No Rest for the Dead

by Andrew F. Gulli; Lamia J. Gulli

  Again the nod.

  “Excellent.” Christopher ripped off the tape and pulled Taylor’s abandoned panties out of Artie’s mouth. Christopher tossed them aside, then wiped his hands on a clean spot on Artie’s shirt. “Now.” He put the barrel of the gun against the man’s crotch, cocked the hammer back. “About that letter.”

  Tired. So tired.

  Jon Nunn’s shoulders were clenched like knuckles. Eyes grainy and dry. When he raised a hand to rub them, the fingers were trembling. As if he’d been running for days.

  Not days. Years. Twelve long years.

  Twelve years of pain and guilt about his marriage—about Sarah.

  Twelve years of believing that Christopher Thomas might be a snake and a climber, but that he was also a murder victim.

  Twelve years since his testimony sent Rosemary Thomas to her death for a murder that never happened.

  Twelve years of letting things happen around him. Of drink and despair and weakness. Of second-guessing himself and squandering time. Passively watching the world go by and wishing it were different.

  Years when Christopher Thomas lived his dream while Jon Nunn was trapped in the drabbest of nightmares.

  And now, that it should all end here, in this hotel of all places. TROMPE L’OEIL the sign read. Trompe l’oeil, “tricks the eye,” if he remembered high school French.

  Just fucking perfect.

  Nunn flipped on the hazards, stepped out of the Mercedes. The valet made a move in his direction, but he shook his head. “I won’t be long.”

  The lobby doors parted soundlessly, revealing a broad expanse of marble and subtle lighting. The air had the sweetness of a pear two days past perfection. The heels of his shoes clicked as he wove through brokers and lawyers and doctors in overstuffed chairs. The wall behind reception was lined with trees. Not until he was standing at the desk did he realize they had been painted on, the perspective rendered so carefully that it seemed he could reach out and touch them.

  “Welcome to Trompe l’Oeil, sir. How may I help you?”

  “I’m looking for someone. A guest.”

  The woman—her name tag read CLAIRE—barely looked up from her keyboard. “What’s your party’s name, please.”

  He grimaced, pulled the old photo out of his pocket. “This is him. Do you recognize him?”

  “I’m sorry, what is this—”

  “I’m a cop.” No reason to start playing by the rules now.

  “Still, I’m sorry, but I can’t … I could call my manager, perhaps he—”

  “Listen to me.” Nunn leaned into the counter. “This man is a killer. Get me? He’s dangerous. Please. Think. Have you seen him?”

  Claire licked her lips nervously. “I don’t know.”

  A muted boom. Somewhere indistinct. It wasn’t loud. The investment banker in the lobby bar didn’t stop running his game on the model, and she didn’t stop touching her hair and cocking her hips. Conversations continued, the low murmur of wealth and influence.

  But Jon Nunn knew the sound, even through however many insulated floors.

  The woman behind the counter said, “What is that? I heard it just a few minutes ago.”

  He turned back to her. “Think. Have you seen him?”

  “I—”

  “Yes or no.”

  “No.” Her voice strained.

  “Anyone else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is there anyone else who might have seen him?”

  She shook her head. “Usually there are two of us, but Jonathan met this curly-haired boy, and I told him—” Claire shrugged. “Do you want me to call my manager at home?”

  Nunn was already walking away. That noise had been gunfire, something with muscle, a .45 or even a .357. What was Thomas shooting at?

  Not what. Who.

  Nunn clenched and unclenched his fingers. Every instinct developed in a lifetime spent protecting people told him that Christopher Thomas was here. That he was armed. That he had probably just shot someone.

  And none of it made any difference. What was he going to do, knock on doors? Call SWAT and cordon off the building? He wasn’t a cop anymore. He couldn’t call for help. Couldn’t explain what he was doing there or how he had gotten the information in the first place. Couldn’t flash the badge he didn’t have.

  Besides, Peter Heusen had said that Christopher had had surgery. A brand-new face. There was no way to be sure Nunn would recognize him even if they passed in the hall.

  Yes, you will. He can’t change the eyes. His arrogant, certain eyes, always the same across a dozen case-file photographs.

