Shotgun Alley

by Andrew Klavan

  That evening, when he stepped out of the concrete tower that housed the agency, Weiss paused in the shadows of its entranceway and scanned the street, Market Street. It was late, nearing seven, but a summer’s day, still light. The banks were closed and the shops were closing, but the pavement was still loud with footsteps, the air still grumbled with car engines, and the wires overhead still snapped and sizzled as the electric streetcars went rattling by underneath. The last of the rush hour pedestrians flowed homeward, pooling at the bus stops, eddying at the corner traffic lights. Weiss stood in the entranceway a long moment, his features in darkness, his eyes bright as he studied the passersby.

  He’d seen mug shots of Fry—we’d all seen them in those weeks after the North Wilderness Assault. But he had no idea if it would be Fry himself who would come after him or if he would send some minion or come in disguise or if he would come at all. He had no idea what he was looking for, in other words.

  A bent, wizened old black woman hobbled along the sidewalk as he watched; then a young black woman came striding up, plump and shapely. There were two youthful Asian men in suits and ties, walking together; a youthful white man and a youthful black man standing in hail-fellow conversation; a middle-aged white man with a frown and a briefcase, marching as to war. Any one of them could’ve been the one who was watching him. All of them. None of them. He just didn’t know.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Weiss murmured aloud finally. He was a tough old bird. He wasn’t used to feeling helpless like this. It gave him a panicky sensation in his throat, as if he were strangling on his own paranoia. The whole business was starting to get to him.

  With a shudder, he moved resolutely out of the shadows, into the balmy evening and the failing light. He headed for home.

  Nine

  I will remake you into your body. Lips and nipples and clefts. You will have no hopes, no anxieties. No thoughts, no philosophy. Only flesh, only sensation. I will sprinkle spring grass in your hair, Marianne, and force my tongue into your mouth; pour wine into the hollow of your throat and drink it as it spills down between your breasts and over your belly; I’ll slide my cock easy into you and rub velvety rose petals against your clit…

  “And I’ll be the king of Romania,” Weiss murmured, raising the whiskey to his lips again.

  It was night now, a cool mist at the panes of the bay window. He sat in his favorite armchair, facing out on his view of the city, the Victorian town houses across the way, the haloed streetlamps on the steeply descending hill. He held his glass just beneath his nose, savored the stinging scent of the malt, the Macallan’s that he loved. He sipped the surface of it, then let his gaze return to the papers on his lap.

  They were the e-mails to Professor M. R. Brinks. The initials, it turned out, stood for Marianne Rose.

  The world doesn’t need any more professors, believe me, Marianne Rose. It doesn’t need any more lawyers, any more corporate queens or drones. But most of all, my darling, what the world doesn’t need is any more big thoughts, any more grand ideas or brilliant theories that are utterly convincing and utterly untrue, that chain the free-floating mind into tormented templates, self-fulfilling patterns of torturous and tortured lies. Why do you cling to them, woman? To your theoretical religion? Is it because actions themselves aren’t beautiful? Is it because you can’t tolerate the intensity of sensation, the moment of desire? The moment of desire, Marianne! That’s what you’re yearning for, you know it is. The world is sick of the sight of you cowering behind your tailored suits. The world craves you naked on your knees with your round ass and your wet purple pussy lifted to me. I crave you that way…

  “Foof,” said Weiss softly.

  He made a sardonic face to himself as if he were beyond these things. But the images stirred him. There was sweat on the back of his neck, and under the papers his cock was pressed hard against the front of his pants. He lifted his scotch again, lifted his eyes again. He didn’t drink but, for a long moment and then another moment more, he merely sat like that, merely looked out the bay window, unseeing.

  Aroused, his mind drifted back to Julie. To that video he had of her, that ten-second loop, a come-on for some kind of Internet site. He’d seen it often enough now so that he could run it in his imagination. She was crooking her finger at the camera, beckoning. Dressed in a lacy white outfit that was somehow prim and seductive at once. Her cheeks were pink and creamy, and her eyes were deep and blue. And there was an expression on her face—dreamy, distant, angelic—that squeezed poor Weiss’s heart every time he looked at it.

