Pariah cd-1

by David Jackson

  Bartok says nothing. He purses his lips slightly and waits.

  Doyle says, ‘I’m not involved in that operation.’

  He sees the fury igniting in Bartok’s eyes, a twitch appearing on the corner of his mouth.

  ‘But,’ Doyle adds, ‘I know one or two things.’

  Bartok continues to wait. The room is silent, save for a steady pounding. Doyle isn’t sure whether it’s from the dance floor or his own heart. He opens his mouth, finds himself choking on his own words. This goes against everything in which he believes, everything he is.

  ‘New Year’s Day. Seven a.m. When all the revelers are still sleeping it off. East River Park. The handover will take place at a bench under the Williamsburg Bridge. That’s all I know.’

  More silence. Bartok finishes his drink and passes a reptilian tongue over his thin lips, then smoothes his hair again.

  ‘Good enough?’ Doyle asks.

  ‘It’s a start,’ Bartok answers, and Doyle can see the devilish glee on the man’s face.

  Stay calm. He’s fucking with your head. Stay calm.

  ‘The name, Kurt. Give me the name.’

  ‘In a moment. I need a little more. . persuading.’

  Doyle leans forward suddenly, almost coming off his chair. Again he notices how Rocca and Bruno brace themselves.

  ‘Persuading is the last thing you want me to do, Kurt. You haven’t seen how I can persuade people. I’ve given you what you asked for, so you-’

  ‘You’ve given me nothing,’ Bartok says. He reaches for a drawer, slides it open. He pulls out a notepad and pushes it across the desk. On the top sheet of paper it says, ‘Ramon Vitez. East River Park. Jan 1.’

  Doyle stares at the sheet for some time, then raises his gaze to Bartok. ‘What the fuck is this?’

  ‘Call it a test. A validation of your sincerity. You’ll be glad to hear that you’ve passed with flying colors. Now, tell me something I don’t know.’

  Doyle leaps to his feet so fast, the heavies are almost caught off guard. He sees them reach beneath their jackets and start toward him.

  ‘Fuck you, Bartok!’ Doyle says. ‘You want to play games, do it with someone who’s prepared to lie down and roll over. I’m outta here, and when I come back, all the data in the world ain’t gonna save you from what I got in mind.’

  He starts toward the door, wondering how far he’s going to get. Wondering whether they’re prepared to let him leave. Once again, he’s regretting giving up his gun. He gets to the door, reaches for the handle. .

  ‘He’s close, Detective Doyle.’

  Doyle halts. Despite himself, he wants to hear what Bartok has to say.

  ‘He’s close,’ Bartok repeats. ‘You know him, in fact. And he knows oh so much about you. Don’t you want to know who it is?’

  Doyle lowers his hand. I have to know, he thinks. I’ve come this far.

  He turns to face Bartok. Rocca and Bruno are toward the front of the desk now, their hands still inside their jackets. A sneer on his ugly face, Bruno is straining against his leash, anxious to release some pent-up violence. Rocca’s face is impassive. He has no axe to grind, but there is no doubting his loyalty or conviction.

  ‘Come on, Detective. You’re already committed. Whether I knew about Vitez or not, the fact that you told me about him is enough to lose you your job and get you put in jail. You’ve proved yourself. All I’m asking for now is for you to demonstrate your usefulness. Please, sit down. Finish what you came here for.’

  It’s true, Doyle thinks. He has me. I’m in. You can’t get back in the plane once you’ve jumped.

  Slowly, he walks back to the chair. Bartok flicks his wrist and his guards back away, Bruno looking like he’s just had a prime steak snatched away from him.

  Doyle sits down. Tries counting to ten before saying, ‘What do you want to know?’

  Bartok waves his hand. ‘I’ll leave it to you. Surprise me.’ He says this as though he’s a food critic inviting a restaurant owner to impress him before he writes his review.

  Doyle consults his mental menu and tries to avoid the expensive items.

  ‘Tito Sloane, one of Blue Tucker’s soldiers. Took a hit last month in a Chinatown parking lot. Tucker blames your crew for the hit, saying you claim he ripped off one of your mules.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Mr Tucker. Such a fantasist, and yet he’s determined to cause me a lot of problems at the moment.’

