W Is for Wasted

by Sue Grafton

  The two men came together in a wide pool of shadows between two streetlamps. The path was lined with shrubs. A patchwork of rustling leaves created shifting patterns of light, adequate for conversational purposes but preventing either man a clear view of the other’s face. The damp night breeze coming off the lagoon smelled sulfurous.

  Linton wore the same dark wool overcoat he’d worn at their earlier meeting. Pete’s sport coat was inadequate for the evening chill, and he envied the other man’s comfort. He was still debating how to play the occasion, so he offered Linton the first move, saying, “What’s this about?”

  “Mary Lee Bryce quit her job. Game’s over.”

  “Nice if you’d told me before I went out to the lab.”

  “I left two messages on your office machine, telling you the deal was off.”

  “When was this?”

  “Two o’clock and again at five.”

  “I wasn’t in the office yesterday. If I’d known she quit, I wouldn’t have put myself out.”

  “Too bad. I want my two grand back.”

  “No can do. I went in with her badge as agreed. You ask your computer techie and he’ll show you the trail she left.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I can’t prove it standing out here. You prove I didn’t.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Unlike yourself,” Pete said.

  “I gave you two grand for nothing and I’d like it back.”

  “No need to repeat yourself, son. Money’s gone. You want it back, you’re out of luck.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Something came up.”

  “That’s it? Something came up and now you keep my two grand?”

  “I did my part, so, technically speaking, you owe me two more. Under the circumstances, I’m giving you a break. Let’s consider it payment in full.”

  “For what? I told you I didn’t need you. If you did it regardless, why should I be out the dough?”

  Pete lifted his hands. “Hey, I’m done and I’m gone. Your money’s gone as well, so how about we call it square? I don’t owe you and you don’t owe me. Anything I have on you stops right here.”

  Pete was dimly aware of the panhandler standing in a wash of darkness while the argument went on. Fellow must have decided to forgo his campsite and come have a look. In the dark, Pete couldn’t make out the red cap or the red shirt, but he knew the man’s size and body type and the lighter block of his face.

  “Anything you have on me?” Linton said, shrilly. “What would that be?”

  Pete kept his voice low. He was reasonably certain Linton had no idea there was a witness to their fight. “I know more than you think and I’ll use it if I have to. To be honest about it, I’d prefer not.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “I’m just pointing out you got your money’s worth. With that woman gone, you can blame her for anything. She quits in a huff and before she leaves, she trashes your work. Same story plays and I came up with it. That’s what you paid me for.”

  “What good does that do me now?”

  “If you’re smart you’ll wipe the slate clean and dump everything you’ve done.”

  “I don’t want to dump it. Why should I do that?”

  “To cover your butt. Keep that data, she’s got your nuts in a vice. Now she’s unemployed, you think she won’t come after you? She’s a loose cannon. What’s she got to lose? She can accuse you, point fingers—whatever the hell she wants and you’re a sitting duck.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I might not, but she does. Now see here? Lookit. I’ll do you one more favor. This for the same two thousand dollars you were kind enough to shell out. She’s been in touch with a reporter. Are you aware of that? Journalist who has connections at the New York Times. Fellow’s done his homework. They’ll blow you out of the water.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “Fine. Then our conversation’s over and I’ll be on my way,” Pete said, keeping his tone light.

  Linton reached out and grabbed his arm, saying, “Hey! Don’t turn your back on me. I’m not finished.”

  Irritably, Pete flung off his hand. “The hell you aren’t.”

  “You know what? You’re more dangerous than she is,” Linton said. “She’s righteous. You’re corrupt.”

  “I got no interest in you. We did business and now it’s done. End of story.”

  “What if you flap your big mouth?”

  “To who? Nobody gives a shit. She might nail you, but I got no dog in that fight. Trouble with you is you think you’re more important than you are.”

  “Who’s the reporter? I want his name.”

  “Too bad.”

