Lone Wolf #2: Bay Prowler (8 page)

Heading south again, out of Sausalito, Wulff was cut off by another car and almost ditched. It all happened so fast that there was no time to evaluate, no time to even consider what was happening to him. He was going on a long stretch of pretty good highway, working the right lane pretty close to the top limit of the Fleetwood, peering through the rear view every ten seconds to make sure that his rear was staying as clear as the front. Maybe eighty-five miles an hour, which for all its tricky suspension and soft riding insulation, was all that the big car could safely handle. Sure they were road cars, the reputation was deserved. They were road cars on long, flat, empty straightaways without ruts, when held below ninety miles an hour. Any two-year-old patrol Plymouth could have left this thing for dead in a parking lot.

The Mercedes in the far lane came upon him so quickly that he did not even see the damned thing until it was alongside. It must have been going a hundred and forty, a hundred and forty-five miles an hour. That was the only explanation. Otherwise, on his ten-second sweeps of the rear he certainly would have seen it. The man beside the driver riding low, hunched over, looked at Wulff for a bleak instant as the car, decelerating, hung alongside the Fleetwood. Then he said something to the driver.

The Mercedes spun ahead and screamed across Wulff’s left front fender. The idea of course was to make him brake so abruptly that the Fleetwood would rear out of control, then a quick fishtail of the Mercedes, a quick cut left, storming back then into the passing lane would finish up the job. It was an old maneuver; Wulff had done it himself on patrol quite a few times although never to kill. There you did it to bring some drunk to his senses and to a crawl but the fishtailing motion was the real killer. That you never did. You stayed in front of them and braked them down quickly, but turning your right rear into a battering ram: that was the killer.

All of this he was able to judge and calculate in a frozen fraction of a second. He knew exactly what they were trying to do; the question was whether he had the reflexes and the experience to overcome before he passed over the point of losing control. At eighty-five miles an hour in a Fleetwood that point came up very fast. He hit the brakes to the floor with all his strength, making the car scream and hurling himself against the wheel but in the next instant he released the brakes totally so that the car sprung back. He fell against the seat, holding the wheel desperately, having picked up six or seven feet of clear space behind the Mercedes. All of this had taken perhaps a half a second.

The car was trying to fishtail now, the driver reaching the accelerator to the floor to pick up the necessary power. The Mercedes itself had braked down to about fifty or sixty miles an hour to get into lane and boiling down like this in just a matter of seconds must have shaken the driver too, enough so that his only impulse was to get to the floor and get the car
out
of the sudden pocket as quickly as possible. But even as the Mercedes was looking for speed and passage to the left, Wulff was deep on the gas himself. He pulled the Fleetwood into the left lane and pedal to the floor ran up alongside the Mercedes.

He did not have half the power or suspension of the other car; it was only surprise that had gotten him this far, surprise on the part of the other driver and his own quick reaction in not slamming the brakes but
stabbing
them, meaning that the Fleetwood was still under power and in control at a time when by the Mercedes’ calculations it should already have been looking for an exit hatch from the road—the fishtail would only finish the job. But that would mean nothing unless he was able to capitalize on the surprise. He tried to literally drive the accelerator through the floorboards. The Fleetwood, screaming, did the best it could. He got it in one whining explosion above its control limit, one hundred and five miles an hour.

Now he was slightly past the Mercedes, he had an impression of astonishment in the other car, the passenger his mouth open distended, almost screaming, the driver risking a quick sidelong glance of absolute shock. What the hell was the Fleetwood doing
there?
the driver wanted to know. Wulff had almost the same question but he was not going to push his luck. So far the car was handling. If it did not continue to handle he would be no worse off than he would have been otherwise.

This had taken no more than five seconds. Now he perilously worked the Cadillac forward, trying to gain a car-length on the Mercedes. He could not outrun that other car on a straightaway, couldn’t come close. He was capitalizing, he hoped, only on the driver’s shock. If the driver realized in the next second or two that the Mercedes was in no worse position than it had been when this began, that he could accomplish his deadly work as easily from the
right
lane as the left, and Wulff would be finished. He would not have a second chance at this.

But the driver was not thinking. For too long he had probably depended upon the wonderful resources of this car and the panic of his victims; left to his own devices he could not handle the situation. Wulff, at a hundred and ten miles an hour got his car-length. Got a little more. He could see the puffs of dust and fumes rising from under the Mercedes even as he inhaled once, tightened his lips and took the wheel hard right, got in front of the Mercedes and before he had even established himself in that lane cut it left.

