Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem (30 page)

“I changed a lot over the years,” Corbett said softly. “Never forgot
that night, Perry. And then when Ed started working with
us . . . and, man, we got along. He was a good guy. One of the best
I’ve ever known. And loyal. If you were his friend, he’d break his
back to help you. No questions asked.”
“Yes,” I said. “He would.”
“A time came when I knew I had to tell him. Had to. Man was
my friend, and he didn’t know. And he was working for Jimmy, and
didn’t know. And that wasn’t right.”
It had been a hard story for Corbett to tell, all right. Ed hadn’t
been exaggerating when he’d told me that.
“He listened to it all, and he didn’t turn on me, not right then,
and not after,” Corbett said. “Can you imagine? The things that
happened to his family, you know? The things that I was a part of.
And all he did was thank me for telling him.”
I watched the shadows on the opposite wall. “Could be he’d
learned something about holding grudges.”
“I thought it was the right thing to do,” Corbett said. “But now?
Shit. I’d do anything to take it back. Because look what it started.
Look what it did.”
I shook my head. “No. You needed to tell him, Corbett. It
needed to be settled. Ed started to settle it, and now we’re going to
finish it. You and me. You’re talking to Cal Richards. Telling him
everything you told me. You’re going to do that because you’re too
much of a man not to. You can’t hide from it anymore.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice low and sad. He snapped his fingers,
and out of nowhere the cat emerged again, purring. It sat beside
him, and he scratched its head.
“You know,” I said, “you should have left the cat at home. It certainly
wasn’t helping you hide.”
“He’s fifteen years old,” Corbett said, as if that explained everything.
“Couldn’t leave him.”

“I’ll have someone come to get you.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m not going to do it that way. You say
I can trust this guy, Richards, then I’ll trust Richards. But you’re
not going to send them out to get me, put me in handcuffs. You set
up a meet with him, and I’ll be there.”
I thought about it, then nodded.
“Tomorrow morning, Richards and I will come here. Just the
two of us. You’ll be here?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I believed him. He was not a man who had any energy left to
hide, or to run.
“I’m leaving now,” I said. “And I’m taking your gun.”
“Where you going?”
“To see an old friend.”

The neighborhood was silent when I stepped out of the back door
of the house on West Fortieth Street with Corbett’s revolver
tucked in my waistband. There was a pay phone up the street. I
could use it to call Cal Richards. I could send him down to the
Hideaway, let him pick up Draper.
I walked past the phone, though, moving north toward Clark
Avenue at that time when the night seemed to have forgotten to
which day it belonged. The police would get their chance at
Draper soon enough. Right now, I wanted my own. I wanted to
hear him explain it. To understand how he’d let it happen.

It was past three when I got to the Hideaway, and even Clark, usually
an active street, was still. The bar would have been closed for
nearly an hour now, but I was hoping to find Draper there, anyhow.
People in the bar business typically go to bed about the time
most of us wake up.
I walked up the sidewalk to the front door, over cracked stone
steps where I’d once sat with Ed and Draper and watched the
regulars drift in and out of the bar. Now I stood on them alone and
tugged on the heavy door, found it locked. I pulled my hand back
and knocked several times, the enormous piece of wood soaking
the sound up even when I pounded hard with a closed fist.
Nobody came to the door. It was hard to make a good, loud
knock on that front door, though, and if Draper was in the back, it
was no surprise that he hadn’t heard it. I walked around the building
and down the alley that ran beside it. The back door was familiar
to me; when Ed and Draper and I used to snag a couple bottles
of booze from Draper’s old man’s supply, that was how we made
our exit.

The back door was open. I stepped through it and into a narrow,
musty corridor with rubber mats on the floor. A couple empty kegs
were stacked along the wall to my right, and it was dark. I started
to yell out for Draper, but stopped. Something felt wrong about
the place.