  Nunn paced the lobby in short, angry laps, feeling time ticking away. There wasn’t time to delay, but there wasn’t time to make the wrong call, either.

  Sure. Hesitate again. Just let it happen around you. Like you did for the last twelve years.

  An expensively dressed blond guy was crossing the lobby towing two suitcases behind him. He was slender, and his walk was smug and swift, almost a sway.

  Nunn broke into a sprint. He bolted between two leather chairs, leaped the outstretched legs of a man reading The Wall Street Journal. There was a shout from behind as he knocked over someone’s drink. Two more seconds brought Nunn up behind the blond, who started to turn. Nunn grabbed his shoulder, yanked him around, and cocked his right arm back.

  A woman with boyishly close-cropped hair stared back at him, eyes wide and terrified, mouth falling open. “What the—”

  Nunn held the punch he’d been about to throw. “I’m sorry, I thought—”

  “Help!”

  Shit.

  He turned. Throughout the lobby, people were frozen. Staring. Nunn looked from one to the next. Behind the desk, Claire had a phone in one hand and was looking at him as she spoke. Calling the police?

  A sudden sharp pain and a quick jerk of the world. He heard the slap after he felt it. The blond woman. She was winding up for another. He caught her arm. “Lady, listen—”

  “Hey. Buddy. Back off.” The doorman, starting this way. Nunn looked around, saw that the lobby was back in motion, most of them coming toward him. The elevator on the near wall had opened, and the man inside hesitated, the scene not what he’d expected.

  Nunn whirled from person to person. Everyone was staring at him. He had a flash of school-yard paranoia, the feeling of being singled out. “I’m a police officer,” he said, using his cop voice. “Everyone calm down.”

  It was enough to freeze people. In that silence, across the span of marble and wealth, framed by gilded metal doors, Nunn saw them. Time seemed to stop.

  Then, as Nunn pushed himself into motion, two things happened.

  The elevator doors began to close.

  And behind them, a stranger with Christopher Thomas’s eyes winked at him.

  Well. That had been bracing. Peter must have given him up. Something to deal with later.

  The moment the elevator doors opened on the parking garage, Christopher set off at a jog, dragging his suitcases behind, the wheels skittering and bouncing. The light was yellow and soulless. The Colt was heavy in his pocket.

  Christopher didn’t know a great deal about cars, but beauty he knew, and his rented Aston Martin DB9 was beautiful. The woman who’d shown it had blathered about horsepower and V-12 engines and rack-and-pinion steering, and he’d just smiled and nodded and imagined bending her over the hood of it, fucking her with the engine throbbing beneath.

  He beeped open the car, threw in the suitcases. Quickly now, quickly. Poor, broken Jon Nunn would be on his way. He cranked the engine, shifted into first, and sped toward the exit. The tires clung to the pavement. The car hummed with power. Christopher rounded the corner, turned up the ramp. All he had to do was get clear of the hotel. Let the ex-cop try to catch him in this—

  Jon Nunn stood at the top, framed against the purple mist of a San Francisco night, a gun in one hand.

  The car was silver and expensive and hurtling toward him.


  His arm moved on its own, the gun lifting as though it were immune to gravity. Decades of habit had him sighting down it, his left hand coming over to steady the automatic, finger sliding inside the trigger guard as the car bore down.

  You can do this. Just aim and squeeze and aim and squeeze. You’ll hit him, and then his car will hit you, and the two of you will go out together, and maybe that’s how it’s meant to be.

  He locked eyes with the man behind the wheel. A man who believed he was above everything. Who wrecked the lives of those around him with a solipsistic abandon.

  No. A tie isn’t good enough. You need to beat him. For Sarah. For Rosemary.

  For yourself.

  He dove aside. The car was huge and breathing hot as it blew past. He hit the ground on his shoulder, managed to hold on to the gun. Brakes squealed as Thomas fought against his own velocity. The Aston Martin slid sideways, skidded, knocked trash cans like dominoes. Then the transmission ground, an ugly sound, and the car lurched forward.

  Nunn was on his feet and running for the Mercedes.

