“Do you smoke reefers?” I wheezed.
Crack. The sap made a sound like a wet towel smacking up against a board, but it wasn’t a wet towel and my lower spine wasn’t a board, and nobody could hear it anyway because this was out in the middle of nowhere. Nobody could hear it, but I could feel it. Feel the fire flooding my kidneys, feel the blood on my knees as I went down, feel the hand tearing at my hair.
“You better talk soon,” the little guy said. “Fritz gets mad easy.” I saw the sap rise in rhythm with the little guy’s voice. “Who you working for?”
“Who are you working—?”
I never finished the sentence. The sap came down, and I tried to twist my head away. I felt a jarring wrench, but no blow.
“Goddamn you!” the little guy howled. “You hit my hand! Jesus, I think my wrist’s busted.”
He let go of me and stood there, moaning and holding his right hand.
Fritz scowled. “Get out of the way,” he said. “I’ll finish this.” The small man stepped back, letting his partner advance. He crouched before me, and the sap went back.
“Listen,” he said. “I ain’t got all night. This is your last chance. Either you tell us what we want to know, or—”
I swayed there, watching the sap come up again.
“All right, then!” Fritz moved forward and swung the sap down.
I swung with it, dropping to my knees. At the same time I pushed forward, catching him just below the belt with the top of my head. I put all my weight behind it, and he felt it.
At first, when he opened his mouth, I thought he screamed. But he couldn’t scream. It was the other one who made all the racket. Because the big guy fell on top of him.
I raised my head, located the hand holding the sap, and twisted. Then I put my foot down on the fingers and jerked the sap away. I got it free and raised it. I brought it down once, twice, three times. Fritz stopped moving. The little guy beneath him stopped screaming. I wondered if he’d passed out, too.
Well, I’d know in a minute. Now the trick was to lug them both into the car and take them back to town.
I moved toward Fritz, trying to summon up energy for the effort. My knees were wobbly, and I wondered if I could manage to support myself, let alone a big man like Fritz.
I never found out.
Because the little guy wasn’t unconscious. And he wasn’t unarmed, either.
As I stooped over Fritz, the little guy moved. He rolled out from underneath, his left hand dipping towards the coat pocket, then emerging. He groaned and rose to his knees. The hand pointed towards me.
One red burst, and a million echoes, bouncing off the dunes.
One red burst, and then I was running, dodging and weaving as I tried to outguess the gun, outrace the second shot.
The echoes exploded again, and I turned sharply, veering off to the right. It was hard to run, hard to just keep on my feet, even hard to breathe.
Another shot. My head throbbed, my heart was pounding, the back of my neck ached. But I had to get away. I had to.
Then I mounted a rise and looked back. I saw the spurt, but never heard the echoes.
I took one more step and fell into the middle of nowhere.
Chapter Ten
The middle of nowhere isn’t such a bad place to be. The trouble is, you can’t stay there very long. Sooner or later, something starts to throb. At first it’s just a far-off motion you’re aware of; then you begin to react to the throbbing, feel its effects, realize that it’s your head.
Then the pain comes in waves, like the tide washing its way up a beach. The beach is your body, and it lies there and lets the pain ebb and flow, ebb and flow, over your head, over your neck, over your shoulders and arms and chest.
Finally you decide to do something about it, something hard, like opening your eyes.
That’s what I did, eventually. I opened my eye and found myself lying at the bottom of the dune. I’d pitched off the top, apparently, and slid down. The bullet hadn’t hit me, the fall didn’t break any bones. It was the sapping that caused the pain, and that was enough. I ached all over.
I lay there, moving my hand over my limbs and torso. I stretched my legs, sat up, steadied myself against a long moment of dizziness, and then I listened.
No sound. Nothing to hear. And nothing to see, either, in the dark. I gazed up at the rim of the dune, towards the sky beyond. The first star was still twinkling.
Damn you, I thought, I’ll never wish on you again.
I wondered about my little playmates. Were they still looking for me in the dark? Well, I could join the game. Hide-and-seek didn’t exactly appeal to me at the moment, but I knew I’d better play along.
The dune was high. I started to stand up, then decided it would be more comfortable to crawl. I inched forward, upward, until I clung to the dune’s lip, peering over towards the derrick.
By this time my eye was adapted to the light, or the lack of it. I gazed at the ground, looking for Fritz. He was gone. And the small man wasn’t there, either.
More important, and more convincing to me, was the realization that my car was gone, too.
Of course, they might be waiting down the road. But I’d have to chance it.
I stood up, took a deep breath. My ribs protested, but my lungs enjoyed it, so I took another. And another. Gradually my head cleared. I found I could walk.
Making my way into the shadow of the derrick, I examined the sand. Plenty of footprints, and the imprint of Fritz’s body, plus my own. And the car tracks, two sets of them. They’d turned and gone out the same way; there was no other choice.
I followed the tracks, moving slowly and cautiously. I wound my way along until I could see the road. It was clear. Then I started walking. It seemed like forever before I hit the highway. It seemed like forever before I thumbed a ride. I guess nobody was interested in picking up a bleeding stranger with an eye-patch who stood on the highway in the middle of the night. Nobody except an ambulance driver.
But as luck would have it, I got the next best thing. The car that finally halted contained a Dr. Engebrusher, of Santa Monica. He took an immediate professional interest in me. I regaled him with the story of my mysterious assailants as we drove to his home.
Once there, he patched me up. I don’t know if he believed me at first, but he patched me up. And when I asked to use his phone, I guess he realized my story was straight. He listened while I dialed the L.A. police and reported that my car was missing. Then I told them about the assault. They were very courteous; told me to stay right where I was until they signaled a squad car to pick me up and bring me in.
I asked for Thompson, then. My luck was holding. He was on duty, late as it was.
“Hello, this is Mark Clayburn. I just gave your people a report. Want to hear it?”
His groan was audible over the phone. “Now what?” he said.
I told him what it was now. All of it. All of it except why. That I had to change to protect Bannock. I made the reason appear to be that they were trying to find out what I knew about the deaths. Which, in a way, was still true enough. Then I described my playmates, in rich and, I fear, somewhat profane detail.
“Recognize the little guy?” I asked. “Sound like Dean, by any chance?”
“A little. In fact, more than a little. But it wasn’t,” Thompson answered.
“Why do you say that?”
“According to your story, you were picked up around four or four-thirty, right?”
“Right.”