The cordite-filled air was making my eyes burn. I pointed the .45 at him and he raised his hands and was crying. Maybe the cordite. Maybe not.
“This is unpleasant in here,” I said. “I think a couple of these guys shit themselves. Let’s go in the living room where it’s quiet and maybe light a scented candle or something. We need to talk.”
I gestured with the .45 and he swallowed, wiping his tears away with a forearm, and headed glumly into the nearby living room. I could see now that his wife-beater t-shirt had four aces and a pair of dice on it; his jeans were worn and so were his tennies.
With the snout of the weapon I indicated a black overstuffed fake-leather sofa and he sat. I settled into an adjacent matching armchair. On a low-slung coffee table were some scattered girlie magazines — Caper, Escapade, Dude, Swank. Maybe he had mommy issues.
“Jesus, man,” he said. He looked sick. “You killed everybody.”
“Not yet,” I reminded him.
He swallowed. Absently, he scratched a bearded cheek. “What do you want from me?”
“The truth.”
“About what the fuck?”
“About you and Vincent Colby.”
“What truth is that, man?”
“You trained him for that stunt, Harry. Maybe you didn’t know what your buddy Kraft and his client had in mind — faking that hit-and-run ‘accident.’ Maybe you thought it was for a movie or something. Or some elaborate prank. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“No idea what you’re talking about, man.”
“You need to think this through. The kind of trouble you’re in.”
His lip curled back taking some mustache with it. “You’re the one in trouble. Break in here and fuckin’ shoot everybody! You’re out of your freaking mind, Hammer!”
I raised my free hand. “First of all, your friends all had guns and were about to use them on me. Second, I’m a licensed private investigator in New York State and heard you fellas planning a robbery. I have nothing to fear from this. But you do.”
He tried not to look alarmed. “What do I have to fear?”
“I’m going to guess your Wall Street pal Vincent has greased your palm but good. You may be figuring that rich-guy money’s gonna just keep flowing. But think about it.”
“You think about it.”
“I have. I think about how Roger Kraft was on the payroll and got killed. I think about how a cop named Shannon looking into young Colby’s homicidal ways got himself killed, too, and you know how much the cops love it when one of their own buys it.”
“Nothing to do with me.”
“A hooker blackmailing Colby got killed last night, and so did a bartender who beat up Vincent’s girl. Anybody who crosses that Golden Boy is on the chopping block. All this went down within a few days. And you’re likely next.”
He sneered again. “More likely you, Hammer. And maybe Roger tried to blackmail Colby or some shit, and got what blackmailers get.”
“Is that what happened?”
He raised his palms shoulder high. “Just sayin’ what might be. I have nothing for you, Hammer. And I’m not afraid of you.”
That was hard to buy, with the coppery smell of his associates’ blood wafting in on cordite waves with just a hint of the fragrance of human excrement.
I said, “If the cops bag your ass, Harry, you won’t be just some guy who trained a rich kid for a prank. You’ll be an accomplice. Probably to murder.”
His smile in the nest of beard was not convincing. “How do you figure, Hammer? Suppose that was a phony accident I helped along. That’s no murder rap.”
“Kraft getting his makes it felony murder, sonny boy.” That was a little thin but I didn’t think Harry here knew much about the finer points of the law. “And for sure you’re obstructing justice in a murder investigation by not coming forward.”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s what you want. Me to come forward.”
“That’s what I want.”
What Pat Chambers would want.
“Okay.” He swallowed. “I’ll do it.”
I had lowered the .45 a little, while we talked, and that must have encouraged him, because he came forward, all right. He dove off that sofa and right at me, taking the chair back and me with it, then with one powerful hand grabbed me by the right wrist and shook the rod out of my grasp, sending it tumbling on the shag carpet. Meanwhile that chair hit the floor, hard, and powerful fists were at me, a right hand to the face, a left hand to the kidneys.
I pushed him off and to one side, onto the floor, then twisted to throw myself on top of him, giving him a knee in the balls and then a right to the nose, breaking it, and a left to the jaw, jarring it on its hinges. He was wincing with the pain only a groin blow can bring, but he was, after all, a stunt man and obviously a muscle builder, so his testicles were probably the size of peas anyway, thanks to steroids. In any case, he had the will and presence of mind to shove his right forearm into my chest with enough power to send me tumbling back.
Then he jumped on me like a wrestler in the ring only not phony, and he was pinning me with a knee and strangling me with two powerful hands. For a moment I wondered if he was the killer with the deadly knee move, but he smelled like pot, not Obsession. Gasping, I caught his pony tail with one hand and jerked his head back while with the other I hit him in the side, and busted a couple ribs because their snap was unmistakable. He cried out and his hands loosened, and I head-butted his chin, which rocked him back, and he stumbled off me and got to his feet and put a little distance between us.
I was still down low and I threw a tackle into him and he went backward, hitting his head hard on the edge of the projection TV. His eyes rolled back and he slid down to the floor and lay in a pile of random bones and muscles in a bag of flesh. Very quiet, but for some dripping blood.
I bent over and checked his pulse. Both his wrist and neck.
Then I stood staring down at him, thinking about what to do. Thinking about my situation.
I had a phone call to make. It would take going to a gas station and making a call, but I would be back.
I wasn’t done here.
Chapter Thirteen
The Meatpacking District on a Sunday night was dead, the businesses for which the area took its name shuttered till tomorrow, the weathered buildings wearing graffiti like scars. Refuse blew down the cobblestone street like tumbleweed except where slowed by fetid-surfaced puddles.
No inhabitants were showing themselves. Even the underground gay scene with its leather shops, bathhouses and notorious sex clubs (The Manhole, The Hellfire Club) were, like God Almighty, taking a day of rest or anyway a night of recuperation. The rain stopped yesterday but the sky was still a dirty gray, not ready to turn loose of the world below. The block where Velda and I had visited the bustling movie location was a sinister ghost town now, the production having moved on.
My farmhouse visit had been Friday and yesterday was a day of prep, for what I faced tonight. The only development on Saturday had been the press reporting that the Ulster County Sheriff’s Department, operating on an anonymous tip, discovered four bodies in a farmhouse, carnage that appeared to be the result of a falling-out among thieves.
The spate of bank robberies in upstate New York was being tentatively tied to this event, according to unnamed sources within the PD, and the whereabouts of the rented farmhouse’s occupant, Harold P. Strutt, were not known. Meanwhile, New York State Police were looking for Strutt, who had a criminal record and whose 1978 white Camaro’s license number was included in the All Points Bulletin seeking him and it. Identification of the other fatalities was being withheld, but registration of vehicles at the property matched identification on the bodies of the shooting victims. No fingerprints were found at the scene other than those of the victims and the missing occupant.