Lone Wolf #9: Miami Marauder (14 page)

At the airport they found that a flight to Chicago had left just fifteen minutes before. That had to be it. There was an abandoned copter at the far end of a runway in the private plane section which Wulff pretty well identified but there seemed little point in checking it out. The important thing was to get onto another Chicago flight as quickly as possible, but it would be a forty-five minute wait and in the meantime staying in the terminal itself seemed an ominous proposition.

Williams bought tickets and did some hurried surveillance while Wulff went into the men’s room, locked himself into a cubicle and for long, gasping instants sat looking at the floor, fully clothed, sitting on the toilet seat. Shame filled him. Miami was to be the final arena, the last confrontation and it had not been. They were both going to get out of it alive. Behind Wulff were a lot of bodies but multiple murder was not accomplishment and the girl was dead. The girl was dead.

He looked at the sack curled beneath him on the floor of the men’s room and found himself saying
no more, no more
, looking at this clamped mass of death that had only brought death and then in one sudden impulsive gesture he stood, grasped it, opened the cord and dumped all of it into the open toilet, filling it with grain that became glutinous as it meshed with the water. Then he began to flush, flushing spasmodically, again and again, shaking out the sack with one hand, dumping the stuff with the other, pouring the heroin into the sewage of Miami, flushing and flushing repeatedly, coughing, tears in his eyes from the fumes that came up from the scented waters, flushing all of the death away, shaking the bag, pounding it, slapping it desperately to remove the last grains.

Finally, five or ten minutes later, he had no sensation of the passage of time, all of it was gone and he jammed the sack into the toilet, stoppering it, and walked out of the cubicle. That was stupid, he thought, not only flushing it away, but leaving the sack as evidence. At least he could have disposed of the sack somewhere else; he didn’t have to tie it so directly. But he did not care. Let them worry about it. Let the porters come in and see this sack jamming up the toilet, the toilet by then with an OUT OF ORDER sign across it and wonder what had happened.

He had ditched one enormous load of heroin into the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge; enough heroin to have supplied the entire northeast sector for months. Now in Miami he was putting the midwest out of business. So be it. Let the heroin go into the sewage system.

He wondered vaguely if like LSD was rumored to be able to, traces of heroin could drift from sewage into the water supply and freak out portions of the city of Miami. He doubted this very much. Heroin was an inert material, LSD an active, virulant chemical. Pity that he had never tried to bust the LSD business but then you couldn’t have everything, could you? Besides, LSD was dead. Dead. The kids were turning away from it in droves. Damaged genes.

At the door of the empty men’s room Williams met him. “No surveillance,” he said, “not yet anyway. They’re not watching the airports it seems; they’re not into that yet. Everything’s focusing down on the beach. We should be able to get out before they come into the airport unless someone down there gets bright.”

“Remarkable,” Wulff said. “How did you find out all that?”

“I scout around,” Williams said. He looked at Wulff curiously. “What did you do with the sack?”

“I dumped it.”

“In here?”

“In here,” Wulff said, “where else?”

“After everything you went through—”

“Oh come on,” Wulff said, “enough of this, will you? Just don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Williams said. He put a hand on Wulff’s elbow, guided him out of the room, into the empty, ringing spaces of the terminal. “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to go back to Chicago and kill him, that’s what I’m going to do.”

“You’ll never make it.”

“Try me.”

“You ought to lay low for a while.”

“I’m not lying low again. I’m going to go in there and kill him,” Wulff said. “After that I don’t give a damn.”

“The girl is dead,” Williams said. They walked over to a small service bar, the Chinese bartender looked at them idly. “You’d better have a scotch or something. The girl isn’t going to be brought back.”

“Bullshit,” Wulff said. “The girl has nothing to do with it.”

“The girl has everything to do with it, but she won’t come back.” Williams motioned to the bartender, asked for two double scotches. “You ought to go back to New York,” he said. “If we’re lucky we can get back there and then you can go underground.”

“And you?” Wulff said, “what are you going to do?”

“I’m going back,” Williams said. He took the scotch in one gulp. “I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’m going to try and get back into it. I don’t think they want me as bad as they want you and they’re pretty well smashed regardless. If I go back into the NYPD I’m too big a target to bother. You’ve set them back ten years, you know.”

