Our shooting, predictably, grew less impressive the more whiskey we consumed. Jack gave me pointers on overcoming the imbalances, but it was less a serious practice than "Let's get a feel for this"...with a generous heaping of horseplay.
I pulled into the lead quickly, but lost ground the more I drank, with Jack seeming to hit his "low point" early, then staying there. Earlier Jack had said I didn't seem to be much of a drinker. I suspected the same went for him. It took less than half a bottle to get us both pretty wasted--well beyond the point whe
re we'd ever attempt a hit.
As for Jack, I must admit I was curious to see him drunk. He was one of those guys you can't imagine stumbling and slurring. And he didn't, his feet and tongue steady even as I could see the alcohol taking its toll.
I'll admit, too, that I was curious about how the alcohol might affect his tongue in other ways, but the only thing it did was make his brogue more pronounced. He didn't start waxing eloquent...or even use more pronouns. Nor did he delve into tales of his sordid youth, as much as I would have loved to hear them.
What did happen was not what I expected. As he drank, that edge I'd seen earlier, when he put on the tux, that hard, dangerous "something" that I glimpsed every now and then, slid to the fore. Not an angry drunk. If anything, he was quicker with a laugh or a joke. Just that edge peeking out, that look in his eyes, in that set of his jaw that said he wasn't someone you wanted to cross.
Maybe, seeing that, I should have been worried. At least wary. If anything, it was almost comforting. I saw it, and I recognized it, and it didn't bother me. With a man like Jack, a career killer of his caliber, you know there has to be something hard, something dangerous under that calm, impassive exterior. Seeing it and seeing no anger there, feeling no sense of danger directed at me was oddly reassuring.
The last thing I remembered that night was Jack's voice, his thick brogue making even his clipped sentences almost musical as he told the story of a job gone by. I'd been up a hundred dollars in the betting, but almost falling over drunk, and he'd suggested I sit, close my eyes, rest for a minute. While I did, he told his story and I hung there, fighting sleep, clinging to his words, wanting to hear the end and then...thankfully dreamless sleep.
The next morning I awoke on the forest floor, Jack's coat draped over me. He was propped against a tree--more dozing than sleeping--and roused when he saw me up. We gathered our things, including the beer cans, then headed off in search of breakfast and news.
The morning papers mentioned the killing. Just mentioned it. Few details had been released, and certainly nothing about the killer's "challenge." I suspected the Feds were scrambling to come up with a way to break the news themselves, with their own slant.
As for us, we'd go back to doing what we'd been doing all along, pursuing our leads in hopes that we'd roust the killer from the rear, through his identity and contacts in the underworld. Far from a foolproof plan, but it was a damned sight better than sitting on our hands waiting for more people to die.
* * *
HSK
He watched the typed messages scroll up the screen and, with each, his hands gripped the chair arms tighter. He'd logged in for a quick check before he dropped off his next letter at the courier's. In it, he forewarned the Feds of his next night-time strike--an overnight train to California. He'd even provided the train number. That should be fun, and hopefully more challenging than the opera house. On the way he'd make his daytime hit. He hadn't worked out the location or the specifics yet, but he knew what he wanted: a young working-class male. And it was probably time for another visible minority.
But now he was reading something that had sent all thoughts of his plan from his head. The big news on the boards? Little Joe Nikolaev was dead. He wanted to believe the timing was coincidental, but a smart man assumes connections exist until he can prove otherwise.
Rumor had it that Little Joe opened his mouth once too often. One of tonight's posters claimed to know a middleman who'd been approached by Little Joe about a job just a few days earlier. Sounded like wannabe bullshit...until he read the next lines.
REDRUM: LJ wanted him to whack two broads. First thing I thought was: whores. LJ buys himself some company, blabs too much pillow talk, wants them offed. No big deal. Only one of them was old enough to be my grandma. The other was younger but, still, doesn't sound like whores to me.
He stared at those lines, watched them jiggle up the screen, pushed by the flurry of responses that came after them.
Evelyn.
His fingers dug into the chair arms. Now the pieces clattered into place. Rumors of hitmen on his trail. Jack showing up at the opera house, with a young female partner on his arm--Jack, who never took partners. A young woman and an old lady show up at Little Joe's, asking questions that put a price on their heads.
Evelyn, the goddess of destruction, always looking for disciples to sacrifice on the altar of her ego. Evelyn and her schemes, endless schemes, sucking you in, then tossing you aside when something new and shiny caught her eye.
A snap of her wrist and she'd yanked her favorite hound back to her side, foisted her new acolyte on him, then set the pair on his trail.
He could be wrong. There were plenty of assumptions in that argument. But a careful man took action before action was required. If Jack was on his trail, and if Evelyn knew about the Nikolaev connection, then he had a tap to shut off...before it leaked.
He looked at the letter. Could he still do it? Not that particular train, but he'd find another. He wasn't about to let Evelyn spoil his plans.
* * *
THIRTY-SIX
"Gallagher," Evelyn said before her door even closed behind us. "Maurice Gallagher called the hit on Sasha Fomin, the one Kozlov witnessed."
And with that, she swung us back on the trail without a word about what had happened in Chicago. The opera house murder had yielded no clues, so she'd plowed past it. An inconsequential distraction from the hunt.
"Gallagher in Vegas?" Jack asked.
Evelyn snorted. "Where else? That spider hasn't left the Fortuna in thirty years. As long as he's alive, that's where you'll find him. Hell, even when he isn't alive, that's where you'll find him." She looked at me. "He's built himself a mausoleum inside the casino. You meet some strange ones in this business. More than our share of psychiatric case studies."