Authors: Joe Gores
But Dain was upon him, towering over him, all the more terrifying because he was speaking in a rational, almost quiet voice
totally at odds with the tension in his face and body.
“You knew only the three of us would be out there in that cabin, Doug. And you told them to slaughter us all.”
“Please! Dain! For God’s sake, man, pity…”
Dain brought his arm back and across his body like an ancient warrior with a broadsword, then swung the hard narrow spine
of the book like that warrior’s blade. Not at Sherman. In martial arts he had been trained to think of striking something
a foot beyond his real target.
The edge of the book struck the side of Sherman’s neck with a rending sound. Dain, panting, turned away from the carrion huddled
in the corner of the elevator.
“There’s your pity, Doug,” he said.
Shenzie started to meow, and some of the shock left Dain’s face. He screwed the fuse back in tight and shut the fuse box door
before going back down the hall.
“Let’s get you out of that box, Shenz.”
He carried Shenzie into the loft, turned on the lights—and scattered words and images from the last few hours came clamoring
unbidden through his brain. Questions. Answers. Probabilities. Inevitabilities.
A coherent whole.
He sat on the bed for a long time with the carry case unopened beside him. A vast shudder ran through him.
Of course. If the middleman had come after him, why would the hitman be any slower off the mark?
Finally he shook himself, reached into the cat carry case for Shenzie. Fondled his furry little head. Chucked him under the
chin, scratched him under the collar. Still no purr, of course, but at least he withdrew his hand to vocal protest.
“We’ll have you out of there in no time, cat,” he promised. “Just one phone call to make first.”
Dain dragged Moe Wexler, the electronics genius, away from his reality cop show on TV, got some precise advice from him, then
asked him to do a little job. Moe sighed and said he would have to go down to his shop in the middle of the night and it was
going to cost Dain plenty, and Dain said that was all right, he had plenty, and he would meet Moe there.
The next part was going to be difficult and dangerous. But if he had to go, Dain figured, he would be going in good company.
Shenzie had always wanted to be an engineer and he would be able to see some engineering problems get worked out at first
hand.
Especially if Dain quite literally blew it…
The eleven o’clock news told the hitman he was safe. An explosion had gutted a semi-abandoned pier on the San Francisco waterfront.
Fortunately there was a firehouse next door, so they were able to extinguish the resultant blaze before the flames had a chance
to spread to adjacent structures.
One unidentified body had been found in the wreckage, at this hour police and firemen were sifting through the rubble for
clues to his identity and for the source of the blast…
The shooter tapped his remote to blank the screen, and went to bed feeling totally safe and at peace with himself for the
first time in five years.
It was one of those unusual San Francisco summer days, a sparkling sunlit morning without fog. Randy Solomon bounded zestfully
down the outside stairs of his beautifully restored old Victorian on Buchanan, whistling. He turned downhill toward Fell and
his car parked half a block away.
Standing on the sidewalk waiting for him was Dain. No sling this morning; both arms were free. Solomon checked his forward
momentum, momentarily appalled.
“You were the other hitman,” said Dain simply.
His face was pinched and drawn; another sleepless night. Randy had recovered; his face was placid, beaming. He mimed holding
his arms out from his sides.
“You a tricky enough dude to be wired, Dain?”
Dain opened his arms wide for the frisk. “Doctor said I could take the sling off today, so I did, that’s all,” he said.
“So, no wire.” Randy gave his big laugh. “So it’s just us, sorta
mano a mano,
huh?”
“Something like that,” said Dain. “After all, I’ve been looking for you for five years.”
Randy nodded.
“Lots of activity gettin’ you nowhere. Sure, I was the second shooter. Who the hell else could it have been? I been waiting
five years for that penny to drop. When you said last night about Inverness bein’ a cop, I thought you knew then.”
“I didn’t,” said Dain. There was none of the heat and hatred he’d shown the night before with Sherman. Only a sort of sadness.
“You’re right, I should have known. It only made sense—a couple of murderous cops working together. You had the directions
to the cabin—I’d given them to you myself. Inverness had the instructions from Sherman—kill us all.”
Randy laughed his
basso profundo
laugh, spread his hands.
