But there’d be no more gunfire from my caller.
I got to my feet and had a look at him. The .45 slug had gone in clean mid-chest but delivered a fat sloppy wad of the gray man’s colorful insides to splash and glop and slide bloodily down the wall behind where he lay crumpled under it, just inside the door. He looked up at me, eyes trying to blink death away. But that wasn’t going to happen — not with his chest a tired beach ball, slowly deflating.
The glaze hadn’t reached his eyes yet, so I’m pretty sure he could still hear me.
“I told you, buddy,” I said. “Sooner or later, everybody screws up.”
I had to take the hinges off the doors so they could go through the routine of seeing the body before anyone touched it. Lots of pics, lots of prints. They impounded my gun, inspected my license and took my statement while they photographed the corpse, then ushered me out when they took the guy away in a rubber body bag, neither one of us the captain of our own ship in this instance.
When we reached headquarters, the desk sergeant nodded to the detectives flanking me and said, “Chambers doesn’t want to see him just yet. But keep him handy.”
They dumped me on a bench outside the door that read Captain Patrick Chambers, Homicide Division, and somebody offered me coffee that I turned down. Instead I made the bench my hard little bed, dropped my hat down over my face and had a snooze. Killing that guy hadn’t taken it out of me, but waiting around while the cops and techs treated my office like a crime scene had been a damn drain.
Somebody shook me awake, lifting the hat off my face, and it was Pat in his shirtsleeves, his tie loose as a noose awaiting a customer. I saw a tiredness that made me think maybe the hard line cop had finally mellowed out of him. Then the gray-blue eyes focused on me and I knew it hadn’t.
“Up and at ’em, boy.”
I yawned, sat up, tasted the nasty thickness in my mouth, and said, “What’s been shaking, Pat?”
He just sighed, went over and opened his office door and I went in. The space was modest, a few filing cabinets and scads of framed citations. I took the visitor’s chair while he shambled behind the desk. A couple of cardboard cups of coffee were waiting and I sampled mine.
The homicide captain laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his swivel chair. His grin was as rumpled as his shirt. “Your damn luck is something else, Mike.”
I shrugged.
“Your tail really ought to be hanging out on this one. Your reputation precedes you, you know. And this new administration isn’t like the old one, chum. They won’t be happy with you ruining the Fun City image.”
“Who gives a shit?”
Pat let a small grin crease his mouth. “This time you may just get away with that flip-ass attitude. Come the inquest, you’ll no doubt have a list of formidable witnesses ready to testify to your character, thanks to you getting them out of various jams.”
“That’s right. Haven’t you heard? I’m beloved.”
“Not by the new crowd you aren’t. The big boys would be ready to stand you on your ear for erasing one Milton Woodcock...”
“Is that who he was?”
“...a reputable businessman from the suburbs of Chicago who recently elected to re-establish himself in the insurance game in our fair town.”
“Sure,” I said, “he was a nice, reputable guy all right. He came around to tell me how much he admired me while he pointed that fancy silenced rod at my chest.” I shoved my hat back and slouched in the chair. “So are these big boys of yours going to lean on me or not?”
“Not.” Pat took his hands down and folded them on the desk. He grunted a deep laugh and shook his head. “A dinosaur like you, and modern science gets you off the hook. That and a certain pal of yours in the Homicide Division.”
“Sounds like somebody did me a favor.”
“He did. I did. I rushed that foreign-make automatic through ballistics. Those boys don’t like to work fast but I lit a fire.”
“Thanks, buddy. When should we hear from ’em?”
“We have heard.” His face drained of anything frivolous. “Woodcock had used that weapon before. He had routinely switched out the barrel so ballistics couldn’t match up any slugs, but the last time out, he didn’t recover all the ejected shells... and the firing pin marks tallied with the gun he held on you. I called a friend of mine on the Chicago PD, at home, and he put me in touch with a night-shift homicide dick who had a file on Mr. Woodcock as thick as your skull.”
“No kidding.”
“The Chicago lads were never able to indict the respectable Mr. Woodcock, but they linked him to half a dozen homicides and figured those were the tip of a very bloody iceberg. That and a few more goodies pointed to him as a contract killer, which explains his relocating to our little island.”
“I should nap outside your office more often,” I commented drily. “It does a taxpayer’s heart good to know public servants are working like elves for him while he slumbers.”
Pat spoke two words, one of them nasty, but his grin took off all the edge.
I said, “So — where do we go from here?”
The grin on Pat’s mouth spread a little. “I had calls about this from two of the upstairs crowd, making lots of noise, but now they’re mostly embarrassed. Woodcock’s presence in our fair city is more of a liability than yours, apparently.”
“So I helped keep the city clean, even if I did litter up my office. You’re welcome, kiddo.”
“Oh, don’t get this wrong — the big shots aren’t offering any apologies... but you’ll walk through the inquest. In fact, I’ve already been instructed to return your license, gun and good name.”
“Generous souls.”
“Consider it a show of good faith.” What he said next he tossed out casually, like a kid buying a pack of rubbers between a comb and a candy bar. “And they’ve given me a special assignment — investigate why you were the target of a certain contract killer.”
“When you find out,” I said, “be sure to let me know.”
I saw the grin fade and Pat’s eyes got that curious, almost spooky look I had seen so often. “Something must be running around in your mind. Like Daffy damn Duck.”
I shook my head. “No way, old buddy. I haven’t been on anything worth shooting me over in a long damn while. I’m just a working P.I. with a colorful reputation.”
Pat waited a second, then said, “Maybe it’s for something you didn’t do.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “Could be some case you got recently that you haven’t dug into yet. Or maybe some client feels you didn’t deliver, or maybe you did deliver and it caused somebody else trouble. This doesn’t necessarily have to come from your gaudy past.”
But I was waving that off. “Sorry. All my assignments for the year so far have been completed to the clients’ satisfaction and none of it was anything that wasn’t a simple civil case. And there’s nothing shaking at all right now.”
“For a guy who had a hitman caller,” Pat said, “you don’t seem very worried.”
“Why should I be? I’ve been shot at before.”
“You haven’t been dead before. Anyway, not so you’d notice.” His eyes were steady on mine. “A contract for a guy like you would come high. You’ve been keeping a low profile in recent years, granted, but you still have a hell of a rep.”
“Thanks, buddy.”
He ignored that. “The more prominent the target, the bigger the fee... but when there’s a big element of possible failure involved, because the target is capable of deadly defense? Well, the price goes sky high.”