The Man Who Fought Alone

  The room was empty. Except for the echoes. And my thudding heart.

  And the legs sticking out under one privacy door.

  Thin legs, all bone—too thin for the heavy shoes propped against the tile.

  Almost gently, I swung the door all the way open.

  He lay sprawled in the stall like he’d been overcome by loneliness, his head on the floor near the commode, one arm draped awkwardly over the toilet paper holder. Dumbly I knelt at his side. I didn’t need the lost glaze of his eyes, the pallor of his skin, the trickle of blood drooling past his lips, or the stillness of his abandoned chest to tell me that he was dead.

  But there was so little blood. It had all drained out of him long ago. Or he’d lost it to the labor of a vexed and failing heart. I wasn’t sure how he’d died until I lifted his head and saw the narrow diagonal welt, as bright as a shriek, driven furiously and impossibly deep into his Adam’s apple.

  He’d been killed. By a blow that crushed his larynx.

  Oh, Bernie.

  He hadn’t even had time to reach for his walkie-talkie. It was still clipped to his belt.

  One part of me knelt stunned beside him, nearly unable to breathe, entirely unable to think. He’d been chasing a drop, for God’s sake, a mere thief—a man with no reason to worry even if he’d been caught red-handed, what with lawyers and bail and good time, and courts overcrowded with far more frightening crimes. No ordinary thug with even a hint of experience, never mind common sense, would commit murder over a bag full of petty theft.

  But this one had.

  There was nothing ordinary about him. He was a butcher.

  While I knelt, however, another part of me—the part that knew its job, and understood how to be angry—had already moved on.

  The beige paint on the metal sides of the stall got me started. It showed scratches—

  No, they were more than scratches, they were like welts themselves, slashes cut so deep that silver shone through them. And thin, no more than an inch at the widest. One was as long as my forearm, the rest shorter.

  Another marked the inside of the privacy door. And when I finally climbed to my feet, I found another outside, on the support between stalls. Something had taken a chip out of the rim of the sink opposite the stall.

  I’d seen marks like that before.

  10

  I took a few seconds to make sure. Then I reached for the phone.

  My fingers felt numb, and my hands shook. I was stunned and livid at the same time. If the number I needed hadn’t been programmed for me, I might not have been able to dial it.

  When Max answered, the shocked part of me stared dumbly at my image in the mirrors—a rumpled suit on a too-big frame, topped by a face like a ghoul’s. The other part told him where I was. Then it said, “Bernie’s been killed.”

  Max gasped like an asthma attack. “Shit. Oh, God. Shit.”

  The part of me that knew its job didn’t care.

  “Get the cops,” I snapped at him. “Then I want one guard, I don’t care who. I need him right away. Don’t let anyone else in here.” Vicious with memory, I added, “And keep an eye on those fucking chops.”

  I had no authority to give him orders. But he knew I was right. Still gasping, he muttered, “Shit. I’m on it.” Then the line clicked dead.

  Echoes seemed to hang in the air—the clash of the men’s room door, the screech of welts gouged across metal, the fatal rasp of Bernie’s crushed throat. I couldn’t clear them out of my head. The numb part of me wanted to kneel at Bernie’s side again, stay there until help arrived. But I didn’t.

  Instead I moved woodenly to the men’s room door to keep guests and spectators out.

  I needed one of Bernie’s men. I needed him now. Before the cops got here.

  How long would Max take to cover everything?

  A tremor spread from the pit of my stomach into my chest and shoulders. I’d caused Bernie’s death. Indirectly, innocently, I’d brought him to this. On some level, I knew I wasn’t responsible for it. But I took it personally anyway.

  The door shifted hard as someone in a hurry put his shoulder to it. I only let it open a crack until I recognized a Hotel Security blazer and badge. Then I stood aside.

  The man was relatively young, at least by the standard of hotel security guards, and he’d been running. But he looked tight with muscle, in good shape. Exertion flushed his cheeks, although he didn’t pant. Below a crop of blond hair, his pale eyes hinted at frenzy against a background of bravado.

  His nametag said, “Wisman.”

  “Axbrewder?” he demanded urgently. “What the hell—? Where’s Bernie?”

