Headhunter

by Michael Slade

  It was, dark down there with only the occasional naked light bulb protected by a wire cage throwing off a dim light. Concrete support pillars cast great shafts of shadow. From far off, somewhere hidden, came the throb of a boiler. There were no people. Just cars. Parked between white lines.

  Sparky went straight to the Volvo and, using the screwdriver, pried off the left front hubcap. The space inside the disc was small but it would hold the cocaine. Working the plastic bag in around the wheel nuts, Sparky replaced the cap and hammered it back on with the handle of the screwdriver.

  Suddenly there was a sharp sound, a scraping off to the left.

  Then there was laughter.

  Sparky drew the Smith and Wesson from its Sam Browne holster, ducking at the same time in behind the car. "Bet you can't do this!" a young voice yelled. As the killer peeked over the hood, two boys, aged seven or eight, came down the concrete ramp into the parking lot. One of the youngsters was balancing with one foot on a skateboard. The other ran beside. "Come on! Gimme a try!"

  Out in the alley behind the boys the world was turning red. Night had come down and the snow was falling thickly, collecting on the ground. Across the lane a burning tin was spewing forth red sparks that lit up the snow. Damn, Sparky thought, crouching by the car. There was nothing to do but wait. Then kill the two boys as well.

  7:46 p.m.

  "I spend half my life in this elevator. It's the slowest one in town." Al Flood punched the button a third and fourth time, finally the doors closed and the elevator jerked. It took its time going down.

  * * *

  "Donny! Kevin!" a voice called from the alley. The two boys in the parking lot turned to look up the ramp. "Where the hell are you two? I said to watch this fire. Burning's against the law."

  "Oh!" one lad said. "Now we're in for it!" "Down here. Mom!" yelled the other boy. The woman who appeared at the top of the ramp was heavy set and angry. Her hair was up in curlers and she was wrapped in a fake-fur coat.

  "I thought I told you two to watch the tin till the fire died. Can't you do anything right? The house could have burned down while you were having fun."

  "Ah, Mom," one boy said. "We can see it from here." "That's not the point, Kevin. If your father were alive you wouldn't act like this."

  The taller boy bent down to pick up the skateboard. Single file they marched up the ramp and out into the snow.

  "Leave the embers," the woman said. "Let's go inside." The three of them disappeared just as another noise filled the parking lot. It was the sound of muffled voices from beyond the elevator door. Pistol in hand. Sparky left the Volvo and moved into the shadow of a pillar fifteen feet away.

  The elevator opened.

  "This snow will slow us down," Genevieve DeClercq said. She stepped out in the open, followed by Al Flood.

  7:48 p.m.

  The passenger side of the Volvo was no more than eight inches away from one of the concrete pillars supporting the roof. A person would have to be Plastic Man to enter the car from that side. "A tight squeeze," Genevieve said as they approached the vehicle.

  "You'll have to wait till I pull out or get in by the driver's side."

  "I'll get in your side," she said as they reached the left front door.

  Flood was unlocking the door when he noticed the marks and glove smudges on the hubcap of his car.

  Vandals? he wondered, stepping forward toward the left front wheel.

  "What's wrong?" Genevieve asked. "Is some—"

  Fifteen feet away there was a flash of brilliant yellow from within the shadow cast by one of the pillars. Then a shocking explosion. Echoing wildly the sound of the blast boomed around the cavern. The bullet hit Flood in the side of the chest, spinning him back along the driver's door of the car. Blood spattered the roof of the Volvo as his left lung collapsed.

  But wounded though he was, the cop reacted fast.

  With his left arm extended, he pushed away from the side of the car with his right hand and gave Genevieve a hard shove to clear her out of the way. Then the muzzle flared yellow again. This time the thunderclap seemed even louder. It boomed in Al Flood's ears like a nuclear explosion. His head was going light.

  Veering insanely off the chrome, the slug whacked home against the metal rim of the driver's door and ricocheted. Had Flood not moved a second earlier it would have ripped through his heart. Instead it struck Genevieve in the eye. The velocity of the shot slammed the lead through her brain. It bounced off the inside of her skull and blew out through the top of her head, opening her cranium in a shower of blood and bone.

