by Barry, Mike
“You can’t do this!” Figueroa screamed. “You murderer, you murderer!” And at that moment it was indeed the pilot who was the murderer, collaborating in all of this: watching it, being held responsible and now obstructing vengeance. And something cold and terrible, a snake of purpose, seized Figueroa’s wrist and he turned his arm, then wrist and hand holding the gun toward the pilot, went through the bulkhead, aimed the pistol at the pilot’s head. Slowly the man turned and then he saw the pistol and the same terror was in his face that was in Figueroa’s.
“No,” he said, “you cannot do this.”
“Murderer,” Figueroa said.
“You do not understand. Who will fly the copter—”
“Murderer,” Figueroa said again. He shot the pilot in the neck. The pilot reached his hand toward the sudden hole as if it were an insect bite or bee-sting, his face perplexed. Then, as the helicopter swayed in the air, he dropped his hand to the controls, instinctively tried to right it.
Still alive. The murderer was still alive. “Die!” Figueroa said. He put another shot into the pilot’s head, this one at the medulla oblongata. A smear of blood appeared, delicate as a spider web in the first impression, then spreading. The pilot slumped over the controls.
The copter began to fall.
“Murderer!” Figueroa shrieked. “Murderer, felon! You killed my boss you bastard!” And then the tears came, the tears because DiStasio was dead, and now, looking out at the revolving landscape beyond the windows, Figueroa understood that he was dead too because the plane was falling hopelessly out of control. In that suspended instant before impact he went for the controls himself, yanked at bolts and levers futilely, desperately tried to bring some organization to the path of the plane but nothing worked, nothing worked and the plane revolved in the air, a complete turn, three hundred and sixty degrees, everything loose in the cockpit jumbling together, wedges of metal flying, the corpse of the pilot tumbling from the seat and hurling Figueroa into the wall, enveloping him with a ghastly hug. Figueroa still had his gun, he fired and fired, sending shots into the dead man but the grip would not release. And the copter, gracefully coming out of its revolution settled in a straight plunge toward the fields, light and air streaming by, a curious soft radiance in the cockpit as Figueroa tried to struggle free and then, at the last instant before impact, there was a feeling of ascension, rising, it was exactly as they had told him in church so many years ago, there was some kind of radiance and he tried to embrace it, tried to move into that center and beyond pain but he could not help thinking of DiStasio dead, the flight destroyed, his own life ended, as the plane arced. And at the end, as he had always known there would be (because the church always lied about everything, that was why he had left it for that better church, DiStasio), there was terrific pain, tearing him apart, gutting him like a fish on sand and then—
Mercifully enough, and as he also had long suspected, there was nothing.
XVI
They watched the copter hit in flame midway between them and the horizon, the lances of fire diving into the earth like Jove’s bolts and then Wulff’s attention returned to the situation at hand, the two corpses, the pulped head of one of them lolling at his foot. He moved away from DiStasio’s body slowly, feeling the disgust, hearing the secondary explosion of the destroyed copter. Everywhere he went he brought death. But then again, the dying was just.
“That was stupid,” Stevens said. “Knocking me out.”
“I thought I had to.”
“Well you’re lucky you didn’t.”
“All right,” Wulff said, “enough of that. You saved my life. I’m grateful.”
“Are you?” Stevens said, rubbing the back of his neck, looking at him strangely. “Are you really grateful?”
“I am,” Wulff said, “I’m endlessly grateful. I’ll write you a recommendation. I’ll use my influence with the NYPD to get you a job as a custodian. What the fuck do you want, Stevens?” He walked to the valise, perched on one end, half-buried in the ooze and tugged on it. “I thought you had no heart for it and that you were holding me back. I was half-right, wasn’t I?” He struggled with the valise, got it out, put it down flat. “You have no heart for it.”
“No” Stevens said. “I haven’t.”
