Shotgun Alley

by Andrew Klavan

  “Anyone found any bodies at Stinson Beach lately?”

  “Not that I know of. Why? You boys drop another corpse in the ocean? Damn it, this has gone beyond homicide now, this is illegal dumping. Who was it this time?”

  “Guy named Harold Spatz.”

  “Uh huh. Pimply boy from the warehouse, right? Lemme guess. He was in a sausage-and-doughnut situation with a girl named Beverly Graham.”

  Weiss closed his eyes, drew his breath in, held it. Ketchum was not supposed to know about the Graham girl. He listened to the wind and rain outside his car for a long second. “So Cobra’s boys are talking,” he said.

  “Oh yeah. Oh yeah. They are chattering like mechanical teeth.” Ketchum’s angry snarl grew even angrier, snarlier. “And guess what? It seems Miss Graham was the one who brought Cobra the warehouse codes. In fact, it seems she was the getaway driver at the Bayshore Market. And yet, where oh where was she, Weiss, when the raid went down? I know Bishop didn’t help her slip out of the net so he could—oh, I don’t know—fuck her. I know he didn’t do that, Weiss, because that would be accessory to murder.”

  Weiss opened his eyes. The rain streamed down the windshield. The treetops bowed and rattled in the swirling air. This conversation was not helping his stomach any. And even worse than his curdling gut was the cold line of premonition beginning to creep its slow, slow way up the back of his neck.

  “You have her in custody?” he asked Ketchum.

  “Well, you know, that’s a funny thing,” Ketchum said. “Because that’s exactly what I was planning to call you about. Right this minute, I am driving back from Marin County, where I went to pay a call on the little lady. And do you know what I found when I got there? Lo and behold, she seems to’ve run away.”

  The walls of the car, the storm on the windshield, seemed to spread away from Weiss on every side—spread away and then suddenly snap back tight around him.

  “She’s gone?” he said. His voice was distant, hoarse.

  “Slipped right out from under her daddy’s guards.”

  “Have you found Cobra? Have you found his body?”

  “Cobra? Shit, no. Don’t you think I’d’ve told you if I did? What’s he got—”

  “She’s gone and you haven’t found Cobra’s body?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Weiss blinked hard. Lifted his eyes to the ceiling. Stared at it, unseeing, clutching the cell phone in his sweaty hand.

  “Is there somewhere where Cobra would’ve hidden, you know, his stash, his money?” he asked softly.

  A hesitation on the other end. Then Ketchum said, “Yeah. His boys were just explaining to us about their clubhouse. Pine Lane in Oakland. We’re getting a warrant to search it now.”

  “Shit, shit, shit,” said Weiss. “Fuck the warrant. Get a car over there. Tell Oakland to get a car there now.”

  “What—”

  “Do it. I’ll meet you. Do it.”

  Weiss hung up. He switched the wipers on with a quick, hard gesture. He stuck his phone in the car’s speaker device. His hands were slick, unsteady. He had to shove the phone into place a couple of times before he got it right. Then he jammed the car into reverse. Backed up, swung around. Put the car in drive and headed down the winding road. Through the slanting rain, under the thunder.

  As he went, he held down the number one on his phone and speed-dialed Jim Bishop.

  Forty-Seven

  Bishop’s palmtop rang, but he couldn’t hear it over the roar of the Harley. The bike wound over the long road uphill, and its roar engulfed him. His attention was on the twisting pavement. The pavement rose and switchbacked along the edge of the forest canyon. The pine trees screened the dropoff, but glimpses of it flashed out between the trunks and branches. This was the place where Mad Dog had fallen. Bishop roared past it, his eyes on the road.

  Heading for Cobra’s clubhouse. Heading for Cobra’s treasure.

  Honey was on the pad behind him. He felt her leaning against his leather though she was light as air. He felt her arms around his waist, her head between his shoulder blades. He liked the feel of her against him and the bike underneath.

  His palmtop went on ringing. It was in his jacket, zipped into a side pocket. Bishop didn’t hear it at all. After a while, the ringing stopped. The Harley went on, winding up the hill.

