Night Raider (10 page)

Wulff got up eight hours later, feeling a little better. The business from yesterday was little more than an ache in his guts; it went away when he stretched. He got out of bed, dressed, had some coffee, went outside leaving the door unlocked to pick up a paper. Let anyone come in; let them take whatever he had. This was the best way to co-exist with the rooming house. Everything that he needed he carried around in his head and jacket. The gun came in tight against his ribs.

Story in the late
Times
about the Marasco fire. The
Times
called him an executive. No one else had died. The
News
was somewhat more interesting; there were a couple of pictures in the centerfold and the
News
seemed to think of him as a mobster. Right on,
News
Wulff thought,
vox populi omnia
and went back to the rooming house, meditating.

Time to take on Peter Vincent, of course. But there was not only time, it was a question of timing; Wulff was still pacing it out. Going after Vincent would put him into a truly exposed position for the first time. Davis and Jessup were in a place where they could not talk; Marasco was there too, so far so good. The blond knew plenty of course and in due time would get the word out but it did not seem as if he would have to worry about the blond’s people for a day, a couple of days anyhow. Then they might have a good deal of trouble finding him. The trace would come to the police department and then, like Marasco’s black book, hit a dead stop. No one knew where he was now except Williams and Williams, Wulff was very sure, was not going to spread it around. That had been a sincere offer earlier today. He would have to think about it. He had always seen this as a solo operation, make it all the way or get dragged down alone but never involve or injure other people, but Williams was offering to go in with his eyes wide open. He would have to consider that. He would certainly give it some thought.

He walked back to the rooming house, digging the scene on West 97th which was pretty much like the scene all over town these days except for the residential East Side and parts of the business district, and those two sections were being kept clear only through a massive influx of cops and private security. As long as the business district and the one or two upper-class residential sections held out the city could avoid the appearance of total collapse but Wulff knew, the cops knew, the city knew that they were losing ground. It was only a matter of time now: two years, maybe three and the last vestiges of safety and wealth would collapse and New York City, the cities all over the country, would collapse into the pools of hell that surrounded them.

It was something to see, the West 97th Street scene; it was not even noon yet but the streets had the stuporous languor in August of a combat zone that had been passed through by two massive, if incompetent armies. On the fringes of the devastation or skipping around the middle once again were the isolated sources of energy: a resident struggling with grocery bags and terror trying to make it back to one of the high-rises before the club fell against the neck, a junkie freaked out on cheer dancing in the gutter. Oh, it was just beautiful. Wulff took the
Times
and pitched it as far as it would go, took the
News
and kicked it after. The hell with the newspapers. They were on the outside of it too; at best they could tell you what was going on. They would never tell you
why. Why
was not a newspaper game: start printing the truth and the free press would go out of business.

Wulff thought about Peter Vincent. The name, the address, the general relationship meant that this one was probably holed up in a townhouse with private security and alarm systems; there was probably the arsenal of a small army up there too. How the hell was he going to take it? There was no point in going in frontally; they would wipe him out in one burst. But security was of the type, probably, that could not be circumvented easily. Come in by air? Wulff smiled a bit wryly at that. He was not the 41st Airborne Division and Vincent was no bunch of ignorant peasants in a valley. They would eat him for breakfast.

So why bother? He had gotten three: not much but something and the Marasco knockoff would certainly be instructive to the next man who moved into Marasco’s approximate place. Why not retire or at least back off a long way; why not start picking his spots from now on? It might be more effective in the long run and it would certainly be conducive to a longer life.

The hell with life
, Wulff muttered, sprinting up the steps of the brownstone,
there’s no such thing for me anymore
and that, more or less, seemed to be the point. There was no backing off now. He was already too far committed and more than half-dead. How long before he was tracked down? Did he really think that he could drift underground again, go back to the dreaming and careful planning of these past three months?

Bullshit. They would be coming after him in waves.

