Walk on the Wild Side Read online

  Walk on the Wild Side

  Bob Mayer

  Contents

  Lou Reed, 1972

  Manhattan

  1. Wednesday Morning,

  2. Monday, 14 April 1969

  3. Wednesday Morning,

  4. Wednesday Afternoon,

  5. Wednesday Evening,

  6. Thursday Morning,

  7. Thursday Afternoon,

  8. Tuesday Evening, 13 May 1969

  9. Thursday Night,

  10. Friday Morning,

  11. Friday Afternoon,

  12. Wednesday Afternoon, 14 May 1969

  13. Friday Evening,

  14. Friday Night,

  15. Friday Night,

  16. Saturday Morning,

  17. Wednesday Evening, 14 May 1969

  18. Saturday Afternoon,

  Grand Escalante Staircase

  19. Saturday Evening,

  20. Monday Afternoon, 19 May 1969

  21. Sunday Early Morning,

  22. Sunday Afternoon,

  23. Monday Morning,

  24. Monday Afternoon,

  25. Monday Night,

  26. Tuesday Morning,

  27. Tuesday Evening,

  28. Tuesday Night,

  29. Wednesday Morning,

  30. THE SERIES

  31. Authors Note:

  About the Author

  Lou Reed, 1972

  “New York City is the place where they said:

  Hey babe, take a walk on the Wild Side.”

  Manhattan

  1

  Wednesday Morning,

  10 August 1977

  GREENWICH VILLAGE,

  MANHATTAN

  “I could have killed you while you were sleeping.”

  Former Green Beret, currently exhausted, William Kane heard the words distantly, on the cusp between sleep and consciousness, not sure for a moment whether they lay in dream or reality, but based on his luck lately, odds were the latter.

  He reluctantly opened his eyes to clarify. Night sky with clouds reflecting the constant glow of The City That apparently Never Sleeps. The view was framed by a handful of wilting corn stalks which fixed his position: lying in the midst of his landlord’s garden in the back yard of the Greenwich Village brownstone where he rented the basement apartment.

  “May I have my knife back?” the intruder asked.

  Unfortunately, reality. Kane lifted his head from the dirt and toward the voice. A dark silhouette was squatting beyond his feet, backdropped by plants. The man pointed with one hand toward Kane’s chest, while aiming a gun in the other.

  Kane lifted hand from chest and extended the Bowie knife, spinning it so that the haft was toward the Navajo.

  “Do you sleep out here often?” the man asked as he took the Bowie and checked the edge, angling it in the faint light, as if Kane might have dulled it during his slumber.

  Kane remained on his back, considering limited tactical options. “Occasionally.”

  “It is good to be under the stars, although they are hard to see in this city. The air is dirty.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Kane said. “It’s a cesspool. Yazzie and Johnson already told me.” Johnson was dead by Kane’s knife, the reason this man, his brother through adoption, was here.

  Kane considered sitting up but he was still tired and he didn’t know how far Navajo blood feud custom extended. Obviously, no killing a sleeping man which was damn considerate. But a man who sat up? He belatedly wondered why he’d given the knife back, then chalked it off to an autonomous obeying response hammered into him by four years at West Point. Yes sir; no sir; no excuse sir. And there was the gun.

  “Got your message,” Kane said, referring to the note pinned to his door with the knife reading: A BLOOD DEBT MUST BE PAID WITH BLOOD. It was referencing Kane’s killing of Johnson, in the course of his search for a team of Irish terrorists trying to blow up the Statue of Liberty.

  His life was complicated.

  The Navajo remained quiet.

  Just before going to sleep, Kane had drawn his forty-five and put it next to his left hand. He knew, without having to reach, that it wasn’t there. His slender Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife was in place, however, pressed against his lower spine in its sheath.

  “Can I sit?” Kane asked.

  “You must stand so that we can finish this.”

  “I had a long night. I thought I’d have more time.”

  “We always think we will have more time,” the Navajo said.

  “Right, that’s deep,” Kane said. “You know who I am, but I never caught your name on the boat or in the warehouse.”

  “Dale.”

  “’Dale’? I’d have thought you guys had names like Soaring Eagle or Man With Big Knife. Something like that. So far Yazzie, Johnson and Dale. Kind of blah.”

  “We have the names we were given,” Dale said. “They are honorable names because they are our fathers’ names.”

  “Your real fathers,” Kane said. “What happened to them?”

  “They were Code Talkers and died in combat.”

  “And Boss Crawford adopted all of you,” Kane said, stalling. “At least he gave you your fathers’ names but they sound Westernized.”

  “Our Navajo names remain within us and are not to be shared with outsiders.”

  Kane sat and glanced to his left. As expected, the pistol wasn’t there. He could see that Dale wore khaki pants and nothing else. He was barefoot. There was a single line of red smeared across his forehead. His skin was dark and smooth. He was in his mid-thirties and his body lean, muscles like taut ropes. Despite the dim light, Kane could see several scars crisscrossing the man’s torso. This wasn’t his first knife fight and he’d also brought a gun. Kane had his own scars under his clothes and a nasty one on the side of his head from an AK-47 round, but it was mostly hidden by his thick, dark hair. He was lean, not as much as Dale, six feet tall, and after a busy week of tracking down and stopping the terrorists, his face was dark with a week’s beard. He wore black jungle fatigue pants, a grey t-shirt and jungle boots. The denim shirt he usually wore was rolled in a ball as a field expedient pillow.

