Hit and The Marksman (31 page)

“Bottom line, Commander, he couldn't have done the second assassination because he was right in our kitchen eating breakfast.”

Mrs. Trong gives her husband a dry look.

Clay is stony. “Who's going to believe that? They know you're on his side.”

“I don't care what they believe. I'm telling you to believe it.”

Clay nods. “I could buy him for the first one. But this second murder—it's political and it's organized … But he's our only lead, and we've got to get him … If you're telling the truth, you harbored a capital fugitive and you could do time as an accessory.”

“Not if he's innocent, I won't. And some people will have a lot of egg on their faces.”

Dickinson bursts in. “They spotted him …”

Dr. and Mrs. Trong hold their breath. Clay whips toward the door; Dickinson restrains her. “—And they lost him …”

Clay reacts—big exasperation—and Trong smiles at his wife, and she makes a face at him.

Outside a sporting goods store Radford parks his cycle and takes out the photo from Conrad's apartment—the group photo of shooters, emphasizing Harry and the trophy. He takes it into the store and shows the picture to a saleswoman, asks questions, gets an answer: “Sure, I know that guy. Lives out on Highland …”

In Harry's kitchen Anne talks on the phone with repressed fury. “It's too far, that's all. How many more wet operations are you people setting up?… I don't care. Don't talk to me like that. You find Damon. Find him right now and tell him either he calls me tonight or I go to the police.”

She hangs it up violently and that's when she looks around and sees Radford, standing frighteningly near her.

“‘Wet operations'—I thought that one went out with the Iron Curtain.”

Anne tries to shrink away. Radford moves in on her. “Or is it what you do under the covers with guys you're setting up for a frame?”

“C.W.—I didn't know. Oh God, how can I explain this? They just wanted your fingerprints on the rifle. They said they were going to give you a head start.”

Radford whips the nutcracker around her throat.

“Head start to where?… Where's Harry?”

She doesn't comprehend. “Who?”

He whips out the now-crumpled photo of the gun-club group and shoves it in front of her, forcing her to look at it.

“Your husband.”

Anne goes weak. “He's not my husband. And his name's not Harry.”

“This is his house. You live here.”

“I—I got a divorce. From my fourth husband. I had no place to go. I never really had any kind of a home—you know? He offered, and I moved in here with him—I never meant to stay.”

“They sicced you on me. I was the perfect sucker, wasn't I?”

“C.W., I—” She's very scared. “What do you want?”

Radford taps the photograph. “For openers—him.”

After nightfall behind his gun shop Harry is showing a sleek new limousine to a customer in a chauffeur's uniform who looks like a bodyguard for a crime boss. “Yes sir, state-of-the-art. Three eighths-inch Teflon armor plate.” He moves around, pointing out features on the new luxury limo. Not far away is parked an older limo. “All bulletproof glass. Not just the windows. Even the mirrors.”

Radford watches this, from concealment in a doorway down the alley. He's got Anne, not gently; he holds one hand around her mouth.

Harry kicks a tire. “Bullet-proof steel cord in the sidewalls and tread. I'm tellin' you it'll take an anti-tank bazooka to stop this mother.”

The customer says, “Okay … When?”

“She's all gassed up. I'm just waiting on that upholstery. Be in tomorrow, for sure Friday.”

“Well then you call me and I'll come pay the balance. Right?”

“Right. Sure. You got it, my man.”

The customer goes to the older limo and drives away while Harry takes the keys out of the new limo's ignition and pockets them—Radford particularly notices this action—and then Harry goes into the shop's back door.

Radford, carrying the nutcracker, pulls Anne with him, approaching the same door.

Inside the gun shop Harry crosses to the front window. He pulls back a slat of the blind to peer suspiciously out into the night, cupping his hand around his eye to see better.

Out there a police patrol car slowly cruises forward.