  Genevieve DeClercq was dead before she hit the ground.

  Then the muzzle flared again. But by the time the third shot came, Al Flood was on his belly with the .38 in his fist. He was rolling underneath the Volvo when the bullet hit the concrete floor and deflected up under the car. A moment later crankcase oil spewed from the oil pan. Flood felt sick to his stomach, for out of the corner of his eye he saw Genevieve in her death throes. He knew that she was gone.

  With his heart now beating frantically and pumping his blood away, he scanned the parking lot floor for any sign of the killer. Pinned beneath his car he was like a fish in a barrel; if the assassin bent down and saw him that would be it: a spray of shots along the floor and he would be gone too.

  Gritting his teeth against the pain, he rolled out on the other side. He staggered to his feet. And then he began to run.

  The fourth shot, triggered off in haste, missed him. He was still on his feet and moving as the bullet hit the concrete at the mouth of the ramp to his right. Flying pieces of soot-stained gray burst out into the snow.

  When the fifth shot missed, Flood felt an adrenaline pump of hope that he'd get clean away.

  Then the sixth shot hit him high in the back and knocked him to the ground. The slug tore through his shoulder in a line of searing pain. The force of the shot, like a sledgehammer, had knocked him face down in the snow that was blowing along the ramp.

  Flood heard movement behind him. Footsteps light and swift across the concrete floor. A whisper in the cavern. The click of an empty pistol. A second click as the hammer once more hit a fired chamber. Then he rolled on his side, screaming out in agony, and pulled off three quick shots in succession.

  As the slugs careened around in the lot, Al Flood struggled to his feet and stumbled out into the alley. Here the ground was now white with a thick blanket of snow.

  Still on his feet, still moving, Flood staggered off into the storm, leaving a trail of blood behind.

  7:51 p.m.

  Damn! Sparky thought as the pistol clicked again. Then the lot was filled with roaring noise, explosion on explosion, and a slug whizzed by to the right. Ducking behind the Volvo, the killer tripped over the bag. The Adidas bag was on the ground beside the driver's door.

  Sparky crouched low until the booming faded and died.

  Reload first. Destroy the heads. Then blow that fucker away. No room for an error at this stage of the game.

  Flipping open the cylinder and emptying the casings, Sparky fed the .38 six new cartridges. That's it. All right. Fingers steady. Don't shake. Flick the weapon shut. Now you're ready to go.

  At this very moment half the West End of Vancouver was probably phoning the VPD to say that World War III was on. Magnified by the cavern, the shots would travel far and wide. By now the VPD would be dispatching patrol cars and calling out the SWAT squad. There was not a second to lose: the heads had to go.

  As luck would have it all eight heads were in the Adidas bag. So was Al Flood's diary. Sparky glanced quickly at one page."Why do human beings so fear a severed head?" Sparky read. "If this is everyman's general fear, why must I he plagued with it multiplied a thousand times?" A flick through a couple more pages brought home to Sparky the diary's chilling implications, and what must be done.

  Someone had left an oily rag on the floor after working on a car. Grabbing it quickly. Sparky soaked the cloth in crank-case oil now spreading out across
the concrete from beneath the Volvo. Then grasping the Adidas bag, gun still in hand, the murderer ran up the ramp and out into the snow.

  Flood was not around, neither right nor left.

  Across the lane, embers glowed in the burning can.

  Half expecting a .38 shot and still clutching the Adidas bag, Sparky skirted the alley and tossed the oil-soaked rag into the tin. It ignited at once. With a whoosh the flames shot up, dyeing the snowflakes orange. Holding the gym bag open with both hands Sparky shook the contents into the burning tin. The shrunken heads caught fire immediately amid the stench of burning hair. The skin ignited like paper. The lip rings turned red and glowed. And then the heads were gone. When the diary burst into flame, its pages curled like fingers as each sheet charred black and then crumbled, sifting down as ash.

  Fuck you, Mother, Sparky thought. Burn, witch, burn.