  He hauled himself in, tossed the gun on the seat, started up the car, and slammed the accelerator to the floor. The valet stood frozen as the Mercedes smashed through a brass luggage cart, sending designer bags flying. A horn screamed from behind. Nunn ignored it, yanked the wheel back to fight the fishtail. Ahead of him, Thomas streaked between two cars.

  Now what?

  The Aston Martin was probably faster than the Mercedes Nunn had stolen.

  Then find another way.

  Union Square was a shopping district, the lanes wide, the intersections marked in clean paint and smooth pavement. Logos blurred outside his windows, Urban Outfitters and Apple and Diesel. The sidewalks were almost as wide as the—

  Wait a second, think about this before you—

  Nunn jumped the curb, took the Mercedes up on the sidewalk. Beat out a warning on his horn without taking his foot off the gas. Late shoppers stared with cow eyes. Rich women clutched bags that held his month’s salary. A longhair in a dashiki leaped aside, yelling curses. Nunn gritted his teeth and rode the edge, made it to the corner, blasted off the sidewalk, spinning the car as he went, south on Fourth now. Ahead, the Aston Martin wove between cars, the traffic slowing it. Until he got a clean run, Christopher Thomas’s expensive toy wasn’t going to help him much.

  So he’ll be going for a clean run. You need to beat him there.

  But how?

  As he crossed Mission, he saw the answer.

  When Christopher had seen the ex-cop at the top of the garage ramp, he’d thought for a moment it was all over. Artie’s body was flopped on the floor of a hotel room with his fingerprints all over it—no explaining that. But good old Jon Nunn remained as predictable as he had been when he’d worked the case. Instead of coming with an army of police, he was here alone on some sort of revenge mission. Still underestimating Christopher, still not realizing whom he was playing against. No, it didn’t matter that he’d let Nunn live. The man wouldn’t be a concern. Christopher just had to get a little space. Then to the Oakland airport, where a private jet waited, creamy leather upholstery and chilled champagne and a phone to begin arranging his final disappearance.

  A Volkswagen Beetle stopped dead in front of him for no discernible reason. Christopher jerked the wheel, managed to squeeze the Aston Martin between the Beetle and a utility truck parked halfway up the curb. Stupid sheep with their stupid little cars. Ridiculous vehicle. He had to get some space. But where? The next street was Howard, five or six lanes running one way the wrong way, and after that another slow block….

  There comes a moment in the work of any painter when he stops thinking and begins to operate on instinct. When he goes with his impulses. It’s the thing that turns a good artist into a great one.

  Christopher turned left onto Howard, found himself staring at staggered headlights like accusing eyes. His heart beat harder, and he was conscious of the feel of the steering wheel in his palm, of the cool of the air-conditioning. A movie theater rushed by his side window. He swerved to miss a delivery truck. Let’s see that son of a bitch keep up with this. He smiled, wove the Aston Martin to one side, then the other, the howl of horns almost symphonic. Yerba Buena Gardens on his left, trees and tourists, and—

  No. It couldn’t be.

  Those lights smearing across the park, weaving between the trees, getting larger, they couldn’t be—

  Nunn squinted out the window, concentration whitening his knuckles. Driving right through Yerba goddamn Buena, he must be losing it, it was crazy, he could hurt someone—

  How’s this for not passively letting things happen around you?

  Someone shrieked. His headlights caught nightmare images, young lovers leaping aside, a juggler staring as his bowling pins plummeted, a family pushing a stroller, Fuck, Nunn swung hard the other way, an oak forty feet tall, he pulled back, the side of the Mercedes scraping against the trunk, the side mirror snapping off with a pop, and then sidewalk, the tires gripping hard—What now, Jon?—and the staircase opening up like an answered curse; he grit his teeth and held down the horn and hurtled down the steps and saw the Aston Martin tear by, Christopher Thomas’s eyes no longer arrogant and certain.

  Nunn whooped, forced the Mercedes left to follow. One car length behind, maybe two. Thomas wove back and forth across the lanes, the oncoming traffic keeping him from opening the car up, and Nunn rode him down, closing the distance an inch at a time. Thomas went right and gained himself a quick twenty feet, until Nunn cut across the corner and took it back. He felt his lips curling in a smile unlike any he’d known in ten years.