Wulff opened the valise. He half-expected to see it filled with bits of waste-paper—it would be the right end to his adventure with the post-revolutionary regime—but no, he did not, it was filled with the same snowy bricks that he had seen in the Las Vegas airport. Only two days ago, that. Unbelievable. He looked at those little pillars of death and then swung his head left to look at the fire tracings from the downed copter. When he turned his head back Stevens was standing to his right, looking into the valise, the pistol held loosely at his side. “Son of a bitch,” Stevens said. “So this was it all the time.”
“You didn’t believe there was such a thing?”
“No,” Stevens said. “I did not. I admit that I thought you had made the thing up. Shit, there’s a million dollars in there.” He extended a forefinger cautiously, rested it against a brick.
“No,” Wulff said, “not the way to do it. First you lick the finger, then you put it against the brick. That’s the way you test them. If you want to test them. It’s real.”
Stevens licked his finger rather doubtfully, rested it against a brick, then took it up and checked the grains, sniffed them delicately. “You’re right,” he said, “it’s real.”
“Don’t doubt it.”
“Son of a bitch, it’s real,” Stevens said. His facial expression had changed, become subtly fierce and ugly. He extended a foot and kicked the valise closed.
Suddenly the pistol in his hand was levelled at Wulff.
Wulff held his ground, looked at Stevens steadily. He was not surprised. Whatever else, he had been expecting this at some level. “Don’t think of it,” he said.
“I have to,” Stevens said. “You don’t believe this but I do.”
“I believe anything,” Wulff said.
“You don’t think it’s true,” Stevens said. Once again he had that confused, abstracted air. Despite the danger of the situation Wulff had the sudden insane urge to clasp Stevens by the shoulder and tell him that it was perfectly all right, but he would do better by getting some control of himself. Stevens appeared badly in need of counsel of some sort. This was not his kind of thing at all. Nevertheless the pistol appeared menacing.
“I know it’s true,” Wulff said.
“I’ve got to do it,” said Stevens, “I’ll never get another chance, don’t you see that? It’s there, staring me in the face. A million dollars.”
“It’s not a million. By the time it works its way into supply channels it may not be half of that. Besides, the purity is still in question.”
“I don’t care about the purity,” Stevens said. “What does purity have to do with it? I can’t live on the margin all my life, can I? Sooner or later you’ve got to get out. I’m forty-four years old.”
“All right,” Wulff said, “I’m thirty-two. What does that have to do with it?”
“Thirty-two isn’t forty-four,” Stevens said. “It’s an entirely different stage of life. You’ve got options ahead of you. Possibilities. I’m going to be living in hotel rooms all my life.”
“Not necessarily,” Wulff said. He felt the bulge of a pistol in his hip pocket. It was the one he had retained through all of this: loaded and cocked like the others. If he could get to it in time … But he discarded the notion for the instant. Stevens was alert. His conversation was only peripheral to his purposes. A move toward that pistol now would merely give Stevens his excuse to kill. Now he was on the borderline, still talking himself into position.
“I don’t want to live in hotel rooms all my life,” Stevens said in that cold, empty monotone. “I mean, it’s not fun living that way, no matter what you’ve heard. I admit that I’ve fallen into that habit but that doesn’t mean it’s right. And working for bastards and pricks
like Delgado just because it was too much trouble to go out and chance it on your own. Well, this has to end.”
“Don’t do it,” Wulff said, not to dissuade but merely for rhythm’s sake. Throw in a line here, a response there, keep the man talking. If Stevens’s eyes ever lost that peculiar air of alertness …
“I lost everything in Vietnam,” Stevens said, “I was only thirty you know when I went over there. I was there five years and I went in believing everything. Came out as a light colonel believing nothing. That’s a hard thing to do to a man.” His hand clenched on the pistol. “I’ve got to kill you Wulff,” he said. “You’re not a bad man, understand that. I even sympathize with you a little bit; you’ve bottled up a lot of integrity in there. But consider my position.”
