Shotgun Alley

by Andrew Klavan

  Then he was up, he was on his knees, scanning the darkness wildly. He found him, found Cobra. Cobra was down.

  The silver chopper hadn’t stopped in time. It had hit the curb head-on and flown forward. Cobra stayed in the saddle, riding over a black rainbow of empty air. He and the motorcycle came crashing down together into the vacant lot that fronted the water. His rear tire blew. The bike whirled away from him. Cobra was hurled across the lot’s broken concrete. The machine gun, which had been strapped to his shoulder, tore loose, tumbled into the rubble. Cobra rolled, and when Bishop saw him, he had come to rest on his back, spread eagle. He was lying still, one hand extended toward the weapon, the weapon inches out of reach.

  Bishop, rattled, struggled to his feet. He felt dazed and dull. He felt the stinging scrapes on his forehead, on his hands. He felt a line of hot blood touch the corner of his eye, running down.

  He heard the sirens baying. They were coming closer. He sensed the cop cars searching the area, saw their red, rotating glow begin to tinge the mist. He saw the mangled wreckage of the chopper in the vacant lot. He saw the downed biker splayed out beside it. The gun. He saw where the lot ended beyond them and went down over a dirt hump into blackness, the blackness of the water. He made out the gnarled shapes of what had been piers and posts out there. They rose above the gently lapping surf, above rippling reflections of moonlight and city light that surged and ebbed under the red mist’s drifting tendrils.

  Now, as Bishop stood there, he heard Cobra moan where he lay. He saw the outlaw shift slightly, his chest rise and fall. He was still alive.

  Some sort of choking thrill, some sort of choking urgency, rose from Bishop’s chest to his throat. But he didn’t know what he was thinking. He wasn’t thinking anything. He just knew Cobra was still alive and he knew he had to get to the HK first. That’s all.

  He started forward. He moved wearily, stiffly. His body felt hollow and strangely precarious, as if something had been knocked loose inside it. But he didn’t hurt much yet; nothing had been broken, he could move. He stepped up onto the curb. He walked over the rubble toward the outlaw and the weapon.

  He was a step away when Cobra stretched his arm out, fast, and seized the machine gun with one hand.

  Bishop reacted on the instant. He kicked. His boot struck Cobra’s wrist, and the gun skittered over the gravel. He jammed his own hand into his jacket pocket, felt for his .38.

  Cobra twisted off the ground and lunged at him. Grabbed his legs. Brought him down.

  Bishop grunted as his back hit the concrete, as the air rushed out of him. He had his gun half drawn, but he lost it—it was knocked from his grasp—as he struck the earth. Cobra was on top of him, was clawing his way up him to strike a crippling blow. With pulsing desperation, Bishop realized he was about two seconds away from dead.

  He lifted his torso—like a man doing a sit-up. He caught Cobra as he came on. He glimpsed the outlaw’s contorted, striving face and drove his stiffened fingers into it. He was aiming for Cobra’s eye. He was close enough. Cobra let out a high-pitched scream and tried to recoil. Bishop grabbed him by the hair, struck again, hammering the heel of his palm into his nose. Blood burst out from under Bishop’s hand, spit over Cobra’s cheeks. Cobra screamed and wrenched himself away, rolling and stumbling across the lot.

  Bishop rolled in the opposite direction. He jumped to his feet. There was no time to look for the gun. Cobra was on his feet, too, crouching low, pissed off and coming at him. Blood was pouring from the outlaw’s nose, running down over his mouth. He grinned at Bishop and the blood stained his teeth. His emerald eyes were shining in the night.

  Bishop grinned back at him. There were sirens growing louder in the air all around them. There were red flashes growing brighter, coming closer. But Bishop didn’t hear or see them anymore—them or the night or the skyline or the glimmering water, either. He saw Cobra, Cobra’s crouching body, his grinning, bloody face. He felt his own body coiling and full of clean fire, perfect for the task at hand.

  The two men circled for a second, then Bishop went in. His kick to Cobra’s knee snapped out and back like a whip, and though somehow Cobra managed to dodge the worst of it, Bishop followed after it, jabbing and slashing with his open hands. He felt his fingertips sink into the soft flesh of Cobra’s throat and felt his elbow sweeping across the mess of blood beneath Cobra’s nose. He felt his boot, in tight now, driving down into Cobra’s instep and then his knee coming up into Cobra’s groin.

