Dirty Fire Read Free Page B

knew we were all that close,” I said. “The last time I talked to him was four, five years ago. He skated—a theft ring we couldn’t tie him to. He didn’t give up word one back then. What makes him so talkative now?”
    Kellogg snorted. “They didn’t tell you? He’s dyin’.” He walked on a step or two before realizing I had stopped dead in my tracks.
    “Yeah, ain’t that a kick? Man’s on death row for three years, fin’ly gets his sentence turned over. Lawyer convinced some judge they fucked up on evidence in th’ first trial, lets him cop to manslaughter two. He was maybe lookin’ at parole in another year, tops. Then, whaddaya know?—man finds out he’s got a brain cancer. They give ‘im a month or two. Me, I figure he’s mean enough to last three.”
    Kellogg passed the paperwork through the grillwork to a guard and nodded in the direction of an interview room on the secure side of the steel grate.
    “Kinda makes you b’lieve there really is a God, y’know?” he said with a cold thin smile in which his eyes played no part.
    • • •
    As a species, Sam Lichtman was not unique. Mutant varieties have spawned themselves on the streets of every major city, individuals who used a native cunning and instinctive viciousness to find their own definition of success outside the pale of civilized society. Lichtman was freelance, operating on the periphery of what newspapers tend to call “organized” crime. He had carefully threaded his way through the often complex boundaries, rules and fiefdoms of the criminal underworld. He was considered a solid citizen of his particular universe, paying without complaint the street taxes levied by bosses. In turn, they granted him permission for the incidental warehouse theft, extortion or robbery he engineered in their territories.
    Word was that he was available as the occasional button man when an outside enforcer was needed. The fact that he played no favorites on such assignments gave him a measure of immunity among the various families and factions who utilized his services.
    In the quid pro quo of the street, this also earned him entrée to many otherwise unadvertised opportunities in his selected field. By the time he went down for killing a Jamaican whose ambitions had included part of Sam’s action, there was no doubt that he was one of the more active freelancers in the very active Chicago area.
    In the outside world, he had been a sharp dresser, favoring dark, expensive suits and custom-made shirts. When it suited him, Lichtman could display a rough-edged charm that belied whatever prowled the subterranean levels of his mind.
    But the people he did business with, even the ones with their own reputation for violence, tended to avoid working a second time with Sam. Many of them, in fact, would cross a busy street if they saw him on the sidewalk ahead. They knew Lichtman as one of their own: a street-smart tough with a reputation for muscling his way into a wide variety of “deals” that had as their common denominator a tendency to turn nasty.
    But they also knew him for more, for what he really was. Few men—at least sane ones—were not, on some very personal level, afraid of Lichtman.
    There was still some of the old Sam Lichtman in the convict who sat behind a steel table in the interview room. He still had the full head of black hair, though the temples were now fringed with silver just above each ear. The set of his mouth, lips twisted in a vague, superior smirk, was unchanged. The eyes were still a chilling blue, and they still never seemed to blink when he pointed them at you.
    But there were new lines on his face, and an unhealthy pallor to his skin that was somewhere between gray and yellow. It came from something even darker than confinement in a sun-starved cellblock.
    Sam Lichtman looked up into my eyes and raised both his hands in an awkward gesture.
    I took it to be a greeting until the convict twisted his head to put the cigarette