False Negative (Hard Case Crime) (30 page)
Read False Negative (Hard Case Crime) Online
Authors: Joseph Koenig
Another big wave rolled in. Ten feet behind Pixley, Jordan watched the photographer raise the gun above the redness sweeping around him.
“Adam?” Pixley said. “Adam, where are you? Don’t tell me you’re alive.”
He aimed into a swell, held fire as a wave knocked him off his feet. Treading water with the gun above his head, he spun a 360. Jordan dived, and Pixley fired at his heels, put two bullets dead center in a pattern of concentric circles.
The surface churned. As Pixley turned the gun, Jordan hurtled out of the water, and butted him under the jaw. Pixley’s teeth coming together through his tongue stifled a scream. Jordan stripped the gun from his hand, and forced his head under the waves. Pixley touched the shallow bottom, pulled in his legs, and swam away.
“It’s not a beach day,” Jordan said. “Come in.”
Pixley flipped onto his side. Marcel floated toward him, and he stiff-armed the body, which drifted off caught in the tide. Jordan examined a wound bleeding freely above his elbow. A
good thing there were no sharks in the water, he was thinking. None as dangerous as Pixley and himself.
“What’ll you do with me?” Pixley said.
“I need a memorable finish for my story,” Jordan said. “What do you suggest?”
“You can’t shoot me. I’m the wolf. You’re a...just a writer.”
Jordan held the gun over chest-high waves rushing in in rapid order. Pixley remained where he was with Marcel bobbing face-up between them. His eyes squeezed shut, and he flinched each time Jordan pulled the trigger.
“That’s your idea of a joke?” he said when the shooting stopped. “You’ve got a cruel streak, Adam. I didn’t know that about you. All I do know is you aren’t capable of killing me. You have to let me go.”
Jordan poured water on his head, which was ringing from the collision with Pixley’s chin. “Look at Marcel.”
“Why would I? He’s a dreadful sight now. If you must know, I always thought he was.”
“Look anyway.”
Pixley spit gobs of blood. He turned distastefully toward the floating body. “Not just cruel,” he said. “You’re an evil bastard.”
“Would you like it better if I’d shot
you
?”
“You might as well have.”
Jordan heaved the gun as far as he could. “You’re creative, Pix. An artist. By the time the cops get here, you’ll know what to say.”
“There’s nothing.”
“Tell them you’re Marcel, and Marcel’s Pix Pixley, who shot himself in the face three times after taking a bullet to the mouth to avoid the chair for murdering those girls whose pictures are all over your—his studio.”
“That’s not funny.”
Jordan waded to shore, shook himself like a dog. “Everybody out of the pool. It’s starting to blow.”
Pixley turned onto his back, and rode the current away from shore.
“You’re out too far,” Jordan said. “You’ll drown.”
The wind shifting out of the north prickled his skin. He hugged himself, but couldn’t stop shivering. When he looked back, Pixley was swallowed by the chop. Shading his eyes, he watched the ocean spill over the horizon, the fleeting silhouette of a swimmer receding against the sun.
He called detectives to tell them where to find Mollie, refusing to identify himself. He’d done their job for them; they’d have to settle for leftovers. There would be time to fill them in about Pixley when his body washed up.
After seeing a doctor, he went to the Columbus, and drew up his notes on hotel stationery. Two stories began to take shape, a first-person account for the glossies, an extended hard news piece to sell himself to a big city daily. If no one bit, he could always go back to New York. Crafting the leads, he couldn’t find the proper voice, something eating at him till he was forced to put the work aside.
The Checker at the head of the hack line was the same cab from last night. Jordan wondered if the driver ever slept, but didn’t ask. He was tired of asking questions, an odd feeling when he didn’t have all the answers. “Missouri Avenue,” he said.
The cabbie eyed him in the mirror, the soiled face under a soiled newsboy’s cap with a pencil stub against the brim. “Nothing but trouble there,” he said. “Interested in a piece of ass, I got connections. How much you looking to spend?”
“Thanks the same,” Jordan said. “Take a right at the corner.”
He crouched on the jump seat, gazing out at shabby blocks that all seemed the same. The radio crackled with a syrupy crooner boasting about the teen queen sporting his fraternity pin. “Kill it,” Jordan said. “Another right. I mean left. No,
here.”
On a street dead-ending at a curb beside the beach the cabbie said, “You don’t know where you want to go, do you?”
“Did I ever?” Jordan smelled saltwater, glanced toward the ocean through the cool darkness under the boardwalk.
As they backed into a broken U-turn a girl in a red coat jumped a puddle in the pot-holed gutter, and hit the curb without breaking stride. Jordan’s door was open before the cab stopped rolling.
“Cherise,” he shouted. “Hey, Cherise, wait up.”
Her head jerked, and she held it higher. He called to her again, and she spun around pushing one hand away from her chest like a traffic cop at a light stuck on green. “Adam Jordan, don’t come near.”
She backed off as Jordan edged away from the cab, a slow-motion tango at thirty paces.
“Come to tell me again how sorry you are?” she said. “I had it to here with you, hear?” She hacked at her throat with the side of her hand. “Up to here.”
Words were Jordan’s best friends, but all but the wrong ones had deserted him. He tried a couple of baby steps reaching out to her. Another sent her bolting up the boardwalk stairs.
“Not so fast,” the cabbie said as Jordan started after her. “Fifty-five cents for the ride.”
Jordan patted himself down, and flung a bill through the window.
“Got something smaller? This is a twenty.”
“Keep the change.” Jordan ran.
“You crazy? You can have any woman in this town for twenty bucks.”
A bum was camped under the boardwalk, caged in shadow. Sand drizzling between the planks showered his ragged blanket, and built dunes on the stairs. The bottom steps were buried. Jordan vaulted over them running harder, took the rest two and three at a time, three and then four, flying.
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