Damnation Street wab-3

by Andrew Klavan

  Now here came Ketchum, also the same as before-Ketchum and his Baleful Glare of Wrath, exactly the same. Same as before, the sinewy little black man propped a foot on a chair seat and leaned over Bishop, seething and silent.

  Finally, Bishop got sick of it. "What the hell's going on?"

  "If it was up to me, you piece of garbage…" Ketchum growled back at him.

  Bishop didn't get it, at first. Then the surprising idea occurred to him. "What? You mean I can go?"

  Ketchum couldn't even bear to say it out loud. He nodded. He took his foot off the chair. He turned away, snarling and despondent.

  Bishop blinked, scratched his jaw. It was an unexpected turn of events, all right. What do you know? he thought. He hadn't realized how crappy he'd been feeling till just now when he suddenly felt a lot better. He had no clue what was going on, but he wasn't going to ask questions about it either. He got out of his chair. His sardonic smile found its way back to his face.

  Ketchum caught that, caught the smile with a sidelong glance. That was too much. He shook his head in disgust. He muttered curses into the knot of his tie. "Yeah, you can be real proud. You can put this on your resume. You know why? You know why you're getting out of here?"

  Bishop shrugged. "No. Do I care?"

  "If it was up to me, you'd be looking at battery."

  "Yeah, I figured that was coming."

  "But you know that fuck? That fuck whose arm you broke?"

  "Yeah?"

  "The fuck with the knife?"

  "Yeah, the clay-headed fuck with the knife, sure, I know him."

  "Punk he was trying to kill?" said Ketchum.

  "Skinny white kid, sure. What about him?"

  "Name is David Adalian."

  Bishop's mouth opened. He made a little noise, a sort of laugh. The two men were only a couple of feet apart from each other in that outhouse of a room. For a second he could only stand there, looking deep into Ketchum's steaming brown eyes.

  "Like Joseph Adalian?" Bishop said finally.

  Ketchum gave a quick nod, jutting out his chin. "He's Joseph Adalian's son."

  "Whoa," said Bishop.

  "The punk and the fuck were dealing meth together. Punk's an idiot. Fuck's a fuck. Punk got busted, dealt the fuck; fuck didn't like it, tried to cut the punk."

  "Except I broke his arm," Bishop murmured.

  "Except you broke his arm," Ketchum growled.

  Bishop laughed. "So now Adalian…"

  Even Ketchum chuckled once in a dejected, nauseated sort of way. "Right. Now Adalian calls some of the lawyers he owns, and the judges he owns, and the faggot mayor and district attorney, who if you ask me he also owns…"

  "And suddenly I'm free as a…"

  "…psycho piece of shit in a city run by circus clowns, you got it."

  "Actually, I was gonna say 'bird.' Free as a bird. Or maybe a spring lamb," said Bishop.

  Ketchum made that dejected chuckling sound again. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks. His narrow frame was hunched as if he were carrying an anvil on his shoulders or maybe just the weight of an idiot city. "Congratulations. You now have a friend in organized crime. Like I said, you can be very proud."

  Bishop snorted. "Yeah, that is embarrassing." His leather jacket was hanging on the back of his chair. He worked it off and slung it over his shoulder. "I sure do hate to leave under those circumstances."

  "Yeah, I'll bet."

  "If it makes you feel any better, I'll go home and dress in orange and sleep in a room full of muscle-bound Mexicans."

  "Don't press your luck, prick. You'll be back."

  "It's always a pain in the ass to see you, Inspector."

  "Likewise."

  It was only a single step to the interrogation room door, but Bishop managed to put some swagger in it.

  "Hey," Ketchum said.

  Bishop paused, looked at him, his hand on the doorknob.

  Ketchum said: "Adalian's the devil. Take my word. Whatever he offers you, you put your hand on it and you won't need me to run you to ground. You'll die in prison as sure as I'm standing here."

  "Thanks," said Bishop. "That's a very helpful tip. You should write a book." He turned back to the door.

  "Hey," Ketchum said.

  Bishop rolled his eyes, looked at him again.

  Ketchum said: "Why'd you do it?"

  Bishop shook his head. "Do what?"

  "The fuck. Break his arm. Why'd you do it?"

  "Hell, I don't know. He had a shank."

