“What you’re telling me is that you two have fucked up this deal for me,” snarled Griffin Paris at Ballard. “And it was sweet.” His suave veneer crumbling, he snatched the shotgun out of Sebastian’s hands. “I’m gonna do you fuckers myself!”
It happened with such stunning speed that neither Larry nor Bart, determined to sell their lives dearly, even had a chance to move. A shotgun’s roar filled the air with sound and the stench of cordite. Again, as Morris Brett threw his Luger across the room as if it were red-hot.
Griffin Paris was driven back by the charge of double-O backshot that blew his chest apart. Then the deer slug smashed him through the window into the front yard, exactly as the waves below the cliffs had slammed Danny against the rocks.
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern came through the door from the bedroom, pumping fresh rounds into their shotguns, grinning like feral Dobermans.
Larry Ballard foot-swept Sebastian, who went down hard on his side. Ballard, still on the floor, delivered a side kick that shattered his jaw, then broke bones with a series of exuberant karate chops.
Morris Brett screamed and shot his hands in the air. Perfect position for Bart Heslip to break his nose, dislocate his neck, and crack two of his ribs with a honey of a combination that would have put Sugar Ray on his back even in his heyday.
Rosenkrantz stared owlishly at the shattered window through which the dead man had disappeared. “A lot of that going around these days.” He turned to his partner. “How long we been trying to get this guy, Guildie?”
“Years and years. Slaving over hot stakeouts—”
“On our own time, protecting and serving.”
“Planting bugs under his back bumper — just like he did to you, Heslip. Following him around, like tonight...”
Bart and Larry were helping Danny up on the couch.
“We gotta get him to a hospital,” said Larry.
“I’ll drive him,” said Bart, “I’ve got a date.” He looked at the cops. “Did you ever suspect me of killing anybody?”
“Not once we made you as Bart Heslip, Esq., of DKA. No.”
The two baddies still alive had started to groan. Nobody paid them any attention at all.
Ballard said, “You followed Paris—”
“Followed him, snuck in the bedroom window—” He looked over at his partner. “Snuck is right, ain’t it?”
“Snuck,” agreed Guildenstern.
“Why’d you wait so long?” asked Heslip. “He almost—”
Rosenkrantz was holding up a cassette recorder. “We wanted to get it all on tape.”
“And we liked hearing you guys get the shit beat out of you, we really did. It did our hearts good, all the lyin’ that’s been goin’ around.” He smiled beatifically. “Hey, Rosie, how did the private eye find out his dick was too small?”
“When his girlfriend went down on him, she didn’t suck, she flossed,” said Rosenkrantz.
“Okay, we’ve got one for you guys,” said Ballard. “What animal has an asshole halfway up its back?”
To their silence, Heslip said, “A police horse.”
Dan Kearny said, “A piece of cake, Bernardine.”
But Bernardine Rochemont, still trying to clean pink whipped cream and meringue off herself, was not amused. Her party was a shambles about her ears. She blamed Ken Warren.
“You deliberately threw that awful thing into the torte!”
“Bernardine,” Dan Kearny said mildly, “he saved your life.”
Ken was ignoring her because torte-covered Paul was embracing him, demanding, “How did you know the physics of the windtorte versus the explosive force of the grenade?”
Ken shrugged modestly. Thank God for speech impediments. He would never have to explain that the Viennese windtorte had been the only place there was to throw it.
“I should have known better than to cross class lines,” said Bernardine. “A gentleman would have fallen on the grenade and taken the blast himself. Well, you have had your little amusement — now you shall get no money from me.”
“You will from me,” said Paul.
“Paul!”
Matching her tone, he said, “Mother!”
Mexican standoff, thought Kearny, then suddenly demanded, “Hey, where’s Giselle?”
“She never showed,” said Paul. “And Inga’s gone, too.”
“Gone where?”
“Maybe the Basic Pascal. It’s close by.” He told Kearny what it was, and where it was, and added, “I named it after a couple of basic computer languages.”
“This thing isn’t over yet.” Kearny thrust the sheaf of xeroxed papers from Karen Marshall’s office into Paul’s hands. “See if these make some basic sense to you.”
Inga was busily smearing salve from the yacht’s first-aid kit onto Giselle’s and Frank Nugent’s singed hands. Inga was feeling very good about herself. Giselle was feeling good about her, too. The strange little blonde had come through for them.
“So Inga, you still haven’t told us why you came here rather than stay at the banquet.”
“That was Eddie.” She paused, a faraway look in her eyes. “I still don’t get it. He told me I had to leave or... Paul would die. Same as when...” She paused, starting to blush. “When I put the sleeping pills into your coffee—”
“Yeah,” said Giselle impatiently, “that’s okay, Inga.”
Frank Nugent said sadly, “Who do you think tied us up here? Eddie. He’s going to come back and murder us after he takes care of Paul, and then marry’ you, and—”
“But... but Eddie wouldn’t... Why, he’s saving Paul’s life right now! They’re going to meet me in the parking lot” — she checked her lady’s diminutive golden wafer by Piaget — “just about now.”
Giselle exclaimed, “We’ve got to—”
“Stay and face the music.”