  As Kane got to his feet, Dale also stood, putting the gun in the holster on his belt, keeping knife in hand. The first gray of dawn was permeating the air which meant Kane had been asleep less than an hour since returning from stopping the terrorists and disposing of their bodies and gear.

  “BMNT,” Kane said.

  Dale inclined his head inquisitively.

  “Begin morning nautical twilight,” Kane said. “When the Indians traditionally attack which is ironic. I should have been on alert but I had a very long night.” Kane looked past him. “Did you hit the wire and I didn’t hear?” He was referring to the fishing line hanging soup cans with rocks in them he’d put around the perimeter of the garden as early warning against an intrusion just like this one.

  “The wire told me you were out here and not inside,” Dale said. “Why put an alarm where you are not?”

  “Right.” Kane added that logical tidbit to his tactical repertoire.

  “Where is your knife with which you killed my brother?”

  “If I draw it, will that commence the fight?”

  Dale readied himself, feet shoulder width apart, right slightly forward, Bowie held in front of his chest. A solid stance.

  “I take that as a yes,” Kane said. “What if I don’t want to fight?”

  “Either way you die. One path is honorable. The other the coward’s.”

  Kane slid his right foot back. Then his left. He took another step back, pushing through the plants, sliding his feet. Another. Dale matched his retreat with advance.

  “I don’t want to have to chase you,” Dale s
aid.

  “We’ll need space to fight,” Kane replied. “Let’s not ruin Pope’s garden with blood and guts and bits and pieces.”

  “He has not taken care of his plants,” Dale noted. “His corn is pathetic.”

  “He’s had a bad couple of months,” Kane said. “Got laid off from his job and he lived for his work.” He knew he was being chatty, an anomaly to his nature, but talking delayed the fighting and Kane was still considering tactics because the scars, and the way Dale was moving and holding the knife, indicated he might have more prowess than the last Navajo.

  Kane moved, slowly, steadily, toward the edge of the garden and the open space between it and the back of the three-story brownstone. He drew the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife from the sheath in the middle of his back. Double-edged, six inches long, it was significantly smaller than Dale’s Bowie. The rear of his left leg hit the tripwire and the stones in the cans rattled loudly in the relative pre-dawn quiet of the city, against a unending backdrop of a distant siren and blare of car and truck horns. Kane lifted that leg to continue his retreat.

  Dale attacked, a short slice of the Bowie at Kane’s face, but it was a feint to get Kane off balance.

  It didn’t work as Kane jumped back, clearing the wire. Dale charged, hopping over the wire and slashing, three times, back and forth, closer and closer. Kane gave ground until they were both free of the plants.

  Kane shifted and moved so that they faced each other in a five-foot-wide stretch of gravel and stone. Kane took a couple of steps back. The fence was just behind him.

  “No more ground to escape,” Dale noted. “Before I finish this, where is the material you took from Sean Damon’s place the night of the Blackout?”

  “What?”

  Dale repeated the question as if speaking to a child. “What did you take from Sean Damon’s place the night of the Blackout?”

  “I didn’t take the money,” Kane said.

  “The ledger,” Dale said. “We thought Marcelle had it. He said Damon did and that you got it from him.”

  Even from the grave, Thomas Marcelle was fucking with Kane. There was no way the old man had known Kane had grabbed the ledger the night of the Blackout after Quinn had ordered Damon to cough it up while torturing him, but Kane imagined that Marcelle had said that during the bargaining phase of his interrogation, desperate to throw anything out there to save his life.

  “Got no clue what you’re talking about,” Kane said. “What’s in this ledger that’s so important?”

  “I don’t ask questions when given a task,” Dale said.

  “That’s a shortcoming.”

  “If you tell me, I’ll kill you quickly,” Dale said.

  “I think you’re being optimistic with that,” Kane said. “Remember, the reason you’re here.”

  “I am better than Johnson,” Dale said.

  “Right.” Kane knew he was at a disadvantage with Dale’s Bowie just from the way he was moving. The Navajo was too good with it, experienced, patient, unlike his brother who Kane had killed. Kane wasn’t watching the knife, but rather the Navajo’s eyes in the glow from the light over the back door and the gathering dawn. He spotted the decision a fraction of a second before Dale charged. As Dale slashed on an angle, down Kane’s left to right, he dodged to the left, and jabbed with the Fairbairn but also missing. While Dale’s stroke missed, he had more in his repertoire, as he reversed the stroke and slammed the butt end of the haft of the knife into the back of Kane’s knife hand with a sharp and savage blow. The Fairbairn fell from numbed fingers.

  Dale followed up, bringing the Bowie forward in an extended strike toward Kane’s chest.

  Kane blocked the thrust with his arms crossed in an X at the wrist just in front and above his face. He flowed, twisting, trying to lock down on Dale’s knife wrist, but the Navajo surprised Kane with a punch to the throat with his free hand.