“All right,” Wulff said softly, “I’ll consider your position.” The fire on the hill was out now; thick, deadly puffs of smoke indicated that ignition was over and that now it was only guttering in small sparks. He revolved his attention nearer, looked at the corpse of DiStasio which through some trick of light had already begun to cyanose, the veins puckering darkly under the skin, surfacing. The bodyguard lay behind him face-down on the ground in the embryonic position. Already the area was filled with the stink and fumes of death and of the crash. They could have been at the end of the world. “You don’t have to kill me, you know,” he said. “You’ve got the gun. You can just take the valise and get out of here. What can I do?” You’ll have to kill me, he thought. You’ll take that valise away over my corpse and no other way and you know it.
Stevens nodded as if he was listening to Wulff’s stream of consciousness. “I have to kill you,” he said. “I know who you are and what you are now. You’ve killed a hundred men for that stuff. You wouldn’t let me walk away with it and if you did you’d spend the rest of your life getting me. The only way is to kill you.”
“All right,” Wulff said, “kill me.”
“I want to,” Stevens said very softly. “I want to a lot. I’ve killed hundreds of men and I shouldn’t really have any trouble with this at all. But it’s hard, do you know? I guess I don’t really want to kill you after all.”
“Good,” Wulff said. “If that’s how it is, don’t kill me.”
“I’ve thought of that too,” Stevens said, “but it doesn’t work. You have your qualities though. You really do have your qualities.”
His finger tightened on the trigger. Wulff looked in the man’s eyes, saw them shrink toward a small point of light. He looked for it, saw that point, deduced it and the proper moment.
“I think that someone’s come off that copter,” he said. “Not to bother you.”
Stevens whirled, dove toward the ground facing the clearing, looking for the men who might have come off the copter. There were none but the idiot trick had worked, it had worked just as Wulff had hoped it might, knifing in toward the moment of maximum tension and reluctance as well, that delicate balancing instant in which Stevens was trying to push himself past fear toward murder and now as the man, hopelessly out of position, turned on the ground, Wulff already had the gun in his hand. Yanking it out of his pocket, without thinking, he put a shot squarely into the lower spine and Stevens bucked on the ground; his body convulsed and his own gun fell from him. Then, spine broken, he flopped on the ground like an animal, scrambling desperately as if to raise himself toward his feet, squealing in horror as he realized that he could not and finally falling on the ground, stretching out full length as if it were a bed and Wulff reached over and took the pistol that Stevens had dropped, looked at the man on the ground. Stevens, convulsing again, rolled on his back, shrieked with pain as he drew his knees up involuntarily and then looked up at Wulff through clouded eyes. Wulff stood there and looked down at the man impassively. Stevens stretched his arms out full-length, fingers twitching. “Kill me,” he gasped, “you’ve got to kill me.”
“Soon,” Wulff said, “but when I’m goddamned ready.”
“I’m in agony, Wulff,” Stevens said. His voice was thin and soft. “You broke my spine.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“I lost,” Stevens said. That curious transparency of cheekbones made his face seem to glow. “I tried it but I lost.”
“You certainly did.”
“It was nothing personal,” Stevens said, “I was just tired of living on shit. There’s just so much shit a man can take and then you’ve got to make a move.”
“Sure,” Wulff said.
“I couldn’t take it anymore. But you’re good. You’re practically the best there ever was. Did anyone ever tell you that? You’re just about the best in the business.”
“I’m flattered.”
“I mean, the way you handled this. I couldn’t handle things that way.” A flash of pain went through Stevens, he convulsed again. “I’m no fucking good,” he said. “I never knew what I was doing.”
“Neither did I,” said Wulff.
“Kill me,” said Stevens. “I tried and I lost and I’m in great pain now, Wulff. Don’t give me fucking dialogues. Put a bullet through my head. You’d do it the right way, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t leave me a brain-damage case.”
“I trusted you,” Wulff said. He had a vague feeling of incompletion. Everything was happening too rapidly. Not fifteen minutes ago, it seemed, they had been stalking the clearing, looking for a shot at DiStasio. Now at least three men were dead and another lay on the ground destroyed. Events accelerate. It must be the same way, he thought, on heroin. Yes, that is exactly what a drug jag must feel like; the compression of time, the acceleration of circumstance. “You were the only one so far I’ve trusted.”
