Colin had brought home a helium balloon with a ribbon to hold on to for Deborah’s third birthday. She’d liked it. Playboy thought it was the greatest cat toy in the history of cat toys. He launched himself through the air time after time at the ribbon while the balloon bounced against the ceiling. He sprang up onto the backs of chairs and the couch so he could bat at the ribbon and try to get it into his mouth. He even jumped onto the dining-room table, where he was totally not allowed. He knew going up there was a laundry-room offense. He knew, but he didn’t care. In his small, fuzzy brain, the quarry was worth the punishment.
“You’ve turned our cat into a criminal,” Kelly told Colin. She was only half kidding.
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” Colin had sounded bemused.
Two or three times since then, though, he’d come home with more helium balloons to give Playboy something to do. Kelly’d bought him one or two herself. Playboy never got bored with them. And sometimes the great hunting beast would triumph. He’d snag the ribbon and scarf down a few inches before his people could take it away from him. Then it would reappear in one less attractive setting or another.
“Hey, when you’ve had your balls chopped off, you’ve got to make your own fun however you can,” Colin said.
“I guess,” Kelly said. “I just don’t see why he thinks it is so much fun.”
“Maybe he thinks they look like mouse tails or something,” Colin said, which seemed sensible even if Kelly didn’t know whether it was true. Most of the things Colin said seemed sensible. That made his deadpan jabs at the way things were all the more dangerous.
Which was what Kelly was thinking this morning when she heard a car out in the street. That didn’t happen every day any more. She looked up in surprise. It stopped somewhere close by. Two doors slammed. Footsteps came up the walk.
She went to the door. Looking out through the little panes of glass set into the wood, she saw two uniformed cops approaching and a San Atanasio PD black-and-white at the curb. “What’s up?” she asked as she opened the door.
“Mrs. Ferguson?” one of them said somberly.
Her world swayed. “Colin,” she got out. “Is he all right?”
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid not. I’m sorry, but you better come with us.”
XVIII
Willie Sutton used to say he robbed banks because banks were where the money was. Colin doubted one modern robber in a thousand had heard of Willie Sutton. Whether the crooks had heard of him or not, the principle remained the same. This was the first time the check-cashing place on Sword Beach had been knocked over… this month.
It was a nice day for riding a bike, anyhow. It was in the mid-fifties, with a few clouds but nothing that looked like rain. When not behind one of the clouds, the sun shone as bright as it ever did since the eruption.
Gabe Sanchez used the trip over as a chance to get his nicotine fix. As he and Colin turned right from Hesperus onto Oceanic, he lit a fresh cigarette and said, “I met a gal.”
“Cool,” Colin said. Gabe had met a fair number of gals since his marriage exploded. He hadn’t stayed with any of them long. He sounded a little different this time, though, so Colin asked, “Who is she? What’s she like? What’s she do?”
“Her name’s Ruby, Ruby Crawford. She’s black, but maybe half a shade darker’n I am. She’s, like, I dunno, somewhere between forty and forty-five—got a teenage daughter. Sergeant in the Hawthorne PD. I like her, y’know? Haven’t said that about a woman in I don’t know how long.”
“Cool,” Colin said again, this time in a different tone of voice. Cops often hung out with other cops. Who else was likelier to understand the crap they went through? Another thought crossed his mind: “Does she smoke, too?”
Gabe laughed. “Bet your sweet ass, Charlie. Yeah, we’re both junkies, all right. Her kid thinks it’s gross—can’t wait to go off to college and stay in a smoke-free dorm. Then she’ll light up the other shit instead. You wait and see.”
“Ha! Mine sure did.” Colin mimed toking. A little old Asian man in a floppy hat was trimming roses in his front-yard flowerbed. He waved to the cops as they went by. Colin waved back. He came this way fairly often. The old man probably knew he and Gabe belonged to the police.
They swung left from Oceanic onto Sword Beach. Colin pedaled harder. Smoker or not, Gabe stayed with him. The check-cashing place was about halfway from Oceanic to Braxton Bragg Boulevard. A black-and-white motorcycle and a bicycle with police lights were out in front of it.
A swarthy man had come out from behind his fortifications to talk with the uniformed cops. He gave his name as Farid Hariri. When Colin asked him why he hadn’t trusted to the metal and bulletproof glass, he answered, “Because the asshole had an AK-47. This stuff is supposed to be okay against pistol rounds, but not against military ammo.”
“You recognize an AK, do you?” Gabe asked.
“I used to carry one in Lebanon,” Hariri said. “I haven’t touched one for twenty-five years, but I could field-strip it in my sleep.”
“Okay. You know one when you see one,” Colin said. He thought of Bronislav Nedic. How many men who’d fought in far-off wars were making honest or even not-too-honest livings in America these days? He’d have to wonder about that some other time. For now, he asked, “How about describing the crook?”
“Mexican. Maybe twenty or twenty-five. Medium size, medium build. Shaved head. Hoodie. Jeans. Nikes. I didn’t see no tats.”
“Doesn’t narrow it down a whole lot,” Colin said, suppressing a sigh. There were a hell of a lot of tough Hispanic kids in and around San Atanasio. “What did he get away on?”
“He ran,” Farid Hariri said.
That was, or could be, a break. A guy running with an assault rifle and a sack of cash wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. But, with the power down, even somebody who wanted to call the police might not be able to. How had cops nabbed perps back in the days before telephones?
Colin and Gabe had their two-way radios to cope with times like this. So did the uniformed officers. One of theirs squeaked for attention. “Markowitz,” he said into it, then held it to his ear to listen. A moment later, he went, “Roger. Out,” and turned to his superiors. “Maybe we got lucky. A citizen flagged down one of our guys on bike patrol. Sounds like the perp’s holed up in a house on 146th, maybe a block east of Sword Beach.”
That wasn’t far away at all. Well, it wouldn’t be, not if the robber was on foot. “Let’s go get him,” Colin said. Out the door they went. Markowitz jumped on the motorcycle and roared away. The other uniformed cop and Colin and Gabe followed more sedately on their bicycles.
Colin had time to remember that he wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest. Neither was Gabe. They hadn’t figured they’d need to worry about it. The .38 in his shoulder holster didn’t seem like much when set against one of Sergeant Kalashnikov’s finest, either. Well, if they could establish a perimeter and make sure the bastard didn’t get away, that would do till the SWAT team showed up.
Gabe was smoking like a furnace. Colin wouldn’t have minded something to ease his nerves just now. From what he’d heard in the Navy, there was nothing like combat for turning abstainers into two-pack-a-day guys. He hadn’t understood that back then. Right this second, he thought he did.