  He pressed his glass to the side of his face, felt the cool touch of it. He broke off his fantasies and let his hard-on subside before he dropped his gaze to the page in his lap again.

  Don’t try to sell your cant to me. You know I’m right, Marianne. You know I am. You’ve locked yourself in your dark ideas, hidden yourself away in a darkness of theories haunted by the twisted shadows of your desire. You think you hate your desires, but you only hate their twisted shadows. Crawl to me, and I will make you suffer and come until you’re only your body again. We’ll make love for slow hours and when you’re weary I’ll send you to gather young girls for me and you’ll lie by my side on the banks of a river and watch with me as they bathe and caress each others’ nakedness. Then I’ll go down into the water and be with them and you’ll watch without jealousy as they pleasure me and soon you yourself will be nothing but wetness and a craving ache. And then I’ll bring you down to the water too and you will be just one pussy in a row of pussies…

  Weiss blustered like a horse, set the pages aside, tossed them onto the lampstand beside him with a dismissive gesture. Agitated, he stood. Carried his scotch to the center of the room. Paced to another window, peered out at another angle on the street, a glimpse over the building tops at the lights of Russian Hill.

  His own reflection overlay the scene. His unattractive, hangdog face. His focus shifted to it. He made a grimace of distaste.

  Then all at once his pulse skipped as he caught sight of a movement on the street below him. Something—someone—was watching him—there, at the corner to his right. He looked fast but no, there was no one—or whoever it was was gone. Probably nothing. An optical illusion. A late pedestrian he hadn’t noticed before. Still, he watched the corner a long moment, his heartbeat quick. He knew the man called Ben Fry would never stop hunting for her…

  He made a noise in his throat, “Ach.” He faced his reflection again, sneered into his own eyes. God, he hated this. Standing here afraid of movements in the dark. Scanning the dark for dangers and plots and conspiracies. It reminded him of his father. He hated to think there was any trace of that old-style Jewish faintheartedness in himself. Hell, he had kicked down doors in his time, traded gunfire with gangbangers. He didn’t need this shit.

  He thought: I should just forget her. It was ridiculous, embarrassing. What did he think he was up to, obsessing over sex thoughts about a woman he’d never met? Like some kind of kid, like some kind of twelve-year-old or something. At his age, he should be a man of substance. A husband, a father. At his age, mooning around, calling up whores—it wasn’t funny anymore. A person could die alone that way, without anyone to care at all about him. It was a pretty goddamned frightening thing to contemplate.

  He thought. I should find her. He wanted to get in his car right now, track her down, start looking at least. He could lose anyone who tried to tail him. He could handle the man called Ben Fry when the time came. He should at least make an effort instead of standing here like this.

  But he remembered what she had said to him.

  You can’t come to me. Do you understand? Do you? You would only bring him with you.

  If he made a mistake, if she died because of something he did…

  He turned away from the window, undecided. He looked over at the pages on the lampstand, the e-mails to Professor Brinks.

  The world craves you naked on your knees…

  No, he couldn’t go on with
those tonight. It was too much. They were beginning to get under his skin.

  He went into the bedroom. Turned on the TV. Lay back on the bed, holding his scotch glass on his stomach with one hand, the remote control in the other. He watched the sports news for the baseball scores. He left the light off. It was dark except for the wavering glow from the set. He thought: I ought to go find her. But he couldn’t make up his mind. The Giants had won again—third time in a row. Weiss’s mind drifted.

  The world craves you naked on your knees with your round ass and your wet purple pussy lifted to me…

  He could see Julie Wyant like that.

  “Ach,” said Weiss again, disgusted with himself.

  He let go of the remote control and reached out for the phone on his bedside table. He called Casey and asked her to send over a girl.

  Ten

  The narrow road wound upward through the trees. Jim Bishop twisted the Harley Fat Boy down a gear, amping the throttle, taking the curves at speed. Visor up, he felt the cool air on his face. He felt the dappled shadows washing over him.

  The bike leaned hard into turn after turn. His hips leaned with it, his torso drawing over as counterweight. It felt to him as if it were all one motion, the bike and his body. He climbed higher and higher along the rutted switchback.