  Linton reached into his overcoat pocket and pulled out a gun, racking back the slide. Pete lifted his hands in a show of submission, but in truth he was more curious than cowed. What was this about? Linton didn’t seem to know what came next. This was apparently his big move and now what? Pull a gun on a fellow, you better be prepared to shoot.

  Pete dropped his gaze to the weapon. He couldn’t see it clearly in the faulty light, but he was guessing it was a .45. Pete could feel the comforting bulk of his Glock in the shoulder holster under his left arm. He knew how to draw and fire a lot faster than Linton did. “Where’d you get that?” he asked.

  “My father-in-law.”

  “Hope he shared some safety tips.”

  “He’s out of town. I borrowed it.”

  “Trigger pressure’s tricky if you’re not used to it.”

  “Like this?”

  Linton altered the angle of the barrel and fired once. Both men jerked instinctively at the blast. The cartridge popped up to his right like a jumping bean.

  Pete could tell the good doctor was showing off, making a point about how serious he was. While Pete wasn’t worried, his attention was fully focused on the man in front of him. There was something odd at work: Linton role-playing, trying on an alternate personality; tough guy, an overeducated Al Capone. Linton Reed was on unfamiliar ground but getting hyped on the power. The question was how far he’d be willing to push. Pete suspected this was the first time he’d brandished a gun and he liked the feeling it gave him. You’d think a man in his position would be fully accustomed to deference, but this was dominance of another sort.

  Linton said, “What’s the reporter’s name?”

  “What difference does it make?” Pete asked, irritably.

  “I’m asking you a simple question.”

  “Why don’t you go ask her? She’s the one in cahoots with him.”

  Linton backed up a step and raised his arm. The weight of the weapon caused his hand to wobble ever so slightly. “I’m warning you.”

  “Hey, fine. You win. Guy’s name is Owen Pensky for all the good it’ll do you.”

  He thought Linton might put the gun away since his demand had been met, but the good doctor wasn’t ready to concede. It was possible he didn’t know how to make a graceful exit. Pete was trying to figure out how to resolve the standoff before it got out of hand. Pete was close enough that if he’d kicked upward, he might have been able to propel the gun from Linton Reed’s grip, but his Marfan’s made such a move impossible. Whatever he intended to do, he knew he better do it quickly before Linton had time to think. If the gun’s safety was still off and Pete made a move, there was a chance Linton’s trigger finger would tighten reflexively, causing the gun to fire, but Pete couldn’t worry about that.

  He stepped to one side, put his hands together like a club, and brought it down abruptly on Linton’s outstretched hand. The blow failed to break his hold on the gun, but it did catch him by surprise. Pete swung a fist and Linton stepped aside more quickly than Pete thought possible. Pete swung again and missed, only this time, he stumbled into Linton and his momentum took both men down. Pete’s fall was buffered by his landing on the other man while the doctor’s fall was cushioned by his heavy coat. His
right hand went down, the butt of his gun hit the pavement, and the impact jarred the gun loose. The weapon flew off and landed on the path three feet away. As Linton rolled over onto his side and stretched to retrieve the gun, Pete lunged across him and knocked it out of reach.

  Pete pushed himself upward. Staggering to his feet, he pulled the Glock from his shoulder holster and aimed it squarely at Linton’s chest. “Leave it where it is.”

  Linton caught sight of the Glock and paused. Pete doubted the good doctor could even identify the Glock as such, but he must have recognized the ease with which Pete handled it. Linton pulled himself together awkwardly and stood up, brushing at his pants.

  Pete said, “Back up.”

  Linton stepped back a pace. Pete moved to his left, bent down casually, and picked up the errant handgun, which he holstered for safekeeping. His own gun he kept pointed at the doctor. Now that Pete was in control, he felt better. He had both guns; Linton’s weapon in his holster, his own held loosely in his right hand. He didn’t want this to escalate because the odds weren’t that good for either one of them. He was older and more experienced, but he was poorly coordinated and unaccustomed to physical exertion. Linton was the shorter of the two—five nine to Pete’s six foot two—and heavier by fifteen pounds, his stocky build a sharp contrast to Pete’s long-boned frame.

