Number 117 was a brick-and-frame house three stories tall. The siding salesman had evidently missed this part of town, and his efforts might have helped. As it was, the structure and the ones on either side of it looked abandoned, the ground-floor windows covered with plywood, some of the other windows broken, and a sour air of neglect that hovered like fog.
"Nice," TJ said.
The front door was open, the lock missing. The hall lights were out, but it wasn't pitch black inside. A little light filtered in from the street. I could see from the buzzers and mailboxes that there were two apartments on each of the three floors. Third-floor rear shouldn't be all that hard to find.
We gave our eyes time to get accustomed to the dim light, then found the stairs and climbed the two flights. The building may have been abandoned but that didn't mean it was empty. Light seeped from under the front and rear doors on the second floor, and someone had either cooked an Italian meal or ordered in a pizza. The smell was there, along with the smells of mice and urine. There was also what I took at first for conversation, but then they cut to a commercial and I realized it was a radio or TV set.
There was more light on the top floor. The front apartment was dark and silent, but the door of the rear apartment was ajar, and light poured through the inch-wide gap. There was music playing at low volume, too, something with an insistent beat.
"Reggae," TJ murmured. "He supposed to be from the islands?"
I approached the door, listened, and heard nothing but the music. I weighed my options, then knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked again, a little louder.
"Yes, come on in," a man said. "You can see it is open."
I pushed the door open and walked in, TJ right behind me. A slender dark-skinned man rose to his feet from a broken-down easy chair. He had an egg-shaped head topped with short hair and a button nose over a pencil-line mustache. He was wearing a Georgetown University sweatshirt and powder-blue double-pleated slacks.
"I fell asleep," he explained, "listening to the music. Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my house?"
He came across as more curious than outraged. The accent may have had something to do with it. He would have sounded West Indian even without the background music.
I said, "If you're Chilton Purvis, then I'm the man you've been hoping to see."
"Tell me more," he said. "And tell me who is your darker companion. Can he be your shadow?"
"He's a witness," I said. "He's here to make sure I do what I'm supposed to do."
"And what are you supposed to do, mon?"
"I'm supposed to give you two thousand dollars."
His face lit up, his teeth gleaming in the light from a battery-operated lantern. "Then you are indeed the mon I hope to see! Close the door, sit down, make yourselves comfortable."
That was easier said than done. The room was squalid, with crackled plaster and water-stained walls. There was a mattress on the floor, with a couple of red plastic milk crates stacked beside it. The only chair was the one he'd recently vacated. TJ did draw the door shut, or as close to shut as it went, but we stayed on our feet.
"So they saw the rightness of my position," Chilton Purvis said. "And quite proper, too! I went where I was supposed to go, I did what I was supposed to do. Did I leave the mon alive? No. Did I leave a trail? No. How am I supposed to know there is another mon? Nobody tells me. There is one mon in the restaurant who fits the description. I do my job. I put him down. And they do not wish to pay me?"
"But you're going to get paid," I said.
"Yes! And that is excellent news, the most excellent news. Give me the money and we will smoke some herb, if that is to your liking. But the money, before anything else."
"First you'll have to tell me who hired you."
He looked at me, and it was like what Elaine said about Michael Moriarty. You could see him think.
"If you do not know," he began, and stopped, and thought some more.
"They wouldn't pay you," I said. "But I will."
"You are the mon."
"I'm not the police, if that's what you mean."
"I know you are not the police," he said, as if that much was obvious. For the longest time people looked at me and knew I was a policeman. Now this one looked at me and knew I was not. "You," he said, "are the mon I was supposed to kill." His smile was sudden, and very wide. "And now you bring me money!"
"The world is a curious place."
"The world is strange, mon, and every day more strange. You pay me the money to point my finger at the mon who paid me to kill you. I say that is very strange!"
"But it's not a bad deal," I said. "You get your money."
"Then I would say it is a good deal. A fine deal."
"Just tell me who hired you," I said, "and where I can find him, and you'll get paid."
"You have brought the money?"
"I've brought the money."
"Ah," he said. "I can give you this mon's name. Would that be good?"
"Yes."
"I wrote it down," he said. "On a slip of paper, along with his address. You want that as well? His address?"
"That would be useful."
"Also a phone number. Just let me see where I put that slip of paper." He fumbled in the topmost milk crate alongside the bed, his back to me, then spun around suddenly, a gun in his hand. The first two shots he snapped off went wide but the third and fourth hit me, one in the center of the chest, the other a few inches below and to the right.
I'd had my jacket unzipped, and I guess I must have sensed something, because I had my gun in my hand by the time he started shooting and I was squeezing the trigger and returning fire about the same time I got hit. I was wearing the Kevlar vest, of course, and its manufacturer would have been proud of it. The slugs didn't penetrate. This is not to say they bounced off like spitballs off an elephant. The effect was like getting punched with considerable force by someone with tiny hands. It didn't feel good, but knowing that it had worked, that the vest had stopped the bullets, felt wonderful.
He wasn't wearing a vest. I fired twice and both bullets went home, one high on the right side of his chest, the other in the solar plexus two inches north of his navel. He threw up his hands when the bullets hit him and the gun went flying. He staggered, doing the little dance they do when they score a touchdown, and then his feet went out from under him and he sat down hard.
"You shot me," he said.
I caught my breath and went over and knelt next to him. "You shot me," I said.
"It did me no good. Bulletproof vest, yes? A.22 will not penetrate. Head shots! That is what one must have. But when you are forced to hurry your shot…"
"Why shoot me in the first place?"
"But that was my job!" He might have been explaining it to a child. "I try, I fail. Not my fault, but still. Then you come in my door and I have another chance. If I kill you they will pay me my two thousand dollars!"
"But I was going to give you the two thousand."
"Be serious, mon. How I know you will give me the money? All I got to do is shoot you. That way I make sure. I take the money off your corpse, and I collect the money that they owe me." He winced as pain gripped him, and blood seeped from his wounds. "Besides, you think I know their names? You hire a killer, you do not tell him your name. Not unless you are a crazy mon!"
"And you didn't have a phone number for them?"
"What you think?" He winced again and his eyes rolled. "I'm shot bad, mon. You got to get me to a hospital."
I got the sketches from my wallet, unfolded them, showed him the one of the slugger. "Take a look," I said. "Have you seen this man before? Is he one of them?"
"Yes, he is one. Him I know, but not his name. Now you must get me to the hospital."
I wondered if he'd even looked at the sketch. I showed him the other one. "And this man?"
"Yes! Him too! Both of them, they are the men who hired me, said come shoot this mon when we tell you."