Damn. That melting thing in the alley by Fong’s place—had it been bulletproof? Hadn’t looked like it. But still . . .
An idea jumped into his mind. You can bulletproof yourself all you want, but a .50-caliber machine gun will penetrate many inches of solid steel. Even if it didn’t punch through the armor, the force alone would shatter Westlake’s insides, like getting tossed off a building and landing hard on a steel rod. Shooting Westlake with a .50 would be very satisfying indeed. But therein lay a small problem.
A .50-caliber machine gun weighed about a zillion pounds, despite the comic books that show Sergeant Rock carrying one in each fist. It would be possible, with some metalwork, to anchor one to the roof of a car; however, the cops, bribed or not, would hardly stand for carting a gun that big and that illegal around town.
Well, damn, Durant thought wearily. It wouldn’t be all that hard to get one: Notify the supplier, who gets his wares from Colombia, that you would like to buy one, and pretty soon a van comes over and the supplier’s boys haul it out in two crates. Cost? Maybe five grand. Pocket change for Mr. Strack.
So, how to mount the thing? Forget a car. Truck? Nah. Airplane?
Durant emitted a cheerless chuckle. Airplane. Har-har. Why not just buy a helicopter? They only run about three hundred thousand. No, it seemed . . .
Wait. Durant’s eyes were growing larger. Helicopter! Two years ago he had done a large favor for a man who piloted an air-ferry service from the shore of Lake St. Clair. It seemed the man’s ferry business was about to fall apart, and he needed a million dollars in a hurry, twenty-five percent going to Durant if he would make the wife’s death look quite natural. “No problem,” Durant had said. “Go ahead and buy that million-dollar insurance policy. In two weeks she will be very dead. You just make sure you have a solid alibi every moment of the next fourteen days.”
Fourteen days later the poor man’s wife was kidnapped. The police found out about the insurance policy that was so new, the ink still smelled funny. The husband was arrested, but not for long. His alibi was rock solid.
It was three days later that they found her nude body in a ditch not far from home. She had been raped, and stabbed forty-seven times. There was a strange fingerprint on her purse latch, and a check showed it belonged to Roddy “King Killer” Dorado, a minor crime figure who had been murdered years before.
The APB went out: He ain’t dead. Find Roddy.
The coroner had the body exhumed. It didn’t smell all that great, so his team worked with unusual haste. The only strange thing they found was that one of Roddy’s fingers was missing.
The case was never solved. The pilot got his million. Instead of getting a quarter of a million dollars, Durant settled for two hundred grand.
“I don’t get it,” the man had said, and Durant grinned at him.
“The stabbing wasn’t all that fun,” Durant had said, “but I loved the part where I got to rape her.”
They enjoyed a hearty laugh, and Durant showed him his collection of fingers, proudly pointing to the one that had been Roddy’s before Durant had killed him those long years ago.
Musing over those happy times, Durant lit a cigar and dialed the phone. It took thirty seconds to place the gun order. It took a full minute to get hold of that pilot guy, but he agreed it would be a lot of fun, and do you mind if I land in your front yard?
“No problem,” Durant said, then hung up and called Martinez and Smiley and Skip.
When it was over, Durant leaned back in his chair and smiled. Mission almost accomplished. Westlake was about to be dead again.
31
Smiley
“I CAN’T BELIEVE this shit,” the man nicknamed Smiley said as he drove. His real name was Sam Rogers, but few people knew that, because he did not know many people. If by chance he did meet someone, the someone would usually see to it that their paths never crossed again. Below the grimy tangle of his mud-brown hair was a dull and flattened face, a small potato for a nose, a mouth welded into a permanent loony grin. In other words, your basic crazy man.
When Sam was thirteen years old, he was notoriously famous as the crudest kid on the block. Dogs, puppies, cats, kittens—any sort of pet let outside the house in his crummy little town, Wabash Heights—usually wound up dead. His favorite kick was to bury a cat head down in a hole that, shoveled full again, left only the cat’s tail poking up like a bizarre twitching weed. That, or tie the kitties’ tails together with twine and drape them across a clothesline, where they would hang and spit and attack each other in a frenzy of fear. The loser got tossed into the woods to rot. The winner got its skull smashed in with a shovel, then made a similar trip to the woods.