  And it felt good. It felt good as good to hurt the other man. He was in a place inside himself of blazing light and high silence, immensely present in a sweet, white killing zone. He felt invincible and murderous and fine. This—the destruction of his rival—seemed to him everything he had wanted forever. He attacked and attacked with a sense of pure release, as if he were the energy blasting out of an atom.

  And now Cobra was on the ground, gagging and bleeding. Scrabbling across the gravel—like a beetle, thought Bishop in triumphant scorn. Bishop, pale-eyed, dreamy-eyed, was stalking after him—slowly, relentlessly, stoked and stoned on the rush of violence, on the pleasure of watching his enemy crawling and then staggering in a panic to get away.

  Bishop, implacable, pursued him step by step. As he came, he caught—or thought he caught—a whiff of something, a dense and floral scent drifting beneath his nostrils, a smell so achingly sensual it nearly made his eyes roll with the pleasure of it. He knew what it was. It was Honey. It was the way she had smelled lying next to him in bed, fresh from sex, her perfume mingled with her sweat. It came back to him and she was almost there, he could almost feel the touch of her, almost hear her whispering to him, whispering, If Cobra dies, we can be together…we can be together, if Cobra dies…

  In that moment—that moment when Bishop lost his focus—Cobra scuttled suddenly slantwise, found his lost machine gun, and grabbed it.

  Bishop moved fast. He was on the other man in an instant. He drove his boot into Cobra’s side. Cobra grunted and went over. He hit the ground hard and rolled. He was at the edge of the dirt mound beyond the vacant lot, and then he was over it, rolling down the dirt slope, tumbling into the water. He landed on his face with a splash. He fought to his hands and knees, gagging and retching salt sea and blood. The gentle surf rose and fell around him. He gasped for breath, then gagged and retched again.

  Bishop was still coming on. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of his .38. He bent and swept it up and kept walking to the top of the dirt mound. He planted his feet. He lifted his gun in an outstretched arm and aimed it at Cobra below.

  Cobra was still on all fours down there in the water. Up to his ass and shoulders in the shimmering Basin tide. Bishop looked at him in disdain from on high. Calmly, he aligned the gun barrel with the outlaw’s head. Once more, he smelled Honey. He felt her flesh against his flesh.

  If Cobra dies, we can be together…

  Bishop’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  On his hands and knees, Cobra turned to look at him. He saw the bore of the weapon trained on his face. He smiled. He nodded and smiled as if he knew it all, understood it all, even to that faint woman-scent at Bishop’s nostrils.

  “Go ahead,” the outlaw shouted. “She’s worth it.”

  “I know,” Bishop shouted back.

  Cobra laughed and Bishop laughed, and the two men understood each other.

  But for another second, Bishop held his fire. He didn’t know why. His finger squeezed the trigger, but not quite hard enough. Another second went by and another. Still, Bishop didn’t fire.

  We can be together, he thought.

  He thought, Don’t cross the line.

  That was the end of it somehow. Somehow, in that last moment, he came to himself on a trembling breath. He blinked. His homicidal smile faltered.

  “Fuck!” he whispered—as if he were his own better angel stumbling in horror on the scene.

  His gun hand grew unsteady. For a few more seconds, as Cobra grinned up at
him, he wrestled with the impulse to shoot him dead. He frowned, half convinced it was a weakness in him not to just blow this useless piece of biker trash away.

  But it would be murder. With the guy just kneeling there, helpless like that. It would be cold-blooded murder. And Weiss—fucking Weiss—would never forgive him for it.

  “Oh hell,” he muttered.

  His trigger finger relaxed. His arm began to lower. The impulse to destruction passed like drunken madness. That was it, that was all. He was himself again. He was going to walk away from this. He was going to walk away from Honey and the killing passion and the entire business. And as for Cobra, fuck him. He would leave him to the cops. He would leave him to the law of the land.

