Dain shook his head. “I don’t want to do anything about it, Randy. I’m just so goddamned tired of it all...”
“There you go again, goddammit! Didn’t you learn nothin’ five years ago? Right now you don’t look in good enough shape to handle a can opener for the cat food, but that fucker, whoever he is, he’ll just keep coming at you, Eddie. He’ll figure he’s got no choice. Why don’t you tell me who he is and where he is, and go home and get some sleep. When you wake up—”
“I can’t do it that way, Randy. Hell, I’m not even sure of my facts. It’s just a maybe. I can’t stomach any more killing on just maybes.”
Randy’s face was taut, his skin and eyes were glistening.
“You lemme talk to the fucker, we’ll get sure. Remember what happened last time you tried it alone.”
“It happened because I wouldn’t let go of an investigation. This time I’m letting go before it gets started.”
Randy sighed in exasperation. “Where’ve I heard that one before? Look, Hoss, all I’m saying, you’re pretty beat up right now. Things’ll look different in a few days after you’ve had some rest. Then you and I’ll get together—”
“I’m not going to move on it, Randy. That’s final.”
And there it remained as Randy left the freeway for Bryant Street, ran down through the night-quiet South of Market streets to the Embarcadero. He pulled up in front of Dain’s darkened, dilapidated pier.
“I’m probably wrong about him anyway,” said Dain.
“Meanin’ you think you’re right about him.”
Randy shook his head, got out to pull the suitcase off the backseat as Dain got Shenzie in his carrying case. When Randy’s taillights had winked out of sight, Dain used a key on the small door beside the loading door, went in, entered the open freight elevator, left Shenzie there to go back outside for his suitcase.
The creaking, swaying lift clanked to the top floor. Dain hit the hallway light switch, then opened the fuse box to unscrew one of them. All his actions were rendered more difficult, more deliberate, by the fact that he had only one arm to use. And by the fact he was reluctant to do them at all.
Two trips to get suitcase, cat, and Tibetan Book of the Dead to the big steel door of his loft. He balanced the book on top of the suitcase, got out his keys, paused.
“What are the odds, cat?” he asked softly.
Shenzie meowed, also softly.
“That bad, huh?”
Dain silently unlocked the door, opened it a scant half-inch on the blackness within. Took a deep breath. Then jerked the door wide and went through in a knee-high dive, obliquely so he would pass instantly out of the light.
Three shots exploded almost together from the darkness.
Dain’s voice said, “I was hoping you wouldn’t be here, but... just in case...”
Two more shots at where his voice seemed to come from sang and ricocheted. The light switch was clicked in a frenzy.
“I took out the fuse, Dougie-baby,” said Dain.
There was a long pause, then Sherman’s voice said, “How... did you know that... I...”
“Your unlisted phone number was on Inverness’s phone bill at the motel in Lafayette.”
A flashlight stabbed the darkness where it seemed Dain’s voice had come from. It picked up only weight-lifting apparatus. A five-pound weight spun right up its beam like a Frisbee. There was a crunch, a cry, the light hit the floor and went out.
Dain’s voice, now cold and inexorable, said, “I looked because he had to call somebody who was also in touch with Maxton for Maxton to have followed us into the swamp. I didn’t think it could be someone local in New Orleans, but I didn’t expect it to be you. Once I knew, and thought about it, of course then it all made sense. But if you’d just left it alone tonight...”
Another muzzle flash, another bullet whining ineffectually. Sherman was a silhouette against the light, jerking first one way, then another, gun extended, trying to pin down Dain’s voice.
“Who better than you to keep tabs on me, down through the years — hell, I begged you to. My go-between! Just as you’d been Pucci’s go-between, down through the years. You even kept in touch with Inverness — you’re a very careful man, Dougie...”
There was another shot. Dain laughed from elsewhere.
“When I told you I was going to New Orleans, you panicked and called him. Hoped he’d kill me but you tossed in Maxton just to make sure. Know what happened to Maxton, Doug? I boiled him alive in a vat of hot tar.”
Sherman’s gun hand was silhouetted against the doorway light. The knife edge of Dain’s hand broke his wrist in a karate chop. Sherman screamed, dropped the gun. Bent, clutching his shattered wrist, panicked as a fire-trapped horse, he ducked back out of the light.
“Inverness died of snakebite... Not a good way to go. Those last minutes of agony, knowing it’s coming...”
“Can’t you understand, I... I was frightened when you went to New Orleans...”
“Yes, Dougie,” said Dain softly, “be frightened.”
There were running steps, Sherman burst out of the darkness and through the doorway and away down the hall, holding his splintered wrist. How had he ever thought it would be amusing to tweak the tail of his own tame tiger? He’d told himself it was only smart to know Dain’s every move in case he got close to the truth in one of his investigations.
Then he had, and...
At the elevator, Sherman had just seized the rope that would draw the bottom door up and the top one down, when Dain’s foot was planted on the bottom one. He had grabbed up his leather-bound Tibetan Book of the Dead from on top of his suitcase in passing.
Sherman backed away, face stricken, absolute terror in his heart, until he ran out of room at the rear of the elevator.
Dain stood in the doorway, planted, solid, somehow more menacing because of his black sling than he would have been with the use of both arms. He held his leather-bound book in his left hand, spine out.
“Dain... please... after all these years...”
“You put a hitman on me in New Orleans — after all these years. You sent Maxton and his goons after me from Chicago — after all these years. You were waiting here in the dark to kill me — after all these years.”
“Money...”
“Yeah, money. Inverness said it always came down to money. That’s what it was always about, wasn’t it? You had original Magritte paintings, for Chrissake! You don’t make that sort of money selling books. I really was naive and stupid. You were Pucci’s drug distributor for all of Northern California, weren’t you? All along?”
“Dain, you have to believe me—”
“It wasn’t Pucci ordered the hit on me — it was you!” Dain was advancing on him now. “He wasn’t at risk — you were! Did he even know about me?”
“Of course he did, he... he ordered...”
“You ordered.”
“I didn’t... I never expected Marie and the baby...”
A sudden shriek, “Inverness said his orders were to kill everybody in the cabin!”
Sherman also shrieked. “Dain!”
But Dain was upon him, towering over him, all the more terrifying because he was speaking in a rational, almost quiet voice totally at odds with the tension in his face and body.
“You knew only the three of us would be out there in that cabin, Doug. And you told them to slaughter us all.”
“Please! Dain! For God’s sake, man, pity...”
Dain brought his arm back and across his body like an ancient warrior with a broadsword, then swung the hard narrow spine of the book like that warrior’s blade. Not at Sherman. In martial arts he had been trained to think of striking something a foot beyond his real target.