Gun Work

What the desperate Mojica had been able to provide was a key phone number, a last resort backup, emergencies only. Which number, when properly traced, could serve as a homing beacon for a stakeout location in Los Angeles. Barney already knew what his targets looked like. He had Tannenhauser’s dictatorial mien imprinted on his memory. As for Erica — whatever she was calling herself these days — he had Carl Ledbetter’s wallet photo.

It was enough.

Armand and Sirius were spoiling for more, especially since the loss of Karlov, whose burial had been private, in an undisclosed location. Barney, stung by this post facto price on his mission, was reluctant to place his remaining allies in the path of harm. Progress choked, once they had returned home to lives and existences that seemed even more pointless after the blood-fever of battle. Barney told them he had to be very careful, time would be needed to make extremely discreet inquiry and follow-up, and that he would flag them the moment he had his final two targets.

Barney was, of course, lying.

Based on a bit of sublegal cellular tracking, it was necessary to isolate Tannenhauser’s signal as soon as possible, since the man would be on the move as soon as the import of the disaster in Mexico resonated. Since you could never lop off every head of a Hydra, Barney assumed Tannenhauser would be apprised immediately — so he had to fob off Sirius and Armand and land on this man’s tail mega-quick.

He had staked out the Sheraton Miramar in Santa Monica for a whole day, tracking comings and goings. He had spotted Tannenhauser once, and seen a woman who might have been the former Erica Ledbetter three times, depending on how she could have changed her look over the past two years.

They appeared to be together, as Mojica had said.

Just today, outside, waiting for a car, they had appeared to be arguing.

Now all Barney had to do was time them out, and tag them inside the building. Figuring out what code names they were registered under was a waste of time. He had them and they did not appear to be anxious to relocate just yet. There was probably a lot of longdistance spin control going on, the kind that was safer to do from another country.

He would scoop them alone, and his men might be spared a stray bullet.

Armand ruined all of Barney’s quiet strategy with a single cellphone call.

“You’ve got to get down here now.”

Bad news, incoming, take cover...

“Somebody nailed Sirius. Right outside the gun range. Wherever you go, don’t go back there because I’m pretty sure it’s hot. Meet me at the morgue, four o’clock.”

The downtown Los Angeles County Department of the Coroner — the county morgue, due west of the University of Southern California Medical Center — has a gift shop on its second floor called Skeletons in the Closet, where one can buy “ghoulish gifts” such as toe tag keyrings, coffee mugs featuring a body outline in chalk, or toy miniatures of the 1938 Black Mariah hearse. Profits from the shop go to stout causes such as the Youthful Drunk Driving Visitation Program, which, among other incentives to reform, compels offenders to watch an actual autopsy-in-progress. Founded in 1993, the shop pulls down between $15,000 and $20,000 in sales every month (excepting, of course, Halloween season, when it does double that) and has an international clientele.

People who visit the morgue for the purposes of putting a name to a corpse usually don’t stop at the gift shop for a souvenir.

The late Sirius had a small-caliber bullet hole straight through his head. You could actually see through it; blow frigid condensed breath through it, if you had the guts to lift it from the confines of the body bag on refrigerated drawer-tray Number 38.

“They’re hunting us,” said Armand. “We’re not as smart or cool as we thought we were. We destroyed their operation in Mexico and now the sonofabitch is going to pick us off locally. The only reason he missed you is because you’ve spent so much time staking out the hotel. Me, I can’t figure. We might walk out of here and right into a gunsight.”

“I know where he is,” said Barney.

“Then we take him. Sudden death overtime.” Armand nailed his friend eye-to-eye. “I know what you’re going to try to sell me. You’re going to say the hunt is over, that this isn’t Mexico, that it’s your problem. Then, when I don’t believe that, you’re going to say it’s not worth it. They hired a guy to kill you in Mexico when you were slightly less mobile than a rutabaga, and they’re going to keep hiring soldiers until we are dust. You and me are the same, now — our dead friend in the drawer there is proof positive.”

“I was going to suggest you go hole up with your brother in Cincinnati until the gunsmoke clears.”

“Let history pass me by? Fuck that.”

Sirius’ dead, closed eyes offered them no counsel. No one else was present to waste time by suggesting maybe it was all an accident, random, unrelated, a tragedy, sure, but nothing more.

“You’ve got the bloodlust, partner,” Armand said. “Keep it boiling and don’t let it blind you to tactical reality.”

“Armand,” Barney said. “I let one go in New York City. I shouldn’t have. I let one go in Mexico and I shouldn’t have. But each one was a negotiative play for a bigger target. It’s me that Tannenhauser wants; let me take the risk. I don’t want you getting waxed now that Karlov and Sirius are gone.”

