As he tumbled backward I came at him, shoulders square, legs pumping, head up, a decent linebacker making a tackle. My legs were a little shaky and I didn't have enough drive. I hit him too high, and he refused to fall, but I drove him backward until we both hit a wall, Japanese prints clattering to the floor. I had him wrapped up, and we danced that way a moment, his blood smearing my face. Then he brought a boot up high and crashed it down into my left instep where my hundred-percent-wool sweat sock did little to cushion the blow. I tottered backward, hopping on one foot, cursing, the pain closing my eyes. I lost my balance just before I hit the tearoom wall. If you're going to crash through a wall, ass over elbows, a paper wall is best. It didn't hurt a bit, my foot and head and ribs hogging all the headlines in the pain department.
I was lying on the low-slung tea table amid rice cakes and bamboo mats when Carruthers appeared, poking his head through the hole I had carved in the wall. I didn't know if I could stand up. He just looked at me.
"Milk or lemon?" I asked.
He growled like one of his large, furry forest friends and stepped through the wall toward me. I rolled off the table into a crouching position and told myself I was just getting warmed up. I wanted to hit him on the side of the neck just below and slightly to the front of the ear. If I could smash the jugular vein, the carotid artery, or the vagus nerve, I could put him into shock. But I couldn't put any weight on my left foot and didn't know how I'd get anything behind the punch.
He just stood there bleeding onto his buckskin, bent at the waist with hands on hips, sucking great gulps of air. "Hunters have rights," he said.
"What?"
"And trappers too."
I thought about it. "Man is the hunter. Right, Carruthers?"
"Right."
"You hunt them for the beauty of their skins."
"That, and for food."
"Food?"
"You animal-rights nuts have gone too far," he said, still huffing. "First furs, then what, beef and chicken?"
"What are you-"
A gunshot inside a small apartment makes a terrible racket. Especially when the bullet connects with a large Oriental vase. Carruthers hustled out of the tearoom. I limped to the opening. "If you two boys have finished your macho game, perhaps we could have a little talk," said Lady Chattery, her two hands gripping my blue steel revolver, a perfectly furious look on her beautiful face.
There was no use putting the sneakers back on. Galoshes wouldn't fit over my swollen left foot. My ribs were throbbing, my head was on fire, and my ego was under siege.
"Apologize? Apologize for what?" I asked.
"For attacking Mr. Carruthers. Just as you attacked poor Clive and Francis. I'm beginning to think your hostility has its basis in a true psychosis, Jake."
Carruthers sat on the sofa, smiling, if that's what it was, under a towel of ice cubes fastened to his mouth. I surveyed the damage. Shards of ceramic pottery covered the floor, ink prints dangled at crazy angles on the living-room wall, and the tearoom was a shambles of splintered wood and ripped walls. In about three minutes, we had transformed Cindy's townhouse from Oriental Moderne to post-Apocalypse.
"I was trying to save your life. I thought Davy Crockett here-"
"You thought! You might have killed him."
"Sorry, I'm not used to seeing strange men brandish knives at my lady friends."
"Humghfeeldauhdeer," came a sound from under the icy towel.
"What?"
"He was showing me how to field-dress a deer," Pam explained helpfully.
"Is that different than city-dressing one?" I asked.
Carruthers dropped the towel. His face was not a pretty sight. "I was advising against making the incision between the hind legs. Cut into the sternum and go back toward the pelvis. It's not a bad job if you don't mind being up to your ears in blood and offal." His voice was thickened by a swollen tongue.
Pam said, "And I told him how barbarous and cruel it was, hunting those fine animals. And then you came in and…and pounced."
I turned to Carruthers. "What the hell were you doing here?"
"I was in town and stopped over to see Cindy. The door was open, so I-"
"You know Cindy?"
"Sure. Barely Legal. We don't go out that often, what with her import-export friend and my living so far away. But she's the first down-to-earth woman I've met in Mia-muh town."
"Cindy? My Cindy?"
CHAPTER 31
My foot was propped on the phone directory and swaddled in ice. Elevation and cold. Every team trainer worth his smelling salts knows that.
My ribs were swathed in Ace wrap. They only hurt when I breathed.
My head was bobbing on ocean swells. Two Darvons and a grapefruit juice with Finlandia, a linebacker's Sunday-night beddy-bye cocktail.
I was dreaming of sunny days and force-four winds, watching a nine-foot sliver of fiberglass jumping three-foot chop. I looked around inside the dream and couldn't find Pam Maxson or anyone else. A lousy, no-bikini dream. I looked at the sailboard, but I wasn't there. It was a board without a sailor, skimming the waves, darting on a broad reach along a rocky coast. The board jibed, its inside rail digging hard, the tail shooting a plume of water. Then, like a riderless horse, it sped toward open sea.
Someone called my name.
It didn't sound like Pam.
I reached across the bed. Empty. The sheets cool.
"She ain't here, Jake."
Funny how dreams can seem so real. I smelled a cigarette and I don't smoke.
I opened my eyes. The paddle fan clocked its slow turns above my head. A toxic green glow filled the room, my neighbor's mercury-vapor, anticrime light, seeping through open shutters, mixing with the smoke. So I was in my bed in my house. All alone. Except for the voice.
"Got trouble keeping them in bed, do you, Jakie?"
I tried lifting my head. It weighed a ton. Someone was standing by the window, looking out, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. I saw him in silhouette, a strong, bulky shadow in the noxious haze. "Nick?"
"Who'd you expect? Felix Frankfurter?"
I lifted myself to an elbow. "What'd you do to her, Nick?"
"Her?"
"Pam. She doesn't know anything. You didn't have to-"
"Easy, Jake. You've had a hard night." He exhaled a trail of smoke, iridescent and willowy in the gaseous light. "You know, I made a real mistake appointing you."
"Yeah. I saw right through you."
He inhaled and the red ash of cigarette flared. "No. You fucked everything up."
I tried to sit up straight, but the pain kept me stretched out. "What do you want?"
"To take back something of mine. Something you stole. Breaking and entering, Jake. Trespassing. Larceny. Maybe obstruction of justice, too. I got good neighbors, Jake. One of them spots a guy get out of an old convertible and go into my garage the hard way."
I kept quiet. He could be wired.
Nick continued. "When I get to the house, only thing missing is an old memory." He watched me, waiting for a response.
Despite my better judgment, I opened my mouth. "Why not cut the bullshit? You're not going to press charges. You can't stand the heat. If the papers got hold of what's in the log, you'd-"
"What is in the log?"
I knew the important stuff by heart: