Lone Wolf #9: Miami Marauder (11 page)

From too much flesh Williams turned away. He remembered Wulff telling him about his kill in Chicago, the rough one, the kill which had been too strong even for Wulff’s stomach and which had made him realize that he was not fighting a war against objects or forces but against human beings who were as stricken as he, could bleed as freely, decompose as fast. Flesh, he was choking in oceans of flesh, some of it lying to pulp on the floor in front of him, more in the room behind and Williams felt his stomach heave. Death, even in the police training films, had not been such an unsanitary business. He could not take it anymore. Death in the abstract was one thing; to see it demonstrated before you in this way was quite another and these men, by their own lights at least, had been his friends. That made things a little worse.

Putting the gun inside his jacket, pedalling his feet desperately to initiate motion where the impulse for motion seemed to come from some higher, denser, more desperate part of himself, Williams urged himself down the hall, onto the steps, down the steps and clattering out the glass doors of the rooming house, then running freely in the empty air outside, running, he hoped in the direction of the beach.

It was fully five minutes of gasping, stumbling running against poles and walls, crazy, dazzling running that made him realize he was making a fool of himself and that he had to approach this systematically.

And that if he had handled it differently, he might not have had to kill the guard at all.

On the beach Wulff could see only vague forms, the impression of distances, no specifics. He had run the first cordon of Calabrese’s men through sheer stealth; as he had anticipated the old man had the beach within a certain perimeter ringed with troops, forty or fifty men staking out, but he knew things about combat terrain learned in Vietnam which Calabrese could not have sensed and he was able to get into this ring by entering the water far downrange, moving in hip-deep waves and surges past the point where he could see the line and then wading ashore, his pants damp to the skin but the sack held high above his head throughout still safe, still dry. Now, having low-crawled up the beach working himself behind a lifeguard’s chair as improvised cover he was able to command a good view of the beach, that central point where he was fairly sure Calabrese would bring the girl. But from where? That was the only question he had to evaluate. He had to know where they were before they could locate him.

It was quite clear that Calabrese had planned to cross him on the exchange. He had never doubted it for a minute, nor had he ever intended to go through with the switch. It was impossible for the old man to use the girl as anything more than bait, there was no way that either of them could walk out of here with what they wanted before killing the other one. So any thoughts of an honest swap had been dismissed at once.

The only thing was: could he get down here and get the girl away anyway? Could he use his presence and the bag as bait in order, somehow, to get her free? The girl was all that mattered now; if Calabrese had been willing to deal honestly, the old fool might have gotten what he wanted anyway because he was more interested in seeing Tamara free than in holding onto the sack of heroin. But Calabrese could not understand that. Nor would the old man have it that way. Looking for the corrupt, meanest, neatest way through every loophole always, he would, of course, project his motives onto others. He could not understand that Wulff might have been agreeable to an honest swap. He could not understand that in at least this one case the shortest distance between two points was indeed a straight line.

Well. It was too late for all of that now. He had the beach ringed with
soldat
; clearly he intended to encircle Wulff as soon as he uncovered his position and bring upon him enough firepower to utterly destroy him. Those forty men standing in an impassive line, ringing the beachfront were not there as witnesses or to protect Calabrese: no, each of them had to be multiply armed and each of them would be ready to fire upon signal. Execution squad.

But he was safe in the darkness. It was going to be a cloudy day; that was in his favor, the heavy cloud cover over the sun which, in October, would not be rising weakly for another hour and a half at the earliest; he had, in the meantime, an almost perfect dark with which to work and to use. The troops were murmuring to one another, their heads inclining down the line and then Wulff saw what they were reacting to. A man was coming onto the beach from far back. Under his arm was a bulky object which could only be a Browning Automatic Rifle.

A BAR! Calabrese was leaving nothing whatsoever to chance. Wulff permitted himself a grim smile; if Calabrese was moving in a BAR man to cover this he must really feel under pressure. Forty armed men and a hostage and he wanted a Browning Automatic; that was a kind of tribute, Wulff thought. It was a badge of honor; if he lived to see this one through he could always say that he was the man that Calabrese in these circumstances had put a Browning on. If the word got around it would destroy the old man’s reputation, not that the old man was going to get out of this alive.