And it was in the woods behind his parents’ ramshackle house that Sam Rogers—Smiley—did his most dastardly deed. He had seven or eight brothers, a few sisters, and when the newest addition to the family was born, little Sarah, he decided enough was just enough. He would spend hours staring at her in her battered crib, this tiny white thing with its egg-shaped bald head and black eyes that did not focus, tiny imitations of hands and feet flexing and waving without direction. Mom was sick of having kids, but Pop was one extra horny drunkard, and he took what he wanted. The new baby was just one more miserable soul in an Indiana life that had no meaning.
So one afternoon when Mom was watching Days of Our Lives in the front room, Sam had picked up the baby and carried her out the back door. On the way to the woods he got a shovel out of the garage and went into the shadows of trees and weeds. He buried the baby head down and left one leg sticking out.
Not much time had to roll by until there were search parties hiking through the woods, most of them convinced this was a kidnapping, but because the Rogerses didn’t have any money, it was probably the work of a sex fiend. In short order they found the leg sticking up, a small pale foot, bright in the sunlight leaking through the trees. When they pulled her out, one searcher keeled over, overwhelmed by the sight of a newborn baby with a broken leg and skin gone the color of dirty motor oil.
Sam couldn’t understand all the commotion. It was around this time that he began to develop the permanent idiot’s smile that would later get him nicknamed Smiley. It also was around this time that he pleaded guilty of murder and was shipped to the state hospital for the criminally insane until the age of twenty-one.
Then they let him go, and he wound up in Detroit driving a midnight-blue Lincoln Continental, cautiously following a woman named Julie Hastings as she worked her way into the dead heart of the city, a shopping bag parked on one arm. Beside Smiley was Rudy Martinez, who could have been a contender if only he knew how to box.
“Can’t believe what shit?” Martinez grunted.
Smiley’s smile was almost a frown; he was only half happy. “The boss letting me drive his car. And for what? Following that lady? We’ve been at it since four, and it’s almost five. Where is she going?”
“Taking us to that Westlake guy. You know that.”
“But shit, Rudy—nobody lives down here. She must be wise to us, and’s leading us in circles while Westlake takes it easy.”
Martinez slouched down and propped his knees on the dashboard. “Who gives a shit? We’re getting paid. Quit bellyaching and drive.”
“Fucking crazy,” Smiley muttered, feeling useless. At this moment they were the only car on these deserted streets, and all Julie had to do was turn around a few times to know she was being tailed. He dropped back even farther, trying to look nonchalant—tough job for a guy as “chalant” as he was. Presently Rudy began to snore. Smiley jerked his arm, and he sat up.
“Qué?”
“Yeah, and elemenopee too. No sleeping on the job. Remember what happened to Pauly.”
Martinez nodded, rubbed his face. Between the seats were a pair of military walkie-talkies, the bulky green Army-surplus kind most often seen in Central America. Each man was carrying the weapon of his own choosing: Martinez had a double-stacked 9-mm pistol, a Smith and Wesson that held fou
rteen rounds. Smiley was not so particular: He carried a simple sawed-off shotgun of dubious origin. But it fired, and he had some extra shells, so he was happy.
The walkie-talkies hissed in unison. A moment later Skip was playing Army with the airwaves, and not for the first time. “Mobile unit two to mobile one. Come in, one.”
Smiley grabbed one of them up, mashed it to his ear, and thumbed the talk button. “What now, Major Asshole? Another radio check?”
“Roger, one. Do you read me?”
Martinez snatched up his walkie-talkie. “I’ll be reading your goddamn obituary if you don’t stop playing with your radio. If there’s—”
Suddenly Smiley was pointing. Martinez followed his finger.
The Hastings lady had stopped at the large rusty door of a building that had once been a soap factory. A faded sign on the roof said something about FR SH SP ASH, the letters obscured by decades worth of pigeon droppings. Julie had put her shopping bag down and was trying to break open an ancient padlock the size of a hubcap. Smiley stopped and eyed a faded street sign.
