Darkman (30 page)

“Nice shooting,” someone said behind him, and Grouchy spun in the air, twirling like a master of ballet, and landed back on his feet, agape with fright.

Durant was standing there. A familiar shadow, no more. But the voice was his—no doubt about that.

“Boss, boss,” Grouchy said, already switching his voice into the high range that customarily indicated remorse. “Westlake put a new face on his ass. No, wait. He had a different face, you know, like . . . my face. I knew it wasn’t me, so I shot him. Jeez, boss, anybody could fall for that.”

Grouchy stared hard at the dark figure. The aroma of expensive cigars drifted over as Durant got one out of a pocket and bit off the end.

“You know, of course, that what you did is wrong,” Durant said gravely.

Grouchy nodded, suddenly wet with sweat and dread.

“The repercussions of your little disaster here will be severe, Smiley. Very, very severe.”

Grouchy—not even worthy of that name anymore—stood in the dank heat and waited for his sentencing.

Durant lit his cigar. His face shone briefly in the light, a bit smudged and strained. He sighed. “Do I do it, Smiley, or do you?”

The man who had no name left began to blubber, shoulders hunched, tears coursing down his cheeks. “Please, boss,” he said, sobbing. “One little mistake. Okay, two, yeah, the one a minute ago and then this one. But haven’t I been faithful? Haven’t I always done what you said?”

Durant nodded. “Fine, then. You must now do as I say.”

The wretched husk that had been Smiley and Grouchy nodded vigorously, nearly snapping a neck bone. “Anything, boss. Anything!”

Durant must have smiled, because Smiley-Grouchy-Nobody caught a wink of light off a tooth and grinned back.

“Blow your stupid fucking head off,” Durant said, his voice smooth and reassuring and deadly. “Right now. Do it and I won’t have to have you killed the slow way, the way I like.”

Smiley’s bowels went loose. To the sane and healthy, death is something confined to hospitals and nursing homes and graveyards. This new Smiley was now thrust into the stark border zone between life and death, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Y-you can’t make me do that,” he said, stammering.

“Watch me,”
Durant said.
“Just watch.
”

Durant turned and walked away. On the trip outside he stopped and puffed his cigar, eyes fastened on Smiley, a hint of a smile moving his lips. Smiley had seen the look before. It was the same look he had worn on the day they quick-fried Westlake and exterminated his chink pal. It was the same look he had had when Pauly sailed through a really nice window and dropped seventeen floors, whooping and screeching.

He would never get out of this dark hole alive.

The distant door was pulled open, letting in the weary light of dusk. Then it was shut. Darkness.

Smiley sat on the dirty floor with Martinez’s body behind him and his own executioner waiting out front.

He put the barrel of the shotgun between his eyes—hot, bony flesh against cold steel—and before he pushed the trigger with his thumb, he hoped that when he entered hell, he would not find his dead baby sister there, because she had been a real pain in the ass.

36

Durant

O
F COURSE, THE
real Robert G. Durant was still up on the roof in his pal’s helicopter, sitting Indian-style behind the .50-caliber gun, its barrel pointing at the strips in the tar that indicated a trapdoor. The tarred roof itself was flat and dotted with stagnant puddles. Their resultant mush of leaves, bugs, dead birds, even toads and frogs, and don’t—for God’s sake—forget the mosquitoes that bred there by the millions and feasted on the blood of suburbia, not so far away smelled awful.

Durant, in the belly of the copter, heard a muted bang that indicated a gun in action. He cocked his head, wanting to hear more but hearing instead only the horrible whining of mosquitoes as they buzzed around him by the hundreds, miniature Draculas feasting on his blood. He slapped at them, occasionally getting a few, but these were swiftly replaced by more and more and more.

“Get this bird in the air!” he shouted, whacking at his tormentors. The pilot, Steve Dalton, recent widower worth a million bucks, gave the bird some power, and up it rose. It drifted sideways, away from the roof, hovering over the street. Durant glanced down and saw himself walk out of the soap factory, puffing a cigar. His bewilderment lasted only a second, and then he was pointing and shouting.

“Turn around, Dalton! Goddammit, turn this turkey around so I can get a shot!”

Dalton, no slouch in the pilot department, complied by spinning the craft in a swift half-circle that left Durant feeling quite nauseated. On the ground, even over the whapping and whining howl of the copter, Darkman could hear Durant shouting. The copter bobbed in the air while Durant raked the .50-caliber’s cocking handle back, and then the machine gun was pounding the rutted sidewalk at his feet, the huge bullets smashing inch-deep craters in the cement before rebounding away, singing the high song of multiple ricochets. Darkman danced for a while, not expecting this kind of high-powered technology from a goon like Durant. It was when Durant quit shooting and began firing grenades from an actual grenade launcher that Darkman decided the options here were limited, and that if he were to die today, he might as well die in the dark that had been his prison these long weeks.

He ducked back inside. Durant went back to the machine gun, pounding the steel door with bullets, shouting inventive curses and gripping the .50-caliber hard enough to break its wooden grips. With a snarl he socked the hot barrel with a fist, got hurt by the steel and burned by the heat, gave up, and crawled forward to the cockpit, where Dalton was busy doing nothing. “Get me on the ground fast!” Durant shouted, and pulled his pistol out of his belt. “That bastard is one dead motherfucker.”

The copter fell from the sky. At the last moment Dalton yanked on the collective joystick, the one that made the bird go up or down. Durant’s queasy stomach bottomed out and threatened to slide out of his asshole to complain in person, but he held on, gritting his teeth. When the craft was firmly on the ground, he hopped out and went to the door of the soap factory, his greased-back hair flying wildly and his eyes glistening with pure animal hate.