“I’m a big boy,” said Armand. “Practically a grownup.” He waited a beat. Barney was not smiling. “All or nothing.”

They left the morgue. No place was safe. The person who had killed Sirius had walked right up to him, put a pistol to his temple, and fired.

Barney flexed his hands, trying to remember what they had looked like when they were whole.

“You’re right. This isn’t over until they’re all gone.” Grimly he thought, Or we are.

Their entire arsenal — what they had not disposed of in Mexico — was trapped at the gun range, inaccessible. It was tainted ground until they were clear. Barney had his Super .40 and Armand had his Ruger, end of story. It would be so easy to hit the freeway and keep on driving. This was not home anymore.

“See, now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” said Armand, slapping his friend on the shoulder.

“We just jump in the car, drive to the hotel, kill some people and then have a steak dinner?”

Armand remote-fobbed the doors on his ride, a low, gorgeous Cadillac DTS V-8 in pewter. “No. We jump in the car, drive to the hotel, smoke the snake-in-the-grass motherfuckers that subtracted Sirius from our lives, and then go have a steak dinner. Chez Jay’s. I’ll buy. Our dead buddy in there needs one toast at least.”

Yes. At least. At least in a couple of hours it would all be done...

Barney was nearly at peace with that brutal truth when Armand grinned at him over the roof of the car. Then everything behind Armand’s ears burst toward Barney in a macerated mist of red blood, white bone, gray brains.

Barney walloped his chin on the car roof in his hurry to hit the deck, saturated in the remains of the back of Armand’s head. Armand collapsed in a boneless tumble. Two seconds ago, this had not happened yet.

Another .338 Lapua round pierced the door on Armand’s side and exited through Barney’s door three inches from his head. It was a flat trajectory. The shooter was so far away that the echo of distant report came after the bullet had struck. These were boat-tailed, full metal jacketed military rounds, Super Magnums with a muzzle energy of nearly five thousand foot-pounds. This was the sort of death you got at the hands of an expert with a four thousand-dollar rifle and painfully precise optics. The guy could be 1500 meters away. Anywhere.

Barney had about two feet of clearance he was pretty sure the shooter could not aim below. Clawing his own gun out would have been pointless. This was surgical, dispassionate, the slaughter of farm animals.

He crawled on his belly toward a palm tree planter made out of UltraCal while several more rounds chopped and channeled Armand’s car. It was absurdly quiet. There was a good chance the sniper had not seen him move.

Barney actually heard the whine of the incoming slug cutting air. A cloud of gasified fiber turned the air yellow and the palm tree fell over like a British butler, bowing.

Even if he could make it back to the car, what was the point? There was probably a bullet deep in the engine block by now.

Sirius had been killed at the gun range, and the enemy had figured Barney and Armand would come to the morgue. The question that might save Barney’s life was: Had the sniper seen Barney’s car?

It was parked on the other side of the street, a leased Dodge Hemi Charger in gunmetal gray. The only armament it offered was one of Karlov’s Benellis, in the trunk along with some spare ammo for the .40. Both useless.

It stinks, amigo. It stinks like underbrush when you probe by fire.

Carl’s words from an eternity ago echoed back at him. That’s what this superior sonofabitch was doing, but from a leisurely bench rest. He probably had time to sip a Primer Pop between rounds until it was time for him to pack up, drive away, and eat his own goddamned steak.

Nothing left to do. No options.

Barney unholstered his .40 and put five rounds through the windows in front of the morgue, aiming high, hoping not to hit anybody. The sheet glass caved in with a breathtaking racket, people screamed, hollered and sought cover, alarms sounded, and pretty soon there would be police swarming.

Barney crawled toward his car, hands and knees the whole way, cringing at honking traffic.

After parking on Ocean Boulevard and punching the steering wheel a few times to vent his backlog of adrenalin, Barney refreshed his SIG Sauer and walked toward the hotel entrance, where he spotted Erica Ledbetter crossing the lobby in a brisk hurry.

She coded as feminine right down to the ground: attractive ankles, hell on heels, calves with the precise roundness to stop traffic at a leg crossing, the classic hourglass, real hips. She lacked the insectile height of fashion models, but put her in a bikini magazine spread where height is a digitally enhanced mystery and all you’d ever notice were those soft-shoulder, dangerous-when-wet curves. Her padding was all to her advantage and she lacked the bovine look of women who fret about dress size. This woman never fretted about anything. You could read her determination in the precise cut of jaw, the elegant neck, the eyes so blue they hurt to look at, like pure cyan broken off the sun’s spectrum and laser-refracted through a crystal. She was the woman Barney had seen in Carl’s photograph, but distilled into something more fierce.

