Summer Cool - A Jack Paine Mystery (Jack Paine Mysteries) (18 page)

The walking continued for hours. Paine's back was painfully stiff. His legs ached, his eyes wanted to close. He was
weak. He thought of the mattress, five yards away
;
it would feel like a bed of feathers to him. The walking above him was a susurrus, soothing him to sleep. He directed his averted hearing away from it, listening for other sounds, a creak of the house, night noises.

The night passed. Paine thought desperately of lively things, baseball games, boxing matches, raucous parties. His head drooped
_;
he fought himself out of sleep, found he had dropped the cable. It had snaked away from him on the floor. He spent an anxious ten minutes crawling in careful arcs, until his fingers brushed across it, mere inches from the live wire ends.

He went back to his spot, measured two paces out from the wall, found the water bowl, sat, waited.

The walking above stopped.

With indirect hearing, Paine registered the clutching down of the returning jeep outside the house.

It was the coolest time in the cellar. Paine estimated that it must be an hour before dawn, the coldest time of desert night, a clean chill in the air. The sky above would be wide and pure, Saturn high overhead, bringing a preview of autumn stars up behind it in the east—Cassiopeia, the Andromeda galaxy, the Pleiades, peeking above the mountain horizon. An hour-long respite from the heat, the temporary banishment of summer.

Paine tensed, waited.

He heard no sound from above.

Then, he did. A door, not the front door, at the back of the house, thrown open, a tattoo of gunfire, a fumbled pause, more gunfire. Running. Something knocked over, a curse in the dark. Muffled shouts. More gunfire. A curse, followed by a single shot.

Silence.

Not silence. With his strained ears, Paine heard something, the stalking of a hunter, which grew to a resulting whisper. At the back of the house, four quick steps, followed by quiet.

So suddenly that it startled Paine, the trapdoor directly above him was yanked up.

Paine forced his voice to sound calm and faint. "What the hell's going on up there? The light bulb went out."

A quickly muttered curse, the metal ladder lowered into the hole.

A figure as small as a monkey scampered down the ladder.

Paine lifted the water bowl, pooled it around the bottom of the ladder, jammed the live wires against the nearest rung.

Tiny Man stepped into the water and screamed, a spark of light bursting around his small body. He was flung from the ladder, and Paine heard him hit the floor as darkness returned.

Paine threw himself at the spot where Tiny Man had hit. He missed by a foot, heard Kwan panting beside him, on his back Paine covered him with his body, began to pummel him in the face and body, raining blows as fast as he could. Kwan's body was trembling slightly, as if electricity was still running through him, but Paine felt him stiffen, regain his strength.

As Paine reached for Kwan's neck, Tiny Man clamped his hands around Paine's wrists. His grip was steel. One hand left Paine's wrist and Paine felt it move down to a hardness at Kwan's midsection. The hardness moved. Paine took a hand from Tiny Man's throat, moving desperately around to Tiny Man's wrist. His fingers brushed the flat of hard steel. Tiny Man slashed upward, moving against Paine easily, and suddenly Paine lost his grip on the arm with the blade and he felt Tiny Man's arm move free of him, drawing back for a blow.

"Good-bye, Mr. Paine. I will cut you so that you will die slowly and no one can save you—"

Paine and Kwan were outlined in the circle of a flashlight beam as a shot split the air. Tiny Man grunted and bucked once under Paine, his eyes opening wide and then closing. Another shot and Tiny Man bucked and grunted again, less audibly. His knife clattered to the floor. It sounded as if he had taken a couple of punches, but Paine saw two red and
growing stains in the side of his shirt.

Tiny Man's eyes unfocused and he went limp under Paine as Paine turned.

Bob Petty was standing at the bottom of the ladder, his police revolver still held in one straight, aiming arm. As Paine watched, Petty pumped a third shot into Kwan's dead body beneath him.

Petty's eyes met Paine's and locked there.

A long moment passed as the world reestablished itself. Then Bobby smiled, a sad thing, and said, "Sorry I had to beat the shit out of you, Jack."

I
n the dessert, in the hour before dawn when the autumn constellations had not yet given way to the sun, Bobby Petty told Jack Paine what it was like.

"It's like nothing I've ever felt before, Jack. One moment my life was on a flat road, and I was traveling on a straight course. Then, with one bit of information, the road disappeared and there was nothing but hole in front of me. I remember looking into the TV room where Terry and the kids were watching something together, and when I saw her I felt dirty. I went into the bathroom, and looked at myself in the mirror, and it wasn't me anymore. It was someone else. A monster. I didn't even look at the girls. I was afraid they would be unclean if I even looked at them. So I went into the bedroom, and packed some things in a duffle, and said I'd go out for ice cream and took the duffle and left. I went to a bar up in Scarsdale, a non-cop place, and I stayed in a motel room, and by the next morning I knew what to do.

"I went to the bank when it opened and took all the money out, and got on a plane for Texas. If I'd left the money Terry wouldn't have believed I was gone. I only had one thing in my head, Jack. To kill Kwan, and keep him from killing my men. The rest of it didn't seem important. My life was over anyway
_;
the further I got from my life the better it would be. The only thing I wanted to do before the whole thing came out, before they lumped me in there with Calley and the rest of them, was to kill Tiny Man."

Paine had one question, but didn't want to interrupt. In
the purpling dawn light, he felt Bob Petty bursting next to him, wanting to spit all the poison out of him.

"So I followed him from Texas, back to New York." Petty laughed grimly. "I called that stupid bastard Coleman and told him Kwan was coming, and he panicked. I couldn't save any of them."

