Nobody Lives Forever

by Edna Buchanan

  One minute and counting. Here it comes! He could hear the automatic doors opening, then closing, with a clang that made his heart lurch. The grinding of the elevator as it descended. This was it. A deep breath, pull down the cap, pull out the gun. This guy better deliver if he wants to go home tonight. Open sesame. The courier stood dead center, legs slightly apart, eyes straight ahead, the moneybag under his left arm, supported on the bottom by his right hand.

  He blinked, his eyes not yet adjusted, as Alex stepped forward out of the shadows. “Hey!” he said, and took a step back. Alex planted himself between the doors to block their closing. The muzzle of the gun was leveled at the man’s heart. Alex gestured for him to hand over the bag. He hesitated. Alex cocked the gun. The dull metallic click made an impression. The man’s mouth opened, but he swallowed the words. His gray eyes were speculative, daring behind Alex, who did not like that. It made his finger tighten on the trigger. The man saw it and raised his right palm slowly, in a staying gesture. Alex liked the scared look in the eyes, now totally focused on him as they well should be.

  He gestured quickly, impatiently with the gun. The man gave up the moneybag. It was heavier than Alex expected, and he grasped it in a strong grip, then stepped back, smiling, releasing the doors. At the final instant, he realized the man was making a move. He saw it in his face, the grimness in his eyes and the tensing of the muscles in his jaw. The man lunged for the control panel. Alex thought it was to keep the doors from closing, but it was an alarm bell. The man’s thumb was on it, and it was damn loud. Son of a bitch! As the doors glided closed, Alex fired two shots. The sound of the damn bell was unnerving, and the moving doors kept narrowing his target. The man inside had hurled himself to the left, so that even at such close range Alex missed He saw the slugs slam into the elevator’s back paneling.

  Shit! Shouts behind him. Where the hell did he come from? A uniformed security guard. Not one of the old codgers, but a young one, wearing a holster. He was walking fast, now running, approaching from the direction Alex had planned to take. He was fumbling as he moved, unsnapping the holster. The damn bell was still ringing loud enough to wake the dead. The elevator was moving. The courier inside was already yelling for somebody to call the cops. That son of a bitch, Alex thought. He should have killed him. He never should have given him the chance to pull this shit. When that elevator spits him out on the third floor, he will come back down, with reinforcements.

  The damn security guard and his gun blocked the escape route. Alex couldn’t run the other way, past the truck. The driver was armed and mobile and had a two-way radio. No way Alex could outrun a truck. The security guard had a radio too, strapped to his belt. There was no place to run, except toward him. The guard hesitated, apparently afraid to shoot first, uncertain of what exactly was happening. “Halt, stay right there!” he shouted. He was about a hundred feet away. I’ll shoot his damn ass off, Alex thought.

  He fired the first shot. The guard looked surprised. He stopped running so suddenly that he staggered forward a few steps, but he was not hit. Dammit, Alex thought. He dived behind a parked car. He could not see the guard, but he heard him babbling into his radio, and he heard the fucking truck start up. The elevator behind him had stopped on the third floor. In a matter of moments it would be on its way back down. He had to be out of here. Most armed security guards have had a little firearms training, but not much, unless they are ex-cops. It is hard as hell to hit a moving target. Running for it was his best bet. Here we go! From the corner of his eye he saw the headlights of the truck. He ran like hell, the moneybag in one hand, the gun in the other, charging the car where the security guard was hiding. He pounded right by him, running and shooting, heading for cover behind the next row of parked cars. He could smell the gunpowder and see the flash as he fired. Sure enough, the guard was too busy wincing, ducking, hiding his head and trying to crawl under the car to shoot back. It won’t take him long, though, Alex thought. Here it comes, he’s firing, one, two, three. The dumb shit was shooting right into the roof of the parking garage, concrete chips flying everywhere. Alex ran low along the row of parked cars between them, heading west. His own car seemed so far away, and if they saw it, got the tag number, he was fucked.

