Reversible Error (35 page)

Maus parked the van under the expressway and Dugman told the other two men what he expected them to do. He racked a round into the chamber of the Spanish 9mm he had taken off the kid and checked his own big.357 revolver. Maus and Jeffers also checked their 9mm automatics, huge weapons that sat uncomfortably heavy in their shoulder holsters, and Maus picked up his shotgun and a roll of gaffer's tape.

They walked across the deserted avenue to the pier. It was twilight, but the concrete still held the day's heat. As they walked, they each glanced up nervously at the windows of the building, now in deep shadow, like the embrasures of a fortress.

Dugman opened the door with the key he had taken off the kid. They slipped silently into echoing moist darkness, dappled with shafts of light from glassless openings on the river side of the structure. A paler light also came from a small guard post built out of the right inside wall of the building.

As they approached, a voice called out, "Hey, Sloopy, you back already?"

Jeffers accelerated like the linebacker he once was, smashed through the flimsy wooden door of the office, and smashed the man to the ground with a blow of his pistol. The man collapsed and was quickly trussed and gagged with gaffer's tape.

Dugman and Jeffers started up the enclosed concrete main stairway. Maus ran across to the other side of the loading bay to a doorway, went through, and started climbing the outside fire stairs.

At the second-floor landing Dugman opened the door a crack and peered through.

"You see anything?" Jeffers asked in a whisper.

"Yeah," whispered Dugman. Through the crack he could see most of a large and partially ruined room, a passenger lounge of some kind, with a long bar along one wall with a large cracked mirror behind it. Part of the ceiling had sagged, exposing pipes and beams, and the pastel murals depicting luxury ocean travel were buckled and stained. A few pieces of broken furniture lay scattered around and there was a pile of the padded cloths movers use abandoned against one wall.

"Two guys sitting at a table," he said. "A guy lying on a couch. I don't see Willis or Manning."

"What do we do?" said Jeffers.

"I'll go right, you go left. Watch the-"

There was a distant sharp report. And another. Then two louder explosions. Dugman saw the two men at the table spring to their feet and draw pistols from their clothes. The man on the couch sat up, shook his head, reached down to the floor, and came up with a MAC-10 machine pistol. A door slammed some where and someone shouted, "What the fuck…!"

The men looked away at the source of the shots, and Dugman sprang into the room with his revolver in both hands. Without warning, he began firing into the man with the MAC-10. Hit three times, the man fell back on the couch, and as he fell his hand tightened convulsively on the trigger of the little automatic weapon, spraying fire at his two companions. One of them was struck by the full force of the burst and went down screaming.

The other one got off a shot at Dugman, which pierced his suit coat. He felt the tug of the cloth and thought briefly that he had been hit. He was swinging his gun around to the new target when he heard the rapid fire of Jeffers' pistol from somewhere behind him and the third man cried out and disappeared behind the table.

Dugman rose creakily from the crouch he had assumed and snapped a Speed-loader into his revolver. They heard running footsteps and the slam of a door. Jeffers started to move in the direction of the sounds, but Dugman placed a restraining hand on his arm.

"No," he said, "drop on down to the entrance. There ain't but one way out, unless he's got a boat. Maus has the top covered."

"What about Willis?"

"He'll keep. Just go. I got to find the Loo."

Jeffers ran off down the stairs. When he was gone, Dugman glanced briefly at the three men they had shot, enough to make sure all of them were dead. One was still rasping out breath, but Dugman saw that his belly and chest had been blown apart by the automatic fire at close range. He stepped over the man and walked toward the storeroom where the kid had said Fulton was being held. A smell like that of an ill-kept monkey house reached his nose before he had the door open. His stomach turned over as he stepped into blackness.

It was dark in the little room and the floors were slippery. Gun in one hand, reaching out with the other, Dugman advanced into the room. After four steps his foot struck something and he heard a groan.

With his hands he determined what it was he had found. He holstered his gun. Then he dragged Clay Fulton, still bound to his chair, out into the fading light of the lounge.