She walked like a woman with a mission, and Barney managed to trap her in the elevator, alone.

“Wow, I always wanted a new man in my life, and voila,” she said, startled yet not surprised. “I’ll assume that’s a gun in my ribs, and not that you’re happy to see me.”

“Overjoyed,” said Barney. “Stay in the corner. Hold the rails. Bag on the floor.”

Now she was looking at him directly. “You’re him,” she said. “Carl’s guy.”

From the bag Barney extracted a ten-shot, Black Melonite-coated Cobra Patriot in .380. He quickly popped the magazine. Three rounds gone.

It might have been any of them walking into the kill zone back at the gun range, but Sirius had drawn the duty. The hole in his head had not come from a guy with a four thousand dollar rifle, but someone who got close enough to shoot point-blank, perhaps with this pistol.

The illuminated numerals crawled toward the fourth floor. “What do I call you?” said Barney.

“Who cares?” she said. “What’s in a name?”

She fostered dislike, but apparently did not care, even with a gun pointed at her. She was far too attractive to be smiling at her captor now and saying, “It’s nice to meet you at last,” as though they were headed for a high school reunion. She should have had hazard tape on her forehead, and Barney was acutely aware of a completely different kind of arsenal coming into play.

“If you have any sort of special knock, or code, don’t break it to warn him,” said Barney, meaning Tannenhauser. “If there is gunfire, lady, you are going to be point number one, I swear it.”

“Whatever,” she said, as though this had all been rehearsed. Her sheer indifference was disorienting.

He swept the hall. No bystanders.

“Oh, the drama,” she said. “It’s not necessary. Listen, Tannenhauser is not going to shoot you. I promise.”

Barney indicated she should use her key card and walk through first anyway.

They were top floor in one of the Miramar’s biggest suites, and she strolled in on those fabulous legs as though she owned a controlling interest in the hotel.

“Slow down,” Barney said.

“Relax,” she returned. “Look, I did not kill your friend.” She headed for a fully stocked roll-in cocktail counter that must have billed at a good $1200.

“Sit in the chair right there.”

“And stay?” she said impishly. “Woof. I am going to fix myself a drink for our little talk. You’re welcome to one too, but I don’t expect you’ll take one and relax.”

She set about concocting a bourbon and branch water while Barney stared at her. “This isn’t some kind of goddamned meeting, lady,” he said.

“Yes it is,” she said. “A meeting. You’ll see.”

Barney half-expected Tannenhauser to saunter out in a smoking jacket with a martini, to deliver an opening line like Gentlemen, I’m sure we can clear up this little misunderstanding... before attempting to buy, bribe, lie or kill his way clear.

The bedroom double doors were open and the curtains drawn. Dark inside. Feet in silk socks, no shoes, dangled from the king bed.

Tannenhauser — El Chingon — was spreadeagled across the down comforter, one tiny bloodsmear on the fabric and three bullet holes in his chest, a compact and lethal shot group. Both his eyes matched now, gazing sightlessly in two different directions. The tip of his tongue protruded from his slack lips. He had not been dead for very long, his body still cooling, courting rigor mortis.

She stirred her drink and kept her seat. “Now can we talk?”

“I guess he outlived his usefulness, too,” Barney said. “Like all of them — Felix Rainer, Carl... me.”

She made a dismissive gesture with her glass. “Felix was a nervous, impotent little paranoid that needed adventurous solutions. Carl was a loser looking to win the lottery.” She indicated the bedroom, where Tannenhauser had not yet been dead an hour. “He was... greedy. And kind of nasty. He was going to kill you himself when you got here, did you know that part?”

There was no place in the room where Barney could be comfortable holding a gun on this woman. There was no place on the planet where he could be comfortable even being near her. He felt an irretrievable black-mamba vibe warning him to stay sharp. She was too reassuring, too easy to look at, and he should just add lead to her diet and hustle away. But uncannily, she seemed to sense his need to know things. Radar was one of her primary weapons.

She made a little frown and continued: “After his man killed your friend — I forget which one — Tannenhauser knew you’d come here. I think his vile little plan was to kill me, then you, wrap us up, and get out.” She shrugged. “I changed the plan.”

“You fucked them all,” Barney said with unconscious marvel.

“I don’t know that who I sleep with has anything to do with anything,” she said with false outrage.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, well...” She shrugged; no biggie. “Tanny was a greedy entrepreneur looking for the next big score. He and Carl and Felix were like one personality split up into three parts. Putting them together was obvious.”

“You mean playing them off of each other.”

