Dead Last

by James W. Hall

  You raise the weapon, show it to her. Your purpose should be obvious.

  Joni Mitchell sings sweetly. The expression on her lips doesn’t change. Eyes on you, calm, maybe a flicker of interest, but nothing else.

  She removes the ballpoint pen and sets it on the bedside table.

  “That’s some kinky suit. What’s it called?”

  You say nothing.

  “Okay, so what’s your beef?”

  You’re quiet. You’re not there.

  “Well, someone obviously has a problem. The person who sent you.”

  You move closer to the foot of the bed.

  If she’s frightened, she doesn’t show it. She watches you with her papers propped on her stomach as if waiting for you to leave so she can resume reading. As if strangers wandered into her room all the time, then wandered out again.

  “I had my kinky phase,” she says. “Back in the day. Ménage à trois once. Some light bondage with a young fella. Whips, leather restraints. It was interesting for a while. But I got too old for games.”

  You move along the edge of her bed, coming closer to her left side. She’s wearing a loose white T-shirt. The bedspread is folded back, exposing the waistband of her pink pajama bottoms. A narrow strip of flesh is showing around her navel.

  If this woman was heroic or impetuous, she might try to toss the papers at you and use the distraction to bolt for the door. That appears to be her only hope. Unless there’s a pistol you don’t see, or a knife, or some other weapon hiding beneath the sheets. Which of course is highly doubtful.

  In the arm holding the weapon you feel a spring-loaded tension growing. You begin to raise it, choosing your entry spot. Somewhere around her navel.

  “I’d love to know who hired you,” the woman says. “It was those abortion nuts in Tulsa, God’s Children. Am I right? No, no. It was that FBI dick in Dallas. It was him, wasn’t it? Jerry Jeff Peters. Go on, tell me. Was it Jerry Jeff? That jerkwad would love to piss on my grave.”

  You hesitate. The mention of law enforcement flusters you.

  “Now listen,” the woman says. “Let’s talk this out. Give it a minute, I bet we can mediate this. Shit, you can mediate anything.”

  You stand silently, gathering yourself, regaining composure.

  As the seconds pass, you watch the amusement in her face drain away, replaced by a more solemn look, even a hint of dread.

  “No dice, huh?”

  You say nothing.

  “You know, it’s funny. I’ve always counted on words—my story winning out over the other guy’s. But words don’t cut it for you, do they? Am I right? You’re way out there beyond the universe of language.”

  You wait no longer. You raise the weapon quickly and bring it down. At the last second she makes a wild swat at your hand. But she is too late.

  The blade penetrates flannel and flesh. She grunts, emits a single squeal, a high-pitched burst like a schoolgirl with exciting news. Her papers scatter to the floor. She squirms. Her eyes widen, then shut. She writhes. You complete two more strikes. Plunging the final one deep into her body as though you are planting your flag in the soil of a conquered land.

  When she is quiet, you turn from the bed. You peel back the suit at your hip and extract the newspaper clipping with the edges cut into a jagged pattern. You lay the obituary on the woman’s bedside table.

  Rachel Michelle “Rusty” Stabler, at Peace on the Water

  You leave the weapon behind, buried in her flesh. Another gift to the authorities. Let them work with that, see where it leads. You leave the room. Walk from the house. The darkness absorbs you. And you are gone.

  THREE

  MONDAY MORNING RUSH HOUR. DEE Dee was hogging a space at curbside check-in at Miami International. Warning signs everywhere. This area for arriving passengers only. Park, take out luggage, kiss your loved one, and go. No waiting. Towing enforced. But rules didn’t apply to Dee Dee Dollimore. Rules were for losers.

  For the second time the same cop came over to move her along. With her ragtop down, Dee Dee cocked her smile up at him. Cuban guy, forties, with slicked-back hair and a clunky gold wristwatch, hairy arms. He took out his ticket book this time, his patience exhausted.

  “One more minute. Pretty please. Two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  “You can’t park here.”

  “Forty-five seconds, I promise. Forty, thirty-nine.”

  “You have to move. Now.”

