The Midnight Man (27 page)

“Don’t move, I said!”

I stopped. “Check my gun, for chrissake! It hasn’t been fired. Don’t you know a rifle when you hear one?”

“I heard the rifle. Maybe you’re the back-up.” His mouth stayed open when he wasn’t talking and his breath moved in and out in shudders. But the gun didn’t wobble.

“Let him up.”

The command came out in a grunt from behind the cop. He didn’t move. “Who says?”

“Your bread and butter, sonny.”

The cop shifted his weight and turned slightly to take in both me and the speaker. John Alderdyce was sitting on the pavement with his legs spread out stiffly, his back resting against the limousine’s doorsill. His chest heaved as if he’d been running. His jacket and shirt were open, exposing a shiny black surface that was distinctly nonorganic. There was a dent where his heart should be. Hornet was bent over him, undoing the straps that held the bulletproof vest in place.

“He’s got a gun, Lieutenant,” said the youngster. “He don’t look like a cop.”

“That’s because he isn’t one. But as much as I’d like you to pull the trigger you better give him some slack. It’d be just like him to haunt me.”

Reluctantly the rookie holstered his revolver and removed his foot from my wrist. I got up and put away my own gun. By this time Hornet had the vest off Alderdyce and was vigorously rubbing the heel of his hand over a discoloration the size of a saucer on the lieutenant’s chest, which was nearly as dark and glossy as the shield itself.

“That’s one hell of a bruise, John,” the sergeant was saying. “You sure you’re okay? We got a doc here someplace. Where the hell’s that croaker?” He bellowed the last over his shoulder.

“I’m fine, except for a burning on my chest,” John told him.

“Burning? Oh.” He stopped rubbing.

Alderdyce climbed to his feet with the aid of the detectives gathered around him. He was streaming wet. “Get those fucking cameras out of here.”

There was a general hubbub of grunts and curses as a flying wedge of uniforms shoved two technicians out of the enclosure, their cameras bobbing.

I said, “Bright move. There aren’t a lot of vests that will stop a bullet fired from a deer rifle.”

“It’s a new design, effective past a hundred yards. Inside of that there’s no reason for so much firepower.” He worked his left arm, wincing.

“What if he’d aimed at your head?”

He said nothing.

“I can’t figure where he got the gun,” put in Hornet. “We confiscated that thirty-ought-six on Bagley.”

“There are gunshops all over this town,” Alderdyce said. “Robbery can tell us if any were broken into recently. Any line yet on where the shot came from?”

“We just got the squeal. Cop down on Shelby. He was securing a rooftop when someone hit him from behind. Investigating officers found a Winchester ditched on the stairs.” Hornet ran out of breath.

“Roadblocks up where I said?”

“Far as I know.”

“Jesus H. Christ. I bet you don’t even check your fly.” He shoved a path through to the scout car in front, leaned in through the open driver’s door and snatched out the mike. At that moment Central Dispatch came on the air. The female operator sounded as if she were talking in her sleep.

“Suspect seen in blue nineteen-seventy-four Buick Riviera license number Tom-Edward-Robert-six-two-seven heading west on West Fort Street between Shelby and Washington.”

Even as she spoke we heard the gulping sirens. I met Alderdyce’s gaze. The whites of his eyes were brilliant against his blue-tinged skin.

“Officers engaged suspect at roadblock between Second and Third. Suspect now heading north on Second.”

“That’s the wrong way,” said Hornet.

“We’ll be sure and issue him a citation when we catch him. Get this thing turned around.” The lieutenant scrambled into the front seat of the scout car and slid to the passenger’s side. A uniformed officer detached himself from the cluster of officialdom standing nearby and got in under the wheel. I dived for the back seat, shouldering aside a plainclothes man. Hornet was already in back. We were moving by the time I got the door shut.

We were starting to pick up individual reports from officers on the scene, crackling and indistinct.

“... identified myself. When he didn’t slow down I opened fire. Windshield smashed. I put one in the block too, but I don’t ...” The signal faded out.

Another cut in. “This is Sergeant Morrison at Third and Howard. I think I just spotted that blue ’seventy-four Riviera turning east on Howard from Second. He was going the wrong way till he turned.”

“Full circle,” said Alderdyce, hanging onto the dash as our car swung in a tight turn inside the sawhorses: “Go right on Jefferson. Come on, come on.”

