Pseudonym

by Neal Penn

  He sighed contentedly. The decision made, his stress subsided and he was able to relax.

  Sage picked up the phone, dialed information, and ordered a pizza. Same as always: double cheese, double mushrooms and a two-liter bottle of soda. God, how many of these damn things have I eaten in the last twenty years? When he hung up, he turned on the television again.

  There was another big expose on the sniper running. Current theories ranged from a disgruntled factory worker to right-wing domestic terrorists. He watched two experts arguing about each theory and wondered how the hell people always assumed you could put an orderly description on chaos. The company was fucking brilliant with this one.

  A parade of experts took it in turns to voice their opinions, and he watched for a while before switching to a late movie on some cable channel. It was an old monster flick; Lon Chaney and Vincent Price in The Haunted Village. Sage figured the film would be a nice escape. He reached onto the end table for one of the little cigars he liked, lit it, and leaned back putting the cigar-free arm up, hand behind his neck.

  Sage liked old films like that. The bad guys were obviously bad, and the good guys were obviously good. The victims were innocent and completely unable to comprehend the real evil in their midst. He liked it that way. Black and white; no grey areas.

  The world wasn’t that simple, but sometimes he wondered: Maybe monster movies were right. Maybe they should be. Good is good. Evil is evil. Nothing in between at all.

  He sighed. It was all too fucking simple of a thought. He was a living testimony to that fact. Everything was a choice between greater and lesser.

  Greater goods, lesser evils.

  Nothing was black and white, probably never had been. What about all the shit he’d done for the greater good? Was it okay to do evil for the sake of good? He’d done evil.

  Hell, maybe he was evil.

  What do you do when you’re convinced raping a fourteen year old and setting a man on fire is a key part of keeping communism from spreading? He still dreamed of those days, woke up with sheets soaked with sweat, heart pounding and eyes taking longer and longer to lose the images and adjust to whichever cheap hotel room housed him. Not every night, but enough that sleep wasn’t welcome and wasn’t particularly desired, either.

  It wasn’t what he’d done at night that kept him up. He’d raped women, hell, children. He’d tortured men, women, and children. He’d once cut off an infant’s finger to get her mother to talk. It had worked. None of that kept him up at night, though. The one thing that did keep him up, the one thing that left him staring at the ceiling at dusk until the light gradually faded into darkness, the one thing that made him wonder if redemption was reserved for a different kind of person, wasn’t the actions he’d performed at all.

  The thing that kept him up was that he knew he’d enjoyed every goddamn minute of it.

  The pizza would be there in a half hour, and the movie would be over in about two. With drive time, he’d show up at Tommy’s just about midnight.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  She was beautiful and gentle. She led him to the bed and undressed him, and the feeling of her fingers on his chest was electric. She leaned down and kissed him, and the strands of her hair that caressed his cheeks sent thrills down his neck and over his face. He placed his hands on her shoulders, feeling the softness of her skin, the warmth.

  His palms slid down to the small of her back and he was overcome, pulled her on top so that she straddled him. The two moved urgently, wrestling culmination from each other, panting when it was over.

  Then, softly, gently, he turned her over and they began again, this time taking their time and exploring each other. Crane found himself rediscovering her, joyfully examining every inch, every freckle, and every spot. He kissed her and touched her and loved her. When they finally finished the second time, he rolled over and sighed, reaching for his cigarettes.

  “That was wonderful, Noelle. Why the hell do you waste your time with a guy like me?”

  She put her head on his chest and nuzzled him. “I guess I’m a glutton for punishment, honey.” She shifted, pushed his cigarette out of the way, and kissed him. “More likely, I remember who you used to be, who you could be again if you tried.” He gently stroked her hair. She lifted her head to look at him. “I mean it, Roddie. You could be so much more than you’ve let yourself become. You have it in you. I know you do.”

