Damnation Street wab-3

by Andrew Klavan

  It also gave him a chance to try out the fat suit. It worked well. He'd augmented it with some foam, covered it with the Hawaiian shirt, made himself look like a real lard-ass to blend in with the tourists. And the way the Saracen sat invisible in the vest's pouch-that was perfect. No one could have seen it or felt it there.

  In fact, the whole thing had given him fresh confidence after a period of self-doubt. The mistakes he'd been making recently had made him feel that maybe his luck was deserting him. This, though-this had gone off exactly as planned. He left a trail and Bishop followed it, simple, efficient. True, Bishop was no Weiss. He wasn't smart like Weiss, and he didn't have that way Weiss had of guessing what you'd do. But he was a real professional all the same, a specialist, just like Foy. And he never saw it coming. He never suspected a thing.

  Still, he was good at the end. When the shooting started, he was very good. He must've seen Foy coming at the very last second. He had no time at all to react, but he made a close duel of it all the same. When he pulled the curtain open like that, the sun had pierced through the window directly into the specialist's eyes. It had blinded him just as Bishop leapt out of the way. The slugs from the Belgian 5.7 ripped Bishop's left side open at the midsection, but the man who called himself John Foy had been aiming for a center shot, his chest, his heart. The detective should've been dead by the time he hit the floor.

  Instead, he sat slumped against the wall. His head hung limp on his chest. His eyes were open, staring at the carpet. His left hand lay motionless in his lap. His right hand lay open on the carpet, palm upward. His finger was still tangled in the trigger of his gun-a Kahr 9mm, a K9, the specialist noted. Not a bad little weapon for this sort of thing. He probably had another in his boot-or maybe a knife. But it didn't matter now. He was almost gone.

  There was nothing left but to finish it, and he had to do it fast. The blasts from the Saracen had been loud in the small room. Usually people ignored these things, but there was always a chance some shit-for-brains Good Samaritan would decide to investigate or call the police.

  For safety's sake, he tried to kick the K9 out of Bishop's hand, but it snagged on the detective's trigger finger. He covered Bishop with the Saracen, knelt down, worked the gun free, and tossed it behind him onto the bed. Aside from the rapid, shallow falling and rising of his chest, Bishop never moved. He was dying all right but not fast enough.

  So, kneeling there, the man who called himself John Foy placed the barrel of the Saracen in the center of Bishop's forehead. Then he squeezed the trigger.

  30.

  Bishop moved. It took all the strength he had left. From the moment he'd fallen, he'd been marshaling the violence in him. Now he willed it to explode in this single motion.

  As the specialist put the gun to his forehead and pulled the trigger, Bishop's left arm-the arm lying slack on his lap-drove up and forward. His forearm hit the killer's gun hand, knocking it aside. The gun went off. The report was deafening. The bullet whistled over Bishop's skull. It cut through the curtain behind him and shattered the window. Bishop's arm, meanwhile, kept driving forward. His hand, the fingers stiffened, jammed into the killer's eye.

  It wasn't a good hit. Bishop didn't have a good hit left in him. But it nailed the eyeball straight on. The Shadowman cried out. Instinctively, he grabbed his eye with both hands, dropping the Saracen. The gun fell to the carpet with a dull thud.

  But the killer recovered immediately. Holding his eye with his left hand, he groped for the fallen weapon with his right.

  Bishop struggled to rise.

  There wasn't much time. Another second, the Shadow-man would have the gun in his grasp. Bishop managed to get one foot flat on the floor. He managed to get one hand flat on the floor. He clutched at the cloth of the curtain with the other hand. He pushed himself up and pulled himself up. The cold, dull sensation of being shot was morphing quickly now into a pulsing, spreading red zone of pain. He couldn't be sure, but he had the sense that the scream he was hearing was coming from him. He struggled up an inch, another inch.

  And the Shadowman grabbed the Saracen. Holding his hurt eye shut with his left hand, he focused the other eye on the gun. He fumbled with it for a moment. Then he had it, gripped it. He swung it toward Bishop.

