Mourn The Living (14 page)

Nolan faced the four-windowed French doors and watched the shifting shadows on the curtains. He peered through the crack between the doors and saw Dinneck sitting in a chair with his back to Nolan, tossing things from a suitcase over his shoulders, angry because he wasn’t finding anything. Tulip had stripped the bed and was in the process of gutting the mattress with a stiletto.

Dumb bastards, Nolan thought. The room hadn’t told them anything the night before and tonight wouldn’t be any different. Well, a little different maybe.

Nolan slammed his shoulder into the French doors and they snapped open. He kicked Dinneck’s chair in the seat, turning it over on him. Nolan leapt on the chair, heard bones and wood crack simultaneously, and sat on it, pinning Dinneck beneath. He leveled the .38 at Tulip, who stopped frozen, knife over mattress, with the bug-eyed expression of a punk caught stealing hub-caps.

“Raise them, Tulip,” Nolan ordered. “Slow and easy and no games with the knife.”

If Nolan hadn’t mentioned the stiletto, Tulip probably wouldn’t have remembered it, but Nolan had and Tulip did. Like a reflex Tulip whipped the knife behind his ear and let it fly. Nolan ducked, losing control of the overturned chair, and hit the floor. Behind him the stiletto quivered in the wood paneling. Nolan fired the .38 at a fleeing Tulip, caught him in the arm with the shot, which spun him around and sat him down.

That put Dinneck out of Nolan’s mind just long enough for the man to crawl out from under the smashed chair and step up behind Nolan.

And when Nolan remembered Dinneck, it was too late to matter. He turned and saw the toe coming at his face and when he tried to turn away it caught him in the temple and things went black.

He woke thirty-some seconds later and stared into the barrel of his .38, which was now in Dinneck’s hand. Tulip was sitting a few feet away on the partially gutted bed, whimpering, mumbling. “Need it, Dinneck, I tell ya I need it bad . . . let’s just finish him and get out, huh? What d’ya say?”

Nolan looked past the gun barrel and into Dinneck’s cold, uncompromising eyes.

Nolan said, “What’s Tulip need, Dinneck?”

“Shut up.”

Tulip was rubbing his mutilated arm. The bullet had caught him in the lower shoulder and he was stroking below the wound. The blood from his shoulder was all over his hands and partially on his tear-streaked face, where he’d tried to wipe the moisture from his eyes. He was moaning, “I need some, gotta shoot up, need it bad, real bad. . . .”

“He need a fix, Dinneck?” Nolan asked.

“Shut your goddamn mouth, Webb.”

“Little shot of heroin?”

“I said shut up, you son of a bitch!”

“Where’s Tulip getting his heroin, Dinneck? Is it . . .”

Dinneck interrupted Nolan by slamming the barrel of the .38 into Nolan’s temple again, then smashing him across the mouth with it.

Nolan’s body went limp, but he wasn’t out. His mouth, his lips felt like a bloody wad of pulp, but he wasn’t out. His temple ached, his head pounded, but he sat back and waited to make his move. He sat back and waited and watched Dinneck’s eyes.

Tulip seemed excited, the pain momentarily forgotten. “Let
me
shoot ’im, Dinneck—let ol’ Tulip put him to sleep forever—”

Dinneck smiled and shook his head. “Sorry, pal. I got a special grudge against Mr. Webb here.”

Tulip stood up, clutching his bloodied arm. “
You
got a grudge! Last night that bastard set me on my ass every time I turned around, he knocked out one of my teeth, and a coupla hours ago he kicked me in the fuckin’ head! Now he half shoots off my fuckin’ arm and
you
gotta grudge.”

“Sit down,” Dinneck said, “and shut up.”

Tulip sat, frowning, caressing the wounded arm again, and Dinneck consoled him with, “Take it easy, man, I’ll see you get your shot, don’t worry, stay cool. Let me handle it.”

Nolan had been looking past Dinneck’s tacky clothes and into the authority of his face, the competence of his actions, the hardness of eyes that spoke professionalism. Nolan told himself he’d misjudged Dinneck, whose dress and even manner to a degree had been calculated to elicit such misjudgment. Beyond that, Nolan saw a coldness in Dinneck, and a need to inflict pain.

“I read you wrong, Dinneck,” Nolan said.

Intrigued by the comment in spite of himself, Dinneck said, “What?” Then remembering his previous commands to Nolan he said, “Just keep your mouth shut while I figure what to do with you.”

“Who are you, Dinneck?” Nolan asked.

“I told you to shut your mouth.”

“Tulip, how long’s Dinneck been working with you? He been in town very long? How long’s he been with Elliot and Franco?”

“You’re only making it tougher on yourself, Webb,” Dinneck told him evenly.

Tulip’s face showed the strain of thought, then he said, “He’s only been with us about two, maybe three months. He’s somebody the Boys sent in from upstate somewhere.”

Nolan looked at Dinneck again. “Who are you?”

“Just keep trying my patience, Webb, keep going at it. . . .”

“You some kind of Family inside man, checking up? Just who the hell are . . .”

Dinneck’s face exploded into a red mask, veins standing out on his forehead like a relief map. He raised the gun up over Nolan’s head and brought it down fast.

But not fast enough. Nolan sent a splintering left that caught Dinneck below the left eye and followed with a full right swing into his throat. Dinneck rolled on his back, wrapping his hands around his throat, and he tried to scream in pain but that only made it worse. Nolan tromped down on Dinneck’s wrist and the man released his grip on Nolan’s .38—he’d forgotten it anyway.