Her sentence was finished by Karen Marshall, coming carefully down the companionway ladder, a gun in her hand that to Giselle’s inexperienced eyes looked like a deadly twin to Eddie Graff’s. She really was going to have to learn about guns.
“Who are you?” asked Frank Nugent almost peevishly. Things were moving just too fast on a human level for his cyberspace intellect to keep up.
“Karen Marshall,” said Inga. “She wanted to sell a life insurance policy to Paul, and—”
“And I did, a year ago,” said Karen. “He just didn’t know about it. Ten million insurance, double indemnity for accidental death. But Eddie double-crossed me. Instead of just the insurance, he wanted it all.” She shot a venemous look at Inga. “He wanted to marry’ the widow.”
Inga was still lost. “If Paul didn’t know about it—”
“You don’t have to tell someone you’re taking out an insurance policy on them,” said Giselle. “She insured him herself — naming Eddie Graff as beneficiary. But Eddie ran out on her and she got nervous and asked Stan Groner to find him. Dan Kearny found him instead, got curious—”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Karen. “I made myself Eddie’s beneficiary. He’s going to burn up in a tragic fire aboard the Basic Pascal — along with you three.”
That’s when Dan Kearny, stretched out on his stomach on the deck outside the open companionway, shot her through the right shoulder with the gun he had taken off Eddie Graff.
Saturday night and the joint was jumping. More than jumping, SRO, people around the walls. Waiting. Lots of spear-chuckers, but Bagnis didn’t care. Their money was as good as anyone else’s. Go figure, fat old broad like that; but man, she could belt those blues. Filling the house and he wasn’t paying them a goddam dime! He was gonna get rich off his cut of the Mood Indigo take.
Maybelle walked out on stage wearing her shiny red dress, followed by Sleepy Ray Sykes and Fingers Jefferson, the hornman who had joined them from the floor the night before. Everyone burst into applause. Maybelle was blushing, a warm rosy glow under her rich brown skin.
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern sidled in to take up positions on either side of the door. Old Charlie Bagnis was due for a little surprise. Conspiracy to commit damned near every felony on the books...
Up on stage, Sleepy Ray noodled a few chords, Fingers blew a few soft notes through his horn to soften his lip. Maybelle hummed softly, finding that place inside herself she’d thought had been lost forever when Jedediah had been taken from her. The place that hurt but that God and song could soothe.
“Let’s blow this house away,” said Maybelle, and sang:
“I’m so blue, jes’ as blue as I can be,
’Cause every day’s a cloudy day for me...”
They indeed blew that house away. And blew away Neil MacDonald, entertainment director for the St. Mark Hotel, right along with it. He leaned over to speak into his wife’s ear.
“I’ve just found our new headline act for the main room.”
Yes sir, a real old-time San Francisco blues singer who would counteract all the negative publicity the hotel had been getting from their opposition to the Local 3 strike.
The United flight arrived from Detroit just after midnight on Sunday morning. One of the first people off the plane was Corinne Jones, the most beautiful woman in the world, wearing a new fawn-colored spring coat and a manycolored silk scarf that set off her Nefertiti face and café au lait skin perfectly.
She came toward Bart with shining eyes and open arms, then her steps faltered as she looked up at her shaven-headed man. She took in his fatigue-rimmed eyes and his battered face. She couldn’t see the missing teeth, but she soon would.
She did just what Bart had laid odds with himself she would do. She stamped her foot. “Barton Heslip,” she said ominously, “what have you been up to while Mama’s been gone?”
He enfolded her in muscular arms, clung to her as if he would never let her go. Which, of course, he never would.
“Baby,” he said, “that’s a very long story.”
After a bit, she let him take her carry-on and they started off arm in arm through the echoing, now sparsely populated terminal toward the luggage carousels a weary quarter mile away.
“We got all night,” she said cheerfully, then deepened and ghettoed her voice. “Ah hopes you done made lots of money.”
“Who needs money?” said Bart Heslip. “I got you.”
At about the same time, Larry Ballard was standing on the top step of Amalia Pelotti’s stairs, talking very fast. He’d gotten her out of bed, so she was in her robe and slippers. He couldn’t help wondering what she had on underneath it.
“And that’s how I got this broken nose,” he ended up. Because of the tape across his face, it came out, “Dad’s how Ah god did broked node.”
“And Griffin Paris dead.”
“Yeah. It’s over. Now everything is straight between us.” He moved up to the top step. “So I was hoping—”
“It doesn’t explain what you were doing over at that woman’s bar after making love to me all night,” said Amalia.
And belted him right in the mouth, broken nose or not, and down he went again, thud, crash, boom, to end up in a jumbled heap at the foot of the stairs.
“Now everything is straight between us,” said Amalia.
Ballard stared up at her and wondered for the first time in his life whether he had met a woman just too passionate for him to climb to his feet and start up those stairs again...
Trinidad Morales found street parking, finally, way up on Potrero across from San Francisco General Hospital, walked the four and a half blocks home to Florida Street. Everybody who might have a hard-on against him was dead. He could walk easy.