  Bishop screamed again. He propelled himself upward with his legs. He threw his upper body back against the curtains. He felt the curtains catch him and give way. He felt his guts become a single drilled nerve. He saw the killer bring the Saracen around. He saw the endlessly deep black bore of the gun. The curtain behind him gave way, gave way.

  Then the Shadowman fired and Bishop fell.

  He threw himself out the shattered window. He felt himself tumbling through the open air. He felt pain and heat and swirling confusion.

  He caught a glimpse of the swimming pool beneath him. The glare of the sun on the surface flashed up at him. It obliterated everything. Somewhere women were screaming. Inside him the pain was screaming, one great red scream. But his eyes, his mind, were filled with that dazzling light coming up to meet him.

  Then he hit the water and the light went out.

  31.

  Shit, thought the Shadowman.

  He leapt to the window. He shoved the curtain aside as it fluttered back toward him. He looked down just in time to see Bishop plunge into the pool.

  The solid sheet of light on the pool's surface splashed up in a fountain of beaded sparkles. The brilliant water at the fountain's center swallowed Bishop's dark form. Blood began to spread from the sinking body. It stained the blue pool with coils of black. Screaming swimmers streamed up over the concrete edges like insects streaming from the hole under a lifted rock. The killer saw two women wading with long strides through the shallow end to grab their startled children. He saw a man push past the fleeing swimmers to dive in and swim down after the sinking Bishop. Two other men were standing in front of their lounge chairs on the pool's far side. Their bellies hanging over their bathing suits, their hands held to their brows, they were peering straight up at the fourth-floor window, staring straight at him, pointing straight at him.

  Shit, the killer thought again.

  He drew back into the shadows of the room. A little tremor was in his throat, a threat of panic. He blinked against the images: Staring men. Pointed fingers. Police, police… He winced at the frantic whining voice in his head: Why did he keep making these goddamned mistakes? Why did they keep happening? It wasn't fair.

  He put a hand to his temple, massaged the corner of his hurt eye. He wanted the images to stop, the voice to stop. He wanted to climb into his tower, into the blue calm at the top of his tower. No time. He had to move. He had to get out of here. Police…

  He crossed the room in a few steps. As he went, he slipped the Saracen through the slit in his fat suit, fitted it back into the pocket under the silicone. He was panting now, feeling the fat suit's extra weight.

  He pulled the door open. Already, as he stepped out into the hall, he heard the elevator bell ring around the corner. He heard stern voices growing louder. Men. They were coming, fast. They would rush into view any second now.

  He seized the knob to the fire stairs door. It was the reason he chose this room, part of the plan. He was in the stairwell in a second. The heavy door swung shut behind him slowly. As he started down the concrete steps, he heard pounding above him. Fists on the hotel room door. A deep voice shouting, "Hotel security! Open up!"

  The voice grew dimmer as he hurried down and down.

  He stepped out of the stairwell onto the mezzanine. He was sweating, gasping for breath. The fat suit felt heavier with every step. He walked as casually as he could past empty banquet halls and conference rooms. He came to the escalator. He rode down in plain sight of the crowd gathering below him in the atrium.

  He left the lobby by a side door. The smothering heat closed over him. The silicone vest suddenly felt like an anvil tied to him. The silicone overlays he had used to fatten his face seemed to tighten and squeeze the
fluid out of him. Working for every wheezing gulp of air, he dragged himself around the front of the hotel. He humped over the lawn, parallel to the palm trees.

  Now police car after police car came pulling into the Saguaro cul-de-sac, their sirens howling like cats in heat. Their light racks threw glancing rays of red and blue into the desert afternoon. One cruiser stopped at the entrance to the driveway to keep anyone from driving out.

  But by then the man who called himself John Foy had already reached the street. He crossed it in a stumbling jog, reached the shopping mall on the other side.

  There was a concrete box of a parking structure on the mall's northern border. His car was parked there on the ground floor. It was a new car. A brown one. A Taurus, the same type Weiss had. The man who called himself John Foy slipped in behind the wheel.