  Linton said, “Give me my gun.”

  “Kiss my ass. I’ll mail it to you at the lab.”

  “Give it to me! I told you it belongs to my father-in-law. I have to put it back.”

  “Not my problem.”

  Linton snatched at Pete’s sport coat. Pete brought the butt of his Glock down on Linton’s wrist and then gave him a one-armed push. Linton righted himself and launched a sharp two-handed blow that knocked Pete to the ground. Still hanging on to his gun, Pete scrambled forward and wrapped his arms around Linton’s legs, leaning into him. Then Pete took him down. It wasn’t a tackle so much as a slow toppling as Linton was thrown off balance by the weight dragging at him like a bag of sand. Inadvertently, Pete’s trigger finger contracted as Linton went down. The weapon fired and the casing ejected into the dark. The shot had gone wide, but Pete’s ears rang with such intensity he was rendered momentarily deaf.

  Linton took advantage of the moment to punch Pete in the side of the head. Neither man was in shape for a fight, and their clumsy blows and kicks left both floundering. In reality, they fought for less than two minutes, though from Pete’s perspective, the fistfight seemed to go on forever, his own responses weakening as Linton continued flailing. He managed to shove Pete away from him, then lashed out with a savage side kick to the knee.

  Surprised by pain, Pete lost his grip on his gun. He heard it hit the pavement, but he was off balance and was dismayed to find himself falling into the shrubs. Grimly, he extracted himself, aware of how ridiculous the entire encounter was. He knew no good would come of it. He might not lose, but neither would he win.

  Linton stepped back, as though declaring a momentary truce, which was fine with Pete. He was winded. He hurt. His lungs burned with every heave of his chest. He made a dismissive gesture and leaned forward, head hanging while he rested his hands on his knees. “Whoo. Forget it. This is nuts. I’m outta here,” he said.

  He righted himself and dragged a hand down his face, feeling grit and sweat. He wiped his damp hand on his pants and straightened his jacket.

  Linton said, “Look what I got.”

  Pete didn’t catch the words. His scarf was missing and he was intent on finding it. He spotted it lying on the path behind him, picked it up, and hooked it around his neck, and then turned toward the street where his car was parked. There was no shame in withdrawing from a battle that was pointless from the get-go and had already played out. That was it for him. He was bushed. It would take him days to recover as it was. He hadn’t gone four feet when he heard the shots.

  He looked down with astonishment. A fiery arrow of pain pierced his left side. Pete didn’t see the muzzle flash because his back was turned when Linton fired. Someone looking on might have caught that quick flame of superheated incandescent gas emerging from the barrel in advance of the slug, that small penetrating missile followed by the sudden intense burst of light as gas and oxygen ignited. A pungent smell hung in the air.

  Pete turned to Linton with amazement. “Why did you do that?”

  He saw that Linton held the Glock, which he must have snatched from the path while Pete’s attention was diverted. He shouldn’t have taken his eyes off the man, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He tallied his wounds, neither of which seemed devastating. Linton had shot him once in the side. A second bullet had grazed his right calf. It wasn’t his injuries, but the insult that stung, the violation of the rules of fair play. He’d given up. He’d thrown in the towel. You weren’t supposed to go after a guy once he’d done that.

  Pete shook his head, looking down at himself and then at Linton. “Help me out here. I’m hurt.”

  Linton gave Pete the once-over, his glance taking in the blood seeping through his pant leg. Even to Pete, the bleeding from the wound in his side didn’t amount to much.

  “You’ll be fine,” Linton said. His tone was light, with a touch of condescension, the sort of reassurance a specialist might offer a patient with a medical condition of no real consequence.