  The rain hadn’t reached the East Bay yet. The clouds were swirling, dark and low. The day was edging toward evening, and as the light died the thunderheads seemed to press down toward the mountain. At the same time, the Harley climbed closer and closer to the churning gray mass. It felt to Bishop as if he were riding right into the thing, as if he were going to punch through the cloud cover and motor through lightning and rain and break out finally above the storm to coast along in the brilliant blue sky. But it never happened. The clouds kept whirlpooling continually closer and closer. The night kept coming on, kept pressing down. The wind grew wet and cold as if they really were nearing the heart of the downpour. But the Harley just went on growling and stuttering as it followed the rising road higher and higher still.

  The palmtop began to ring again. The Harley’s engine drowned it out. The palmtop rang and rang and then, again, it stopped.

  A little ways on, Bishop felt Honey tap his shoulder. He glanced down and saw her slender hand extended. He followed the gesture. There was a small lane to his left, curving away through the trees. He guided the bike onto it.

  They came into an enclave of houses overlooking a cliff. They were small houses, run-down. They looked as if they’d been planted here years ago and forgotten, left to decay. Honey tapped him again, pointed again. He guided the Harley down a dirt drive.

  They reached the clubhouse. Bishop hardly remembered the place. The last time he’d been here he’d been too jazzed from killing Mad Dog. Then later he was drunk and even later he was hungover. At this point, the whole experience was foggy to him, like a dream. He could never have found the place again on his own.

  The house was still visible in the last light from the west. It was a two-story cabin made of raw pine. There was a porch out front with a rocker and a swing. There was a dusty yard beneath the porch. There was a dead Chevy in the dusty yard and a junked armchair stacked on top of an old sofa.

  It might’ve been any weekend cabin on the edge of any hill. But there was a wood fence out front with razor wire coiled along the top of it. And there was razor wire on the roof gutter, too. The windows were black and empty and gave the house a hunkering, aggressive look somehow. And there was a plaque with a death’s head nailed roughly into the center of the door.

  Bishop brought the Harley to a stop. He sat before the front gate, the bike idling. Honey dismounted, walked to the fence. She had the key.

  She swung the gate open and held it for him. Bishop motored past her to where the driveway ended under an old oak. He killed the engine. Swung his leg over. Walked to her in the rising dust.

  She put her hands against his chest, tilted her head up. He held her shoulders and kissed her. He looked over her to where the lights were beginning to appear in the city below. The lights twinkled on as the night grew deeper and then winked out as the storm moved over them. The bay was already completely hidden. The clouds flickered above it, lightning in their bellies.

  “Big storm coming, it looks like,” Bishop said.

  “Let’s do this,” Honey whispered, pressing her cheek against his chest. “If we’re gonna do it, let’s do it and go.”

  He hesitated there another second, his hands on her soft shoulders. It was a pretty crappy thing to do, he reckoned. Stealing the money, disappearing with the client’s daughter. A pretty crappy thing to do to Weiss. Maybe he wouldn’t, after all. Maybe he’d just go in with her, help her get the cash and let her go. Or maybe he’d get the cash himself and turn it in to the Agency. Or what the hell? Maybe he’d get the cash and ride Honey down to Mexico and fuck her till Jesus came again. It was hard for him to say exactly what he was planning at the moment. B
ut he figured he was about to find out.

  She felt his hesitation. “Do you still want to?” she asked him.

  He stood there another second. He stood there, thinking: What the hell. He knew he was pussy-blind. Sure he did. But so what? There were worse ways to stumble to perdition.

  “Come on,” he said.

  He followed her to the house.

  Forty-Eight

  Weiss raced the darkness across the San Rafael Bridge. Pushing the Taurus to seventy-five, sluicing left and right through the gaps in the swift, steady traffic, he broke out of the rain and glimpsed the last light of sunset over the hills ahead. But the clouds came after him, pressed down from above, pressed in on the water at either side of him. The storm was following fast and night was coming.

