Chance

CHAPTER 51

We waited. The near midday sun baked down on the gravel lot. A big maroon rental car crunched into the gravel area in front of the restaurant. It stopped out of sight. I could hear the doors open and close and then the crunch of footsteps and Marty Anaheim came around the corner of the restaurant wearing a white linen suit over a black tank top. With him was a fat Mexican in a flowered shirt and a funny small hat. Bibi was stone silent beside me. Anthony was moaning softly.

"Marty, you stylish bastard," I said.

"Love your tank."

Marty and the Mexican kept walking straight toward us, without saying a word. This was calculated to make me feel faint. It wasn't working with me, but it seemed effective with Anthony. Finally they stopped about two feet away. The Mexican moved a little ways to my right. He had small eyes and they had no expression in them.

"Who's this," I said and nodded at the Mexican, "a leaner from the local guys?"

Marty ignored me. He stared straight at Bibi.

"When this is over, little girl, you're coming with me."

She didn't say anything. Marty looked at Anthony.

"And you're dead," he said.

Then he turned his attention, almost as if it were an afterthought, to me.

"Okay, asshole," Marty said.

"Whaddya want?"

"I want to wrap this whole deal up, Marty."

"What deal?"

"The deal where you steal from Gino and kill Julius's daughter, and get into bed with the Russians in Boston, and have them try to whack me, and… you know, that deal."

Marty never blinked.

"And what are these two shit birds doing here?" he said.

"I knew you were looking for them," I said.

"I brought them so you'd come."

"My God," Bibi said, "you used us for bait."

Marty looked at her for the first time.

"Hard world, ain't it, baby."

Bibi didn't answer. I could feel the weight of the sun on my back.

"So what's your deal?" Marty said to me.

"I'll get to the deal in a minute," I said.

"But I need a couple answers."

"You need a lot of things, asshole."

"It started," I said, "with Anthony here, skimming a little off the accounts he serviced for Gino. And you caught him, because Anthony's dumber than a rake handle, but instead of closing him down, you turned him, had him skimming from Gino and Julius and splitting the dough with you."

Marty nodded slightly. The small dry wind drifted across the lot and made a feeble attempt at ruffling Marty's hair.

"And while you had him in pocket, you had him spy on Julius."

"Not just him," Marty said.

"Julius's daughter. She was a dumb quiff but she was smarter than Anthony."

"And when Anthony took off on you both, you became allies.

Which is how you knew we were looking for him out here."

Marty shook his head in disbelief.

"She wanted him back, for cris sake "And you wanted him dead, and she knew it. So she came out here to make sure you didn't hurt him."

Marty laughed. There was no pleasure in the laugh, only scorn.

Scorn might be the only thing Marty had ever really felt.

"And you killed her," I said.

"You beat her up and raped her and strangled her and dumped her body with no ID right over there."

Marty shrugged.

"You got some kind a question you're asking or do you just like to flap your face?"

"Did you beat her up and rape her just to throw the cops off, or was it recreational?" I said.

"That your question?"

"One of them," I said.

Marty grinned. It was an expression as scornful as the laugh had sounded.

"Both," he said.

"What I figured," I said.

"Got any other questions?"

"How come you set the Russians on me?"

"What makes you think it was me."

"Joe Broz told me."

For a moment Marty was startled. It was a brief slip and then he got the scorn back in place.

"So?"

"So, why?"

"Why do you think? You're all over my business. You're looking into Asshole Anthony, and you're looking for Bibi, and you're talking to the niggers, Gino and Julius and Fast Eddie. You're in the way. And you don't even fucking know what you're in the way of. A cheap fucking nickel-and-dime goddamned gumshoe poking around into something he couldn't understand if he found it, for cris sake "Something really big, huh?"

"Bigger than you could handle, cheapie."

"Taking over the town, huh?"

"For starters, cheapie, just for starters."

"Today, Boston," I said.

"Tomorrow the world."

"You think it's funny?"

"So far," I said, "all you've had to do is run Anthony and your wife, and you're oh for two on that. The Russians would feed you through a compactor an hour after you all took over."

"You think so?"

"Doesn't matter," I said.

"I'm not going to let it happen anyway."

"You?" Marty laughed again. It sounded like claws on a tin roof.

"Spenser, you fucking kill me, you know it. You going to stop me.

You, asshole? You just delivered me the three people on the fucking planet I want to kill most."

"Killing isn't comparative," I said.

"I think you mean the three people you most want to kill."

Marty ignored me.

"And you don't even know what you've fucking walked into, for cris sake "Marty, you're not saying you set us up?" I said.

"Asshole!"

