Spooker

by Dean Ing

  Gary did as he was told, moving deliberately, no longer in doubt that this sly little changeling was capable of premeditated murder. Gary's entire body sang with adrenaline, and he knew the sensation well but had learned how to keep it on a tight leash until the proper moment. He managed to close the door without depressing its center lock and turned, hands out and empty. He saw that Jan was entirely naked and that Andy was as well. Andy Soriano might not be interested in sports, but completely nude he was a healthy, wire-muscled specimen you didn't jump without thinking twice. He had pulled Jan back, staying close behind her, using her as a shield against any weapon, keeping the tip of that knife blade against her throat. On closer inspection, it was not quite like any blade Gary had seen on a big clasp knife before - ground down near its end so that the tip, honed on both edges, would slash catastrophically either way it was guided. "I'm not armed," Gary said, and tried to give Jan an encouraging smile. Her eyes seemed listless, devoid of hope.

  "That's for me to find out," said Andy, now in a teasing singsong parody of cuteness. "And I will. When she told me that big bad Gary was on the way to the rescue, it simplified things a lot."

  "I'm sorry," Jan said, her eyes pleading toward Gary.

  "It's okay, honey," Gary said softly.

  Andy chortled at that. "Is it? We'll see. Take two giant steps back, Gary. The first order you disobey, I twitch. Do you want me to twitch?"

  Gary shook his head and stepped away, facing his dilemma. He'd left the Beretta in the glove compartment before entering the Tate residence because such weapons added an unwelcome presence to a friendly discussion.

  "Take off everything. Shoes, too. Turn your pockets out," said Andy. His voice seemed to exaggerate his mood of the instant, varying from childlike to peremptory. At the moment, it held a hard edge of command. Gary began to take his clothes off, doing it slowly, hoping to give Swede time to shift the balance before this batty little bastard really hurt somebody again.

  "Got an idea, Andy," he said as he sat on the couch to remove his shoes, pausing. "It's me you want anyhow. She looks pretty tired. You're probably getting tired holding her up - "

  "Keep taking it off," Andy demanded. "Like us, naked like the rest of us, the best of us, and the best of me is rather good, isn't it, Janelle?"

  Jan's mouth moved twice before she managed to say, "Wonderful," in a tone that denied it. "He's got a little gun, Gary." Now Gary noticed the scatter of clothing across the living-room floor, some of it Jan's, some of it obviously Andy Soriano's. But he doubted that Soriano had a gun on him. There was not even an ankle holster in sight.

  Gary forced himself to breathe regularly, muscles aching with need to grapple, throttle, smash. He took off the shoes, then began to turn his pockets out, sitting naked. "But there's nothing more she can do for you, Andy. If I lie down facing away from you, and you can see I'm not carrying anything, why not let her go out the front door? Then you'll have me like you wanted."

  "For a start," Andy said, "she can do the same thing for me she did before. See?" He moved to one side and Gary saw the erection he was meant to see. "But maybe I won't, not yet, because you're my friend and I want to make this easy for you before I - well, anyway . . . Besides, I don't have to bargain; you'll lie down facing any way I tell you to. You'll bite off your dick if I tell you to. Won't you?"

  This guy is completely off his trolley, Gary decided. Even if he had raped Jan, keeping his own clothes off was a sign that he didn't care about his own vulnerability afterward. Maybe he didn't think much about being vulnerable. Maybe he wasn't thinking much, period.

  "I asked you a question," Andy said, and Gary saw the tendons tighten in his knife arm.

  Oh, yes, he was thinking, all right. "Sure, anything you say, Andy. If I can. 'Course, it won't help if you ask me to do something I can't. Because you don't want to throw away your advantage - "

  "Don't tell me what I want," Andy demanded. "I know what I want."

  Jan was crying now, a silent heaving of her poor lovely despoiled body that was without tears. "What do you want, Andy?" Gary asked, still sitting. He knew that if he gathered himself for any fast movement, his muscles would betray him before they could launch him. Andy had known that, too.

  "I'll tell you when the time comes. Maybe." Andy's tone teased again.