  Weiss drove faster. His thoughts were fragmented, jumbled. Bishop…Cobra…The girl…Ideas flashed into his mind, disjointed. She wouldn’t have left the safety of home if she were still afraid of Cobra…She wouldn’t have left if there were not still money to be had…Cobra must’ve had a stash…Cobra…He couldn’t quite string it all together.

  But it didn’t matter. He pressed the gas pedal down harder. Rushed into the red taillights crowded ahead of him as the white headlights, glaring in his rearview, crowded behind. Because he felt as if that cold line of premonition on his neck had turned to ice. He felt as if it had seeped into him through his pores and spread in his blood through his whole body. Maybe it was pure intuition—his sense, his feeling for the character of Honey Graham. Or maybe he’d actually reasoned out her motives and just wasn’t conscious of it yet. Either way, he knew that if Honey had left home, she would head for the clubhouse, for the money. He knew that she would bring Bishop with her.

  And he knew that Bishop was a dead man—that he’d be murdered, as soon as darkness fell.

  He sped west, the lightning on his heels. He pressed the speed-dial button on his phone again.

  Forty-Nine

  Honey was quick and agile up the porch steps. Bishop watched her. She was slender and shapely in her suede parka and jeans. Her long blonde hair moved with her motion. Bishop felt that motion inside him. It changed the way he breathed.

  I’m a fucking idiot, he thought. But he didn’t care. What the hell.

  He let her lead the way to the door.

  She had her key in the keyhole when his palmtop rang again. She turned back the bolt and paused, looked over her shoulder at him. Bishop was working the phone from his jacket.

  “Come on,” she said nervously. “Aren’t you coming?” He could see the spark of panic in her eyes.

  The phone glowed bright in the thickening dusk. He read the incoming number: Weiss—but he already knew that. There was no one else it could be. The readout said this was the third time he’d called. Must’ve been during the ride. Must’ve been urgent. He rarely called at all. For him to call three times like that so close together—

  “Cowboy!” Honey whispered. “Come on.”

  The palmtop rang.

  Bishop held it in his hand, looked down at it. Maybe they’d found Cobra’s body, he thought. Maybe that’s why Weiss was calling. But he knew it wasn’t true. The cops had already stopped the search; they wouldn’t’ve started it up again in weather like this.

  No. It was Honey. Weiss had heard she was gone. Weiss knew—because Weiss always knew these things—that she would come to him.

  The palmtop went on ringing, ringing. He held it in his hand, looked at it. A sense of misgiving tightened his chest, like a screw turning.

  And Honey said, “Come on,” again quickly.

  It annoyed Bishop: Weiss meddling and the phone ringing and Honey urging him on. He knew what he was doing. He didn’t need anyone to tell him.

  He slipped the palmtop back into his jacket. “All right,” he said.

  The palmtop stopped ringing. But the misgiving lingered in Bishop’s mind. To hell with Weiss, he thought. But still—the misgiving lingered.

  Honey pushed the door open. She stepped across the threshold. He went after her, into the house, into the living room. Honey shut the door.

  It was dark. The air was stale. The smell of the stale air brought the place alive in Bishop’s memory. He remembered the night the gang had come here after he’d killed Mad Dog and how everyone was howling and celebrating and how they drank beer and tequila and he woke up with the coarse-featured part-Mexican girl. Somehow even the smell of the girl came back to him in the smell of the room. He smiled a little to himself.

  A line of light cut through the shadows. Honey had a flash—one of those keychain Maglites. That stirred something else in Bishop’s memory but only for a moment and he couldn’t place it. He watched as the strong, narrow beam picked out portions of the room. The leather recliner, the TV. Empty tequila bottles, empty bottles of beer. He remembered seeing Shorty sprawled in the chair, asleep, clutching his Xbox controller on the morning after the party. He remembered how Shorty’s head exploded into a fine spray of blood when the police sniper took him out in the warehouse.

  He felt Honey’s hand slip into his. A small, cool hand. His own hand closed around it. She began to shuffle forward carefully, panning the light back and forth in front of her. Bishop felt the gentle squeeze of her hand as he moved along beside her.

