Night Raider (14 page)

Fuck it. He fumbled with the batteries and heater, made the splices, his eyes streaming from the odors. It was too late to get out of it. He could slide underground again but the man that he had become wouldn’t stand for it. It might be hopeless, in fact it
was
hopeless. What could one man do against the seas of poison being craftily allowed to stream through outlets into all the spaces of the country? Would it make any difference whatsoever? What could Burt Wulff do?

Except get himself killed. He finished the splices, gasping in the reeking air. Being killed was all right though. He had died in a furnished room on West 93rd a few months ago and since then, thank you very much, he had really got it on. There was, in fact, less pain in being dead than alive. The thing about getting himself killed was in itself pointless.

But he could take a lot of people down.

He smiled at this finally. He had been deluding himself, all the way up to this moment. There were no more lies now. There were no furnished rooms in his future in this city, there was no more underground. Like it or not, Wulff was committed. In the chain of circumstances the first action implied the last.

The moment that he had stepped into the Rikker’s Eldorado it had all been sealed, right up to this moment.

If nothing else they were going to know that the Wolf was around.

He held the batteries-and-heater in his hand, just a little instant coffee heater, forty-nine cents with cord, and he tossed it through the hole into the basement which was filling rapidly with gas.

And then he ran like hell.

A minute, minute and a half until that heater attained radiance. If it did. If it hadn’t all come apart on the floor. A minute and a half was enough. Longer than that and he knew he would have failed.

He ran through the gas fumes through the lot like a wild beast, looking for ground. At the far edge of the lot he hurled himself to the Earth, doubled himself over in the protective position and then, rolling once and putting his face to ground, he waited.

He had done everything that he could do. Nothing more. It either would or would not work, his forty-nine cent incendiary kit and then he would see where he went from there.

He had faith. He had faith.

He should have. Six-eighteen East Eighty-Third Street blew up like china on a stove.

Walls flew outward. It was like being under flak except that flak never made this kind of noise. The noise was intense, unbearable, the high whining squeal of ignition followed by a seemingly endless pulsating roar as piece by piece the house went down. Dust rose and fell, hit him with such force that it felt like pebbles. And even behind closed eyes Wulff could see the flash that made it day.

He could not wait too long. He counted off ten seconds, twenty, thirty, when the barrage eased, then stopped, he was already on his feet, running, staggering toward the remains of the house. Six-eighteen looked like the cartoon house that had been huffed and puffed and blown to death by the big bad wolf. Some of it hung in dangling pieces from itself. Other parts were scattered streetside. The parked Buick Electra was covered by debris and on fire.

But otherwise there was not much fire at all. A controlled explosion, it had done its job on detonation, not explosion. Limping, staggering, Wulff held his face against the heat and walked into the wreckage. How long did he have? As isolated as the residents of East eighty-third Street might be, they could not ignore this one. The entire block had shaken although the damage had been restricted to six-eighteen. Right into the feeder cables. Maybe he had five minutes to get out of here. At the first sound of a siren he would have to run. He gasped, choked, inhaled gases, weeping. He tripped over a body, that of the short, fat man who had been at the door. This one had been killed instantly, probably by impact. Hurled against something. He moved through foundation matter, little crackling pimples of flame. What had been the first floor was a parody of itself; grotesquely enough it looked like a living room that might have been imagined by a drunk. Another body here, this one twitching and talking to itself in a wedge between two chairs. Broken arm, scars through the forehead. Vaguely oriental cast.

Not Peter Vincent. Wulff took out his revolver and without bothering to consider it, shot the houseman in the head. He probed deeper through the wreckage.

What had been the stairs dangled and twirled in the winds. Some of the supporting beams had held however, there was still a definable upstairs. With no access. Something hit him in the back. Wulff whirled, saw another oriental scrambling feebly to rise and deliver another kick. The attempted death-blow must have unbalanced him. He still had the revolver. He shot this one too. The oriental fell, flapping his arms like wings. Ascending toward death.