“Semantics. I put them together and the deal invented itself. I don’t vouch for the workability of it.”

“Meaning: you were clean no matter what happened.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“All you had to do was seduce each of them.”

She emitted a pfffhht sound of annoyance. “All I did was utilize the chemistry. You’re big enough to have learned there’s no such thing as romance, right? It’s all DNA. Romance and love are the window dressing with which we tart up our vulgar biology; we use it to excuse our animal hungers in an attempt to delude ourselves that we are some sort of higher being. We’re not, you know.” She narrowed her eyes at him even as the pheromones flew off her skin like mustard gas. “You do know that, yes?”

“I know about black widow spiders,” said Barney. “I know about the preying mantis, chomping the head off the male after sex.”

“You see? This is the problem: People get all judgmental about nature. There’s no right or wrong in nature. That’s a human conceit.”

“You mean nature as in eat-or-get-eaten. You eat men like Felix and Carl. You consume what you need, shit them out, and move on to your next victim. Sometimes the bodies you leave in your wake aren’t even all the way dead.”

“Those men were more alive with me than they had ever been. I didn’t force them to do anything they didn’t already want to do.”

“That’s very orderly, but it’s not the truth.”

“Why don’t you tell me what the truth is?”

“The truth is you found men with weaknesses and aimed them at each other. You set up the operation so they would eliminate each other when their usefulness was spent.”

“Seems to me you eliminated most of them.”

“Yes. I’m the biggest sucker of all. I got conned into this with the best of intentions. You were the one who made sure I would suffer enough that I’d want retribution, enough to justify whatever retribution I could muster. And I did it, just like clockwork. Wind me up and watch me shoot. I did it for me — but each step was at your direction. And to your profit.” The symmetry of the deception was an awesome thing to behold in the light.

“Why didn’t you kill Felix?”she said.

“I didn’t have to. Felix will kill himself. That much was obvious. He’ll flame out, get caught, or otherwise compromise himself. He doesn’t need anybody to kill him. Sorry I messed up the perfection of your hit list.”

“You didn’t kill Felix, but you did kill Carl.”

“I thought Carl was the main viper in this snakepit. I made a mistake.”

“Aww, how sweet — you killed him for betraying you. Very macho. You’re such a man, aren’t you? It takes a lot of guts to murder someone that ready to die, doesn’t it?” She sipped her drink. The look of satisfaction, of satiation on her face was enough to make Barney wish he could kill her more than once.

“How long are you going to drag this out?” Barney said.

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” she said. “So do you. I’m enjoying this, and you could too, if you’d just have a drink and relax.”

Her expression, Barney realized, was the one she probably wore while eating up cockfights or pit-bull tournaments. The face with which corrupt Romans watched speared gladiators, or biowar scientists regarded little designer germs reproducing. Not pleasant.

“Turn-down service might be a little upset to find a corpse in the room,” said Barney. “No extra chocolate mint.” Barney could not see her angle. Time was ticking away. What sort of out did she think she had?

“Oh, I see — you think if you can antagonize me, I’ll do something rash. Like charge you in a flurry of high heels and perfume and die a sort of film noir death? Sorry. I’m not built that way. Tell me: What happened to Mister Moraine?”

Barney’s expression told her it was a mystery.

“The blond man Tannenhauser hired to take care of you in Mexico. We had to outsource him; he cost a lot of money.”

Click; recognition. Once Tannenhauser was in the saddle with Erica and Carl had been subtracted, it was child’s play for him to check emergency rooms all over the continent after Barney’s escape, or rather, disposal. Click; the clinica. Click; Dr. Mendez dies after giving up Barney. The imported assassin dies at Mano’s house...

... and click; the plan changes. Barney is left alone, allowed to live, because what has been done to him is so monstrous that he will do Erica the favor of erasing Felix (oops), erasing Carl (check), and cleaning up the Palacio, thereby erasing every footprint that could lead back to Erica. But Erica is stuck with Tannenhauser, who has all the money. Tannenhauser does not get killed in Mexico. But he does the next best thing: He comes to America to join up with Erica under a totally bogus identity, on the run from the crazy gunman who is, according to intel, back in Mexico behind a huge boner of payback and terminating everybody involved in hurting him. According to every register, credit card bill and travel itinerary, Tannenhauser is not in Los Angeles, which makes him especially easy to eliminate a la carte and at sole discretion.

“He got killed,” said Barney of the wordless Mr. Moraine.

“Now you’re getting it. You killed him before he could kill you — very honorable.”

And as the Palacio had burned, that dirtbag Mojica had scampered to the nearest phone to give Tannenhauser the heads-up. Here he comes.

