Wind Slayers, page 9
"Lanark, Decoy One." He listened intently. "On our way!"
"What is it?"
"Black's got some news for us."
"Fast!"
"No doubt Top Level's on his ass as well. Come on."
"What about--"
"No time!" He lashed on his speedloader and gun and tossed his sport coat over it. The bulge was hardly noticeable. Lanark wore no tie and a pair of designer jeans with the cord coat. He looked like he might be a grad student at the U. of C., or a first-year instructor there.
"I want to know the whole story, Ryne."
"Later," he shouted, bursting out of the office.
"Now!" she replied, chasing after him.
"We're expected." He left her holding the door, and Samantha was staring up at her. For a long moment Shannon wondered why she even bothered with Lanark. The other detectives were out now, combing for witnesses to the downtown slaughter. Shannon, her head spinning with questions and unresolved curiosity, wondered what damaging information had been stolen from Ames's office, and she wondered what Howard Black--or, rather, Sybil Shanley--had for them. She hadn't been fooled by Lanark. She'd heard the high-pitched female voice on the line with him. Shanley had, as in the past, tipped Lanark far in advance of others, and he was racing to her like the lapdog she'd made of him, and Shannon wondered what all the words and caresses and time spent this noon had meant to him, if anything. Damn him. God damn him to hell, and maybe Fabia would do it if God didn't and why the hell should she care?
She caught up with him outside and got into the sports car. She sat stonily silent while Lanark quietly began to explain his position, which served only to annoy her further.
"Look, Shan, if you don't know, they can't touch you--not for anything, and I wouldn't have that happen for anything. I care--"
"Care!" she interrupted. "You and I have a different definition of words like care and love, Lieutenant Lanark. Caring has a lot to do with trust."
"I'm sorry, but--"
"Not to worry, because I'm not. Glad I found out when I did and--"
The police squawk box announced a 10-22 in progress at an address not two blocks from their position. Ryne responded by whipping the car in a screaming U-turn.
"What the hell're you doing?" she asked.
He called into dispatch, "Decoy Eleven, Lanark, ten-seventeen?" Block e.t.a., Keyes with, on our way!"
"We don't have time for a theft just now, Ryne! Ryne!"
Dispatch came on. "Change that ten-seventeen to ten-thirty, eleven, proceed with caution."
"Armed robbery," Lanark said.
He was pumped up by the action. Needed it, the same as he had needed "lunch" today, she thought.
By the time he'd said it, they were screeching to a stop inches before the plate glass window of a liquor store at the location Dispatch had given them. Response time was under one minute. Lanark flashed on that fact, comparing it with the ten that it had taken for cops to get to his parents' bar one night. But he had to focus every fiber on the here and now.
He and Shannon flew from the car and took up positions outside the store on either side of the door. Shannon, in a crouch, moved below the window frame. Lanark shouted, "Going in!" and he disappeared into the store. He saw no one, but sensed someone hiding. Shannon slowly backed him, her gun pointed down one aisle, his the second. The scene was surprisingly clean, which meant no shots had been fired. They'd heard none as they approached. Outside, a crowd was gathering. For all they knew the perp might be among them, his gun tucked away, asking what was going on.
Then they heard a stir, and both detectives whirled and aimed their guns at the head that popped over the counter. It was a gray-headed woman, crying, "Antonio, Antonio! He's a-bleeding! OhGod. HelpohGod. OhGod!"
Bottles and boxes crashed at the rear. Lanark's weapon swung around and the big Magnum's hammer clicked back, but he did not fire. Someone darted out the back.
"I'm out the back!" Lanark shouted.
"I'm front!" Shannon replied.
As Shannon tore out the front, she shouted for someone to get an ambulance, that someone was hurt inside. But she didn't linger, racing around to an alleyway and climbing a fence. Halfway over the fence she saw the criminal racing over a field of bricks and debris where an ancient structure was coming down. If he got fifteen feet farther, he'd have cover in the construction machinery and trailers. It was shut down, no workers.
Hanging from the fence, she fired a warning shot without having taken time to shout Stop or Police or anything else that was obvious. The bullet hit the target she aimed for, the bricks two feet ahead of the scurrying figure. He froze in his zigzag race. He was favoring his left ankle, likely had turned it going over the mine field of brick and mortar. She heard Lanark shout, "Police! Halt, sonofabitch or you'll get it in the back."
The kid was tall and lithe and looked to be in his mid-twenties, dirty clothing, and holes at the backside and knees of his jeans, a splotch of red underwear showing, or was it a bandanna? He was some fifty yards from them and the setup reminded Shannon of an academy simulation.
