Marine Corpse (25 page)

“Far out,” muttered Becker.

“So what I figure is this,” I said. “Knowing Stu, he was asking questions a mile a minute. He realized he had a great story here. Decided to keep his notes separate from the stuff he was doing on the street people. Kept a little diary just for the assassination story. I figure this American agent found out that Stu knew about it. So he arranged to meet him New Year’s Eve. Probably promised him more information. Instead, he stuck an icepick into Stu’s ear. But he also knew that Stu was keeping journals, so he had to track them down. Clean up his mess, see? Bad for him, if anybody got wind of what really happened. Bad for him, bad for the government. Terrible PR. Killed Stu. Killed poor ol’ Altoona, too, just in case the old guy might’ve known something. Had to kill Heather, ’cause she had seen the journals. Then took the journals from her.”

“That’s very imaginative,” said Becker. “I think you’ve had too many Mai Tais, Brady.”

I grinned. “I could use another.”

Becker lifted his hand, and our waiter disengaged himself from the group across the room. Becker pointed at my glass. “Another Mai Tai, Sonny.” Then he peered at me. “You got any proof of this?”

“Ah, Gus. Good ol’ Gus. Always there when I need him. This federal agent Stu talks about. The street people, those Cubans, they called him Redbeard. Stu didn’t know your name, Gus. But he figured out it was you, didn’t he? Redbeard. That was you. You killed my girl, Gus. You killed Heather and you took the journals. She didn’t know anything, and you had to kill her.”

Becker sighed. “You’re drunk.”

“No, listen,” I said. “You misunderstand me, Gus, ol’ buddy. I know how it is. You gotta do what you gotta do.”

He squinted at me. “What are you talking about?”

“Hey, shit. Raison d’état. National security. L’état, c’est moi. All that sniff. Better dead than red, huh? Can’t have the damn commies sittin’ there on our doorstep, now, can we? I mean, war is war. War is hell. There’s always victims, you wanna have a war.” I held up my hand. “Don’t worry, Gus, old friend, old Redbeard. Ol’ Brady can keep a secret. Just too damn bad you hadda kill my girl. Goddam shame.”

“Can you?” he said. “Can you keep a secret?”

I nodded eagerly. “Oh, sure.” I held my forefinger to my lips. “Mum’s the word.”

“Good,” he said, “because I want you to listen carefully.” He leaned toward me. “The secret is this. You’re dead wrong. That’s the secret. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Okay? So why don’t you just go home and sleep it off, huh? I mean, I understand how you feel about the girl. A tragedy. And the two guys, that’s a shame, too. But these things happen, you have a whacked-out faggot like David Lee. I guess I can understand, you’d like to lay it on me, try to elevate the whole thing, make it less grubby. But, shit, things like this, they’re usually grubby, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. So why don’t you just go home and forget it.”

“I found out some things about you,” I said. “You’re quite a guy, Gus. Quite a guy. A goddam hero. A hero for our time. Green fucking Beret. Four years in Nam and Cambodia. You can kill people with a belt buckle or a boot lace or a goddam palm frond. POW, right? Escaped, too. Crawled forty miles through the jungle with a busted leg. Hero. Kind of a renegade, even by Special Forces standards. But a goddam hero. Then back in the good old U.S. of A., working in different jungles. Still a lone wolf. But a result getter. Busted up a big cocaine ring in Miami just last fall. Singlehandedly. Yep. Miami, where all the commie Cubans are. You probably talk pretty good Cuban Spanish. Still got that hair across your ass about the commies. What’s it they say? A man can leave the Special Forces. But the Special Forces never leaves the man.”

“Where’d you hear all this?”

“I got a buddy over at Justice, Boston office. All that stuff’s on their computers, Gus. Part of the record. Nice record. You gotta be proud, record like that.”

My Mai Tai arrived. Becker said to the waiter, “Give me the check, will you? Bet you understand that.” The waiter nodded and dropped the check onto the table. Becker picked it up, glanced at it, extracted some bills from his wallet and laid them on the table. “Finish your drink,” he said to me. “I’m going to get you home, let you sleep it off. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“I feel fine,” I said. I gulped down the drink. “I’m awful mad at you, though, Gus. I loved that girl.”

He shook his head. “Come on, Brady. Let’s go.”

