Buffalo jump

CHAPTER 16

There were no parking spots to be had in front of the Med-E-Mart, so I drove around back to the overflow lot and found a spot facing the loading dock behind Silver’s store. I got my Zeiss field glasses out of the glove compartment. The loading dock was a deep concrete alcove with a steel door that could be rolled down after hours. The other three walls were cinder block. There were shipping tables along two of them, as well as stacks of empty wooden pallets and bales of corrugated cartons. Set into the back wall were double doors that led into the rear of the store.

An unmarked cube van was backed up against the dock with its rear doors open. One man was walking out of the van, wheeling an empty hand truck in front of him. A second, much bigger man was walking in, his hand truck piled high with four cartons, one hand holding the top case steady. I wondered why a pharmacy would be making deliveries by the case instead of receiving them. I put the field glasses on the men doing the loading. One was wiry, dark-haired, in his mid-forties, wearing a light grey suit. Not your average driver or shipping clerk. The other was big enough to show up on a topographical map, sweating through a powder-blue track suit. He looked six and a half feet tall and weighed some three hundred pounds, none of it soft, with a shaved head that grew straight out of his shoulders. He had gold hoops through both earlobes. Put him in a vest and pantaloons and he could pass for a guard outside an Arabian palace. The one where they kept the virgins.

Just as the two men had finished loading, the shipping doors swung outward and Jay Silver came out looking even more worried than he had this morning. He went up to the wiry man in the suit and spoke to him urgently, gesturing at the contents of the truck. The wiry man cut him off within seconds, sticking his index finger in Silver’s face and giving him a talking-to. I couldn’t hear a word but I could tell it was no pep talk. Jay Silver was supposedly sole owner of the company. No partners. But here he was on his own property and this runt was treating him like a fat kid in a schoolyard.

When he was done talking, the runt shoved Jay Silver toward the doors and followed him into the store. The big man waddled behind them. I slipped out of the Camry and moved quickly to the cube van. There were no markings on it; nothing visible through the driver’s window to indicate who owned it or where it might be going. I slipped up a narrow side staircase onto the loading dock and looked in the rear of the truck, where I saw stacks with cartons labelled with the names of major pharmaceutical companies. Pfizer, Searle, Eli Lilly, Meissner-Hoffman, Merck Frosst.

The doors behind me banged open. I turned to see the runt and the big man.

“Can I ask what you’re doing?” said the runt.

I said, “Sure.”

We waited a beat until he realized I wasn’t going to say anything more. I could tell I found it funnier than he did.

“I couldn’t find parking in front,” I finally admitted. “So I parked back here and I was just trying to find a way into the store.”

“Why?” the runt asked. “You need painkillers?”

“No.”

“Or maybe you do but you don’t know it yet.” He held out his hand. “Let’s see ID.”

“You going to show me yours?”

“Come on, smart guy. Hand it over or Claudio will extract it.”

The big man smiled. His mouth was huge, made for swallowing things whole, but his teeth were small and unevenly spaced. His lower lip stuck out much farther than the upper. It gave his face an oddly sensual look, though I couldn’t picture myself telling him that.

I made no move to present ID, so the runt gave Claudio the nod and he came toward me, moving like truly big men do, his arms swinging out away from his sides. He looked like he could pull a redwood out of the ground and pick his teeth with it. He was between me and the stairs that led down off the loading dock, and the truck was parked too close to the other side to allow passage. My best option was to fend him off and get into the store, where a crowd of witnesses might deter an all-out assault.

I feinted to my right, which got Claudio going that way, then crossed him up with a quick shift left. The lithe Steve Nash against the lumbering Shaq. I reached the double doors easily-just as Jay Silver pushed them open from inside. The left-hand door slammed my shoulder and knocked me down. Claudio took the opportunity to grab my bicep with a hand that closed entirely around it.

“What’s going on?” Jay Silver asked.

“Never mind,” the runt told him. “Get back inside.”

“Who is he?” Jay asked.

“I said, never mind.”

I decided a little confusion was in order. I held out my free hand toward him like we were old friends. “Jay Silver!” I said. “How the hell are you?”

“Huh?” He stared at me like he was wondering where we had met.

“You know him?” the runt asked Silver.

Silver didn’t respond. Only his eyes moved, narrowing as if he were willing himself to understand how I fit into the mess he was in. The runt poked him in the chest. “I asked, do you know this guy?”

Jay Silver shrugged. “No.”

“Then beat it.”

“What are you going to do to him?”

“I told you, get inside. Mind your store. Make sure no one steals a lipstick.”

Silver straightened himself out of his natural slouch. He was actually a pretty big man: nowhere near Claudio’s size but towering over the runt and outweighing him by a good sixty pounds. “Now listen, Frank-”

“Shut up!”