He looked toward the street. Inside, he was yet outside. The ventilated home. A new concept in urban design. The fire was out now except for small mean crackles and flickers in isolated areas. Hopefully it would stay out. Of course if one of those gas lines got open again and added a swift breath of fuel to the situation….

Wulff stumbled against a wall. He tripped, fell on his hands and knees, shaking his head. More had been taken out of him than he wanted to conceive. He found himself looking into the eyes of a man.

The man was standing at the second level of the house, poised over a parapet. He was a slender man who ten minutes ago might have been thought of as elegantly dressed. Now his clothing hung in stripes and filaments. Black marks were all over his body. His eyes were round and desperate. He held a revolver, pointed it at Wulff and fired.

Wulff dodged. The bullet went past him, buried itself in ash. The man fired again. This one tore through a sleeve. Another bullet passed above his head. His luck was holding but he was pushing it. He went for his own revolver, toppling sideways.

He got his hand on the revolver, hitting the floor, just as the man deposited another shot next to him. Wulff rolled in the ash, feeling splinters of decomposed wood and metal digging themselves into him. No matter. He came out of it fast in a crouch and shot the man.

The man screamed and dropped his revolver. The hit had been in the hand. Perfect. A rose of blood appeared on the man’s hand as he staggered and wept. Wulff levelled the revolver for another shot, watched instead as the man leaned over the parapet, burst through and fell heavily to ground level, landing on his hands and knees. He gasped, tried to get to his feet, flopped, laid still.

Wulff got over to him fast. Breezes darted through the wreckage bringing tears to his eyes. He seized the man by the throat, pulled him half-erect. He looked into Peter Vincent’s eyes.

“Who’s next?” he said in a perfectly level voice.

The man’s eyes bulged. He hung like a pendulum in Wulff’s eyes. His tongue went over his lips, retracted.
In extremis.
But this had been the man from whom Albert Marasco took orders.

“Who’s next?” he said again.

“What—” the man said and paused, gasped, tried to find breath. The fire must have seared his lungs. “What—?”

“You’re part of a chain, Vincent. You’re just another link in a long, long connecting chain. Who’s the next one? Who do you take your orders from?”

Vincent fainted in his grasp. That was easily taken care of. He hit the man in the mouth, skittering him sideways. Released him. Vincent fell into ashes, weeping.

“What have you done?” he said, face to the floor, “what have you done?”

“I’ve blown up your fucking palace, Vincent, and that’s just the beginning.”

“You killed Marasco,” the man said, “you killed the others.”

“That’s right.”

“You’re crazy. You’ve got to be crazy.”

Wulff heard sirens rising in the distance. Not much time now. Not much time at all. He kicked the man in the ribs. Vincent let out a strangled cry, fainted again. Wulff revived him with another kick.

“Who do you talk to?” he said, “where do your orders come from? Who’s the next man on the list?”

“I’m dying.”

“Everybody’s dying. You’re killing them all, Vincent. Come on,” Wulff said, “I don’t have much time.”

He knelt next to the man, seized his throat, took out his revolver and levelled it. “One last time,” he said, “tell me where the orders come from.”

Intelligence seemed to flare in the man’s eyes for the first time. “I’m dead anyway,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Why tell you anything?”

Sirens were closer. Wulff, in the fading gases, could smell the river now. The explosion was over. The scavengers, the enforcers were about to come.

“Because you can die peacefully or painfully, Vincent,” Wulff said and put the gun to the man’s forehead. “I can take you out quickly and cleanly or I can just skewer little holes in you and leave you to the police. They’ll get you out. They’ll put you in a ward somewhere and after five years of suffering you’ll be ready to stand trial.”

The man looked at him. “Gerald,” he said, “I talk to a man named Gerald.”

“Where?”

Vincent told him, struggling with the syllables. Wulff held the revolver steady.

“You never see the stuff do you, Vincent?” he said. “You just deal over the phone. It’s all outside of you isn’t it? You never have to look at what you’ve done.”

“I’m dying.”

“Yes you are. You certainly are dying. Everybody you ever touched is dying, Vincent. But you never had to look at the death, did you? It was all something going on uptown. You sealed yourself off in your townhouse and called it the world.”