  He slipped the gun into his coat pocket and turned away, strolling toward the parking lot. His pace was measured. He wasn’t hurried. There was no panic that Pete could make out, though it seemed clear he wanted to get out of the area in the event someone had heard the shots and dialed 911. Pete could conceive of Linton as a man who’d always wondered what it would feel like to shoot another man down. It must have crossed his mind, the idle thought of someone who’d never done much of anything except pull the wool over other people’s eyes. It made a certain amount of sense. If Linton had been good at what he did, he wouldn’t have had to cheat. The gun established his superiority, making him better than he was. It was as simple as that.

  Pete felt a fine sheen of sweat break out on his face. He wasn’t sure he’d be fine at all. His early outrage had drained away and he wondered what kind of trouble he was in. Just like that, his vision crowded in on him and he toppled. The arms he flung out in front of him to slow his fall were useless. When his face hit the pavement, he registered little if any pain.

  Dimly, he realized he’d broken his nose. He hadn’t believed the good doctor would shoot him and yet here he was, down on the asphalt, a hole in his side and a stinging gash on his calf. His leg was the least of his concerns.

  When the bullet tore into him, a fragment of jacket lining had traveled into his flesh along with the slug. A large temporary cavity had bloomed and collapsed. That same slug had struck his rib cage, shattering bone before it veered off at an angle, taking a ragged zigzagging path through his descending colon. The trajectory of the lead had scarcely slowed when it nicked a far-flung tributary of his superior mesenteric artery no bigger than a piece of string, which began to pump out blood in a series of tiny spurts. Even if the bleeding had been caught, the resulting spill of fecal matter into his abdominal cavity would have overwhelmed his system soon afterward. None of this—the nomenclature, the knowledge of anatomy, or the acquaintance with the consequences of internal rupturing—was part of Pete’s thinking as he puzzled the sensations besetting him. He was intimately aware of the savage and destructive tunnel the pellet had plowed as it whipsawed through his organs, but he lacked the language necessary to express his dismay. It would fall to the coroner to translate the damage into its myriad elements, reducing fierce heat and sorrow to a series of dry facts as he dictated his findings, days later, in the morgue.

  Pain was a bright cloud that danced along Pete’s frame, expanding until every nerve ending jangled with its flame. He wondered where the other gun had gone. He’d pulled his Glock, thinking to deter the doctor, though the sight of it might well have egged him on. He felt something press against his
ribs and he wondered if the gun was under him. He closed his eyes. Mere seconds had passed when he heard the doctor’s car door slam. Headlights flashed across his eyelids, receding as Linton Reed backed his turquoise Thunderbird out of the space, turned the wheel, and pulled out of the parking lot.

  Pete rested. What choice did he have? All of his faculties were shutting down. He lost a moment, like nodding off and jerking awake again. When he opened his eyes, he saw boots. He angled his gaze, taking in the big fellow with his red baseball cap and his red flannel shirt. Pete longed to speak, but he couldn’t seem to make himself heard. This was his chance to say Linton Reed’s name, putting the blame for the shooting where it rightfully belonged. Tomorrow, when the panhandler read about his death, he could go to the police and tell them what the dying man had said.

  The big man hunkered beside him. His expression was compassionate. He knew as well as Pete did that he was on his way out. He leaned closer and for a moment, the two were eye to eye. The man reached out and slid an arm under him. Pete was grateful, thinking he meant to lift him and carry him to safety. It was too late for that, and Pete knew instinctively that any jostling would waken the pain that had faded to almost nothing. The man fumbled, turning him over onto his side. Pete wanted to shriek but he didn’t have the strength. He was aware of his watch sliding over his wrist. He felt the man pat his pants until he found the square of his leather wallet and slipped it from his pocket. The last conscious thought that registered was the man lifting the handgun from the holster, tucking it into the small of his back. Pete watched him amble away without a backward glance.

  There was no way Pete could rouse himself. Who knew dying could take so long? He was bleeding out; heart slowing, belly filling up with blood. Not a bad way to go, he thought. He heard the beating of wings, a nearly inaudible whisper and flutter. He felt quick puffs of wind on his face, feathery grace notes. The birds had come back for him, hoping he had something to offer them when, in fact, every kindly impulse of his had fled.