  "Yeah, but he wasn't after you. He was after the punk. You knew I'd come down on you for it. You could've just let him cut away. You don't give a shit. So why'd you do it?"

  Bishop thought about it a second. "Because," he said. "Because fuck him."

  He walked out and left Ketchum muttering.

  12.

  It was a fine, clear, cold October day. Bishop tooled his bike slowly across the Bay Bridge. His mouth tasted bad and he stank like garbage, but after two nights in lockup, it was good to be outdoors. The water spread sparkling around him. The cities of the East Bay lay before him in a mist of distance. The red rooftops dotted the green hills. The green hills rose against the blue sky. He felt the bike rolling under him. It was a decent feeling.

  It didn't last. By the time the bike poured off the bridge into Berkeley, all the crap in his life had come back to him. Having his girl get arrested and screwing over Weiss, losing his job, and even that pain in his shoulder from where the psycho had stabbed him, which he'd forgotten about while he'd been in the can.

  His bike sputtered up the avenue. The shops and streetlights whipped by on either side. There were the white stone buildings of the university up ahead and the green iron of the university gates. He curled the bike to the right, gunned it past the rising hill of campus grass. By now all his good feelings about getting sprung were gone, and he was pissed off and miserable again same as before he'd been arrested.

  The Harley went on, down among the tall, faceless concrete dormitories on the south side. Splitting the lanes, cutting around the slow traffic of old student cars, Volks after Toyota after dusty Chevrolet. Bishop motored left and made his way to Telegraph.

  His building was on the near corner, a dingy brown pile of brick and stone, elegant once, but not for a long time. Past the intersection, on the avenue itself, a steady flow of students and hangers-on slouched past the rock-star posters plastered on the windows of a music store. On a billboard hanging above them there was a picture of a sports car and the words EXPERIENCE FREEDOM.

  Bishop pulled his bike to the curb. Shut it down. Swung off.

  He stepped through the fine old oak doorway of his building into the vestibule. He paused there to open the creaking brass flap to his mailbox, to yank out some flyers, some bills. He pushed into the foyer. Slid back the cage of the old elevator. He rode upstairs, blinking, tired, irritable. He scratched his stubble with the edge of a piece of mail.

  Fucking Ketchum, he was thinking. Fucking Weiss too. Fuck all of them.

  The elevator stopped with a jolt. He rattled open the cage. As he shuffled down the carpeted hall, he sniffed his armpit, made a face. He smelled like something in a frat house refrigerator. Fucking CJ. Fucking everything.

  He opened his apartment door, went through. He let out a long, whiffling breath as the door swung shut behind him.

  The apartment was big, but there wasn't much furniture in it. There wasn't much point in buying furniture. He never stayed anywhere long. He threw the mail on a phone table just inside the door. He moved into the center of the living room, facing the tall windows on the far wall. He stood there, tired, looking at the view without really seeing it. The windows showed the flat roofs of the Telegraph shops and the blue sky beyond them and the billboard with the sports car on it. Experience freedom.

  Good idea. Only his life was crap. What now? he thought. What the hell was he going to do now?

  Here was something, though: patting his shoulder, he found his
Marlboros in the slash pocket of his jacket. The bastard deputies hadn't stolen them. It was his lucky day, after all.

  He shot a cigarette between his lips. Torched it with a plastic lighter. He drew smoke and felt the nicotine rush all through him, sweet, like a flower opening. It was the best thing that had happened to him since that piece of ass he had been nailing when the cops came for him, the real estate agent or whatever she was.

  He took another hit off the cigarette. He closed his eyes. This was good. Fuck everything. This was really good.

  The two gunmen ruined the moment. That was the kind of guys they were. He heard them creeping in on either side of him, one coming out of the bedroom, one from the kitchen. He didn't bother to jump back or put up his dukes or anything. Without looking, he knew they had guns. In fact, for another second or two, he didn't even bother to open his eyes.

  Then he did. Sure enough, they had him covered with a couple of very serious-looking Glock 31s. Not just guns. Big guns. Catch a slug from one of those, they have to pick up your body with a vacuum cleaner.

  Bishop took another drag on his cigarette. He looked from one gunman to the other. The guy who'd come out of the bedroom-he was the good one, the dangerous one. Young, still twenty-something. Tall and lean. Sleek and muscular most likely under his crisp slacks, his red windbreaker, his white cable sweater. Mixed race, with light brown skin, a long, smooth handsome face with a thin layer of hair over his jaw and up top. He had calm, cold, smiling eyes-a little like Bishop's eyes, in fact. He kept his stance relaxed, kept an easy grip on his gun, kept his left arm casually slung across his belly, casually steadying his right wrist to keep his aim nice and true.