  He shoved past me when he spotted Bernie’s feet. I didn’t try to stop him. Still guarding the door, I watched him reach the stall, then go rigid with shock and stumble backward until he hit the sinks.

  “Christ,” he groaned. For a couple of seconds, I thought he was going to puke. His bravado didn’t cover this. As hotel security, his experience and training probably didn’t extend past rousting drunks. Violence like this wasn’t in his job description.

  I didn’t give him a chance to think. I needed answers.

  “Wisman.” I made my voice hard to get his attention. “Did Bernie carry a weapon?”

  He turned eyes full of distress and confusion toward me. His mouth hung open. “A weapon—?”

  Poor kid. If I’d had time, I might’ve allowed him a few minutes to pull himself together. But the cops were on their way, and I had no patience for him.

  “A weapon,” I insisted. “Protection. Something to fight with.”

  He gaped at me stupidly. “Axbrewder, what’re you—? Hotel regulations—”

  If Security carried unauthorized weapons, and Watchdog didn’t know about them, The Luxury might lose its coverage. The hotel would probably fire every guard in the place.

  I heard a siren. It sounded distant, the wail of someone else’s crime. But too many walls muffled it. For all I knew, the cops had already reached the portico.

  Without transition, the tremors took over. My knees and arms shook. I didn’t have a stunned nerve left in my whole body.

  “Listen to me.” Striding straight for Wisman, I grabbed him by his lapels and hauled his face up to mine. “I don’t give a shit about hotel regulations. I’m not going to cause any trouble.”

  Abruptly I released his blazer and groped his back until I found what I was looking for—a hard shape like a short stick with a handle at right angles near one end.

  “You’ve got a tonfa, for God’s sake.” In case he needed it. In case a drunk turned ugly on him. Almost shouting, I demanded, “Did Bernie carry a weapon?”

  He still didn’t answer. Maybe he couldn’t. I knew his secret now—I could get him in serious trouble.

  I took his arm and wrenched him forward until he stood over Bernie’s body. I wanted to force him to his knees, make him face Bernie’s murder nose-to-nose, but I didn’t.

  “That wasn’t a knife.” Even the back of a blade couldn’t have smashed Bernie’s throat that way, or scarred the walls. “He was killed with some other weapon. Did he carry—?”

  Wisman heaved against my grasp. “A flik,” he answered suddenly. “It’s a—”

  “I know what a flik is.”

  Roughly I let him go.

  A flik was a short steel rod like a baton, usually about eighteen inches long and an inch thick. Inside it held a tightly coiled steel spring. Very tightly coiled. With a small lump of steel on the end for weight. A release on the handle let the spring out. You swung it the way you would a flail. The flex of the spring and the added weight gave it the force of a cudgel.

  Bernie should’ve been able to handle almost anyone with it. Even that heavyset goon.

  Wisman retreated to the sink again. For a minute longer, his brain refused to function. Then he turned, ran some water, and splashed it on his face. When he’d toweled himself dry, some of the frenzy had left his eyes.

  “As far as I kno
w,” he said hoarsely, “he never used it. The flik. The hotel doesn’t need to know about it. The cops can figure it out for themselves.”

  Absently I muttered, “Let them think the killer brought it with him.” I wasn’t really listening. “Why not?”

  My tone must’ve warned him that I was thinking about things which hadn’t occurred to him. “Why does it matter?” he asked.

  “Because,” I told him, “it isn’t here.”

  He didn’t understand—and I didn’t explain.

  Why did the killer take the flik? It wasn’t his. He had good reason to leave it behind. If the cops caught him, he could tell them Bernie attacked him with it. He got his hands on it and hit back, accidentally killed Bernie in self-defense. Then panicked and ran. Involuntary manslaughter, not murder.

  Either he was too stupid to think that clearly. Or he didn’t care what he was charged with.

  Or he wanted the cops to know that Bernie had been murdered.

  Before I could go any further, a couple of uniforms came through the door, and the men’s room turned into an official crime scene.