Suddenly the kid turned and raised his hands, the gun going limp in one and a paper bag in the other. He looked prepared to give himself up.
"Toss down the gun!" Lanark shouted. Keyes started to finish her fence climb, coming over, when suddenly the wood beside her head splintered. "Holy shit!" she shouted. She thought some asshole on the other side of the fence had come at her with an ax, sending the shards of wood at her. But at almost the same instant she realized that the filthy punk kid with the paper bag and gun had taken a chance on evening the odds. He had sent a bullet within whistling distance of her eyebrows.
She felt a flush of anger and fired on the now-prone kid who'd dropped to the ground and fired one round at Lanark, followed by another in her direction. Her second shot sent debris in the kid's face, some flecks of brick embedding into the skin, turning his pale features to blood.
"Drop the damned gun, now, or I swear, kid, you're dead!" she shouted. She still could not see Lanark, and was only vaguely aware that her tweed jacket was ripped and that her face was smudged. She worried that since Ryne was not saying anything, that he'd been hit.
"Awl-right, awl-right!" came the southern drawl just before he threw the gun a good twenty yards ahead of him.
Shannon breathed a sigh of relief but held her weapon at the ready. The kid had already proven he couldn't be trusted. "Lanark!" she shouted. "You all right?"
"Fine," came the reply. He was drinking from a Coke bottle. How'd he find time to stop at the fridge, she wondered.
"You're drinkin' a Coke and this guy's taking shots at me!" she said angrily.
"Thought the situation was in hand. Thought you had him in your sights."
"I was coming off the damned fence."
"Oh, I didn't know that."
"There's a lot you don't know."
They had moved closer toward each other as they argued. A handful of other cops now stood around at a construction fence watching, looking as if they might even be wagering on the outcome of the Shootout at the "not O.K. Corral" here.
"Still think you're a better shot than I am, don't you, Keyes?" he said, as if to taunt her.
She barreled back, "Damn straight I am, and we both know it."
"Want to prove it?"
"How?"
"Your prisoner's gettin' away. Want to bring him back here, or bring him down, Keyes? Dammit, you really have to learn to keep your eyes on your work."
Shannon wheeled and saw the kid was making a mad dash again to get away. "Damn that kid." She sounded like her mother, she thought, aiming.
But Lanark speed-fired without aiming his big weapon. The result was an instant explosion and an enormous hole through one of the construction trailers.
"God! I hope no one's in there!" Shannon shouted.
The kid turned in another direction, racing toward a pile of concrete that was once stone steps. "Your shot!" Lanark shouted.
She fired. Inches from the kid. It sent him into a paroxysm of fear and dancing, but he then took off in yet another direction.
By now Lanark and Shannon were standing almost side by side. "Doesn't want to go in, does he?" asked Lanark, who raised his long-barreled gun again and missed the kid's toe by a fraction of an inch. This made the kid jump and wheel and scream all at once. He ran now toward them until he realized he had been turned around. Shannon showed him the end of her .38 and he raced again for the construction machines. She pinged a slug off the one he had gotten nearest to. This made the perpetrator collapse from frustration and exhaustion.
The crowd at the fence, mostly cops, sent up a cheer.
"Guess I won that one," she said.
"Then go get him."
She made her way to the would-be thief and cop killer. She forced his hands behind his back and cuffed him, got him to his feet, and began to read him his rights as they staggered back over the debris. She grabbed the sack, presumably filled with cash. It was light, hardly enough to kill for. It made her see red and she lost her temper, pushing the punk down hard into the brick and stone.
"This is it? This is what you dragged us down here for? This is what you beat up an old man for? This is what you almost shot me in the fucking face for?" She almost kicked him but saw the pitiful, crying creature at her heels was hardly capable of understanding her, he was so high on drugs. Ortega flashed through her mind, his full, fat face and perpetual half smile, leering eyes. This kid could be one of his "results."
She dragged him to his feet and turned him over to a pair of officers who commended her actions and ability with a weapon. They did so in true cop understatement, ending with a proposition, two on one.
"No thanks," she told the young officers, "I got a pistol of my own. But tell you what, you can have the collar."
Lanark was waiting when she slid back into the Porsche, and she could almost hear the older cops telling the younger ones what fools they'd been to come on to Lanark's girl.
She worried about that some. Was that all anyone saw when they looked at her? Lanark's girl? Maybe today they'd seen that she was more than anyone's girl. Maybe they'd tell the story of this day in bars all over the damned city instead of the story that she slept with her superior to get ahead, or--as she'd heard it when it wound back around to her--a head."