“Always tellin’ you how I couldn’t stand old Dougiebaby, where’d he get his information, shit like that, when all the time
him and me…”
“You’d worked for him before,” said Dain, more a question than a statement. “Paying for your house.”
“Couple of times,” Randy agreed. “Do a hit locally saves travelin’ on the weekends.”
“It was you who blew up Grimes on his boat.”
Randy chuckled again. “You sure you ain’t wearin’ a wire, Hoss, seeking all these admissions, like?”
“No wire,” said Dain. “Just trying to understand.”
Randy was suddenly irritated. He looked around the quiet early-morning street. No one else had come from any of the houses
on the block. No cars had started up at the curb. Randy had always been an early one in to the office. Dedicated cop.
“What’s to understand? Killin’ people’s the easiest way I know to have a nice retirement.” He swept an arm around to encompass
the city. “Shit, they kill each other every day—over what TV show to watch and what corner to sell crack from.”
“But… but I was your
friend.
Marie was your friend. Albie was your friend. Even Shenzie was—”
“Can’t be friends with no cat, Hoss.”
“But all you had to do was—”
“You wouldn’t let it alone. I had set up the accident on Grimes’s boat, and you just kept peckin’ at it. So me and Sherman
decided…” He broke off, said, “That was old Dougie’s body they drug out of the loft, wasn’t it?”
“His body,” said Dain. “I called him from New Orleans, told him I was on my way back and would be at the loft last night.
I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I had to know one way or the other.” He suddenly quoted, “’Was me, I’d be plannin’
a whole lotta other people’s deaths.’” He met the incomprehension in Randy’s eyes. “It’s what you said to the doctor at the
hospital that night. Whatever part of me was still alive heard it… It kept me going all those years…”
Randy shrugged. “I don’t remember it.” Then he was suddenly intense, with an edge of anger again. “But you shoulda listened
closer, Sherlock. I said that’s what I’d of done. Me. Not you. Hell, you was just a nerdy chess player in those days.”
“Still am,” said Dain, and meant it. “Playing around at life, playing around at revenge… Who else but you would have put
that second bug on Farnsworth’s phone? I never told you about the bonds but you knew about them in the car last night from
the airport and I
still
didn’t get it…”
“Yeah. Beefed up yo’ body, got all ready physically for the war, but up here” —he tapped his forehead with a finger— “and
here” —he slammed a fist against his own washboard gut— “you’re still a fucking nerd.”
His anger boiled over, he put a hand on Dain’s chest and shoved him back a couple of steps. Dain gave without pushing back.
Randy nodded as if his point had been made.
“You know I killed your fucking kid, you know I helped kill your fucking wife, you know I planned to blow you and your fucking
cat all to hell, and what do you do? You think it all through an’ you come here for a fucking confrontation.”
He whirled, jabbed a finger at the flat roof of the Victorian across the street.
“Why the fuck aren’t you up there with a sniper rifle and a scope, layin’ the cross hairs on my chest?”
He shoved Dain again, harder this time. Dain went back a few more paces, still not trying to defend himself.
“Because you’re a fucking nerd, same as you ever was.” He gave his big booming laugh. “You ain’t figured out shit. And you
got no proof of anything.” He was suddenly curious. “What really tipped you off it was Doug and me?”
“Him, a phone bill. You, the remark about the bonds—eventually it sank in. And how scared you got when I almost took Shenzie
out of his carry case in the car. So up at the loft I checked and sure enough—there was a wire running from his collar down
into a lump of molded
plastique
in the case with a detonator embedded in it. If I’d lifted him out—”
“So you blew up the loft, figuring I’d be watching the news and figure you were all done. And old Dougie went there, tryna
get you before you got him, and by accident got blown up along with the place. You’re pretty slick, Sherlock. But not slick
enough. ‘Cause you don’t want revenge
hard
enough. You gonna
talk
me to death. Only people don’t die that way.”
“I’d quit wanting revenge at all,” said Dain. “I was going to let it go with Doug, even after I knew he’d been the go-between.
But he wouldn’t let it alone. Just like me five years ago. And it got him killed, just like me five years ago.”
