by Barry, Mike
“I can’t move,” he said, “I’ve lost circulation in my arms. Besides, how am I supposed to open the door?”
The man had not thought about it. He was so involved with the gun and murder that the simple logistics of the thing had escaped him. His face contracted with thought, “All right,” he said, “that’s a point. I’ll get out and go over and open that door near you and then you’ll come out.” He turned, opened the driver’s door and ducked to move his head below roof-level. “Don’t try any shit,” he said.
Wulff, poised behind the seat, brought all of his weight down on his buttocks and lashed out with a heel. He had been concentrating on this for several moments, gently working his legs up against the seat, getting his kneecaps almost to the top and then away so that he would have an angle of impact. Now, his foot, pointed sidewise, connected with the man’s neck just below the medulla. It was a sidewise impact, the man seeing it, already ducking away, trying to get his gun on Wulff. But the blow was stunning and he was unable to make coordination between hand and gun, his hand shaking on the trigger, finger palpitating against the trigger; then finally he got off a shot, ill-aimed, smashing into the rear window above Wulff’s head and the recoil of the shot atop the momentum of the kick sent him spinning all the way out into the dirt, head-first. Wulff yanked desperately at the lever on the left side trying to get at the man but his arms had almost been deadened by the handcuffs; from wrists to neck he felt little more than a numbing ache where his arms had been. The man hit the ground and rolled, came up.
He came up slowly with an expression of terror but when he saw what had happened, that Wulff was still battering helplessly at the door, struggling with the lever to get out, the terror went away, running out of him like blood and in place of it came a slow, eager smile which was like the one on the face of a child about to be offered an illicit gift. His eyes were stunned but slowly they came into focus looking at Wulff and then, as if he had all the time in the world the man paused, shook himself and began very casually to knock the dirt from his clothing, brushing from thigh to knee, knee to raised instep, instep to ground and only then, when his appearance had met some internal standard, did he look downward, spot the gun, pick it up and then walk slowly toward Wulff. There was a jauntiness to his step, a brightness to his carriage. He might have been walking forward to receive communion.
Wulff stopped trying to work on the lever two-handed. Instead he remembered an old trick from judo training at Fort Bragg many years ago: find the pressure-point. The least force is the greatest if applied at the proper juncture. He put his index finger into the space between the lever and the door and rather than trying to force it up through arm movement used just the tip of the finger, keeping the finger rigid, using his arm as pivot to ease it up.
It opened and the door unhinged just as the man with the gun was walking toward him, the gun already in the process of being levelled. Wulff inhaled, drew back both legs and in that moment before the door could click closed again, kicked out ferociously, slamming the door so hard that it almost broke free of its hinges to go spinning into the marshes beyond.
Instead, the opening door hit the man.
It hit him squarely across the stomach and he gasped, gave an uh! of surprise and pain and then went stumbling back, his eyes wheeling, his mouth opened like a dog’s, struck in the solar plexus. Barely able to breathe he dropped the gun in order to gather breath, the gun twinkling away from him and Wulff leapt upon him then, closing the ground in a heavy, chopping run which tore his own breath from him and then huddled against the man in brief but horrid embrace, looking once again for that pressure-point.
He had no arms, really, and the man, as hard-hit as he was, had two but there was the recollection of judo training once again to remind Wulff that what matteredwas not strength but leverage, not condition but distance … and if he could close upon the man tightly, face to face with him, hold him within that limited range, then he had cancelled out the only real advantage the man had. Distance for the enemy was strength; it would enable him to bring his arms into play, get at the gun again. But if there was no distance there would only be equality and Wulff closed that gap to less than an inch, breathing against the man, feeling the storming, gasping breath of the man hit in the plexus coming back at him. It was an intimacy of a sort, almost the kind of intimacy one might have with a woman, the bodies shoved against one another, engaging in an exchange which was horrid rather than graceful but equally total.
