Lone Wolf #6: Chicago Slaughter

by Barry, Mike

  Wulff said, “May I sit down? I’ve had kind of a tough trip.”

  “I guess you have,” Versallo said, looking through the folder idly. “You’ve been all over the place. But what with your background on the police force, all aspects of police work including tactical police and narcotics, and with that wonderful combat background you had in Vietnam, you should be able to stand up under a little interrogation, eh, Wulff? Later on we can get you a suite in the Congressional Hotel so that you can catch up on your rest.”

  Wulff looked at the man. The corruption was still there, leaking out in little waves and droplets, but underneath it he sensed something else, a new quality. It was not exactly fear, call it contemplation then or reconsideration, but Versallo was not quite as assured as he had been when Wulff first came in, and Wulff had the clear intimation that he was holding onto the folder in this way to conceal a shaking in his fingers. Maybe. This did not ease the situation; it made the use of the gun in fact only more likely, but it was interesting. It was always interesting to see the advantages shift, to see the way that the balance between people could change. Call it an aspect of police work. “Screw you,” he said.

  The man laughed, a simple, empty chuckle that filled the room. “My name is Versallo,” he said, “you can call me by my name if you want. William Versallo but most of the people I know simply settle for Bill.” He paused, shook his head, continued to dig into the folder. “The least you should know is my name,” he said, “so just call me old Bill Versallo when you tell me to fuck myself.”

  “I’m not interested,” Wulff said. “I’m not interested in dialogues. What the hell do you want?”

  Versallo looked up at him then away, with a restless gesture tossed the folder into the desk drawer and slammed it. “I’ve got what I want,” he said softly, “I’ve got you. I’ve been looking for you Wulff. I’ve been looking for a long time. You’ve been screwing up, you’ve been making life unpleasant for a lot of people and I thought that it was high time that we brought this bullshit to an end. I was really glad to get the news that you were coming to Chicago. That made my day, knowing you were coming here. It was too good to be true.” He stood abruptly, the gun held in his hand, levelled it at Wulff’s chest. “You’ve just made me very happy,” he said. “I’ve been getting happier and happier all day and having you here in front of me just cinches it. Welcome, you son of a bitch.”

  Wulff doubted it. He doubted the happiness. He looked at the gun calmly and then into Versallo’s eyes and what he saw was not the aspect of a man who would shoot. No. He did not think that Versallo would do it; this was the kind of man who sent messengers to do the job. If he was going to be shot it would be Mendoza who would do it. This and other things enabled him to meet Versallo’s eyes. “The trucking line is a good dodge,” he said, “it’s an honest cover. Most of the guys I’ve been dealing with so far have been into corporate accounting or stock-brokerage or they don’t really seem to do much of anything at all. But you’ve got a good industry here, you work hard. Why not dump the drugs and get into it all the way? You’d probably do better.”

  “Probably not,” Versallo said calmly. “Have you looked over the books recently?”

  “Probably not,” Wulff agreed, “because you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you weren’t in shit. You love it; you love breaking people’s heads and screwing around. That’s what’s going to finish you off in the long run.”

  “I don’t have to listen to your shit,” Versallo said hoarsely. His face had changed colors; the red flush had yielded to a blue undertone and his breathing was suddenly not regular, the smooth flow of his speech pattern broken. “You’re some kind of crazy self-appointed judge and jury who’s going to clean up the fucking world, aren’t you? Well you’re not doing so good, Wulff. Let me tell you something; the world’s as mucked up and filthy as it was before you began.”

  “Of course it is,” Wulff said. “You’re still in it.”

  Versallo’s face clotted further and he seemed about to scream, then checked himself. That strange smile began again, plucking tentatively at the corners of the mouth, then centering. “Really?” he said. “You really think that that’s so, Wulff? Let me tell you something, I’m answering a human need, that’s all. And that’s all everybody in this business is doing; we’re just servicing people. We didn’t create that need, we had nothing to do with it and if it were to go away or if the government was to handle it promptly we’d go right out of business. But the way it is, friend, if it wasn’t us it would just be someone else and that’s about the size of it. Ex-narco, huh? Then you know all that.”