  "Maybe you'll tell me how you found the lady. Or maybe you'll tell me why you set out to kill me, dump me down that goddamn shaft with the others. What had I done to you, Andy? Or was it something I did to your mom?"

  "Fuck Mom! Fuckfuckfuck mom, fuck her dead." Saliva formed at the corner of Andy's mouth. His eyes danced - not in hatred, but with blazing triumph.

  "Boy, you really get off on that, don't you?" Gary said in awe.

  Andy licked the spittle away. "You have absolutely no idea," he said with a death's-head grin that generated visible gooseflesh on Gary's legs.

  "If you hate your mom, why help her? How long have you been helping her?"

  "Too many questions," Andy said, sobering for an instant, and then smiled again. "I bet I know why, Mr.

  Chuck Lane, Gary Landis, whoever else you are. I bet you're counting on help. I think you actually believe that poor clod out there near the drainage ditch can save you, but" - his eyes grew large in false wonderment - "who was going to save him? Lucky I landed off in that field while there was still a little light. I don't think he even saw me go over, but I saw him. And I can be very, very quiet."

  "You flew?"

  "Like a birdie. Your friend's neck will bend ever so far over backward now, he could lick his own asshole. But no, I don't suppose he could. I took his ID; always take their ID," he advised, winking like a conspirator.

  Gary could not help the tear that found its way down his cheek. He was trembling now, knowing it showed, not much caring. He must not think about Swede now, lying alone in a ditch with his throat laid open. If this little ghoul was a practiced killer, maybe he wouldn't make the mistakes Gary had been counting on.

  "I think you'd better give me a better reason than her to keep me from disobeying you," he said.

  "Really?" The arm twitched. Jan made a soft noise, and a small trickle of blood appeared at her throat beneath the knife's tip. "What I think is, you'd better go to the bathroom. Go on; we're right behind you,"

  Andy said, his voice strained because he was half-lifting Jan from behind with his free arm.

  The bathroom had never been designed for three, but Andy solved that one easily. Standing in the doorway, he made Gary step into the tub. Then he withdrew the knife from Jan's throat, thrust her toward Gary, who embraced her, and switched the knife to his free hand while the two held one another. "Get into the tub, Janelle!" he commanded, and burst into laughter.

  As she complied, a faint metallic clink sounded from somewhere nearby. Gary saw that somehow the naked man had produced a medium-caliber derringer, and it was cocked. "Neat, huh?" Andy said in a tone as rational as a politician's. "You can hide one under your arm without a holster, even move the arm around.

  Mom showed me that. Mom was the master," he added, nodding at his own words, smiling as though at some faintly pleasant admission.

  Now he leveled the ugly little weapon at Jan's breast; closed the clasp knife one-handed; tossed it four feet to Gary, who nearly failed to catch it. "Now," said Andy Soriano, "you can do the honors. Let go of the curtain!" he barked to Jan, who had grasped the shower curtain to keep from sliding down into the tub. She swallowed and stood upright, hand to her throat, leaning against Gary, who could feel her body trembling against his.

  "You don't think I'm really going to use - " Gary began.

  Singsong, teasing again. "Yes I do," Andy interrupted, speaking in the slow cadences of sweet reason. "I think if you have the choice, you'd rather do her quickly. It doesn't hurt much, honest - not if you do it right.

  Or, you can make me put a round or two into your belly, and then I can gut her very slowly while you can see and hear it. You're both going bye-bye,
you know. There's positively nothing you can do about that. Oh, you may think you could take my little slitter and try for me, but think about it: I can't possibly miss, and nobody functions well when he's gut-shot, and surely you don't expect her to be much help. And when you tried and failed, then I'd get to do it my way." The face was gleeful, eyes intent on Jan's unprotected torso.

  Knees shaking uncontrollably, eyes closed, Jan slid downward until she was sitting on the back lip of the tub. The derringer was now pointed at Gary's very center. "If I have to do you first, Gary, I may just wait awhile for you to enjoy that new navel. And you won't like that, will you, Janelle?" The face changed.

  "Choose!" he snarled.

  Jan laid her cheek against Gary's naked thigh, leaning forward. She did have a few tears left, it seemed.