Wulff brought his arms, completely numb now, above his head and used them as a wedge to bring them down upon the man in a battering smash, the man cried out and tried to drop back a pace but Wulff straightened him with a knee to the jaw and now, looking at him in sudden anguish the man’s face exploded blood like a pulped fruit, running. He screamed, a scream of mingled hopelessness and pain as he realized that he would not be able to get to the gun before Wulff destroyed him. He struck out feebly and Wulff dodged the blow, brought a knee up again to the damaged plexus and the man fell to his side in the mud, gasping. He opened his mouth and tried to vomit but absolutely nothing would come out. Wulff was reminded of Versallo. “Son of a bitch,” the man said, grasping for the syllables like twigs, breaking them off, painfully, one by one. “You dirty son of a bitch.”
“The key,” Wulff said. He kept the man pinned, knee-to-thigh. “Get the key.”
The man shook his head back and forth in agony. Tears were in his eyes. “No,” he said and then struggled for breath once again, reaching deep into himself. Little sand puffs came up around them. “No. No.”
“Get the key and get these off,” Wulff said, “or I’ll hit you in the stomach again.”
The man’s eyes registered horror but still he shook his head. He was a tough one, all right; in full possession of himself he had been the toughest that Wulff had yet faced in this miserable, tormented city. Not at all like Versallo who was completely surface; shake him and he turned inside-out. “I won’t do it,” he said, “you’ll kill me.”
“I’ll kill you anyway,” Wulff said. “Don’t you think I will? Can’t you believe that.” And the man shook his head but his eyes said yes, I believe that, I believe you would kill me, and Wulff saw himself rimmed in those tiny, credulous eyes, unspeakably ferocious, leaning over the man. He saw how he must have looked and the effect was terrible. The man’s hands were fluttering all over his body, ducking and diving into various little crevices, his eyes now contracting against the sand. “Can’t find it,” he said hoarsely.
“Find it,” Wulff said and slapped him across the face. The man’s jowls quivered, the blow knocked ten years off him and suddenly he was fifty, haggard, squirming and struggling in his pockets like a little old man looking for a subway token. Then, in a palm like a pearl, there was a key. Wulff extended his braced arms. “Unlock them now,” he said.
The man resisted feebly, shaking his head again. “No,” he said, but it was only the squalling, balking resistance of the imbecile. Wulff brought him back to attention by slapping him on the face again. Now the man looked ashen, senile; the key dipped in his grasp and then he aimed it toward the handcuffs. Wulff held his arms there, waiting. They had moved beyond deadness to a strange, clinging warmth as if there were moisture or oozing fluid within. That was the next to last stage, he knew, before circulation failed completely and he would be left with gangrene regardless of what happened next. The man had braced him in this way deliberately, counting on getting Wulff eventually even should he fail. It had been a foolproof plan indeed but he simply had not counted on poor luck and lack of foresight. Somehow he got the key in. Wulff inverted his wrists and let the key turn.
The cuffs fell away; they bounced off the man’s forehead and then onto the ground. Wulff stood, walked away from the man then and walked twenty yards or so to where the pistol lay, picked it up, and put it in his pocket. Then he walked further from the man, behind a little hedge, the only touch of vegetation in this blasted area and there he stood awaiting for
the pain of returning circulation to hit him.
It took a minute or two for the blood to begin its motion, and for the next three or four minutes—as he had thought—he stood there absolutely helpless. The pain was exquisite and tormenting, so much so that if Wulff had been alone he would have screamed from the sensation much in the way that he screamed during sex. But screaming was the wrong thing to do. The man lying on the ground was in pain but he was not in the least stupid; if he deduced that Wulff was helpless he might, despite his own agony, chance making a rush at him, and Wulff, not able to move his arms without agony, doubted that he would be able to reach the gun. The man might have a chance of overcoming him. Smart of him to pick the gun off the ground anyway. He could have kicked the man into unconsciousness first but he did not want to do this. Wulff needed information.
