"Hey, look, buddy, calm down. You're hurt, and you need medical attention, and I've got to write this up," the young officer said insistently as he got Paxton back into his grasp. "You just- Hey, what's this?"
In trying to regain his grip on Paxton's arm, the patrol officer's hand had brushed against the grip of Paxton's shoulder-holstered SIG-Sauer.
Oh, shit! Paxton thought, realizing that there wasn't enough time to go through the lengthy procedure of positively identifying himself as a federal agent. Especially since his badge and credentials were locked in the trunk of the car across the street.
Responding to his academy training, the young officer instinctively shoved Paxton around to face the patrol car while he reached down for his holstered 9mm Glock automatic, which left Paxton with only one reasonable option.
Dropping his head and bracing himself against the hood of the patrol car, Paxton slammed the heel of his hiking boot into the officer's lower abdomen, trying as best as he could not to catch him square in the groin. Then, as the navy-blue- uniformed officer grunted and dropped to the ground, Paxton spun around, wrist-locked and arm-barred him down to the pavement, fumbled for the snap of his handcuff pouch and quickly secured his arms behind his back.
Then, feeling his sorely bruised ribs and every one of his thirty-six years, Paxton started to pull himself back up to his feet.
"You goddamned bastard," the young officer snarled as he tried to get at Paxton with his free leg. The well-aimed and solidly driven kick narrowly missed Paxton's groin, catching him in the thigh instead as it knocked him back down to the asphalt.
"Nice going, man. Hell of a shot," Paxton gasped as he dragged the still-struggling and cursing officer over to the sidewalk and held him down against the concrete for a moment with his aching body.
"Listen to me, buddy. You don't want to do this. You're making a real bad mistake," the officer tried, but Paxton was in too much of a hurry to listen.
"It's okay," he said, speaking as quietly as he could between deep breaths as he looked around quickly to make sure that nobody was watching. "Take my word for it, I'm on your side. No time to explain right now. Make it up to you later."
Then, after looking both ways this time, he took off at an unsteady gait across the street toward the Cat's Paw.
Paxton saw Stoner look up at him when he came in through the door. Sonny Chareaux was standing with his back to the bar, feeding three more quarters into the telephone. He held up a piece of paper in his right hand and began to dial.
Larry Paxton, with a convenient glazed look in his eyes, staggered over in the direction of the Cat's Paw's single telephone. As he approached Sonny Chareaux's back, he deliberately bumped into the small table, knocking the set of keys to the floor and causing the Louisiana poacher to turn around and look. Paxton, muscular but still much smaller than Chareaux, lurched forward, knocking Chareaux sideways. As Paxton threw out his left arm to catch himself on the telephone box, the fingers of his left hand closed down over the handset receiver.
"CAN AH USE THE PHONE WHEN YOU IS DONE?" Paxton yelled in a loud, slurred voice, blinking his eyes as he smiled up at the hulking Cajun, who had already recovered his balance.
"What?" Sonny Chareaux rasped, still clutching the handset.
"WHAT AH SAID IS, CAN AH USE-?" Paxton started to repeat himself in a loud, mumbled version of a South Carolina dialect before he found himself being flung backward into the table.
"HEY, MAN!" Paxton started to protest, gasping in pain as his ribs seemed to grate against the hard surface of the table.
But the severely injured agent was wasting his breath. Sonny Chareaux had already brought the handset back up to his ear, and his eyes were widening in rage as he recognized the dial tone.
Chareaux screamed out something unintelligible- something that Paxton figured was a Cajun-French curse on his ancestry.
Turning back to the phone box, Chareaux was in the process of hurriedly fumbling for more quarters when Paxton lurched forward again, wedged himself between Chareaux and the phone, screamed out, "IT'S MAH TURN!" and then used his leverage and the full force of his right leg to send Chareaux tumbling backward into and over his table.
Working quickly now because his ribs were really hurting and he knew he wasn't going to have much time, Paxton pulled a handful of Kleenex out of his back pocket, tore off a piece about three inches wide, and then began fumbling around in his pocket for a coin so that he could stuff the Kleenex into the slot of the phone.
Behind his back, he heard the sounds of people yelling and tables and chairs being flung aside as Sonny Chareaux screamed out his rage.
Paxton had just finished jamming the last of the blue tissue into the narrow slot when Sonny Chareaux's savage roar warned him in time to duck away from the fist that slammed into the wall right next to his ear. But he couldn't avoid the second fist that seemed to explode into his already damaged rib cage, turning his knees into jelly, or the third that caught him right in the side of the head and sent him sprawling to the floor.
Paxton was still down, clutching at his ribs, shaking his bleeding head, and Sonny Chareaux was working feverishly at the phone, when ex-Raider-tackle Dwight Stoner slammed into Chareaux's upper back with a bone-crushing forearm shot that sent Chareaux and the telephone through the two-by-four-studded wall and into the bar's storage room.
Nearly trampled by the crowd of half-drunken spectators drawn by the irresistible sounds of breaking glass, splintering wood, grunting, screaming and cursing, Paxton crawled under Chareaux's table and waited. As the fighters and spectators worked themselves farther into the nearly demolished storage room, Paxton reached for Chareaux's keys, and the piece of paper that had also fallen to the floor.
Getting to his feet was more difficult than Paxton had expected, but the sounds of distant police sirens offered encouragement. Within a minute, he was out the back door and walking unsteadily to the car that he and Stoner had rented. He unlocked the door, pulled himself into the front passenger seat, quickly shut the door, and then spent another thirty seconds trying to reach under the seat for the portable telephone that Mike Takahara had talked them into carrying as a backup.
He didn't know how badly he was hurt, but nothing was going to stop him, Paxton told himself for perhaps the fifth time. Not until he found a certain Chevy pickup truck. Paxton smiled, because he thought he might know where Sonny Chareaux was keeping Len Ruebottom. He paused to listen to Dwight Stoner's distinctive roar, followed by the glass-shattering crash of a large body being thrown through a window.
"Go to it, Stoner, my man," he whispered to himself. "Take that coon-ass son of a bitch apart at the seams."
Finally, his rib cage about ready to burst, the tips of Paxton's long fingers located the cold, plastic case. Good old Snoopy, he thought as he slowly extended his hand another half inch and managed to retrieve the heavy, battery-operated remote phone without fainting in the process. One of your crazy-ass ideas actually came in handy.
Lying semiprone on the seat, his head braced against the driver's armrest, and holding the face of the radio up at window level so the numbered buttons were faintly illuminated by the nearby streetlights,
Paxton carefully punched in the phone number for the Prime Rate motel.
"Operator," the soft, youthful voice spoke in Paxton's ear.
"Room one-three-seven," he said, working hard to enunciate the numbers clearly. He didn't know what time it was, but it had to be well after ten, which meant that Henry and Len Ruebottom were probably running out of time. He had to get word to McNulty.
"Thank you."
Paxton listened to the busy signal ring eight times before it occurred to him that Mike Takahara probably hadn't gotten back from the airport yet. Which meant that all of his fancy message-switching gadgets-the ones that would have alerted McNulty that someone else was trying to call in-were still sitting in their cases, waiting to be reconnected to the Prime Rate Motel phone lines.