Petty stared at the horizon, looking for the sun that refused yet to rise. "In a way I think they were lucky, getting it over with."

This time, the silence was longer
_;
the sun would not burst forth from the horizon, but Petty was looking beyond it, anyway.

"It was horrible in Cambodia, Jack," he said, his voice barely audible. "It was war, and I lived with it because of that, but face to face like that. . ." The whisper trailed off, returned, stronger. "It was something we thought we had to do, and we did it. For years I wished I had been in the air force because they got to do it from up in the clouds by pushing a button. It's no different, but they didn't have to look into the faces. There was one face I dreamed about for years. He couldn't have been more than nineteen. He looked into my eyes when I shot him. His eyes were the same as mine. Whatever happened, he thought he was doing the right thing. He was willing to die for it. That was my face. I knew that if that conviction wasn't in me, that if I wasn't absolutely sure that what I was doing was right, was saving the lives of my own people, then what I had done that day when that face had looked into mine and refused to look aside, was look in a mirror and that I had killed myself. . .

He was weeping, trembling beside Paine in the cool predawn desert. All of it came out of him, and suddenly Paine felt as if he were holding not a friend, not even a brother, but his own son. The bond was that close.

Petty wailed, "Oh,
God!"
and tried to bury himself, his memory, his very self, into Paine's chest, and Paine held him for a long time, and rocked him, and let the hurt flood out of him into the desert ground.

"Jesus, Jack," Bobby said, sitting up, pulling away from Paine. "Jesus."

And they watched, and still the sun would not rise. "I have one question, Bobby," Paine said.

They looked for the unrising sun, and Petty said, "What is it?"

"Who told you that what you had done was wrong, and that Kwan was trying to kill off your unit?"

Bob Petty looked at him in the purpling light.

"I thought you would have known that. Didn't you talk to him? It was Chief Bryers."

Paine rose, and told Petty to follow. And, as they turned their backs on the cool desert, the sun, an orange beacon, thrust its lip up over the horizon, triumphant, promising light at last.

A
t the airport in Tucson, Paine made a call to Billy Rader, and one other call, and then they got on a plane. In the seat next to him, Bob Petty, exhausted, slept, but Paine couldn't sleep. He watched Bob Petty's fretful slumber, and he looked out the window and watched America move west under him, and after a long while he did sleep because the stewardess was waking them both, telling them with her vacant charm to fasten their safety belts because they were descending toward landing at La Guardia Airport.

They circled a few times, in a clear, blue, late-summer sky, with high, small, fat clouds that looked almost autumnal. The captain told them that it was eighty-nine degrees in New York, with a high expected of ninety-three, but that the heat was supposed to break that night. "If you believe it," he said, which made most of the passengers laugh, but Paine just looked at the skyscrapers below and waited for the plane to land.

When they reached the ground, as Paine had arranged, Bryers’ car was waiting for them. Bryers got out himself from the back, without help from the driver, looking grim but satisfied. He smiled stoically and held out his hand for Paine to shake, saying, "Good work, Jack," but Paine ignored the hand and moved past him into the car.

Bob Petty sat between Bryers and Paine. The car trip up to Yonkers was strained. Bryers tried to talk a few times, but Paine looked out the window, watching New York go by. "You think perhaps we should have cuffed Petty?" Bryers said
once, but Paine didn't respond.

By six o'clock they had reached Yonkers. Paine pushed out of the limousine as it reached the curb, and Bob Petty followed.

Billy Rader was waiting for them outside Bryers’ office. There was a folder under his arm, and he smiled and rose to shake Paine's hand. Paine shook it, and said, "Thanks, Billy."

Rader 's smile widened. "Wouldn't have missed it for the world."

Paine said, "Let's go," and they all went into Bryers’ office, Bryers last, protesting.

"Shut up and come in," Paine said, and when Bryers was in the office Paine closed the door behind him.

"Go ahead, Bobby," Paine said, and Petty took a swing at Bryers and knocked him down.

"What—" Bryers started, but Paine said, "Shut up," and told Bryers to get up and sit in a chair. Billy Rader went around Bryers’ desk and sat in his swivel chair, and Paine and Bob Petty stood.

"I take it you got it?" Paine asked Billy Rader.

"I told you my friend was pissed," Rader said. He opened the folder on Bryers’ desk and drew out a sheaf of papers.

Bryers, nursing his jaw, looked from Rader to Paine. "You're all about ten seconds from arrest," he said.

"I don't think so." Billy Rader laughed, and then he consulted the papers in front of him. "Special Agent Kevin Bryers," Rader read, "covert domestic intelligence arm of the DEA, on loan for the National Security Council." He looked up, watching the color drain from Bryers’ face, replaced by shock and anger.

"How—"
Bryers began.

"Let me finish," Rader said, turning back to his paper. "On loan from DEA to the Yonkers Police Department, acting chief, on a twelve-month assignment to infiltrate, expose, and wipe out a Colombian drug operation just making inroads into Westchester County in New York. Said drug ring is already well established in Tucson, New Mexico, and
in southern California, and will use its connections in Westchester to move down into New York City and up into New England."

"I told you—"
Bryers sputtered.
"National security—"

"I told you to let me finish," Billy Bader said. He consulted his paper. "Bryers is the architect and chief administrator of something called. . ." Bader peered close at the paper, and then looked for Bryers’ reaction, "Operation TM." He looked up, smiling. "I suppose that stands for Tiny Man. But what he's really the head of is something called Operation Hush, which even the dopes at the DEA who thought he was just looking to shut down Tiny Man's drug business, didn't know about."