Up the stairs and into his room Wulff went, already thinking of the best way to take a reconnaissance on East 83rd Street, and as he opened the door he was hit with something that felt the size of a brick and was filled with spikes. He reeled and instinctively brought himself at bay against the wall, fighting before he even saw. So this was it. What a fool he had been to think that he had any open space at all.

The blond and his friends had been waiting for him.

At that he was lucky. The shot that he had taken ought, by rights, to have killed him, but the one who threw it was an amateur, overeager, a little scared, so anxious to get in the suckerpunch and crusher that he had not timed it properly. It was this one who now dived at Wulff, frantic to make up for the lost opportunity. Not thinking even about the gun he held which had been reversed and used as the clubbing weapon. A well put together beer-drinking type in his mid-twenties, this one, not that Wulff felt that he had the time to do extended character analysis in the middle of this.

The beer-drinker could have given him one shot, just backed off five or six paces like a quarterback dropping back fast into the pocket, and it would have all been over. But the only thing that this one seemed to understand was collision. He came at Wulff screaming, leaped at the last instant and launched himself into a shoulder tackle. Wulff, hurting bad, braced the shoulder that had been hit against the wall and came out fast with a foot, knocking the beer-drinker off balance in the air and upending him with a shriek. He fell to the floor screaming from pain and frustration and then remembered the gun, began like a child to level it with two hands, painfully.

Wulff, shoulder and all, fell on top of the man immediately. He had to bring the gun
in
he told himself, that was the way the training went anyway, bring it into the subject, the closer the better, you wanted to make him eat that gun, the gun was fine as long as it stayed wedged in close because that way he couldn’t shoot except by accident; the risks were too high. He might hit you or a piece of himself. Wulff concentrated on keeping the contact, letting the blows fall off him as they would. That wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was the
gun.
He ran a hand down the man’s thick forearm, found the gun finally and began to grapple with it.

The man’s knee flailed toward his groin. At the same time Wulff, turning in struggle, saw his old friend the blond framed suddenly against the window. Oh, the blond was a cute one; he sent his friend out to run the interference and then he came right through the line. If the interference got killed, so much the better, that way the blond could take all the credit with no one to dispute him. There was a gun in the blond’s hand. He levelled it.

“I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch,” he said, “get ready for it, it’s coming.”

Those who announced their intentions had their doubts. Old police rule; most would-be jumpers simply jumped, didn’t stand on ledges and building roofs for hours gathering and entertaining crowds. If you wanted to do it, you already had done it; simple rule of life or death. Wulff forgot about the blond for the instant. Let him consider the act for a few instants longer while he dealt with the beer-drinker. The beer-drinker was certainly enough of a problem. This one was without doubts of any sort;
his
only problem was that he was stupid.

“You son of a bitch,” the beer-drinker said as Wulff explored his groin savagely, gambling on one final assault. It became a whine of pain.
“For God’s sake Mel, help me,”
the man groaned.

Too late. Wulff had the pistol. The beer-drinker went slack underneath him, the pistol rolling free and Wulff took it, rolled and rolled himself on the floor, ducking for the relative safety of the bed, waiting in one partition of his mind for the bullet from the blond to come. If it ever came it would come now; people like this, if they could hit at all, would do it with a fleeing target. No shot. Wulff pushed the bed aside, wedged himself in there and coming around very, very fast, shot the blond in the throat. The blond’s gun fell, he heard a burbling scream of defiance and revulsion and the blond hit the floor.

Then he shot the beer-drinker in the knee, looking for the tendon right behind the joint. That would incapacitate the man, turn him into a cripple for life, on the other hand there would be so little bleeding from this spot that the man could lie here for hours losing barely a pint of blood. The blond wasn’t going to be doing a great deal more talking although he was bubbling and thrashing about energetically. That meant he had to save one of them for some answers.

The beer-drinker gurgled with an agony so profound that it defied sound of any sort and held himself rigid against the floor like a man on a crucifix. “Shut up,” Wulff said, and kicked him, “you’ll live.”