  He had fired four, two left before he had to reload. The way the guard was popping them off, if he had a standard revolver, which he probably did, and no second gun, which he probably didn’t, he would have to stop to reload soon. It sounded like he was killing a lot of parked cars. Sounded like he hit somebody’s gas tank or radiator, something was splashing, running out all over the place. What the hell! Who the hell are they? A whole herd of people, seven or eight of them, civilians, shoppers, stampeding around the corner of the building, rushing toward him. These damn Miamians, they are so accustomed to crime and violence that when they hear shots, they run, not in the opposite direction like normal people, but to go see. They’re crazy, he thought. The security guard waved his arms, yelling at them to get back and giving Alex a good chance to get off another shot at him. Now the shoppers were all screaming, pushing, shoving and stampeding back around the corner for cover. That’s more like it, Alex thought. These people are crazy.

  He had to stop to catch his breath. It would give him a chance to dump some of the change that was making the moneybag so heavy. Something was coming his way, something wet, rivulets from a big, dark, widening puddle. Sure enough, gasoline. Somebody had had a full tank. Fire could be his ticket out of there. Fire could distract most of them long enough for him to get out of the garage, across the sloping, landscaped lawn and back to his car on the next street. He’d flick his Bic and make a run for it.

  Good thing he was careful and jumped back, it caught with a whomp that could have singed his ears. Now, feet, do your stuff, he thought. The fire leaped between him and the guard and the elevator. The smoke, with no place to escape fast, would start stacking up in this garage. Nobody would see him running now. New arrivals would rivet on the fire. With any luck, he’d be out of there in a few seconds. He just had to run down the empty exposed traffic lane and out the far side. Damn! The truck was coming, bouncing over the speed bumps and accelerating. The guy had his arm out the window, holding his gun. Who does he think he is, Wyatt Earp?

  Oh, shit, the truck was gaining on him. He couldn’t make it. Bullets would just bounce off that fucking truck. He would have to dump the money. Thai’s what the driver wants, the damn moneybag. That’s his whole gig, Alex thought, he’ll give up on me if I throw down the bag. He’ll know he can’t wait and come back for it later. In a shopping center full of Miamians, with cops and firemen running every which way? He wouldn’t find two nickels when he got back.

  Shit, all this effort. For nothing. Here goes. He pulled open the top of the bag and gave it a nice little heave, so it plopped into the splash of headlights behind him, then ran like hell. He heard the brakes squealing. Sirens, probably cops and firemen, coming from every direction. Down the slope. Glad he wore his running shoes. Out onto the street. Walk calmly. Can’t stop huffing and puffing. Take a deep breath. Take off the cap, stuff the scarf.

  He saw his car waiting halfway down the block and fought to keep his knees from wobbling. What was this? A woman, a senior citizen, walking a little dog on a leash.

  She must live around here, he thought, not carrying a handbag. The dog is all perky and prancy. What is this shit? She had seen him and was coming across the street. She wore glasses and a wrapper, with what looked like a nightgown underneath.

  “Good evening.”

  “Hi, there,” he said, staying out of the light from the street lamp. What else could he do?

  “What happened? What’s all the excitement at the shopping center?”

  She was eager. Her eyes lit up. Will these people ever quit. His knees shook, he wanted to run but couldn’t. Don’t blow it now, he thought, willing his voice to sound casual, with no trace of a tremor. He stopped, cocked his head to one side and said: “It’s some sort
of fire, I think.”

  “I hope no one’s hurt,” she said, then looked back at him expectantly. “Do you live here?”

  “No, just visiting.” He started to move away. She picked up the little dog. He could swear they looked alike, with their bright eyes, floppy ears and graying muzzles. Their eyes were drifting back to the confusion and mounting noise at the shopping center. Good, he thought. He really did not want to strike up a friendship or have to shoot her and the mutt and bring down more grief on himself. But he sure as hell didn’t want her to see where he went, which car was his.

  “I think you can see the whole thing from the top of the little rise there. It looks down into the parking lot.”

