"In a minute," Toby said. "Let go of him, John."
John did as he was told. Moving like a zombie, he took two or three steps back and then sat down. He was covered in blood from shoulders to waist.
Tiny raised both hands to his throat and sank to his knees. He managed somehow to get his eyes open and looked up at Toby.
"You're right," Toby said with his biggest, broadest grin. "She did love you." Then he pulled the trigger.
A red hibiscus blossomed in the dead-white center of Tiny's chest. He looked down at it as though astonished, lifted his gaze to Toby, and fell.
Toby looked at him, fascinated. The grin had frozen on his face, and his nostrils flared as if he were sniffing the moment. He exhaled slowly, closing his eyes, like a man who had just put down something heavy. Then he turned to me. He held out the gun. "Now you can have it," he said.
"No, Toby," I said. "It's your trophy. You keep it. You've earned it. Hasn't he, Dolly?"
Toby glanced over at Dolly, and I took one step and blindsided him backhand with both fists, fingers laced together. The shock of the impact traveled all the way up my arms to my shoulders. Toby went down, and I put a foot on his throat. He made a strangled sound and tried to bring the pistol up at me.
"This is where we began," I said. "The gun's empty, by the way." Then I stepped back and kicked him in the stomach, twice.
"That's for Amber and Saffron," I said. He curled into a ball, arms clutched over his midsection. I lifted my right leg and kicked his face. If his skull hadn't been attached to his neck, it would have been a field goal in any football stadium on earth. His head snapped back, an ear squeaking on the hardwood floor.
"That's for Nana," I said. "You want to take one, Dolly?"
Looking bewildered, Dolly extended her hands, palm up, and shook her head.
"Well," I said, "duty is duty. Someone's got to do it." I kicked Toby in the face again. "That's probably for Tiny. And this one"-I kicked him one more time-"this one is for Jack, you asshole. For sending him in first." I started to walk away, toward the telephone, but something red and hot came over me. "One more for me," I said in a voice I didn't even recognize, turning back.
"No, Simeon," Dolly squealed. "You'll kill him!"
I looked down at him. Red bubbled in the corners of his mouth, but he was still conscious. "How I wish," I said. "Oh, how I wish. This protozoan, this virus. How I wish it were that easy to kill him."
Dolly was looking at me as if I were the Loch Ness monster come ashore. "Right," I said, fighting for control. "The telephone." I picked it up and started to dial.
"If you want to finish him while I'm busy, I won't tell," I said. Dolly knelt down beside Toby and put her hand under his head to cradle it. Hero worship dies hard.
"Too bad we're out of bullets," I said.
My first call was for an ambulance for Nana and John. Tiny didn't need an ambulance. The second call was to the police.
"I'm calling from Toby Vane's house in Encinal Canyon," I said, hating every syllable. "I want to report a shooting. Please come quickly."
After we'd finished with the details, I called Dixie. His voice was thick with sleep. "Get up," I said. "You know where Toby lives?"
"Sure," Dixie said. "What's going on?"
"Toby just shot the guy who's been killing these women," I said. "We've got at least one dead body. Get your ass over here and make your boy into a hero."
I dropped the phone onto the floor and went into the kitchen to hold Nana until they came.
22
"That's an extra five thousand," Norman Stillman said with a generous smile, dropping a check onto his immaculate desk and looking as jaunty as ever. His blazer looked like the winning entry in the national dry cleaner's playoffs.
"What's it for?" I asked. Dixie hovered in the background, looking vaguely embarrassed.
"A little bonus. Value given for value received. Toby's price, I mean High Velocity's price, went up yesterday, thanks largely to you. And they bought it without a murmur, didn't they, Dixie?"
"Everybody wants the hero's show," Dixie said, sounding as though he were choking on his heart.
I picked up the check and looked at it. Then I dropped it back onto the desk.
"I'll need more," I said. "Eight thousand more."
Stillman's smile got a lot more muscular. "What does that mean?"
"It means the girl's hospital bills are almost eight thousand. And that's just for emergency care."
Stillman gave me an elaborate shrug. "Oh, well," he said, "you can't expect me. ."
I looked at Dixie. "I can't?" I said.
Dixie met Stillman's gaze. "Under the circumstances," he said. He still had an obstruction in his throat.
Stillman pursed his lips. It made him look like a little old lady. "Seems pretty stiff," he said.
Neither Dixie nor I said anything, although Dixie swallowed twice.
"Still," Stillman said unconvincingly, "if it's the right thing to do." Then, slowly enough to preserve his dignity, he slid open the drawer in front of him and pulled out his gold Mont Blanc pen and a checkbook. He filled in a check and tore it loose. "I do this out of the goodness of my heart, not because of any threat," he said. Placing a hand protectively over the check, he pulled a sheet of typewritten paper out of the drawer and slid it over the polished wood toward me. "Just sign this," he said. "It's only a formality."
"What kind of formality?"
"Nothing," he and Dixie said at the same time. Stillman gave Dixie a glare, and Dixie subsided. Whatever resentment had flared inside him seemed to have burned itself out, probably smothered by the damp mass of his paycheck. Stillman provided an unnecessary coup de grace in the form of a barely audible sniff.
"As I was saying," he continued. "It's nothing. It's like a contract, I suppose. Nothing you wouldn't do anyway. You're a man of honor, we all know that. You wouldn't violate it even if you didn't sign it." He gave me the smile again.
I gave it back. "Then why sign it?" I said.
"For peace of mind."
"Whose?"
"Everyone's. It's just a promise that you won't tell anyone what really happened." He spread his polished hands in a gesture of pure reason.
"For how long?"
"Forever," he said in a firmer tone. "For always."
"Or what?" I'd stopped smiling.
Stillman leaned forward and crossed his hands. "Or it gets sent to the cops," he said. "It's. ." He leaned back ruminatively. "It's an account of the facts in the case. What really happened in the last week or so. Nothing that isn't true. I'm sure you won't object to signing it."
"If it became public," I said, "I'd lose my license."
"Faster than instant coffee dissolves," Stillman agreed. "Still. ." He picked up the check and gave it a little wave.
I pulled the document closer to me and looked at it. "It's all true?" I said.
He nodded.
"And all I have to do is sign it and I get the thirteen thousand?"
Stillman put the check down again and said, "Yes."
"Dixie," I said, "have you read this?"
"Sure," he said. "Sure I have. I wrote it, with some help from the lawyers."
"Everything in it is true? I mean, man to man, it's all accurate?"
"Truer than the history books," Stillman said.
I looked at the piece of paper again. The language was direct enough. The facts seemed straight. I put out a hand.
After a momentary hesitation, Stillman handed me the Mont Blanc.
"I'm just a country boy," I said. "I sure hope I'm doing the right thing."
I snapped the Mont Blanc in two. Stillman gasped, and ink flooded over my hands and the desk.
"Gosh, I'm sorry," I said. I picked up the contract and wiped my hands with it. Then I used it to wipe up the pool of ink on the desk, crumpled the blackened paper into a ball, and flipped it at Stillman. It caught him right on his embroidered anchor and bounced into his lap. He looked at me, his face dark and still.