At length, in little sobs and squirts of anguish the pain began to subside. He was able to focus his eyes once again, was able to move his arms, was able to see and care that the man uprange had dragged himself to his knees and was now regarding Wulff from that crouched, penitential position with a look of hate as profound as he had ever seen. Wulff walked in that direction, took the gun out of his pocket and pointed it at the man.
“All right,” he said, “now we’re going to talk.”
The man could breathe a little better; his voice was under control although very soft. “No we’re not,” he said.
“Yes we are.”
“Make me.”
“What’s your name?”
“I won’t tell you. I won’t tell you anything.”
“Why did you want to kill me?”
The man, amazingly, smiled. “Doesn’t everyone?” he said.
“I don’t know. I don’t keep statistics. You did. Why?”
“I’m not talking. I told you that.” The man weaved in the ground, got a foot underneath him. He half-rose.
Wulff stepped forward and hit him in the mouth. The man weaved and collapsed to the ground. Wulff kicked him in the shins.
“Come on,” he said, “talk. Tell me.”
On the ground, the man shook his head. His agony had transported him; his face, incredibly, held confidence. “No,” he said, “we won’t talk.”
“We’re going to sooner or later. Why not now? Who sent you? Did Wilson send you himself? Is this a setup?”
The man held himself in frieze. “I won’t tell you,” he said.
Wulff reached out, feeling the restored circulation in his arm, seized the man by the collar and dragged him neatly upwards to face level. “You’re going to talk,” he said. “Otherwise I’m going to kill you. You know that, don’t you? You know I’m serious.”
Sweat was all over the man’s face and pain had long since given the skin an impacted density but his voice was low and controlled. “You killed Versallo,” he said, “because of that I was going to kill you. I still would if I had the chance. You know that.”
“You worked for Versallo?”
“No more,” the man said. “I’ve told you all I’m ever going to.”
“Who gave you the car? The uniform? Who set this up? Who paid off Wilson? Is Wilson in on it?”
The man kept that expression on him. His lips were set. “I’ve never had a wife,” he said. “I have no family, no children, I’ve never been able to enjoy a normal sex act with a normal woman, everything I’ve had was lent to me by other men for whom I was working. But I have one thing and that’s honor. You can’t take that away, Wulff and you know it. You’d have to kill me. You will kill me, but I won’t talk.”
Looking at him, Wulff saw it. He knew that the man was telling the truth. He could kill the man but he could not break him. If nothing else this man had that, and looking at him, seeing the stubbornness, something close to the divine in it—if only for the most profane of purposes—Wulff could feel admiration. The man had strength. If nothing else he had that will, that interior which had to be respected. No wonder, he thought, that Versallo had used him. Versallo knew what manner of avenger he would have.
Wulff looked at the man and he looked away and he realized that he could not kill him. Killing was all right, although the one of Versallo had turned him inside out for a while in its sheer brutality and horror. Still, killing was all right, it was a necessary means to an end and dealing at this level of the culture it was often the only effective tactic. But you killed only for gain. You could not kill in a vacuum, simply for the pleasure of killing because that made you no better, in fact it made you worse than them, because for them as well killing was only an administrative act, part of the operating equipment of a business. No, he could not do it. Wulff turned in disgust, broke open the gun, removed the cartridges left and threw it in the hedge. Behind him, the man drew in a deep, groaning breath and then expelled it as laughter. Wulff did not want to look at his face. He was not ready for that, not just yet.
A car slewed into the yard in one shrieking slide, a Buick Electra 225, and three men in suits and hats came out of it quickly, lightly. All of them held guns and all of them looked confident. Wulff, caught short, without a weapon, could do nothing. He stood there and then in utter disgust, spread his palms.
Damaged as he was, his assailant was now laughing. The tallest of the three men turned that way and the laughter stopped. “Randall, you stupid son of a bitch, you can’t do anything right,” the man said and Randall looked at the ground. “You really fucked this one up,” the man said, shook his head, looked at Wulff, looked away. “What a fuckup, Randall,” he said, and then he nodded to the two others and they closed quickly. Wulff felt swift and sure hands upon him and then, quickly, he was bound.
