Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (34 page)

 
          
 
Beat, beat, beat,
beat —

 
          
 
Skip.

 
          
 
Beat, beat. . .

 
          
 
All right.
Straightening, Levine took a deep breath, finding his throat more open, the act
of breathing less painful. That had been a scary one.

 
          
 
Generally, the skips came every eighth beat,
but excitement or exercise or terror could shorten the spaces. Three was about
the closest it had ever come, and this near-accident had matched that record.

 
          
 
Accident?
This was no
accident. His entire body still slightly trembling, Levine struggled out of the
car, walked around it, and saw that both right-side tires were flat. They
showed garish big ragged holes in their sides. A sharpshooter, worth the money
Polito would be paying him.

 
          
 
Polito.
Banadando.
Feeling sudden urgency, Levine looked up the
empty roadway toward the top of the slope
he*
d just
come down.
Crawley
should have appeared by now, he wasn't that
far back.

 
          
 
They've taken him out, too.

 
          
 
Jesus, what's happened to
Crawley
? Levine had actually trotted a few paces
toward the distant crest when over it
came
a rattly
white delivery van, and he remembered his other urgency instead: Banadando. In
going for Levine's tires, Polito's men had made it clear they weren't
interested in killing police today, so they'd undoubtedly taken out Jack
Crawley the same way. The man in real trouble was Banadando.

 
          
 
Pulling his shield out of his jacket pocket,
waving it in the air, Levine flagged the approaching van to a halt. A big boxy
contraption advertising a brand of potato chip on its side, it was driven by a
skinny bearded young man who stood up to drive. He was frowning at Levine with
a kind of hopeful curiosity, as though here might be that which would rescue
him from terminal boredom.

 
          
 
It was. The tall door on the right side of the
van was hooked open. Climbing up into the tall vehicle, still showing the
shield, Levine said, "Police. I'm commandeering this truck."

 
          
 
"This truck?"
The young man grinned, shaking his head. "You got to be kidding."

 
          
 
"Drive," Levine told him. "As
fast as this thing will go." To encourage the young man, he added, "We're
trying to stop a murder."

 
          
 
"You're on, pal!"

 
          
 
But no matter how enthusiastic the young man
might be, the van's top si>eed turned out to be just about fifty-two. Levine
kept leaning his head out the open doorway, looking back, hoping to see Jack Crawley
after all, but it never happened.

 
          
 
The interior of the van was piled high with
outsize cardboard cartons, presumably containing potato chips. Levine leaned
against the flat top of the dashboard under the high windshield and wrote a
note on a sheet of paper torn from his memo pad:

 
          
 
"NYPD Detective Abraham
Levine, 43 Precinct.
Partner Jack Crawley in apparent accident on LIE.
Underworld informant under attack.
Follow caller to
site."

 
          
 
After the highway ended, the young man
followed Levine's instructions along
Old Country Road
and
Main Road
and
Church Lane
and
Sound Avenue
. "It'll be a dirt road," Levine
said.
"On your left."

 
          
 
When they finally found it, the young man was
going to swing to the left and
drive down
that road
but Levine stopped him. Handing over the note, he said, "Go to the nearest
phone, call the
Suffolk
County
police, read this to them, tell them where
I am."

 
          
 
"You might want me along," the young
man said. "Maybe you could use some help."

 
          
 
"Bring me help," Levine told him.
Stepping down to the shoulder of the road, he slapped the tinny side of the van
as though it were a horse, calling to the driver, "Go on, now.
Hurry!"

 
          
 
"Right!"

 
          
 
The van lumbered away, motor roaring as the
young man tried to accelerate too rapidly up through the gears, and Levine
trotted across the road and started down the dirt road, seeing the fresh scars
and streaks of a car's having recently passed this way.

 
          
 
First he saw the water through the thin-leaved
birch trees; Long Island Sound, separating this long tongue of land from
Connecticut
. Then he saw the automobile, a small fast
low-to-the-ground Mercedes-Benz sports car painted dark blue. The black Chevy
was nowhere in sight; Polito apparently employed specialists.

 
          
 
There was only the one car, and it contained
seating for only two. Levine unlimbered his .38 S&W Police Special from its
holster on his right hip and moved forward, stepping cautiously on the weedy
leaf-covered ground. Yellow and orange leaves fluttered down, sometimes singly
or when the breeze lifted they dropped in platoons, infiltrating their way to
the ground.

