Damnation Street

32.

The specialist had spent a lifetime killing other men. Women sometimes, a bunch of kids once, but mostly men, over a hundred of them. He had come to the job as easily as dozing in a chair. He had been in a Burger King in his home city, a stark gray city surrounded by flatlands. He was sixteen. He was with a guy he knew, a tough guy who had dropped out of school and was making a living jacking stuff off trucks. The tough guy noticed someone across the room. He lifted his chin and said, "That fuck needs doing." And right away Foy answered him, "What'll you pay me?"

That was it. He went home and made a garrote out of a broomstick and a jump rope. He found the target a couple of nights later walking through a stand of trees in a small park. He didn't even look around to see if anyone was watching. He just walked up behind the fuck and strangled him with the homemade garrote. Left him lying right there in the grass in his own shit. Strolled over to the tough guy's place to pick up his pay.

It was strange to look back on it. It had been as simple as that. No plans, no worries. What did he know? He was a kid. He trusted his luck. He didn't think about the bad things that could happen if he got caught. He didn't think about anything. He just did it.

But then, later on, he did think. After all, he knew what it was like to get caught. He knew better than anyone what it was like to be punished and humiliated and hurt more than you thought you could stand while people looked on and laughed at you. He didn't want that ever to happen again.

So he learned to be more cautious. It was a gradual process. He learned to plan, to keep ahead of events. He learned to make allowances for the unexpected. After a while the planning was all he thought about. He was planning every moment right up until he did the job. It was almost a kind of ritual for him. It made him feel safe. It made him feel that nothing had been left to chance. He would never allow himself to be caught, punished, hurt, humiliated-never again.

He drove for the heart of the city. As he went, he reached down under the seat and pulled up his surveillance briefcase. He laid it on the seat beside him, worked it open with his free hand. He got the laptop going.

He picked up Weiss at once. The GPS tracker in the detective's car appeared as a green triangle blinking on a map of the city's south side. The killer was still too far away to pick up the bird-doggers woven into Weiss's clothing.

The killer headed for the green triangle. He was getting his breath back now. The runnels of sweat were slowing down on his body. The cry of the sirens was fading behind him. The tremor of panic and the panicky inner voice-they were fading too. Ahead, through the windshield, the sun was arcing toward the top of the skyline. Lights were coming on in the buildings. Windows stood out as yellow rectangles in large gray rectangles set against the rich blue sky. He gazed at them as he drove, but in his mind he was far away. In his mind, once again, he was in his own high tower. He was calmer there, calmer.

The city closed over him. He prowled down a dark broad avenue between skyscrapers. Only a strip of blue sky appeared at the top of his windshield here. He began to come back to himself. He was fine now. Everything was fine. Bishop had been a hard case. He'd fought a good fight. But he was dead, or he soon would be. And the man who called himself John Foy had gotten away. His luck was not running out. Everything was fine.

He crossed the city into the south, heading toward the low mountains. The skyscrapers fell behind him quickly. He came into an area of shacks and empty lots and churches, one church after another. The church steeples and their crosses stood high and dark against the rich blue horizon. Lean Mexican men and fat Mexican women walked beneath them. The falling sun gleamed on the white shirts of the men.

The killer heard a noise from the seat beside him. He had picked up the bird-doggers in Weiss's clothes. He glanced over at the laptop, seeking out the yellow blips.

He saw them-but for a moment he didn't understand what he was seeing. Then he did understand, and his breath caught. He stared at the laptop so long that when he looked up, the brown Taurus had nearly veered off the road. He had to wrench the wheel to keep it from smashing into the curb.

He eased the car to a stop at a red light. He stared down at the laptop's screen again. That crawly fear was back at once, that crawly, whispering panic. Why is this happening? It isn't fair. It isn't fair.

One of the bird-doggers had broken away from the GPS tracker. Only one-P143-the one in Weiss's tweed jacket. At first the man who called himself John Foy thought Weiss might have left his jacket somewhere. But the bird-dogger was still moving. And the GPS showed the car was still moving too. Weiss's car was driving away from the south mountains, heading for the interstate, and Weiss's tweed jacket was somehow traveling slowly over the southeast corner of the city.

The car's air-conditioning was going full blast now, but the Shadowman began to sweat again. What the hell was this? Some kind of Weiss bullshit, some kind of trick. The red light turned green, but the killer just sat there looking down at the screen. Which signal should he follow? What the hell was going on?

A horn honked behind him. He glanced into the rearview and saw some straw-hatted Mexican in a Chevy pickup. He briefly considered getting out of his car, walking back to the Chevy, and ripping out the wetback's esophagus with his bare hands. But he was a professional, a cool professional. He fought down the impulse. He hit the gas. He drove on.

He went after the bird-dog in the tweed jacket. The car would get away quickly, but he could trace the car at a distance. The jacket was less than half a mile away. He could get to it, find out what was happening, and get back to the car fast. Anyway, if Weiss was in the car, the killer already knew where he was going.

He turned the corner, putting the sun behind him. The shacks and churches sank away. Now there were empty lots by the side of the road, dust and nothing. Brown hills to the right of him. Brown hills up ahead.

The sweat was in full tide under his shirt again. His heart was hammering again. That lost, childish voice was whining at him again. What was Weiss doing? What was going on?

