A talent for killing, p.28
A Talent for Killing, page 28
The man in the dark raincoat approached the open entrance-way slowly, cautiously. He’d almost reached the doorway when Kane, running behind him, barreled into him and slammed him hard against the wall. The Commander dropped out of the man’s hand. He slumped to the floor. Kane stopped long enough to kick the Commander down the hallway. He stepped over the man, ducked low and stepped outside.
Sanders had cleared the hedges that bordered the front edge of the porch. Kane walked down the steps and stood over him. There was a gagging, a choking from Sanders.
Kane leaned over him.
Sanders blinked up at him. Blood ran out of Sanders’ nose. His lips moved but no sound came out.
Kane straightened up. He stood over Sanders until he was certain he was dead.
He heard a noise on the porch. He looked up.
Rachel Carson stood to the left of the lighted doorway. The Commander was in her right hand and she’d turned to the side in the firing range stance. Her left hand crossed her body and gripped her right wrist.
“Put your hands on your head,” she said.
“No.”
“I’ll burn you. I swear I will.”
Kane pivoted and walked down the lawn toward the road. At the curb, just before he stepped into the street, he looked over his shoulder.
Rachel still stood on the porch. Now the lighted doorway was behind her. The Commander was down at her side, flat against her leg.
Two hours later, after he’d disposed of the Sport and changed from the hunting clothing into the dark gray suit, Kane caught a dawn flight from Dulles to Atlanta.
Kane arrived at Hartsfield a few minutes before eight. He drove to the shopping center and parked in the front row facing the building where Jackson Carter’s office was. After he ordered breakfast at a Huddle House a few doors down, he placed a call to Carter at home. He ate breakfast and then returned to the Duster and waited until the black Continental pulled into the space on his left.
Twenty minutes, later they were in the prison ward at Grady.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
The blinds were drawn in the room. Even in the near darkness, Ben Carpenter’s skin seemed as transparent as wrapping plastic. The veins in his face were pale blue, like fresh milk.
Carpenter opened his eyes and blinked at them. “Is it over?”
“It’s over,” Jackson Carter said. “Early this morning.”
“It was Saunders or Sanders or … whatever his name was?”
“Watt Sanders,” Kane said.
“A short man, wide shoulders?”
“That’s the one,” Kane said.
“How?”
“Shot three times at close range,” Kane said.
“Before that …?” Beads of sweat ran down Carpenter’s face and pooled at his neck.
“He admitted it.” Kane repeated the exact words Watt Sanders had used.
“Now …” Ben Carpenter said.
Kane looked toward Jackson Carter. Both men had heard the failing breath, the flutter in his voice.
Carter leaned closer, one hand on the side of the bed. “Yes?”
Carpenter said something to Carter that Kane didn’t hear.
Carter leaned away. “I guess that’s true.”
Out in the parking lot, with all the smells of death behind them, blown away by the warm April wind, Kane asked what it was that Ben Carpenter had said.
“He said he could die now.”
The cover-up at 2120 Bridger Road was completed by sunrise. Even protesting, not liking it, Joe Blaustein drove Watt Sanders’ Impala from the General Weapons compound. At an agreed upon site, an abandoned service station about halfway between Parker and Washington, Blaustein met the Rambler driven by Edward Mason. As soon as the Impala pulled off the road the Rambler switched on its headlights and pulled away. Blaustein followed the Rambler down a dirt road for two or three miles. It was a deserted road. The two men struggled with Sanders’ plastic-wrapped corpse. They carried it around the Impala and dumped it into a ditch.
Mason placed the bloody plastic in the trunk of the Rambler and dropped Blaustein at the main gate of General Weapons.
The search for Watt Sanders would begin later in the day. Blaustein would make sure the body was found. After that, it would be a matter of a state-wide search for the hitchhiker Sanders must have picked up on his way back from Washington.
It was a crime without a solution. Most of the random ones were.
Starting a bit after nine in the morning, two Rockville policemen worked the whole length of Bridger Road. They said they’d had complaints that someone had been exploding some kind of fireworks early in the morning. Two or three people said they vaguely remembered the noises but that they hadn’t lasted very long.
Whistler and Burden arrived at 2120 Bridger Road at noon. Rachel Carson and Stan Turbeville were waiting for him in the living room. Edward Mason, who hadn’t slept most of the night, was in one of the bedrooms upstairs.
Whistler sat in the stuffed chair across from the sofa. He packed a leather-covered pipe with John Cotton’s Mixture. His eyes were level and hard behind the flare of the match as he touched it to the tobacco and formed a small coal in the center of the bowl. Past his right shoulder Fred Burden blocked the doorway.