He swung open the door, went inside. The good people of Fresh Splash Soap welcomed him with the cheery sign overhead, the one caked with dust and yellow varnish. Beyond that, things were dark. Durant began to sweat immediately.

“Westlake!” he shouted, and was answered by echoes. “Westlake, I’m not here to kill you! I have someone you ought to meet!”

More echoes, more silence. Durant scowled. This wasn’t going to be easy. The heavy artillery was in the chopper, currently useless. Here, in this darkness, it would be man against man. Durant’s little revolver only held the usual six bullets. His pockets were empty except for the usual coins and keys, and the cigar snipper. So what did Westlake have? An atomic bomb, probably.

Something thunked off to the right, where the light was a weak haze. It sounded like a large slab of metal falling on edge, ringing. Then, rapid footsteps.

Durant ran toward the noise, tripping and falling just as Martinez and Smiley had done, banging his shins on invisible obstacles, getting a spluttering faceful of cobwebs now and then. He stumbled over something soft and yielding and stopped, going down on one knee.

It was a body. Smiley’s body, by the smell of it. All that was left of his head was the lower jawbone. The rest was large, wet spillage on the wall where flies buzzed as they ate what had been his eyes and brain.

Durant stood up. Okay, no problem. Smiley bought the farm, no big loss. Martinez was worth two Smileys.

So, like, where
was
Martinez?

He took two steps and found him. Martinez’s stiffening corpse exuded the smell of ruined guts and, below that, the Mexican cologne.

Durant straightened, edging close to panic. Where did he stand? Rick: gone. Pauly: gone. Smiley: gone. Martinez: gone.

Westlake: alive. Here and alive.

“Westlake!”
he screamed, rattling loose things throughout the factory.
“Come out and fight me!”

Silence. Nothing else.

Durant raised his pistol overhead and fired three shots at the black ceiling as fast as his finger could move. The staccato bursts of fire lit everything a weird orange, showing dangling wires and intricate doilies of spiderwebs. A rat was nestled beside Martinez’s head, frozen with fright, black blood hanging from its whiskers. A portion of Martinez’a left eye had been gnawed out.

Durant shot at it, succeeding in mangling Martinez even more. The rat trundled off, squealing.

Durant realized he was losing it, that Westlake was stealing from him, stealing his men and his confidence and his exalted position with Louis Strack. The wimpy college boy had become as dangerous as a viper, a man who lived in the dark and hid in its protection while he murdered man after man. How was he doing it?

Durant was shaking now, swallowing with a throat that was parched, breathing with lungs that wanted to lock up on him forever, thinking with a brain that was whirling in insane circles. The factory was dusty and dead, the walls seeming to pulse in and out, as if the factory itself were a part of this monstrous conspiracy to rob Durant of everything he had, including his sanity.

A door opened behind him, letting a large wedge of light streak in. Durant spun around, sweat flipping off him in salty drops, his revolver held in two hands that were greasy with sweat, trembling with fear and this crazy new claustrophobia. He fired at the light and then it vanished. The door banged shut, leaving him alone with his frightened self and no one else.

He ran for the door, sliding, tripping, moaning, desperate to get out where the air was not sticky and hot. He ran headlong into a giant machine full of spikes and cogs and fell back with a shriek, his body shallowly punctured in a dozen places, bruises welling up on his forehead and ribs. His pistol skittered away and pinged against something. Durant did not care. He found his feet, ran some more, and got to the door just as the thin thread that held him from the abyss of insanity was about to break.

He jerked it open. Cool fresh air and welcome light drenched him, never tasting better. He stepped sideways and slumped against the building, sweat raining off his face and fingertips, eyes closed with thankfulness and relief.

The Dalton guy’s helicopter began to howl, whining with fresh power, ready to lift off. Durant glanced over at it, squinting against the wind.

He was inside it, riding shotgun, his face very clear through the copter’s bubble of Plexiglas. The other Durant turned away and shouted at the pilot.

Durant pushed away from the wall and ran for it, expensive shoes slapping the street, all worries of sweat, fear, and claustrophobia left behind. That bastard, Westlake, had pulled his last impersonation. It was time to die.

The copter was four feet off the ground when Durant dived inside, sliding on his belly across the smooth aluminum floor of the cargo bay and conking his head on the far door, the unopened one. He struggled to get to his knees, but his pants, torn now, were hung up on the .50-caliber’s tripod.

The wrong Durant turned and looked at the right Durant. So did the pilot. He gaped in amazement at these strange twins, one wearing blue polyester, the other maroon polyester.

I
believe we have done this before,
Durant thought, and ripped his pants free, exposing a black sock held up with a garter. For a short instant he felt embarrassed by this, but then it was gone, and he was lunging for Westlake’s throat, grappling at it, managing to get a handful of some slimy, cold stuff. He jerked at it and came away with a familiar-looking mask in one hand, a wig in the other.

“Gotcha!” he shouted, and pulled Westlake backward, out of his seat. He thumped to the floor on his back, writhing and twisting. Durant, experienced at this, gave him a karate chop to the throat, a tactic meant to crush a man’s Adam’s apple and ruin his whole day in the process. It worked. Westlake let Durant loose and clutched his own throat with his claws, making thin, croaking noises.

Durant, panting, looked down at him. “You are,” he said with a satisfied grin, “the ugliest motherfucker I have ever seen.” He peeled off Westlake’s artificial hands, grimaced with disgust, and tossed them out to the street below.

“It’s just you and me now, my friend,” Durant said, and then, to the pilot, “Crank this bitch up as high as she’ll go. We’re about to make a Westlake pancake.”

The pilot did just that.

37