I was in Long Beach in under thirty minutes.
My big regret was that I had never met Randy. Never would. He was the key player in all of this, and I thought it would have been awfully damned interesting to hear what he had to say, an addition to the My Most Memorable Character collection.
From what people had told me, Randy would go to just about any lengths to get his own way. If sheer force of his considerable charm, stubborn will, and cussed determination didn’t work, he used money. Sometimes he used money for bribery, as I believe he had with George Metrano, as he had tried with Lacy. Sometimes he used the threat of withholding money, as he had with his ex-wives, to maintain control.
I keep telling Casey that she should be careful what she wishes for, because her wishes might come true. Apparently no one had ever warned Randy. Or maybe he hadn’t listened very carefully, because what he wished for ended up killing him. Poor Randy.
At two-thirty, all the bars and clubs on Second Street were closed. All the chickies were in for the night. The narrow streets of Naples were deserted. I drove through the alley behind the Ramsdale house, saw no one about, and parked two houses farther down.
When I got out of the car, I had one of Mike’s big, heavy Kel-Lite flashlights in my hand. I had picked it up on my way out of the kitchen.
Mike had told me one time that when he worked street patrol in uniform, back before his hair turned white, the Kel-Lite had been his compliance tool of choice during hand-to-hand brawling. Better than his service revolver as a cudgel. His stories always failed the political correctitude tests. Sometimes their brutality set my back molars on edge. Most of the time, they made me laugh, because I knew there was no malice in anything he had done. Times have changed. Acceptable police practices have changed. So has Mike.
Anyway, I carried the flashlight as a sort of talisman against anything that might be waiting in the dark. I lurked down the alley. If anyone had seen me, and been worried, he or she would have called in to report a burglar. I heard no sirens, so I lurked on.
The back door of the Ramsdale house was heavy oak. I longed for Martha’s key. But I would have had to break into her house to get it. So I broke into the Ramsdales’ instead.
Randy’s study was on Martha’s side of the house. I knew she was gone, so unless I made a big noise, no one was likely to hear me. I used the Kel-Lite on the pane in the French doors closest to the latch. The shattered glass made less noise than I had expected as it fell onto a doormat inside.
I tried the knob. It turned, but the door wouldn’t give. I could see hardware for a floor bolt, so I broke another pane and I could pull up the bolt. The door opened smoothly, finally, and I slipped inside, stepping wide around the glass.
I stepped inside and waited for my heart to stop pounding, a wide spot in the checkerboard of shadows, trying to listen to the house. All was still except for the ticking of a clock somewhere. Relying on my imperfect recollection of the floor plan, I felt my way through the dark and up the stairs to Hillary’s room.
I went straight to her bookcase and used the flashlight only long enough to make sure that I had taken down the right books – the photo album and the yearbook. Then I went back out into the hall. I listened to be sure all was quiet before I went back down.
Thinking it had all been too easy, I pulled the French doors shut behind me and rebolted them. I was so slick, I thought, I could reel in a little extra money as a cat burglar on the side. Send Casey to an Ivy League school if she wanted. Or to London for ballet. I felt more hyped than scared when I came out into the narrow passage between the houses.
I flattened myself against the wall beside a skinny juniper, and looked for trouble. The alley end, where I was headed, was clear. To be cautious, because my dad when he taught me to drive told me always to look both ways in case a comet, or whatever, came shooting up behind me, I looked down to the canal end, too.
On the water, things are always moving: lights, boats, ducks, gulls. What alarmed me was a block of dark stillness against the motion. I froze, tried to focus on it. I was closer to the canal than to the alley. I tried to figure whether I had a big enough head start to make it back to the car if that dark shape decided to chase me. I hated myself for being so anal that I had locked the car – my caution had added two or three seconds to my escape time.
I thought about the alternatives, and chose one. Clutching the books tight against my chest, the Kel-Lite straight in front, I stepped away from the wall and shot the light into the dark.
What I saw was an old wooden dinghy that had been hauled up out of the water. It leaned against one of the support pilings of the Ramsdale dock. Next to it was a can of caulking. Kids, I thought, doing some boat-repair work on a vacant dock.
Feeling relieved, if a bit of a jerk, I switched off the light, quickly reevaluated my future as a burglar, and turned toward the alley.
My dad also taught me to look three times, left right left, before committing to a turn into traffic. I forgot that part at the wrong time.
When I spun back, he was there, blocking the passage to the alley maybe four yards in front of me. I flashed the light on him.
He flinched, raised an arm to shield his eyes.
“Officer Flint,” I shouted in the direction of the shattered French door. “Metrano is here. Have the alley sealed.”
George Metrano smiled, monstrous in the beam of light. “I watched you go in. You were alone.”
“Cops have had the place staked out.”
“No, they haven’t.” He started toward me. “What did you take?”
“Not a goddam thing.” I gripped my booty tighter, and screamed, “Flint, out here, now!”
“Shut up.” He hissed as he lunged, moving fast for a big man.
I ran for the canal. Ivy vines snagged my shoes and ripped up from their roots – I didn’t have time to aim for the artfully placed stepping stones. If I tripped, I knew he would be all over me.
I felt him reach for me, a push of air from behind. I ducked to the side, used my flashlight hand to right myself, and ran on. I didn’t have time to find him back there. I only knew he was too close. My back arched away from him, giving me a few more inches of time.
I came out on the sidewalk, careened around the corner, and headed toward the nearest bridge. I miscalculated my speed at the turn and lost both my footing and my lead. As I scrambled to find solid ground underneath, he dove. And he got me.
Metrano’s huge hand caught me just below the knee, flipped me, and sent me skidding face forward onto the concrete. I kept the books, but lost most of the skin on my knuckles.
He slid his hand up my leg for a better grip. I managed to roll onto my back. I cocked my free foot to flatten his smug face, but he caught it, too. He was on his knees, I was on my butt, struggling to get upright, straining to wrench free as he tried to get over me, dominate me, pin me down. I hate to be pinned. Especially by a guy with a thing for razors. Every time I tried to sit up, he yanked my legs and sent me backward again. One big jerk had sufficient force to knock me on my head hard enough to make my ears ring.
I was plain old mad. On my way up again, I swung the Kel-Lite with everything I had, a well-placed backhand stroke. He was turning to see where the blow was coming from when Kel-Lite and face bones connected. He screamed like something on Wild Kingdom. Warm blood sprayed through the air and hit my face. I retched at the smell of it.
The follow-up shot I gave him didn’t have as much force as the first blow, sufficient to raise a dummy bump on his temple, but not enough to break the skin. It did motivate him to try something else on me. When he moved his hands higher on my calves, looking for a better grip, I found an instant of hesitation to slide through. I snatched one leg free and got some leverage to kick away from his hold. Like a scared bunny, I scooted the hell away.