Mortal Faults

27

Dylan came back to himself slowly, with a pounding headache and a weak, hung-over feeling. His arms and legs were sore, and there was a dull ache in his neck. He opened his eyes and saw a white ceiling with cobwebs in the corners. It took him a moment to realize that he was in his own apartment, stretched on his back on the futon, and she was watching him.

Sandi from Mission Viejo.

She knelt before the futon, a gun in her hand. Instinctively he searched for his own weapon. Gone.

“What’s the matter, Dylan?” she asked. “Don’t you recognize your own gun when you see it?”

He focused on the pistol she was holding. His piece. The Glock 9mm he carried on the street.

“What the fuck is this?” he asked, his voice thick, his throat raw and scratchy. “You robbing me or something?”

“No, Dylan. I’m not robbing you.”

“What’d you do, knock me out?”

“Yes.”

“Shit.” He released a thin laugh. “Guess you really do like adventure, just like you said.”

“I’m not in this for adventure. There are things you need to tell me.”

“What kind of things?”

“About the Scorpions. About who arranged your assignment this afternoon. And where you stashed your gear afterward.”

His eyes narrowed. “You a cop?”

“No.”

“Some kind of P.I.?”

“Who I am isn’t important. I want you to start talking.”

“That’s not gonna happen.”

“Yes, it is. You’re going to answer every question I ask.”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

“I’ll hurt you.”

He lifted his head, experiencing a brief wave of vertigo.

“Sandi from Mission Viejo, or whoever the fuck you are-you are in way out of your depth.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Let me give you the best advice you’ll ever get. Walk away.”

“You’re the second person tonight to tell me that. I didn’t listen the first time. I’m not listening now.”

“You’re not listening, and I’m not talking. Sounds like a goddamned stalemate to me.”

“You’ll talk.”

“Just because you laid me out on this couch don’t mean you’ve made me your bitch. I know how to keep my mouth shut. Now why don’t you put that gun down and we’ll get back to that lovin’ feeling?”

“You’re an asshole,” she said, and she leaned forward and smacked him hard across the jaw with the butt of the gun. Pain startled him. He dropped back on the futon, clutching his mouth, which was suddenly full of warm fluid and splintered chips. Gagging, he rolled sideways and spit out the mess, staining the carpet with blood and broken teeth.

The pain was no big deal, but the teeth really bothered him. He had a nice smile, and now she’d fucked it up.

“Cunt,” he growled, the word coming out a little slurred.

She hit him again. This time she caught him on the nose, snapping his head sideways with a sharp crack and a spurt of blood and mucus.

“God damn it!” He held his nose while a shooting migraine worked its way deep into his forehead.

“Feeling talkative yet?”

He looked up at her. She wasn’t kneeling anymore. She had stood up and was leaning over him, the gun poised for another blow. He calculated the odds of lunging for it, snatching out of her hand. Even as he did, he saw her smile as if she had read his mind. The smile seemed to dare him to try it. He didn’t have the nerve.

“Who the fuck are you working for?” he said. His voice sounded funny in his ears, like it was echoing around inside his head.

“I don’t work for anybody. I’m a free agent.”

“Yeah, well, you ever need a job, you can get one. How’d you like to shake down guys who’re behind on their dues?” He started to laugh, he didn’t know why. It just seemed funny to him. “Hired muscle. All ninety-eight pounds of you.”

“I’m not in the mood for comedy, Dylan. I’m feeling very serious right now. I think you should start to feel the same.”

“It’s the old lady, right? The one in the valley. She must’ve hired you.”

“Nobody hired me. Tell me who arranged the hit. Who sent you to that address?”

“I think it was Santa Claus. He has this list, you know-who’s been naughty and nice. Guess the old lady was one of the naughty ones.”

She struck him again. The gun hooked him under the jaw and clacked his teeth together hard enough to rattle his head. Then she was bending in close with the muzzle of the gun pressed below the socket of his left eye.

“Who sent you?” she asked again.

Her face was inches from his. He stared into her brown eyes and saw something that scared him, something like craziness. All of a sudden he wasn’t so sure he would be getting out of this.

“You know I can’t talk about that,” he said, trying for the first time to sound reasonable. “They’ll kill me.”

“They’re not here right now. I am. Worry about me right now.”

“Lady, you got my attention. But you don’t know what they do to snitches.”

“I have a pretty good idea. Let me make it easier for you. Whoever hired you-does he work out of the repair shop?”

“How’d you even know about that?”

“Give me a name.”

Still he hesitated.

She pressed the gun deeper into his skin. “I’m going to find out eventually. When I do, they’ll assume you told me. So you’re up shit creek whether you say anything or not. If you talk, you get to live through tonight. If you don’t talk, then you die right now.”

Her eyes, blank and cold like the eyes of a shark, told him she wasn’t kidding.

“Shanker,” he whispered, feeling like Judas delivering his fatal kiss.

“He runs the shop?”

“Yeah it’s his outfit. Ron Shanker. He’s been a made man in the gang for-I don’t know, since before I was born.”

“How’d he get in touch with you?”

“Phone call.”

“This phone?” She gestured toward a phone on a table near the TV.

“No, he called my cell. Left a message.”

“And how did you call him back?”

“From here.”

“The landline?”

“Yeah.” Dylan licked his lips and tasted blood. “I don’t like to talk business over a cell. Too many ways the call can be intercepted. What difference does it make, anyway?”

“It’s called evidence, Dylan. Records of those phone calls will link you with Shanker. But Shanker didn’t decide to pull this job on his own. He was asked to do it. You know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know shit about how it was set up. Shanker never tells us anything.”