“Corner of Beech and One Sixteenth, I think,” he said, and talked to Skip again. “Get your ass here fast. Where the hell are you, anyway?”
“Fuck if I know,” Skip said, and laughed. “Go ahead and grab her. I’ll cruise until I find your location. Shouldn’t be long.”
Smiley was about to bark something unkind when Durant’s voice boomed through the walkie-talkie. “I’m gonna have your balls if you aren’t there in one minute!” he shouted to Skip. There was a lot of noise behind him, the sound of a huge engine and rotors beating the air. How Durant had rounded up such hardware was a mystery to his employees.
“Smiley,” Durant barked over the noise, “give me some smoke. We’re flying in circles.”
“Okay, boss.” Smiley pointed to the backseat with a thumb. There were several old-looking grenades there. One of them had the word SMOKE printed on it in fading yellow. Martinez leaned over the seat and picked it up.
“What now?”
“Wait till I get closer, then pitch that fucker out the window.”
Martinez waited. When Skip stopped the car across from the factory and the woman beating on the door there, Martinez pulled the pin and let the elderly grenade fly. It hit the sidewalk near Julie’s feet, rolled to the curb, and instantly began to squirt thick yellow smoke. Smiley’s grin got bigger as he saw her hold her mouth and start to cough. The smoke grenades were fun, but the real fun was in the helicopter with Durant. He had a huge machine gun and about a billion shiny belts of bullets for it, and some kind of black tube on a rack, that fired grenades. Before they left to begin this operation, he had called it his special bonus from Garcia, though Smiley had never heard of a Garcia. It didn’t matter. Durant had assembled the equivalent of a small army, complete with a helicopter and a machine gun and a grenade launcher. But . . . why? That Julie Hastings didn’t pose any threat. And Westlake was just one man. So why all the artillery?
“I see it!” Durant shouted, his voice sounding tinny through the walkie-talkies. “We’ll be there in one minute.”
“Okay,” Smiley said.
“Unit two to unit one,” Skip blared. “Unit two to unit one. Come in, unit one.”
It was Martinez’s turn to talk. “You dumb, one-legged, bony-eyed asshole!” he shouted. “Stop fucking around!”
Skip sounded wounded. “I just wanted to tell you I can see the smoke and I’ll be there in just a little while. Do you copy?”
Martinez eyed Smiley, shaking his head. “He’s watched one too many Vietnam shows.” Then, into the walkie-talkie, “Roger Ramjet, Skip. We’ll wait.”
“Ten four,” Skip replied.
“Up yours,” Martinez answered.
So they waited. The smoke was a drifting fog now, Julie a lighter shadow inside it. She was banging on the door in a frenzy, coughing and crying. Smiley happened to look up, and saw a figure behind a shattered window, a man whose head was a ball of white bandages, whose hands were white clubs. He was staring down at Julie, shouting across the distance for her to get away before it was too late.
“Check it out,” Smiley said, and leaned back to let Martinez have a look.
He smiled. “Westlake?”
Smiley nodded. “Gotta be. Groove on those bandages for a while, Rudy. Who else would be wrapped up like that?”
Martinez nodded and picked up his walkie-talkie. “Boss,” he said, “we’ve spotted Westlake through a window. What now?”
Durant’s reply sounded almost rabid. “Shoot!”
He clicked off, and the two men shrugged at each other. It was too damn easy. They got out, Martinez pulling his pistol out of its hidden holster, Smiley reaching to the backseat for his shotgun. They looked up through the haze of smoke.
Westlake was still there, still screaming down orders to the lady on the ground, the gist of which Smiley could understand quite well. He wanted her to run before the fireworks started. Unfortunately for Smiley, the distance was a bit too far for his shotgun to be effective, though it wouldn’t be hard to bag Julie. She turned and looked through the billowing smoke, tears flowing down her cheeks, her eyes bright with fear and sorrow. Kind of cute, Smiley thought, and wished it was him, and not that idiot Skip, who would get the drop on her. A little tussle in the backseat would be just fine. Perhaps she would bear his children.