“Rachel,” Whistler finally said, “Burden will talk to you in the study.” After the footsteps faded and the study door closed, he took the pipe from his mouth. “Tell me about it, Stan.”
“I was sent here by Wilson at Mr. Burden’s orders.”
Whistler nodded.
“I let myself in with my key.”
Whistler looked down at the white ash that topped his pipe.
“I called Eddie. He didn’t answer and I looked in the living room. He was face down on the rug, his hands taped behind him, and tape was wrapped around his ankles.” Stan Turbeville lifted his right hand and ran it over his forehead. It came away greasy wet. He rubbed it against the thigh of his trousers. “I was checking to see if he was all right. I couldn’t tell because he was unconscious. About then, I heard a noise down the hall. I got out my piece and charged it. I was heading for the hall when a man ran by. He was carrying a piece in his right hand. I could see that.”
“You call out to him?”
Turbeville hesitated. A long breath hissed between his teeth. “No, I didn’t call out.”
“Why not?”
“He was armed.”
“I see.” There was a dry tone in Whistler’s voice.
“So I knocked him down.”
“How many rounds?”
“Three,” Turbeville said.
“And then?”
“Somebody ran up my back and knocked me down.”
“And you were out?”
Turbeviile nodded, “Rachel says for about twenty minutes.”
Whistler stood up. “Wait here.”
“One bad step you made,” Burden said. “You brought him here.”
“He brought me here,” Rachel said. Realization touched her. “I see what you’re thinking. Well, you’re wrong. Remember the conversation you and I had while Blaustein was in the bedroom with Watt Sanders?”
“I remember.”
“That man, whoever he was, heard us from the kitchen.”
“But you helped him.”
“The hell I did.” In short and slashing words she told him about the two times she’d tried to jump the man. “And I’ve got the lumps and bruises to prove it.”
Whistler entered and closed the door behind him. Burden waited until he was seated before he continued.
“And what happened after Turbeviile shot Watt Sanders?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I was half-knocked out. By the time I was over that and got to the front door, after I’d stopped to be sure Stan was okay, the man was gone. He’d driven away and there was a body to be taken care of on the front lawn.”
Whistler leaned forward and tapped the dottle out of his pipe. “You were in the room when he questioned Sanders?”
“Yes.”
“And …?”
“What he admitted, it made me want to throw up. I wanted to blow Sanders away myself.”
Whistler nodded and stood up. “Eddie will give you a ride back to the Agency later today. You won’t be going back to General Weapons. You’ll be given another assignment.”
Rachel couldn’t help asking. “Who was the man …?”
“The masked man?” Burden laughed. “The one with the silver bullet?”
Whistler didn’t smile. “It wouldn’t do you any good to know. It might even be dangerous for you.”
Burden drove. Whistler sat in the passenger seat next to him.
Burden said, “Anyway we try to cut it, it was our mistake.”
“Our fuck-up,” Whistler said.
“How do we handle it?”
Whistler stared out at the road. “We ship Stan Turbeville to Jacksonville to replace Foster. We have a few words with Rachel before we assign her to Madrid. She’s to forget that Kane had any part in this. Eddie Mason’s a dependable type. He’ll go along with our story that Watt Sanders overpowered him.”
“That’s possible.”
“It’s our afterbirth,” Whistler said, “and we’ve got to eat it.”
“Afterbirth?” Burden was puzzled.
“Never had a mama cat?”
“No,” Burden said.
“Too bad,” Whistler said. “It gives a person a number of good metaphors to play with.”
As soon as he entered the house Kane caught the scents. There was a smell of closed-in sweat and the fading scent of burnt gunpowder. He looked straight ahead and saw that the basement door was open.
A Cuban with a webbing of acne scars on his face stood in front of the sofa with a .38 in his outstretched hand. “Close the door behind you, Mr. Callan.”
Kane closed the door and waited.
“Bring the bag over here.” The Cuban pointed with his other hand at a spot about three feet from the sofa. Kane rounded the end of the sofa and put the ready bag on the rug. “Take off your coat.”
Kane slipped off his jacket and dropped it.
“Turn around.”
Kane turned and the man patted him down from his armpits to the tops of his shoes. The man grunted and stood up. “Walk away two paces.”
Kane took two short paces and pivoted.
The Cuban drew the ready bag toward him and sat on the sofa. He opened the bag with his free hand and, with his eyes still on Kane, dug around in the clothing. After a minute or so, he leaned back and kicked the open bag away from him. The bag stopped about three feet away from him.