  “Oh. Thank you. Come, Pookie.” She set the dog down on all fours and the two trotted toward the sirens.

  Alex lost no time retrieving the key from the back tire and gently rolling the car around the block, heading south, doing some deep breathing. He was shaky. This was the closest he had come to disaster yet. It was one thing to shoot people, it was something else to have them shoot back. These damn people just don’t take crime seriously enough, he thought. That’s the problem, they are so inured to it, or maybe just so fed up with it, that they don’t follow orders, even from somebody behind a gun. Everybody wants to fight. The only answer is to shoot them. It was damn sure what he should have done this time. A Surfside police car, racing to the scene. A hook and ladder, siren screaming, careening toward the center. How the hell would they get that thing into the parking garage? Alex pulled over to the side and stopped. Every good citizen knows an emergency vehicle has the right of way. Well, he was walking away from this one without a dime, but at least he was walking away. This was a setback, but just a minor one. It should have worked.

  It’s them, Alex thought. It’s their fault. They constantly interfere with my thinking and my plans, he told himself. He was furious. They dragged him down like stones. It was clear to him now, he would have to settle his score with them first. Everything would be better once they were put to rest. Permanently.

  Twenty-Five

  Jim’s wet sneezes erupted half a dozen times as he arrived at the station. His eyes were itchy, red-rimmed and nearly closed. His head ached. He cursed the man, whoever he was, who had conceived the brilliant idea of importing melaleuca trees from Australia to Florida at the turn of the century. People called it the paper bark tree because of its corklike peeling bark. Its brushy snowy white flowers soon made it a favorite ornamental. It was a bonanza, a money tree—for allergists. Not even a native, the melaleuca has caused untold miseries, Jim thought resentfully, like so many other nonnatives who never belonged in Florida, or the United States of America, in the first place.

  The only recruits eager to help answer phone calls from the public barely spoke English or were too dumb, in his opinion, to discern whether they were talking to a crank, a helpful citizen with a legitimate tip or public enemy number one. They were useless, he thought, but he assigned the best of what had to be the world’s worst academy class to help.

  When Jim plodded into the detective bureau, a routinely unnoticed event, he was greeted with suspect joviality. Mack Thomas led the pack, ambling by his desk to comment, “Working hard, eh, Jim, I hear you’re really trying to get a head.”

  “A head,” he repeated, when he saw no reaction. “Get it?” he said, laughing at his own joke. Jim wheezed, fumbled for his handkerchief and realized he had left it in the car. Snorting to keep his nose from dripping, he foraged through Dusty’s desk for a box of Kleenex. He found it in a bottom drawer. Good Girl Scout, he thought, always prepared. She usually handed them, solemnly and without comment, to weeping survivors or remorseful suspects. Despite the pastel-colored flowers printed on the cardboard box, he carried it to his desk, ignored the other detectives who hovered like vultures and blew his nose, vigorously.

  “Don’t take it so hard, Jimbo. You’ll get some head one of these days,” a robbery detective quipped, amid raucous laughter.

  “Another broad who keeps losing her head,” said another.

  “I heard she had a good head on her shoulders,” Mack said. “Did you hear the one about the headhunter who…”

  Jim pushed back his chair and lumbered to the locker room. His clogged sinuses felt solid. He was sure he had stashed a bottle of nasal spray in his locker after an attack of the melaleuca, night-blooming jasmine or whatever had made his head feel like a lead balloon the last time.

  First he took a leak, pulled up his zipper, washed his hands and frowned into the mirror over the sink. He looked terrible, nose red, eyes puffy. He had to get some relief before taking on the most promising among the stack of messages that had grown alarmingly since that afternoon. What did somebody want with the damn fool woman’s head anyway, he thought irritably? Maybe some sort of weird religion? Enough of them had shown up in Miami since the influx from the south. Voodoo rituals. Santería rites, people sacrificing animals, stealing bones out of graveyards. There was a cult, he recalled, that had done some beheadings back in the seventies, but they had done it to each other, to members of their own sect who had become disenchanted and wanted out, not to expensively dressed middle-aged white women. He hoped it was not the start of some new trend and wondered why they always seemed to start in Miami. He hoped Rick was learning something valuable at the autopsy. He dried his hands, dropped the paper towel into the wastebasket and stepped into the adjacent locker room, fishing in his pocket for his keys.