We knocked over a sawhorse and shot out into traffic. We were barely clear of the service drive when a tall silver pickup flamed past on our right.

“Was that who I think it was?” demanded the lieutenant.

I said, “There can’t be two men that size driving a truck that color and wearing a cowboy hat.”

“He got a scanner in that rig?” Hornet asked me.

“Could be. There’s a lot of Buck Rogers stuff in the dash.”

“Why don’t you climb on the air, John? Order him to pull over”

“Yeah, I’d like to hear his answer,” I said.

“Forget him.”

“Forget him!” echoed the sergeant, incredulously. “He’s interfering in police business.”

“I said forget him and forget him is what I meant. Stop at Randolph.”

The driver braked at the intersection. Bassett’s truck hurtled across without slowing and pulled away from us at a rate I wouldn’t have thought possible. I wished I’d taken a look under the hood when I’d had the chance.

“What we stopping here for?” Hornet peered up and down Randolph.

“We’re waiting for Smith,” said Alderdyce.

“What makes you think he’ll come this way?”

“Twelve years with the department, that’s what.”

“I got nineteen years says how come?”

“I get it,” I said.

The lieutenant twisted around in his seat to glare at me. “What the hell are you doing here anyway? No civilians allowed. Get out.”

I opened my mouth to reply. Central Dispatch cut me off.

“Suspect turned south on Randolph. Cars one-six and three-four-two in pursuit.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Hornet. “But I still don’t get it.”

“That’s why they gave me my own office and you’re lucky to have a desk.”

“There he is!” The driver pointed out his open window.

We saw the blinking red and blue lights first, and then, well out in front, a blue bullet skidding along barely on four wheels as it wound through the slowing traffic. Half the windshield was gone, the jagged edges glittering brilliantly. The Buick roared past within arm’s reach of our radiator. Its slipstream rocked the blue-and-white on its springs.

“Pull out!” John bellowed.

Invisible hands pushed me back against the seat. The slot between Smith’s car and the bubblegum machine behind wasn’t big enough for us but we made it. We went into overdrive, and then we weren’t on the pavement anymore. We weren’t earthbound at all. Cars and buildings streamed past in a blur of color.

The blue back of Smith’s car slewed in and out of sight among the traffic ahead. Tires wailed, horns blared. We were shifting lanes constantly, taking advantage of every opening. Cars drifted right, left, any direction that would put distance between them and the godawful racket our sirens were making. I looked at the sergeant. His eyes were bright and when he shifted his considerable bulk on the seat his movements were hyper

“I get it now,” he said.

“Wish I did,” put in the driver.

“Don’t you see it? John’s figuring to bottle him up in the tunnel. Catch him between bases with the Canadian authorities on the other side. What I don’t see is how he knew Smith was going to go for it.” He looked at the lieutenant.

“You know how tough it is to extradite a prisoner from Canada?” He kept his attention on the road ahead.

“Hang on.” The driver spun the wheel and we tore down the circular, spiraling ramp that led down to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, that mile-long air-conditioned umbilical cord linking the United States and Canada. We came in sight of the well-marked entrance just as the rear of a blue car shot into its depths, leaving a trail of black exhaust behind. I wondered if he’d taken a bullet through a cylinder wall.

“Bet he ducked the toll,” Hornet commented.

Our driver eased back on the throttle. “Well, he’s meat for the Canucks if our guys don’t take him. You want to pull off and wait?”

“We’ve stuck this long.” John’s voice was tight.

One of the uniformed toll collectors was standing outside the booth, looking down the tunnel, when we sped past and hurtled down the decline, our tires singing on the steel ribs. His partner was inside on the telephone, probably to the Windsor end. Our sirens boomed deafeningly off the tiles inside the two-lane tube. The driver flicked off the switch. I felt a tightness in my chest beneath all those tons of water in the river and realized for the first time that I was claustrophobic.

It took a moment, I think, for the sound to reach us. A hard bang, louder than a gunshot, that left behind a roaring in the ears as if they’d been boxed. Hornet sat bolt upright.

“What the hell was
that
?”

“Better slow down,” Alderdyce told the driver.

A line is painted across the walls and floor of the tunnel where the boundaries of the two nations meet, with crossed American flags decaled on the tiles on our side and crossed Canadian flags on the other. A hundred feet short of the line, Alonzo Smith’s Buick was stalled diagonally across both lanes, its left front fender and that half of the grille twisted into a fist of crumpled metal. The driver’s door hung open. A tour bus from Canada was stopped in the other lane. There might have been a dent in its left front fender. The driver was just climbing down where we got there.