  She looked into his eyes, warmed up a smile. Took off her Prada black-framed glasses. Narrow rectangles, the studious look. She was wearing a starched white shirt with a boy’s navy blue tie. Her pleated miniskirt was red plaid with black and green. Like she was heading off to Immaculate Heart for a day with the nuns.

  She stared into the cop’s eyes and touched a fingertip to her lean thigh, inched the plaid skirt up to expose more sleek skin, a glimpse of her white panties. The cop blinked, lips parting. He stood for a moment, ticket book in hand, then warned her again it was a no-parking zone before he took a last look at her crotch, and went off down the line of cars to harass somebody else.

  Dee Dee’s ride was a Bugatti Veyron W16.4. Red and black, inside and out, as molded and sleek and deadly cool as a superstar’s basketball shoe. Ten radiators and four turbochargers and a computerized rear wing system that kept it from flying off into the next galaxy. Gus leased the car to maintain a flashy profile around town, but with the show in the toilet, he was dumping the lease. Dee Dee could jet around till Friday, then the car went back.

  Five minutes passed, still no Sawyer, and the same cop returned with his stern look, leaning down, getting his face close to hers, wanting the full show this time. She walked her scarlet fingernails down the lap of her skirt, watching his stern face soften. The tip of his tongue showed at the corner of his mouth. All but drooling.

  Then Sawyer Moss was at the passenger door with his overnight bag.

  “Hey, kids. What’s up?”

  The cop straightened, took a moment to get his strict face back.

  “You with this lady?”

  Sawyer lifted his luggage into the jump seat.

  “Guilty as charged. She giving you a hard time?”

  “What I’m giving him,” Dee Dee said, “is a hard dick.”

  Dee Dee cranked the engine, waited till Sawyer snapped into his safety harness. Cop standing there, riveted by the after-image of Dee Dee panties.

  She slipped the shifter, revved the horses, and shot into traffic.

  Sawyer settled back into the sculptured leather.

  “So how’d it go?”

  “Not even a kiss hello?”

  Through the dense traffic, Dee Dee swerved the Bugatti to the far right lane and idled. With horns honking around them, they tongue-kissed until Sawyer’s eyes were blurry.

  Back in traffic, she said, “Okay, so how’d it go?”

  “The Dallas airport sucks big time.”

  She headed south on Le Jeune Road, clogged with morning rush, Dee Dee whipping into openings, making decent time. Sawyer feeling sick.

  “You saw the Nielsens.”

  Sawyer said yes, he’d seen them.

  “Dropped a full point with the eighteen to forty-nines. We’re in a death dive. Two weeks to break a million, that sure as shit isn’t happening.”

  “Not without divine intervention.”

  “If Daddy bombs, he’ll never work again. You going to let that happen, Saw?”

  “I’m doing what I can.”

  She took Flagler east, jumping onto backstreets when things looked sluggish. Hitting seventy in twenty-mile-an-hour zones, blasting through four-way stops. The Bugatti with multiple G-force pickup, deep throaty engine.

  Her eyes were fixed on the red light.

  “How was your weekend?”

  “Lazed around the pool. Nothing much.”

  “I called your cell, left messages.”

  “I shut it off.”

  “I got worried, you didn’t answer.”


  “You don’t trust me, cutie?”

  “Of course I trust—”

  Light went green and Dee Dee slingshot away, zero to sixty, a blink. Sawyer’s back G-forced against the seat.

  She screamed down Flagler. This morning they were shooting inserts at the Floridian nursing home where William Slattery was killed, a splinter crew doing five seconds of this, three seconds of that. Close-ups of the funky deco architecture, pans of all the old folks in their bathrobes and wheelchairs. Quickies of Janus and Madeline. The nursing home made for a colorful background and it was a freebie, because the owner of the Floridian was friends with Garvey, his grandmom. Which was why Gus decided to milk the place for the rest of the week.

  Making a TV show, Sawyer had learned, was all about nickels and dimes.

  “So, sugar, what’s going on with your mommy dearest?”

  “Like how?”

  “I called her to say hi, do some girl talk. She was pissy as shit.”

  “She’s just stressed with job issues. Paper’s laying off a lot of her pals. That’s wearing on her.”

  “She was harsh. Rushed me off the phone like I was selling time-shares in Afghanistan.”

  “Don’t take it personally.”

  “How else should I take it?”