  He was alone. The room was stuffy, and more gloomy than usual. It was windowless, and the single overhead fluorescent bulb had apparently burned out. The only light was what little spilled through the doorway from the john, and that was blocked by the tall rows of metal lockers. He found his and fumbled, trying to unlock it in the semidarkness. The flimsy metal door seemed stuck. Annoyed, he rattled it, then yanked it hard.

  It sprang open. Something round and hairy rolled off the shelf above his head and fell toward him out of the shadows. A red mouth wore a grotesque grimace. The eyes stared without seeing. Jim hurled himself back, slamming against the lockers behind him, his heart pounding. The thing hit the floor with a thud, bounced a few inches, rolled, then lay still.

  Gasping for breath, his heart galloping in his chest like a runaway horse, he hesitated, looked around, took a small step closer, leaned over and squinted at the ugly thing. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, still breathing hard, and kicked it with all his might. His toe did not connect dead center and the effort threw him so off balance that he nearly fell. The thing scuttled along the floor until it bumped against another wall of lockers and stopped dead. “Those motherfuckers!” he croaked. He felt like he had swallowed his Adam’s apple. “Cops!”

  He washed his face, composed himself and strolled back into the office, delicately carrying the object by some of its long hairs. Surveying the room, he noted which detectives were struggling to keep straight faces. “Very clever,” he announced, and placed the disgusting thing on top of his desk. “Okay,” he bellowed, hands on his hips, “whose smart ass idea was this?”

  He had always wondered why tourists ever bought these revolting souvenirs, Indian faces with seashell ears, big eyes and grinning red lips painted on hairy brown coconuts. He knew why somebody had bought this one.

  “It didn’t faze me,” Jim lied, as they ringed his desk. He lowered his voice. “But what we gotta do is get it into the women’s locker room. They’ll shit.”

  Mack had casually lifted one of the perpetually ringing telephones that was being ignored. “Hey, it’s Rick,” he said. Jim punched the lighted button and picked up.

  Rick sounded tense. “Did you hear about Bal Harbour?”

  “Naw, what?”

  “They’re working some kind of running gun battle, fire and maybe an explosion—at the shopping center.”

  “Christ, that’s where Dusty went. Have you heard from her?”

  “Nope, and I can’t raise her on the a
ir.”

  “Shit. Maybe she walked into something. You know if any cops are involved?”

  “Don’t know. It’s all pretty sketchy, it just went down. One of their detectives was here on a natural, and they called him out on a three. Pick me up ASAP and let’s get over there. I’m worried about her.”

  “Look out the window, that’s me pulling into the parking lot.” Jim shrugged into his jacket. He had never found the nasal spray, but he could live without it. Striding past Dusty’s desk, he glanced around, saw no one watching and slipped the coconut, face up, into her bottom drawer, where the Kleenex box had been.

  They cut through traffic, taking a three signal, using the blue flasher on the dashboard and clearing intersections with the siren. Dusty still did not respond to her radio, despite their repeated tries. “That’s not like her. Christ, I hope she’s okay,” Rick said. His voice sounded strained.

  “Maybe the batteries died, or it got dropped.”

  “She could have lost it in a chase.”

  Jim cursed and weaved around motorists who failed to yield to siren and lights, while Rick filled him in on the postmortem. There was little to tell. Their headless Jane Doe had an old appendix scar, which might help to identify her, and Dr. Lansing had estimated her age at between forty-five and fifty.

  Fire trucks still labored at the scene and the shopping center looked surreal, roped off and illuminated by moving red and blue lights. It swarmed with police. The detectives flashed their badges and asked for the person in charge as they scanned the scene for a glimpse of Dusty’s blond hair.