He felt a shudder roll from the left rear of the Fleetwood all the way through his buttocks to his knees and then he was moving away in the left lane again, the Mercedes dropping far, far behind, in two seconds already down ten car lengths and then he saw the car wobble, begin to leave the road and start a long, long roll through the frail guardrail and out into the flatlands beyond. He braked the Cadillac down and turned, watched the car take six or seven revolutions and then, almost lazily explode. Then he was back behind the wheel: driving, driving, and the Mercedes, bit by bit, was out of sight and his life. And the driver and passenger out of theirs.

There was nothing to think. It might have been Severo, treacherous, putting these people on him. It might have been any freelancer in the area looking for a boost in the hierarchy. Or it might have been someone from New York, flown out to do his specialty.

Then again, it might be some fool who liked to go out on the parkways and kill people.

He was pretty sure he would never know. It did not matter. Wulff put it out of his mind within five minutes and just kept on rolling back toward San Francisco.

You could almost call it part of the hazards of trying to do his business.

Tamara was not in the apartment when he returned, but she had left him a note. AVENGER—she had written—I FEEL BETTER AND AM GOING OUT FOR A WALK. STAYED UNDERGROUND FOR TWO HOURS AS PROMISED AND CHECKED CAREFULLY BEFORE GOING OUTSIDE BUT ALL LOOKS CLEAR. WILL BE BACK LATER TONIGHT. HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO GO YOU SEE. HOPE YOU WILL BE HERE. IF NOT TOUGH LUCK. The note was held between two coffee cups, half-filled, in the kitchen. He shook his head, almost smiled, and ditched it.

It did not matter; he might even want to see her but now all he wanted to do was sleep. There was too much in the past, too much coming up, somewhere in between the two of these Wulff had to sleep.

He had taken care of the Fleetwood half a mile from here. Putting it any nearer would have been stupid; if Severo was indeed bound on treachery, and Wulff thought he might be, then the Fleetwood would be a dead lead to him. Trotto and Ferguson had tracked him once through a car; better people, the first string, would be coming now. So the Fleetwood lay a long way from here, the keys dangling from the ignition, the license plates stripped and thrown into a sewer. If he was lucky, and Wulff thought that his luck might hold on this one, a couple of kids would hit the car and take it far down the freeways before he had even walked back to the apartment. So much for the Fleetwood then. It had been a good car, it had saved his life, despite its poor suspension and essential unresponsiveness, when he had needed it, but he was damned if he was going to get sentimental about it at this time. If the kids who came along to steal it had any sense they would strip the thing blind before they ditched it themselves.

The Galaxie was more easily taken care of; he drove it five blocks away, pulled the plates from that one as well and just left it. A stolen-car alarm would go out from the rental agency of course but he doubted if he would have to worry much about that. He had rented it on a false credit card, no supporting documents had been asked for. It was amazing in this credit society exactly what you could get away with if you could present a card, any kind of a card, with the right expiration date. And getting hold of the card through false information had been as easy as hell, too. All that you had to do, it seemed, was to send in the request in the mail and ask for it. They didn’t care; like the junk merchants the credit-card companies were willing to move the stuff any way they could.

So he went to sleep. Wulff went to sleep. He secured all the doors, although not with the chainlock which would have kept Tamara out; he took off his clothes, stripped the bed and laid on it. Ghostly, her perfume and body odor stalked from the sheets to envelop him, but he discarded this. He would not be moved by the girl. If she came back, she came back. She was object, not subject….

Conlan slept. He slept in the secured room and he dreamed of junk. Junk was everywhere; it was all through the nation. The country was a huge vein and the dealers and businessmen were shooting it up. The junkies were hooked into that vein, they were deep to the center of the country, but the dealers and businessmen were not what you would call slouches either. Everybody was getting theirs. Everybody was getting theirs off the system while the junkies died and the cities wept. The system was paying everybody off in kind, the suppliers were getting one kind of return and the enforcers another, and the pimps in the administration creating jobs for themselves at ten to the minute were picking up the pieces and only the junkies were paying any kind of price. They kept the whole thing going by dying. The cities did their share by collapsing. But that only meant that you could appoint experts to study the fate of the cities so that part was all right too. Nobody was paying except people who, if you had enough money to wall yourself off from, you didn’t even have to look at….

