BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled 2 Read online

  The door to 1008 was ever so slightly ajar, closed but not quite to the point of engaging the latch. I paused in front of it, muscles tensed to a tight ache. No sounds came from the other side; I sensed no movement, no life. I glanced over at the door to the stairs. No sounds came from there either—no shouts, no one racing up or down the steps within the echoey shaft. So what was the signal? Was Taxer still in the room, lurking silently, alerted somehow to the fact someone was closing in on him? Or was he exiting via the stairwell, quietly and calmly because—in accordance with my earlier assessment—he figured he had plenty of time, no reason to hurry, no need to draw attention to himself by acting in a suspicious manner?

  If Taxer was in the stairwell then that meant he would be encountering Dakota at any moment and I naturally wanted to be on hand to back her up. But I couldn't allow myself to be diverted from the room without checking it out first. If nothing else, there was the girl, Sharon, to consider. No telling what kind of shape Taxer had left her in ... if, in fact, he himself was gone.

  I bumped open the door and went in quick and low, covering myself with sweeps of the .45. The room stayed as quiet as the shadows that filled it. No lights were on, only what came through the open balcony doors. I found a couple of switches and snapped them on, narrowing my eyes against the sudden wash of brightness.

  There were no signs of a struggle. There'd been one, though; I knew that much going in. And then I spotted further evidence in the form of Sharon Wyeth, sprawled on the floor between the suite's two beds. The filmy nightgown she was wearing was torn to only a few remaining wisps, leaving her virtually nude. Examining her, I saw that her face was bruised and she was bleeding from one corner of her mouth and nose. She was unconscious, but still alive. The pulse at her throat felt strong, steady. She'd come out of this with some marks both inside and out, but at least she'd come out still breathing.

  I took a second more to check the balcony. No Taxer there, either. Only a cold feeling in the air that he had been present and, peering over the low rail, the bloody evidence far below verifying that fact. Police cars and emergency vehicles were starting to arrive down there, splashing everything and everybody with whirling circles of red and blue light. No one bothered to look up at me.

  * * *

  When I returned to the hallway, this time I immediately heard sounds coming from the stairwell—footfalls ringing hard on the concrete-over-metal steps, shouts echoing.

  Taxer and Dakota must have collided! It sounded as if he was retreating from her, coming back up. I bolted down the hall to intervene.

  It was the heavy, steel-reinforced stairwell door that fooled me. Its density muted the sounds, made them seem like they were coming from farther away. I'd judged the closest of the footfalls to be half a flight or more down. Instead, when I jerked open the door Taxer was right there in my face! "Big as a house" was how Dakota had described him. Up close and looming unexpectedly like that, he looked big enough to have his own zip code.

  He should have been as surprised to see me as I was him. If he was, it slowed him down only a micro-second. He dropped a massive shoulder and came barreling into me, trying to bull me out of the way. But I had the heavy door on my side. I used it to block the biggest share of the impact. After his forward momentum had been stopped, I whipped the door open and then closed again as fast and hard as I could, slamming it shut on him like a battering ram, rocking him back on his heels.

  I couldn't see Dakota but I could hear her shouting something from somewhere down the steps.

  I charged into the stairwell, thinking I had Taxer partially stunned. I was wrong. The big bastard was waiting with a sucker punch—make that a kick. His foot whirled in a lightning-fast arc, the heavy heel of his shoe crashing off the side of my face, knocking me back against the wall, hard. The taste of blood filled my mouth. He immediately threw a second kick, a reverse slash of the same foot, driving it into my gut. I doubled over and dropped to my knees. I lost my grip on the .45, startled by the sound of it clattering to the floor, catching a glimpse as it went sliding away.

  Taxer closed in on me, trying to knee my face, but I twisted away and got a shoulder up, blocking him. He nevertheless drove me back against the wall again and pinned me there, grinding down on me. I felt suffocated and panicky, unable to gain any leverage, unable to fight back. I heard him grunting with effort and then the scrape of something hard, metallic on the wall above me. Scrunching my head back, I looked up and saw him struggling with a large red cylinder—one of those bulky industrial fire extinguishers that he'd yanked off its wall bracket. As I watched, he hoisted it high above his head, getting ready to slam it down and mash my skull.