  Cobra, panting, smiling up the hill, was witness to Bishop’s moment of recovery. He seemed to understand this, too, to understand the whole thing. His body buckled with relief. His features flooded with comprehension and even a kind of inspired gratitude. It was an event on the order of the religious, of the miraculous. He’d been about to die like the dog he was, die as he deserved, and in an instant of unlooked-for redemption, he’d been spared.

  He rose up onto his knees as if to sing in thanks and praise and hallelujah—and instead yanked the machine gun up out of the sand and seized the opportunity to open fire.

  The HK sent a burst and then another burst of bullets into the night as Cobra swept it around in one hand to bring the flaming barrel to bear on Bishop’s chest.

  Bishop let out a cry of surprise and fear. In a panic, he pulled the trigger of his pistol six times with lightning speed.

  Only one of the slugs from the .38 hit Cobra, but it hit him smack in the face. His sharp, arched, craggy features seemed to implode into the red-black hole. The light went out of his eyes and his gun hand flew up and the HK discharged harmlessly toward the sky.

  Then the outlaw tumbled sideways. He crashed down into the water. The surf bubbled and churned and closed over him. His body sank beneath the waves.

  Another moment and he was out of sight. Bishop lowered his arm to his side. He hung his head.

  The mist went scarlet and dark, scarlet and dark around him. The air was full of sirens. There were doors, car doors, opening, shutting. There were heavy shoes tramping over the broken cement.

  By the time the cops reached Bishop at the top of the mound, Cobra was gone. There was nothing left below them but the plash and recession of the moonlit tide.

  Part Four

  The Dead in the Water

  Thirty-Six

  Weiss moved heavily through the rain. He pulled his collar up. He hunched down inside his trenchcoat. He didn’t have a hat, so the water matted his salt-and-pepper hair, ran into the folds of his saggy cheeks like tears.

  It was a miserable rain, thin, steady, cold. It carried the pungent smell of fallen leaves in it, the first whiff of autumn. He had parked a full block away, the only space he could find. By the time he reached the old white brick building, the legs of his pants were soaked; his skin felt clammy. He pulled the wood-framed glass doors open and was grateful to step inside.

  At the elevator, he pinched his coat and shook it. The excess water puddled on the marble foyer floor. He slid back the old-fashioned elevator cage. He got in and it rattled shut. As the box ground upward, he stood gazing at the sinking walls, his hands in his trenchcoat pockets. His hangdog face was impassive. His sad eyes were distant. He felt the low boil of anxiety in his belly, but what the hell. There were a lot of things to worry about just now and not a damn thing he could do about any of them.

  Bishop was irritated the minute he saw Weiss in his doorway—standing there gigantic and dripping wet, his eyes full of sorrow. That’s what annoyed Bishop most: that look of pity Weiss lugged around with him like a suitcase. Bishop read it as pity, anyway—pity for all mankind, which was idiotic enough, and pity for him personally, which just pissed him the fuck off. It meant they hadn’t found the body yet. Which sucked, all right—and Weiss being all compassionate about it only made it worse.

  Bishop grunted a greeting, turned away. Walked back to the table by the window, leaving Weiss to come in behind him. Well, he was edgy to begin with. But his boss was the only man on earth who could get under his skin like this just by showing up.

  Weiss stripped his coat off, draped it over a chair. The water dripped from it, pattered on the wood floor. He felt chilled and uncomfortable in his damp clothes. But then, he didn’t feel all that comfortable just being here, under the circumstances.

  “Crap day,” he said.

  Bishop didn’t answer. He plunked down into one of the chairs by the table. He snatched up his cigarette box, snatched a cigarette, lit it.

  Weiss watched him, read his temper and his nerves. Winced to see the angry bruises on his face and hands. Purple stains in the flesh, spreading out, becoming yellow stains. As Weiss lumbered toward him, he saw the deep rings, too, under his hollow, sleepless eyes.

  Poor bastard, he thought.

  He sank into the table’s other chair with a heavy sigh.

  Oh, fuck Weiss, thought Bishop. And his pity and his sighs.

  He inhaled smoke fiercely, blew it out fiercely. “What, they still can’t find him?”

  “I know,” said Weiss. “It’s crazy shit. They dragged the Basin all yesterday, even a couple hours this morning before the weather went south.”