In the middle of the dream of the devastated country, Wulff was awakened into what seemed, for a moment, to be another dream. There was a girl against him and she was holding him tightly. Her clothes were off, she was naked to the bone and he could feel her skin, her hair, her breasts, take in the rising smell of her. The girl was touching his cheek with her lips and she was talking to him. Wulff struggled against the shell of the dream, trying to shatter it open so that he could clamber out, and then he found that he was not dreaming and that Tamara was against him.

“You came back,” she said.

He felt her against him. He had taken off his own clothes to sleep and the pressure of her body was maddening. He could feel her then, and despite himself, could feel his own response. With it there was a kind of horror because he remembered another girl who had died in a room. “No,” he said, “no.”

“Quiet,” she said, “it’s all right.”

“No. It isn’t all right.”

“Yes it is,” she said. She moved her lips down his cheek to the panels of his neck and began to stroke him below. “Quiet,” she said.

He thought of the other girl in that room of months past and the coldness started to run like fire from his belly, moving up and down, gripping him in fingers of shame. “Please,” he said, “no.”

“I want to,” she said. “I want to, it’s all right, stop it, lie back, sleep, do what you were doing,” and he could not struggle against her any more. Her fingers, soft, were insistent as well. She gripped him.

The grip brought back to him feelings that he thought had perished in New York. He was a dead man. Had he not told this to all of them? He was dead and could not be killed again, yet here was this girl and she would not let him die. He battered like a bird against the wall of self. Against himself, he felt himself rising.

“Yes,” she said, “yes, yes, it’s all right.”

“It isn’t all right,” he said again, “it isn’t, it isn’t,” but in command all day he felt control slipping from him now, felt the situation heave and then like water draining, felt the initiative pass from him to her. He was struggling, but no longer with conviction; she was working on him, but no longer with doubt. He felt her breasts against him; saw them for the first time, full, pouting, contrite, the breasts of a woman, and he reached for them. He could no longer stop himself. She turned and suddenly he was inside her.

“Slowly,” she said, stronger than he. “Slowly.”

And so he worked on her slowly; feeling the engorgement which was at first merely a memory but then took him to the present time; so quickly the months fell away like ash and he was once again locked into present time, seeking her. Seeking this other woman. He pressed himself into her and felt himself being drawn slowly through and out the other side of her. She was wringing him dry.

“Slowly,” she said again. Her eyes fluttered underneath him. He reared over her and found himself looking at her, eye to eye, as if from a great distance and he broke his rhythm, arched himself, followed her will, let her lead him. He reached his hands to her breasts and stroked them. It was at first like a foreign substance; he had not touched a woman’s breasts in so long that he had forgotten the feel of them, the soft, gelatinous wobble, but then memory and the present moment intersected and he found himself at last ready to function. He leaned down, bit at her breast, felt her rhythm increase.

“Now,” she said, “you can do it now. Do it,
do
it,” and very expertly, carefully, began to curse to excite him. She said every foul expression that he had ever heard looking up at him through those carefully ingenuous eyes. “Come on,” she said, “come
on.
”

He was there, he was almost there, he was getting close, he felt himself unbidden leaping to fall into her and then orgasm overtook him finally. Like gears finally meshing on a car that had lain abandoned for months. He poured into her, furious and gasping, and reciprocally she came back at him. He felt her muscles tense and then she was open and free, plunging, her teeth biting into his cheek. Her words broke into little empty moans and sounds and he held her shoulders tightly, rode with her.

Finally it was done.

He rolled from her, curiously contented. He had not thought that he would be; it was surprising how good he felt. With the ease was a spreading pool of guilt, because he did not think, could not have thought, that he would have been able to have a woman after being dead. Dead men did not fuck. Nevertheless he had. It was an interruption in his calculations and might change the situation. But he would not worry about that now. For a few moments in the dead-center of what was going to happen to him he would permit himself to be at peace. There was enough time to think about this later.

“That was good,” she said. “That was the first time I’ve come in months, do you know that?”

“If you say so.”

“I thought that I could never come again, but it was very easy. Maybe it’s just being off speed for a day.
Do
you know this is the first time—”

“All right,” Wulff said. Unbidden, his mind was already racing ahead. He had an appointment to keep, things were happening almost out of control. And he would need a good deal of equipment to take down to the Bay….

“I don’t even know your name,” she said. “I still don’t know your name.”