  The sound of a gunshot filled the stairwell with a deafening roar. The fire extinguisher jumped out of Taxer's hands, punctured and knocked away by the slug. Its pressurized load of CO2 began to escape in a wild, screaming hiss. The cylinder hit the floor and bounced, somersaulting end over end, spewing a cloud of icy white mist that billowed and boiled, enveloping the landing, cutting visibility to zero.

  I grabbed blindly, trying to seize hold of Taxer, drag him down. All I got for my effort was a clout to the side of the head that hammered me back into the hallway door.

  When the frozen mist cleared, Dakota was poised at the top of the steps leading up from below. Her .357 was in her hand, raised and ready. Taxer was gone. So was my .45. I was sprawled in such a way that I was blocking the closed hallway door, meaning Taxer couldn't have fled that way.

  Dakota gestured. "Had to've gone up. The roof."

  I got to my feet, backhanding away some of the blood leaking from my mouth. "Thanks for the bullet," I said, nodding toward the ruptured fire extinguisher that now lay spent and silent, a few wisps of vapor curling around it. "Saved me a split skull, maybe worse."

  "I ran into our man—almost literally—three flights down," Dakota explained. "I gave chase but held fire for fear of setting off a ricochet in this damned stairwell. When I saw him getting ready to brain you, I had no choice but to take the chance."

  "You did fine, kid. I'm the screw-up here. First I let Taxer sucker kick me, then I coughed up my piece and gave him the chance to grab it. If he wasn't armed before, thanks to me he damn sure is now."

  "He still has to make it off that roof. And it's not going to be through us!"

  We started up the final flight of steps. The light had been doused at the top, but the door up there was standing open and I could see a star-sprinkled slice of night sky. I tapped a fingertip against one of the conches on Dakota's fancy silver belt and told her, "You'd better lose that. Go out with that on, you'll reflect whatever light there is and mark yourself as plain as if you were wearing a string of Christmas bulbs around your waist."

  While she was shucking the belt, I hiked my leg and snared the little hideaway 9mm out of the spring clip in my boot. When I straightened up with it, Dakota took one look and said, "What are you going to do with that—throw it at him?"

  "Get me close enough to the big fucker again," I growled, "I'll cram it down his throat and make him choke on it if I have to."

  We broke onto the roof in a fast, flare-out pattern, me cutting to the right, Dakota to the left. The roof was tarpaper-sheeted and sprinkled with loose pea gravel. Scattered by our feet, the tiny stones made sounds like scratching rodent claws.

  Wherever Taxer was, he wasn't waiting in ambush.

  Dakota and I dropped into crouches and stayed that way for several beats, listening intently, letting our eyes adjust to the darkness of the shadowy roof. The winking, multi-colored lights of the city spread out all around us and overhead the sky was cloudless, clear. But the various stacks and pipes and vents that jutted up in wild disorder all across the broad roof cast a jungle of bizarrely-shaped, over-lapping shadows, some as black and deep-looking as death.

  After a minute or so, Dakota edged over to me and whispered, "All we have to do is wait him out, keep this door guarded. He's got no other way down."

  I w
iped some more blood from my mouth. "I dunno. I ain't much on waiting patiently for—"

  The familiar report of my .45 came from some distance away. We both flinched, but no slugs smashed into either of us, none hit anywhere close. In fact, none even came in our direction. The curious-ness of this was just starting to sink in when another shot sounded. Then a third followed quickly. But still no bullet whine, no rounds seemingly sent our way at all.

  A patch of sparse light played across Dakota's bewildered frown.

  Straightening up part way, craning my neck cautiously to scan the rooftop, I saw then what was going on. Dakota saw, too.

  Taxer was at the far corner of the roof, perched somewhat precariously on the point just above the exterior cab of the express elevator. He was leaning out as far as he dared with one arm extended down and was firing repeatedly at the lighted bubble that hung suspended at its top limit just the way I'd left it. As we watched, one of the gold-tinted glass walls disintegrated and collapsed inward, cascading a shower of broken slivers like golden rain.