  ‘It’s gonna get worse. Tucker plans to even the score by acing one of your own operatives.’

  He sees the sudden concern on Bartok’s face.

  ‘Who? When?’

  ‘I don’t know. Soon. Story is he’s psyched up for a war.’

  Bartok blinks several times in a way that suggests he’s trying to bat away his anger. ‘The future killing of an unnamed associate at an unknown time and place, coming from a man who is widely known to despise me, is hardly one of the most valuable or even interesting pieces of information, Detective. You’ll have to do better than that.’

  ‘I’m not done. Suppose I told you I know a way to take the heat off?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Have a word with Lionel Dafoe. He was the one who offed Sloane. Something about a beef over his girlfriend. It was also him spread the rumor it was down to you. You want proof, the nine he used for the hit is still in his apartment. The girlfriend will also confirm the story.’

  Bartok thinks about this for a minute. Doyle wonders whether it’s enough. Because what he hasn’t told Bartok is that Dafoe has already fled to Mexico. Giving Bartok some proof that will take Tucker’s heat off him is one thing, but he’s not going to be responsible for setting up Dafoe to be killed.

  Bartok says, ‘And you know this how?’

  ‘From a CI of mine, whose information was always reliable.’

  ‘Was? That wouldn’t be poor old Spinner, would it? Such a shame about him. I hear that his wasn’t the quickest or most painless of endings.’

  Doyle doesn’t want to talk about Spinner. Not with this monster.

  ‘Your move, Kurt. You’ve been paid. I want my goods.’

  Bartok smiles. He makes Doyle wait that little bit longer.

  ‘Yes, I think you’ve earned your stripes. Perhaps now you’ll join me in a little drink to celebrate our new relationship?’

  ‘The name,’ Doyle says, and will keep on saying until he gets it.

  ‘All right,’ Bartok agrees. ‘The name. As I said, it’s a man you know already. You can stop digging into your past because-’

  He doesn’t get any further.

  Primarily because his throat has just exploded.

  A hole has opened up in his neck, sending a fountain of blood spurting across his desk and onto Doyle’s leather jacket.

  Bartok looks surprised that he can’t speak any longer. He sits there, his mouth moving soundlessly, seemingly unaware that the source of all that gushing blood is himself.

  Doyle’s reaction isn’t exactly immediate either. He doesn’t know what has just happened here. The shock of what he has just witnessed has confused and paralyzed him. And then he zooms out, takes in the wider picture, sees the movement behind the man choking to death on his own blood.

  Bruno is also clearly puzzled. His arms come up and his fingers grapple comically with thin air as though he’s operating some complex invisible machinery. By the time he works out that he should be reaching for his gun, it’s too late. Sonny Rocca is already on him, his gun arm outstretched, his silenced weapon making phut-phut sounds as it spits. Bruno stares uncomprehendingly while his chest is drilled. When anger finally appears on his face, it is there for the fleetest of moments before being obliterated by a salvo of bullets that take out his teeth, then his nose, and then his right eye. Bruno stiffens, leans back like a toppling domino, and crashes to the floor with the force of a felled elephant.

  Doyle is already on his feet. His hand dives automatically under his coat, finds itself clawing at the empty leather of his holster. He star
ts moving toward Rocca, no thought yet as to what he might do when he gets there. Rocca whirls on him, aims his gun at Doyle’s face.

  ‘Back!’

  Doyle brings his hands up, takes a step in reverse. He watches as Rocca moves calmly back to Bartok, now clutching at his neck, trying in vain to plug the hole there as he coughs and splutters.

  No, thinks Doyle. Don’t.

  Rocca observes his boss for a second or two, not a hint of compassion on his face. It’s like he’s studying the behavior of an amoeba under a microscope.

  Please don’t.

  With casual ease, Rocca raises the dark semi-automatic again, and Doyle can only look on helplessly as bullet after bullet smashes into Bartok’s head and face. Even when Bartok’s body slides lifeless from his chair and lies crumpled on the wooden floor, Rocca stands over him and continues with the steady eradication of his ex-employer’s features.