  The results looked and sounded like chaos. The cops inspected Bernie’s body, talked to their radios, and questioned Wisman and me, all at once. The hotel manager tried to force his way inside, but one of the uniforms blocked the door until Homicide could arrive. I focused on controlling my shakes while I gave simple answers to basic questions. Who was I. Why was I there. What happened. In what order.

  Back in my drinking days, I could’ve done this without trembling at all. Then I’d been afflicted with unsteadiness of another kind. Now I couldn’t remember what that felt like.

  The bleeding from Bernie’s mouth slowed as his body settled, but that didn’t make me feel better.

  I heard more sirens. Presumably now Carner’s finest would keep anyone from leaving the lobby. They might even take a stab at sealing the hotel. Too late, of course. Unless the heavyset guy was stone crazy, he was already gone.

  Vaguely I wondered if Sternway had seen anything useful. No doubt he was several times more observant than Lacone.

  I didn’t let myself think about Deborah Messenger.

  And I absolutely did not let myself think about Ginny. Somewhere inside me, her former partner believed that he needed her. But I didn’t want to hear it.

  Eventually Homicide arrived in the form of a plainclothes sergeant and a staff photographer. When the detective finished his inspection, the photog fired his flash at everything in sight. Each burst wiped color and life out of the room. Soon the blare of light off the mirrors and tile made my head feel like I’d been hit with a flik. Bernie already resembled a specimen pinned down on a pathologist’s slide.

  Apparently it didn’t bother the detective. His name was Edgar Moy, and as far as I could tell his nerves no longer reacted to sensation. Even when he moved, he seemed catatonic. He was a short black man in—of all things—a crumpled trench coat. Untidy stains of grey marked his hair, and his mustache was so thin it might’ve been drawn on with an eyebrow pencil. He looked at everything sourly, but he didn’t give off the kind of compensatory belligerence you usually see in small cops. I guess he’d been short long enough to get used to it.

  “Interesting wound,” he remarked when he’d finished his inspection. “Any sign of the weapon?” He was asking all of us, the two cops, Wisman, and me.

  We shook our heads dutifully. Thanks to the flash, mine felt like it was full of broken glass. He didn’t seem to care.

  “Who found the body?”

  “I did.” I wanted to shut my eyes until the photog finished his assault. But even flash and phosphenes couldn’t erase the imprinted image of Bernie’s corpse. He died again every time the light cut into him.

  “And you are?”

  I told him, and we started to dance.

  It was all routine. I could’ve choreographed it in my sleep. But he took me through it carefully anyway, just in case I didn’t know the steps. When he was done, he knew everything I did about the situation.

  Except what I thought about the missing weapon.

  “And you’re sure,” he asked, “you could pick this drop out of a lineup?”

  I grinned coldly. “With both hands tied behind my back.”

  Fortunately the photog was done.

  Sergeant Moy considered my forehead for a moment. “You know, Axbrewder,” he remarked in a musing tone, “you’re swinging without a net here.”

  I knew what came next, but I didn’t help him out. “How so?”

  “You don’t have a license. And you aren’t working for a licensed investigator. You aren’t covered.”

  He wasn’t hassling me. I knew that. License or no license, my dealings with The Luxury, the IAMA, and Watchdog were clean. No, he was warning me not to go after Bernie’s killer myself. Without a license, I had no legal standing. Anything I did might be construed as interference.

  In his version of the dance, my response should’ve indicated acquiescence. But instead I asked, “Don’t you get too hot in that coat? This town’s a sauna.”

  He didn’t smile—or take offense, either. Maybe he didn’t know how. “I like the coat. But I don’t like to sweat. So I don’t put on underwear.”

  After ordering me to go downtown and look at mug shots—tomorrow at the latest—he turned away, leaving me worried that he already knew me better than I wanted him to. At the door, he spoke to a uniform, issued orders about gathering statements and witnesses. After that he did his waltz with Wisman.

  By that time I was practically hopping from foot to foot, I had so many things to worry about. I wanted out of the men’s room, but Moy hadn’t given me permission to leave. Apparently he intended to question his possible witnesses in front of me.

  Which may’ve been a courtesy. He’d warned me off, but he made no effort to shut me out. He hadn’t even told me not to call anyone.