  He got the car started. A blast of steamy air rushed out of the air-conditioning vents, but in a moment it cooled and he leaned over to bathe his cheeks and forehead in it. It was good to feel the sweat drying on his face. His chest and armpits were still pouring. There were dark stains all over his Hawaiian shirt.

  After a while he straightened. He glanced up into the rearview mirror. A stranger looked back at him. He had fattened his cheeks with the overlays and cut his hair to get the balding tourist effect. Simple changes, but they transformed the look of him completely. He hardly recognized himself.

  He pulled out of the lot and drove back toward the city as police cars kept streaming past him to the hotel.

  32.

  The specialist had spent a lifetime killing other men. Women sometimes, a bunch of kids once, but mostly men, over a hundred of them. He had come to the job as easily as dozing in a chair. He had been in a Burger King in his home city, a stark gray city surrounded by flatlands. He was sixteen. He was with a guy he knew, a tough guy who had dropped out of school and was making a living jacking stuff off trucks. The tough guy noticed someone across the room. He lifted his chin and said, "That fuck needs doing." And right away Foy answered him, "What'll you pay me?"

  That was it. He went home and made a garrote out of a broomstick and a jump rope. He found the target a couple of nights later walking through a stand of trees in a small park. He didn't even look around to see if anyone was watching. He just walked up behind the fuck and strangled him with the homemade garrote. Left him lying right there in the grass in his own shit. Strolled over to the tough guy's place to pick up his pay.

  It was strange to look back on it. It had been as simple as that. No plans, no worries. What did he know? He was a kid. He trusted his luck. He didn't think about the bad things that could happen if he got caught. He didn't think about anything. He just did it.

  But then, later on, he did think. After all, he knew what it was like to get caught. He knew better than anyone what it was like to be punished and humiliated and hurt more than you thought you could stand while people looked on and laughed at you. He didn't want that ever to happen again.

  So he learned to be more cautious. It was a gradual process. He learned to plan, to keep ahead of events. He learned to make allowances for the unexpected. After a while the planning was all he thought about. He was planning every moment right up until he did the job. It was almost a kind of ritual for him. It made him feel safe. It made him feel that nothing had been left to chance. He would never allow himself to be caught, punished, hurt, humiliated-never again.

  He drove for the heart of the city. As he went, he reached down under the seat and pulled up his surveillance briefcase. He laid it on the seat beside him, worked it open with his free hand. He got the laptop going.

  He picked up Weiss at once. The GPS tracker in the detective's car appeared as a green triangle blinking on a map of the city's south side. The killer was still too far away to pick up the bird-doggers woven into Weiss's clothing.

  The killer headed for the green triangle. He was getting his breath back now. The runnels of sweat were slowing down on his body. The cry of the sirens was fading behind him. The tremor of panic and the panicky inner voice-they were fading too. Ahead, through the windshield, the sun was arcing toward the top of the skyline. Lights were coming on in the buildings. Windows stood out as yellow rectangles in large gray rectangles set against the rich blue sky. He gazed at them as he drove, but in his mind he was far away. In his mind, once again, he was in his own high tower. He was calmer there, calmer.

  The city closed over him. He prowled down a dark broad avenue between skyscrapers. Only a strip of blue sky appeared at the top of his windshield here. He began to come back to himself. He was fine now. Everything was fine. Bishop had been a hard case. He'd fought a good fight. But he was dead, or he soon would be. And the man who called himself John Foy had gotten away. His luck was not running out. Everything was fine.

  He crossed the city into the south, heading toward the low mountains. The skyscrapers fell behind him quickly. He came into an area of shacks and empty lots and churches, one church after another. The church steeples and their crosses stood high and dark against the rich blue horizon. Lean Mexican men and fat Mexican women walked beneath them. The falling sun gleamed on the white shirts of the men.

  The killer heard a noise from the seat beside him. He had picked up the bird-doggers in Weiss's clothes. He glanced over at the laptop, seeking out the yellow blips.