“Where is the twenty thousand?”
“I don’t have it,” Kane said.
“Then you are all I have.”
“That’s true.” Kane stared at the man. “There was Harley a few days ago. You got your pound of bloodmeat there.”
“The old man?” A quiver of distaste moved across his face, “It was not a thing I liked.”
“Perhaps your man did, the tall one.”
“He was a hard man,” the Cuban said. “He did not have enough imagination to know what someone else’s pain feels like.”
“Was?”
“That’s why I am here. To take your life for his.”
“It’s not a good exchange,” Kane said. “I roughed your man with a fender or a headlight. I didn’t kill him.”
“A man lies when he has to.”
“Under the gun?” Kane shook his head.
“It was the night they watched your house. Perhaps you forget killings that easily.”
“There was a man at the top of the basement steps. He wasn’t as tall as your man. I got past him.”
“That was the albino.”
“I didn’t see your man that night.”
“If not you …?” The Cuban looked down at the .38 in his tightened hand. “That would leave only the albino.”
“Any reason he’d kill your man?”
“It is a political fact that you isolate a man before you deal with him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It does not matter.” The Cuban stood up. “Step closer. I want to see your face. I want to see if you are lying.”
Kane flicked his eyes down toward the ready bag. He wanted it directly in his path. He lifted his head and met the Cuban’s eyes. He stepped out firmly. He didn’t look down. He meant to kick the bag toward the Cuban. Three steps and he thought he’d missed it completely. Instead he stepped into the bag and tripped and fell into the Cuban.
The Cuban shouted something and tried to lift the .38. Kane slammed an elbow into his throat and felt him fall back onto the sofa. Kane fell on top of him. His left hand grabbed the Cuban’s right forearm and slid down it until he gripped the wrist. The Cuban lifted a knee toward him. Kane took it on his thigh. He drew the hand that held the .38 toward him and then slammed it against the front of the sofa armrest. Once, twice, a third time. The hand opened and the .38 fell to the rug.
Kane gave the Cuban a final shove backward and pulled away. He jumped for the .38 and scooped it up and whirled, expecting the Cuban to follow him. The Cuban sat still, eyes very big, one hand clutched at his throat.
It was a few seconds before the man could speak. “Now you can kill me,” he said. “That is only fair.”
“There’s no percentage in that.”
“You did not kill James?”
“He was the tall one?” Kane shook his head. “Who are you?”
“It does not matter.”
“There’s the door.”
“I can leave?”
“When you’re ready,” Kane said.
“I need my bag.”
“Get it.” Kane followed him to the bedroom. The Cuban picked up the gym bag from beside the bed. Kane followed him to the front door. The man went out without looking back.
From the doorway Kane watched him cross the park. He climbed the steps on the other side and went out of sight down the street that sliced toward the park.
It was early evening, with all the doors and windows open, before the house was fully aired out. A thunderstorm hit around eight. Kane slept to the harsh surge of rain on his windows.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND THIS BOOK
Ralph Dennis was born in 1931 in Sumter, South Carolina, and received a Masters degree from University of North Carolina, where he later taught film and television writing after serving a stint in the Navy. He is best known for his legendary Hardman series of twelve crime novels, which were published in mid-to-late 1970s.
But seven books into Hardman, Ralph walked away from the series to try other things. He wrote a standalone novel called Atlanta, intended as an Arthur Hailey-esque potboiler, and Kane #1 and Kane #2, the first two books in what he hoped would become a new series about an assassin.
Kane #1 was released in paperback under the title Deadman’s Game by Berkley Medallion in 1976. At about the same time, according to Ralph, the editor who championed the book left the company, leaving the Deadman’s Game without a champion in-house and without the editorial support for a robust marketing campaign. The new editor, eager to make his own mark, rejected the sequel and any hope of a Kane series.
So Ralph went back to Hardman, writing five more books in the series before walking away from it for good. His final published novel, MacTaggart’s War, was released in 1979 (and has been re-released, with substantial changes, by Brash Books as The War Heist)
Ralph died in 1988. In the decades that followed, the Hardman series gained cult status among crime-fiction lovers and Deadman’s Game became a rare, highly-coveted, and expensive paperback collectible.
In 2018, Lee Goldberg, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, acquired the rights to Ralph Dennis’ published and unpublished work from the author’s estate.
Among Ralph’s papers were the original, typewritten manuscripts for Kane #1 and Kane #2, which Lee combined, interweaved, and substantially edited to create this new book.
Ralph Dennis, A Talent for Killing