  "Oh, shit! If he makes it into that car and starts it down," Dakota said, "we'll never have a chance to head him off."

  She raised her .357, cupped it in a two-handed grip, and squeezed off three fast rounds. Shredded tarpaper and pea gravel erupted around Taxer's feet as the slugs tore in low. The fugitive spun to return fire, a pair of shots that sang off wide but were close enough to cause Dakota and I to both duck. Then, whirling back, desperate and determined, Taxer tossed the .45 ahead of him down into the elevator car and went over the edge of the roof after it—catching the cab's frame like a trapeze bar and swinging himself down and in, dropping heavily to the floor of the bubble.

  "Double shit!" Dakota swore. Wasting no more words or time, she turned and plunged back into the stairwell, intent on trying to make a mad rush back down the flights of steps in an odds-against effort to beat the car to the bottom.

  As for me, I can't tell you exactly why I did what I did next. Maybe I just wanted to get my hands on Taxer again so bad I simply didn't give a damn. Maybe Dakota's out-of-shape insinuation and the fact I'd allowed myself to get sucker-stomped and have my gun taken away made me so pissed and wounded my pride enough so that I couldn't help pulling a stunt of I'll-show-everybody bravado. Maybe I'm kinda nuts to begin with. Whatever the reasons, they propelled me—recklessly, without conscious evaluation or decision—across the roof straight for the elevator and its crash-in passenger.

  I heard the hum of the car being activated, the cables and counter weights beginning to move. Felt the vibration of them under my feet. The bubble started to slide down.

  The car had descended maybe seven feet when I went off the point of the roof and dropped down onto it. I hit hard, no room to tuck and roll. The roof of the car was flat metal, painted bronze in keeping with the whole golden motif. It dented badly under my weight, clearly not designed to be a landing pad for feats of derring-do.

  We continued to hum smoothly downward.

  The expected slug from Taxer ripped through the top, missing me by a full two feet.

  Four to smash the glass; two to keep me and Dakota pinned down; and now one more trying to pick me off .... Seven. He'd fired all of his rounds!

  Digging the hideaway out of the pocket I'd stuffed it in to make the jump, I flattened myself belly down on the roof of the car and squirmed cautiously toward the edge. I had a sudden bad moment when a disturbing thought knifed in: What if Taxer had another piece besides the one he'd snatched from me? But it was too late to worry about that now. I'd already rolled the bones ... I could only hope they didn't end up being my own.

  Slowly, carefully, I leaned my head and shoulders over the side. The air rush was a momentary shock, making it feel like we were plunging downward way faster than I promised myself we actually were.

  Taxer was waiting for me, braced inside the car in a kind of crouch. He was holding the .45—my goddamn .45—by its barrel. The slide was shot back, signaling the spent firepower. Making it now only an impromptu club, which was how he tried to use it. Swinging it at my head, heaving a mighty grunt of effort as he did. His movement was awkward and off-balance, though; he was clearly concerned about getting too close to the gaping opening he'd blasted out.

  I jerked my head back, dodging the attempted blow. When I leaned over a second time, I shoved the 9mm in ahead of me. "Ride's over for you, asshole," I said, and shot him in the left kneecap.

  * * *

  The ambulances had come and gone ... and a few of the cops, too. There were still plenty of the latter left on hand, though. Milling around, their staticky radios hacking and spitting in the background.

  At least they seemed to be done with me for awhile, giving me a break between rounds of grilling me with questions.

  I sat beside Dakota Kiley on a stone retaining wall out front of the hotel. The river was somewhere off to one side. I could smell the water, even if I couldn't see it through the clog of onlookers jammed in tight against the police barricades. It was the first chance Dakota and I had to talk to each other since we'd parted ways to make our very different descents from the roof.

  "You are a crazy goddamn fool, you know that?" she was saying. "That's the real reason the police are hanging around, pretending to consider how many charges they might bring against us. The truth is they've got calls out trying to find a rubber room padded thick enough to hold as big a lunatic as you've proven yourself to be."