  "I don't want to hurt anymore, Gary." To Soriano, then: "Why must you do this vicious, horrible thing?"

  "Horrible? If Gary weren't my friend, Miz Glamourpussy, you wouldn't be in that tub together. You'd get to see him die, and you'd hurt more than you can imagine while I made a new cunt for you. This was Mom's idea, fuck her in hell, but she was right. This way it will look like you - "

  And the world exploded, a dark spray of debris filling the space between Soriano and his victims, peppering them with splinters, Soriano hurling himself backward to rebound from a wall. A second blast erupted beneath the doorway, the sound deafening Gary, more debris cascading from the ceiling.

  Soriano, on one knee, blinked hard and swung the derringer toward Gary, who flung the closed knife into his teeth. The muzzle blast stung, but the slug went into the ceiling and then Soriano was pounding toward the front door, Gary flinging the first missile he could reach as he followed. It happened to be Jan's bowl of unshelled almonds on the dining table, scattering in the air as Soriano wrenched the door open, turning to fire again but ducking away instinctively as the almonds pelted him. And then Soriano leaped into the darkness, Gary hard on his heels.

  The open door threw a rhomboid of light into the yard. Soriano, fleeing from it, turned sidelong to find his target in the light, and he did not see the nose of Gary's Camaro until he impacted against its hood with a squeal that was more anger than pain.

  Gary's vision was equally poor, but he saw Soriano roll back into the light and regain his balance; but not before Gary slammed into him, managing to grip the derringer with one hand, twisting Soriano's wrist ferociously and, when the weapon fired, feeling the heat of it against his palm, knowing he might have the slug in him now but not feeling that at all, not with Andy Soriano butting him in the face, not with his hands now beneath Soriano's chin, both men rolling on the gravel as Gary shook and gripped his opponent, slamming the head against gravel repeatedly, not stopping until long after the legs had stopped churning against his, not until he found himself strangling a rag doll.

  Not, in fact, until a beloved gruff voice beside him said, "Overkill. I like it," and Gary looked up to see Swede Halvorsen, a sawed-off pump shotgun hanging from one hand. The old man was disheveled, baseball cap askew, and on his face was a look of terrible satisfaction. He reached down, helped Gary pull himself to one knee, looked back toward the mobile home. "Did the sonofabitch hurt my granddaughter?"

  "Not much," Gary said. Let Jan tell him if she wants to, he decided. "He sure would've if you hadn't showed up." To tell Swede of the obscenities that involved would not have been a kindness, and Gary left it at that.

  Swede waved his hand toward Soriano and Gary himself. "Don't tell me this was the uniform of the day," he said.

  38

  JUNE 1994

  " The uniform was Andy's idea. Looks like he's all out of ideas now," Gary said, inspecting the palm of his hand.

  "Shit, no wonder," Swede said, kneeling, pressing his fingers against a bluish depression oozing in the faint light on Soriano's muscular little chest. "You popped him here."

  "Popped himself," Gary replied, rising, hugging the older man.

  "Hey; the neighbors," Swede growled, and Gary realized he was outdoors, naked, embracing another man.

  He began walking toward the light. "He said he had cut your throat out here, Swede. What happened?"

  "Well, he lied. I just got here, and saw your Camaro, and started to knock. But then I heard what was coming down and worked my way under the floor. Believe me, I know every inch of that bathroom layout upside down. Especially upside down," he chuckled. They closed the door behind them, and Swede raised his voice. "It's us, Jan. It's okay now."

  "She'll be dressing," Gary said quickly. "Wait - Soriano said he had your ID." He knelt at the rumpled jeans Soriano had left on the floor.

  Swede fished his old wallet from his hip pocket with two fingers, held it up. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  Gary pulled two wallets from the trousers, tossed one down after a cursory look, then flipped open a slender, flashy eel-skin wallet. He laughed in disbelief. "Christ! Looks like my old buddy Ralph Guthrie is out there somewhere in a ditch, bled out. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy - but how'd he find this place?"

  "DEA guy?"

  "Scuffler for La Familia. Somehow they got a line on me after all." He stood up and shrugged. "Well, Andy Soriano, you'd say you got the wrong sentry. I say you got the right one."