  “London solution,” Wulff said bitterly, “the British policy. Open up a clinic on. every corner. Throw smack into every drugstore, let any twelve-year-old walk in there and buy it to order, give it to all of his friends. That would suit you, wouldn’t it, Versallo?”

  “No,” Versallo said, “it wouldn’t suit me at all. It would put me out of fucking business, that’s all that it would do. I wouldn’t get anywhere so I like it just the way it is and so do you, you ex-narco, filthy son of a bitch. Crusader, where would your crusades be if they just gave the stuff away?”

  “You tell me,” Wulff said, “I’m not here to solve your life for you.”

  “Aren’t you?” Versallo said. He put the gun on the desk neatly, leaned himself across the desk his hands straddling the gun, nowhere in a position where he could not reach it before Wulff’s lunge but wanting the position for emphasis. “Let me tell you something you vigilante Christ-loving son of a bitch. I used to be on the shit myself, do you know that?”

  “Good,” Wulff said.

  “I was on shit for twenty fucking years,” Versallo said. “Twenty years, and I kicked it myself without any help or any drugs or any assistance at all. Probably the only guy in history who ever kicked it cold and all the time went on living his daily life, just like he had before with no one knowing what was going on. And do you know something? That was six years ago, when I kicked it. Nineteen hundred and sixty-eight on June fourth was the last day I ever took any horse and there hasn’t been a day since then, there hasn’t been one fucking minute when I haven’t been dying for it. All right?”

  “All right,” Wulff said. “I’m very moved.”

  “Dying,” Versallo said again. His cheeks had sunken in; momentarily he looked both younger and older, wrapped in some cloak of recollection which made his face translucent. “Dying for a fucking shot of horse. So don’t tell me that I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I know what I’m doing, I know what I’m dealing with.”

  “You’re dealing with death.”

  “Maybe,” Versallo said softly, “maybe you could call it that. But death is only part of it.” The translucence faded; his features were again opaque as he took the gun and caressed it. “The thing with you fucking narcos, you Christ-loving clean-up-the-world men,” he said, “is that you ought to take a little shot or snort yourself before you go around taking it away.”

  “I know someone who took a little shot or snort.”

  “Oh,” Versallo said in an abstracted way. “Oh year, that.” He tapped the desk drawer as if referring to the brochure. “You’re referring to that cunt, Marie Calvante, the one you were supposed to be engaged to, who was found OD’d out in shit city and was supposed to be so very pitiful that it got you started on your crusade. Seeing ain’t doing, friend, and if you had shot it up with the little cunt instead of denying what you probably could have seen, she might be alive today and you might be in some gallery somewhere.”

  Wulff did not contrive what he did then. There was no way that forethought could have allowed it; it was an insane act but talking to him about Marie Calvante had been insane too: mad of Versallo to do it, he surely should have known that no one talked about Marie Calvante to Wulff. No one, not even David Williams who had been in the patrol car that night, had seen the girl lying on the floor, had been with Wulff to see what had happened, no one talked about
it and yet here was Versallo, an armed man standing in a locked office with Wulff, having him totally at bay, calling the girl a cunt. This could not be. If it was so, if Versallo could be permitted to get away with this then Wulff was a fool, everything that he had done so far had been a fool’s act because it had been based on a lie. It was intolerable. The man, no man could be permitted to get away with this.

  Wulff sprang-at Versallo.

  He sprang at him without forethought, without measuring the situation at all, and this is probably what gave him a chance at the start because Versallo was alert and he would have seen the calculation in Wulff’s face an instant before the spring. That would have been all that he would have needed to have used the gun. But Wulff had not calculated; his spring was almost as much of a surprise to him as it was to Versallo and so he was able to take the man off guard, at least a little, rammed a knee over the desk and, with a hand extended, was at Versallo’s throat before the man could prepare himself.

