Menaced Assassin (2 page)
Authors: Joe Gores
“More than a mystery…a meditation on the nature of humankind and the origins of evil, as well as an attempt to reconcile the word of God with the laws of science.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle
“His narrative sleight-of-hand makes for a satisfying read with a rewarding finish. A first-rate job in the hands of a master.”
—
Greeley Tribune
(CO)
“Gores has established himself securely as one of the best and most versatile authors of crime novels.”
—
Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers
“Rich in detail…Gores has the right talk and the right cadence to draw readers deep into his web of suspicion and evidence.”
—
Ocala Star-Banner
“If you want to know in today’s terms what a Hammett yarn truly was like, read Gores.”
—
Mystery Magazine
“One of the very few authentic private eyes to enter the field of fiction since Dashiell Hammett.”
—Anthony Boucher
NOVELS
A Time of Predators
Interface
Hammett
Come Morning
Wolf Time
Dead Man
Menaced Assassin
DKA FILE NOVELS
Dead Skip
Final Notice
Gone, No Forwarding
32 Cadillacs
COLLECTION
Mostly Murder
ANTHOLOGIES
Honolulu, Port of Call
Tricks and Treats
(with Bill Pronzini)
NON-FICTION
Marine Salvage (1971)
SCREENPLAYS
Interface
Hammett
Paper Crimes
Paradise Road
Fallen Angel
Cover Story
(with Kevin Wade)
Come Morning
Run Cunning
Gangbusters
TELEPLAYS
Golden Gate Memorial
(4-hr miniseries)
High Risk
(with Brian Garfield)
“
Blind Chess
”
(B. L. Stryker)
EPISODIC TV
“Kojak”
“Eischied”
“Kate Loves a Mystery”
“The Gangster Chronicles”
“Strike Force”
“Magnum, P.I.”
“Columbo”
“Remington Steele”
“Scene of the Crime”
“Eye to Eye”
“Helltown”
“T.J. Hooker”
“Mike Hammer”
MYSTERIOUS PRESS EDITION
Copyright © 1994 by Joe Gores
All rights reserved.
The Mysterious Press name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.
Mysterious Press books are published by
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: October 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56835-7
Contents
Praise for Joe Gores and Menaced Assassin
Part Two: End of the Ordovician
Part Six: End of the Cretaceous
Part Eight: 25,000 b.c. to the Present
For DORI
Heaven’s last, best gift,
my ever-new delight
The geological eras and time frames on the part-title pages refer to notable mass-extinction events during which 60-85 percent of all life on earth disappeared, with its ecological niche then promptly being refilled by new life-forms.
Man is now destroying other life-forms at the rate of one every twenty-four hours. Their ecological niches are not being filled with new species, because the niches themselves are being destroyed. Once a species and a niche are gone, they are gone forever.
I am your dwarf.
I am the enemy within.
I am the boss of your dreams…
the kindred of blackness and impulse.
See. Your hand shakes…
It is your Doppelganger
trying to get out
.
Beware… Beware
…
Anne Sexton
“Rumpelstiltskin”
ART
O
NE
510 m.y. ago
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so,
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.…
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall he no more; death, thou shalt die.
John Donne
Holy Sonnets
HAPTER
O
NE
Listen to Raptor,
mon vieux
. Don’t take this life so seriously, you’ll never get out of it alive.
I kill. Oh, I know. You expect me to add, Therefore I am. But that is nonsense. I do not kill out of any inner compulsion to give what that fool Hemingway called the gift of death. If killing is a gift, it is a gift to the killer himself, during the ritual frenzy of the hunt. Whoever considers Proud Death a gift to a healthy animal has no imagination and is already half in love with his
own finis
.
I am not. I kill—without pity, compunction, emotion or moral qualms, to be sure—but not because killing obsesses me. Just because, well… it is what I do. Previously I have done other things, perhaps in future I will do other things again. But for at least a few hours more, I kill. After that…
After that, well, tonight Will Dalton plans to give a lecture. A lecture on the nature of man in hopes of exposing, no less, the roots of man’s endless violence, perhaps man’s evil, and to draw some sort of inane conclusions from it.
No, no, my dear women, lower your knitting needles. I am sure he will not exclude the Fair Sex, the Better Half, the Little Woman, from his overview.
I
would not. When I say Man I speak not of gender, but of my own kind
sui generis
, as a class by itself apart from all else in Nature.
Separate, let me hasten to add, only in the way that a dog is separate from a stork. Not separate as the fallen angel of
Religion (with an immortal soul breathed into it by God) is separate from the beasts of the field. And not separate as the risen ape of Science (last best result of evolution’s efforts) is separate from those same angels set twirling by Aquinas on the head of a pin.
Rather, I speak of man as
fallen ape
, of whatever sex he might be. Baser than heaven, baser than our primate stock, baser even than the slime from which both Science and Religion insist all life springs.
I admit that I speak to you now out of my own base pride in my own base actions, because I am vain enough to want to give you my version of events—small things make base men proud, you can appreciate the reference. And also, by showing it in action, my version of man’s nature to set against Dalton’s pitiable attempts at exculpation and justification for mankind.