He was quite determined. It was going to be nothing equivocal; this was the last showdown. If he didn’t walk out of this with what he wanted he wasn’t going to walk out at all.

It did not look, however, as if he would have that choice.

The BAR man put his weapon down with a groan, then began to work in a clip. The BAR was a heavy son of a bitch, the heaviest piece of mobile combat machinery going. They weighed forty pounds and could only be fired from a stationary position; still the beauty of them, at least for platoon combat commanders, was that they could have this kind of firepower brought along with the unit. Of course your BAR man had to be strong as hell with a back made out of planks of wood and he could not be a corn-plainer because complaining BAR men in Vietnam had a way of getting themselves shot by their own troops. In highly justifiable circumstances, of course.

The BAR man was finished now and then Wulff heard another sound; high above them all a shaking roar, growing in force, and as he looked up he could see the copter lumbering over the sea, the blades almost static in this perspective, the bird suspended in the air and at the same time, from far back, a huge spotlight came on, catching the copter in a blaze. Wulff huddled in his position, hoping that the spotlight would not sweep; it did not. It wavered, holding the copter in the center of the light, then as the bird hung motionless it locked in.

Helicopter, spotlight, Wulff thought, all of this on the beachfront not more than a couple of hundred yards downrange from the hotel and the sweep of the city itself. Certainly the man did not care, certainly he understood that he had no more than a few minutes before, no matter how deeply the guests were sleeping, the first calls came to headquarters, the police were summoned … and then he realized that the man did not care. This was Calabrese’s play, all of the chips were on the line and he was quitting Miami. It was exactly as he had figured; all of it was going to end here.

A ladder unfurled suddenly from the copter, the rope dangling below, waving like a pennant and then a hatch opened. As that latch fell there was a high whine and then Wulff heard the sound of an amplifier seeking modulation, a high, shrieking scream piercing the beach, and then Calabrese’s voice came out of that amplifier, magnified ten times but characteristically his, the slight lisp, the rolling consonants. “All right, Wulff,” the voice said, “we’re going to let the girl down now. Leave the stuff under the spot in clear view and she’ll be coming down.”

He made no move, rigidly held his position. The spot slowly backed off the helicopter, settled onto the beach, illuminating a circle perhaps six feet in diameter about twenty yards east of his position, near the waterline. “Let’s go, Wulff,” the voice in the amplifier said, “let’s do it now. I promise you safe passage forward and back.” It paused “I know you’re there. I know you’re on the beach with the rest of them. Now let’s go.”

Still he did not move. Instead he found his attention fixated on the BAR man. The man, exhausted by his trudging journey with the ordnance, had settled into the stand next to it and was smoking a cigarette, shaking his head. He looked utterly weary and not at all alert.

There was at least a chance that he could rush that position and take it. All of the troops were facing the copter, the spot had carried their attention far away from that line. Surely, he could get off a killing shot into the BAR man at just this moment. The point was taking over the gun. The point was also what Calabrese, overhead, planned.

“I’m not going to wait,” Calabrese said, “I’m not going to wait this out much longer. I want the stuff, Wulff. Otherwise, we’re going to kill the girl. Look now. Look at this.”

Tamara’s figure appeared at the hatch and then suddenly, convulsively, she was on the rope itself, struggling like a fly, impaled in that position, slowly moving downward. She struggled on the rope awkwardly, her body constricted at the joints, obviously no rope-climber, obviously a girl who had never been on a rope in her life and Calabrese said, the amplifier holding a strange, mocking note which infuriated him, “We’re going to drop the girl on the beach, Wulff, and if you don’t make the plant we’re going to shoot her. Do you want her to die in front of your eyes? She’s going to do it.”

She hung on the rope desperately. Then, sinking, staggering, Tamara began to descend. The troops looked at her without pity but with fascination. The man at the BAR, revealed now in the light of the spot, was leaning forward intensely, holding the cigarette, drawn into a line of attention which locked with the girl.

