The Porkchoppers

27

At the sound of the first shot, Fred Mure whirled around in a crouch. His eyes swept the street, found nothing, but when the second shot came his ears told him where to look and his gaze moved up to the roof of the two-story building across the street.

He thought he saw a blurred, shiny motion on the roof, but it disappeared before he could make sure. He felt that he should do something so he raced across the street, tugging the .38 Chief’s Special from its hip pocket holster. A car, coming fast from his right, slammed on its brakes and squealed to a stop, but not before its right bumper grazed Mure’s leg. The car’s white-faced driver pounded his horn and screamed, “Stupid bastard!” but Mure didn’t hear him. He didn’t even know that he had been hit.

To the right was a narrow passageway where they kept the garbage cans. It ran between two buildings back to an alley. Mure tore down it, but slowed and then stopped when he reached its end. It was not training, but instinct that made Mure peer cautiously around the corner of the building. In his right hand was the revolver that he had carried for three years, but had fired a mere dozen times, and then only at tin cans. Cubbin had always made fun of him for carrying it and once, when drunk, had even tried to take it away from him. Boy, he wouldn’t make fun of me now, Mure thought as he squatted down and peeked around the corner of the building into the alley.

He saw the back of a blue Toronado with Maryland plates. It was parked next to a steel fire escape. The Toronado’s engine was running and traces of blue smoke escaped from its exhausts in steady gasps. Its left-hand door was open.

When Mure heard the clatter of leather shoes on the steel steps of the fire escape, he jerked his head back around the corner. You gotta look, he told himself. You got to make yourself look. He edged the right side of his face around the building’s corner until one eye could see the man who clattered down the fire escape, taking two and even three steps at a time. The man wore white, transparent plastic gloves and carried a rifle in his left hand.

I seen him before, Mure thought. I seen him and Don somewhere together before. Mure had a phenomenal memory for faces, home numbers, dates, names, and addresses, but he could seldom recall yesterday’s weather because, to him, it was totally useless information.

In Chicago, he remembered, at night, in the Sheraton-Blackstone lobby after that $43.85 dinner we had at Gino’s. He was the weasel sitting there in the lobby and Don said “hi yah” to him and he said “hi” back.

As Truman Goff raced down the fire-escape steps he rehearsed his next moves in his mind. Rifle in the trunk, slam the lid hard, into the car, straight ahead, turn right, go two blocks, turn left and keep straight on. In five minutes, maybe five and a half he would be on the highway that led to Wheeling, West Virginia.

That first shot had gone high, Goff told himself, remembering how he had forced the second one, willing his finger to squeeze the trigger of the Remington .308 that he had stolen from a parked car in Miami. But the second shot had been all right; it had killed him. Goff wasn’t sure how he knew about the second shot but he knew. He always knew.

Goff trotted to the rear of the Toronado and lifted the trunk lid that he had left carefully unlocked. He put the rifle under an old blanket, slammed the lid, and then froze when the voice behind him said, “Hey, you.”

He must have a gun, Goff thought. He’s gotta have a gun. You can either try for the car or you can try the other. Goff decided to try the other. His right hand moved quickly to his belt and pulled the .38 Colt Commander free, but held it hard against his belly.

Now, he thought and whirled quickly, but before he turned all the way around the bullet slammed into his right thigh and knocked him back against the car.

Why don’t he fall down? Fred Mure thought as he watched the thin, intense man slowly bring the automatic up. Why don’t he fall down? I hit him. When you hit ’em they’re supposed to fall down.

Goff didn’t recognize the man who stared at him from only ten feet away. He felt the pain in his leg, but it didn’t bother him. Truman Goff could ignore pain the way some people ignore Christmas. He brought the automatic up and was squeezing its trigger when Fred Mure’s second shot struck Goff’s right shoulder, throwing his aim off. Mure fired again and this time Goff crumpled to his knees with a bullet in his left side just below the heart. Goff tried to lift the automatic again, to aim and fire it at the man once more, but it had grown too heavy. All he could do was lift his head and watch the man walk slowly toward him.

Fred Mure and Truman Goff stared at each other for ten seconds of long silence and during that time they exchanged life histories, agreed on at least one major philosophical point, and then with considerable mutual regret on both sides, agreed to part.

So in a back alley in Pittsburgh Truman Goff bowed his head and into it Fred Mure fired two bullets.