The Last Option
Chapter Forty-Eight: The Confrontation

Almost an hour before his meeting with Duncan, Bernard and Anthony arrived in the vicinity of the Williamsburg Bridge to check the area and overtake him. Bernard left Anthony about two hundred and fifty meters away and Anthony quickly went to look for an ideal place to position himself in order to get the killer in his sights. He had with him a powerful 7.62 mm Dragunov rifle that he had obtained from some acquaintances of Gonzo and Don, along with the Beretta 9 mm pistols. Like any old-school veteran, he preferred to use the best of the lot, for him, even if it was many years in the making. He found a small five-story building and felt that from there he could get a perfect view of the meeting site. He climbed the emergency stairs and reached the rooftop, positioned himself in a corner and checked the telescopic sight on the rifle. He saw Bernard arrive in his car at the rendezvous point, turning off the lights and getting out of the car to wait for Duncan. Bernard looked around and then behind him. From where he stood, Anthony turned a flashlight off and on four times, indicating his position. Bernard held up his thumb as a sign he had caught it and prepared to wait. That was also the signal he would give him to shoot.

Forty minutes later, exactly at twelve o'clock, Bernard saw the lights of a car approaching from the same direction he had come, very slowly. He quickly pulled his pistol out of the back of his pants and tucked it in front, covering it with his shirt. The car stopped about fifty meters behind him. The driver turned off the engine but left the lights on, making it a little difficult for Bernard to see, who opted to position himself behind his car, alert. The driver's door opened and someone got out, but because of the lights he couldn't make out who it was. A few seconds later the rear driver's door also opened and another person got out, who Bernard couldn't make out either.

"We agreed without anyone else!" Bernard shouted, "I came alone!"

"Are you sure, driver?" Duncan shouted in turn. Bernard couldn't tell which was him.

The two people closed the car doors and walked a little to his left, away from the car, one behind the other. Then they moved forward a bit and Bernard could see them: the one in front was Anthony! And Bernard guessed the one in the back was, then, Duncan. He felt his blood run cold and for a moment he couldn't say a word.

"Who do you think you're dealing with, driver?" Duncan shouted at him again, standing next to Anthony and putting a gun to his left temple. Bernard didn't recognize him at first because of the wig, mustache and beard.

"All right, all right!" Bernard raised his hands, telling him not to do anything against Anthony. "I made the mistake of bringing him, it's true, but my problem is only with you, leave him out of all this. Let him go." Duncan smiled, pulling the firing pin of the gun and preparing to pull the trigger.

"Wait! Wait!" Bernard shouted, coming out from behind the car, still with his hands up. "Please don't hurt him. I'm here for you; let's work this out, the two of us. Just you and me."

"You know, driver, all my life I followed one cardinal rule that I never broke," Duncan said, still smiling, "and is that I would never hurt or murder children or old people. I never broke that rule, never violated it, never ignored it, but now I'm willing to do it, to put it aside just for the sake of seeing you suffer."

"Please!" Bernard felt he could no longer do anything for Anthony.

"And you know what else, driver? When I'm done with this old man here, and with you, I'm going to go after that beautiful young lady you're in love with and kill her too, just like that kid you're taking care of," Duncan realized the baby was also involved, which he hadn't taken into account until that moment. "Oops, that's right, there's that kid too! Come to think of it, I'll break my strict personal rule twice, and it's all thanks to you, driver. I'll kill an old man here, and a child later, and it's all thanks to you!"

"Noooooo...!" Bernard shouted at the top of his lungs and pulled his gun out of his pants, aiming it at Duncan.

Two gunshots were heard, but neither from Duncan's gun nor from Bernard's gun. It was captain West, who was coming towards Duncan, and who in turn fired his gun at him, ducking to avoid being hit by the captain's bullets. Bernard ran toward Anthony and pulled him by the arm, running after his car. Duncan and West continued shooting at each other, with such bad luck the latter was hit in the abdomen, falling down afterwards but still firing his gun. Duncan ran back to his car and boarded it, quickly getting into gear.

"Are you all right?" Bernard asked Anthony.

"I'm fine," he replied.

They immediately went to check on West, who was on the ground moaning from the wound.

"Damn it!" the captain shouted. When they reached his side, he grabbed Bernard by the shirt and looked him in the eyes. "Go after him! Don't let him escape!"

"Go! Go!" Anthony said, "I'll stay with him."

Bernard quickly got to his feet and boarded his car, putting it in high gear to go after Duncan. He drove down Roosevelt for quite a while until he spotted a pair of red lights in the distance. It must have been him, since there wasn't much traffic at that hour. He put his foot on the accelerator of his BMW and the engine roared into overdrive, catching up with him in a few seconds. He thought about disabling Duncan's car by ramming it and so he did, he accelerated much more and hit it hard in the rear; the car skidded and Bernard accelerated again, pushing him off the road. Duncan maneuvered and managed to keep the vehicle from falling off the dock, getting back on the road. Bernard moved back to the rear, thinking to do the same maneuver again, but Duncan, overtaking him, slammed on the brake pedal and the car locked all four wheels. Surprised, Bernard didn't have time to dodge the car stopping suddenly in front of him and hit it again, this time with more force, from the rear, but with the bad luck of disabling his own car. The engine died and the BMW lay motionless.

Stunned, he watched as Duncan descended from the car, pistol in hand, and as best he could he pulled his own from his waistband, stuck it out the window, aimed it at him and fired two shots. Duncan went back to the car to protect himself, firing in turn at Bernard twice, who felt one of the bullets graze his ear after going through the windshield and shattering it; he pulled the gun out of the car window again and fired twice, while trying to open the door, which he did, getting out and running to hide in the back. Duncan fired three more shots at him.

