Menaced Assassin (42 page)

Kosta kept his face straight. “What is a Raptor?”

Stagnaro left, Miss Pym came in with that look on her face.

“I have Charlene covering your calls,” she said. She
locked the door. “Rather exciting, hearing you talk to that policeman.”

“Show me,” said Gounaris. She did. Afterwards he told her to take the rest of the day off to buy some lingerie. “With open crotches. Be wearing it when I come over tonight.”

Power.
Power!
Jesus, there was nothing like it. What had Henry Miller written? Living in the land of fuck. The gold ring was within his grasp. Nothing could stop him now.

Dante, feeling depressed, stopped for a cup of decaf in the lobby coffee shop. How many ways could you blow one interview? He’d planned it all out in advance, and it had been a dud. The loose tail on Gounaris had lost him that night. He’d gone into his parking garage after work, hadn’t come out. Hours later they caught up with him at Diana Pym’s apartment on Telegraph Hill. He’d been loose during the vital time.

And a man who had left his car garaged there while gone for the holidays had found a Domino Pizza sign in his trunk—the kind that clips on the top of a car. The kind that Dante had seen on the top of the shooter’s car just before the bullets had started flying.

He had thought the information about the car would shake Gounaris; the man had just laughed at him. And Diana Pym was giving him an all-evening alibi; she was completely in the thrall of the tall Greek, just like Moll Dalton before her. Even Rosa had thought Gounaris was a handsome devil.

Dante’s eyes found the lobby pay phone Gounaris had used to call Gideon Abramson in Palm Springs, back in the days when he’d had Gounaris on the run. Now Gounaris was on top of the world. He’d been involved somehow in Moll Dalton’s death. He’d been able to eliminate everyone in power between him and a position of high importance in the mob. He’d gotten the Mafia a toehold in San Francisco. And, although Dante didn’t know why, he’d tried to kill Dante and had gotten away with it.

And Dante couldn’t prove a damned word of it. Accuse
him, Gounaris could sue him and the department. Tim was right. Let it go. Gounaris just wasn’t his problem any longer. Probably never had been.

His problem was that tonight Will Dalton planned to make a speech over in Berkeley at the Institute of Human Origins, detailing his fifteen months in Uganda studying chimpanzees. And hadn’t returned Dante’s calls urging him not to.

Will Dalton, whose wife had left him
something
, a computer disk maybe, that might shed light on the riddle of Kosta Gounaris. Dalton, who had brought himself back into the danger zone months before he was scheduled to return.

Dante wanted to
stop
Raptor from killing, not put the cuffs on him after Will Dalton was already dead. If Dalton spoke, Raptor would be there; Dante could feel it in his bones. So he had to be there, too. Alone. Nobody believed him that Dalton was in danger. Except for Raptor. And probably Kosta Gounaris.

Kosta was at his desk, thinking about Will Dalton. Fifteen months ago he had wanted Dalton dead. Had wanted revenge on him, in a weird way, for Moll’s death. Now Moll and her passionate lovemaking had paled to insignificance next to Miss Pym’s delicious perversions of body and mind.

The phone rang. Charlene said, “There’s an Inspector Flanagan on line two, Mr. Gounaris.”

“Tell him I’ve already left for the day.”

“Gee, I’m sorry, Mr. Gounaris, I said you were still—”

“Oh, all right, put the bastard on.”

“I’m already on.”

That fucking Charlene was out of a job, as of right now! Not closing down Flanagan’s line while she buzzed him…

“Can’t blame me for trying, Inspector,” said Gounaris. He heard Charlene hang up. At least the stupid cunt had gotten that right. “Your friend Stagnaro was sniffing around all morning, I’m sick of the stink of cops.”

“Yeah? Tough titty. Somebody whacked Diana Pym in her
apartment an hour ago. I just got here, I’m waiting for the tech boys now. I want you to get your ass over here.”

A huge hand seemed to seize Kosta’s heart. “Diana? Dead? But that can’t be! She was just—”

“Dead. And she didn’t die easy. Like maybe whoever did it was trying to get some information out of her.”