Dugman tore off the wires that held him to the chair. In a small alcove under a window he quickly made a pallet of the mover's pads, heaved Fulton over to it, and covered him with several more.

He felt Fulton's pulse and was gratified to find it reasonably strong. Fulton opened his eyes, or rather one eye, as the other was closed by a massive bruise. "That you, Dugman?"

"Yeah, it is. You look like shit warmed over, Lieutenant."

"What the fuck took you so long?"

"I took some leave, went to the islands. Cheap fares this time of year."

From the battered face came something that could have been a chuckle. They were both silent for a minute, and Dugman said, "For a while there, I thought you were in the islands."

"Yeah," said Fulton. "Sorry about that. Somebody explained?"

"Yeah, Karp gave me the whole story-what I needed, anyway. He figured out you were here, by the way."

"He's a smart motherfucker," said Fulton. "I don't even know where I am." And then he reached out and grasped Dugman's wrist with remarkable strength. "Manning," he said. "Did you get him yet?"

"Not yet. He's in the building, though. He can't get out, unless he can get past Mack. It never been done."

Fulton did not relax his grasp. "No. Listen. You heard the story. Look. He has an ankle gun."

Dugman said, "Sure, Loo. We gonna pat him down real good."

Fulton shook his head from side to side. He fixed Dugman with his one good eye, staring across to him the meaning his mouth could not express. "No. That's not what I mean. He could draw on you. When you're not looking. You understand?"

Dugman nodded. He understood. Fulton's grasp slipped away and he fell into an exhausted unconsciousness. Dugman got up and yelled at the top of his voice, "Hey, Maus!"

An answering shout came from above. Dug-man walked over to a glassless window and stuck his head out. "Maus," he shouted. "Window, north side."

In the gathering dusk, Dugman could just make out Maus's white face sticking out of a window on the third floor. "You see anybody up there?" he called.

"No. Willis passed through a while back. He came up to take a piss. They been using the top floor as a latrine. It's pretty disgusting, but what the fuck, they're criminals, right?"

"What happened to him?"

"I braced him and he took some shots. I shot him back a couple."

"He dead?"

"Well, I can't say, since I'm not a licensed physician. But he took a full pattern high and low. There's hair on the ceiling. Do you want me to try mouth-to-mouth?"

"I want you to clear the building. We got to get a bus for the Loo real fast. Mack carried him down. Manning must've skipped."

"OK, I'm coming down," called Maus. Dugman heard the sound of steps and a slamming door, and then the pounding of feet on iron treads.

He turned and walked heavily toward the stairway. He opened the door and let it slam shut. The sound reverberated through the empty building. Dugman walked silently back into the room, carefully avoiding the crunchy fragments of plaster that littered the floor. He crouched down behind the bar and waited.

After about five minutes he heard furtive steps, and Manning appeared in the dusty glass of the mirror, moving cautiously in short rushes, bent nearly double, with a pistol held out two-handed in front of him. Dugman waited until Manning's back showed in the mirror and then he rose smoothly to his feet and said, "Drop the gun, Manning."

Manning dropped the gun immediately and turned slowly around to face Dugman, who held the Spanish automatic on him steadily.

Manning smiled and said, "Tricky, ain't you? I must be losing my touch."

"I'd say so," said Dugman. "OK, turn around and hands on the wall. You know the drill."

Manning faced the wall with his hands against it and his legs spread wide apart. Dugman gave him a perfunctory pat-down, relieving him of his handcuffs. He backed away and Manning turned around.

Manning said, "You was always pretty smart, Dugman. I heard you was quite the man in the old days. Lots of sugar around in Harlem for a cop in the old days."

"Do tell," said Dugman.

"But let me tell you, my man, it ain't nothing to what they got now. I'm talking millions. Millions of dollars. Would you like to have a million dollars?" Manning was speaking rapidly, and Dugman could see a film of sweat speckled with gray plaster dust across his forehead.

"I sure would," said Dugman.

"It could be arranged," said Manning.

"I'd have to take care of my people."