Harry lets the blind fall back into place and turns, and that's when he sees—Radford, looming, moving silently forward—almost on top of Harry—nutcracker lifted … Harry reacts: recognition; dread …

Two cops are in the slow-moving patrol car. The cop in the passenger seat sees something, switches on the car's swivel spotlight and swings the beam around until it reveals—a motorcycle parked in the deep shadows of the alley.

“Hey.” Softly.

The car stops. The cops get out and approach the motorcycle, with flashlights. One whispers to the other with suppressed excitement: “We got it! Put in a squeal!”

Harry is backing up, flustered, with Radford pursuing him, not hurrying, keeping within arm's length, swinging the nutcracker at his side, holding it by the end of one stick, holding Anne's arm with his other hand. Harry nearly falls over the tripod-mounted machine gun. He's talking very fast:

“You get nothing out of me, hear? You spilled your guts out, but you don't get a thing out of me. Go ahead. Chickenshit bastard. Fucking traitor.”

Radford swings the nutcracker underarm. Hinged on its lanyards, the nightstick flicks up into Harry's crotch … Harry's eyes bug out; he doubles over in shrieking agony … Falls down by the machine gun … Radford stands above him, swinging the nutcracker gently like a pendulum. Harry slowly focuses on it, his eyes hypnotically following it back and forth. When it begins to swing toward him he yells: “No! Hey!”

The pendulum stops. Radford waits, looking down—patient as a Buddha.

Harry licks his lips. After an interval Radford says quietly, “Okay. The hard way.” The nutcracker begins its pendulum swings again.

“All right, all right. Wait. You want to know—the next assassination. Next target … It's Clay. Commander Clay.”

Anne looks down at him, still able to be shocked. “Oh, Jesus Christ. You bastard.”

Radford says, “Commander Clay. Sure. She's a real cop. She can't be bought, so she's in the way.” Abruptly he crouches and gathers Harry toward him. Nose to nose.

Harry's glance breaks away.

But Radford isn't letting up. “Who are you people?”

“We're just trying to—”

“Give me a name. The head man. Who's on top of the shitpile?”

And the nutcracker whips around Harry's throat and begins to tighten. Harry tries to pry it away with his hands but the choking leverage continues to tighten …

Anne makes an abrupt decision. “Damon.”

Radford looks up at her.

She says, “It's Damon Vickers.”

Harry coughs. He's relieved now that it's out; he's got nothing to lose by going along. His whisper is hoarse. “Yeah. Colonel—Colonel Vickers.”

It takes a minute for Radford to absorb this. “The White House?”

“He ain't the White House, Christ's sake. He just works there.”

Radford looks at Anne, then at Harry. They both have the exhausted look of people who've given up their most dangerous secret; he's got to believe they're telling the truth. “Where does he live?”

Several police cars silently roll up and stop, forming a perimeter around the gun shop. Quietly, cops on foot steer pedestrian passers-by away. As cops barricade themselves, surrounding the gun shop, Commander Clay gets out of her car and meets Dickinson. They talk in hushed voices.

She says, “We've had trouble with him before. Automatic weapons, illegal sales.”

“We think Radford's in there with him. They've got a real arsenal in there. Keep your heads down.”

Harry is on his knees. Anne fidgets. Radford flexes the nutcracker. “Tell me about it. Tell me about your outfit.”

Harry hesitates; Anne begins to speak; and they all stop, frozen by the sound of Commander Clay's voice amplified on a bullhorn outside: “This is the police. You in the gun shop—we have you surrounded. You've got one minute to come out with your hands in the air.”

Radford's eyes dart from front to back. He settles back hard on his heels, his face bleak. Harry's grunt overlaps the bullhorn speech: “Holy shit!” Anne doesn't know which way to turn. Radford finally swings toward the front, where the bullhorn sound comes from, and in that instant while his back is turned, Harry swiftly feeds a belt of ammunition into the tripod-mounted machine gun.