“Do you know who Jack Reynolds is?”

Dylan knew. Everybody in the Scorpions had heard rumors about Jack Reynolds. He kept his face expressionless, or so he hoped. “Never heard of him.”

“He’s your congressman.”

“I don’t follow politics too much.”

“Reynolds is tight with your gang, isn’t he? He’s a player?”

“Telling you, I never heard-”

She drew back the gun, and although he hated himself for it, Dylan flinched. Flinched like a whipped dog. He couldn’t believe she’d reduced him to that.

“Tell the truth,” she said, and the terrible thing was that the words were spoken without anger, without any emotion all, as if she was feeling nothing and would feel nothing even if she battered his face into a bloody mask.

“Okay, I hear things. Reynolds, you know, he used to be the D.A. around here, a long time ago, and I guess he got in with the Scorpions back then, and maybe he still uses us sometimes for some, you know, odd jobs, but nobody ever talks about it, not out in the open, I mean it’s not like we ever say his name…” He was talking too much. All of a sudden he couldn’t stop talking.

“The job you did this afternoon was for Reynolds.”

“I don’t know about that. I just don’t know. They don’t tell me shit like that.”

“Do you even know the name of the woman you were hired to kill?”

“Never gave me a name. Just an address.”

“Where’s the gun?”

“What?”

“The gun you shot up the house with.”

“Threw it away.”

“Not likely. It was an expensive piece. Too expensive to toss. Besides, you’re not smart enough to toss it.” The muzzle of her gun was teasing the orbit of his eye socket again. “Where is it?”

Dylan thought about telling her to fuck herself. She would probably shoot him, but hell, it would be quick, bullet in the eye, right through into the brain, lights out. Better than what he could expect from Shanker. Or from Reynolds, for Christ’s sake. Word was, that guy was a straight maniac. He could save himself a world of hurt just by telling this cocksucking bitch to go fuck off.

“In my bedroom,” he said. “Bureau. Top drawer.”

She almost smiled. “I’m surprised this shit hole has a bedroom.”

Unaccountably, Dylan was wounded. “You said it wasn’t such a bad place.”

“I lied. I do that a lot.”

“So you got Shanker’s name and the gun and, I guess, the phone records. I gave you everything you wanted, right?”

“You cooperated. Eventually.”

“So what happens now?”

“That’s good question, Dylan. That’s the first really intelligent thing you’ve said. What does happen now?” She hadn’t removed the gun from his face, and that was a bad sign. “I guess I’ll have to give all this helpful information and evidence to the authorities.”

“Yeah. Except you don’t work for no authorities, do you?”

“Sometimes they work for me-without knowing it.”

“So you’re gonna have me arrested, is that the plan?” At the moment, being arrested didn’t seem like such a bad deal.

“Well, that’s the thing. See, if you’re in custody, you’ll talk. I’ve already discovered that it’s not too hard to make you open up. I didn’t even have to break any of your fingers.” Her mouth stretched briefly into a grin that scared him. “You’ll tell them all about me. Which will put me right in the spotlight. I don’t like the spotlight, Dylan.”

He swallowed. “You don’t?”

“I’m very private person.”

He was thinking fast, or trying to think, but it was hard, because all at once his mind was crowded with thoughts, a million thoughts, memories of the jobs he’d done, the people he’d killed, the wet smack of his bullets in their flesh.

“Maybe,” he said, fighting to control the tremor in his voice, “maybe you can give me a couple hours to haul ass out of town. Then they won’t pick me up. They’ll get Shanker because of the phone numbers. But Shanker don’t know nothing about you, so he can’t blow your cover. That’ll work out. Work out for both of us.”

She seemed to consider it. Dylan allowed himself to feel a thrill of optimism. Then her eyes narrowed, and he knew she had never given it any thought.

“What makes you think I want things to work out for you?” she asked, her voice dangerously gentle.

Dylan was silent. He had no answer to that.

He was in trouble, real trouble, the worst trouble of his life. This woman was a hard case. She was crazy, and she could blow him the fuck away without thinking twice about it.

She removed the gun from his face, but he took no comfort from that fact. Her expression was unchanged, and the coldness in her eyes was deeper than before.

As he watched, she took a pillow from the futon and wrapped it around the gun. He knew what that was for. To muffle the shot. She didn’t want his neighbors to hear it. She wanted to kill him and get away clean.

The pillow made it fully real-what was about to happen to him. His heart shuddered with an electric jolt. He felt his hands trembling and willed them to stop, but they wouldn’t stop. His stomach was sour, his bowels dangerously loose.

He had always figured he would go down fighting. Die like a man. But he couldn’t seem to control his body anymore. He couldn’t even muster the physical coordination to get off the futon. He couldn’t do a damn thing.

“Hold on, okay?” he breathed. “Just hold on.”

“The world isn’t going to miss you, Dylan. I can pretty much guarantee that.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

“I think I do.” Her tone was flat, matter-of-fact.

“What I did in the Valley-it was a job, okay? Just a job.”

Her gaze drilled through him. He felt his pants getting wet and knew he had crapped in his shorts, and they would find him that way, and they would laugh.

“We’re both pros, you know?” He had to find a way to reach her. “I was doing a job. Like you.”

Something flickered beneath her surface calm. “I’m not like you.”

“Don’t do this. Please?” He heard the terrible whining quality in his voice, and it sickened him.

“Quiet, Dylan.”

“Don’t do it. God, please, don’t fucking kill me.”

“Quiet,” she said again, her voice so low as to be nearly inaudible. “Quiet now.”