  The other guy, the one who'd come out of the kitchen-a stocky, nervous white guy with thinning red hair-he was amateur night, a back-alley arm breaker. A gym rat, judging by the ripples in the muscle shirt under his brown leather jacket. He had a lot of twitches, quick glances this way and that, as if people had been sneaking up on him his whole life.

  "Fuck with us and we'll feed you your knees," he said tensely.

  Bishop snorted. He glanced over at the brown-skinned gunman from the bedroom. "Feed me my knees?" he said. "What kind of threat is that? What kind of cheap operation is this anyway?"

  The brown-skinned gunman shrugged wearily. "What can I tell you?" He had a smooth, mellow voice, no accent, just northern Cal. "Listen, this isn't really a gun play, Bishop, awright? Our guy just wants you to come with us, no problem. It's not a killing thing. Really."

  "Come on, come on, let's go," said the arm breaker. "You wanna do this on your feet or on your face?"

  "Is this guy, like, an intern or something?" Bishop asked the brown-skinned gunman.

  The brown-skinned gunman laughed.

  That made the arm breaker angry. Twitching, looking this way and that, he moved in on Bishop. "Oh yeah. Give me an excuse. Make me happy. Give me a reason to put you down."

  Bishop took his gun away and smacked him in the nose with it.

  "Ow!" said the arm breaker. "Jesus! Fuck!" He grabbed his face with his hand. Blood flowed out of his nose, ran between his fingers.

  The brown-skinned gunman sighed. "Morris, you are such a fucking knucklehead."

  "Oh. Oh shit," said Morris, cupping his hands under his nose to catch the blood.

  Bishop gave Morris's Glock to the brown-skinned gunman. "Thanks," the brown-skinned gunman said. He slipped it into the pocket of his windbreaker, still shaking his head. "You ready?" he asked Bishop.

  "Whatever," said Bishop. "If we're going, let's go."

  13.

  The windows in the limo's backseat were blacked out: the side windows and the rear window and the glass partition that sealed off the front. They were all blacked out so Bishop couldn't see where they were going. That's why they'd come for him at gunpoint probably. Bishop wouldn't have gotten into a blind spot like that if he hadn't been at the point of a gun.

  Morris, the knucklehead, was driving, out of sight. He'd been casting a lot of dark looks at Bishop ever since Bishop had busted his nose, so Bishop was glad to be rid of him. The brown-skinned gunman rode in the back. The kid knew what he was doing. He sat against the opposite door, as far from Bishop as possible. He held the gun close to his waist, pointed at Bishop but out of Bishop's reach. Bishop knew if he tried to take it, he'd be blown into the middle of next Thursday.

  The brown-skinned gunman didn't say anything. He didn't even seem to be watching Bishop, although Bishop knew he was. After a while it sort of got to Bishop, sitting back there with no one talking, nothing to look at.

  Just to break the silence, he said, "So is this about Adalian?"

  The brown-skinned gunman didn't answer.

  But it was. It was about Adalian. About half an hour after they started out, Bishop felt the limo slow, heard the growl of a motor, an electric door being rolled back. The car bumped forward and the door rumbled closed behind it. The car stopped and the brown-skinned gunman said, "Let's go."

  Bishop stepped out into a windowless warehouse. Shelves stacked with brown boxes lined the wall. There was a man with a clipboard talking to a man sitting on a forklift. Other than that, the place was empty.

  Morris got out of the driver's seat. He was still giving Bishop dark looks. His nose was swollen and red. His lips were puffy. The dark looks just made his face ridiculous, like the face of an angry child. He drew his Glock again. The brown-skinned gunman had given it back to him after Bishop took it away.

  The three men walked across the concrete floor, their footsteps echoing. Bishop and the brown-skinned gunman walked side by side. Morris walked behind them with both his gun barrel and his dark looks trained on Bishop's spine. They reached a white door. The brown-skinned gunman knocked. Someone inside said, "Yeah?" The brown-skinned gunman opened the door and stood back to let Bishop enter.