  They followed the beam of light down a hall. A long, low growl came at them from somewhere. Honey pulled up short at the sound. She swung the flashlight nervously this way and that. Bishop saw her eyes gleam as she looked at him. He heard her give a little laugh, starting to breathe again.

  “Thunder,” she said softly. “Like a fucking horror movie.”

  She went on again, her hand in his.

  They came to a doorway, a room. Honey stood on the threshold a moment. She let the flashlight explore the space wall to wall. Bishop remembered this, too. The stacked boxes. TVs, computers, stereos. All the electronic stuff the gang had hijacked. It was all still here.

  “Good,” she said softly. “The cops haven’t found this place yet.”

  “They will,” said Bishop.

  “I guess. I don’t know. There’s a gang code. You’re not supposed to tell about the clubhouse no matter what.”

  Bishop snorted. She glanced at him. He shrugged. “They’ll tell. The cops’ll offer to take fifteen minutes off their sentences, they’ll tell everything. I’m surprised it took them this long.”

  “Right,” she said. “Right.” He made out her smile in the light of the beam. “Everybody’s so full of shit, I swear.”

  “Yes, they are,” said Bishop.

  She tilted her head. “C’mon, help me move some of these.”

  They went into the room. She set the flashlight on the floor. They worked in the dim outglow, carrying boxes from one corner to the opposite wall. There was only darkness at the windows now. Their big panes rattled with the rising wind. Night had fallen, and the storm was blowing in fast. Another grumble of thunder sounded, then the first washing patter of rain on the leaves and grass.

  “Now what?” said Bishop.

  They had cleared a place in the corner. Honey took the Maglite again and knelt down.

  “There’s supposed to be a place…” she murmured. She ran her fingers over the rough floorboards. “Here,” she said.

  Bishop stood over her, watching.

  “Hold the light for me,” she whispered.

  She handed the flash up to him. He trained it on her hands. He watched as her fingers sought out a space between the boards. They found it, half a knothole. She reached into the opening.

  “You need me to lift it up?” he asked her.

  “No, it’s just—there’s a lock…There,” she whispered.

  Bishop heard the mechanism shift. He trained the light on her while she pulled the floorboard away easily. She pulled away another. The wind rose, and the window rattled again. Bishop glanced up, glanced out at the darkness. His own reflection looked back at him from the window. His image was faint, stained with the night, half his
face obliterated by the stains of night. A gout of rain pasted itself against the glass and erased the image completely.

  “Okay,” Honey said.

  Bishop leaned forward, looked down again. She’d lifted two more boards out. There was a space underneath. He shone the flash into it, but all he could make out were some rotting joists and some more old boards.

  Crouching now, Honey shifted. She worked knowingly. One of the joists separated and twisted around in her hand. It was another secret lock.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  Bishop’s heart beat faster. He fidgeted with the Maglite, rolling its grainy grip in his fingers. His mind raced, and for a moment the memory about the light came back to him. Cobra had had a Maglite just like this one when they had raised the warehouse at China Basin.

  And he thought: Weiss was calling because he knew Honey had run away. He was calling because he knew Honey would come to him. He was calling because—

  But now Honey pulled up on one of the joists. A long section of the underfloor lifted up on a hidden hinge. It was a trapdoor. There was a hole underneath it, a deep hole at least four feet across with maybe more of it hidden under the boards.

  There was a suitcase in there, at the bottom, a small, black over-night bag.

  “There it is,” said Honey breathlessly. Her face turned up to him, white as white in the light. “I can’t reach. Can you get it, Cowboy?”

  Bishop nodded—but for a second, he didn’t move. There was that tight sense of misgiving in his chest and he just stood there, looking down at the bag, looking down into the hole and thinking how deep it was, deep as a grave.

  “C’mon,” said Honey. “Just reach down there, would you? Come on. Reach down and get it.”

  Bishop began to lower himself—and then the palmtop in his pocket started ringing again.

  He heard the sound. It caught him, froze him. Thoughts crashed in on him all together. Weiss…Urgent…Honey…