Bart felt the shock all the way up to his shoulder, felt teeth give, but was already dropping to a crouch, whirling. His free hand caught the rim of the garbage pail, spun it into the middle of a second dim face coming at him out of the darkness.
The man shrieked and fell away.
There was a searing along the back of his shoulder. Knife. He shuffled back into the shadows like a fighter trying to shake off a punch. It put the blademan in the light, hid Bart in darkness. The blademan hesitated, leaning forward, squinting. Bart wished he had his garbage lid back. At least no one had shown a gun yet. He could run now, but damned if he would.
The dazed kicker staggered to his feet. Bart hooked a really good left into the hinge of the man’s jaw, caught him as he fell, threw him at the blademan. Bart followed the lax body like a running back following his blocker through the hole.
The knife ripped into the kicker’s clothing, was enfolded in cloth or flesh, Bart didn’t care which. He hit the blademan seven times in two seconds, jabs, crosses, a honey of an uppercut that broke the man’s jaw while the heavy silver skull-and-crossbones finger ring Bart was wearing for his bartender charade tore an ear almost off the man’s head.
Bart backed down the alley away from the disabled trio, walked down to the light, turning into Taylor Street with his jaunty fighter’s strut. His shoulder burned. Needed tending, maybe. The knife had raised some kind of hell with the leather jacket Corinne had given him last Christmas.
Man, she was gonna be pissed!
He walked into all-night Ace in the Hole with blood dripping off the fingertips of his left hand and an idea of what he should do — before the shock passed and the pain really started to chew at him — bouncing around in his head.
He said to the ex-con cook he’d nearly got into it with the night before, “Just got myself mugged.”
“Mugged, huh? Doctor?”
“If he talks quiet.”
The big ugly man chuckled while writing on a napkin with a ballpoint pen. “Or not at all?” Bart nodded. The address was close by. The cook said, “This guy is cash only.”
Bart dropped a twenty on the counter. “So am I,” he said.
“Some muggers,” the cook snorted derisively.
“They were overmatched,” said Bart automatically.
But the short-order cook’s remark had confirmed his own half-formed feeling that the attackers hadn’t been trying very hard, which was why he’d asked the cook about a doctor. They’d all been dogging it — except for the blademan, of course, and he might just have lost his cool when he bit rabbit and tasted bear cat. But had they been dogging it to orders?
“When you see me coming back, be frying bacon and eggs until I tell you to stop.”
The cook laughed at him almost affectionately, the way you might chuckle at a miniature schnauser who thought he could take that Great Dane over there with one paw tied behind his back.
“Over easy,” grinned the big cockeyed man.
Chapter Twenty-one
Ballard woke at 8:00 A.M. in Amalia’s bed with a stinging sense of loss, realized it was because she was not beside him. He got up, padded nude and barefoot through the little apartment. Coffee was made, she’d burned a cigarette or two with her toast.
No note. Then he saw the happy face drawn on the front page of the morning Chronicle in red felt-tip and was suddenly happy himself. Had the night with her been as incredible as it had seemed, or... He wrote “Tonight?” under the happy face with the same pen, dressed, headed home. He’d maybe catch a couple more hours sleep, change and shower, before going out again.
He still had no leads to Danny, and he was sure his In basket at DKA would be stuffed with new assignments and memos on the old ones. A good omen, perhaps, his car was where he had parked it, unscathed, not even a ticket under the wiper blade.
Through the frosted glass of the front door on Lincoln Way he saw movement in the hall. Kearny was still bunking in at his place — unless Jeanne had taken pity on poor Ballard and let her husband back into the house.
But when he unlocked the door and opened it, he was looking at Takoko Togawa’s little round face. Her hair was wet and she wore only a towel. Usually she would have covered her mouth and giggled, then fled down the hall to the safety of her own minuscule apartment. Not today.
“You catch me,” she said solemnly, her eyes big.
“Catch you?” asked Ballard densely.
“In hall. In towel.”
She paused in the open doorway of her apartment, looking at him. No giggling. Face very solemn. Then she smiled. It was a smile unlike any he had ever seen on her face before. As she disappeared around the edge of the doorway, the towel happened to slip. He got a fraction of a second of slender glowing ivory legs, rounded curve of haunch, then she was gone like a dream. But the final corner of the towel remained in the open doorway.
He took a step, another down the hall, stopped. The door was still open. The invitation was clear. After two years of pursuit, she was ready to be caught.
Except. Except Amalia. Last night had been... had been...
What was happening to him? He fell in love a lot, but last night, Amalia... Surely that had been different... Somehow he just... couldn’t betray the night, even though there was no reason to think that Amalia felt the same way he did...
Of course she did. It had been too intense, physically and emotionally, for her not to.
Down at the end of the hall, the final corner of the towel was drawn from view. Then an exquisite golden arm stretched across the open doorway and a tiny hand grasped the doorknob and slowly, gently, as if it were part of some elaborate tea ceremony, pulled the door shut.
Ballard heard the latch click. He wanted to rush down the hall, knock on that door, beg Takoko to let him in for the shared ecstasy he had sought for two long years...
Instead, full of sorrow at lost opportunity and pride at newfound constancy, he unlocked his door and went into his cheerless little apartment.
To find goddam Dan Kearny still asleep in his bed.
He went down the hall for his shower, forgoing further rest to avoid strangling the man to death in his sleep.
Dan Kearny rolled over and looked at the cheap alarm clock on the stand beside the bed. Noon. Five hours of shut-eye. Once, five hours would have been plenty of sleep. Now he felt exhausted, old. Sitting up all night on that ridiculous guard duty at the Rochemont estate was what had done it. Ridiculous, yes; but the old lady was paying enough to make it all right.
Almost all right.
He tapped out his home number as he did every morning. Jeanne picked up on the third ring. He spoke very quickly, in an untypical rush of words. “Honey, don’t hang up before—”
Click.
Goddammit, he’d get dressed and drive over there across the Bay Bridge and have it out with her. It was his goddam house, wasn’t it? She was his wife, wasn’t she? Why in Christ’s name couldn’t she just tell him what was wrong, instead of...
No. Wrong.
Ballard must have been there while he was asleep; the coffeepot was still hot. He poured a cup, sat at the counter sipping it, wishing there was a doughnut or sweet roll or something to dip in it. Damn, that was good coffee!
All his life he’d gone straight at things like a charging bull, but if he did that now he would lose her, lose his marriage, lose everything — hell, probably half of DKA, too — if he didn’t figure out a different way to go at this. You couldn’t force your way through it. You had to treat it as a minefield, you had to cautiously inch your way on all fours...