Wulff watched her climb down with the motions of someone sinking to their death, he watched the frozen line of troops, he looked at the man with the BAR and he did then what he knew he would have to do very quickly and without any kind of mental set whatsoever. It was impossible to prepare for this kind of thing. You had to do what you did before thought; thought in itself could be transferred to the enemy.

He levelled the point thirty-eight, which he had been holding throughout all of this. He pointed it yards downrange and in one savage motion on the trigger as the girl tumbled the last few strands of rope he blew the BAR man’s head off. The man fell into the sand kicking.

And then he charged the unguarded Browning.

Williams had been running since he had left the rooming house, he had hit the street, running, had headed in what he hoped was east, running, had paused at an intersection and then, running, had commandeered a car, not even thinking, just running, desperate to get to the beach. He was obsessed with a feeling of lost time; by his watch it was still only three
A.M
., hours until the rendezvous, but undoubtedly they would have the beach sealed off long before that time and there would be no way for him to get on. He had to get there; what he would do once there he did not know but around that simple essential purpose everything was focused.

The car he had commandeered, simply by going over to it idling at a traffic light, showing his gun and climbing in, was driven by a nineteen-year-old college student and his date who wanted no part of Williams at all. “Listen,” the boy said, the girl huddling against him, hiding her face in his shoulder, shifting and clashing gears, “I don’t want the car. You can have the car. Why don’t you just let me pull over and let us out and you can take it?”

“Not necessary,” Williams said, “I don’t want the car either, I just want a ride. Take me down to the beachfront in front of the Fontainbleau and get out of here. I’ve got no quarrel with you.”

“But I don’t know Miami!” the boy said, “I don’t know where the Fontainbleau is, I’ve got nothing to do with this, I’m just down here on a vacation.”

“It’s hopeless, Lenny,” the girl said, “we’re going to be killed. I come from New York, I know all about these mass murderers. First they make you do whatever they say and then they kill you. You can’t change their evil desires.”

“Take the car,” the boy said, but he was sensible enough to keep on driving, “really you can take it, I don’t want it. It’s never been any good anyway. It’s—”

“Don’t argue with him, Lenny,” the girl said into his jacket, “the more you try to reason with them the more they get to turning around and killing you. The only thing to do is to agree with everything they say. Take him to the Fontainbleau.”

“I don’t know where it is.”

“Well don’t look at me,” the girl said, rearing up, wiping a hand across her forehead, then adjusting a strand of hair back over her ear in that casually heartbreaking feminine way which even now Williams found could move him, “I don’t know where the Fontainbleau is, Lenny. Do you know where the Fontainbleau is?” she said to Williams.

“Just keep on driving east,” he said, “I’m sure we’ll hit it.”

“He’s sure we’ll hit it, Lenny. He’s sure we’ll hit it, so just keep on driving east. You know, there’s no need to kill us,” the girl said, “you can just take the car—”

“He doesn’t want the car, Jill,” Lenny said, “remember? We already discussed that. I offered him the car and he said he didn’t want the car and you said to stop fighting with him.”

“Listen,” Williams said, “listen folks, I’m not a murderer or a lunatic. Just do yourselves a favor and relax. I just have to get to the beach, fast.”

“Oh I’m sure you’re not a mass murderer or a crazy man,” Jill said, “
I
never said that, did I? Of course I didn’t. You just want a ride to the beach. So you’ll get a ride to the beach—”

“Shut up, Jill,” Lenny said, “please shut up.” There was no traffic; they accelerated through the dead streets at forty, fifty miles an hour, Williams holding the gun on them loosely from the back seat. It was his first engagement in criminal activity unless you counted dealing with Father Justice in Harlem or running munitions to the coast or gunning down a group of troops in the trailer park in Los Angeles. He did not. All of those were legitimate acts, the kind that an ex-cop could engage in without rationalization, but this was different. Kidnapping, assault, the threat to murder. It didn’t look good. It just didn’t look very good at all. Still, the remarkable thing was how you were able to accommodate yourself to this. There was nothing difficult about crossing the line; it even gave you a high, dense kind of freedom. It could be fun. He hoped that he would never reach the point where he would see it in just that way.