  Kane staggered back, gasping, losing his tentative grip on the man’s knife hand.

  Dale was on him, free hand clenching Kane’s throat, one leg sweeping Kane’s feet from underneath him.

  Kane fell hard on his back. He punched Dale in the face as the Navajo was on top, bringing the Bowie up for a final blow.

  The knife came down and Kane used both hands to stop it, gripping Dale’s wrist. The point was inches from his throat. Dale put his other hand on the base of the hilt, lifting his body to put all his weight behind it.

  Kane stared up into the Navajo’s eyes. A drop of sweat from Dale’s forehead fell onto Kane’s.

  Fraction by fraction the tip of the Bowie closed the distance.

  “The ledger,” Dale said.

  Kane tried to roll, but Dale’s legs were spread wide, a stable platform with superior position. Kane jerked his knee up, slamming into Dale’s crotch but there was no apparent effect.

  The point touched Kane’s throat.

  Kane dug his thumb into Dale’s wrist, deeper, finding the right spot, then squeezing with all his strength. Dale grunted from the pain as a bone broke and the Bowie lifted because his own pressure was making the break worse.

  Kane did a quick adjustment of his hands, thumb into the other wrist, digging. Dale’s eyes widened as he realized he was going to lose use of both hands.

  The tableau was interrupted by a familiar light pfft sound from behind Dale in concert with the slight mechanical sound of a pistol ejecting the fired round and sliding forward, seating another.

  A .22 caliber bullet splatted into the wood fence, but Dale remained on task, giving it one last attempt, the point reaching flesh and putting pressure on it.

  The bone in the other wrist gave way to Kane’s thumb and Dale finally let loose a grunt of pain, no longer able to maintain downward pressure. He made a quick decision, pulled back and slashed. Kane blocked it with a forearm on Dale’s forearm.

  The sound of the suppressed High Standard pistol firing was repeated and a round struck Dale in the back, at the base of a rib and doing little damage. Dale straightened, pulling the knife away from Kane, turning on his knees. The High Standard fired four more times in rapid succession, the small bullets all missing.

  Kane used both arms to shove Dale to the side and rolled away. He jumped to his feet.

  Pope was standing eight feet away, the High Standard shaking in his hands, his eyes wide. If circumstances were different, he’d be a comical figure in his bathrobe and slippers, stick-like white legs poking out below the robe, ending in big, fuzzy slippers.

  Dale got to his feet; the .22 caliber long rifle bullets having distracted him but the one that struck causing as much apparent damage as Kane’s knee. Dale charged, gripping the knife as best he could. Kane side-stepped, grabbed the knife hand and flowed it, down and in and around, the wrist snapping completely. The Bowie slammed into Dale’s chest, breaking through the ribs, into the heart.

  Dale reached for the knife, whose presence in his heart was actually sealing the wound and keeping him alive for the moment. He pulled it out, letting loose a spurt of dark red blood. He took a step toward Kane, who was retreating. Dale looked at the blood pulsing out of his chest. He dropped the knife then paused, whispering something in Navajo. He collapsed to the ground, blood still flowing from the wound as his heart gave a few last beats, pumping his life out.

  “I shot him,” Pope said. “I think I hit him.”

  “You did,” Kane said. “You did good.”

  “I heard the cans.” Pope’s voice was a monotone, his mind still processing the shock of what had just happened. “I saw you fighting. Is he dead?”

  Kane knelt next to Dale and checked the pulse in his neck while staring into the gathering cloud in the Navajo’s eyes. “Yeah. He’s dead.”

  “I killed him?”

  “No,” Kane said. “I killed him.”

  “I’ve never killed anyone,” Pope said.

  “You still haven’t.” Kane checked the body, finding the pager clipped to the belt. He wondered where the rest of Dale’s clothes we
re? How did he get here? “Don’t move,” he ordered Pope as he reclaimed his knife, sheathed it, and found his forty-five lying behind where Dale had been squatting. He pulled the slide to make sure a round was in the chamber.

  Pistol at the ready, Kane climbed the fence to the next yard and ran up the narrow alley to the front of the row of Brownstones. A large dark car, the same make which he’d ridden in with Yazzie and the other Flint Boys, was idling out front. It burned rubber peeling away as soon as the driver spotted Kane.

  It occurred to him the driver could have come with Dale, making it two on one and finishing the retribution. The Code. Kane shook his head, having had some experience with codes in his life.

  Kane retraced his steps.

  Pope was in the same spot, staring at the body. “I shot him. But it didn’t seem to do anything.”

  “You distracted him,” Kane said. “Twenty-two caliber bullets are pretty small and these were low velocity. To do real damage there’s a couple of key places to aim for. But you did good, Pope. I appreciate it.”

  “You killed him.” Pope seemed to be having trouble processing that, but it was a positive shift from blaming himself.

  “I did.”

  “Who was he?” Pope asked.

  “The first.”

  “The first of what?”

  “The first of six who’ve sworn a blood oath to kill me. Now there are five.”

  2

  Monday, 14 April 1969