“That’s a great feeling.”

“Well,” Williams said, “you have. I don’t think I have as much to fear from them going back now. I think you ought to go back too; lie low. They’re scattered, they’re in a panic. It’s going to be a long time now until they come looking for you again.”

“I don’t care,” Wulff said. He looked at the scotch without interest, then drained it. “That doesn’t mean anything to me anymore, can’t you understand that?”

“You have more to worry about from our side. Lot of people are going to ask you questions if they can get hold of you. Also, I don’t think a lot of people are too happy with the fact that you were able to do more on your own, one man, in three months, than all of these agencies, bureaucrats, narco squads and investigators were able to manage in ten years. That kind of has a tendency to show people up. People don’t like to be shown up, Wulff, have you noticed?”

“It’s bullshit,” Wulff said again. He looked numbly at the empty glass, then pushed it across the bar, let the bartender refill it. Williams put more money out on the bar. He held the glass, looked at it for a while and then took it straight again. Williams smiled and pushed over his own glass.

“That’s the ticket,” he said, “that’s the best way to handle it, it’s going to do you more good that way. Listen, don’t go to Chicago. Come back to New York with me.”

“No,” Wulff said, “I won’t go back to New York. Not yet.”

“You can get him anytime,” Williams said, “that old man is dead. He’s run out his options now and he’s got nowhere to go.”

“No,” Wulff said, “I’m going to kill him. My options have run out too.”

A megaphone blared and Williams said, “That’s my New York flight boarding right now.”

“Well good luck to you. The best of luck to you in your new career.”

Williams looked at him intently. “You all right?” he said.

“Yeah, I’m all right. I’m fine. I’m great.”

“I’m not going to Chicago with you. It wouldn’t do anybody any good, you see.”

“You’re quite right about that,” Wulff said, “quite right. This has to be me. Get on your plane.”

Williams put down his glass. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again,” he said.

“Well, it’s a possibility. Everything’s a possibility.”

“I can’t stay with you!” Williams said with sudden, desperate urgency. “I can’t live like this. I’ve got to go back; I’ve got to get out of this.”

“Go, good luck.”

“You make me feel fucking
guilty
, man,” Williams said with a forced smile and the megaphone blared again. Williams put down some money on the bar and said, “I’ve got to go. That’s all. I wish you luck.”

“Sure,” Wulff said.

“I think you’re the best there is, you know? I think that you’re out of everyone’s class. But I just can’t cut it anymore.” He extended a hand, Wulff looked at it for a long time and then he touched it delicately. It was as far as he could go, it was the most contact he could make. Williams drew his hand away, shook his head, muttered something which Wulff did not hear and then went away from the bar quickly, walking in an uneven, stumbling gait, heading toward the New York flight.

Well, Wulff thought as he let the bartender pour him one more scotch, well, it had been a long journey from the first time he had seen Williams until now. The rookie Williams had approached him somewhat as this renegade Williams had left, the strange, proud tilt of his shoulders, the poise of his bearing, a hint of something yielding in the center which caused him to walk subtly off-balance.

A long way from there to here but maybe not so long at all and now it was over. The girl dead, Williams gone. Wulff raised the scotch, looked around the terminal for signs of local police or leftover scouts from the Calabrese party … and waited for his Chicago flight.

In the airplane, a routine passenger flight, Calabrese was dreaming. His head tilted back, his hands folded before him, he was dreaming of the rape again, the way that the girl had opened underneath him and in the dream he was whole and had parted her savagely, had torn inside her, feeling the smooth convolution of her cunt as it had gripped him, the smooth rising within him as he had, gliding, pumped himself toward orgasm, each stroke one of superb felicity, each stroke driving the girl into deeper and more profound paroxysms of her own.

“Oh my God yes,” she was saying to him in the dream, the plane rolling slightly in diminished turbulence over Knoxville, “Please keep seat belts fastened,” the stewardess had said just before Calabrese had fallen off. “Oh my God yes, this is the way I always dreamed it would be, this is the way it should be. Do it, fuck the hell out of me, lover,” and her breasts slid into his mouth, the conjoinment easier than it had any right to be considering their posture; in the dream he sucked and sucked at her breasts, each suck giving him renewed invigoration to pump below and he knew that he could keep it up forever.