  He saw them-but for a moment he didn't understand what he was seeing. Then he did understand, and his breath caught. He stared at the laptop so long that when he looked up, the brown Taurus had nearly veered off the road. He had to wrench the wheel to keep it from smashing into the curb.

  He eased the car to a stop at a red light. He stared down at the laptop's screen again. That crawly fear was back at once, that crawly, whispering panic. Why is this happening? It isn't fair. It isn't fair.

  One of the bird-doggers had broken away from the GPS tracker. Only one-P143-the one in Weiss's tweed jacket. At first the man who called himself John Foy thought Weiss might have left his jacket somewhere. But the bird-dogger was still moving. And the GPS showed the car was still moving too. Weiss's car was driving away from the south mountains, heading for the interstate, and Weiss's tweed jacket was somehow traveling slowly over the southeast corner of the city.

  The car's air-conditioning was going full blast now, but the Shadowman began to sweat again. What the hell was this? Some kind of Weiss bullshit, some kind of trick. The red light turned green, but the killer just sat there looking down at the screen. Which signal should he follow? What the hell was going on?

  A horn honked behind him. He glanced into the rearview and saw some straw-hatted Mexican in a Chevy pickup. He briefly considered getting out of his car, walking back to the Chevy, and ripping out the wetback's esophagus with his bare hands. But he was a professional, a cool professional. He fought down the impulse. He hit the gas. He drove on.

  He went after the bird-dog in the tweed jacket. The car would get away quickly, but he could trace the car at a distance. The jacket was less than half a mile away. He could get to it, find out what was happening, and get back to the car fast. Anyway, if Weiss was in the car, the killer already knew where he was going.

  He turned the corner, putting the sun behind him. The shacks and churches sank away. Now there were empty lots by the side of the road, dust and nothing. Brown hills to the right of him. Brown hills up ahead.

  The sweat was in full tide under his shirt again. His heart was hammering again. That lost, childish voice was whining at him again. What was Weiss doing? What was going on?

  Then the road ended. There was a diamond-link fence, an open gate. He drove through onto an unpaved lane, his tires bouncing over the ruts and rocks. Ahead, some kind of a house stood on a little hill. It was a strange misshapen house. A covered balcony of red wood, misshapen gray battlements of rock. A single car was parked nearby. An aging Impala, not Weiss's car. But when the killer glanced over at the briefcase again, the yellow bird-dog signal was still blipping, not fifty yards away.

&n
bsp; The man who called himself John Foy was getting angry now. He thought he knew what was happening, and the rage was rising into his throat. He shut the car down. Got out. The heat was bad. There was desert all around him. Dirt and stone crunching under his shoes. When he looked off, he saw a rolling plain of dust, the distant sun touching the top of the gray and sparkling city. He was isolated out here. That Weiss, that fucking Weiss…

  He reached into the slit of his silicone vest. His fingers closed on the Saracen. He drew it out. His teeth were clamped together. He wanted to see something die.

  He walked up a flight of steps. The broken-rock battlements loomed over him. He stepped into the shadows of the covered balcony. He reached the front door. He pushed it. It swung in.

  There was a strange stone room, lit dimly with standing lamps. There was rough handmade furniture made of logs and rock. Shelves, tables, benches-and all of them crowded, the whole room packed, with junk and knickknacks. A stuffed bird in a bamboo cage. The skull of a longhorn staring from above the fireplace. The skin of a snake lying on a wooden table under an embroidered

  pillow that said: " HOME SWEET HOME."

  The killer jumped as he turned and saw a piano with a woman sitting at it. But she was nothing, a weird stuffed figure. And there was an easy chair with a stuffed man sitting in it.

  Then the man moved. The killer leveled the gun at him. He nearly shot him. He wanted to.

  The man in the chair was an old black man. He was long and bent. He had a long, sad face with a day's growth of grizzled beard. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt-and Weiss's tweed jacket.

  "He said you'd show up," the old man said.

  The killer could hardly breathe. He felt as if a powerful hand were around his throat, squeezing it shut. "Who are you?"

  "I run this place."