  Until the Aston Martin made another turn, and Nunn realized where Thomas was going.

  No, no, no!

  Nunn held the accelerator down, rocked back and forth in his seat, willing the car to go faster. He had to catch the man. Had to catch him soon.

  The Bay Bridge was straight and broad and four and a half miles long. Thomas’s pretty little car would practically set it on fire.

  Come on, come on.

  Thomas hit Essex, spun the car hard, and started up the bridge. He began to widen the distance immediately, the roar of his engine louder even than Nunn’s heart.

  No. It couldn’t be, not now. Not after all of this. It wasn’t fair.

  Fair? Ask Rosemary about fair.

  Because just like her, he was going to lose.

  Christopher thrilled at the sound the engine made, the way the Aston Martin responded to his command. He dodged between cars, easier now that he was going the right direction. When the RPM needle was deep in the red, he upshifted, felt the car leap ahead.

  Something in the moment was quite lovely. For years he and Nunn had been collaborators of a sort. True, the cop hadn’t known he was alive, but even so, together they had created a work of art. The canvas had been spun of human lives, the paint mixed of blood and tears and semen, the subject wealth and desire and betrayal. And now it ended.

  Collaborations don’t last, Jon. One man is always the greater artist.

  Christopher felt something tighten deep in his belly, a feeling that reminded him of the one he’d had as Artie crawled across his carpet. That sweet, stretched feeling of complete victory. He grinned, brushed his hair back from his eyes. Looked into the rearview mirror, savoring the image of Nunn’s car shrinking. What the man must be feeling! It might be Christopher’s masterpiece, even better than Rosemary. To take so much from a man, not just his marriage, but his career, his faith in justice, even his hope, then simply leave him behind, powerless to do anything but watch, it was—

  Bright fire bloomed in the Aston Martin. The light seemed to flare right in front of Christopher, as though he were snapping a lighter.

  A metallic thunk, meaty and clean.

  Another flash from behind, and his rear window spiderwebbed.

  What is—he’s—is he—

  Something shoved his shoulder. It felt like a punch, the kind of rough gesture men
in pubs gave one another. Christopher glanced down and saw a hole in the Egyptian cotton of his shirt, then red, red—What? No.

  He couldn’t believe it.

  The pain surfed the wave of comprehension, suddenstabbingburning, and he gasped. Tried to move his arm and fire spread down it. A scream of horn jerked his eyes back to the road. He was feet from the back end of a semi. Panic overwhelmed pain as he spun the wheel, yanked it right. The car fought to respond. The tires shrieked, loud and embarrassing. The car cleared the end of the semi, but the spin had it now, chaos taking control. For a terrible second he thought it might roll, but it just kept turning, the heavy guardrails of the bridge, open sky beyond, then the front of the car was facing the wrong way, traffic racing toward him, cars struggling to stop, and then he saw the battered Mercedes headed right for him, and through its broken windshield he thought he saw Jon Nunn’s face.

  Then the car slammed into the Aston Martin and ground and sky switched places.

  Jon Nunn felt as if he’d been punched by a giant’s fist.

  The impact had slammed him against his seat belt, sent his body rocking forward, but before his head could hit the wheel the air bag had exploded, a confusion of white and gray and the smell of gunpowder and a wallop to his chest and face.

  For a moment there was only the feel of it against his cheek, and pain.

  Slowly the drone of a horn penetrated. The world was dark, then he realized his eyes were closed.

  When he opened them, he was staring over the deflating air bag, through the splintered windshield, at the graceful sweep of a bridge cable two feet thick. The barrier rail was crumpled and torn.

  And atop it, upside down, a car that had once been beautiful rocked like a seesaw.

  Nunn shook his head, regretted it immediately. Pain sloshed in his skull.

  He fumbled for his seat belt. Pushed the air bag away, opened the door. Dropped out, catching himself on the window frame.

  The night was cool and burnished with mist. The glowing bridge lights were fairy lamps. A passing car began to slow. Jon gestured them on, didn’t realize he still had the gun in his hand until the driver roared away.

  Somewhere far off, sirens rose.