  Through the pines that clustered on the mountainside came glimpses of the bay below. The water lay broad and steely and bright in the still summer air. Sometimes as he climbed, Bishop caught sight of the orange towers of the Golden Gate Bridge shouldering their way out of the billowing fog that clung to the base of the headlands. Sometimes he caught sight of the city skyline across the water; against the distant backdrop of the aqua sky, it rose and fell like a kind of visible music.

  Bishop felt still and easy in himself, riding up the mountain. It always seemed good to him to be going fast.

  The Graham house appeared suddenly on his left. It was sunk down low off the road, the top of its slanting roof gray through the tree cover. Bishop swung his bike onto the driveway, corkscrewed steeply around and down into deeper shade. At the bottom of the drive was a three-car bay. Sputtering, the Harley came to a stop at the rear fender of an emerald green Z3. To the Beamer’s right was a silver Mercedes SL500. The third bay was empty. The third car, the wife’s car, was gone, Bishop thought. Graham wanted to meet with him alone.

  Bishop killed the engine, dismounted. In the sudden quiet, there was nothing but sparrow song and the rattle of the zippers on his open leather jacket. His black boots thudded heavily on the path of white gold slate that led him under the redwood branches. The boots thudded even louder on the patio tiles.

  He stood at the back door under the flat overhang of the roof. The inner door was open. The screen door rattled as he rapped his knuckles on the jamb.

  More quiet, more sparrow song. And then footsteps came clapping briskly on the tiles inside. It was Philip Graham himself who pulled back the screen to let him in.

  Graham was tall. He towered over Bishop. He had a blocky build, wide at the waist and the shoulders, but he was trim and fit, a fellow who spent plenty of time at the gym. His hair—even now, here, in private—was as perfect as it was in the newspaper photos. Rich, full, red-brown, it looked as if it had been combed into place one strand at a time. He was in his late forties, but his features were youthful, vigorous. He had a lot of chin especially, which made him appear forthright. His big rimless glasses magnified his eyes and gave them a perpetual expression of startled disapproval, like a minister frozen in the moment he caught his wife with another man. He was dressed casually—in khaki slacks and a yellow polo shirt—but nothing about him was casual. He shook hands as if he were going for the state handshaking championship.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said brusquely. He looked straight into Bishop’s eyes as he said it. “Come on inside.”

  The house’s interior was several million dollars’ worth of rustic simplicity. Graham led Bishop across a sprawling living room of aged tile floors and raw wood ceiling beams. As they went, Bishop scoped a massive fireplace and shapely furniture set against stone-faced walls and broad windows.

  “I’m sorry to drag you up here on a Sunday morning like this,” Graham was saying. “I figured this way we’d have some time alone together. Obviously I don’t want anything put in writing or said over the phone.”

  At the far end of the room, he drew open a sliding glass panel. The two men stepped out onto a broad deck. Now they were looking down the mountainside at a panorama of the bay, from the pillowy fog round the Golden Gate across the sweep of the San Francisco skyline to the red roofs and white stone of the campus in Berkeley.

  Graham showed Bishop to a cushioned chair. Bishop sat with the sparkling vista at his shoulder. He waited while Graham fussed at a round wrought iron table, stacking the papers he’d been working on, shutting down his laptop. Then Graham poured two glasses of ice water—everything done with precise motions, with thin-lipped concentration. He gave one of the glasses to Bishop and sat down with the other in his own chair, facing him.

  Bishop drank a little, slouching, his legs stretched out, his motorcycle boots crossed at the ankle. He hadn’t shaved that morning and there was sandy stubble on his jaw. He looked surly and defiant and he knew it. He wondered if it bothered the straitlaced Graham. For no particular reason, he sort of hoped it did.

  He lit a cigarette. He liked the way Graham’s eyes flicked to it, disapproving. He blew the smoke out nice and slow.

  “So—” Graham cleared his throat. “You’ve found my daughter.”

  Bishop nodded. “She’s with a motorcycle outlaw named Randolph Tweedy. He goes by the name of Cobra.”

  Graham lifted his forthright chin at that, then let it fall. He turned to stare blankly out at the bay. “Cobra,” he said softly. “Now there’s a name to warm a father’s heart. ‘Daddy, I’d like you to meet Cobra.’ And I take it when you say she’s ‘with’ this Tweedy, you mean…”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

  Graham went on contemplating the view. He shook his head. “Incredible.”