Then the road ended. There was a diamond-link fence, an open gate. He drove through onto an unpaved lane, his tires bouncing over the ruts and rocks. Ahead, some kind of a house stood on a little hill. It was a strange misshapen house. A covered balcony of red wood, misshapen gray battlements of rock. A single car was parked nearby. An aging Impala, not Weiss's car. But when the killer glanced over at the briefcase again, the yellow bird-dog signal was still blipping, not fifty yards away.

The man who called himself John Foy was getting angry now. He thought he knew what was happening, and the rage was rising into his throat. He shut the car down. Got out. The heat was bad. There was desert all around him. Dirt and stone crunching under his shoes. When he looked off, he saw a rolling plain of dust, the distant sun touching the top of the gray and sparkling city. He was isolated out here. That Weiss, that fucking Weiss…

He reached into the slit of his silicone vest. His fingers closed on the Saracen. He drew it out. His teeth were clamped together. He wanted to see something die.

He walked up a flight of steps. The broken-rock battlements loomed over him. He stepped into the shadows of the covered balcony. He reached the front door. He pushed it. It swung in.

There was a strange stone room, lit dimly with standing lamps. There was rough handmade furniture made of logs and rock. Shelves, tables, benches-and all of them crowded, the whole room packed, with junk and knickknacks. A stuffed bird in a bamboo cage. The skull of a longhorn staring from above the fireplace. The skin of a snake lying on a wooden table under an embroidered

pillow that said: " HOME SWEET HOME."

The killer jumped as he turned and saw a piano with a woman sitting at it. But she was nothing, a weird stuffed figure. And there was an easy chair with a stuffed man sitting in it.

Then the man moved. The killer leveled the gun at him. He nearly shot him. He wanted to.

The man in the chair was an old black man. He was long and bent. He had a long, sad face with a day's growth of grizzled beard. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt-and Weiss's tweed jacket.

"He said you'd show up," the old man said.

The killer could hardly breathe. He felt as if a powerful hand were around his throat, squeezing it shut. "Who are you?"

"I run this place."

"What place? What is this?"

"It's the castle. For tourists. Robert Lindley built it. For the woman he loved. Only she never came. I run it now. For the people."

"What people?"

"The people. You know. The tourists. I give them the tours."

The specialist's quick wild glance took in the corners, the rafters. A stuffed alligator. A glass dog. A hangman's noose. Dizzy with the heat, he saw them swirling around him.

"Ain't it strange?" the old man said. "He put everything in it. Hoping she'd come."

The killer steadied his gaze on the man in the chair. Shoved the gunpoint at him. "Come on."

"All right, all right," said the old man. "Here. He wanted you to have this."

The old man reached inside the tweed jacket. The killer's gun hand tightened.

"Uh-uh-uh," said the old man, with a soft chuckle. He didn't seem to care very much whether he died or not. Slowly, he drew out a folded piece of paper. He held it out toward the man who called himself John Foy.

Foy snatched the paper away. "Did he tell you I'd kill you?" he said in a strangled voice.

The black man shook his head slowly. "He said you wouldn't do a thing. Not a thing. The people'll be here for the last tour soon and they'd find me. He said you'd take the paper and go, or the two of you were finished. He said you didn't want that."

The killer hated Weiss so much just then, he almost shot the old man anyway. But in the end, what could he do? He felt the room closing in on him. Strange shapes in glass bottles. A carved menagerie. A crude painting of a staring face.

"This is a crazy fucking place," he said, sick and dizzy with the heat.

The old man laughed outright. "Yes, it is. Robert Lindley, the man who built it, he had a crazy idea of things. But that's what a man builds castles for, isn't it? Some say it's for money; some say it's for sex or love. But really, it's just for his own crazy idea of things, that's all. The woman he loved-she never even came."

The killer retreated, his heart hammering, his face hot. He drew away from the staring longhorn skull and the stuffed woman sitting weirdly at the piano. He went out the door. Down the steps, across the dirt lot, back to the car. He had to sit behind the wheel a long time before he could focus, before there was anything in his mind but heat sickness and rage. He had to stare at the folded paper a long time before he could bring himself to open it.

Then he did. It was a notebook page, wrinkled. Black ink on it. Weiss's scrawl.

Sky Harbor. Gate 8. 6:30.

The Shadowman crushed the paper in his fist, a growl of rage squeezing out of him. He could barely stand the feeling in him. He thought it would claw him apart. Weiss. Weiss. That arrogant fuck. Weiss had summoned him to a meeting. Sky Harbor. The airport. Six thirty. Just a couple of hours from now.

The arrogant fuck. The arrogant so-dead fuck. He had known exactly what the specialist would do. Known exactly, every step-and still knew. It made the specialist hate the detective with a flaming hatred. Worse. It made him afraid of him. Because if Weiss could do this to him now, what would happen when it came time for the end?

The fuck. The arrogant fuck. The arrogant so-dead fuck.

He tried to breathe. He tried to breathe deeper. All right, he thought, all right. They would meet. Six thirty. They would meet and the killer would tell him about Bishop. He would tell him how Bishop walked right into it, how he never suspected a thing. He would tell him how Bishop took two in the gut, how he sunk down to the floor leaving a trail of blood on the window behind him. How he sunk into the pool leaving a trail of blood in the water.

That's how it would be in the end too. That's how it would be for Weiss.

He started the car with a quick jerk of the key. He put it in gear roughly. He backed out over the dirt lot.

You arrogant so-dead fuck, he thought. I am coming for you.