Randy made as if to step around Dain toward his car, then checked himself again.
“Like I told you in the car last night, he couldn’t leave it alone. I can’t leave it alone. I ain’t safe long as you’re alive.
But the difference between you and me, Sherlock—I know the way people die is somebody kills ‘em. So I ain’t gonna talk you
to death.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Dain in a strangely flat voice.
“I’m gonna give you time to have a lot of fun wonderin’ when it’s gonna happen. Then, one of these days, just when you figure
I’ve forgot all about it, you’ll turn around and, wham! You ain’t there any more. Nobody’ll ever suspect
me, ‘cause see, Dain, the whole world knows I’m your best friend. Hell, I’ll cry at your funeral.”
He laughed his big booming laugh again, went jauntily down the street and across the grassy strip to his car, went around
to the driver’s side and unlocked it, opened the door. Dain bent down to pick up something he’d put down out of sight beside
the roots of a tree, then just stood there with it in his hand to watch Solomon get into his car.
As Randy slid in under the wheel, he checked the back from automatic cop’s habit. And froze. On the seat behind him was Shenzie’s
cat carrying case with a big red satin bow tied around it. A bow with bright gold letters stamped into it:
FROM A FRIEND. MEOW.
“No!”
he screamed.
Utter terror distorting his features, he tried to get out of the car before Dain pushed the button on the transmitter. Moe
Wexler had been up almost all night putting it together for the detonator in the
plastique
Randy had put in Shenzie’s case.
Randy didn’t make it.
With a great
whoosh!
of sound and a burst of flame, his car went up with him only halfway out of it. Black smoke poured up into the unusual summer
morning without fog. Dain just stood there, watching, tears on his cheeks.
“You turn around, Randy, and wham!” he said in a soft, sad voice, “you aren’t there any more.” He started down the street,
murmuring to himself, “Nobody’ll ever suspect me. I was his best friend. Hell, I’ll cry at his funeral…”
Cautious people had begun venturing out of their houses with stunned faces, but by then Dain was gone.
From force of habit, he went around to the back door of the little bungalow in Mill Valley, started to let himself into the
kitchen, stopped dead, key in hand. The door was unlocked. He had locked it after leaving Shenzie off last night before going
back to Moe Wexler’s shop in the city. And Shenzie hadn’t come to greet him as he usually did…
Nightmare. Yet another hitman was in the house, someone else he had to kill… forever and ever, yet another murderer
to murder… And the iron grip of the past on his heart would never ease, he could never die and be reborn again…
Set carelessly on the kitchen counter was an attaché case. One that looked very familiar…
Dain slid forward silently, opened the case carelessly—if he was wrong and it was another bomb, now was the time to go. He
had nothing left in his life he valued…
No bomb. It was indeed the bearer bonds that had started it all—and ended it all.
Dain moved silently through the little house he knew so well. Vangie was slumped back in the big easy chair across the coffee
table from the couch, asleep, her fierce and beautiful face relaxed and childlike. Dain felt his heart leap up as he stood
looking at her.
Something in his life that he valued.
Shenzie was asleep on her chest.
Dain crossed silently to the sleeping pair, put his finger down under Shenzie’s throat. He was purring, his little motorboat
going even in his sleep. He woke at Dain’s touch, looked up at him with big pop eyes, stretched, kneading Vangie’s sweater
with little front paws, then shut his eyes again, indifferent to Dain’s arrival.
The kneading paws woke Vangie. Just like the cat, she looked up at Dain for a long time without moving or speaking. Finally
she sat up and cradled Shenzie upside down on her lap.
“You said your cat didn’t purr,” she told him.
“Not for five years.”
She touched the name tag on Shenzie’s collar.
“Shenzie. What a goofy name.”
“It means crazy in Swahili. But more than that. Goofy is right—nuts, a little out of control. He always has been—knocks your
cup of tea off the arm of the couch just to see what you’ll do, sleeps on the cable box on top of the TV ‘cause it’s warm,
quits purring for five years…”
Vangie stood up, turning to set Shenzie back in the chair when she did. She stood in front of Dain looking up at him. They
were not touching, but almost.