Damnation Street

by Andrew Klavan

  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."

  Bishop nodded politely, but he didn't believe it for a second. He thought if Adalian had another life, he'd want to come back as Adalian only with even more money.

  "But let's be realistic here," Adalian went on. He sat back now in his chair, hooking a thumb in his belt, making little motions in the air with his free hand. "I'm not that guy. And—and this is the point I'm getting to—neither are you. I mean, come on, what is that? What kind of small-ball life is that for a big-league player like yourself? Are you starting to see what I'm saying?"

  "No," said Bishop.

  "I'm saying you should be working for me."

  Well, this was a day full of surprises. Bishop wasn't expecting that at all. "Oh," he said.

  "This," Adalian said, with another grand gesture at the crummy little room, "this is what you might call your natural habitat. Being my guy is the job you were born for. So I'm gonna give it to you. That's how I'm gonna pay you back for rescuing my piss puddle of a son."

  Bishop sat still, in his usual slouch, with his usual ironic half smile on his face. He gazed at Adalian's hawklike features through his pale eyes and gave nothing away. But he was interested. He was thinking: Yeah. Maybe. Why not? He was out of work. He couldn't survive forever without a paycheck. He couldn't even survive a very small part of forever. And Adalian was probably right. This was probably the sort of thing he was made for in the end. It was like his fate catching up to him or something like that.

  "What kind of job are we talking about?" he asked.

  Adalian made that little motion—a little circular motion in the air—with his hand. "What do you mean what kind of job? A job for me. Doing what you do. Being who you are. Expressing your inner Bishop, whatever. Good money too. Real money. Genuine happy-time cash. Plus whatever else you feel like. Girls? I run girls'll suck your dick so hard, your socks'll come through it. You like to travel? I got business in Thailand, Russia, China now, the Middle East. Plus there'll be plenty of the kind of psycho violent stuff you get your rocks off on, and you won't have Weiss hanging over you, wagging his finger or whatever. Plus the next time that what's-his-name, the nigger, Ketchum—next time he rousts you, you can beat the living shit out of him on me, and he won't be able to do a goddamned thing about it. How's that sound?"

  Bishop was still sitting in that way he sat, still smiling that way he smiled. And the truth was, it sounded pretty good. The way he was feeling—fuck Weiss, fuck Ketchum, fuck everything—it sounded like just what the doctor ordered.

  "Come on, Bishop," Adalian said. "You don't belong with a guy like Weiss. Guys like Weiss, they mess with a man's head. They think they make the rules of the world. I mean, I'm talking philosophically here, if you can understand me. A guy like Weiss: you cut a man's heart out for the fucking government, he gets all misty-eyed, calls you a hero. You do it for me, suddenly you're the bad guy." He gave an elaborate shrug and made a sound with his lips like pffft. "Where the hell is that written? It's just him. It's just the way he looks at it. So you look at it another way; I look at it another way. So what? He got on you about that bitch, I'll bet, didn't he? That bitch in the papers who got charged with murder. I'll bet he got way down on you for that."

  For all his self-control, Bishop couldn't keep the answer from showing itself in his eyes. Not that Weiss had said anything to him about the girl, but he didn't have to. Bishop figured he knew where Weiss stood.

  Adalian pointed a finger at him and laughed. "Eh? Eh? What did I tell you? He gets in your head; he fucks with your brain. Weiss, see, he's not open-minded. He needs to be more open-minded. This is San Francisco, right? This is a very open-minded town. That's why I've done so well here."

  Bishop frowned, considering. He had often thought similar sorts of things himself.

  Adalian sat back in his chair, folded his hands over his belly as if he'd just finished a satisfying meal. "So what do you say? Good work. Good money. Good-bye bullshit. What's not to like?"

  Bishop wasn't sure why he hesitated. It wasn't anything that Ketchum had said about his dying in prison or anything. He was already pretty well sure he was going to die in prison one way or another. This way might be fun, at least. It sounded like his sort of thing. He took to heart what Adalian said about Weiss and his stifling rules and his dis- approving attitude. That had always bothered him. Still, he hesitated. This—this job Adalian was offering him—this was exactly what Weiss had been trying to keep him from. This was exactly where Weiss had seen him going when he'd dragged him o
ut under the Golden Gate Bridge that night and beat him senseless and advised him not to live out his life as a piece of shit. Bishop got pissed off at Weiss sometimes, but Weiss was all right, more or less. Somewhere deep down, he sort of hated to disappoint Weiss after Weiss had gone and made a project of him and everything.