  As soon as I was sure that no one cared what I did, I withdrew to the back of the men’s room. While Moy grilled Wisman, followed by Sternway, Deborah Messenger, and Bernie’s second-in-command, I got as much done as I could.

  Under the circumstances, Max answered pretty promptly. He told me the chops were safe. The picks had been locked away until the cops were ready for them. Meanwhile the tournament continued as usual. Apparently nothing as minor as a dead security guard interrupted martial artists in their relentless pursuit of trophies. I thanked him, hung up, and called Marshal Viviter.

  About the time Sergeant Moy finished with Wisman and started on Anson Sternway, the Professional Investigations receptionist, Beatrix Amity, put me through to her lord and master.

  “Good timing, Brew,” Viviter said cheerfully. “You caught me be- tween appointments. How’s the exciting life of a field operative?” I was too pissed off for pleasantries, so I told him roughly, “Bernie Appelwait’s been killed.”

  Without transition he turned off the good humor. “At a karate tournament? What the hell’s going on there?”

  I gave him the concise version. He paused to mutter softly, “Poor old guy. He was an irascible sonofabitch, but I always liked him.” Marshal and I had that much in common, anyway. Then he got back to business. “You’re in an awkward position there, Brew. What do you need from me?”

  Sternway hardly glanced at me while he answered Moy’s questions in an unrelieved monotone. He rubbed his left forearm once, then ignored it.

  I kept my voice down. “First, do you know a Homicide sergeant named Moy, Edgar Moy?”

  “The somnambulist in the trench coat? He’s straight, for a cop. And smarter than he looks. Some people think he’s lazy because he doesn’t close cases quickly. But I’d say he takes his time because he doesn’t jump to conclusions.”

  I’d already heard Moy ask Wisman whether Bernie had any enemies. Until then I hadn’t known that the detective was interested enough to consider alternative explanations.

  Moy didn’t keep Sternway long. When the IAMA director left, Deborah Messenger t
ook his place. She gave me a worried look as she came into the men’s room. After that she concentrated on Moy.

  To Marshal I said, “He reminded me that this isn’t my problem. But I’m not going to drop it. The pieces don’t fit.”

  “You mean,” Marshal put in, “why did a guy facing a minor rap like petty theft raise the stakes on himself by committing murder?”

  “That,” I admitted. “And there’s something else.”

  I didn’t risk saying what it was, and Viviter was too clever to ask. Damn him anyway. I wanted to loathe him, but he made it bloody difficult. After a pause, he repeated his earlier question. “How can I help?”

  “I don’t know if it’s possible,” I told the phone quietly, “but I want to see the ME’s report. And I want to know if Bernie ever had any dealings with Sternway, the IAMA, Alex Lacone, the schools in Martial America, or Watchdog Insurance. I mean, outside his job here.”

  Again Marshal refrained from questions. “Might be possible,” he mused instead. “Or not. I’ll let you know.

  “Anything else?”

  Moy had finished questioning Deborah. Like Wisman and Sternway, she’d reported that she hadn’t seen Bernie go into the men’s room. She hadn’t seen anyone like the heavyset man. When the detective let her go, she threw me another anxious look, but didn’t hesitate on her way out.

  Next the uniforms in the lobby admitted Bernie’s designated second-in-command, an untidy man named Slade who managed to make his blazer look slept in. I wanted to concentrate on what he said, but I needed one more thing from Marshal.

  “Can you give me a direct phone number? In case I have to get in touch with you fast?”

  “Sure.” He recited a number. “That’s my cell phone. It’s always on.”

  Brusquely I thanked him and hung up.

  Slade was telling Moy, “You want to talk to Max Harp. He’s on monitor duty. If one of our cameras saw it, so did he. But the odds aren’t good.” Then he added, “Of course, we keep everything on tape, at least for a couple of weeks.”

  His tone gave off hints of truculence or defensiveness.

  Prodded for more, he explained that the Security cameras in the lobby only swept this men’s room door at intervals. On top of that, images at the edges were blurred. Even if one of the cameras happened to swing in the right direction at the right time, it focused on more vulnerable locations, like registration and the cashier’s desk.