Lone Wolf #9: Miami Marauder

by Barry, Mike

  Williams looked at him intently. “You all right?” he said.

  “Yeah, I’m all right. I’m fine. I’m great.”

  “I’m not going to Chicago with you. It wouldn’t do anybody any good, you see.”

  “You’re quite right about that,” Wulff said, “quite right. This has to be me. Get on your plane.”

  Williams put down his glass. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again,” he said.

  “Well, it’s a possibility. Everything’s a possibility.”

  “I can’t stay with you!” Williams said with sudden, desperate urgency. “I can’t live like this. I’ve got to go back; I’ve got to get out of this.”

  “Go, good luck.”

  “You make me feel fucking guilty, man,” Williams said with a forced smile and the megaphone blared again. Williams put down some money on the bar and said, “I’ve got to go. That’s all. I wish you luck.”

  “Sure,” Wulff said.

  “I think you’re the best there is, you know? I think that you’re out of everyone’s class. But I just can’t cut it anymore.” He extended a hand, Wulff looked at it for a long time and then he touched it delicately. It was as far as he could go, it was the most contact he could make. Williams drew his hand away, shook his head, muttered something which Wulff did not hear and then went away from the bar quickly, walking in an uneven, stumbling gait, heading toward the New York flight.

  Well, Wulff thought as he let the bartender pour him one more scotch, well, it had been a long journey from the first time he had seen Williams until now. The rookie Williams had approached him somewhat as this renegade Williams had left, the strange, proud tilt of his shoulders, the poise of his bearing, a hint of something yielding in the center which caused him to walk subtly off-balance.

  A long way from there to here but maybe not so long at all and now it was over. The girl dead, Williams gone. Wulff raised the scotch, looked around the terminal for signs of local police or leftover scouts from the Calabrese party … and waited for his Chicago flight.

  XX

  In the airplane, a routine passenger flight, Calabrese was dreaming. His head tilted back, his hands folded before him, he was dreaming of the rape again, the way that the girl had opened underneath him and in the dream he was whole and had parted her savagely, had torn inside her, feeling the smooth convolution of her cunt as it had gripped him, the smooth rising within him as he had, gliding, pumped himself toward orgasm, each stroke one of superb felicity, each stroke driving the girl into deeper and more profound paroxysms of her own.

  “Oh my God yes,” she was saying to him in the dream, the plane rolling slightly in diminished turbulence over Knoxville, “Please keep seat belts fastened,” the stewardess had said just before Calabrese had fallen off. “Oh my God yes, this is the way I always dreamed it would be, this is the way it should be. Do it, fuck the hell out of me, lover,” and her breasts slid into his mouth, the conjoinment easier than it had any right to be considering their posture; in the dream he sucked and sucked at her breasts, each suck giving him renewed invigoration to pump below and he knew that he could keep it up forever.

  It was just like the old days; he could come on the spot or hold it back for hours, either way, anything he wanted, he was in utter control of the situation. Rolling and rolling in the dream he turned over all the angles of the bed on which they were copulating and finally when the girl had reached some peak of excitation her mouth fell open, her tongue moistened her lips and she said, “Now, now, give it to me now,” and he had done so, unloading into her in a single rush, all of it: the pain, the loss, the fear, the desperation and above all the power. It had been power to unload into her and she had taken everything he had given gratefully, moaning, winking back at him through spasmed eyelids and holding him more tightly as he poured into her.

  “Oh yes,” she said then, “oh yes, that was good, that was everything I ever wanted, it was wonderful, you’re the best there is, do you know that?” “Better than Wulff?” he said in the dream, the first thing he had said to her since the coupling had begun, “better than him?” “Oh yes,” she said, “oh yes, you’re much, much better than him, of course you are, he can’t do half the things to me that you can, you were just wonderful.”

  He had begun to laugh then, a sheer, unstrangulated laugh of delight because at last he had beaten the bastard, beaten him cold, gotten at him through the interposition of the girl and proven himself finally in every essential sense a better man, twisting with laughter on the bed, the sheets wrapped around him, drawing little cords into his neck and shoulders, tightening on him, the girl a weight too, the girl lying across him as he laughed, her weight added to the binding of the sheets suddenly constricting, his soft prick dangling and he could not breath, he could not somehow get air into his lungs, either the girl or the sheets had cut something off, he was struggling, falling, gasping, sinking beneath the weight and the constriction and suddenly he flailed with panic trying to free himself, his arms flying to his head, the weight increasing all around.

  “Stop it,” he said, “stop it, I’m dying, I’m drowning, I’m choking,” fighting to get free of all of this, “I tell you I’m drowning,” and still the weight coming in. He was going to die, he was going to die right here—

  —He woke up.