It was just like the old days; he could come on the spot or hold it back for hours, either way, anything he wanted, he was in utter control of the situation. Rolling and rolling in the dream he turned over all the angles of the bed on which they were copulating and finally when the girl had reached some peak of excitation her mouth fell open, her tongue moistened her lips and she said, “Now, now, give it to me now,” and he had done so, unloading into her in a single rush, all of it: the pain, the loss, the fear, the desperation and above all the power. It had been power to unload into her and she had taken everything he had given gratefully, moaning, winking back at him through spasmed eyelids and holding him more tightly as he poured into her.

“Oh yes,” she said then, “oh yes, that was good, that was everything I ever wanted, it was wonderful, you’re the best there is, do you know that?” “Better than Wulff?” he said in the dream, the first thing he had said to her since the coupling had begun, “better than him?” “Oh yes,” she said, “oh yes, you’re much,
much
better than him, of course you are, he can’t do
half
the things to me that you can, you were just wonderful.”

He had begun to laugh then, a sheer, unstrangulated laugh of delight because at last he had beaten the bastard, beaten him cold, gotten at him through the interposition of the girl and proven himself finally in every essential sense a better man, twisting with laughter on the bed, the sheets wrapped around him, drawing little cords into his neck and shoulders, tightening on him, the girl a weight too, the girl lying across him as he laughed, her weight added to the binding of the sheets suddenly constricting, his soft prick dangling and he could not breath, he could not somehow get air into his lungs, either the girl or the sheets had cut something off, he was struggling, falling, gasping, sinking beneath the weight and the constriction and suddenly he flailed with panic trying to free himself, his arms flying to his head, the weight increasing all around.

“Stop it,” he said, “stop it, I’m dying, I’m drowning, I’m choking,” fighting to get free of all of this, “I tell you I’m drowning,” and still the weight coming in. He was going to die, he was going to die right here—

—He woke up.

And found himself leaning back on the red corduroy of the plane seat, the fabric biting into him, the back of his neck running with sweat, all of him twisted over into a terrifying position, limbs bunched underneath one another like an insect’s so he could not, for the moment, move, and the stewardess, apparently having seen him move in his sleep, was by his side, an expression of fear and concern in her eyes which Calabrese would have given almost anything not to see. It was close to the worst thing that had happened to him yet, seeing the way that this young girl was looking at him.

“Are you all right?” she said, and then remembered her training. “Are you all right, sir?”

“I’m all right.”

“Can I get you something? Something to drink?”

“Yes,” Calabrese said, “you can get me a double scotch, no water, no ice.”

Her eyes flickered. “Are you sure—”

“Yes,” he said, so loudly that the couple across the aisle looked at him strangely, “yes, I’m sure it’s all right. That’s exactly what I want.”

“You’ve already had one—”

“Get me another!” Calabrese said, “you get me another right now!” and the stewardess turned, went down the aisle, the set of her buttocks showing a fury which would never reach her face. Fuck her. He was feeling a little better now.

Just a muscle spasm, that was all it had been. Sleeping in uncomfortable posture and then the matter of the turbulence. Nothing to worry about.

Nothing. Nothing to worry about; he was not going to die. He was not having a heart attack; he was in excellent condition for a man of his age. He looked out the windows, then, seeing clouds, that child’s vision of heaven, and felt sick again. Never look down. Never. He leaned back into the seat and looked back at the aisle.

Strange: strange to be travelling alone like this but probably clever, too, the cleverest thing that he could have done under the circumstances. All of his troops were back on that beach; he had no idea how many of them had survived, maybe five or six, he could assess his losses later, but there was not time to surround himself with any of them before leaving. His bodyguard dead, the pilot in the ditched helicopter could worry about that. He was going back to Chicago alone, commercial flight. For the first time in years he did not feel insulated from surroundings by a coterie of protection. He was on his own. He would have to make it on his own.

But it was a good feeling; it was the first release and peace he had known since he had left Chicago for this damned, rotten Miami adventure and with every mile that he was able to put himself away from Miami he felt a little more assured, like the old Calabrese. At least he had gotten out. Everything had been fucked up; the expedition was a total disaster, the complications and reverberations which came off what had happened here would reach through the country … but he was safe. He was out of it. And once he knew the province of his estate again no one could touch him. He would wall himself away. And if Wulff came for him, as surely Wulff would … he would meet that when it came. The man had not killed him yet. He had not killed Wulff. A standoff.