“Yes,” he said, “all right.” He wanted to lie with her in this bed, talk with her, tell her who he was and even, unreasonably, what he was doing, but his instincts were against it. He could feel the instincts thrashing like snakes underneath the surface.

“No time,” he said. He sat on the bed. “Later.”

“Later?”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Wulff said, “it’s not safe anymore. I tell you—”

She looked at him, her mouth opening. “What’s wrong?” she said, “is something going to happen now?”

“I don’t know. I think so.” He thought of Severo, of letting Severo go, of the Mercedes on the freeway, of men beginning to come out of the corridors now to take their shots at him, one by one and then in groups. Open season. Open season on the wolf. “Get your clothes,” he said.

She came alert against him immediately. Give her that, this girl was no fool. In fact, out of the haze of drugs, her purpose and sense of self-preservation might have been as significant as his. “All right,” she said.

“Quickly,” Wulff said, “quickly,” filled with a desperate sense of urgency which sex had only heightened. He bolted from the bed, seized his own clothing, began to get dressed with the same fury and economy of motion with which, not five minutes before, he had possessed her. Tamara was already into her pants, pulling them up, walking awkwardly within them across the room to seize her sweater.

“What happens now?” she said.

“I don’t know,” Wulff said, seizing the pistol and then putting it near him on the bed as he pulled on his shirt. “Do you understand that? I just don’t know.”

“You’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t you?” she said.

“More than you think.”

He heard a clattering sound on the staircase. Someone was moving up very quickly, very quietly but you couldn’t trust these old rooming houses, something unsteady on the staircase, he had slipped. They were closer than he thought. No time to order himself, he lunged for the pistol—

And the door burst open.

Two men came in, holding guns, plunging on them. The accident on the staircase had probably made them decide to discard caution; they had made their presence known so they might as well make their move. They were short, heavy types. Wulff was sure he had never seen either of them before. One of them raised his gun. He aimed at Wulff and fired.

Tamara screamed. As pointless as his own ducking motion. If the man had been on target that would have been the end of it right there. But anxiety, haste, shortness of breath from the climb, any one of a number of things had thrown him off. The bullet struck into the wall above Wulff’s head with terrific force. He felt the plaster sifting down on him, coating him.

He raised his gun and fired just as the other man, the one who had come in second rushed him full out. The tactic succeeded. Wulff felt himself hurtling over the shoulder, striking the floor hard, a jolting contact that almost blew the gun out of his hand. But it did not. He held onto the gun and shot the first man, the one with the poor aim, in the leg.

The man screamed and went over. Tamara screamed again, her hands rising to her face. She was trying to cover herself. Assertion had given way to panic. Wulff levelled his gun at the man who had rushed him. He had a pure, blank second to level; this man apparently had forgotten that he was holding a revolver. His rush through the door meant that he wasn’t comfortable with a gun in his hand. That gave him a little time.

He shot this man in the forehead. He went down instantly, circuitry of blood sprouting from his head. For one instant he seemed to be in inexpressible pain; he seemed to be trying to say something. Too late. He died.

Wulff went back to the one on the floor. But that one had moved. Injured leg and all he had staggered to his feet and embraced Tamara. He was holding the girl tightly against him now and with an extended arm was trying to point his gun.

Wulff shot the gun out of his hand. The target was too easy to miss. It smashed against the wall and came spinning to a point underneath the window. But the man held on. He had Tamara clutched against him now in a desperate bear hug. The girl was beginning to discolor.

“Help,” she said weakly. Her eyes rolled. It had all happened too quickly for her. She looked as if she was about to faint.

“Let her go,” Wulff said.

“Are you crazy?” the man said in a thick, foreign-sounding voice. “She’s my ticket out of here.” He must have moved his leg then; he screamed in a surprised, feminine-sounding way. “You hurt me you son of a bitch,” he said, “now drop your gun.”

“Let the girl go. She has nothing to do with this.”

“Fuck you,” the man said. He clutched her more tightly. Tamara’s cheeks puffed. “You son of a bitch, you killed Willie.”

“Willie was going to kill me.”

“You dirty bastard,” the man said almost as if he were complaining. “This was supposed to be an easy job. Where did you come from?”

Wulff concentrated levelled the gun. But the man was clever; he had the girl flat and hard against him like a plank of wood. There was simply no area at which he could risk a shot. She was taller than he if not as wide. He could try to squeeze off a shot into his ribs but one anticipatory flick and the girl would take it in the heart.