  And found himself leaning back on the red corduroy of the plane seat, the fabric biting into him, the back of his neck running with sweat, all of him twisted over into a terrifying position, limbs bunched underneath one another like an insect’s so he could not, for the moment, move, and the stewardess, apparently having seen him move in his sleep, was by his side, an expression of fear and concern in her eyes which Calabrese would have given almost anything not to see. It was close to the worst thing that had happened to him yet, seeing the way that this young girl was looking at him.

  “Are you all right?” she said, and then remembered her training. “Are you all right, sir?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Can I get you something? Something to drink?”

  “Yes,” Calabrese said, “you can get me a double scotch, no water, no ice.”

  Her eyes flickered. “Are you sure—”

  “Yes,” he said, so loudly that the couple across the aisle looked at him strangely, “yes, I’m sure it’s all right. That’s exactly what I want.”

  “You’ve already had one—”

  “Get me another!” Calabrese said, “you get me another right now!” and the stewardess turned, went down the aisle, the set of her buttocks showing a fury which would never reach her face. Fuck her. He was feeling a little better now.

  Just a muscle spasm, that was all it had been. Sleeping in uncomfortable posture and then the matter of the turbulence. Nothing to worry about.

  Nothing. Nothing to worry about; he was not going to die. He was not having a heart attack; he was in excellent condition for a man of his age. He looked out the windows, then, seeing clouds, that child’s vision of heaven, and felt sick again. Never look down. Never. He leaned back into the seat and looked back at the aisle.

  Strange: strange to be travelling alone like this but probably clever, too, the cleverest thing that he could have done under the circumstances. All of his troops were back on that beach; he had no idea how many of them had survived, maybe five or six, he could assess his losses later, but there was not time to surround himself with any of them before leaving. His bodyguard dead, the pilot in the ditched helicopter could worry about that. He was going back to Chicago alone, commercial flight. For the first time in years he did not feel insulated from surroundings by a coterie of protection. He was on his own. He would have to make it on his own.

  But it was a good feeling; it was the first release and peace he had known since he had left Chicago for this damned, rotten Miami adventure and with every mile that he was able to put himself away from Miami he felt a little more assured, like the old Calabrese. At least he had gotten out. Everything had been fucked up; the
expedition was a total disaster, the complications and reverberations which came off what had happened here would reach through the country … but he was safe. He was out of it. And once he knew the province of his estate again no one could touch him. He would wall himself away. And if Wulff came for him, as surely Wulff would … he would meet that when it came. The man had not killed him yet. He had not killed Wulff. A standoff.

  The stewardess came back with his drink on a tray, held the tray stiffly while he reached out and took it. She was really quite a pretty girl in the cold, effective way which stewardesses were trained to project, but underneath it there was something tender, he was sure, if only he could find it. Didn’t they all screw like bunnies? That was the folklore on stewardesses; hell, if they screwed like bunnies there was some real tenderness there if only you could find it. “Thank you,” he said to her.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, starting to move away, but a little gust of turbulence caught her and sent her back the other way. She dug a thigh expertly into the ridge of his seat to hold on. Nice thighs, nice buttocks. It would be nice to go to bed with her. It would be nice to go to bed with all of them if only—

  “Sorry I shouted at you,” he said, trying to smile. “I didn’t mean—”

  “That’s all right sir.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it is all I wanted to say.”

  “It’s already forgotten sir. Is there anything else I can get you?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “Then you’re quite welcome, sir,” the stewardess said and moved away from him, her buttocks waggling. For a moment Calabrese thought of pursuing her, at least calling out something which would make her come back and extend the conversation until he could break through that wall, touch her as a human being … but no, it was not worth it. What did you get when you broke through all the way to the depths of a stewardess? A stewardess, that was what you got.

  He settled back in the seat, looked at his watch. Forty-five minutes, maybe a little less, until O’Hare. The thing was that you spent forty years of your life fighting, fighting to reach a point where you had finally gotten to the top or if not the top at least a place where you had moved beyond the struggles, moved to a place where they could not touch you. You worked on an organization, nursed it along, tried as best as you could to make that organization a living, viable thing. There were rivals every step of the way, people who had already reached that position who saw you as a threat and would do anything within their power to stop you from reaching that objective—

  —So you had to be shrewd, had to be cunning, had to take risks which most of those with whom you were competing would not be willing to take, simply to reach that position. At the end of it, at the end of this forty years you were most likely dead, long since knocked off in your pursuit. If you were not dead you were likely to be the next thing to it, ruined, racked up, but if you were one of the very few who had been able to follow it all the way through, who had had that correct combination of luck and ruthlessness and flexibility, the flexibility terribly important because it meant that you were willing to get out of what was dying, into what was growing without an instant of doubt and hesitation, move into prostitution in the forties, into drugs in the fifties, into harder drugs and gambling in the sixties—