Frank. Frank who?

“Don’t make things worse than they already are.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Frank hissed. “Get your fat ass inside before I kick it.”

“This is my store,” Silver said firmly. “My place of business. I don’t care what’s happened till — ”

Frank slapped him hard across the face, then backhanded him harder the other way. Silver looked stunned, both cheeks glaring red. For a moment I thought he might go after him. Claudio must have thought so too because he let go of me and moved in on Silver but Frank motioned to him to stay back.

“Don’t ever talk back to me,” Frank said. “And don’t ever, ever speak my name.” He stuck his finger in Silver’s face as he had before. “You got that, bitch?”

Silver swallowed hard like a child trying not to cry in front of his friends.

“Now get out of here and let the men take care of business.”

Silver gave me a look that was shameful and apologetic at once. Frank snorted impatiently and grabbed Silver by the upper arm. “Fuck this guy up and get rid of him,” he told Claudio, then marched Silver through the shipping doors into the Med-E-Mart.

I scanned the area around us, looking for room to move, identifying obstacles: two concrete pillars, the stacked pallets and baled cartons. Claudio had the obvious advantage in strength-and in scaring the living shit out of his opponent- but guys his size rarely have speed or stamina. If he wasn’t a trained fighter, chances are he’d be gassed after thirty to sixty seconds of combat. It was time to get my well-trained ass moving. Get this big schlub wilting in the heat.

I started dancing, leading him to my left, then back to the right. He put his hands up in a boxer’s stance and moved his feet pretty well for a beast his size. Maybe he had some training after all.

I snapped a few kicks at his knees, keeping my centre low, ready to lunge back if I had to. I made him move, kept him honest with the attacks I’d practised that morning. Sanchin, but with speed, torque and bad intent. Claudio wasn’t used to being attacked and he definitely wasn’t built for speed. Inside of a minute, sweat was pouring down his cheeks, his breath was coming hard, and his arms were slowing as they blocked my attacks.

“Stand still and take it,” he said, almost panting. “You make me work, I’ll fuck you up worse.”

“No you won’t,” I said, a little more cocky than I actually felt. “You might be big, Clod, but size is all you got.” Rather than continue the discussion, he threw a right my way. I blocked it, at considerable expense to my forearm, and kicked his left knee hard, then snapped his head back twice with short punches. He backed off, breathing hard, until he was leaning against one of the dock’s cinder-block walls.

“Give it up,” I said. “It’s too hot for this.”

He shook his big head, then reached over and picked up a box cutter off the floor. He thumbed the blade out and held it out in front of him. I grabbed a roll of packing tape off a shipping table behind me and flipped it in a high, slow arc from my right hand to my left, like a juggler. When I flipped it back, his eyes followed it. I flipped it a third time, back to my left, which few people expect to be your throwing hand. As soon as I caught it, I winged it at him from the hip like I was skipping a stone. It was still rising when it hit him in the mouth, drawing blood, a good deal of which he spat out on the dock. I moved in on him and faked a move to my right. When the box cutter moved that way, I kicked his arm with the arch of my foot and sent the box cutter skittering along the floor. Left with nothing but his three-hundred-plus pounds and too much testosterone, he charged at me with arms flailing. I waited until he was almost on me, then stepped quickly out of his way and kicked him in the small of the back, sending him crashing into a pile of empty pallets. When he turned to face me again, his eyes were hooded and there was more blood in his mouth to spit.

“I’m going to have to end this now,” I told Claudio. “I’m way too hot.”

“You haven’t hurt me,” he panted.

“I haven’t tried.”

No matter how big a man is, he can’t strengthen his eyelids. Claudio could be three hundred pounds of muscle; his eyelid was one fold of skin like everyone else’s. So I faked another kick at his knees and when he dropped his hands I jabbed two stiff fingers into his right eye. He yelped and clutched it with both hands, blinking furiously as sweat ran into the eye. I punched him hard and fast in the windpipe-another area you can’t develop. He gasped and tried to draw in breath like a man about to blow up a balloon.

I should have stopped there but I didn’t. I don’t like guys who hurt other guys for profit. I kicked him hard in the ribs with the ball of my left foot, and heard a cracking sound. So pleasing was it, I pivoted and kicked him in the same place on the other side. He fell to his knees, not knowing which part of himself to hold first.

I leaned down, twisted one of his big meaty ears and said into it, “Don’t threaten to fuck people up. It’s anti-social.”

Frank banged out through the shipping doors just then. I don’t think the tableau in front of him was quite what he expected to see: Claudio in tears and me looking distinctly unfucked up.

“I think he needs eye drops,” I said.

Frank turned quickly back into the store without a word. Maybe the eye drops were on sale.