He looked back up at Westlake. He was no longer shouting, no longer waving his arms. He looked like a statue.
Smiley nodded to Martinez, who brought his pistol up and steadied it on the roof of the car. He squeezed one eye shut.
Pop!
A chunk of Westlake’s face burst away in an explosion of tattered gauze. He toppled over backward.
Martinex frowned at Smiley, who could only shrug. Westlake was dead. What a fool Durant must be. Smiley leaned inside the car and got the walkie-talkie out. “Boss?”
“Yeah?” He sounded closer now.
“Uh, Westlake’s dead. Martinez nailed him right through the head. Any, uh, other instructions?”
A long pause. Then: “What about the girl?”
Smiley looked. She had sunk to her knees on the crumbling sidewalk and was crying into her grocery bag, looking absolutely miserable. He keyed the walkie-talkie again. “On the ground crying. Should I shoot her?”
“Not yet. Find Westlake’s body and make damn sure he’s dead. The fucker has nine lives.”
“Roger. Out.”
Christ, he was starting to get as goofy as Skip. He motioned to Martinez just as Skip roared up in his junk pile of a car, a 1969 Javelin. His bald tires screeched, and he jumped out. By now the smoke was thinning, along with the smell of burned sulfur. Skip stomped over, his wooden foot slapping on the street inside his Reebok high-tops. “Done already?” he asked, panting, his face glowing with expectation.
“All over,” Martinez said, and Skip’s face drooped. “Only thing left to do is find the bastard’s body. I imagine Durant will want a finger, like always. Skip, put the lady in your car until the boss can figure out what to do with her. She’s a witness to all of this—and he won’t want her alive for long, I imagine. Smiley, what say we go inside and pay our respects to the newly departed?”
They went across the street to the door. Skip hauled Julie upright and kicked the grocery bag away. Forty dollars’ worth of food tumbled out as the bag split open. Mindless with grief and fear, she tore away from Skip and went on her knees to pick the groceries up, sobbing. Skip put his hands under her shoulders and dragged her to the car. She screamed and spit, trying to claw him. He opened the trunk and dumped her inside. “Serves you right!” he snarled after he slammed shut the trunk, then massaged his leg where flesh ended and wood began.
Smiley exploded the old padlock with one close shotgun blast. Most of the pieces clattered down to the cement, very old and very rusty, yet worn to the smooth metal in spots, as if someone had been using it quite often lately. He freed the remains from the hasp, tossed them awa
y, and looked inside.
Dark.
He started in, shotgun ready, Martinez skulking close behind.
32
Martinez
HE COULD TRAIL Smiley in the dark because Smiley happened to have more B.O. emanating from his body than a road-killed skunk under a broiling sun. Competing with this unpleasant aroma was the smell of age and dust and decay, a ghost factory where the machines were silently rusting to nothing, walls collapsing, rats inbreeding, mutating. It gave him the spooks, and he wished he had cat eyes to penetrate the musty gloom. All he could see was the back of Smiley’s Scooby-Doo T-shirt, where Scooby was imprinted holding a bowl of dog food in one paw, a kerchief around his neck, tongue hanging out and dripping. Never one for goofy T-shirts, Martinez was wearing his usual Western shirt, Levi’s 501s, and real snakeskin boots. The high heels clicked and gritted on the black cement floor. As he walked behind Smiley he pulled out a comb and ran it through his greasy hair.
Smiley was walking in large circles. Martinez tapped his shoulder.
“Wuh?” Smiley whirled around, banging his shotgun on a rusty pipe that climbed from the floor to the ceiling, slowly dripping foul water. It hummed like a huge tuning fork.
“He’s upstairs,” Martinez whispered. “Find the stairway.”
Smiley slapped at his chest, indicating a heart attack. “Don’t ever do that again, man. And I don’t know where the goddamn stairs are.”
“Find a light switch, then.”
“What do you think I am? The meter reader?”
They walked, grumbling, stumbling over dark things, sidestepping shadows, barking their shins on old cable spools and giant discarded cogs. Weak spears of light shone down the cracks in the ceiling, proving that there was a second floor full of window light. So how did Westlake get up there?
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