  So he didn't answer right away. He sat there thinking.

  That made Adalian impatient. Adalian was a busy man. He only had so much time for this back-and-forth shit. You were either in or out. He leaned forward on the desk again. He dropped his voice to an intimate just-between-you-and-me tone. "Hey," he said. "Let me be frank with you on another score. Speaking strictly careerwise? Weiss is not exactly a long-term proposition anyway."

  Bishop shifted in his chair. He worked the corner of his lip under his teeth. "What do you mean?"

  "I'm just saying. If you're looking to invest in the future, his is limited."

  "What do you mean?" Bishop said again.

  "How clear do I have to be?" said Adalian.

  "Clear," said Bishop. "What do you mean? You mean there's a whack on him or something? There's a contract out on Weiss?"

  Adalian only shrugged, as much as to say, You said it, not me.

  Bishop fell silent again another second or two. This also was news. And it probably had a much different effect on him than Adalian intended. It bothered him. It bothered him more than he wanted to admit or even to feel. An electric sense of urgency fanned out from his belly, up through his chest. He was worried about Weiss, about Weiss getting whacked—just the sort of ordinary human emotion he never expected from himself, that always caught him off guard. Only his natural instinct for cool allowed him to speak in his usual ironic drawl. "Hell, what's that about? Is this because he put you away? You gonna whack him because of the seven months he put you away for?"

  "What?" said Adalian. "Oh no, hell no. I'm not like that. I'm not a spiteful person. Weiss did his job, that's all. Me, I move on, I look to tomorrow. This isn't about me."

  "So what's it about? What, did you hear this?"

  "Sure. A man in my position. You know, I pick things up; I hear things, yeah."

  "So it's a rumor," said Bishop. He was inclined to disbelieve it. Aside from the hookers, Weiss was clean. You never get hit if you're really clean, or almost never.

  Adalian still didn't really understand how this was working on Bishop. He thought if he could prove what he was saying, Bishop would see there was no future with Weiss and take the job with him. "You know the Frenchman?" he said.

  "The Belgian guy, sure."

  "I referred a guy to him."

  "So?"

  "A guy I know. A guy who did some work for me."

  "A specialist," said Bishop. "A whack guy..."

  "He was stocking up for a job."

  "Did he say it was Weiss?"

  Adalian slowly shook his head. "We didn't talk particulars." He relaxed back into his chair again, a little knowing smile on his lips like a cat sitting by an empty goldfish bowl. He waited for Bishop to figure it out.

  And Bishop did figure it out, some of it anyway. He figured out which specialist they were talking about. He knew how much Weiss wanted the guy, and he knew how much the specialist wanted Weiss. He knew about the missing whore too, some of it. He knew the whore was between them. He knew if they were going to come down to it, it was going to be over the whore.

  Bishop went on looking ironic, looking cool. But he felt that urgency spreading through him, growing deeper. He felt something else as well. He was irritated. He was pissed off—pissed off at Weiss. If the specialist was gunning for him, then Weiss must've made a move to find the whore. That's what the specialist was waiting for; that's the only thing that would bring him out into the open. What the hell was Weiss thinking? Did he think he could take this mutt down, finish it off between them—and maybe get a couple of flutter-eyed thanks from the whore in the bargain? That would be stupid. Stupid? It would be fucking nuts. Weiss was a street cop, a door-to-door desk-and-paper man. Tough and all that, fine up against some liquor-store shooter. But not this guy. He was no match for this guy. Man-to-man against the specialist, he would get himself killed and the whore probably with him.

  Adalian was still stuck on the other thing, the thing about the job. "So what do you think?" he said, breaking into Bishop's thoughts. "You're my guy now, right? I pay you back for my piss-head kid; you work for me and get the life you were made for. Yes? No? What do you say?"

  Bishop stood up. The second he saw it—saw the way Bishop stood—Adalian understood his mistake. He threw his hands up and let them fall until they slapped the chair arms. He made a big show of gaping at Bishop with an open mouth. "Oh, come on," he said. "Don't tell me."

  Bishop made a little gesture of regret, a lifting of the hand, a shrug. He would've liked to take the job. He really would've. "You can consider us clear for your kid," he said. "You paid me back with the tip on Weiss, the stuff about the Frenchman."

