A quick flick with the billy flattened him in dazed prostration long enough for me to pounce on him and pin his arms behind his back.
“Don’t make me hit you again,” I said.
“Deal,” he mumbled back.
I straddled him, my feet planted firmly in the thick-pile shag, my hands holding his arms behind him, my weight pressing down on his wrists.
I told Rogers, “I’m going to let you up very slowly and lead you to the sofa. You’ll sit and talk with me for a while. I’ll be standing behind you the whole time, ready to smash you into the middle of next week if you so much as sweat heavily. Understood?”
“Loud and clear.”
After sitting him on the couch, I said, “I’m going to tell you a story. All you have to do is nod, and then answer some questions. There was a man named Baxter Flatt. He worked for a government agency as an intelligence operative, until he turned. He started selling secrets to another government. He approached you one day, either claiming to need help in the national interest, or threatening you with something so embarrassing that you had to comply. He asked you to give him information of a sensitive nature. You did so, and kept doing so, endangering your freedom each time. Finally, when you could take no more, you slipped into his room at the Duvalier and put a long thin gouge in his throat with a fine piano wire.”
Either he was very fast or I was way off guard. He flipped from a sitting position over the back of the couch, smashing his forearm into my throat as he came to his feet. My larynx spasmed, choking off my breath temporarily. Something like a bulldozer slammed into my kidneys, and I went down in a useless protective crouch, waiting for my body’s all-systems-go alert. It never came.
Something hard and fast took off the top of my head, scattering consciousness all over the living-room floor and down the hallway.
I wasn’t out long, just enough for Rogers to pick me up and dump me onto the sofa. When I was alert enough to remember my name, address, and dire straits, I found him standing over me with an automatic pistol — not the one I had stowed in the toilet tank. I had been sloppy, and stopped looking for guns when I found the one strapped to his bed slats.
“You’re really stupid, mister,” he scowled.
“It’s Gallegher,” I told him, the words echoing off what was left of the top of my skull and setting off little thuds of agony. “What in hell did you hit me with?”
The room swam in and out of focus. I had a concussion, probably a dilly. I’d be months recovering. Somehow, in the present circumstances, the notion seemed quaint. I had a feeling I’d be lucky to see nightfall.
He pointed at the shards of a broken porcelain vase on the floor. I saw a smear of blood on one fragment and reached back to palpate the back of my skull. I drew it away and saw blood on my fingers. That wasn’t good.
“Gallegher. Okay. What did you think I’d do? Roll over and spill my guts just because you whacked me behind the ear?”
“It’s worked before.”
“Let’s say your story was correct. Where would that leave me? Whatever Flatt might have had on me, you can bet I’d still want to keep it a secret. You didn’t think this through entirely. If I killed Flatt to keep a secret, what would stop me from doing the same to you?”
“You’re saying I was wrong?”
“Dead wrong. It was a good story, though. Only you had it backwards. I turned, not Flatt. He was a pretty respectable sort, working as a clerk at Langley CIA. That boy was a box full of nasty secrets. Flatt needed an extra closet for all his skeletons. Leading a sordid, debauched life might not be a big deal in the civilian world, but they still frown on it in the intelligence community. It offers the opportunity for someone like me to come along and exploit it. I used him to cull information on satellite tracking systems for my control. That’s a—”
“I know what it is, thank you.”
“Then Flatt disappeared—”
“—and resurfaced in New Orleans with his own cover story about being an out-of-sanction operative,” I finished. “He was trying to find you, to put you out of action before you could get to him. It’s a great story, you two stalking each other all over the Quarter. Just one question. Why?”
“Why do you think? The money. I busted hump fighting bad guys all over the world for truth, justice, and the freakin’ American Way. What did it get me? A pension that just barely pays for three hots and a cot. Nobody hires a fifty-year-old guy whose primary skills are killing people and breaking things. I cashed in. It was a survival thing. You dance with the one what brung you. I don’t have to like it. Fact is, most nights I can’t get a dab of sleep. Doesn’t mean I can quit. You get in as deep as I am, there’s no walking away. I’m strapped in for the whole ride, like it or not.”
“You killed Flatt to protect your little slice of Hell.”
“He wanted to get in the game, but he forgot the most important rule. You lose, you lose it all.” He pulled the hammer back on the automatic. It clicked with a sinister sound that raised my blood pressure several thousand points. “You lost, Gallegher.”
“So I lose it all. Yeah. I get it.”
“Now, if you’ll be cooperative, I’d like you to step into the hallway bathroom.”
“The bathroom?”
“You don’t expect me to shoot you out here, do you? I’d have to replace the carpet and furniture to hide the bloodstains. The bathroom is neater. In the tub, I think. I’ll be several paces behind you, to keep you from trying anything sneaky.”
I stood, and immediately dropped to my knees. It was only half fake. The room spun and my head pounded. It was hard to gain my balance. I held up a hand. “You scrambled my brain, dude. I have a concussion. It’ll take me a minute to get to my feet.”
Slowly, I pulled myself up on the arm of the sofa, and half shuffled, half stumbled down the hallway to the bathroom. When I reached the doorway, I placed a hand on my forehead and swayed a little for effect, as if I were about to fall backward. I heard Rogers step back, and I jumped inside the bathroom, slammed the door behind me, and locked it to buy myself a few seconds. There was a caned chair next to the sink. I grabbed it and wedged it between the sink pedestal and the door. It shook as Rogers slammed against the door.
“This is really dumb, Gallegher!” he shouted. “There’s no window out of there. I can wait all week for you to give in!”
I lifted the lid to the toilet. The automatic I’d taken from Rogers’s bed slats was still there. I took it out of the plastic bag and checked the safety.
I haven’t been in many gunfights, and I didn’t care for the ones I’ve had. Killing is no joke. It leaves a hollow in my stomach and an ache in my head that won’t go away, and it’s hell on the other guy. I got down in the steel bathtub, in case Rogers took a notion to start taking potshots. The automatic was in my right hand, hard and heavy and ugly. It was a Desert Eagle, one of the big weapons designed to do absurd amounts of damage. Rogers would be directly in front of the door, from the sound of his voice, completely unaware of the firepower at my disposal. I took a deep breath, and positioned myself to shoot. My hand trembled with an adrenaline rush.
I never found out if I could do it. There was a crashing sound, a couple of shots, and lots of shouting.
“Freeze, Rogers!”
“On the floor!”
“Got it all on tape?”
“Loud and clear!”
“Where’s Gallegher? Where is he, Rogers?”
“Bathroom.” It was muffled, as if coming through an inch of shag carpet.
I dropped the revolver on the floor and slowly opened the door. One of the intruders saw me and braced his pistol in front of him.
“Wait!” I yelled, my hands in the air, “I’m Gallegher!”