  “I don’t know, Elle. I feel like that sometimes, but most of the time, I think about how I let myself become a miniature Ty, you know, let myself care about the money and the power and not about what really mattered. Then Sienna …”

  He swallowed hard, and Noelle reached up to stroke his cheek. She kissed him softly.

  “I mean,” he said, “all at once everything I’d worked for didn’t mean a thing, not a fucking thing. I started thinking about how many daughters Nero and his boys had killed, how many fathers. And the whole time I was right there along making sure they could.”

  “You didn’t pull any triggers, honey.”

  “I may as well have, I mean … oh hell, what the fuck was I thinking back then?” He sighed heavily and drew on the cigarette before crushing it out.

  “But all that’s over, Roddie. You don’t have to let the rest of your life be defined by the beginning of your life. You’ve lost some years, and you’ve already been beaten up for it. Maybe it’s time for you to stop trying, you know, stop trying to just survive and start building a new life.” She kissed him again and then stood up. “I need another shower. Come on in with me, and I’ll help you get cleaned up.”

  She led him to the shower, and he let her lather him with the washcloth and rinse the day away from him.

  He tried to visualize the soap cleansing away more than just the dust and sweat. Starting over. Jesus. He owed Nero a hundred grand, and this case was just getting crazier and crazier. He didn’t want to finish it, just wanted to spend forever in the shower with Noelle.

  Finally, she turned the knob and the water stopped flowing over him. She wrapped him in a robe and stepped out of the bathroom. He loved the way the water flowed down over her back, loved the way it turned her hair darker.

  He walked in behind her and held her, his arms around her belly and his chest against her back. She leaned against him and sighed.

  Too soon, the two parted and got dressed. Crane took one of the few remaining bottles from the minibar and downed it before they stepped out of the room.

  It was 11:45.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Tommy had already opened a bottle of wine and put out some refreshments on the table. With his bulk, that had been nearly an hour of preparation. He looked at the clock. It was about ten to midnight. You’ve finally done it, Tommy. You finally got someone to want you for you.

  He felt light, and that was strange for him. He chuckled to himself and wheeled across the living room, struggled to reach for his laptop, and brought it to the table as well. He opened it to the Costa Rica document. Everything was ready.

  The doorbell rang. “One moment,” he called out pleasantly. Then, he wheeled to the door, unlatched it, and pulled it open with a smile.

  His smile faded instantly.

  Instead of the woman from the bar, on the porch were a tall man in a suit and a shorter man that looked like a longshoreman. “Uh, I think you guys have the wrong place.”

  “Aw fuck,” the shorter man said. “Did we get the address wrong?”

  “Shut up, idiot.” The tall man looked pained. He turned back to Tommy. “Are you Thomas Norwood?”

  “Uh, yeah, but I …” The two men walked in and shut the door. “Hey, what’s going on here? I have an engagement. I’m not—”

  The tall man slapped him across the face and cut off the conversation.

  The shorter one started knocking everything off of the table, and then moved to the shelves.

  Jesus, Sage was right. “Look, I don’t know anything, I just write—” Another slap cut him off.r />
  The tall man leaned in and put his face inches from Tommy’s. “You need to tell Crane to stay the fuck away from the Winslows.”

  “Crane? I don’t know any Crane.” The tall man slapped him again.

  “Hey, he don’t know any Crane. What do you think of that? This fat fuck don’t know any Crane.” He leaned in again. “You need to tell Crane to back the fuck off.”

  “But I don’t know any Cr—”

  The shorter man walked up and pulled a gun from his pants. Tommy watched him move the slide. That meant a bullet had entered the chamber, making the gun ready to fire; he’d learned that much from Sage.

  Tommy tried to back his chair away, but it was already butted up against the entryway wall. The tall man stepped forward and put the gun against his forehead.

  “My friend don’t like having to tell people things more than once.”

  The gun barrel was hard, cold. Tommy felt wetness and realized he was pissing on himself.

