Authors: Allen Steele
I should have thought of that earlier. It wouldn’t have been quite as stupid or reckless to wait in the alley until he reached the bottom of the fire escape. No turning back now, though. I was here, and he was somewhere in there, and the time had come to take down the son of a bitch before he killed somebody else.
Gripping the iron bar in my left hand, I tiptoed to the door, grasped its handle, and slowly eased it open.
A short hallway led me past the defunct elevator and the door of the vacant office space; at the opposite end of the corridor was the fire-escape window. The window was raised, and the office door was propped open with a short piece of broken wood.
Through the door, I could hear vague, hurried movement: metal moving against metal, a zipper sliding down, then up again. The grunt of breath being exhaled. I inched my way toward the door, put my back against the wall, and peered through the doorframe.
The space beyond the doorway was completely vacant; even before the quake, all the interior drywalls had been knocked down, leaving open a large, empty room bordered only by the outer walls. Sullen midday sunlight, flecked with dust motes, streamed through the windows and the gaping hole in the ceiling where the roof had partially collapsed, leaving broken pipes, brick, and mortar strewn across the dirty tile floor.
On the opposite side of the room, the killer was packing up the tools of his trade.
He was nobody I recognized. In fact, he looked like nobody anyone would ever recognize. Average height, medium build, late thirties or early forties, wearing a beige workman’s jumpsuit. A wireless radio headset hung around his neck. Sunlight reflected dully off a receding hairline, which had already left him half bald, and the wire-rimmed glasses on his plain face. People talk about the banality of evil; I was looking right at it. This dude could have been a janitor, an electrician, an exterminator cruising for rats … anything but a professional assassin.
He moved quickly as he dismantled his weapon: a small compressed-gas tank, a contraption that looked like a compact piston-driven pump, a pair of storage batteries attached by slender cables to a long, cumbersome instrument that vaguely resembled a World War II vintage bazooka, itself mounted on a tripod with an infrared telescopic sight above its barrel. All of it was being stripped down and loaded into a two-wheeled golf caddie.
You think “laser rifle” and the first thing you imagine is something from a late-show SF movie—small, sleek, no larger than an AK-47—but this thing resembled nothing more or less than an industrial welding rig from Chevy Dick’s garage.
Of course two people had been shot from a van,
I thought.
You’d need a van just to haul all this shit around.
Never mind that now. His back was turned to me. His target was gone, and he only wanted to get out of here while the getting was good. Man, was he in for a surprise.
He had disconnected one of the batteries and had bent over the caddie to shove it in place when I moved through the doorway as quietly as I could, carefully stepping around the broken stuff littering the floor, the rebar grasped in both hands. I paused as he stood up and turned toward the laser itself, pulling an electric screwdriver from the back pocket of his jumpsuit. He fitted it into the base of the tripod; there was a thin mechanical whine as his thumb pressed against the button.
I took a deep breath, hefted the rebar in my hands, and then I charged across the room toward him.
Halfway across the room, my boots stamped through some debris. His head snapped up at the sound; he dropped the screwdriver and began to twist around, his right hand whipping for the front breast pocket of his jumpsuit as he turned toward the figure hurtling at him.
I screamed at the top of my lungs as I hauled the iron bar above my head. The .45 automatic was out of his pocket, but he didn’t have a chance to aim before I swung the rebar.
It slammed straight across his chest and lifted him off his feet; the gun sailed out of his hand, hitting the floor ten feet away from where his ass landed.
He lashed out at me with his right leg, catching me on the side of my left ankle. I yelped and danced away; he rolled over and began to scramble toward his gun.
“Fuck you!” I yelled as I raised the slender iron bar again and brought it straight like an ax against the back of his right arm.
He screamed at the same instant as I heard the dry snap of his elbow being shattered. He clutched at his arm as he rolled over on his back, losing his glasses as he howled in agony.
“I said, ‘Fuck you!’” I yelled again as I raised the bar and swung it down square between his legs.
His scream could have shattered a wineglass. A dark blotch spread against his pulverized groin as he grabbed at it. I didn’t care. “Didn’t you hear me, asshole?” I snarled. “Are you deaf? I said, ‘Fuck you!’”
I swung the rebar down across his right knee. The breaking of bone and cartilage, like fine porcelain shattering beneath a hammer, trembled through the bar into my hands.