  But Versallo did have the gun. He had the gun and for a man of fifty-three he had extraordinary reflexes and even as Wulff was in midair, his body arched, one hand extended to seize Versallo by the throat and wrench the life out of him, Versallo had snatched the gun off the desk and had fired. The bullet went high, passing just above Wulff’s wrist and then the second shot came with booming impact, aimed toward Wulff’s belly. Somehow, though, Wulff had been able to turn his body away from the line of fire so that he was falling upon Versallo from a sidewise angle and this shot, too, missed, roaring into the wall opposite. Dull splinters rained out of the ceiling and then Wulff had fallen upon the man, the force of the dive carrying them both to the floor. He had his palm outstretched flat to Versallo’s forehead. As the man hit the floor hard on the back of his head he could feel his palm going into the forehead and could feel something literally splattering within there. Softness lurched against Wulff’s palm, he could feel a moistness—which he took for a moment to be brains but it was not, it was only blood—exploding upward from some open part in the rear of Versallo’s skull and quickly he felt his hand palpating with warm, red glue.

  At the least Versallo had a concussion; he might have a skull fracture. Nevertheless the man was strong, desperately so; almost reflexively he reared up against Wulff, bringing a knee toward the groin, missing, settling for a dull impact in the belly and Wulff heard a sound like a sack hitting wet sand, realized that it was the sound of Versallo’s knee into his belly and almost simultaneously the pain opened within him as the secondary impact of Versallo’s fist came up from the floor, striking him on the cheek. The man was fighting desperately, singlemindedly, no thought of going for the gun undercutting his counterattack. Versallo, concussion or not, was functioning coolly and splendidly under the circumstances. He was a murderous alley fighter. Now his other knee was battering up, still seeking Wulffs groin, settling for another part of stomach, and Wulff raised his hand, chopped the flat of it hard into the adam’s apple, heard Versallo gag, squawk like a bird and then vomit into his hand as he used his full weight to pin the man like an insect underneath him.

  Versallo fluttered and squawked, his feet kicking away at the floor, and then he made one final effort, bringing up both legs simultaneously, getting Wulff in the solar plexus and thus breaking the interlock. Wulff fell away from him, momentarily blinded with pain, went into a full-roll and came halfway to his feet to see Versallo staggering into the corner, all arms and legs and angles, looking desperately for the gun. He was still squawking and cackling but these were the sounds of his breath, Versallo was not the kind of man who would waste his time with cries of pain. Pain would have to be wrung out of him.

  He had the gun almost in his hand when Wulff got over there, shambling, crawling and took it away from him by breaking Versallo’s left wrist in two places. He could hear it go, double-break, one, two, and now the squawks were no longer breaths but real cries of despair. The man was fighting and bucking against him, the heaves of his body then going suddenly gelatinous and Versallo folded underneath him like a sheet, all of the angles of his body disappearing into that gelatinous huddle, still he was going desperately for the gun, grinning in a rictus of pain and revulsion when Wulff levelled the gun and shot him. He levelled death into the man’s temple and heart, two shots, both of them mortal, compounding death to ease the man’s passage and when that was done Versallo was still, like a dismembered frog, thrashing around on the floor as if on wire.

  Wulff threw the gun into the corner with all the force that he could muster, and then, wandering behind the desk in little circles like a pained animal, vomited there, heaves of pain and hatred forcing a mixture of fluid and blood out of him. Weeping he vomited into the carpet, a spreading stain of vomit running through the room and puddling around the corpse’s head and finally he was done. He took out a handkerchief and wiped off his mouth and lips slowly, trying through the deliberate slow inhalation of breath to bring himself back to normal. But the effort was still beyond him; he found himself vomiting again, although this time not so much in wrenching heaves as in gentle sobs and outputs which steadied him, slowly.

  After a little while he was able to think once again.