  “So listen, are you gonna give Crane a message or am I gonna blow your fucking head another hole?”

  “But I don’t know any Crane!”

  “Jesus, this guy.” The tall man walked to the other. “Maybe we ought to blow his head off. If he won’t give the message to Crane we don’t need him to be able to talk anyway.”

  “Wait! Wait!” Tommy could feel sweat trickling down the side of his head. He imagined it red and thick like blood.

  “Oh, now you know Crane?”

  Tommy shut his eyes tight and opened them.

  In the kitchen, behind the men, he saw a shadow.

  “You guys looking for me?”

  Sage stepped into the light.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  The two rode in the back of the town car in a pleasant silence. The meal had been wonderful—a little awkward at first, but wonderful nonetheless. He stared at her, and Gladys smiled at him. “It was just fabulous,” she said.

  He smiled in return. The driver reached his gate, entered a code, and the car drove in. “It was fabulous, Gladys, a beautiful evening. Thank you so much for it.” He fixed her with another smile, and the driver opened the door. He stepped out onto the drive and felt the cool air, only then realizing how warm it was in the car. Gladys stepped out behind him.

  “The evening doesn’t have to end, you know.” She was still smiling, gently. He thought about all of the years that she’d jump when he said to, all of the years that his word was an inviolate command.

  “I would really like that, Gladys. I really would.” He smiled sadly at her. “But I really want to be more … I think I’d like to take things a little bit slower. Dammit, I feel like a goddamn school kid, Gladys.”

  She laughed at him and stepped forward, placed one hand against his cheek. “If you were a school kid, there’s no way on Earth you’d want to take things slower.” She leaned forward and kissed him. He caught the smell of her hair, her perfume, and for a moment he was torn. He wanted her, wanted her to come in with him.

  She made the decision for him, though. She softly ended the kiss and backed a step away. “Okay, we take things slowly. Tonight was wonderful, and the next time will be even more memorable.”

  One more smile, and she was back in the car. The driver shut the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. The lights lit, the engine came to life, and the car made its way back down the drive.

  He watched as it paused again at the security gate and then left, turning right and back into the night. With a sigh, he walked to the front door and opened it. His man was still awake, and he asked for a bourbon and headed to his room.

  The bourbon arrived in a few minutes. “Alex?”

  The butler inclined his head. “Something else, sir?”

  “Do you ever miss Marie?”

  The butler paused, as though carefully measuring his words. Finally, he said, “The Missus was a wonderful person, sir. We all miss her.”

  A strange jolt of guilty hit him over the night’s date. He brought the bourbon to his mouth and took a good drink.

  “Thank you for the bourbon, Alex. I think I’ll just go ahead and call it a night.”

  Alex was almost out of the room when he turned around. “But, sir, the Missus being gone doesn’t mean that we must live our lives in sadness. She never would have allowed that were she here.”

  He thanked him and sighed. A glance at the clock told him it was midnight. He walked to the phone and dialed Aiken, who told him that the operatives were due to check in at two a.m. “Only wake me if you need to.”

  He hung up, finished his bourbon, undressed, and got into bed.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Sage watched as the Tall Man jumped, startled.

  Then his ears rang with an explosion and he saw that the shorter man had jumped as well, pulling the trigger in the process.

  A good section of Tommy’s head was vaporized.

  “Jesus Christ!” It was the short one, and Sage was momentarily paralyzed at the sight of Tommy, limp in the wheelchair. “Fuck, I didn’t mean to shoot him.”

  Then Sage’s reflexes took over, and he saw the red haze he always saw in the middle of battle. He leapt over the table and closed on the man, who was still looking at his gun with something between horror and irritation. Sage had already crossed the distance before the man realized his danger.

  When he did, he brought the gun around, but Sage clamped a hand down on his wrist and hit him full in the chin with a vicious upper cut.