God help me, but I loved it.
He howled as tears streamed from his eyes, his face turning stark red. I bent over him, savoring his agony, the high animalistic keening of his voice.
“Still can’t hear you, cocksucker!” I bellowed at him, then I stood up and lifted the iron bar above my head again. “I said—”
“I hear you!” he gasped, his voice ragged and hoarse. “I hear you! Please don’t …”
I saw John’s face. I saw Beryl Hinckley’s face. I saw Jamie’s face, even though this scumbucket had had nothing to do with his death. I wanted to beat this nameless bastard to death … but before that, I wanted answers to a lot of questions.
“Where are you from?” I shouted. “Who sent you?”
His face crawled. “Ehh … ehhh …”
“Tell me, you dick! Tell me who sent you or I swear to God you’ll never walk again!”
His chest was rising and falling as if he had just run a ten-mile race. In another minute, he’d go into shock and I’d lose him …
“Speak up, you piece of shit!” I showed him the jagged edge of the rebar, holding it just above his face, and let his imagination do the rest. “Talk to me!”
“ERA!” he cried out. “I’m working for ERA!”
No surprise there. Still holding the rod over his head, I yanked Joker out of my pocket, thumbed it into Audio Record, and held it over him. “Who at ERA sent you?” I demanded, even though I already knew. “Tell me his name! Why did he—”
“Drop it, Rosen!”
Mike Farrentino was standing just inside the door, book-ended by two uniformed officers. The cops were crouched, their revolvers cupped between their hands and aimed straight at me, but Farrentino’s hands were shoved in his pockets.
“Get away from him, Gerry,” he said evenly. “Just let go and—”
“Aw, cut it out, Mike.” I pulled the rebar away from the sniper’s face and let it drop from my hands; it hit the floor with a dull clang. I raised my arms and backed away from the man on the floor. As quickly as it had come, my rage dissipated. “He’s the guy you want, not me. I just—”
“Shut up, Gerry.” Farrentino walked farther into the room. “Simmons, look after the man on the floor. Conklin, make sure Mr. Rosen isn’t carrying anything he shouldn’t be.”
The two cops stood up. Their guns still in hand, they quickly crossed the room. I kept my hands in the air while Conklin patted me down and removed Joker from my right hand. “He’s clean, Lieutenant,” he said as he holstered his pistol and held out my PT to the detective. “That’s all he’s got on him.”
“This guy’s in bad shape, sir.” Simmons was kneeling next to the man on the floor, checking his pulse. “He’s still conscious, but he’s got a broken arm, a busted leg, some hemorrhaging in the testicle area.” He paused, then added, “Gun on the floor over there.”
Farrentino walked over to the gun and knelt down beside it, being careful not to touch it. “Get another ambulance crew up here pronto,” he said to no one in particular, “and collect this piece as evidence. Bag it and have it taken downtown to the lab … dust-up, serial number and registration check, the works.”
Simmons nodded his head, then looked down at the man on the floor. The headset was lying next to his head; he picked it up and held it next to his ear, then looked up at the lieutenant. “Just static,” he said, “but it must have been active.”
“Bag it,” Farrentino said. “Take it downtown.”
“What about this one?” Conklin asked, still standing beside me. “Want me to bring ’im downtown?”
“Before you start reading me the card, Mike,” I said, “you might want to check out that rig over there. That’s the laser rifle you guys have been looking for. This dude’s the one who killed three people so far.”
Farrentino glanced at the man, then stood up and walked over to study the partially disassembled laser more closely, again being careful not to lay his hands on anything. He gave it the once-over, then grunted and looked back at me. “And I guess you’re going to tell me that you found this character up here and worked him over before you thought he was going to shoot you next. Right?”
I lowered my arms to my sides. “No thinking about it, Lieutenant. He shot Beryl Hinckley—that’s the woman down there in the plaza—while we were crossing the street together. He tried to shoot me next, but the courthouse cop got in the way.” I swallowed, remembering the way he had screamed when the laser had struck him. “Is he going to be okay?”
“Hecht? He’s being taken to Barnes right now … he’s a tough kid, he’ll make it.” Farrentino was still eyeballing the laser. “You just happened to figure out where this buck was shooting from and decided to take matters into your own hands, that it?”