He yanked the man from the floor, forced him to a standing posture. “Look,” he said, “look at what you’ve done.”

He propelled the man forward, showed the man the street, the splinters, the demolition, the ruins of what had once been his home, of what had once been a fortress. “That’s what you’ve done, Vincent,” Wulff said, “do you understand that?”

“I don’t understand—”

“This is what you’ve turned New York into. Don’t you understand?” Wulff said then with a terrible, sweet, slow patience as he held his revolver. “Don’t you understand, Vincent, that the inside of a junkie’s head looks just like this does now?”

He saw comprehension or thought he saw comprehension growing in the man but Wulff was just not interested. He was not interested.

He pointed the revolver at Vincent and held the trigger. “I’m going to give you more peace than you ever volunteered for anyone, a better end than you’ve wished on a thousand demolished souls,” he said.

And shot the man in the head.

Vincent dropped before him with an exhaling sigh, almost as of relief to finally take leave of life. Looking at the dead man in the growing fury of the sirens Wulff felt a twinge of envy: Vincent at least was out of it. Wherever they went, however they had been taken, the dead, at least, had been granted release.

Which he had not yet been and which he knew now he would never bring upon himself. For death was either for the sick or the weak; it was not for him.

No ease for Burt Wulff.

He picked his way through the broken spaces of Peter Vincent’s house, stumbling through the ash. The beacons were close now, the sirens upon him, all up and down the block people had come to windows and open spaces to look upon his work but he felt that he just might be able to make it out of there undiscovered. The proper way was to the river and then picking his way along that blind back up a cross-street.

He breathed raggedly, unevenly, tears and gases mingling in his lungs but he was breathing.

And he was walking.

The great siege, he knew now, had begun.

The man dressed like a stockbroker came quickly into the midday crowds, an attaché case swinging, headed north toward Broad Street. Briskly he stepped from the curb, dodging without thought the heavy traffic, separating himself from the bodies around him, opening himself up for space to move freely. His eyes instinctively measured the traffic, the crowds, the amount of space given him, like any New Yorker’s they saw without seeing. The man opened up to full stride as he crossed the street and began to speed toward his destination. He was already a little late. It was an important meeting, dealing as it would in part with the allocation of Peter Vincent’s domain.

The bullet caught him behind the ear, spun him on the pavement and dropped him in his tracks. The contact had been so precise, the impact so shattering and yet bloodless that it appeared as if he had merely been stricken by a cerebral hemorrage. The man lay there, his case dangling at his side, his sightless eyes looking up toward the great buildings he would never see again. People eddied around him, being careful not to touch. It was certainly best in New York not to get involved with cases like these if you could help it.

A tall man with hollow, pained eyes came from the crowd and knelt quickly beside the fallen man. He appeared to be a friend or a doctor, quickly checking him out for gross signs of damage. The tall man nodded once and took his hand away from the other’s wrist. Then he reached over and took the attaché case and standing, moved off quickly into the crowd. All of this had taken no more than thirty seconds.

The fallen man lay there for fifteen more minutes while the crowds swarmed around. At length a patrol car came, prodding itself haltingly through the traffic and two cops came out. They checked him, shook their heads, put in the call. Then they started to go through his pockets for identification.

There was no identification of any sort. The man with the bullet in his head had no papers, no credentials. A wallet empty except for two one hundred dollar bills and five singles fluttered open on the pavement.

The cops looked at one another and then shrugged. It was possible. A lot of these Wall Street types recently, because of all the security problems on the street, all of the pickpockets, had taken to carrying their identification papers in their attacé cases which they could hold onto, see with them at all times. Someone had probably snatched the attaché case and run with it. It didn’t matter. The cops would find out who he was and if they never did it wasn’t their problem anyway. The problem was the sniper in the district and that made their palms sweat a little as they waited for the wagon and reinforcements to come so that they could at least get some coverage….

But the sniper was already heading uptown holding the attaché case. In due course he would open it up, get a look. He couldn’t wait.

The contents of the case would tell him where he would be heading next….