I heard him set something heavy and metal on a tabletop, then walk past the screen again and into another room. I took a deep breath, tore open the door, and went in after him. In the hard electric light, he and I both seemed caught as though in the sudden flash of a photographer's camera. I saw the stiff spaghetti noodles protruding from a pot of steaming water on the stove, a loaf of French bread and a block of cheese and a dark bottle of Chianti on the drain-board, an army.45 like mine, except chrome-plated, where he had placed it on a breakfast table. I saw the animal fear and anger in his face as he stood motionless in the bedroom doorway, the tight mouth, the white quiver around his pinched nostrils, his hot black eyes that stared both at me and at the pistol that he had left beyond his grasp.
"You're busted, sonofabitch! Down on your face!" I yelled.
But I should have known (and perhaps I already did) that a man who had lived on snakes and insects and crawled alone through elephant grass with an '03 Springfield to the edge of a Vietcong village would not allow himself to be taken by a small-town cop who was foolish enough to extend the game after one side had just lost badly.
One of his hands rested on the edge of the bedroom door. His eyes stared into mine, his face twisted with some brief thought, then his arm shot forward and slammed the door in my face. I grabbed the knob, turned it, pushed and threw my weight against the wood, but the spring lock was set solidly in the jamb.
Then I heard him jerk a drawer out on the floor and a second later I heard the clack of metal sliding back on metal. I leaped aside and tumbled over a chair just as the shotgun exploded a hole the size of a pie plate through the door. The buckshot blew splinters of wood all over the kitchen, raked the breakfast table clean of groceries, whanged off the stove and the pot heating on the burner. I was off balance, on my knees, pressed against the wall by the jamb, when he let off two more rounds at a different angle. I suspected the barrel was sawed off, because the pattern spread out like cannister, ripped through the wood as though it had been touched with a chain saw, and blew dishes into the air, water out of the pot, a half-gallon bottle of ketchup all over the far wall.
But when he ejected the spent casing and fired again, I gave him something to think about, too. I remained flat against the wall, bent my wrist backwards around the door-jamb, and let off two rounds flush against the wood. The recoil almost knocked the pistol from my hand, but a.45 hollow-point fired through one surface at a target farther beyond makes an awe-inspiring impression on the person who happens to be the target.
"You've had it, Romero. Throw it down. Cops'll be all over the street in three minutes," I said.
The room was hot and still. The air smelled heavily of cordite and an empty pot burning on the stove. I heard him snick two shells into the shotgun's magazine and then heard his feet thundering up a wooden stairway. I stood quickly in front of the door, the.45 extended in both arms, and fired the whole clip at an upward angle into the bedroom. I chopped holes out of the wood that looked like a jack-o'-lantern's mouth, and even among the explosions of smoke and flame and splintered lead and flying pieces of door I could hear and even glimpse the damage taking place inside the room: a mirror crashing to the floor, a wall lamp whipped into the air against its cord, a water pipe bursting inside a wall, a window erupting into the street.
The breech locked open, and I ripped the empty clip out of the handle, shoved in another one, slid the top round into the chamber, and kicked the shattered door loose from the jamb. By the side wall, safe from my angle of fire, was a stairway that pulled out of the ceiling by a rope. I pointed my.45 at the attic's dark opening, my blood roaring in my ears.
The room was quiet. There was no movement upstairs. Particles of dust and threads of fiberboard floated in the light from the broken ceramic lamp that swung back and forth on its cord against the wall. Down the street I heard sirens.
I had every reason to believe that he was trapped-even though Victor Romero had survived Vietnam, thrived as a street dealer and pimp, gotten out from under federal custody after he probably killed the four people in the plane at Southwest Pass, escaped unhurt in the Toyota when I punched it full of holes with the.45, and managed in all probability to blow away Eddie Keats. It wasn't a record to ignore.
For the first time I glanced through the side window and saw a flat, tarpapered roof outside. There were air vents on it from the laundry, a lighted neon sign, two peaked enclosures with small doors that probably housed ventilator fans, the rusted top of an iron ladder that dropped down to ground level.
Then I saw the boards at the edge of the attic entrance bend with his weight as he moved quietly toward the wall and a probable window that overlooked the roof. I raised the.45 and waited until one board eased back into place and the edges of the next one moved slightly out of the flat, geometric pattern that formed the ceiling, then I aimed just ahead of the spread between his two feet and began firing. I pulled the trigger five times, deliberately and with calculation, saving three shells in the clip, and let the recoil bring each round farther back from the point of his leading foot and the attic entrance.
I think he screamed at one point. But I can't be sure. I didn't really care, either. I've heard that scream before; it represents the failure of everything, particularly of hope and humanity. You hear it in your dreams; it replays itself even when they die silently.
He fell back through the attic opening and crashed on the floor by the foot of the ladder. He lay on his back, one leg bent under him, his eyes filled with black light, his mouth working for air. A round had cut off three fingers of his right hand. The hand trembled with shock on the floor, the knuckles rattling on the wood. There was a deep sucking wound in his chest, and the wet cloth of his shirt fluttered in the wound each time he tried to breathe. Outside, the street was filled with sirens and the revolving blue and red lights of emergency vehicles.
He was trying to speak. His mouth opened, his voice clicked in the back of his throat, and blood and saliva ran down his cheek into his black curls. I knelt by him, as a priest might, and turned my ear toward his face. I could smell his dried sweat, the oil in his hair.
"… did her," he rasped.
"I can't understand."
He tried again, but he choked on the saliva in his throat. I turned his face to the side with my fingers so his mouth would drain.
His lips were bright red, and they formed a wet smile like a clown's. Then the voice came out in a long whisper, smelling of bile and nicotine: "I did your wife, motherfucker."
He was dead two minutes later when three uniformed cops came through the apartment door. A flattened round had caught him in the lower back, tunneled upward through his trunk, and torn a hole in his lung. The coroner told me that the spine had probably been severed and that he was paralyzed when he crashed down the ladder. After the paramedics had lifted him on a stretcher and taken him away, his blood left a pattern like horsetails on the wooden floor.
I spent the next half hour in the apartment answering questions asked by a young homicide lieutenant named Magelli. He was tired and his clothes were wilted with perspiration, but he was thorough and he didn't cut corners. His brown eyes seemed sleepy and expressionless, but when he asked a question, they remained engaged with mine until the last word of my answer was out of my mouth, and only then did he write on his clipboard.
Finally he put a Lucky Strike in his mouth and looked around again at the litter in the kitchen and the buckshot holes in the walls. A drop of perspiration fell out of his hair and spotted the cigarette paper.
"You say this guy worked for Bubba Rocque?" he said.