Final Stroke (56 page)

Sue’s eyes were open, her mouth held in a tight grimace as she hung onto the cart with all her strength.

Now was the time, the only time, the chosen time, the time granted. Such a short time, he thought, as the food cart, with Sue hanging onto it, began to roll into the center of the hallway, opening a path.

The man’s attention was on Sue and his gun was tucked into his belt. Steve knew there was another man and that one of the men was Max Lamberti. But what did it matter who these men were? What mattered was that this was the only opportunity given and he had to take it.

He concentrated, trying to send signals to his right hand.
Damn it! If you can’t get anything from the left side of this fucking head, then take instructions from the right side!

The hand moved. He could see it. Arm down. Lower. Cool touch of the wheelchair’s push rim. Grip. Grip, goddamn it!

He gripped, harder than he had gripped anything in his life. He pushed, harder than he had ever pushed in his life. The chair lunged toward the man pulling Sue across the hallway, catching the bastard at the back of one knee and sending him over.

A man’s voice from behind. “Max!”

A scream from Jan. “Steve!”

He turned. Arm up, swinging out, making contact with the other arm that was coming down, gun in hand.

He was turned in the chair when the blow came down. His right arm held high to meet the blow acted as a lever and he went over. But so did the man who had tried to hit him from behind. The upturned wheelchair entangled the man’s legs and his follow-through had done the rest.

Something solid and thick hit the tile floor a moment before his shoulder hit the floor. The gun! The gun down and bouncing away! He tried to kick out at it, but the capsized wheelchair was still taped to him at the ankles. Then the right arm that did not seem to be
long to him—had not belonged to him for months—lunged out and trapped the gun between the chair and Sue’s body. In another instant he curled up, going into a fetal position that put his right hand nearer the gun. In this new position he could not see the gun, but he could feel it. He could feel it!

Metal warmed by a killer’s hand. Killer’s blood pumping through killer’s muscles and killer’s brain cells.

He had succeeded in knocking over Max Lamberti with his wheel
chair, had succeeded in disarming the man who had tried to hit him. But Max recovered quickly, crawling to him and gripping his neck, pulling at him just as Steve got hold of the gun that had fallen.

The face, though covered by stocking mesh, was obviously that of Max Lamberti. Max spit “Fucker!” at him. Steve twisted his body and came around with the gun, praying to God his finger was on the trigger and praying to God he could squeeze the trigger hard enough to …

He shot Max in the gut. Max arched from him and fell across Sue, holding onto his gut with both hands. There were screams. Jan and Sue screaming. But Jan’s screams making sense.

“The other!”

Steve twisted, the chair flopping with him, and was about to fire in the general direction of running footsteps. But he waited a fraction of a second, long enough to aim, long enough to home in on the other killer and do damage. He hit a shoulder and heard a grunt.

The injured killer continued running down the hallway, right shoulder slumped, gun transferred to his left hand. But then the killer stopped, turned, stooped, and fired three rounds.

One bullet ricocheted on the floor and hit the downed Max in the leg, making him grunt and pushing his body against Sue who had her eyes open wide and actually seemed to be smiling.

The killer running down the hallway ducked toward a doorway, about to lunge inside for cover. But something stopped him.

An old man appeared in the doorway and faced the killer. The old man wore a white shirt, but was naked from the waist down. The old man was skeletal, his skin luminescent in the bright overhead lights. The old man had dark eyebrows and his head seemed huge for his body like a concentration camp visage from a black and white film. The old man smiled at the killer and held out a hand.

For a second the killer paused, aiming his gun at the old man. Then the killer turned and looked back down the hallway where Steve aimed at him, then he looked back to the old man just in time to see the old man smiling a toothless smile as he reached out, placing his hand on the killer’s shoulder.

The killer shoved the old man back into the room from which he’d emerged, turned once more to look down the hall, then ran.

Time. Short segments of time that affect the entire future. The future of one or two people, or perhaps even the future of hundreds or thousands. The ointment ruined by the fly in it. The secret com
ing back to kill Marjorie and her son, trying to kill Jan, killing the guards and the nurse. A secret like that better off abandoned, better off dead.

The signals to Steve’s right hand crashed about for a moment, but finally the hand swung over and obeyed, using Sue’s body as a firing platform.

“I’m going to shoot,” he heard himself say in a quiet voice.

“Go right ahead,” said Sue.

A brain bullet was out of the question. He leveled the gun at the
killer’s back and, just before the killer rounded the corner at the end of the hallway, a signal—squeezed from his very soul, squeezed from the moment he found out his fiancee in Cleveland had been murdered, squeezed from the moment he found out Jan had been kidnapped— made it to the hand and the hand clenched tight and the finger on the trigger squeezed and the gun fired, sending the killer into a headlong skid that crashed his skull against the far wall.

A smiling face. So-long Sue. A smiling face and a tangle of arms and legs amid upturned wheelchairs and duct tape.

Jan’s wheelchair had tipped away from him and he could not see her face. He dropped the gun and pulled himself along to her up
ended chair.

“Jan?”

When he was close enough to reach her, he grabbed onto the foot
rest of her chair and slowly turned her.

“Jan!”

Her head was slumped to the side, eyes closed. She was bleeding from the right side of her head, blood oozing from her hairline behind her ear. But there seemed to be much more blood than earlier, too much blood for the cut he had seen on her head, the blood soaking the shoulder of her raincoat.

He pulled Jan’s wheelchair close, then pulled himself up to the side of her chair. He reached up with his right hand and cupped her head, trying to hold in the blood that was oozing out, trying to cap
ture what he could of her before it bled from her, trying to capture Jan before she was gone.