  Then with an intense feeling of satisfaction and newfound freedom, Sparky lifted the lid of a nearby garbage can and stuffed the Adidas bag inside. As soon as the lid was replaced it began to recollect snow.

  Turning out into the alley, Sparky surveyed the ground. A second later, gun in hand, the killer set off to follow the trail of blood that the detective had left in the snow.

  Okay, Mr. City Bull, now it's you and me.

  Shootout

  7:56 p.m.

  Al Flood had never been shot before so he didn't know what to expect. It was true that he had heard from cops on the Squad who had received gunshot wounds and survived, and had also spoken to a few who had later died. One and all, they had informed him that you could tell if you would live or die from the thoughts that ran through your head. But that did not mean much. For as the man says: you had to have been there, right?

  Al Flood was there now—and he knew he was going to die.

  So go on and die!he thought. What's so wrong with that? We all have to face this fear one day or another. Are you so afraid to die if your time has come?

  No, Al Flood thought. I'm not afraid to die.

  There, he felt better for that. After all there are many more things in life far worse than death. Things like loneliness and not being loved, and he'd had his share of them. Yes, when you got right down to it death could be a blessing. A good, clean release. Perhaps his own salvation. Death was only bad when it hurt so much or took so long that it humiliated you.

  Well, it sure the hell hurts, Flood thought, and his head began to spin.

  It had been a mistake—Flood knew that now—to have made for the loading bay. At the time he had made the decision, however, all that seemed important was to escape from the line of fire, to get away from the killer as quickly as possible. Turning into the loading bay off the alley had accomplished that. But it was a mistake all the same. For now Flood found himself trapped on his hands and knees in a dead-end alcove. He was cornered in a three-sided box no more than twelve feet wide, and for anyone looking in from the alley he was an open target. He was totally unprotected, with only three shots left. Once those rounds were gone he had no extra shells.

  To make matters more precarious, dizziness was coming at him in nauseating waves. Here one moment . . . gone the next . . . then surging back again. At certain times he thought that he could hear the wail of police sirens through the wall of snow, rising and falling, rising and falling, very far away. It's foolish, his mind told him, to place any hope in that. Far, far better than most you know that this is a crime-plagued town. They're not even heading this way

  Al Flood had collapsed on his stomach and was facing into the alcove with his back to the alley. He had not the energy to turn himself around, to at least face the direction from which an attack would come. Instead he let his head drop and his face fall into the snow.

  Al Flood allowed his thoughts to lightly drift away.

  The visions began with a man, an old man with a wrinkled face wearing wire-rim glasses, a man whose hair was sparse and swept back and graying at the temples, a man who smoked a cigarette below a thin moustache. The old man was sitting in the back of a sleigh, wrapped in a warm fur blanket. He was reading a newspaper. The paper was yellow and dog-eared, covered by snow. Al Flood recognized the man: he'd once read one of his books.

  The man in the sleigh turned toward him and held out the yellow paper. In a voice thick with smoke he said: "It says here this snow is general throughout the entire province. It's falling further westward into the dark Pacific Ocean. It's falling on every peak and summit in the Rocky Mountains. It is falling also on that lonely mountain graveyard . . . lonely mountain graveyard . . . lonely, lonely graveyard ..."

  And then the man was suddenly gone, obliterated completely by a rage of swirling snowflakes, disappearing beyond ii curtain of white that parted several seconds later to reveal a precipitous slope with banks of snow that lay thickly about a shattered fuselage and plane cockpit. This vision. Flood knew, was his father's grave.

  Off in the distance beyond the slope he could also discern the angry black waves of an ocean pounding against a shore, throwing out spray to mix with the snow that tumbled down upon crooked crosses and headstones in a deserted, abandoned churchyard.

  "What you see—" it was the old man's voice again "—is a Christian Indian graveyard, the West Coast of Vancouver Island. One of the graves has been redug and your brother is buried there."

  Then once more Flood could just make out the sleigh within the blinding storm, only this time there was another figure standing behind the old man wrapped in the blanket. This second figure was a much larger individual, full-faced with a bushy beard and one hand on the shoulder of the older one in the sled. They're friends, Flood thought, comparing them. An incongruity.