"You don't mean you sent some people down here ahead of time," I said.

Marty frowned slightly.

"I'm shocked," I said.

"Shocked."

The Mexican didn't move, but I could sense a tightness in him that hadn't been there before.

Without taking his eyes off me, Marty yelled, "Paulie."

The door to the utility shed opened and two guys came out. One of them was leaning heavily on the other one. There was blood on his face. Hawk came out of the shed behind them. He held a big stainless-steel finish.44 Magnum loosely at his side, the barrel pointed aimlessly at the ground.

"One over behind the fence," Hawk said.

"In the weeds."

His teeth flashed very white as he grinned at the Mexican.

"Hasta la vista," he said.

"Deceit breeds deceit," I said to Marty.

"Hawk came down here, before I called you."

Beside me Anthony said, "Shoot him. You got to shoot him quick while you have the chance."

Nobody paid any attention to him.

The Mexican's small eyes shifted from Hawk to Marty to me and back to Hawk. He gave Marty one more brief sidelong glance and then turned without a word and walked back toward the street.

Marty looked after him for a moment. Beside me I felt Anthony start to take a step, and I put my hand out and gripped his arm. I shook my head. He froze.

"Hard to get good help out here," I said.

Marty shifted his gaze back at me. He glanced at Hawk standing behind the two gunmen. In the background I heard the rental car start up and the gravel scatter as it drove away.

"Okay," Marty said.

"This is the way I like it, anyway. It's down to you and me, ain't it."

"Appears so," I said.

"You got a deal, or what?"

"Couple things," I said.

"Like what?"

I said to Bibi, "This guy used to beat you up?"

"Yes," she said.

Her voice was so soft and flat it was almost inaudible.

I said to Marty, "You killed my client, Shirley."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," I said and hit him a short left hook that landed under his right eye.

Beside me I heard Bibi gasp.

I hit him the same left hook again and a straight left on the nose. Blood started. Marty clubbed at me with his right. I took the hit mostly on the left shoulder and upper arm, but even so it rocked me and my arm hurt. I circled him a little, moving toward his left, and popped in the straight left on his nose again. He bulled inside the punch and grabbed me around the waist and lifted me in the air. I brought both fists simultaneously together on each side of his head, just in front of his ears. He grunted and staggered, still holding onto me, and turned his hip and slammed me onto the ground. I landed on my back and as he came down on top of me I doubled my knee and he fell on it, and slid sideways, to my right, while I rolled sideways to my left, and onto my feet.

He scrambled onto his hands and knees and started to lunge at me and I kicked him in the head. It knocked him sideways and he went back down, landing on his right side, scrabbling away from me even as he landed. I waited. I could hear somebody's breath rasping in and out, and realized it was mine. Sweat was soaking my shirt and running down my face and arms. My hands were slippery with it, and Marty's blood. The desert seemed to have focused down to Marty and me. He got to his feet. I hit him again the straight left. He grabbed at my arm and missed, and I came in over his left shoulder with an overhand right that caught him under the left eye. I saw his knees buckle. He was still fighting but he was pawing at me. I slapped his left hand away and rolled in a right cross with all of me behind it and he went down. I waited. He got up and rushed in low at me, his head down. I kneed him in the face and he fell forward, trying to hang onto my legs as he went down. I stepped away from him and waited. He lay for a minute facedown on the hot gravel, and then he pushed himself up slowly like a man doing his hundredth push-up. I waited. He got his knees under him. Then his feet. Then he stood. Upright, but wobbly. His left eye was closed. Blood ran down his face and the front of his shirt was covered with it. I waited. He took a step toward me and pitched forward and lay motionless, facedown on the ground.

Nobody moved. Nobody said anything. The traffic went slowly by on the Strip and more distantly, and much faster, behind us, on Route 15. Bibi stepped over next to Marty and quite deliberately kicked him in the side of the head. Then she turned and looked at me.

"You used me," she said, "as bait."

"Some," I said.

"But you make a nice witness, too. You heard him say he killed Shirley."

"You better kill him," Anthony said.

"While we got the chance.

You wouldn't get in trouble. We'd all say it was self-defense."

I looked at him without saying anything. He turned toward Hawk.

"Do it," Anthony said.

"Do it now, nobody'll say anything. Shoot those two guys too, if you're worried."

Hawk looked silently at Anthony for a minute and then looked at me.

"Old Marty didn't quit," Hawk said.

"I'll give him that."

"Even if I was just a witness," Bibi said. The soft flat voice was shaking a little.

"You still used me. You think it was right to use me?"

"It was necessary," I said.

"And it worked. Sometimes I have to settle for that."

"You shouldn't have used me," she said.