I put both hands onto the table and slowly pushed myself up. My chair toppled over backwards behind me.

Becker came around the table and grabbed my arm. “Come on. I’ll help you.”

He put his arm across my back and half carried me out. We stood in front of the restaurant breathing in the chilly March air. “I’m going to put you into a cab,” said Becker. “Come on. This way.”

We started up the street. “Where we goin’?” I said.

“Find a cab. Won’t be any around here this time of night. We’ll head over to Washington Street.”

The lights were still on in the restaurants along Beach Street, but the narrow sidewalks were deserted, and there was no traffic moving in Chinatown.

“I gotta take a whizz,” I announced.

“Good idea,” said Becker.

“Very good idea.”

There was an alley. I lurched toward it. “Gotta get outa sight,” I said. “Don’t want to get picked up. Indecent exposure, huh? Pissing in public.”

Becker kept his arm on me as I moved into the shadows. There was a bare light bulb glowing over a doorway down the alley. It illuminated rows of plastic trash barrels and stacks of cardboard boxes, creating big distorted shadows on the blank, windowless brick walls.

I stood to face the wall, propping myself up against it with one hand while I fumbled at my zipper with the other. Becker stood behind me.

“Don’t you have to go?” I said. “Those Mai Tais, they go right through you.”

“You had more than I did,” he said. He was standing close behind me, his voice a low whisper in my ear. “You had an awful lot of those Mai Tais, Brady. And you talked an awful lot. Said terrible things. You said things you really had no right saying. You hurt my feelings, Brady.”

“Ah, we’re friends, Gus. We can talk.”

Suddenly his forearm levered against my throat and forced my chin up. His body was a heavy weight against my back. “Hey,” I managed to gasp. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I told you,” he said softly into my ear. “You talk too much.”

I reached up with my right hand and grabbed his arm. Beneath his coat I could feel his forearm, as hard and unyielding as a hunk of oak. He increased the pressure on my throat. “Come on,” I wheezed. “I can’t breathe.”

I was bracing myself against the wall with my left hand. The weight of his body was pushing against me. My knees were beginning to buckle from the bulk of him, and he was slowly forcing my chin up and back, constricting my windpipe.

I managed to shift my weight onto my left leg. Then I lifted my right foot and smashed backwards with my heel as hard as I could. I caught him on his instep, and he grunted in surprise and pain. And for an instant his grip on my throat loosened. I ducked my head and pivoted, swinging my left elbow backwards. I heard the whoosh of his breath as I connected with the pit of his stomach.

I turned quickly and went at him. I was bigger than Becker, and it raced through my mind that I could overpower him the way I once had been able to push opponents around when I played tight end, compensating for my lack of gracefulness with strength and bulk. I hit him with my shoulder and we went down together. I fell on top of him. I tried to get my forearm under his chin, but he managed to twist away from me. I clawed at his face. I wanted to get my fingers into his eyes or his nostrils and to rip and tear, I had no desire to fight fair. I knew Gus Becker was a killer. He wouldn’t fight fair.

He tucked his chin into his chest. I couldn’t get at the soft parts of his face. I smashed at his neck and throat with the side of my fist. All I hit was hard skull and shoulder.

Becker squirmed under me. He was quicker and leaner and better conditioned, and I could feel my initial advantage slipping away. I tried to get my knee up into his groin, and as I did he thrust suddenly with his legs and rolled away from me.

I scrambled to my feet. My breath was coming hard and raspy. All those damn cigarettes.

Becker had managed to circle around beside me. I turned to face him. He was bent forward. I noted with some satisfaction that he was panting, too, and he was holding his side with his right hand.

In his left hand something glinted in the dim light.

I kicked at him and caught him high on his thigh, a harmless, amateur, glancing blow. He jumped back, crouched, both hands held low, a knife fighter’s stance.

“Come on,” I said. “Come on, Becker. Try somebody who isn’t drunk or old or an innocent little girl. Come on, you fucking Green Beret.”

He swayed back and forth, feinting, low and alert, like a cobra looking to strike. He was grinning, now, sure of himself. I backed up carefully until I felt the wall against my back. “Gonna be messy, boy,” he whispered. “Coulda been neat and quick. Too bad.”

