Black Hornet by James Sallis Read Free Book Online Page B

crates and take-out meals, bits of cast-off vegetation, clothing, cardboard, bits of cast-off lives. Near the back, however, in a kind of corridor formed by a sealed chimney and heating vent, all was in order. Against one end where these met, someone had propped a massive old door. Over it, a slab of plywood served as roof. Beneath were a legless chair, burned-down candles in coffee cans, scorched saucepans, a huddle of sheets and thin curtains torn into rags. A square of bricks stacked two deep, ash and chunks of wood burned to a weightless white heap within.
    Nothing to connect it with the sniper, of course. The city was full of such desperate islands. Abandoned houses, boarded-up cafés and corner grocery stores, the culverts of open canals. Obviously the police didn’t think there was any direct connection. If they had, these things would have been carted off as evidence.
    All the same, it definitely looked as though someone had been living here. And while I kept telling myself it could have been anyone, myself wasn’t paying much attention to me.
    I climbed down a drainpipe at the building’s street-side corner, then sat in the car a while going over what I had learned.
    The reason it took so long was that I hadn’t learned anything, so I just kept going over it all again and again. But when you’re stuck, it doesn’t much matter how hard you rev the engine and spin the wheels. You have to find something solid. A board, a branch. Jam it in there, hit the gas once more, and you’re moving.
    Maybe myself had the board and was just keeping it out of sight.
    In which case I couldn’t do much besides wait him out—so I might as well get on with business.
    Having little inclination to revisit Dryades just yet, I drove down LaSalle to Loyola and headed on into downtown New Orleans. Parked in front of the telephone office on Poydras and walked up to Baronne. Not much traffic except for cabs. And while the Quarter would still be bustling, things this side of Canal were pretty much deserted. The few people I encountered strode purposefully along, staying well out on the sidewalk, keeping watch about them.
    I looked up. Toward the top of a mock-gothic office building, The Stanhope, with brass-clad revolving door and tiled, bright lobby at street level. Toward the crest of an art deco hotel hashed (judging from signs on windows) into a copy shop, dance studio, commercial photographer, credit union, tailor. It had to be one of those two buildings. But after half an hour of searching I couldn’t find any way of getting up either of them.
    I did find an unsuspected narrow alleyway running between buildings, like a chink in rock, toward Carondelet and the site of the second killing.
    I was maybe halfway through when I heard a shot, a small-caliber pistol from the sound of it, ahead of me.
    I inched out into halflight and stood there scarcely breathing. My own blood hammered at my ears.
    Voices.
    No: a single voice.
    Too low, too far off, for me to make out what it was saying. In another alleyway like this one?
    Then something moved, shadow settling back into shadow, across Carondelet, in a cleft between buildings. Nothing there when I watched now: had I really seen it? That was where the sound came from.
    Courting shade and shadow myself, I eased into the street. A cab swung onto Carondelet a block away, headlights like two lances, a death ray, and I froze. This was how rabbits and deer felt. But almost immediately the cab turned off. I made it across unseen, and with my back pressed against brick beside the cul-de-sac could hear what was being said.
    “Man just can’t keep to himself anymore, can’t be left alone. You’ve been on me for a while. And not because you believe in something. That would be all right. But it’s only because I’m a bootstrap you think you can use to pull yourself up. Now look: you’ve found me. Pure Borges. The hunter becomes prey. Poor great white hunter.”
    Hands flat on the wall, I leaned