The stewardess came back with his drink on a tray, held the tray stiffly while he reached out and took it. She was really quite a pretty girl in the cold, effective way which stewardesses were trained to project, but underneath it there was something tender, he was sure, if only he could find it. Didn’t they all screw like bunnies? That was the folklore on stewardesses; hell, if they screwed like bunnies there was some real tenderness there if only you could find it. “Thank you,” he said to her.

“You’re welcome,” she said, starting to move away, but a little gust of turbulence caught her and sent her back the other way. She dug a thigh expertly into the ridge of his seat to hold on. Nice thighs, nice buttocks. It would be nice to go to bed with her. It would be nice to go to bed with all of them if only—

“Sorry I shouted at you,” he said, trying to smile. “I didn’t mean—”

“That’s all right sir.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it is all I wanted to say.”

“It’s already forgotten sir. Is there anything else I can get you?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Then you’re quite welcome, sir,” the stewardess said and moved away from him, her buttocks waggling. For a moment Calabrese thought of pursuing her, at least calling out something which would make her come back and extend the conversation until he could break through that wall, touch her as a human being … but no, it was not worth it. What did you get when you broke through all the way to the depths of a stewardess? A stewardess, that was what you got.

He settled back in the seat, looked at his watch. Forty-five minutes, maybe a little less, until O’Hare. The thing was that you spent forty years of your life fighting, fighting to reach a point where you had finally gotten to the top or if not the top at least a place where you had moved beyond the struggles, moved to a place where they could not touch you. You worked on an organization, nursed it along, tried as best as you could to make that organization a living, viable thing. There were rivals every step of the way, people who had already reached that position who saw you as a threat and would do anything within their power to stop you from reaching that objective—

—So you had to be shrewd, had to be cunning, had to take risks which most of those with whom you were competing would not be willing to take, simply to reach that position. At the end of it, at the end of this forty years you were most likely dead, long since knocked off in your pursuit. If you were not dead you were likely to be the next thing to it, ruined, racked up, but if you were one of the very few who had been able to follow it all the way through, who had had that correct combination of luck and ruthlessness and flexibility, the flexibility terribly important because it meant that you were willing to get out of what was dying, into what was growing without an instant of doubt and hesitation, move into prostitution in the forties, into drugs in the fifties, into harder drugs and gambling in the sixties—

—Well, at the end of all of that you were seventy-three years old and fit prey for the gravediggers anyway. Half of the people you had started off with were long dead, most of the rest of them were dying or just barely hanging on. But even though you could say that you beat them you knew that the one thing you could never beat was mortality itself, the slow corruption of the flesh, the dark, singing torment of chronology which drove you further and further away from any sense of what you yourself might have been, might have gained—

—And then there you were, seventy-three years old. Seventy-three years old and just barely hanging on. Calabrese closed his eyes against the pain of that insight, drinking the rest of his drink with his eyes closed, the liquor piling down into the gut in the familiar way, clamping, wringing him, feeling the motions of the craft moving through him and thought, I will not deal with this anymore. Everybody gets old, everybody ages, it’s a condition of life. It has nothing to do with me personally, I will not take it personally. It is better to be seventy-three years and alive than to be seventy-three and celebrating the seventy-third anniversary of your birth, remember that, remember that always … and the plane lurched sickeningly, began to plunge in a long, uneven dive that brought gasps and screams from the passengers. He gripped onto the chair blanking his mind, blanking response of any sort and a thousand feet or so down the plane levelled off, began to hobble in the air like a canoe shooting the rapids with a single oar.

The pilot got onto the public address system and said that there was nothing to worry about, this kind of mid-air turbulence was common in cases like this, nothing to be concerned about, have a drink on the house, try to enjoy the rest of your flight … and then Calabrese knew it was bad, it was unmistakably bad if they were taking that approach, but as the plane rocked and shuddered in the air he could even smile at that, the drink on the house that was because the idea of a seventy-three-year-old man dying in a plane crash, why there was a redundancy if he had ever heard one.

Opening his eyes he saw that the stewardesses looked terrified.

The plane plunged again.