  Bishop gave a snort of disgust.

  “They figure either he was swept out to sea somehow or—” Weiss’s shoulders lifted and fell.

  “Or what? He hailed a cab? I shot him in the face.”

  “Maybe the sharks got him. I don’t know.”

  “The cops were there in less than a minute.”

  “Right, that’s the thing. So maybe he swam for it.”

  “He didn’t swim for it. He was too dead to swim for it. I shot him in the fucking face, Weiss.”

  “What can I tell you? It’s gotta be something.”

  “Jesus!” said Bishop. “Who’s Ketchum got on this? The Blind and Stupid Division?”

  “They’ll find him.”

  “Hey, it’s nothing to me. The man’s dead. He’s plenty dead. Just be nice if the Keystone Kops could manage to fish him out of the seaweed, that’s all. I’d like to be able to move on with my life, sleep with both eyes closed for a change.”

  He turned away after that so Weiss couldn’t see how wired he was, how uncool. Because all that stuff about moving on with his life, sleeping with both eyes closed and so on—that was bullshit, a smoke screen. It was all about the girl, really. And he didn’t want Weiss to read his expression and see just how much the girl had gotten to him. Weiss could do that, too, look into people’s minds like that. It was even more annoying than his universal pity.

  Weiss looked out the window, meanwhile, so Bishop could suffer in private. The girl must’ve really gotten to him, he thought. Why else would he care if Tweedy’s body was found? That stuff about moving on with his life, sleeping with his eyes closed, that was bullshit. He seemed sure enough that the biker was meat. Wouldn’t be afraid of him if he was still alive, either.

  No, it was Honey Graham who was really frightened. Philip Graham had been calling the Agency almost by the hour, asking if there was any word. He said his daughter was terrified, convinced that Tweedy was still alive, that he would come after her, kill her. The father sounded pretty nervous himself. He had the girl under heavy guard, and he was talking about getting her out of the country before long.

  So unless Tweedy was found—unless the Grahams were convinced he was dead for sure—Bishop would never get anywhere near the girl again. That had to be the reason he was on edge like this.

  Weiss watched the rain course down the glass in waves. It blurred the scene outside: the steel gray sky, the stretch of wet avenue. It blurred the smiling woman on the billboard advertisement for the bank so that she seemed like the hazy dream of a woman.

  What the hell is she so happy about? Weiss wondered.

 
“Ketchum doesn’t think all that highly of you, either, if the truth is known,” he said aloud.

  Bishop faced him, pulling hard on his cigarette again. “Well, that’s not news. What’s his problem this time?”

  “He says you should’ve warned him about the blade. Says you wanted the takedown to go sour. Says you were looking for an excifse to blow Cobra away.”

  “That’s crap.”

  “He’s been snarling at me all morning about it.”

  “It’s crap,” Bishop said. “Why the hell would I want to do that?”

  Weiss shrugged. But that wasn’t good enough for Bishop. His voice grew harsher, more challenging.

  “I mean it. Why does Ketchum think I’d do that? Fucking cop is on me all the time.”

  “It’s true. He is,” Weiss answered gently. “And he doesn’t even know about the Graham girl yet.”

  Bishop felt the heat rise in his face. So Weiss already understood the whole deal, understood about the girl and everything. It made Bishop feel sour inside. If Weiss knew about that, then, being Weiss, he’d probably also figured out what the gunfight at the edge of the Basin was like. He probably even knew the thoughts that had gone through Bishop’s mind and the way his finger had tightened on the trigger and maybe even about the smell of perfume and sex that had seemed to drift by him. It made Bishop sour to think that Weiss knew about all that.

  Weiss rumbled to his feet now. He put a big hand on Bishop’s shoulder, clutched it. “Listen. They’ll find him,” he said again.

  Bishop felt the heat in his cheeks, the sourness all through him. “Sure.”

  Weiss walked to the chair where his coat lay dripping. He lifted the coat and shrugged into it.

  Bishop pretended to ignore him. Pulled on his cigarette, acted as if he didn’t care what Weiss did or what he thought. Because why should he? Why should he give a shit what Weiss thought about anything?