  He came into a small office. It was crowded with metal shelves. The shelves were stacked with books and papers. There was only one man in the room and it was Adalian. He was standing behind a scarred wooden desk, holding a piece of paper up in front of his reading glasses. He was a big, heavyset man who might have been athletic once but had gotten out of shape. He had a large head with black-and-silver hair. He had a hawklike face that was not quite handsome. His gray eyes had a certain flatness to them, like a one-way mirror on the mirrored side. He was about fifty-five years old.

  He was wearing slacks and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, a blue tie loosened at the neck. His jacket was draped over the back of a cheap office swivel chair. Ketchum had said he was the devil, but he didn't look like the devil to Bishop. He looked like a businessman, any self-made businessman. You could tell just by his expression that he had that self-made businessman attitude, that bristling certainty about himself: Hey, if I'm not right all the time, how come I've made so much money? That's the sort of guy he looked like to Bishop, not the devil at all.

  Adalian glanced up from the page he was reading. He looked at Bishop over the top of his glasses-and got a load of Morris's throbbing red beezer out of the corner of his eye. "What the hell happened to you?" he asked the arm breaker.

  Morris could only answer with a lame gesture.

  "I broke his nose," said Bishop helpfully. "He was getting on my nerves."

  "Oh yeah? What was he, talking tough?"

  "Yeah-and badly."

  "I know. He does that."

  "Threatened to feed me my knees."

  "Feed you your knees?" said Adalian. He peered over his glasses at Morris now. "Does that even mean anything? What does that even mean?"

  Morris could only make the same lame gesture.

  Adalian sighed. "I don't know. What can I tell you?" he said to Bishop.

  Bishop nodded in sympathy. "Good thugs are hard to find nowadays."

  "You can say that again." Bishop didn't, and Adalian held a hand out toward a chair in front of his desk, an old steel-framed chair with torn green cushioning. "Have a seat," he said. "You smell like shit,
by the way."

  "Thanks. I've been in lockup for two days. Your boys didn't give me a chance to shower." Bishop lowered himself into the chair.

  Adalian lifted his sharp chin to the gunmen. Bishop glanced over his shoulder to see them leaving, closing the door. As he did, he caught a whiff of himself. He did smell like shit, it was true.

  When he faced front, Adalian was settling his big out-of-shape body into the swivel chair on the other side of the scarred wooden desk. He peeled his glasses off and tossed them down onto the blotter. "So," he said. "You saved my son's life. That was my son-the whiny little dickhead-you saved his life in county."

  "Right. So I heard."

  "So I owe you." Adalian gave him a hawklike glance from under one bushy white eyebrow. "What do you want?"

  "That's a pretty big question."

  "Give a big answer, then." He gestured at the shabby little office as if it held a glittering display of worldly pleasures. "Anything you're likely to think of I can probably supply."

  "Thanks, but I don't really need anything."

  "That's not what I asked you." Adalian leaned forward, forearms on the edge of the desk, hands together, fingers intertwined: the pose of a captain of industry eye-locking an underling for a heart-to-heart. "You wanna hear what I know about you? You wanna hear what the word is about you on the street?"

  Bishop shrugged.

  "You were military," Adalian said. "Some kind of bigtime black-ops killer shit, no one knows what. But you got all the weapons skills and hand-to-hand skills. Plus you can fly pretty much anything. Plus you can drive pretty much anything. All things being equal, you oughta be a valuable player, government, private, whatever you want. The only problem is you're all psycho inside-I guess 'cause of the war shit and everything. So you got yourself into some small-time trouble, broke into a house, kidnapped a family, whatever. And Weiss, back when he was a cop, let you off with a beating, right? 'Cause you've got all those medals, and everyone knows Weiss is Mr. Born on the Fourth of July and all that shit. So now you're his lapdog, running around helping old ladies across the street or whatever it is you do for him. A private eye. They still call it that? Whatta you, take pictures of jerks fucking other jerks' wives, shit like that?" Adalian parted his hands, an almost priestly gesture. "Hey. To each his own. Don't get me wrong. And I know Weiss. We all know Weiss. I like him. I admire him. Hell, he put me away for seven months once, and it was my own judge on the bench at the time. Guy's incorruptible-plus some good friends of mine make a lot of money off his hooker habit. No, listen, really, if I had another life, I'd wanna come back as a guy like Weiss. I really would."