back then. What difference did it make, that job, to a hunted guy with a prison-guard murder over him? What did I care about a few more killings if I had protection and good money?”
He gripped his pistol, began to slap it over and over against his leg. “No coincidence, Fortune. I just about set it up, made it have to happen! I took the job Zaremba offered back then partly because it would put me in Dresden a lot, I could be near the kids undercover. I could maybe help them, and see that Katje and Crawford did right by them. With my face fixed I got close to Crawford a few times unknown. Even Katje didn’t know me. When I went to meet Tony Sasser a few months ago she was with him. We even shook hands! She didn’t know me at all.”
“You went to meet Sasser? Why?”
“A job,” he said. “See, no coincidence, right? When there was a job in Dresden, Zaremba sent me, naturally. I was his best killer. I knew Dresden. Who else would he send?”
“You were the man who murdered Mark Leland?”
“Yes,” Andera, or Ralph Blackwind, said. “I didn’t know his name, or why he had to be hit. I never did. And it didn’t have to be Zaremba who wanted a victim dead. The Commissioner sent me on jobs for other guys, you understand?” He seemed to be seeing Abram Zaremba who sent him out to kill for other men. “So I hit Leland. A girl saw me run. Not good enough to hurt me, I was sure, but I holed up in New York anyway. Later, I got word from Zaremba that the girl couldn’t finger me, and that was that.”
He’d been talking like a man who had to talk, tell. Now, all at once, the words came out stiff. “Three weeks ago Zaremba told me he’d found out that the girl in Dresden had seen more than anyone had thought, maybe did know what I looked like, and was tailing me! Someone had told him that, and Zaremba wanted her shut up for good. He told me where she was living, and I went and killed her!”
His pistol shook, and his knuckles were white where he held it. The control that had kept him going was breaking, raw anguish in his voice now.
“She’d been away in college, I hadn’t seen her up here in Dresden for four years. She’d changed. Her looks had changed, she dressed different. I even saw her on the street, planning the hit, making sure it was the roommate who went away and ‘Fran Martin’ was alone in that apartment. In the room it was dark, and I hit and went. In and out fast. My way. My own daughter!”
I had nothing to say. Condemn him, yes, but he’d done that to himself already. Pity him? Maybe, but how many others had he killed, how many other men’s daughters? He was a hired killer, and I felt something as I would for any man who’d lost a child, even Hitler, but that was all. His special anguish was something he would have to face by himself. Excuse-if he could, or if he wanted to. I didn’t think he did, no. He had judged himself for his crimes, he expected neither pity nor excuse.
“I had it coming for taking the job fifteen years ago. Okay, sweep me into the garbage. But she didn’t have to die! Not my Francesca. Someone else had killed her, too. I was just the knife. I wanted whoever really sent me to kill her!”
His face changed. In that motel room he became the killer, the cunning animal who had survived war, North Korea, prison, and fifteen years on the run. “Remember, I didn’t know why I had killed that Mark Leland, or who had wanted him dead. Both times, Leland and Francesca, Commissioner Zaremba could have been sending me out for someone else. He made it sound like that’s what he had done. But I couldn’t charge around to find out on my own. Someone would know me. So I hired you-and tailed you all the way.”
“I spotted you following me once early,” I said. “Then you got more careful, and tailed me to Zaremba. I’d told you why Mark Leland had been killed, that Zaremba was personally involved, that he knew who Francesca was, and that probably he’d been the one who wanted her dead. Then you heard the rest when he talked to me up here. When he drugged me, you came in and killed him.”
He smiled. “The bastard begged me. Abram Zaremba, a big man with other guy’s lives. He said he hadn’t known she was my kid, that he’d been told she could identify me, and that she knew he had sent me to kill Leland. He said he was only trying to protect himself-and protect me! I killed him.”
I said, “Mark Leland, Francesca, and Abram Zaremba, all your killings. But why kill Carl Gans? Was he the one who told-”
“Not Gans. I didn’t touch the bouncer,” Andera-Blackwind said. “He knew me and what I did for work, but he wasn’t any part of killing Francesca. Not Carl Gans, no, but I think there’s one more who sent me to kill her, right?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Listen to me, I-”
“One more,” he said, not listening to me. “The one who told Zaremba that Francesca could identify me, was looking for me, could finger Zaremba, too. The one who knew that Francesca was only looking for her father, but who told Zaremba different!”
“Andera,” I said, “Or Blackwind, if you go and-”
“John Andera,” he said. “Ralph Blackwind died in a prison break fifteen years ago. Or maybe he died earlier when he shot old man Van Hoek. Or maybe in Korea. Or maybe when the white man drafted him and changed his name!”
“Listen to me! We don’t know for sure that-”
“Sit up straight, Fortune. Now!”
I sat up straight, he wasn’t going to listen. He produced a length of thin rope from inside his black coveralls, the clothes of his dark trade. He began to tie me. He did the job carefully and well, an expert, and he talked while he worked.
“I don’t want to kill you too,” he said. “One more, and that’s the end. I won’t be found. Not anywhere. Nothing for Felicia to read in the newspapers about what her father was, what he did with his life.”
He tied me solidly, stepped back, pocketed his pistol.
“Thanks for helping, Fortune.”
“I’ll have to answer for that,” I said. “How long can you run?”
“As long as I have to, and as far. I’ve been running all my life, but not much longer. In the garbage with me, right? Good riddance.”
I didn’t bother to reason with him anymore, and he gagged me, and went out the door. He backed out, watching me, and faded into the night and rain like a vanishing ghost.
26
Only minutes had passed when I heard the sound. Someone was outside the motel room in the rain.
The door opened. Felicia Crawford stood there. She came in, slim and young, and removed my gag.
“Untie me. Maybe there’s time.”
She began to untie my ropes. “He’s my father, isn’t he?”
“Where’s Two Bears?” I said.
“In our car outside. I knew that man was my father. I made Paul stay close and wait. I knew he wouldn’t hurt you.”
“I didn’t,” I said, rubbed at my wrists as she got the ropes off. “Go somewhere, Felicia. Anywhere.”
“You said there might be time? Time for what?”
She had the ropes off my legs. I stood up. “Time to stop him from killing anyone else. He’s a killer, Felicia. Many times over-cold and for pay. He had bad breaks, cruel breaks, but he failed himself, too. Old Two Bears Walk Near is right. Your father had a choice, if a hard one, but some weakness in him matched what the world did to him, and his anger turned bad. He’s doomed, Felicia. Forget him. Tell me where Anthony Sasser lives.”
She told me. It wasn’t too far from the Crawford house.
“He’s my father,” she said. “I want to talk to him, for Francesca. It was important to her.”
I couldn’t tell her the truth, no, she’d find out soon enough. “What was important to Francesca was a man eighteen years ago. A man and his life. You can still have that life, and he’d want you to-his life back at Pine River. Go there if you want your father. That’s where he really is.”
Paul Two Bears spoke from the doorway. “He’s right. That man wasn’t my uncle. Even his eyes are a lie.”
She stood there torn between what we said, and the need to know her real father at least for an instant. I