“You don’t know the way to the Fontainbleau, Lenny,” Jill said, “you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re just driving around, you’re hoping that you’ll come across it.”

“Shut up, Jill, please shut up,” Lenny said, hunched over the wheel, “do me a favor and don’t say anything more.”

“He’s doing a good job,” Williams said, “if you just keep on driving to the beach you’ll hit that beachfront drive and you’ll be able to see it. He’s doing fine.”

“Lenny, I told you I didn’t want to go out tonight,” Jill said, “I told you that we should have stayed in the motel. Why did you want to go out for a drive? Wasn’t the motel enough for you. You spent six months trying to get me to a motel and after two nights you want to go driving around Miami. That wasn’t very smart, Lenny.”

“Jill,” the boy said, “I can’t listen to this anymore. I don’t want to hear it, you’ve got to cut it out, Jill, this is stupid.”

“Well I have a right to say it, don’t I? I just don’t know how you’re thinking, Lenny, you beg me to come away with you, shack up in a motel and I do it finally and then on the second night you want to go out for a drive—”

“Why don’t we just cool it?” Williams said, “I’m sure that everybody here has a good, reasonable point of view but this isn’t doing anybody any good. Now you’ll be out of this in just a little while and you don’t want to do anything or say anything you’ll be regretting; you want to have a good relationship, you want to keep on going with one another, don’t you?”

“Don’t ask me,” Jill said, “ask him.”

“Shut up, Jill,” Lenny said. “Just shut up.” He dropped down a little hill, went up a gentle rise and then Williams could see the beach in the distance, to the right, the huge sign of the Fontainbleau spilling light on it. They might have been three blocks away from the beachfront now.

“You did good,” Williams said, “see that? You did fine.”

“Yeah,” Lenny said, “I always do fine.”

“Now you can stop right here. Right here is fine, I’ll hike it from here.”

“He’s going to get out now Lenny. Get down in the seat, for God’s sake, this is when they put a bullet in your head because they don’t want any witnesses.”

“For God’s sake,” Lenny said, “I can’t stand this anymore,” and the girl thrust her head like an axe into Lenny’s shoulder. “I’m waiting,” she said, lifting a palm to cover the back of her head, “I’m ready, I’m ready.”

“Oh Jesus,” Williams said. The car rolled to a stop, Lenny pumping the brakes spasmodically, and Williams lifted himself against the seat, then was held by the weight of the girl. “Excuse me,” he said, “you’ll have to get out.”

“I knew it. I knew it.”

“You’ll have to move, I’m sorry.”

“I won’t,” she said. “You’ll have to shoot me down right here. I won’t get out. If I’m going to be gunned down it’s going to be in a car with my friends.”

“For God’s sake,” Williams said as gently as he could, “you’ll have to get out because it’s a coupe and I can’t push by you, don’t you understand?”

“Jill,” Lenny said, “please get out.”

“Oh all right,” she said. She seemed vaguely disappointed as if something for which she had long prepared herself was not coming to pass after all; she tossed her head in a very feminine and to Williams quite infuriating way, poked more hair out of her eyes, lifted the door and got out of the car. Williams pushed through, she looked at him. “I just want you to know,” she said, “that I remember your every feature and that you’ll pay for this.”

“Oh,” Williams said, “in that case I guess I do have to kill you, right? Because we desperate psychopaths can’t have any witnesses to our acts, remember?”

“Oh my God,” Jill said, “oh my God,” and rammed herself into the car, buttocks heaving, trembling as Lenny leaned across her dense weight to pull the door closed and then the Volkswagen yanked itself out of there, the clutch chattering. Williams watched the little taillights bob their way out of his line of sight and then he set out toward the beach, moving as quickly as he had on the street from the rooming house, pacing himself to a level, even run which could hold for distance—

—And although it was ridiculous under the highly dangerous and menacing circumstances, although he hated himself in a way for it because there was so little justification … despite all of that, as he ran he found himself smiling, seeing the girl’s face again and then the bleaker image of the downed guard superimposed itself upon this and he was suddenly out of breath, suddenly staggering to maintain his pace, suddenly very chastened and frightened as he raced toward the beachfront.

But he kept on.

Wulff would need him.