"That's no problem," said Manning. "I got people who owe me. Millions ain't zip to them. You got no idea how much is involved. I'm not talking buying a hat, chickenshit police pads. This is serious money. Money for life. And it's clean. It's in accounts in the islands, man. You go down there and live like a fuckin king, and nobody can touch you."

"Keep on talking," said Dugman. "You starting to get my attention." His eye fell on Manning's pistol where it had been dropped. Casually he turned away from Manning and walked slowly over to pick it up.

As he expected, he heard the sudden movement, the snapping sound of metal leaving leather.

He stood and turned, his pistol, already cocked, pointing straight out from his body. Manning's ankle gun had cleared its holster and was rising, a blur of motion. Dugman shot him through the chest with the Spanish automatic. Manning fell backward into a sitting position and the little ankle gun went flying. His face had the stupid expression worn by the recently shot. Dugman took more careful aim and shot Manning twice more in the center of his chest. Karp arrived at the pier building just as the ambulances were taking away the last of the corpses. He picked out Dugman standing with a group of police officers and caught his eye. It was quite dark by now, and the night was lighted by the glow from the city, and from the Jersey shore, and by the white glare from a local TV crew, all of it laced with the colored scintillations from the various police and emergency vehicles.

"How's Clay?" was Karp's first question.

Dugman said, "He been chewed up some, but I guess he'll live. He's a tough son-of-a-bitch for a college boy. He's in Bellevue."

"Who do we have?"

"Nobody much," answered Dugman. He pulled the stump of a cigar from his coat pocket and lit it. "Choo wasn't using his regular people for this particular job. The two survivors were just a couple of mutts from Brooklyn. We questioned them but they don't know shit. They didn't even know Clay was a cop."

"I heard something about that questioning," said Karp sourly. "I heard you cut off some kid's prick, as a matter of fact."

Dugman laughed and coughed on the cigar smoke. "Yeah, we did. We threw it in the jar with the others. Want to see?"

"I don't want to know about it, Dugman. Willis got shot, I understand."

"Dead."

"Uh-huh. And Manning?"

Dugman looked off toward the river and blew a long plume of Macanudo eastward. "Well… about that. I was on the line with the chief. Have you talked to him yet? No? Be a good idea. The thing of it is, Manning is on his way to the morgue with a John Doe tag-"

"Christ! You killed Manning too?"

"Well, let's say he took a round in the lung and two more right through the pump from a big old nine belonged to one of the mutts. The circumstances are still under investigation and so on and so forth."

"Meaning you're still working on your cock-and-bull story," Karp snapped back. He gestured to the TV crew. "The press?"

"Yeah," said Dugman. "The police stumbled on a nest of felons while looking for fugitives. They opened fire, we returned. Four dead. Page twelve."

"You don't think you can bury this completely?"

"I try not to think at all," said Dugman, "when the Chief of D. has got his nose up my crack. You got a problem with any of this, you need to talk to him."

"Yeah, I got a problem," said Karp bitterly. "The problem is, the guy who engineered this whole fucking scene is gonna walk away from it smelling like a rose."

"You mean Mr. Lemon Coffee?"

"That's him," said Karp. "And Fane. And Sergo. Although I have a feeling that Fane and Sergo are going to be harder to connect with the actual murders. Reedy's the key player. He was there at the club. He must have tipped Manning about Clay being undercover as soon as he got it from… whoever he got it from. By the way, you did secure the plates and cups from the club?"

"Yeah, after we talked, I sent some people over to collect the whole tray. You think it'll be enough?"

"Not nearly."

"So how you gonna bust him?"

"I don't know yet. I'll think of something."

Dugman smiled crookedly. "Well. You might at that. If you do, and it's OK with the chief, let me know. I'd like to bust a rich white dude one time. Make a nice change." Two hours later, Karp, although he still hadn't thought of something, was feeling considerably better. He was stretched out naked, facedown, on a throw rug, while Marlene walked up and down his spine, wiggling her toes. Marlene was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Albert Schweitzer on it, and nothing else.

"Mm, that's getting there," said Marlene as she trudged. "You felt like Grand Street asphalt when I started. How do you feel?"