“It wasn’t my fault!” he shouted. He was a tall white with a seamed face and gray hair and his uniform jacket was too short in the sleeves. “He was going way too fast. Skidded across the line. I didn’t have no place to go. Ask the passengers.”

“Where’s the driver?” Alderdyce shot.

“He jumped out and took off down the tunnel. That’s illegal, ain’t it?”

John turned to the cop in uniform. “Stay here. Make sure no one leaves the bus.” To me: “You too. I don’t have to tell you why.”

“You don’t,” I agreed.

The two detectives started down the tunnel, one on each side. They had their guns out. The bus driver started to follow. The uniform took hold of his arm.

“John!”

Hornet was on the other side of the bus, out of sight. The lieutenant spun in that direction, bringing his revolver up in both hands. “Police! Drop it!”

He fired.

The report rang along the tiles in two directions, giving each country its share. There was a short silence, and then a dark-clad figure staggered out from behind the bus, clutching its stomach. In the pale artificial light it was hard to tell if he had a weapon. He picked up his pace and ran with faltering steps toward the Canadian end. I could hear him gasping.

“Stop!” commanded Alderdyce.

Smith kept running. John took aim. I don’t remember hearing his second shot. I saw fire leap from the barrel. I saw the gun jump in his outstretched hands. I saw Smith stiffen, run two more steps, then collapse like a tent when the pole is kicked out from under it. His face ended up on the other side of the line.

Time hesitated a beat. Then Sergeant Hornet appeared beyond the end of the bus and walked over to where the fugitive lay. For a long moment he was bent over him. Then he turned and approached the lieutenant, who hadn’t left his spot.

“It was a good shoot, John. He had a Saturday night special and he was going to use it on you. I saw the whole thing.”

Alderdyce remained unmoving. “Dead?”

“He won’t be ambushing any more police officers.”

His superior nodded. Then he grasped his stomach with his free hand, supporting himself with his gun hand against the wall. His face had lost some of its dark coloring. I started toward him. Hornet stopped me.

“Twelve years with the department,” said the sergeant. “That’s his first one.”

The noise of John’s retching echoed off the tiles.

I
T WAS A LITTLE AFTER TWO
when I reached the office. It should have been later. It felt later. The waiting room was as crowded as an asteroid. I looked for mail under the slot, then remembered that it was Saturday and that they held it until Monday. I left the connecting door open and threw up the window in case the air felt like circulating. It didn’t.

There was plaster dust on the desk, which meant that the Korean who ran the martial arts class upstairs was back from vacation. Bump, bang, wham. Now you throw me. Wham, bang, bump. So sorry about the cracks in your ceiling, Mr. Walker. Would you like to talk about the bulletholes in the foyer? The new wallpaper looked more and more as if it were slumming.

Creaking into the tired swivel, I broke out a fresh pack from the top drawer and lit one and blew smoke at the door. Thinking. I’d made the case a lot tougher than it had to be by trying to shield everyone and everything from the cops, running around in tighter and tighter circles like a scorpion on a hot rock. It was no wonder I ended up at a standstill while the cops brought it to a close. They didn’t owe anyone anything beyond a full day’s work.

I stopped pitying myself long enough to dial my answering service for messages. I had a message. Next I got Tulsa on the line. We spoke for ten minutes. I said I’d get the check off Monday and hung up. For a time afterward I sat and scowled at the telephone. Ivan the Terrible once skewered a messenger’s foot to the floor for bearing bad tidings. Me, I paid for it once a month. I closed the window and connecting door, locked all the locks, and hurried downstairs to my car.

Part of Bassett’s pickup stuck out from behind the maze of trailers and camper shells in the lot on Schoolcraft. I cruised past to a service station on the next corner, called police headquarters, and went back. I parked in the driveway so that he’d have to drive around me to get out, cut off a beaming salesman on his way over, and walked up to the bounty hunter’s battered Airstream. He had the truck backed up to it and was stooped over the hitch. He straightened as I approached. His T-shirt was big enough to cover the infield at Tiger Stadium, but it was just barely big enough for him. With the cane hooked on his pants pocket, its rubber tip dangled nearly twelve inches off the ground. They don’t make them in his size. He was wearing his gun.