A husky Latino opened the rider’s door of a car at the curb in front of Trin’s apartment, and got out. At the same time, Trin heard a grunt of effort behind him. He started to whirl, and something terrible and heavy struck him in the kidney.
He arched and shrieked with the pain as a foot slammed into the side of his knee, tearing ligaments. Morales went down, four of them were on him like junkyard dogs. He went into a fetus curl, arms up trying to protect his head. They didn’t.
The kicks got to be like rain on the roof, almost soothing. He felt himself soaring up and away, maybe leaving his body...
His ears were full of blood, but he heard voices as through a storm door. “Stop, Esteban! Stop! You have killed him!”
“Bastard’s too mean to die.” The eye not yet swollen entirely shut could just barely make out a face inches from his own. A brown face, like his own. Full of hate and contempt. A Latino voice soft in his bleeding ear. “You touch my sister, man, ever again, you with the dead. With the dead, man.”
Morales went away from there. He didn’t know anything. Then he knew light. A voice. As through a storm door.
“Massive concussion, lots of broken bones... but this one is tough enough to make it if he wants to bad enough.”
“That smashed up, how can he even know he wants anything?”
She was right. Just let it slip away. So easy, drift into nothingness. Couldn’t remember which one it was anyway... junior high girl... neighborhood kid... wetback chica... who? Did it matter? They all got off on the Morales swagger, the Morales machismo... couldn’t remember... didn’t matter... nothingness forever... nice... just slip... aw... aaay...
No! Had to live. Esteban... had to find Esteban... and his buddies... one by one...
Danny Marenne lay there and thought he was a mummy, wrapped seemingly from head to foot in bandages. Tight constrictions of tape around his chest — and no pain. No pain!
Danny opened his eyes. Lovely white ceiling of sterile acoustical tile. Hospital. Where? How?
A dearly known voice said, “You’re in Marin General, Danny. You’re okay. You’re safe... safe...”
He turned his bandage-swatched head and saw Beverly sitting in a straight-back chair beside his hospital bed. Cute, beautiful little Beverly. He thanked God he had kept her right out of it, out of all of it. Behind her, dawn light poured in through a window. He could see the tops of green trees on a hill flanking the hospital.
Beverly seemed to be crying. Danny licked his dry lips.
“Hey — ma petite chou-fleur... No need to cry. You know your Danny’s a survivor...”
She stood up and leaned her face down close to his. The fragrance of her perfume washed over him. She was smiling through her tears.
“Damn you, Danny,” she said in a soft voice, “I could just about kill you for—”
“Somebody just about did,” said Danny.
And went back to sleep. Realizing, with wonder, that he dearly loved his little partner Beverly. Wasn’t that strange?
O’B parked his car and got out, stood beside it, listening to the two guitars. Dueling guitars. Hardly. Sounded like somebody was learning chords.
John Little was sitting on an upended wooden apple box in the middle of the empty room, stroking slow chords from his guitar. Facing him on another apple box was a kid of about 12, guitar in hand. Trying to reproduce those chords.
John Little laid aside his guitar. “Hi, Red,” he said. He stood up. “Lesson’s over, Jimmy.”
The boy gave him a $5 bill. When he had gone with his guitar, Little lifted up his apple crate. There was a half-empty bottle of bourbon under it. He handed his guitar to O’B.
“John, if there was any way—”
“Hell, man, I’m the one hasn’t paid for it.”
O’B put the guitar on the backseat, drove away. It had clouded up on his way out; now it had started to rain. Half a mile down the road, he used a logging track to turn around.
John Little’s house was dark, though the fog and drizzle made it like late afternoon. Carrying the guitar, O’B clumped back into the unlit living room. Little was sitting on his apple crate with his bottle. “They cut the power today,” he said.
O’B handed him the guitar. “You’d already skipped out when I got here this morning,” he said. John Little strummed, sang:
“I’m a bummer, I’m a hummer,
I’m a long way from home,
And if you don’t like me,
You can leave me alone.”
He paused to thrust the whiskey bottle at O’B. O’B said, “Shit!” in a disgusted voice, “no good deed ever goes unpunished.” And took a long drink, and fell off the wagon.
John Little strummed his guitar, they sang together:
“We eat when we’re hungry.
We drink when we’re dry.
And if bummin’ don’t kill us,
We’ll live ’til we die...”
Dan Kearny went up the walk and knocked at the door. As he waited for it to be answered, he looked around. The place wasn’t very well kept up. The grass was shaggy, the hedges unkempt. The house, a rather pleasant pale lemon California bungalow, needed to be scraped and repainted. The cherry tree in the corner of the yard still awaited its spring pruning — due in February and here it was May.
Which all went to show that the man of the house was a careless homeowner and a lousy husband to boot.
The door was opened by a small, vivacious, dark-haired woman, ten years younger than Kearny’s 52. He felt an unaccustomed and suspicious moisture at the corners of his eyes.
“Goddammit, Jeannie,” he said, his voice coming out a bit gruffer than he had intended because of the unexpected tears on his cheeks. “We gotta talk.”
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Daniel,” she said gravely, and opened the door wider so he could pass through into his home.