  But after a few more seconds of silence, he straightened decisively. He faced Bishop again, his elbows on the chair arms. He rubbed his hands together and finally clasped them. Raised his index fingers in a steeple. Tapped the steeple thoughtfully against his thin, frowning lips.

  “All right,” he said, all business now. “I hired you to find her and you did. Good job. So here we are. My wife and our other daughters won’t be back from church for at least an hour. Let’s hear what you’ve got. And please don’t waste any time sugarcoating it, whatever it is. Just get to the point, tell it straight.”

  “Good enough,” said Bishop, with his mocking smile. He rolled his cigarette hand over, showing the open palm, as if to say he would hide nothing. “Bottom line, Tweedy’s a bad guy.”

  “I already guessed that.”

  “Yeah. But he’s a very bad guy.”

  “You mean he has a criminal record.”

  “Nah. Not much. Mostly piddly-shit biker stuff. Disturbing the peace, drug possession. You know. But his rep is hardcore. Hardcore. As in, two years ago he was booted out of the Hell’s Angels because they thought he was too unstable, too violent. You understand what that’s like? That’s like…” Bishop searched for a way to phrase it.

  Graham said, “I understand.”

  “It’s like getting kicked out of Los Angeles for being too shallow.”

  “Yes, I understand. Go on.”

  “The word is he has a jones for violent crime. Home invasion, armed robbery, carjack—the sort of caper that tends to irritate your average lawman, draws his attention, if you see what I mean. On top of that, Cobra’s got a bad habit of going off on short notice. That’s why his handle’s Cobra, ’cause he strikes like that. You know: snap, you got a dead civilian on your hands; snap, he pounds some gas jockey into a sack of broken bones. There’s one story he stabbed an Arizona traffic cop with a bayonet
just for giving him the usual biker hassle. That stuff’s no good for the regular gangs. It means manhunts, APBs. They don’t need that kind of aggravation. It interferes with them selling drugs and kicking the shit out of each other and so on.”

  No reaction from Graham behind his lifted forefingers. Only the rise and fall of his polo shirt as he breathed.

  “What else can I tell you? He’s charismatic,” Bishop went on. “Smart, funny, charming. And he’s got a nice little line in horseshit philosophy which—” The ladies seem to like, he almost said. But he remembered in the nick of time that they were talking about Graham’s daughter. He took a drag on his cigarette to cover the hesitation. Blew the smoke out and said, “Which, you know, attracts people to him. Right now, he’s got a gang of four or five guys pretty much like himself. Bikers the clubs didn’t want, couldn’t handle. People call them the Outriders because they’re barred from the gangs. But they don’t wear a name of their own. Cobra’s careful about that. He wants to keep it informal. No charter, no patch. Obviously he doesn’t want any trouble with the Angels, or with any of the others. My guess is he’s got his own thing going on and he doesn’t want it screwed up with any gang warfare.”

  “His own thing going on,” said Graham sourly. “You mean like robberies and carjacks and…snap.”

  Bishop gave a wave of his cigarette. “I haven’t found that out yet.”

  Graham’s hands settled to his armrests now. He gripped the rests so that the muscles on his forearms corded. His mouth twisted in a sneer of distaste, just a quick one, there and gone. That was it. After all the bad news, that was all the emotion he showed.

  Bishop was impressed with that. He respected it. Graham came off as kind of a stiff, but he was a pretty cool case when you got down to business. It wasn’t just his daughter at stake here. There was a political angle, too. Graham was a businessman, ran his own investment firm, had lots of cash, family cash, cash of his own. But he was ambitious. He wanted to run for U.S. Senate next year. And according to Weiss he had a pretty good chance of winning. Bishop couldn’t remember just then if he was a Democrat or a Republican or what he stood for. He couldn’t’ve cared less. He had no interest in politics himself—true believers made him laugh. Still, he could appreciate the problem: It wasn’t likely to help Graham’s campaign any if his daughter got herself busted in the company of a bunch of violent sociopaths. This was a tough spot for the guy. He had a lot on the line. Bishop respected him for taking it like a man.