“I don’t… know what to say…”

There was a heavy bray of laughter over the line. “Just say she was a great piece of ass and move on to the next one.” The voice suddenly hardened. “I want you over here right now, Gounaris. There’s papers and shit all over the floor, and she’s naked except for some Victoria’s Secret underwear without any crotch in it. Whoever did this liked his work…”

It was nearly five o’clock, dark out. The light drizzle that had fallen early in the afternoon had ended; the pavement gleamed in the streetlights but the air was clear and crisp. Gounaris was lucky enough to flag down a cab just as he emerged from the Atlas Entertainment building.

“Kearny above Broadway,” he told the driver.

Vivid sexual images shot through him. Going down on Moll Dalton, finishing off in her mouth… And an hour later… Diana Pym, going down on him so he finished off in her mouth. And now, a few hours later…

Stop it, goddam you, he thought. There wasn’t time for that. Moll was gone. Diana was gone. As the cab threaded its way through the stalled, angry, honking rush-hour traffic, he knew he had to think, think hard and quick. It wasn’t over after all! It hadn’t died with Martin Prince! Maybe that Raptor mentioned by Stagnaro…
She didn’t die easy… trying to get information out of her… whoever did this liked his work…

Think, goddammit! What had she known that could be dangerous to Kosta Gounaris? He relaxed fractionally. She had known nothing about the things the mob would want to
know: whatever might cost them money or endanger their operations.

He remembered Flanagan now, fat, red-faced and deliberately stupid. Even so, he could be a problem, might think this gave him a right to dig around in Atlas operations…

“Here you are, pal.”

Kosta shoved some bills at the cabby, got out, almost slipped crossing the wet-slick, steeply slanted sidewalk toward the gaping street door of Diana’s second-floor apartment. Flanagan’s unmarked sedan was parked at an angle halfway up across the sidewalk, the driver’s door hanging open.

Gounaris ran up the interior stairs, his shoes echoing on the old hardwood risers. The door to her apartment at the head of the stairs also stood open. Bright light came through from the living room beyond the hallway. He went in, faltered. He didn’t want to see Diana…

“In-Inspector? I—”

The wire garrote was looped around his neck from behind. The big predator coming out of the hall closet gave a grunt of effort as he jerked the wire tight with its two handmade wooden handles, ramming his knee into the small of Kosta’s back for leverage.

“Die… you… fucker…”

Gounaris did. Almost immediately. But not before he had been spun around to face the hallway mirror so he could see, through dimming eyes, Raptor’s ferocious and triumphant face reflected over his own shoulder.

I want something special for this one—the savagery unleashed last time seems to be growing. Something up close and personal. The gun? I’ve used that already, more than once. The bomb? If you will allow a directed gas main explosion to count, I’ve used that too. The knife? Prince of darkness. Which leaves the club or the garrote.

The garrote it shall be. Up close and personal. Easy to fabricate out of piano wire and two pieces of dowel for handgrips. Gloves at all times, of course. And I want it to be at Miss Pym’s apartment—somehow fitting, don’t you agree?

I go in two days ago using the old telephone repairman ruse. Cap, jacket, a phone to hang off a thick leather belt… Lovely view of the Embarcadero, the piers, the Bay Bridge from her front room window. She has a telescope—for watching the ships, she tells me. Spare bedroom fixed up as a home office; fax machine, filing cabinet, speakerphone, copy machine…

Outside, the view is equally delectable. A breathtaking panorama down Kearny and across Broadway to the financial district, dominated by the towering white golf tee of the Transamerica Tower. A similar view, in fact, to that from the late Moll Dalton’s penthouse apartment, visited, thoroughly scouted, many times by Raptor before her demise.

I have been tracking Gounaris for two weeks now, I know his patterns, his habits. I see Stagnaro visit him today, I
watch Miss Pym depart, follow her shopping, home, activate my plan. When the time is right, I go up to her apartment, do what I do, call Gounaris. Impersonating fat Tim Flanagan over the phone is easy; Gounaris has not spoken to the man for fifteen months.

I leave my Hertz car—the epitome of an unmarked sedan—parked at an artistic angle across the sidewalk, door agape. I leave street and upstairs door to the apartment open, flood it with light to make it subliminally seem a crime scene.

I wait in the closet. Gounaris arrives. Sees himself die.