 
          
 
Beyond the Mercedes muddy ground sloped down
to an old wooden dock. Tied beside it, very close to shore, was the Bobby's
Dream. Revolver in hand, eyes on the boat, Levine approached and, as he passed
the Mercedes, a big-shouldered man in dark topcoat and hat came up out of the
boat onto the dock, his arms full of boxes and packages, a couple of which
Levine recognized; things he had brought to Banadando himself. He stopped, arm
out, revolver aimed, and quietly said, "Just keep coming this way."

 
          
 
The man
stopped,
staringat Levine, his expression one of total amazement. Then, in a blindingly
swift move, he flung the boxes away and his right hand stabbed within his
topcoat.

 
          
 
Levine did not want to kill, but he did want
to stop the man. He fired, aiming high on the man's torso on the right side,
wanting to knock him down, knock him out of play, but still leave the breath of
life in him. But the man was ducking, bobbing, just as Levine fired; when he
jolted back, his own pistol flying out of his clothes and arcing away to fall
into the water, Levine had no idea where he'd been hit. He went down hard, the
sound a solid thud on the wooden boards of the dock, and he didn't move.

 
          
 
A sudden burst of pistol fire flared from the
boat and Levine flung himself backward, putting the low bulk of the Mercedes
between himself and the gunman. The firing stopped, and Levine sat on the leafy
ground, revolver in his right hand, left hand pressed to his chest, mouth
stretched wide. The constriction. . .

 
          
 
Hand cupped to ear. He counted beats, and
after the fourth came the skip. Not too bad, not
so
bad as a little while ago in the car.

 
          
 
To his right, where he was sitting, were the
hood and bumper and left front tire of the Mercedes, and out at an angle beyond
them were the dock and the boat and the unmoving man Levine had shot. To his
left, pressing against his arm, was the narrow graceful trunk of a birch tree.
Levine sagged briefly against the tree, then pulled himself up onto his knees
and looked cautiously over the hood.

 
          
 
Immediately the pistol cracked over there, and
a fluttering of branches took place somewhere behind Levine, who ducked back
down. When nothing else happened, he called, "Banadando!"

 
          
 
"He
don't
feel
like talking!" yelled a voice.

 
          
 
"Send him out here!"

 
          
 
"He
don't
feel
like walking either!"

 
          
 
So he was dead already, which would give the
man on the boat nothing to lose by holding out. Still, Levine called,
"Come out of there with your hands up!"

 
          
 
"I'll tell him when he comes in!"

 
          
 
"You won't get away!"

 
          
 
"Yeah?
Where's
your army?"

 
          
 
"On its way," Levine called, but the
constriction dosed his throat again, chopping off the last word. Get here soon,
he prayed.

 
          
 
The man on the boat swore loudly and fired
twice in
Irvine
's direction. Headlight glass shattered, and
Levine couldn't help flinching away, his entire body clenching at each shot.
"I'm comin' right through you!" yelled the voice.

 
          
 
"Come right ahead," Levine yelled.
But he didn't yell it, he hoarsely coughed it. The tightness in his throat was
making his head ache, was putting metal bands around his head just above his
eyes. He couldn't pziss
out,
he had to hold this
fellow here. Bracing himself between the Mercedes and the tree trunk, he
extended his arm forward onto the hood, where the revolver would be visible to
the man in the boat. Hold him there. Hold him, no matter what.

 
          
 
Another shot pinged off the car's body; merely
frustration and rage, but it made Levine wince. His free hand went to his
ear,
he sat looking at a leaf that had fallen into his lap.

 
          
 
Beat, beat,
beat —

 
          
 
Skip.

 
          
 
Beat, beat

 
          
 
Skip.

 
          
 
Beat, beat

 
          
 
Skip.

 
          
 
Beat —

           
 
The
Suffolk
County
cops were all over the dock, the boat, the
foreshore. Boxes of Banadando's evidence were being carried to the cars. The
gunman from the boat had already been taken away in handcuffs, and now they
were waiting for the ambulance and the hearse.

 
          
 
Crawley
stood with the Medical Examiner, who straightened and said, "He'd been
dead at least a quarter hour when you got here."

 
          
 
"Yeah, I thought.
And
this one?"

 
          
 
They left Abe Levine's body and walked over to
the wounded man on the dock, still unconscious but wrapped now in blankets from
the police cars. "He'll live," the M.E. said.

 
          
 
"The wrong ones die,"
Crawley
said.