Nolan stood over the sprawling figure, leveling the retrieved .38 at Tulip, who had sat back down on the bed.

“You didn’t have to hit him in the throat, did you?” Tulip’s voice was like a child’s; he wasn’t holding onto his arm anymore and the blood on it was beginning to turn a dry brown. “You didn’t have to hit his throat. It still hurts him from this morning when some broad hit him there. What a hell of a place to hit him. You sure are a mean son of a bitch, Webb.” Tulip shook his head.

“You and Dinneck came to the wrong man for sympathy,” Nolan told him. “He should’ve got his tonsils out some other day.”

“What are you gonna do now?”

Nolan didn’t answer Tulip. He lifted a barely conscious Dinneck by the collar and dragged him to the can, keeping one eye (and the .38) on Tulip all the while. Nolan dumped Dinneck in the tub, turned on the shower full blast, on cold, and pulled the shower curtain down over his head.

“You sure are a mean s.o.b.,” Tulip repeated.

“It’ll relax him,” Nolan said.

Nolan left Dinneck in the tub, shower curtains around him and shower going on full, ice-cold. Dinneck was a mass of whining, hysterical pain, fighting the shower curtain and the cold with what was left of his will. Nolan shut the bathroom door.

“I bet you could use a shot, couldn’t you, Tulip?”

“Mean s.o.b., sure are a mean s.o.b. . . .”

“How long you been riding that horse, Tulip?”

“. . . mean s.o.b., you sure a . . .”

Nolan gave up on getting any information out of Tulip; at the moment the big man was practically catatonic and talking to him was a waste of time. Besides, pretty soon Barnes would get worried enough to call the cops, despite Nolan’s advice to the contrary, what with the gunshot and all the violent noises that had been coming from the room. He wondered if Vicki had taken off. She should have.

He collected his things, picked his suitcase up off the floor and hastily re-packed it, got his clothes-bags too. He rubbed his temple; his head was still pounding like hell, but his balance was okay. A few aspirin would help the head as long as there wasn’t concussion. His mouth was bleeding and hurt like a bastard, but he ran a hand over it and didn’t think he would need stitches.

Out in the hall, he could hear a muffled Tulip in there saying “Mean s.o.b.” over and over. Nolan lugged his suitcase and clothes-bags thinking he could have been a lot meaner than he’d been. He wouldn’t have lost much sleep over killing that pair.

The Lincoln was indeed waiting and he walked easily over to it. Vicki was at the wheel, the engine running. He got in the rider’s side, tossed his things in back.

When she saw him her eyes rolled wide and she gasped. “What happened! Your face, your mouth . . .”

“Hard day at the office,” he said. “Beat it the hell out of here.”

5

SOMETIMES,
when insomnia hit him and he spent half the night fighting for sleep, Phil Saunders almost wished his wife were alive.

This was a night like that. He’d gone to bed at twelve, as soon as the late night talk show had signed off. Now it was two-thirty and he was still awake.

Yes, too bad, in a way, his wife wasn’t alive any more.

At least if she were there she could have bitched him to sleep.

Now there was no one. No one to talk to, have sex with, live with. A little old fashioned nagging never killed anybody. At least you weren’t alone.

Not that it was bad, living alone here. He had a nice apartment, six rooms, luxury plus. And very nicely furnished, too, in a conservative sort of way. But then, Phil was a conservative sort of person, outwardly upright, honest. But on the inside? Life had grown a sour taste lately.

A year and a half ago life had been sweet. A year and a half ago when he had been Police Commissioner of Havens, New Jersey, a legit above-board job he’d worked his ass off over the years to get. A year and a half ago his wife had been a drying-up prune he put up with out of habit and for appearance sake. A year and a half ago his affair with Suzie Van Plett, that succulent soft little seventeen-year-old, had been in full bloom.

Too bad his wife had walked in on him and Suzie that time. There’s nothing like the sight of a naked seventeen- year-old blonde sitting on the lap of a naked forty-nine- year-old balding police commissioner to give a really first rate instantaneous and fatal heart attack to a fully-clothed fifty-two-year-old grey-haired police commissioner’s wife. Then the reporters, the disgrace, the friends deserting him, the question of statutory rape in the air and finally the humiliating midnight escape.

His name had been different then, but it died with his wife and his reputation in Havens. He turned to his cousin, a longtime con artist going by the name Irwin Elliot. Elliot had a sweet set-up going in Chelsey, Illinois, through the Chicago crime syndicate. Cousin Elliot was good at documents and he forged the defrocked Havens police commissioner a good set of references, pulled the proper strings, opened and closed the right mouths, and the newly named Phil Saunders sprang to life, full-grown at birth. He filled the puppet role of Chelsey Police Chief and watched his cousin Elliot control the town as the brains behind another puppet, that fat fool George Franco, who was a brother of some Chicago mob guy.

It was a rich life, and an easy one.

But there were no succulent seventeen-year-olds in his Chelsey life, nor would there be, on Cousin Elliot’s orders.

Just a conservatively furnished six-room apartment that even his dead wife could have brightened with her presence. At least if his wife were around there would be someone not to listen to, not to talk with.

The door buzzer sounded, startling Saunders. Then, knowing who it would be, he went to the door and opened it.