“Son of a bitch,” the man said, “oh son of a bitch.” He held himself tight on the floor. The lightest movement of the leg, Wulff knew, would cause the man to pass out. He remembered how it was.

Wulff got up fast and investigated the terrain. The blond dead or dying under the window, the beer-drinker screaming deep in his throat in the center of the room. The door itself flapping open, mindlessly, in the weak inner ventilation of the rooming house. He stepped to the door and looked down the hall. Absolutely no sign of activity. Usually there was a fair amount of traffic in these halls at almost any hour; fifteen to twenty living units on a floor full of drifters or drunkards meant plenty of action to and from the bathroom at all times but now Wulff could have been living in a deserted townhouse. He could have been beaten to a pulp in here and killed—and only a certain ineptness on the part of the attackers had prevented that—and no one would have peeked out a door.

Of course that was New York for you and not necessarily to be blamed. What did these people owe him? What did he owe them? People could not be blamed for sealing themselves away if it was the only means of survival.

He kicked the door closed and went back to the scene in the room. The blond appeared to be dead although there was so much blood surrounding the respiratory areas that it would have been difficult to check. Blood covered the blond’s face, streamed around his nostrils, flowed into his ears. His neck could not be seen at all. He lay in a curiously cramped position—even in death this man could not seek grace—staring with round, open eyes at the ceiling.

It was a dismal thing to have the ceiling of Wulff’s furnished room be the last thing you would see in this world but Wulff guessed the man rated it. There had always been a certain ineptness about this one, he suspected. He had selected a career with a dead man in Islip which meant right away that he had no gift for choices.

Wulff went back to the beer-drinker who had not moved. “All right,” he said, “talk.”

The man shook his head. Strain showed deep in his eyes; tears as well. Pain could make any of them cry. “No,” he said.

“Talk,” said Wulff gesturing toward the leg, “or I’ll move you.”

The man seemed to fold within himself in defeat, then the pain reared him up again in tension on the floor. “Nothing to say,” he gasped. “Strictly free-lance. He asked for some help.”

“Who did?”

“Marty. You killed him. You killed Marty.”

“I hope so,” Wulff said. “How long you been in the murder business?”

“No murder,” the man said hoarsely. “He just said beat you up, teach you a lesson. I don’t murder.”

“He lied to you, didn’t he? He came here to kill.”

“Don’t kill. Wouldn’t kill.”

“That wasn’t nice,” Wulff said, “you keep the wrong kind of company.”

“You’ve got to get me some help,” the man said, “you got to get me some
help.
”

“For what?”

“Pain. Won’t walk. The
pain—
”

“You’ll live,” Wulff said. “Believe me, you won’t find it worth it, but you’ll live.”

He stood from his crouch. He kicked the beer-drinker in the wounded leg. The man shrieked like a woman, his cries rose clear out of amplitude and he lay there screaming without sound, his mouth locked into an
o
of agony.

“Now you’ve fucked up everything,” Wulff said, “you’ve blown my cover. I got a corpse and a half in this room. What the hell am I supposed to do? Roll over and make space for the two of you?”

The blond sobbed unexpectedly, launched a last gurgle and then, hovering to his knees, threw a last spray of blood across the room and collapsed in it unmoving. Wulff looked at it in disgust.

“You see what I mean?” he said.

The beer-drinker continued to say nothing. His only percentage, he had apparently decided, was in making no sound. Either that or he was beyond speech. Same difference. Meant nothing.

“You see,” Wulff said, talking to the man now almost as if he was an old friend, going to the closet, taking down a valise, beginning quickly but absently to toss equipment into it, “I never thought I wanted to get in as deep as I have already. For three months I lived here happy as a clam, reading newspapers and taking little walks in the neighborhood. My expenses were about four dollars a day and I could have stayed here indefinitely. It was fun living underground. It sure as hell made more sense than being a cop. I was getting more accomplished and making more of a contribution to the human condition just lying around in this bed over here than I ever was as a narco.”