“Well that’s too bad,” Stevens said. He licked his lips. “The pain isn’t that bad now,” he said. “It’s fading away. You must have smashed the spine altogether; after the first impact you don’t feel anything. I’m all gone in the arms and legs, gone below the waist.” There was a dark stain on his pants which Wulff noticed; Stevens looked at it as well. “Bladder control would go,” he said clinically. “You lose all control of the sphincter, too. I’m sure that my pants are full of shit.”
“I did trust you,” Wulff said, “that’s the hell of it. I haven’t trusted anyone since all of this crap began. But I trusted goddamn it in you. I figured that like me you had nothing left to lose.”
“I didn’t,” Stevens said weakly. “I had nothing to lose, that’s why I did it. I’m sick, I was sick of having nothing left to lose. You’re the guy that’s holding on. You’ve got something to fight for.”
“Now what the fuck am I supposed to do?” Wulff said, feeling something very much like disgust, looking at the corpses and the valise, the damnable valise lying to his right. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
“You can kill me,” Stevens said, “and then take your fucking valise and get out of here on foot. But I wouldn’t advise you waiting much longer because probably a lot of people are bearing down on this place by now. That copter may have had a radio and besides DiStasio was a very important man. He was almost premier six years ago, you know. There was going to be a coup but at the last moment people backed out of it.” His eyes rolled. “I know all about the fucking politics of this fucking miserable country,” he said. “I know everything about everything. It’s sure as hell gotten me a long way, hasn’t it?”
“All right,” Wulff said. He sighed thickly, the breath uneven in his chest. He pointed the gun. “All right, I’ll do it. I ought to fucking leave you on the ground to die but I won’t. Maybe you wouldn’t die. They’d find you here and patch you up, give you a useful life in a wheelchair. A whole new second career, moving around rehabilitation corridors. You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?”
“Don’t bet on it,” Stevens said. “Medical care in this fucking country is like it was in nineteen-hundred in the States. I probably wouldn’t survive the exploratory.” He leaned his head to the side, vomited, a thin, clear stream of bile with little flecks of blood mixed in it. “I thin
k I’m bleeding internally, Wulff,” he said. “It’s going to get very bad now. You could save me a lot of trouble.”
“Sure,” Wulff said, “I’m saving a lot of people trouble these days. That’s a career.”
“Up to you,” Stevens said. He inhaled, closed his eyes. “But if you’re going to do it you’d better do it now because I don’t think I can be courageous anymore. I’ve just about used up the last of my courage.” Tears sprang from his eyes. “Please, Wulff,” he said.
Wulff shot him.
He put the shot deep into the man’s forehead, centering it between the eyes, the purest killing shot of them all and on the ground Stevens arced, he gasped, his body tensed like a bow and then it relaxed. One pearl of blood came from the wound and he emitted a final gasp, then he lay there, empty, on the earth.
Wulff smelt the sharp odor of feces.
With a sudden revulsion as profound as it was surprising he raised the pistol over his head and hurled it into the forest. It clattered off a trunk, then vanished into grass. He knelt by the corpse, closed the eyelids, shuddering for a long time in a mood that he could not understand. Then he brushed one hand down the forehead, covering the wound with hair and stood, feeling a curious lightheadedness, an inability to focus himself.
He walked away from Stevens and toward the valise. It was just like Boston. At the end there was the valise. Bodies came and went, the fires leapt, people screamed and died, everything fell away … but there was always a valise and within the valise was the pure, white death that had inspired it all. It laughed and mocked at them. It was the only permanency. It would survive all of them.
Wulff shuddered.
He hefted the valise; curiously warm it came into his hand. As he did so—and as he knew it would be—purpose returned. The valise was central. It would always remain. He too would die, his death was inevitable … but the pure white death would remain. That was the nature of the situation. It could never be any other way.