Still, Mojica had been as good as his corrupt word. Barney’s deal was: Tell me where I can find Tannenhauser; do not lie, and you shall go free. Mojica had abided by those terms, which did not prevent him from alerting Tannenhauser. Damn it all, the little weasel had played fair.

“Who killed Sirius?”

Erica’s forehead crinkled. “Who killed who?”

“My partner. At the shooting range.”

“Oh, the bald man? Sorry, bub; no chance for justice there. After Moraine blew it, Tannenhauser decided to actually work, for a change. He had all you guys tracked the second you stepped back into LA. Tanny had enough spine to do the first, but had to hire the second, because he knew you guys would be spooked. More needless expense.”

Armand had smiled, then died, right in front of Barney. Needless expense.

“Don’t you get it?” she said. “There’s no call for all this hairy, erect, masculine gun-waving. Tanny was going to kill you when you showed here, not me — because I’d already be dead. I shot him with that little gun you found in my purse. It was easy, and a little bit exciting.” Almost independently, her left hand had gone down to stroke the inside of her thigh, as though she was experiencing a rush from the recent memory of murder.

“Felix Rainer was in the process of giving me the heave-ho,” she continued. “I was just a boring little employee at a fashion magazine. He was abusive. Carl saved me — he really did.”

“That’s not the way Carl told it.” Barney recalled the epic story of Rafe Torgeson, another presumed abuser from whom Erica needing saving.

“There were a couple of bad choices in between,” she said. “But I knew enough to put Carl and Felix in the same room together. Their scheme hatched itself. It was just as likely to implode as succeed, but in the process a lot of cash would be floating around. One day Carl said he had known a fellow in Iraq, a brother in arms, the kind of guy about whom you say, ‘Gee, I wish he was here; he could solve everything.’ The kind of man who would make a good enforcer, and in the process, increase the odds of a scam actually working to everybody’s profit. That would be you. All I had to do was encourage Carl to phone you up. But a polite social cocktail-party solicitation was not the way. From what Carl said, I guessed you would respond to a crisis, and I guessed correctly, didn’t I? The late Mr. Tannenhauser was the first to see the potential cash-flow possibilities as a satellite to his kidnapping racket, which was already thriving. When you surprised everybody by surviving, it became clear that the whole chain-of-title could be erased, which is always nice when great gobs of money are concerned. That bloodbath in Mexico? I didn’t do that. You did it. Case fucking closed.” She seemed to deflate at the possibility it was all beyond Barney. “Look, do I have to drag a blackboard and a pointer in here?”

“The only thing left,” said Barney, “is money. Enough to fight over. Enough to cause problems later. How much did Tannenhauser have when he left Mexico?”

“Oh, a second ago you wanted to kill me and now you want to talk money.”

“You put me and my friends in harm’s way, and right now I am the only one left standing. I got shot. Mutilated. Hospitalized. My friends died around me.”

“Please. Who recruited them? You did. Hence, they are dead because of what you did — your little revenge mission. Feel better, yes or no? Besides, I think your hands are rather elegant.” She fingered an expensive jade choker on her equally expensive neck. “May I see them without those gloves?”

“No. What happened to the money?”

She exhaled nasally, piqued at this talk of money when she would rather be involved in a seduction. “Five million, in three cases, in the bedroom. That works out to a bit more than a million and a half per case, and change. Take any one of them. And go, if you’re going to be dull. Take one for your trouble, and consider yourself fortunate.” She flitted her hands at him. “Go on; they’re not short-count or booby-trapped or anything.”

Barney did not move.

A tiny line of frustration creased her brow. “Oh, come on,” she said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t fantasized about fucking me. Especially if I am so goddamned dangerous. Men like you are addicted to risk, and risking your life makes you horny, don’t bother to deny it. You and I are survivors; we are the last people standing. That’s why I wanted to meet you. That’s why we have all the time in the world. The war is over, lover. You could forget the gun-waving and penetrate me with something better than a bullet, and it would be worth it. I guarantee it. I’ve been looking forward to it as much as you have.” She was stimulating herself with her own speech, going lubricious right there in the chair. “Or you can be a bore and just take your little suitcase of money and split... and wonder for the rest of your life what it would have been like.”

She really was a consummate businesswoman, except for one infinitesimal detail.

“What’s to stop me from taking them all?” said Barney.

In response, she laughed. It was a fluting sound, rich and sonorous, the kind of laugh that could make royalty sacrifice a kingdom. “Oh, doll...”

Then from out of nowhere she leveled a Charter Arms Bulldog at him and smooched a quartet of .44-caliber rounds right into his chest.