  At this point, Gary's knees began to shake and he sat down, regaining his own shorts and trousers.

  "Jan? If you're decent, I am," he said, hoping this moment of reaction would not become a fit of the shakes.

  He had shot men in the line of duty before, and knew to expect that rushing mixture of dread and elation, I've taken a human life, and he would've taken mine but I won, that had followed. It didn't follow this time. Only the dread was there, a dull ache of uncertainty, not of whether he'd been justified according to every law of man and Providence, but what kind of a cynical Providence would give us this kind of free choice? There had been an Andy attentive to a friend, meticulous in his work, almost pathetically congenial. And another Andy full of a demonic force that lusted to kill and far worse, to torture, even to force a friend to murder his own mate. And how many more Andys had there been? To kill one, you eliminated all the Andys.

  It was all too metaphysical to unravel this quickly. Gary stood up, forcing his knees to obey him. He would know the elation he sought when holding Jan close, feeling her vibrance, glorying in what he and Swede had saved from shy, friendly, hellish Andy Soriano - or from chaos, or perhaps from Providence if that was the way it worked.

  And when he arrived at the bathroom, stepping past a two-inch hole in the flooring with its splintered plywood edges, Jan Betancourt sat in the tub looking past him with an unearthly calm. A small runnel of blood, like a tear, had trickled down her cheek from the inner corner of her left eye, and as he knelt and tilted her face in his hands, then held her still-warm body in his arms, Gary knew that one of those metal pellets - probably double-aught buckshot - had struck the orbital ridge just above her eye and - Providence again? - deflected inward, into the brain, instead of out. She was not breathing. For all practical purposes, death had found Jan instantaneously.

  Gary was not worth a damn those next two days, but Paul Visconti helped him through his debriefing.

  Graham Forster's congratulations sounded hollow, perhaps because it was the FBI, not the Company, that had begun to unravel the secrets of that hideaway on the reservation, including the discovery of Helmut Klemmt's gun cabinet which was an outstanding datum in the Spooker File. But the central discovery was that the fingerprints of Romana Dravo were a perfect match with those of Skander Masaryk.

  Some of those secrets might never be resolved, said Forster. Very few would have come to light if someone had taken five minutes more with a few dynamite caps. As for Romana Dravo's head, it had been found in the rear seat of an exquisitely constructed Chamois kitplane, in an open field near Bakersfield.

  Evidently, Andrew Soriano had not wanted to leave his mom entirely behind.

  Gary sat at the rear of the sanc
tuary, alone, the Betancourt family huddled together in the front pews as if hoping for security in numbers. He had offered his sympathies, but Jan's mother had said only, "If it weren't for you," in a choked whisper, and the father's stare had been eloquent with silent hatred.

  Swede had witnessed this in silence, standing a little apart before filing into a pew with the family. After a muted buzz of furious whispering among them, Swede Halvorsen stood up and strode to the back, seeming suddenly very old, reseating himself near Gary without word or glance.

  Gary only half-heard, and later would not recall, what the priest said. The place smelled of incense and sweat, the odors of penance, and later Gary drove alone at the tail of the short procession to the brief graveside service. Swede drove just ahead of him in the old Dodge Polara that Jan had once driven into the hills, demanding to be part of the action, utterly incapable of imagining how serious the consequences might be, what part she might ultimately play.

  At the graveside, Swede stood well apart and Gary took up a position near him, both of them sweltering under unrelenting California sunshine. They could hear nothing but distant murmurs. Probably just as well. At no time did the Betancourts give any sign to acknowledge the presence of Gary or Swede.

  When the obsequies were past and the others had driven off, fat tires grinding gravel as if it were guilt, Gary sighed into a blinding sun. "Why isn't it raining?"

  The old man looked at him. "In Bakersfield?"

  "It rained for Amadeus. It should be raining for Jan," Gary insisted.

  "Amadeus?"

  "Never mind. Shit. Who said, 'The world isn't like they told you it was'?"

  "Ever'body who knows anything worth knowing," said Swede.

  "That'd make a damned short list," Gary replied. "And if they know, chances are they won't tell you.