“Personally,” the man who had been speaking said, “I’d like to kill both of the bastards right here but orders are orders. So let’s take them in.”
Wulff felt himself being prodded toward the Electra. Randall, being handled more roughly, was clouted behind the ear by the man guarding him, fell into the back in a screaming dive.
The rest of them got into the Electra, roomy and cavernous inside, air-conditioning clamoring away. And the three men brought them in.
Chapter 20
Calabrese knew that Randall was going to fuck up. Of course he was going to fuck up; the man always had, anyone who worked for Versallo was a loser from the start. Versallo ran a lousy operation even though, for some reason, he had a lot of employees and got loyalty from them. The sympathy felt for the man who is really soft inside, Calabrese decided. Still, he had to give Randall enough rope. If this was going to work out in the optimum way, then he at least had to give Randall the opportunity to do the job. But Calabrese took no chances. You did not get where he was, become what he had become, by working on any margin at all.
He sent men to trail Randall.
Now it had worked out just as he had feared it would. Here they came up the drive, past the guardhouse, the Electra filled with bodies, the guard already reporting over the intercom phone that not only Randall but Wulff had been brought back in the car. That meant only one thing, that Randall had fucked it up. Because if he had not, Wulff would have already been dead, the following soldat would have noted that with pleasure, would have disposed of Randall as per their instructions and would then have cleaned out of the area. But their instructions otherwise were explicit, and the soldat did not get or keep their positions by being creative. If Randall had not done the job, disposedof Wulff within an hour … pick them both up and bring them here.
The trouble was, Calabrese thought, that old sayings were true ones: the only way to be sure of getting a job done the way you wanted it was to do it yourself. He should not have dispatched Randall on this errand. It was too dangerous and the man’s record which Calabrese had studied carefully indicated that he was beyond his depth. Still, it had seemed too easy; he could not have really passed up what fell into his lap. Here was a chance to get rid of Wulff, who was a source of much despair to Calabrese, with minimum risk. He would not even have to use one of his own men. His
own men would be tied only to disposition of Randall, which was routine work. But now look at it. Gloomily he watched the men spill from the Electra, Wulff bound up, yet somehow still strangely possessed of himself just as Calabrese would have known him to be, Randall showing all the signs of a bad beating, staggering from the car, being supported by two of the gunmen as he almost fell. That had been some beautiful job Randall had done, all right. Instead of being killed by Calabrese’s men, he had been saved by them. Son of a bitch.
Calabrese went back to his desk and waited. The instructions were explicit, bring up Wulff, dispose of Randall at once. It would have to be done on the grounds here but in a clean, efficient fashion. He wanted nothing more to do with Randall; he had had only one potential purpose and had failed. Now the thing was to make sure that he was dead. Wulff on the other hand he wanted to see. He had hoped that he would never have this confrontation but as he waited for the men to bring the man up he succumbed to a weird anticipation. Yes, it was true. He had actually been waiting to see this man for a long time. It may have worked out for the best after all, because he badly wanted to see the man.
He wanted to see the man who had killed Cicchini, killed Marasco, smashed up a townhouse, sunk a freighter, bombed out the Paradise in Vegas, cut up half of Havana too. This was a remarkable man; he should not, after all, have the opportunity of meeting him taken away. Everything for the best, Calabrese thought, without irony. Randall had done him a favor after all.
He would see the son of a bitch.
The two soldat who had been accompanying Randall came in with Wulff, having switched. One would be sufficient to dispose of Randall in his condition, the soldat had decided, and Calabrese would want two men in the room with him at all times while he dealt with this one. That was good thinking. That showed the kind of independent thought and ability to make individual decisions which Calabrese tried to drill into his troops, to take a little initiative, share some responsibility. More than anything else, he thought, it was the secret of his power. You had to know how to run a shop and when to run it, but you also had to know how the hell to delegate authority. Failure to understand that simple fact had destroyed most of the organization throughout the country … might finish off his, he thought grimly, after he could no longer oversee it. “Sit down,” he said to Wulff.