  I have one chance, Doyle thinks. And it will come only if Sonny Rocca hates his former boss badly enough.

  So he watches and waits, listening to the muffled explosions, the clatter of empty cartridges hitting the floor, thinking that the destruction seems to be going on forever.

  And then it happens. The slide on Rocca’s gun jerks back and stays there, announcing that its work is done: there are no more bullets to be fired.

  Doyle makes his move. He believes it’s the fastest he’s ever shifted. His high-school sprinting instructor would have been proud of him.

  He manages to cover all of one yard.

  Rocca is ready for him. His other hand, which Doyle hadn’t even noticed dipping into his pocket, now comes up and points at Doyle. And it’s not empty.

  The soles of Doyle’s shoes squeal as he applies his brakes. For the umpteenth time, he mentally slaps himself for agreeing to surrender his Glock. He thinks, finally, that he’s learned his lesson. Certainly he’ll never do it again.

  Because now, for the first time in his life, he’s staring into the business end of his own gun.

  ‘Back!’ Rocca says again. He twitches the gun muzzle to one side. ‘Back in the chair.’

  Doyle takes a few steps backwards, his eyes never leaving Rocca’s.

  ‘Why, Sonny?’ he asks. ‘What the fuck’s this about?’

  Rocca doesn’t answer. He swaps his guns over, putting the loaded Glock into his right hand. Then he steps over Bartok’s

  corpse, edges around the desk, the Glock aimed squarely at

  Doyle’s forehead. He comes to a halt. Continues to point the gun.

  He stands like that for several seconds, as if allowing Doyle the

  opportunity to say a final prayer.

  ‘I was beginning to like you, Mr Doyle,’ Rocca says. ‘So long.’ Doyle senses the change in Rocca. He realizes that Rocca has

  just made his decision. He sees the whiteness of Rocca’s knuckle

  as he tightens his trigger finger.

  Doyle closes his eyes and thinks of Rachel and Amy.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  When Doyle opens his eyes again, Rocca has disappeared from in front of him.

  He twists in his chair and sees that Rocca is now standing at the door.

  ‘Sonny. .’ Doyle says.

  ‘I got no instructions to kill you, Mr Doyle,’ Rocca says. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact.’

  There is a trash basket next to the door. Rocca holds the empty, silenced gun over the basket and allows it to drop in. His left hand now free, he reaches into his inside breast pocket and pulls out an envelope. A white one. There is typing on the front, and even though Doyle can’t read it from here he knows that it will be addressed to him.

  ‘A message for you,’ Rocca says, and lets the envelope float down to join the gun.

  ‘You’re not thinking this through, Sonny. They’ll hunt you down. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘We’ll see. Goodbye, Mr Doyle.’ He reaches for the door handle behind him.

  ‘Sonny! The name. You know who it is, don’t you? Please, this was my last chance. Give me the name.’

  Doyle hears the desperation in his own voice, but he doesn’t care. Right now he thinks he’d get down on his knees and beg if it’d get him the name.

  Rocca hesitates. ‘I’d like to help you, Mr Doyle. Really I would.’

  But he’s not going to, Doyle realizes.

  In one smooth motion, Rocca drops the Glock into the trash basket, swings open the door, and leaves. Doyle jumps from his chair, but even before he’s anywhere near the door he hears a key turning in the lock.

  He grabs the handle and tries turning it. Realizes that he’s well and truly imprisoned.

  ‘Shit!’

  He reaches into the basket, removes his Glock and the envelope. He stuffs the unopened envelope into his pocket, points his gun at the door-locking mechanism. .

  What the fuck? he thinks. What am I going to do? Blast the door open, and then what? With all those human tanks out there, I won’t even get down the first flight of steps before someone blasts me out of my shoes.

  Shit!

  He lowers his gun and begins to pace the office. He glances at the mutilated figures of Bruno and Kurt, leaking their bodily fluids all over the polished floor. He can still smell the acrid odor of gunpowder in the air.

  Why the fuck couldn’t you speak a little faster, Kurt?