I arrange the scene further, drive to my Berkeley motel room; I have two hours to wait before the Will Dalton
finis
. Or my own. I don’t know how that will go, not with Stagnaro lurking around. I lie down for a moment, fall asleep, dream.

I have completed an assassination in a strange city, rent a cheap hotel room for the night. It is high-ceilinged and boxy, sparsely furnished with a neatly made double bed and an almost napless carpet on the floor.

In the night I come half-awake with a warm heavy weight on top of me. At first I think it is my dog, he weighs as much as a person, but when I put my hand down to pat his head, I encounter soft human flesh. I feel an arm, a female breast, I jerk my hand away. A woman is lying asleep on top of me.

At first I think, My beloved! But then I remember that she has no way of knowing where I am or what I am doing.

“You have come to the wrong room,” I exclaim, very puritanical, shaking the sleeping woman awake. “You must leave.”

She mumbles something and rolls aside so I can jump out of bed. I find the light switch, but the fixture in the high ceiling has a very dim pink bulb, so it furnishes ambiance but little illumination. The woman is tall and comely, her body beautifully shaped under a filmy blue negligee. Because of the dim light, however, I cannot see her face as she comes toward me.

She slides the negligee down off her shoulders to bare for my ecstasy her beautiful breasts, nipples erect with sexual
anticipation, and I realize she
is
my beloved! I put my arms around her hips and crouch to bury my face between those breasts, my own sex already thrusting out stiffly in its excitement.

“One need only be faithful unto death,” she murmurs in an astounded, suddenly fading voice.

And I am crouching in the middle of that strange barren pinkly lit hotel room with a ridiculous hard-on, clutching only an empty blue negligee, the texture of my beloved’s departed flesh still burning my lips. I hear mocking male laughter dissipating into thin air above my head.

Lips burning. Face wet. I think with tears, but when I bring down my hand it is stained with something dark. I stagger into the bathroom, look in the mirror. My face is smeared with blood like the face of a vampire.

End of dream. I awake in my Berkeley motel room, heart pounding, fearing I have missed the next murder, fearing I have slain my beloved. I sit on the edge of my bed, face buried in my hands. I bring my hands down. They are red with blood. I run into the bathroom, look in the mirror. My face is smeared with blood like the face of a vampire.

The bed is bloodstained, too, but… empty. Void take me, my beloved is not dead by my hand after all! I merely have had my first nosebleed since I was a child.

I have checked out and am driving toward Will Dalton’s assassination, feeling confused, when I recall that departing male laughter above my head. God’s laughter—God, in Whose existence, you will not be surprised to hear, I have very little faith. Suddenly I am enraged at this God I do not believe in.

“Why do You do things like this to people?” I demand, but reasonably at first. “They pray, they try to live good lives, they give love to other people… and then You destroy them.”

No answer. He never answers, as those of you who engage in the futile exercise of prayer well know. You must take it on faith that some cosmic ear is up there listening. Louder now.

“What do You get out of it? You claim to be all-powerful. Why do You need the humiliation and destruction of human beings? Of all living things?”

No answer. I wait. Louder again. I am pounding my fist on the steering wheel by this time. My face, caught in the rearview mirror, is contorted with rage.

“WHY? DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD? DO YOU ENJOY THE SCREAMS OF HUMAN PAIN? DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL ALL WARM AND TOASTY INSIDE? DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A
BIG MAN
?”

No answer. I am at a stoplight. The woman in the next car is looking over at me. She cannot hear me through our closed windows, so perhaps she thinks I am singing along with some operatic aria—with Rome’s sinister chief of police, Scarpia, let’s say, plotting Cavaradossi’s murder in the church of Sant’ Andrea before cynically falling on his knees to pray.

I shriek,
“ANSWER ME, GODDAM YOU! OR DON’T YOU HAVE THE GUTS?”
No answer. The light changes. Traffic moves. I scream:
“ALL RIGHT THEN, FUCK YOU! I’LL KILL YOU TOO, YOU FUCKER, SO YOU CAN ROT IN YOUR OWN HELL!”

No answer. Because there is no answer He can make.

And God has the balls to claim He created us in His image!

“‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’”

Will paused and looked around the room full of scientists, most of whom had little sympathy with the Genesis story of the beginnings of life. But the room was still, almost tense.