Gun Work

Barney half-expected Tannenhauser to saunter out in a smoking jacket with a martini, to deliver an opening line like Gentlemen, I’m sure we can clear up this little misunderstanding... before attempting to buy, bribe, lie or kill his way clear.

The bedroom double doors were open and the curtains drawn. Dark inside. Feet in silk socks, no shoes, dangled from the king bed.

Tannenhauser — El Chingon — was spreadeagled across the down comforter, one tiny bloodsmear on the fabric and three bullet holes in his chest, a compact and lethal shot group. Both his eyes matched now, gazing sightlessly in two different directions. The tip of his tongue protruded from his slack lips. He had not been dead for very long, his body still cooling, courting rigor mortis.

She stirred her drink and kept her seat. “Now can we talk?”

“I guess he outlived his usefulness, too,” Barney said. “Like all of them — Felix Rainer, Carl... me.”

She made a dismissive gesture with her glass. “Felix was a nervous, impotent little paranoid that needed adventurous solutions. Carl was a loser looking to win the lottery.” She indicated the bedroom, where Tannenhauser had not yet been dead an hour. “He was... greedy. And kind of nasty. He was going to kill you himself when you got here, did you know that part?”

There was no place in the room where Barney could be comfortable holding a gun on this woman. There was no place on the planet where he could be comfortable even being near her. He felt an irretrievable black-mamba vibe warning him to stay sharp. She was too reassuring, too easy to look at, and he should just add lead to her diet and hustle away. But uncannily, she seemed to sense his need to know things. Radar was one of her primary weapons.

She made a little frown and continued: “After his man killed your friend — I forget which one — Tannenhauser knew you’d come here. I think his vile little plan was to kill me, then you, wrap us up, and get out.” She shrugged. “I changed the plan.”

“You fucked them all,” Barney said with unconscious marvel.

“I don’t know that who I sleep with has anything to do with anything,” she said with false outrage.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, well...” She shrugged; no biggie. “Tanny was a greedy entrepreneur looking for the next big score. He and Carl and Felix were like one personality split up into three parts. Putting them together was obvious.”

“You mean playing them off of each other.”

“Semantics. I put them together and the deal invented itself. I don’t vouch for the workability of it.”

“Meaning: you were clean no matter what happened.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“All you had to do was seduce each of them.”

She emitted a pfffhht sound of annoyance. “All I did was utilize the chemistry. You’re big enough to have learned there’s no such thing as romance, right? It’s all DNA. Romance and love are the window dressing with which we tart up our vulgar biology; we use it to excuse our animal hungers in an attempt to delude ourselves that we are some sort of higher being. We’re not, you know.” She narrowed her eyes at him even as the pheromones flew off her skin like mustard gas. “You do know that, yes?”

“I know about black widow spiders,” said Barney. “I know about the preying mantis, chomping the head off the male after sex.”

“You see? This is the problem: People get all judgmental about nature. There’s no right or wrong in nature. That’s a human conceit.”

“You mean nature as in eat-or-get-eaten. You eat men like Felix and Carl. You consume what you need, shit them out, and move on to your next victim. Sometimes the bodies you leave in your wake aren’t even all the way dead.”

“Those men were more alive with me than they had ever been. I didn’t force them to do anything they didn’t already want to do.”

“That’s very orderly, but it’s not the truth.”

“Why don’t you tell me what the truth is?”

“The truth is you found men with weaknesses and aimed them at each other. You set up the operation so they would eliminate each other when their usefulness was spent.”

“Seems to me you eliminated most of them.”

“Yes. I’m the biggest sucker of all. I got conned into this with the best of intentions. You were the one who made sure I would suffer enough that I’d want retribution, enough to justify whatever retribution I could muster. And I did it, just like clockwork. Wind me up and watch me shoot. I did it for me — but each step was at your direction. And to your profit.” The symmetry of the deception was an awesome thing to behold in the light.

“Why didn’t you kill Felix?”she said.

“I didn’t have to. Felix will kill himself. That much was obvious. He’ll flame out, get caught, or otherwise compromise himself. He doesn’t need anybody to kill him. Sorry I messed up the perfection of your hit list.”

“You didn’t kill Felix, but you did kill Carl.”

“I thought Carl was the main viper in this snakepit. I made a mistake.”