Radford catches this corner-of-the-eye action just in time and dives to one side, knocking Anne protectively to the floor just as Harry begins to shoot—full-rate automatic fire—the bullets shattering the big levelor blind and the front plate-glass window …

Cops cover their heads and hunker down as machine gun bullets from the shop spray the street, ricocheting everywhere, smashing car windows, creating havoc …

Commander Clay is rock steady. “Tear gas—now!”

And Dickinson simultaneously shouts, “Open fire. Fire at will. Son of a bitch!”

Clay's angry “No!” and her sharp look are too late to stop the chaos. Cops open up with revolvers and shotguns. One of them fires a tear gas grenade from a flare pistol into the store.

Inside, the grenade explodes in a puff of evil smoke near the front of the shop. Harry is blazing away, having lunatic fun, overheating the machine gun. Police bullets return the fire, banging around inside the shop, and Radford shoves Anne toward the cover of the counter and scrambles to follow. Tear gas rolls back toward them. All three begin to cough. Radford growls at Harry: “You gun-happy son of a bitch!”

A blaze of police bullets shatters glass everywhere. Anne goes down, shot. Radford tries to protect her. “Give her a hand here!”

Harry ignores him—maybe doesn't even hear him; must have adrenalin pumping so loud he can't hear a thing. His machine gun swivels back and forth, raking the street. And runs empty.

Radford lowers Anne gently to the floor.

Harry with deranged glee yanks open a hidden floorboard compartment, heaves out a goddamn flame thrower, ignites the sumbitch and starts to shoot a long spout of deadly flame out through the smoke toward the street.

Under the smoke Radford is trying to rouse Anne but he sees that she's dead. Finally—coughing desperately—he's driven back, stumbling back into the fog of tear-gas and smoke.

The roaring blast of flame hoses out from the smoky smashed front of the shop. Cops fall back, desperately seeking cover. And the idiot's flamethrower has set half the shop on fire; it's blazing dreadfully.

Inside the thick smoke, coughing, Radford pounces on Harry and wrestles the flamethrower away from him and turns it off.

Harry shoves him away. Both men are coughing hard. Harry yells like a spoiled child whose toy has been taken away. He jumps up and down, throwing a tantrum.

Radford yells at him. “Get down, you stupid—”

But the warning is too late. Harry goes down, cut to pieces in a fusillade of police gunfire.

Amid ragged aftervolleys of police gunfire the smoke billows from the smashed front of the shop. Finally Clay, very weary, stands up. “Cease fire, for God's sake.”

Total stillness now. An expectant hush. Cops begin to peer out from behind cover …

Now several cars in convoy arrive—Vickers and his G-men get out of them; Vickers deploys his troops with hand motions. Vickers as usual is dressed like a suit mannequin in an expensive shop window.

Dickinson says dryly to Clay, “Cavalry to the rescue right in the nick of time, like always.” As the feds approach, Dickinson gets up and greets them in some disgust, addressing his insult to Vickers: “Here's Ken. Where's Barbie?”

“Don't fart around with me, cop.”

Clay ignores him; she says to Dickinson, “Put another tear-gas round in there. I want to be sure.”

Another tear-gas grenade lobs into the smoke. There's the muffled puff of its explosion inside the inferno.

Vickers stands with his hands in his pockets, looking dubious. “You sure he's in there?”

Clay says, “Let's wait and see.”

Dickinson says, “Nothing alive in there by now but maybe a few cockroaches.”

Vickers thinks a moment, visibly. Then he pulls a riot shotgun out of the nearest cop car and, carrying it, circles around toward the back of the shop. The smoke thickens. Flames appear; the building is a goner. Everyone waits …

Behind the gun shop the armored limousine stands near the back door and Vickers sees cops farther back, in a rough perimeter around the back of the shop, watching nervously. Vickers moves in closer to the building, shotgun in hand, working from cover to cover. Smoke pours from the building, beginning to obscure it, but Vickers can make out the back door. It stands wide open.