I shrugged. “Something like that,” I replied. “I’m sorry about your man, but he didn’t have a clue. I tried to explain it to him, but he wasn’t in the mood to listen, and I didn’t have time to spell it out for his backup.” I pointed to the gun on the floor. “The gun belongs to our friend over there. He pulled it on me when I found him up here. Sorry I beat on him like that, but—”
“Yeah, right.” Farrentino stepped away from the laser. “I can see how shook up you are.”
“Call it self-preservation. Oh, and there’s a van parked out back. I think it belongs to him. You might want to look at it—”
“I know. We found it already, just before we came up here.” Farrentino stood idly rubbing at the tip of his nose, then he looked at Conklin and cocked his thumb toward his partner. “Okay, Bill, you can leave him alone. I’ll take care of Mr. Rosen here. You go assist Jerry … oh, and call downtown and get a forensics team sent out here, too.” He gestured toward the laser. “I want prints off this thing, plus anything else they can find. And try to keep the press out of here, okay? One reporter’s enough already.”
Conklin didn’t get the joke. He hesitated, looking uncertainly at me. “Are you sure about this, Lieutenant? I mean, we don’t know if this isn’t the guy who …”
Farrentino sighed. “Bill, you want to spell your first and last name correctly for Mr. Rosen here? He’s from the
Big Muddy Inquirer.
I’m sure that the chief will be absolutely delighted to see your name in the next issue of his paper.”
Conklin shut up. He gave me a sour look, then handed Joker back to me and went over to help his partner. Simmons was crouched over the automatic on the floor; he had pulled a plastic evidence bag out of his belt and had inserted a pen through the gun’s barrel, delicately lifting it off the floor to deposit it in the bag. Conklin gave me one last backward glance, then shrugged out of his uniform jacket and laid it across the sniper’s chest.
Ambulance sirens were already warbling our way as Farrentino led me into a corner of the room away from the two officers. “I’d appreciate it if you switched off your PT,” he said softly. “I know you’ve got nothing to do with that lady’s murder, but I’d just as soon not see the rest of this in the paper, y’know what I mean?”
I had forgotten Joker’s audio-record mode was left on. I switched off the ’puter and shoved it back in my pocket.
Farrentino pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. “Jesus Christ,” he said, “you’re such a pain in the ass. I only met you last night, and so far you’ve been in my face three times already. If I didn’t know better, I’d have you cuffed and hauled downtown.”
“I’ve taken that trip already,” I replied, “but thanks anyway—”
“I don’t mean your business with ERA, Gerry.” He exhaled blue smoke, then jabbed the lit end of the cigarette at me. “This is police stuff now. It’s going to be hard for me to explain how I found a reporter whaling the shit out of a possible murder suspect with an iron bar as it is …”
“Chill out, Lieutenant.” I held up Joker. “I got it here on disk. That guy’s working for ERA, he told me so himself.”
“I know that already,” he said, quickly nodding his head. He pulled out his PT and flipped it open. “I caught that part of it just as we came through the door. Now I want the rest of it, from the beginning.”
I ran it down for him, telling him everything that had happened since I met Hinckley at the restaurant down the street. Although I excluded the details of Ruby Fulcrum, I was careful to mention the fact that I had discovered a cellular tracking device in the card Barris had given me the night before.
Farrentino remained quiet until I ended my story with the discovery of the gunner here in the building. “Okay,” he said as he made a few notes in his palmtop, “I’m going to believe you on this, but …”
His voice trailed off as he read something on his screen. His eyebrows raised slightly. There was the sound of footsteps coming up the stairwell. Farrentino looked over his shoulder; a trio of paramedics trooped through the door, carrying a folded stretcher. They barely noticed us as they went straight for the man on the floor, but Farrentino seemed relieved. He let out his breath, then looked back at me.
“I just received an APB,” he said very quietly. “There’s a ten-ninety-four out for you.”
“What, I didn’t pay my parking tickets? I don’t even have a car—”
“Shut up.” Farrentino’s eyes were like black ice. He closed his PT and slipped it into his coat pocket. “No fucking around now,” he whispered, glancing over his shoulder again. “It was issued by ERA, and it means that you’re wanted for immediate pickup … possibly as a militant, an armed suspect, a mental case, or all of the above.”