  “It’s not you, Dee. This is her MO. She sees me getting serious, the hackles go up. She was just a kid when she had Flynn and me. She’s supersensitive about us not making that mistake.”

  “You’re a long way past being a kid.”

  “Not in her mind.”

  “She give you a date when it’s safe to get serious?”

  “Ignore her, Dee. She likes you fine. She’s just got issues.”

  Sawyer gripped the door handle as Dee Dee slammed through traffic. Overtaking cars, trucks, motorcycles, dodging fenders by inches, tromping on the gas, pinning Sawyer’s head to the seat.

  “On a scale of one to ten, how smart are you, Sawyer?”

  “Where’s this coming from?”

  “Like test score smart. You kick ass on the SAT?”

  “I forget. It was like a century ago.”

  “Nobody forgets their SAT.”

  “All right. Yeah, they were fine, ninety-something percentile.”

  “Well, see, there’s your problem.”

  She swung into the parking lot of the Floridian. The Honey Wagon was there, a big white RV where the cast members peed and catnapped. Crew members queued at the catering truck for their scrambled eggs and burritos. Union contract mandated three squares a day.

  She shut down the engine.

  “Maybe you’re too smart. Brainiacs like you overcook everything.”

  “Where we going here?”

  “I read the scripts for the last episodes. Too much talk, not enough action. All that flowery shit doesn’t sound real. Like boring people talking to other boring people.”

  Sawyer was quiet, his feelings hurt.

  Dee Dee said, “You want to make it in this world, you gotta dumb down. Dial back the brain power.”

  “I’ll take a look, Dee Dee.”

  “Am I being too hard on you?”

  “I can take it.”

  She turned her head and gave him that dirty-girl sleepy look.

  “I like a man who can absorb punishment.”

  This woman had only known Sawyer for a few months and she had him totally pegged. Truth was, he knew he was too smart for his own good. At sixteen Sawyer graduated prep school. With his test scores early-admission offers flooded in. He picked Harvard, prelaw, not that he gave a shit about the legal world. It was all about the perks, picturing the Mercedes, mansion on the bay, a yacht, all that. He flew through undergrad, finished his BA in two years, was out of law school by twenty-two.

  Top Miami firm snapped him up. A month after he passed the bar he was stuck in a windowless office doing rote work, reviewing documents, proofing bullshit letters. He walked into a partner’s meeting, said he wanted to start litigating; get his feet wet and his dick hard is how he put it. They laughed, not at his joke but at him.

  He left them chuckling, packed his briefcase, and bailed. No explanation. Didn’t tell them he’d been hanging out on a movie set, watching Flynn playing a bit part in a prime-time series shot on Miami Beach, and he’d fallen over his fucking heels in love with the film scene.

  The day after he left the firm, Sawyer began work on a spec script. Finished it, tore it up. Finished another, tore it up. Learning the form was tougher than he’d thought. Left brain staying with the formula, right brain coming up with people, dialogue, the emotional core. What he discovered was, he loved making shit up. Something out of nothing. Start with an empty page, fill it up, like magic: poof. First time in his life he’d been challenged. Like a god with his private universe, everything his own, every action, every word, everything down to the smallest detail.

  A year later, he was selling scripts to three different TV series. When he heard Flynn was doing tryouts for Miami Ops, Sawyer wrangled a sit-down with Gus Dollimore. They hit it off, and here he was.

  Dee Dee reached over and scratched a fingernail across his thigh.

  “Did I hammer you too hard? You pouting?”

  “I’m fine. I don’t mind criticism.”

  “I speak the truth,” she said. “No matter how painful. Always.”

  “The truth is our friend.”

  “Give me more people to kill. I like killing people. It gets me wet.”

  Smiling like it was a joke.

  Dee Dee’s hair was black and lustrous, a Hepburn pixie cut. Today she was dressed in her usual campy outfit: plaid miniskirt, white short-sleeve blouse, a man’s tie, Buster Brown shoes, and kneesocks. She did it as an attention grab. A fuck-you to political correctness. Not everyone got the joke.