  "Can you hear the snow," the old man asked, "falling, faintly falling through the Universe? The snow is falling, my son, on all the living and dead."

  "She's dead," the big man stated, "but you are still alive. If you can do nothing for yourself, then do something for her. Each one does what he can. Take another look."

  Then Al Flood saw the alley all white with its sheet of snow. He could see himself in the alcove, face down as flake by flake enveloped his prostrate form and buried him in a shroud. And he could watch as that same snow blew into the parking lot, its whiteness stained red in the pool of blood that spread out from Genevieve.

  "Die for a reason," Hemingway said. "Don't throw your life away."

  "Die for a cause," Joyce added. "Let's have one last fight for the dead."

  And then they were gone, both of them, leaving nothing behind but the snow. Al Flood heard his breath come in gasps as phlegm caught in his throat. Death rattle,the man thought. I guess my time is near."One more fight," he said: then slowly he found himself coming around and moving across the ground.

  Now he was turning, cutting a ragged circle in the snow, endeavoring to gain a position from which he could make a stand. Inch by inch, like the hands of a clock, he rotated around.

  Eight o'clock . . . nine o'clock . . . you're halfway there, he thought. Think of her . . . don't pass out .. . do what must be done . . .

  And then he saw the window.

  The window was set in the alcove wall now in front of him. It was long and narrow and two feet high, eight inches up from the ground. Though Flood had passed here countless times he had never seen it before. Whatever its use—perhaps as a light source for a building basement—it had not been opened in years. The windowpane was grimy and caked with layers of soot.

  Flood used the butt of his .38 to smash through the glass and clear away the shards.

  The pain was fierce, but he crawled in and fell eight feet down to the floor.

  8:00 p.m.

  Sparky heard the crash of glass and moved toward the alcove.

  Easy. Take it very easy. Don't expose yourself.

  Gun in hand, crouching low, Sparky peered around the corner just in time to see Al Flood's legs disappear in through the window.

  The killer moved into the alcove, closing the gap between them.


  8:01 p.m.

  It was strange down here.

  It was so eerie, so weird, so surreal, that at first Flood thought he had passed out again and that this was another vision. Who were all these people and what were they doing? Living in a madhouse?

  For a moment the cop was certain that he had stepped back in time, that now he was a younger man lost on a carnival midway.

  Was this some sort of nightmare? Was this what you saw when you died?

  Mickey Mouse and Mortimer Snerd and the Count of Monte Cristo? The Connecticut Yankee, Marie Antoinette, the Last of the Mohicans? Alonzo from The Tempest leaning against the wall?

  For there were costumes on tables and draped on the floor and hanging from the ceiling. Lurking in shadows about the room were men in uniform: a Russian Cossack of the Guard, a Sepoy of the Second Gurkhas, a Hussar, a Roman Centurion.

  Between two tables and blocking the end of one aisle were a French Poilu in his horizon bleu greatcoat from the trenches of Verdun and a red-coated Scottish Highlander of the Ross shire Buffs, ostrich feathers in his bonnet and a goatskin sporran at his groin.

  There were clowns with red noses, and Hamlet. There was the Scarlet Pimpernel.

  There were Yoda and Punch and Judy and Azuncena from II Trovatore.

  Off in one corner by herself was Lady Livia from Women Beware Women.

  And everywhere that Al Flood looked there were Monster masks.

  Each head was stuck on a hat hook that angled out from one of the walls. In his fall from the window Flood had knocked two of these masks to the ground. They now lay beside him: the face of Fu Manchu to his left, and to his right, Fredric March as Stevenson's Mr. Hyde. When Flood glanced up, the other heads still on the hooks were beginning to come alive.

  That's it, he thought. You're going. Then his mind was in a whirl.

  "I'm Count Orlock," Max Schreck said, "from Murnau's Nosferatu."

  "And I'm the Frankenstein Monster," whispered Boris Karloff. Then the walls were rife with laughter.