I moved slowly down the hall, sidestepping the kegs, and trying
to keep quiet. I didn’t hear anything from the bar, and that bothered
me. If Draper was still here, it seemed he’d be cleaning up
from one day and getting ready for the next, moving chairs and adjusting
kegs and filling the coolers with bottles of beer. Instead it
was completely still.
There was a door to my left that would take me out of the
hall and into the back portion of the dining room. I passed it up
and continued until the hall took a sharp, ninety-degree turn and
opened out behind the bar. I had Corbett’s revolver in my hand
now, held against my thigh. I stepped around the corner of the
hall and raised the gun as Scott Draper came into view.
He was sagging forward in front of the tall shelves that stood
behind the bar, his hands over his head, cuffed to the heavy
wooden shelves that were lined with bottles of liquor. He’d been
cuffed just high enough that when he fell forward, his knees hung
a few inches off the floor, increasing the pressure and pain in his
wrists. He hung there now, his body limp, head down, and I
could
see blood dripping off his face and onto the floor. His T-shirt was
soaked with sweat and blood, and even from ten feet away I could
see swollen knots rising on his face. While I watched, Jimmy Cancerno
stepped forward with a gun in his hand and swung the butt
of the gun into Draper’s face. It connected without the hard crack
of metal hitting bone that I’d expected; instead, it was more like
the sound of someone stepping on a wet sponge. That gave me an
immediate idea of just how swollen Draper’s face already was.
The scene in front of me was wildly different from anything I
could have expected when I stepped around the corner, but I didn’t
pause to consider it. Instinct took over. Draper had been a friend
once, and moving to help him wasn’t a decision so much as a reflex
action.
“Not surprised you had to put him in handcuffs before you had
the balls to hit him, Cancerno,” I said, taking another step forward
and pointing the revolver at his head.
It wouldn’t be like Cancerno to travel alone to take on somebody
like Draper, but I couldn’t see anyone else yet, so pointing the gun
at him was my best bet. I stepped forward some more, clearing the
edge of the wall so I could see into the rest of the room. That was
when Ramone came around the corner and lifted a shotgun at me.
I switched the revolver’s muzzle quickly from Cancerno to Ramone,
bringing it to bear on his chest before he could get his gun
high enough to fire, and he froze for a moment, just a few feet
away with the shotgun at his waist. Even while I stopped his advance,
I knew I was screwed. He and Cancerno were positioned at
opposite angles from me, and they were close. Keeping both of
them at bay was going to be difficult.
“Get out of here, Lincoln,” Scott Draper said, the words sounding
as if they’d been spoken through a mouthful of newspaper as
he spit them out through busted, bloodied lips.
“I’d prefer it if he stays,” Cancerno said, and there was a flash of
motion as he turned to face me, reversing the gun in his hand so it
was no longer held by the barrel.
“Keep the gun down, Cancerno,” I said, taking a step back, close
to the wall, and shifting the gun quickly from Ramone to Cancerno
and then back to Ramone as he started to raise his gun
again. I had to get at least one of them disarmed, fast, or this was
going to be over all too quickly. My choice was Ramone—he
would be the better shooter, the better fighter, and he was closer.
Keeping an eye on Cancerno, who was walking around the bar
toward me, I took a few shuffling steps toward Ramone. All the
lights were off in the bar except for one thin fluorescent lamp
above the mirrors, and behind Ramone the dining room was dark.
I hoped they didn’t have more backups waiting there.
“Put it down, Ramone,” I said, and he stood completely still,
looking unconcerned. In Ramone’s eyes, I had already lost this
fight because I hadn’t shot him as soon as I’d seen him. He was a
killer, and his mind worked in a kill-or-be-killed fashion. I had
failed to kill him, and now he was sure that I would die before this
was over.

I was about to repeat my command when I saw Cancerno lift his
gun quickly to shoulder level. I jerked the barrel of the revolver
away from Ramone and fired a quick snap shot at Cancerno almost
exactly as he fired at me. Both of us missed. Even as I was pulling
the trigger, through, I was diving to my left, into Ramone, knowing
that I had to prevent him from getting that shotgun up and firing
at close range.
I hit him in the chest with my shoulder, but he’d been prepared
for my lunge, and rather than attempt to bring his gun up, he
dropped it, wrapped one arm around my head, and went with my
momentum. We fell together, Ramone clutching my head and
neck, and landed painfully on the floor of the bar. I tried to roll
onto my right shoulder immediately and bring my gun around on
him, but Cancerno was running toward us, trying to get a clear
look at me, so I leaned back and fired two rounds into the glass
mirrors behind the bar, making him drop. That was too much time
to give Ramone, though, and he was on his knees, swinging his fist
at my face.
He caught me high on the side of my head, as I had just enough
time to turn my face away. It was a hard punch, and the next one
was even harder. I swung the gun at his mouth, but he blocked it
with his forearm and the gun flew from my hand. I grabbed at his
chest with both hands as he threw another punch, and another,
both connecting with my forehead.
Then it was over, Cancerno standing above me with a Beretta
9 mm pointed at my face. Ramone threw one last punch, this one
splitting the skin above my right eye, then climbed off me and retrieved
his shotgun.
“Thanks for coming by,” Cancerno said, and kicked me in the
ribs. I rolled onto my stomach and tried to push myself up, but he
kicked me again and pushed the Beretta against my skull.
“Stay down,” he said, and then to Ramone, “Get him over with
Draper.”
“No more handcuffs,” Ramone said.
“That’s all right.”
Ramone lifted me off the floor by my hair, pushing the barrel of
a gun I assumed was Mitch Corbett’s revolver in my spine. He
shoved me past the bar and then kicked me behind the knees,
making me fall forward. I caught myself with my palms out, but he
ground his boot into my back, shoving me down on my stomach
again.
I looked up at Scott Draper, and it took a great deal of effort to
keep my eyes on him. His face was a pulpy mess of blood and
bruises. I saw his front teeth hanging loose and chipped behind
torn lips, and his nose had been smashed flat against his face.
Blood dripped from various areas of his face and fell onto the rubber
mat below him in slow, steady drops. His eyes, though, were
remarkably clear. Clear, and angry. More than once while we were
growing up—and even a few times in the last week—I’d had the
passing thought that Draper was a man who could take a hell of a
lot of punishment before he stayed down. Now I had proof of that
hanging in front of me.