  "Aw, come on, Bishop," Adalian said. "Whatta you think you're doing? You think you're gonna stop this. You're not gonna stop this. Believe me. I know this guy. This guy did work for me. He'll kill you, Bishop, even you, so help me. What do you think? You think you're gonna, like, redeem yourself? Make good with Weiss over the girl? Save his life, get back in his good graces. Believe me. This guy will plain kill you. You and Weiss both."

  "I'll see you, Adalian," Bishop said.

  "I'll see you. I'll identify your body, how's that? And don't expect any help from me with the Frenchman either. You're on your own there."

  Bishop only lifted his chin by way of farewell. He walked to the door.

  "And take that shower," Adalian said behind him. "I'm serious. You fucking stink. You dumb fuck."

  Bishop waved without looking back. He stepped out into the main bay of the warehouse. The limo was still there, waiting for him. The brown-skinned gunman was leaning against the hood, smoking a cigarette. The other gunman, the arm breaker, Morris, he was nowhere to be seen—and then suddenly he was. Suddenly he stepped out of a shadow along the wall at Bishop's shoulder. He was hunched and angry-eyed, his bruised face flushed. He had his Glock drawn. He had it pressed close to his side, the bore leveled at Bishop.

  "This isn't over between you and me," he snarled. "We'll settle up and it's gonna cost you in blood."

  Bishop took his gun away and smacked him in the nose with it. He left him writhing and screaming on the ware- house floor and walked over to the brown-skinned gunman. He handed the brown-skinned gunman Morris's gun.

  "Drive me back to my place," he said. "I got stuff to do."

  14.

  Weiss hit Hannock that same day and started tailing a man named Andy Bremer. He hated following people. It was boring and sleazy. You sat in a car and drank coffee till you needed to piss so badly you thought it would kill you. Then, without fail, just as you decided to go find a bathroom somewhere, your subject started moving and you had to hold it in and go after him. Finally, your bladder on fire, you ended up watching the poor bastard try to steal something he shouldn't steal or buy something he shouldn't buy or fuck someone he shouldn't fuck—in other words, you watched him trying to find some pathetic version of happiness even as you knew all the while that he would never be happy ever again precisely because you were watching him and were going to tell the person who hired you, who was probably the person your subject least wanted told. Fucking was the worst. Standing outside some hotel window, needing to piss, snapping pictures of some guy's hairy ass bouncing up and down between some girl's open knees. Weiss had a romantic streak. He knew full well this moment might seem like hearts and flowers inside the guy's head, inside the girl's head too. But outside the hotel window, it was just a bouncing ass and open knees. Some photographs. A screaming spouse. Alimony. Misery all around.

  With Andy Bremer, he wasn't even sure he was trailing the right guy. It was just one of his Weissian hunches that had brought him here. And while his hunches were almost always right,
he almost never trusted them. They were too vague, too unscientific. He wished he could write out the facts on a whiteboard or something and look them over and tap the pen against his chin and reach his conclusions through logic and deduction. But he never could. He just knew what he knew, so he never felt certain of it.

  In Paradise, for instance, he started with the fact that Julie Wyant had called him from a pay phone. There were other calls made from that pay phone as well, but somehow he just had a hunch they weren't hers. He figured she wasn't using a cell phone because it would be too easy to locate. He figured she wouldn't use the same pay phone twice for a similar reason—Weiss might trace the call she'd made to him and find out who she'd called next. So using an old contact at the phone company from his police days, he collected some calls from other pay phones in the area, calls that had been made within an hour or so of the call to him. There weren't that many pay phones around anymore, but he still managed to come up with more than thirty calls. The call to Andy Bremer in Hannock caught him somehow. He wasn't sure why. It was made about the right time and Bremer lived in the direction Julie was traveling and—well, it just caught him. It was one of those Weiss-type things.

  So he set off for Hannock, to the northeast. It was a little oasis of oak and evergreens and clapboard ranches on the edge of the desert. It was pleasant and shady, but every street seemed to end in dust. The dust ended at the snowcapped Sierra Nevada rising in the distance against a sky made pale by a scudding mist of clouds. With all that nature and emptiness everywhere, the town felt to Weiss like the frontier outpost it had once been. It was the kind of place that made him itch to be elsewhere. He was a city boy through and through.

  He drove his drab Taurus down the deserted morning streets, past open playing fields and a silent flat-roofed school and into deeper shadows under clustered junipers. At the end of one tree-lined lane, he parked outside Bremer's house. It was a gray two-story with gingerbread trim on a peaked roof, one of the few two-story houses in the neighborhood.