"Cops," she muttered, "they're all bastards."
Lanark moved nervously in his seat and said simply, "Good shooting."
"Like a duck in a gallery."
He laughed lightly. "Hey, I'm sorry I didn't watch a little closer back there. You were right to chew me out. Got careless, and if something had--"
"Forget it."
"No, I won't do that."
"Think we can find someplace to stop where there's a mirror and a john?" she asked. "Before we go to see Sybil, I mean."
"Plenty of space in the crime lab building."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Little soap and water, you'll be fine."
"Good as new?"
"Shannon, these files stolen from Ames. If they bring anybody down, it's just going to be me. Not you, not anyone on my team, not Wood. That's why what's in them stays up here." He pointed to his head. "I bring you in, I put you in jeopardy, simple as that. If I love you, I can't do that. So tie me to a stake and burn me."
"We're good together, Lanark, in and out of bed, partners or lovers. We do it together, or we fall apart. That's my final word on it."
They were at the rambling old crime lab building just down from City Hall, where Black did his magic and Shanley operated as his first assistant and wand twirler.
"I don't like ultimatums, Shan."
"Too damned bad."
"What're you going to do? Go back to Jordan, that sonofa--is this all so important because you know it'll cause enough of a fight to send you packing, back to him?"
They'd pulled into a parking spot and she all but jumped car, slamming the door so hard it resounded through the underground lot. "Damn fool man!"
He sat deep in the car and fantasized about her. Yes, he wanted very much to tell her how his family had met their end at the hands of men like Jimmy Fallen, but he could not. Instead, he watched her disappear from the rearview mirror, disappear from his sight.
He'd have to patch it up with her later. At the moment she was making herself more presentable for ... for whom? Dr. Black? Him? Or was it for Sybil Shanley's benefit?
He climbed from the car when a bicyclist came racing through. It was one of the downtown messenger boys, and he looked as if he were going seventy and ought to get a ticket. Then Lanark heard the tires squeal and the bike was brought around as quick as a whip snap. The rider pulled out a gun and fired as Lanark, reading the signs, dived for the pavement. The bullet put a hole in the trunk of the Porsche, and Lanark thought how he'd catch hell for that. Besides, it was a sin. He rolled out and came up firing as the biker began to race off, knowing he'd missed and knowing the building was full of cops.
Lanark aimed for the thin racing tire at the rear and fired. The result was a terrible smashup into the wall just before the kid exited. Lanark raced to him and stepped on the semiconscious young man's throat after kicking away his gun.
"Who sent you, who! Tell me right now, or I'll blow your goddamn head clean off." He put the muzzle of the big gun to the kid's right eye. The kid was Hispanic with long waves of thick, glossy black hair and his eyes were deep onyx, filled with fear and hatred. "I hear someone coming!" Lanark shouted. "I'll kill you before they see, and say it was self-defense! Now, who sent you?"
"To-ooo-towwd..." he groaned.
Lanark's features quivered with rage, and he saw Shannon racing to them as he pulled back the hammer of the Magnum. "Toad? You say Toad? Carl Toad? Where is he? Where?" Lanark shook the kid madly, dashing his head against the concrete. Toad was one of them, one of the four who'd cold-bloodedly killed his family.
But the kid was unconscious, and Lanark had to release the hammer gently if he didn't want to lose the assassin altogether, accidentally blowing his face away.
"What happened?"
"A little present for me."
"Ortega?"
Lanark pursed his lips, looked up to his partner, and said, "Yeah, Ortega seems likely."
Other cops from all over descended on the scene, Fabia among them. He didn't say a word to Lanark or Shannon, just stood on the periphery, sizing up the situation, his beady eyes working, an occasional aside to one of his drones in IAD.
"I want a twenty-four-hour watch on this kid, and when he comes to, he's mine," Ryne told the officers at the scene. Some of Fabia's people were trying to determine the nature of the shoot as Lanark had described it. He showed them where the kid's shot had gone into his car, the marks where he had skidded through the garage dirt, and the marks left by the bicycle.
"Ortega sent him," Shannon said, still shaken. When she'd heard the shot, she was just inside the rest room, washing up. The gunshots in the garage had sounded like bombs exploding.
"Eventful trip over, wouldn't you say?" Lanark said calmly when they were riding the elevator up to the forensics labs to meet with Black and Shanley.
In a few minutes they were upstairs, but Ryne's thoughts were on what the Spanish assassin's last word had been before he went under: Toad. Is that what he heard, or what he had wanted to hear? Was it possible that Jimmy Fallen's fellow murderer had paid someone to kill Lanark before Lanark got to him?