  It makes sense now. Sonny in his big heavy overcoat to hide his armory. His gloves to avoid putting fingerprints on the gun he used for the hit. And let’s not forget his demeanor. His cheerfulness tonight. His little speech about red-letter days, the start of a new life. He wasn’t talking about me, Doyle realizes now; he was talking about himself.

  Doyle moves back to the door. How the hell am I going to do this?

  He knows he can’t stay here for much longer. Any second now, someone could come through that door. Maybe even Lucas Bartok, and my, won’t he be in a good mood when he sees what happened here? How am I going to explain that one? Me locked in a room with his dead brother and his dead bodyguard, and oh yes, that murder weapon in the trashcan — that’s nothing to do with me. How long is Lucas or one of his heavies going to stand there and listen while I try to wriggle my way out of that one?

  Fuck!

  He paces again. Takes another look at Bartok. He had the name, goddamnit! He was on the verge of giving it to me. The only man walking this earth who. .

  Well, that’s not quite true. Sonny Rocca knows the name, doesn’t he? Sonny Rocca, who is probably right now heading for a flight to Rio if he has any brains, knows who the sonofabitch is.

  Doyle leaps over Bartok and stands at the window behind his desk. Straight ahead is the uniform blackness of a featureless wall. Below, he can just make out the dimly lit alley in which they parked.

  Doyle holsters his gun and flips off the catch on the window, which looks old and covered in a million layers of paint. Please let this open, he thinks.

  He manages to force the window up an inch, then slips his hands through the gap. The ice-cold air from outside almost freezes his hands to the frame as he strains to pull the window upwards. Eventually, he raises it by about a foot or so — just enough, he hopes, to squeeze through.

  He pushes his head outside, feels the sting of an icy blast of wind. It looks one hell of a long way down. He has never thought of himself as a sufferer of vertigo, but his head swims at the thought of putting his center of gravity any closer to that sheer drop. He turns his head and sees that the nearest fire escape runs under the adjoining office. The only thing that will take him anywhere near it is a drainpipe that runs from above his window and gently angles down toward the front corner of the building. It’s hard to tell in the darkness, but there’s a slight gleam on the pipe that makes it look as though it’s been recently painted. What lurks beneath the paint is another matter. As escape routes go, dangling from a length of decades-old rusty pipe two floors above the ground would not be high on his list of preferred options.

  Not that you got all that many op
tions here, Doyle.

  He swings his right leg up and slides it onto the narrow outer ledge. Slowly, cautiously, he edges his torso sideways through the window. Keeping his left arm hooked under the window, he starts to pull his outer leg under his body. Inch by jittery inch, he transfers his weight onto that single leg, as he brings his other leg out and twists himself to face the building. He eventually gets into a standing position, his face pressed hard against the freezing glass as he tries to stop his knees wobbling. Remind me not to become a window cleaner when they throw me off the job, he thinks.

  He slides his hands upwards along the window and brings them above his head. He feels them hit the brickwork, and continues to push them over the rough surface. He flexes his fingers, searching for the drainpipe.

  Nothing.

  Reluctantly, he unpeels his face from the glass and leans his head back as much as he dares, then rolls his eyes upwards. He sees that the pipe is inches above his fingertips. He straightens up again. Begins to raise his heels from the ledge. When he is on his tiptoes he stretches his arms until it seems they’re about to leave their sockets.

  He feels like an Olympic diver about to do a backward jump into the pool. He has never been in such a precarious position. One gust of wind is all it’ll take to knock him from his perch. Despite the cold, he starts to perspire.

  He extends himself another couple of millimeters. Feels his fingernails just scrape the lower surface of the pipe. But it’s not enough. He comes down onto his heels again, relaxes his muscles, allows his joints to click back into place. There’s nothing for it, he thinks. I’m gonna have to jump.

  He looks up again, fixes his gaze on the drainpipe, flexes all his fingers. Another couple inches — that’s all I need. If I don’t make it, or I do make it and the pipe doesn’t hold. .

  He casts such thoughts out of his mind. There is no time to debate this. It has to be done now, and it has to be done with utter conviction.

  He brings his arms up again, then starts to bend at the knees. There’s no room to take his knees forward, and so he has to bow them out to the sides, like he’s a ballet dancer.

  He gives himself a three-count: Three. .