  Maybe she was a little old to be playing dress-up, but he was cool with it. Over the years Sawyer had dated Goths in their corpse paint and black lipstick, dressed for perpetual mourning. He’d had a fling with a labor lawyer who rotated through seven identical Armani suits, all blue pin-stripe, and he went out with a sound technician for a while who wore nothing but khaki trousers, penny loafers, and white polos. People found a style, got stuck. Goth or raver or schoolgirl, hell, it was just another flavor. And good god, Dee Dee had that body and those Kama Sutra moves. She’d introduced him to some freaky shit. Kept him off-balance, hungry. Maybe it was love, maybe just animal heat. He was still sorting that out.

  She had winter-gray eyes, hard cheekbones, a juicy mouth. Best abs he’d ever seen. You could roll marbles down the grooves. Ripped arms. Skinny frame with those tight one-scoop breasts. She didn’t bother with a bra. Her feisty nipples always poking the thin material of her white schoolgirl shirts.

  She was right about April sending negative vibes. Sawyer’s mother hadn’t warmed to Dee Dee. Even had trouble speaking her name. Some visceral girl-girl thing going on. Maybe it was her schoolgirl outfits, maybe something else entirely. Who could tell with mothers? Especially his.

  Dee Dee climbed out. Sawyer stayed put, taking out his phone.

  “Look at you. Now you’re pissed.”

  “I need to answer some e-mail.”

  “You’re sulking.”

  “I’m fine. You’re right about the scripts.”

  “Story should move as fast as this freaking car.”

  “Got it.”

  “And hey, while you’re rewriting, give me some better lines, would you?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder. Some reviewer in Chicago said I was dumber than a blond rock. Make me smart, Sawyer. Rescue me quick, baby.”

  Dee Dee twiddled her fingers, blew a kiss. She sidled over to the catering truck, high-fiving a couple of grips, all the guys and a couple of the girls sneaking looks at her supple backside.

  She saw Gus, went over, started talking to him. Gus nodded, nodded again, listening to her while his eyes homed in on Sawyer.

  Sawyer totally dug this woman. Since the mom
ent she walked up to him in the Gansevoort Hotel bar, where he was having a martini during the Miami Ops get-acquainted bash. He and one of the stunt girls were cozied up, working through the preliminaries.

  Dee Dee stood between them silently, and when the bartender came, she said, “Whatever this young man’s having. And keep them coming. I’m taking this one home tonight.”

  After a while, the stunt girl drifted off. Sawyer and Dee Dee kept drinking. Back at her condo in the Grove, the next twenty-four hours was a red flashing strobe. They clawed, sucked, chewed, and wrestled. All that hot Friday night and all day Saturday and into Sunday afternoon, no rest. Half a year later, it was still hot. Sawyer’s libido cranking. Always some new kink pushing Sawyer way beyond his comfort zone. The woman was a sexual mastermind.

  Which was the exact opposite of her role on the show. Playing against type, Sawyer wrote Madeline Braun as an all-work, no-play professional. A lady with major sex appeal, but when guys hit on her, they got total frostbite. Sawyer’s idea was to play up the sexual tension between Madeline and Janus, building toward a season-ending romp between the two.

  Miami Ops was Dirty Harry redux. With two vigilante cops working in secret—their boss, chief of Miami PD. Sick of coddling evildoers, contemptuous of the laws that hamstrung his department, Chief Levine gave the two supercops free rein. He funded their work, covered their tracks. Left them free to kick down doors, take out thugs or whoever got in the way, extort confessions—no court orders, no Miranda, no apologies. Just get it done even if the occasional innocent citizen was sacrificed. It being Miami, the crimes were outlandish, collateral damage high.

  Both agents had nasty skill sets. Madeline Braun was a former officer in Shabak, Israeli intelligence, gorgeous in a brittle fashionista way. She could bewitch the baddest baddie, slip past the burly guys with a flutter of her eyes, and if some bozo didn’t fall for her charms, she dispatched him with razor blade implanted in her fingernail or used an old-school scrotum kick.

  Janus was part magician, part cutthroat who could transform himself into any character the script called for, male, female, dangerous, wimpy. He had a hair-trigger temper, zero respect for the law, and a black belt in every martial art known to man. Week after week he crushed the bad guys’ bones, and with reluctant witnesses, he used his sandpaper and power drill with abandon.