He lunged at me. I turned my body and threw up my arm. I felt a sudden dart of pain near my elbow. I stumbled away from him, moving back deeper into the alley. Becker came at me, stalking me, his teeth glittering from inside his beard, his eyes narrowed. I held my wounded elbow. Warm blood soaked my coatsleeve and oozed between my fingers. The arm felt numb, and I had to cradle it with my other hand to keep it from dangling uselessly at my side.

“I thought you were drunk,” he said, grinning, coming at me. “You can hold your Mai Tais, I’ll give you that.”

The pain in my elbow was moving up, searing into my armpit. Becker kept coming at me, an animal with the powerful whiff of his wounded quarry’s blood flooding his nostrils.

“Why don’t you give it up, Gus,” I said, edging backwards. “It’s all over.”

“You said it yourself,” he said, light and shifty, up on the balls of his feet. “Gotta clean up the mess.”

He lunged at me again. I ducked away. Too late. I realized he had faked me, and I was off balance, stumbling backwards. He rammed me with his forearm, knocking me onto my back. Then he was on me, his knee in my stomach. “Let’s make it quick and painless,” he whispered.

I tried to twist away from him. He shoved the heel of his hand against the side of my face, smashing my head onto the rough pavement. I clawed at him with my one good hand. But I felt weak, and there was nothing to grab.

Then the alley was filled with a blinding light. This, I thought, is that great flash that you see inside your brain when an icepick slides in. Then it goes black and it’s all over.

“Drop it, Becker!” came a loud voice.

I felt his weight shift on me, and I kicked hard and rolled quickly out from under him. I scrambled away from him on my one good hand and both knees and dragged myself into a sitting position against the wall. I looked toward the end of the alley. The light blinded me. I glanced at Gus Becker. He was crouched there on all fours staring into the spotlight, looking like a red-bearded raccoon that had been caught robbing a garbage pail.

Then the alley was full of people. Two uniformed policemen grabbed Becker by his arms and led him away. Becker did not fight it. Then Al Santis was kneeling beside me.

“You all right, there?”

“Shit,” I said. “Had him right where I wanted him.”

Santis grinned. “Sure didn’t look that way.”

“You guys cut it awful close,” I said. “What were you trying to do?”

“Wanted to see how well you could handle yourself.”

I shook my head. “Not that well, to tell the truth. I expected you sooner, or I wouldn’t have been so cocky.” I held up my right elbow to look at it. The coatsleeve was wet and shiny with blood.

“Let’s have a look at that,” said Santis.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Help me up, will you?”

He put his arm around my back and helped me climb up onto my feet. “The transmission wasn’t very good,” he said. “We kept waiting to get something we could use.”

I took the little transmitter out of my pocket and unhooked the wire that led to the tiny microphone pinned to the inside of my shirt. I handed it to Santis. “You mean, you guys weren’t right there all the time?”

“Oh, we weren’t far away. Picked up your voice just fine, most of the time. Couldn’t hear what he was saying very well, though. Maybe the recorder got it all. What
did
he say?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Mm,” he muttered. “Well, anyway, we’ve got an assault here, and a weapon.” He showed me what looked like a miniature icepick, with a wooden handle and a thin steel shaft perhaps five inches long.

“That’s not an icepick, is it?”

“Looks to me like a pickle spear,” said Santis. “Seventy-nine cents at any five-and-ten. You use them to fish pickles out of a jar.”

“Or to stick into people’s brains.”

“That, too.” He held it up to the light. He was holding it gingerly with a handkerchief. “It’s got your blood all over it. Maybe we can find traces of other blood on it, too.”

We walked out of the alley. Becker had already been carted away. Two policemen stood beside a squad car, waiting for Santis and me. He said, “Hop in. We’ll drop you off at the hospital, get that arm looked at.”

I climbed into the back seat. Al Santis slid in beside me. “Now what do we do?” I said.

“Now we get that arm cleaned up. Then we go over to the station and talk about what happened.”

“Nothing happened,” I said. “I pretended I was drunk. I told him what I believed he did. He didn’t say anything. He admitted nothing. Then we went outside, and he tried to kill me.”

“Well, we’ll go over it, anyway.”

The police car got onto Washington Street, heading toward Mass General. It traveled sedately. No sirens or flashing blue Lights. It comforted me that no one seemed especially concerned about the wound on my arm. I put my head back against the seat and closed my eyes.

“How did you arrange that, so Becker would think you were loaded?” said Santis.