in front of Gina's building ten minutes later, Montcalm g
ave him seventy dollars, the total amount that was in his wallet. "You serious?" the cabby asked. Montcalm only nodded and walked away, barely hearing the driver's thanks, or the cab as it pulled back into the light traffic.

  Without hesitating, he walked into the lobby and pushed the button next to Gina's name. Gina Montcalm, he read. There was the heart of it: Gina Montcalm, and the events that had created Gina Montcalm. How did he think he could change her?

  Could even the house in Pennsylvania have done it? His love hadn't changed her, never could.

  Finally he heard her voice, distorted in the tinny speaker. "Who's that?"

  "It's me. Bob."

  "Bob?"

  "Let me in, Gina." There was a brief pause, and then the buzzer sounded at the lock. He pushed the door open and walked in. The Out of Order sign was no longer on the elevator, but he took the stairs, trudging up them slowly, as if he wore heavy weights on his feet. She had the door of her apartment open when he reached the fifth floor, and he smiled when he saw her. Her hair was tousled with sleep, but her eyes were clear. She looked young and innocent, and he loved her.

  "What is it, Bob?"

  "I had to see you, Gina, that's all. I just had to see you."

  "Well . . . come in. You want some coffee?"

  "No," he told her, following her in and walking to the couch. The room was a mess, as usual, but it didn't matter to him, and he picked up the magazines on the couch and set them on the coffee table, then fell back onto the cushions with a sigh. It was a nice apartment, he thought.

  "Can I . . . can I get you anything?"

  He shook his head. "Have you been all right?"