  —Well, at the end of all of that you were seventy-three years old and fit prey for the gravediggers anyway. Half of the people you had started off with were long dead, most of the rest of them were dying or just barely hanging on. But even though you could say that you beat them you knew that the one thing you could never beat was mortality itself, the slow corruption of the flesh, the dark, singing torment of chronology which drove you further and further away from any sense of what you yourself might have been, might have gained—

  —And then there you were, seventy-three years old. Seventy-three years old and just barely hanging on. Calabrese closed his eyes against the pain of that insight, drinking the rest of his drink with his eyes closed, the liquor piling down into the gut in the familiar way, clamping, wringing him, feeling the motions of the craft moving through him and thought, I will not deal with this anymore. Everybody gets old, everybody ages, it’s a condition of life. It has nothing to do with me personally, I will not take it personally. It is better to be seventy-three years and alive than to be seventy-three and celebrating the seventy-third anniversary of your birth, remember that, remember that always … and the plane lurched sickeningly, began to plunge in a long, uneven dive that brought gasps and screams from the passengers. He gripped onto the chair blanking his mind, blanking response of any sort and a thousand feet or so down the plane levelled off, began to hobble in the air like a canoe shooting the rapids with a single oar.

  The pilot got onto the public address system and said that there was nothing to worry about, this kind of mid-air turbulence was common in cases like this, nothing to be concerned about, have a drink on the house, try to enjoy the rest of your flight … and then Calabrese knew it was bad, it was unmistakably bad if they were taking that approach, but as the plane rocked and shuddered in the air he could even smile at that, the drink on the house that was because the idea of a seventy-three-year-old man dying in a plane crash, why there was a redundancy if he had ever heard one.

  Opening his eyes he saw that the stewardesses looked terrified.

  The plane plunged again.

  XXI

  Coming off at Kennedy Williams found that he could not wait. He could not wait even until he had gotten out of the terminal. He went to a telephone in the Eastern terminal and called his sister-in-law. The phone rang only once; she picked it up as if she had been waiting for a long time.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “I knew it was you.”

  “Is she all right? Is everything okay?”

  “You took long enough to call,” she said, “you didn’t really give a damn, did you?”

  “I’m home,” Williams said, “I’m home now. Tell me. Is she all right?”

  “I take pity on you. Everyone’s all right. You have a son, eight pounds two ounces, born three days ago. They should be coming out tomorrow.”

  “A son,” Williams said. He leaned against the glass, it seemed porous. “A son! How about that? What’s his name?”

  “No name yet.”

  “No name yet? How can that be? Aren’t you supposed to put the names on the certificates within twenty-four hours?”

  “Male child,” his sister-in-law said, “they give you a seven-day extension for that. We were waiting, maybe waiting on the chance that you’d be back. That you’d like to help name your son. But we had just about given up hope. You’re a real son of a bitch, do you know that?”

  “That’s all over now,” Williams said, “that all happened a long time ago.”

  “Did it?”

  “I’m home,” he said, “I’m home. I came home to be home and I’m staying. What hospital?”

  “Lying-in.”

  “Lying-In? That’s in Manhattan. What is she doing way over in Manhattan; we had it all arranged—”

  “There was kind of a speedup,” his sister-in-law said dryly, “we were out for a drive and the baby decided that he wasn’t having none of it. You’re a real bastard, do you know that? Walking out on an eight-months pregnant—”

  “I said that’s all over,” Williams said. He held the receiver tightly, feeling the dampness come from his palms and said, “I’m going now. I’m going to see her right now.”

  “You’re going to have a very tough time. I don’t envy your position at all.”

  “I’ll make it right,” he said, “I’ll make it right. I don’t envy my position either but there are reasons.”

  “There are always reasons,” that bitterly philosophical woman, his sister-in-law said, and Williams hung up, threw the receiver on top of the phone and came out of the booth roaring inside, wanting to grip everyone who he could see in the Eastern terminal, babble out to them the news that he ha
d a son, but of course something leaner, colder within him told him that he was acting like a fool if he did that, not that it wasn’t sympathetic, and that he was in no position to call attention to himself. Right. Right on the second anyway, the first he did not know about. What was a fool anyway?

  He came out of the building, got onto the cab-line, got a taxi and went off to Lying-In Hospital down the ramps, over the expressway at seventy miles an hour and so complete was his absorption, so total was his delight, that it was hours later, hours after he had left the hospital, hours after the reunion with his wife at a depth of connection that he would not have known could have existed … hours after all of this that he thought of Wulff even in the slightest way and then in the most detached fashion: he hoped that the son of a bitch had made it through. He really did. He wished him the best. He certainly wished him the best.

  But it was no longer his battle.

  XXII

  He did not even read about the Chicago liner that had gone down for three days and then only idly, did not connect it to Calabrese. By that time his wife and son were home, he was applying for reinstatement to PD. He had enough on his hands.

  30 September 1973: New Jersey

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  Copyright © 1974 by Mike Barry

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  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.