Draper coughed, and a fine spray of blood flew from his lips and
landed on the back of my hand, covering it with tiny crimson
droplets. Ramone stepped away and Cancerno stood over me and
kicked me again in the side. He hit me directly in the ribs, but he
wasn’t a powerful man, and the blow didn’t do the damage he’d
hoped to inflict.

“Glad you made it, Perry,” he said. “You’re the other one I
wanted to see tonight.”
“You’re done, Cancerno,” I said, not bothering to twist my head
so I could see him. “Padgett got shot, and the half of the police department
that you don’t control is going to see Gajovich right now.”
“No shit?” he said. “Well, then, I guess that makes this encounter
all the more important. Because I’d hate to go to jail with
unsettled scores.”

Cancerno paced to the end of the bar where Ramone stood,
then whirled back to Draper and me.
“You guys like fires, right?”
He reached up with the hand that wasn’t holding the gun and
grabbed a bottle of vodka from the shelf above Draper. I started to
get to my hands and knees when he did it, but Ramone stepped
forward and pointed his gun at me.
“I know Draper likes fires,” Cancerno said, smashing the top of
the vodka bottle against the bar and shattering the glass. He
turned it upside down and poured the alcohol out on top of us. It
splattered the floor and my legs and Draper’s bloody face. Draper
rose up higher on his toes, the handcuffs still binding him to the
heavy oak shelves. It was a massive, one-piece unit filled with
shelves for liquor, with mirrors set behind the shelves, and stood at
least eight feet tall. Draper’s cuffs were looped around one of the
solid crosspieces that separated the two sides of shelves. The wood
was not going to break, no matter how hard he pulled.

“Draper likes fires more than he likes his life,” Cancerno said,
breaking another bottle and emptying it around us. “That seem
like a good trade to you, Perry?” When I didn’t say anything, he
said, “What about you, Ramone?”
“Doesn’t sound like a good trade,” Ramone said.
“I didn’t think so, either. But it appears this prick”—Cancerno
threw a bottle that just missed Draper’s head before breaking on
the shelves—“thought it was a good one.”
Cancerno stopped picking up bottles and stared at me. “I own
this neighborhood. But I was done with it. Bigger things in mind.
So you bastards had real, real bad timing. Gradduk could have been
the only one to die. I didn’t need to send his friends to join him.”
“It’s done, Cancerno,” I said again.
“Exactly.” He nodded. “It is done. But I’m going to be the one to
finish it. Understand that, Perry? And Draper here just designed
your own graves. Because with all the fires in this neighborhood
last night, one more isn’t going to stand out.” He poured a bottle of
Crown Royal in a circle on the floor at my feet.
Ramone stood behind the bar, keeping the revolver pointed at
us. Cancerno was still working his way down the length of the bar,
grabbing bottle after bottle, breaking them, and then pouring the
liquor on the floor.
I’d kept moving, still trying to turn my body and prepare to get
on my feet when the time came, and apparently I’d gotten too close
to that for Ramone’s liking. He fired a round into the shelves just
above my head, the bottles exploding, glass and liquor landing on
the floor around me.
I stopped moving, and Ramone smiled, showing his teeth.
Ramone’s round was one more in addition to those Cancerno
and I had fired earlier, but I wasn’t too hopeful that they would
have attracted the attention of the neighbors. The Hideaway’s ancient,
thick walls absorbed noise better than the most expensive
soundproofing panels. Draper’s dad used to brag about how loud
he could turn the jukebox up before you’d hear a bit of it on the
sidewalk.
Beside me, Draper shifted position again, sliding his heels
across the floor until they actually rested against the bottom of the
shelf unit. The chain on his handcuffs jingled softly as he pulled it
tight on his wrists. I looked away from him, feeling pity. When
Cancerno lit this place, Draper had nowhere to go. Not that I’d
make it far—Ramone stood just ten feet away, and his gun was
trained on me. At this distance, he’d kill me before I even came out
of my crouch.
Cancerno had assumed a position at the far end of the bar, his
back to the hallway that led out to the back door. He’d finished
spreading alcohol and stood with a bar rag in one hand and his revolver
in the other. Watching him, Ramone set the revolver down
on top of the bar and lifted his shotgun again, leveling it across the
surface of the bar, the ugly muzzle pointed right at me. No need to
worry about accuracy now; the shotgun would cut me in two if I
tried to move.
“You’re right, Perry,” Cancerno said. “It’s all done.” He shifted
the bar rag so he held it in the same hand that was clenched
around his revolver. He reached into his pocket with the other
hand, and when he withdrew it, a steel Zippo was in his fingers.
He flipped the top off the lighter and flicked the wheel with his
thumb. A short flame appeared, and he touched it to the edge of
the bar rag, which began to burn slowly.
I shifted my weight forward, onto my toes, preparing for a rush
that would end with a shotgun blast, and behind me I could hear
Draper tensing, the handcuffs scraping against the wood that
held him.