But the blood was not coming from Jan’s head. The source was lower. When he opened her raincoat, he saw that her blouse was torn and finally discovered the source of blood at the side of Jan’s neck. His right hand moved so quickly it surprised him. His right hand covering
the entry wound in an attempt to hold the flow back. The hand that had been useless until tonight seeming to act independently. But he knew the hand was not acting independently. He knew he was con centrating harder than he’d ever concentrated in his life for one sole purpose. To make his hand into a dam that would hold Jan’s life in side where it belonged.

As he held onto Jan, feeling her warmth escaping between his fin
gers, waiting for help to arrive, he saw Max open his eyes. Max had his hand on the gun Steve had dropped and now he was struggling to stand.

“It ain’t over,” growled Max, rocking back and forth, aiming the gun.

Sue grabbed at Max’s leg and he backed away, holding his gut with his other hand. When she reached out to grab Max again, he shot her through the head.

Max came closer, stooped down beside him and Jan. He put the barrel of the pistol to Jan’s chest. “It ain’t over, Babe. It ain’t over ‘til you tell me where to go with the keys. And if you don’t, well, then it’ll be over.”

A man’s shout drew the killer’s attention. “Hello there!”

Max turned and as he did so Steve let go of Jan and swung out with his right arm, knocking the gun out of Max’s hand.

Two old men wearing jackets and caps approached in the hallway, a Hispanic man pushing another old man in a wheelchair. The man in the wheelchair had a blanket covering his lap and smiled broadly, a smile that made Steve think the old man was a stroke victim. Perhaps they were both stroke victims. Two old men wandering down the hallway, continuing in their direction despite the other killer shot at the end of the hallway, despite So-long Sue lying in a pool of blood, despite Max crawling over Sue’s body toward the gun Steve had knocked away.

Steve returned his hand to Jan’s neck, pressing down on the wound to keep it from bleeding while at the same time stretching himself atop her as best he could. He watched as the two old men continued to
ward them. Then, a spark of hope came down from wherever hope originates when he saw the old man in the wheelchair take a foot off the footrest and kick the gun away from Max’s grasp. The gun skit
tered down the hallway behind the two old men.

“Is anyone here named Max Lamberti?” asked the old man in the wheelchair, smiling broadly.

“Yeah,” said Max, as he continued crawling toward the gun. “I’m Max and you’re dead!”

As Max crawled past the man in the wheelchair trying to reach the gun, the wheelchair turned and Steve saw that the Hispanic man push
ing the wheelchair was holding his own gun. And latex gloves! He was wearing latex gloves! Obviously they were not residents of the nursing home wing. And they were not visitors or two old men who had wan
dered in from the street, or even mobsters like Max Lamberti. These men represented something else. Something from Marjorie’s past. A secret important enough to have them come here and … and what?

Just as Max reached his gun and rolled over, pointing it at the old men, two shots emerged through the blanket on the lap of the man in the wheelchair. Max did not have a chance to fire, but lay his gun down gently, leaned back on the floor, groaned loudly, and lost consciousness.

The old man pushing the wheelchair went to Max, felt his throat, took the gun from his limp hand, and stood beside the man in the wheelchair. Both men turned to Steve and frowned. The man who had been pushing the wheelchair moved forward and aimed Max’s gun at Steve.

The other old man in the wheelchair took his feet off the foot

rests and sat forward in the chair. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, Mr.

Babe.”

“No,” said Steve. “Help her.”

“It’s out of our hands,” said the man, throwing the blanket aside to reveal his gun and standing up from the chair. He turned toward the man at his side, the Hispanic man who had been pushing the wheel
chair. “Let’s not delay this.”

The Hispanic man put his own gun away in his belt and contin
ued holding Max’s gun on Steve. He moved in close. He bent over and stared into Steve’s eyes. The man’s dark eyes reminded Steve of Marjorie’s eyes. A touch of confusion, but a resolve, a deep wish to re
veal something from the past.

“Hurry up,” said the other old man.

“In a moment,” said the Hispanic man, as he moved even closer and stared even harder.

The man moved his face to the side of Steve’s face and whispered in such a way that the other old man would not hear him. “Who was the smarter politician, Mr. Babe? Was it Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan?”

Then the man looked at Steve dead on, watching for his reaction.

Steve recalled Marjorie saying “Carter smarter,” and recalled how she once tried to tell him her husband had been involved in trying to rig votes for a Presidential election. But he was holding onto Jan and he had to do what he must for their survival. This was no time to an swer questions. And, he knew from the look in the man’s dark eyes, this was no time to react. So he did his best to show no reaction at all. Better to show the same reaction a stroke victim would show to any mundane words. Neither concern that he doesn’t know what the man is talking about, nor confusion. Since these men were obviously not going to get help for Jan, it would be best to simply show no reaction
at all. And this seemed to work because after a moment the old man sighed and stood up.

“What are you doing?” said the other old man, turning to look down the hallway.

The Hispanic man turned and, despite the fact he was holding the gun he’d taken from Max, he took his own gun out of his belt and pointed this gun at the other old man. When the other old man turned back, the Hispanic man shot him three times.

The Hispanic man reached out and guided the other old man back into the wheelchair where he slumped to one side. The Hispanic man put away the gun he had used to shoot the other old man. Then he picked up the cast-aside blanket, returned it onto the lap of the old man in the wheelchair, picked up the gun his partner had dropped and carried it to Max’s body. He dropped the other old man’s gun down beside the body, then he put Max’s gun into Max’s hand, moving it about in Max’s hand. It was obvious to Steve the man was making certain Max’s prints were back on his gun rather than being smeared by his latex gloves.