  The man cried out, and Sage felt the tall man behind him. A backhand sent the tall man sprawling over the kitchen table, and Sage pulled his arm around for another blow on the shorter. The man flailed forward and caught his wrist, so Sage butted him with his forehead, breaking his nose. Blood gushed out.

  The blood. The wall was covered with Tommy’s, and now this man’s was flowing down his face and over his neck. Sage cried out and wrenched his arm way from the smaller man. He put his hand over the man’s face, causing him to shriek as pressure hit his nose. Then he pushed with his hand and kicked with his legs, bringing the man down to the floor with Sage kneeling over him. His head hit with a crack.

  Sage closed his fingers around the man’s face and lifted his head before crashing it down on the floor again, and again, and again. He heard the sounds move from sharp cracks to dull, squishing thuds, and he keep at it.

  With each smash he felt the bone of the man’s skull breaking. He could see the blood exploding outward with bits of brain and fragments of who knew what else. Still he smashed it against the floor.

  Finally, he realized he still held the man’s other arm and pried the gun from his stiffening fingers.

  He stood and looked to where the tall man had fallen, but the man was gone.

  Sage screamed.

  It was unearthly, animal; more of a shriek or howl than a scream at all. He ran to the table and checked for the tall man. He ran into Tommy’s bedroom and office. Nothing. Finally, he went back to the entryway and saw the mountain that was one Tommy Norwood slumped on the chair, his murderer on the floor beside him.

  It was only then that he noticed the door was open. The tall man had fled. Sage cursed him for cowardice and screamed into the night.

  Then, he took the gun and pointed it at the crushed mass of skin and blood and brain that had been the smaller man’s head and fired.

  Once, twice, three times. He fired until the magazine was empty and the man’s head was all but gone. He screamed/shrieked/howled again and felt tears running down his face. Finally, he dropped the gun into the bloody mess and stepped back.

  Then, John Sage, once Dennis Winslow, once an employee of Winslow industries, coauthor of a successful series of thriller electronic books, walked through door and went out to find the other man who had killed his only friend.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  They’d just parked to discuss strategy when the door to Norwood’s brownstone flew open and the man in a suit ran out.

  Noelle’s eyes widene
d in surprise. “That’s the bastard that tied me up.”

  Crane turned the headlights off, praying the man hadn’t seen them, but he ran past the car and straight toward a black SUV. Although this one must have been different to the very first he’d seen, unless Boeing 737 aircraft started allowing passengers to check cars.

  “Yeah.” Crane put his hand on Noelle’s shoulder. “That was Rosencrantz. Now where the hell is Guildenstern?”

  That’s when they heard the shots. Eight blasts one after the other, and then a bloodcurdling scream that made Crane think of a werewolf movie. He grabbed the back of Noelle’s head and pushed her down beneath the dashboard, leaning down himself as well.

  “What are you doing?” Noelle looked uncomfortable as hell, but that was to be expected.

  “Waiting for Credence to come on.” That earned him a blank stare. “Credence Clearwater Revival … Bad Moon Rising … An American Werewolf in London … oh, never mind. Stay down.”

  Slowly, carefully, he lifted his head, just in time to see the SUV pulling away. He looked toward the door again, and an imposing shape filled it. He couldn’t see very clearly, but the man was large, bodybuilder large. He scanned to the left and then to the right, seeing the SUV rushing away.

  Crane ducked down as the man ran after the SUV. As he got closer, he could see blood covering one of the man’s hands and splatters of blood on his face and his shirt.

  The man looked even more enormous up close, with clearly defined muscles through the shirt he wore, and a thick neck that reminded Crane of Lou Ferigno during the Incredible Hulk heyday.

  He watched the huge man run to an old white sedan, jump into the driver’s seat, and take off after the SUV. It was too far for him to make out the license plate.

  “Can I get up now?” Crane looked down at Noelle, nodded. Then he backed over to his seat, albeit remaining hunched.