"I see you're a brave guy, driver!" he shouted at him. "You surprised me! If you want we end this right here and now. No guns, just you and me as men. Face to face."

"I'd like that very much!" Bernard replied. "Then I'll be able to tear out your heart as I promised you. With my own hands!"

"We'll see if you can do it."

Duncan threw his gun to the side of the road. As he was about to get out from behind the car to confront him, the sirens of approaching police cars began to be heard. "We'll finish this another time, driver!"

Duncan got back into the car and started it up, getting lost on one of the diagonal streets to Roosevelt. The police cars arrived, led by Scanlon's Mustang, who got out of the car and walked toward Bernard.

"Did he escape?" Scanlon asked him.

Bernard nodded.

"If you hurry, you may replace him nearby," he said, sitting down on the ground and still slowly recovering. "How is West?"

"He'll live, if that's what you're asking," Scanlon said. "The old man's a tough fucking nut to crack."

Bernard smiled, as he handed his gun to Scanlon.

Louis Randall was sleeping peacefully, until he felt the night table light come on. Startled, he sat up in bed blinking to get a better look. Rubbed his eyes, and then he could see the man in front of him: the black eyes staring at him, the padlock mustache and beard, and the black hair. He felt a shiver run through his body suddenly. How could that guy have gotten into the apartment? He wondered, worried.

"There are some cash and some valuables," he told him. "They're-"

"It's me, Louis," Duncan said, removing his mustache and beard, then took off his wig with some difficulty, for it was stuck to his scalp. "I'm Duncan, I've come for you." Recognizing him, Louis breathed a sigh of relief.

"Damn it! You scared me half to death! What are you doing here?"

"As I said, I came for you," Duncan sat down next to him on the bed. "I want you to come with me.'

Louis looked at him in confusion.

"What? What are you saying? To go with you where?"

"To look for a new life. Together. We can go wherever you want, choose the destination and I'll go with you for the rest of my life," Duncan said the words hurriedly, one after the other. "Here we have no future, the police and the thugs are looking for me, I would have to live in hiding forever. You just have to say yes. I love you madly, and I won't be able to live without you."

Duncan moved closer to him and in his eyes Louis could see that the haunting, mysterious blue in them had been replaced by a disturbing black and a feverish hint of madness, and it frightened him. He sat on the edge of the bed, thinking to play along as he slyly reached for his .22 caliber pistol that he kept in the top drawer of the nightstand.

"I don't know what to tell you, Duncan."

"Say yes!" he begged. "You'll see we'll be very happy together in another country!"

Duncan got out of bed and hurried to the closet, opened it and began to look through Louis' clothes, searching for a suitcase.

"Do you have a big suitcase?" he asked as he rummaged through it. "Well, it doesn't matter, it can be a small one and then you'll buy more clothes where we are. You have a lot of money and you can-"

Duncan turned back to Louis, who was looking at him with a somber look on his face as he pointed the gun at him.

"What are you doing, Louis? What's that gun for? Give it to me, you could get hurt."

Duncan went to him to take the gun away.

"Don't move!" Louis ordered. "Or I'll shoot you!"

"But, Louis, I-"

"What the hell were you thinking? You think because I slept with you, you think you have a right to me? To come to me in the middle of the night and tell me all that nonsense you've been telling me?" "Louis, please, it's not nonsense. I love you."

"But I don't love you!" Louis shouted at him. "How do you think I would love someone like you? A murderer, a bully! I only slept with you to pass the time, not because I loved you."

Duncan felt his world crumbling, and despite feeling hurt, he thought that maybe there might be a chance to convince Louis that he really loved him. In the back of his mind he thought that maybe he loved him too, but he hadn't realized it. "Please, Louis, you're breaking my heart. I really love you, and maybe you love me too, you just haven't felt it yet."

Louis let out a loud laugh when he heard that.

"Me? Love you?" he said, after he stopped laughing, but still a little amused by what he had heard. "How could you think that? I could never love you! You're nobody! You're just a common thug with no future!"

Hearing those words, Duncan was becoming convinced the man didn't really love him, that he was mocking his feelings, and that everything he had experienced in recent years had been just a product of his base instincts, taking advantage of him, using him for his own interests, both in bed and in his ambition for power. That he never felt anything towards him. Not even a minimum of affection.

All the love he felt for him gradually turned into pain and sadness, and these in turn gave way to anger, bitterness and resentment. He began to look at him with different eyes, unable to control the maelstrom of gloomy thoughts that were invading him.

"I can't believe you're telling me these things," he said, with almost no emotion in his voice, keeping a last, tiny light of hope in his soul, which was slowly fading away.

"Well, it's the truth!" Louis shouted back. "You're nothing to me! You should have known better than to give yourself false hope with me."

Duncan could take no more. Screaming in rage, he went at him and Louis pulled the trigger, wounding him in the shoulder. The impact caused him to fall backwards and land on his back in front of the closet. He looked at him with startled eyes, incredulous that he had shot him, and in his he could see he was determined to kill him.

He quickly got up and ran to the door of the room, while Louis fired two more shots, missing him. He ran after him and when he left the room he didn't see him in the hallway, he walked slowly to the living room, expectantly, and didn't see him either. He looked at the open apartment door, and after verifying he wasn't in the other areas of the apartment he took a deep breath, relieved. He was gone. Hoping it would be for good.