  He went over to the place near the wall where the gun had fallen and slowly picked it up. It was warm, still stinking of its discharge and he shook it out carefully, then split the chamber and took out the remaining rounds. A point forty-five, a police revolver, a killer, the best professional weapon, and all oiled up for death. Versallo had planned to kill him; there was no doubt about that. He would have said what he intended, gotten out of Wulff what he could and then he would have disposed of him as casually and definitively as he would have ordered a group of trucks dispatched or put in a requisition for a hundred kilos.

  Versallo had been a methodical man. Even dying, the blood still storming from him, he was methodical; going about the business of dying as wholeheartedly and with as much energy as he had with the question of drug distribution. Wulff looked at him, looked away then, revolted. No kill had ever shaken him as much as this; no kill had been dirtier and yet somehow as purifying. He had called Marie a cunt. Was that some trigger within Wulff of which he was himself unconscious? He had no memory of leaping. He had made no decision whatsoever to attack the man. It had simply happened and now Versallo, against all of his planning and intention was dead. It must be a great surprise to him. Versallo, in one form or the next, would never get over it.

  The question was, what the hell was he going to do now?

  He had to get out of here, the sooner the better, but Versallo, no fool he, had been operating on his own terrain and surely every conceivable exit, every aspect of flight had been covered. He had no more chance of walking out of this place alive than Versallo now did. Sooner or later, probably sooner, they would come checking around here, see why the boss had not reported in and that would be the end of Wulff. He had one gun and there were probably a few clips in the desk that he could locate but how was he going to hold off ten, twenty, fifty men? All of them would be in on it once they gauged the situation.

  He had no chance.

  And yet, he thought, this was not so. He had every chance because he held one advantage; they did not know that Versallo was dead. That was his trump card, that Versallo to them would be alive right up until the moment they saw him, and if he were able to manage this quite right they would not see him, not until Wulff was out of the building and on his way.

  He wanted to get out of the building. He wanted to get out of here. He certainly had struggled hard enough to get this far; it would be better to keep on going.

  He checked the body out once more, the features of Versallo’s dead face almost completely shrouded by blood and then he went over to a side door, opened it, found himself in the private bathroom which had probably been Versallo’s one concession in this building, to the way he thought a man of his station should live. The bathroom was surprisingly elegant, walls and mirrors gleaming, a medicine cabinet, half-ajar sh
owing an array of sprays, deodorants, shaving concoctions and male perfumes with which Versallo had doubtless covered himself for certain important interviews. But Wulff ignored all that, concentrated on using the basin and a discovered towel to clean himself off as much as possible. His appearance must be unremarkable; he would be able to get out of this building, if he did, only by cultivating an appearance so unremarkable that he would look like any of the men who had been working on the level below. He doubted if he could do this but at the least he could try.

  The water revived him marginally and he was able, by stroking a towel rapidly across his face a few times to bring himself back to a condition of some alertness. Coming out of the bathroom, the taps still running—let there be as much noise in here as possible now—he looked at Versallo; seeing the corpse again sent lurching waves of sickness through him all over again. Of all the kills this had indeed been the worst: the ugliest and the most painful. The manner of that way in which a man gave up life was some comment on how he had held on to it during his time, and Versallo had wanted very much to live. Now, lying still in the posture of death the mouth had fallen open, rigidified into a pained bark of dismay and horror as if Versallo had caught some glimpse of the actual form of death during his passage and had screamed out against it, was maintaining that scream even now. A mystery, Wulff thought, a mystery—life, death, the intertwining of the two, none of it to be ever understood; and yet men attempted to control death in the way that they did, inflicting it, holding it off because only that gave them a feeling of immortality. The heaves started deep in his gut again and he turned away, went to the door. His hands fumbled on the bolt and then he lifted it, pushed it aside and spun the knob until it opened. He eased the door back and very carefully looked down the hall. Empty, murmurous sounds filling the corridor; no note taken of what had happened here. Soundproofed, of course. It would stand to reason that Versallo would have soundproofed his office thoroughly.