  She looked slightly disheveled sitting there, but still nothing short of awesome. The breeze off the river stirred her cascading hair and the spinning red and blue lights from the perimeter of the scene cast a shifting pattern of highlights across her flawless face.

  I said, "You're just jealous because I beat you down."

  She shook her head. "I can't believe you."

  "What I can't believe is that after all the trouble I went through to retrieve it, the lousy cops won't give me my .45 back. Plus they took my hideaway, too—the one you scoffed at, by the way, because you implied it was too puny to do any good against Taxer. Let's see, in all the excitement I sort of lost track ... how was it that bullet hole got in Horace-baby's leg again?"

  "What are you—angling for a cut of the bounty on him?"

  "Hey, not a bad idea. Real generous of you to offer."

  Dakota cocked an eyebrow. "Speaking of not bad ideas ... you and me could make a helluva team, Hannibal."

  My turn to shake my head. "Not sure the world is ready."

  She grinned. "No, it probably isn't."

  "Besides, I doubt if I could ever get used to thinking of you as a partner."

  "Is that some kind of sexist remark?"

  "Not really." I grinned, too. "It's just that I figure I'd always be able to think of you in only one way, the way I first saw you ... as the loveliest tail I ever had."

  Wayne Dundee lives in the once-notorious old cowtown of Ogallala, on the hinge of Nebraska's panhandle. He relocated there after spending the first fifty years of his life in the state line area of northern Illinois/southern Wisconsin.

  A widower, retired from a managerial position in the magnetics industry, Dundee now devotes full time to his writing.

  To date, Dundee has had nine novels, five novellas, and over two dozen short stories published. Much of his work has featured his PI protagonist, Joe Hannibal. He also dabbles in fantasy and straight crime, and has recently been gaining notice in the Western genre. His 2010 Western short story, "This Old Star", won a Peacemaker Award from the Western Fictioneers writers' organization; and his first novel-length Westerns, Dismal River and Hard Trail To Socorro, appeared in 2011.

  Titles in the Hannibal series have been translated into several languages and nominated for an Edgar, an Anthony, and six Shamus Awards. Dundee is also the founder and original editor of Hardboiled Magazine.

  THE KILLING ON SUTTER STREET

  Paul S. Powers

  I'd driven all night mostly over mountain roads, but I wasn't tired or sleepy when
I hit Oakland at daylight. I parked the coupe near the Emeryville station, wondering if I'd ever see it again, but not caring. All keyed up, the thought of breakfast made me sickish and I grabbed the first train that came along. I sat on the right side of the first car so I could see the towers of San Francisco climbing up out of the mist. The weight of the .38 pistol in my coat pocket was friendly and comforting when I thought of what I was going to do. I would put the gun right to his belt buckle and shoot downward, and in my mind's eye I saw the bright, hard-jacketed slug spinning through his bladder, his prostate, his entrails, and on into the splintering base of his spine. It traveled very slowly, taking lots and lots of time.

  From the station I phoned Helen, and from the way she sounded I woke her up. "Yes, my sister's here, but she don't want to talk to you," Helen said. "You've got gall, Mac, after all you've done. She won't talk to you."

  "Judy isn't there. You're just covering up for Judy just like the whole family covers up," I told her. "And you know who she's been with all night, too."

  She slammed the receiver. I stood thinking for a minute, then walked down the ramp and hailed a cab. I'd left my coupe across the bay because I didn't want to hunt for parking places in a place I didn't know very well. I'd got a ticket in Red Bluff on the way down and now I wanted no slip-ups. The cab took me up Market, then turned off and after quite a long ride dumped me out at the Turk Street address I'd given. It was a hotel for Elks, or Shriners or something, and he always stayed there when he was in town.

  "I want to see Sheriff Dickson from Paloma County," I said to the manager. "I'm a friend." The word stuck in my throat a little.

  "The sheriff checked out yesterday, same day he came. Say, did you know that old Kurt was married?" He grinned at me. When I didn't say anything he kept talking. "I've known him for years. A prince. But you could have knocked me down with a feather. They're staying at the D'Orsay Arms, on Sutter."