Ellen was still in the door. Duran was on his feet now, saying something to her, but I couldn’t hear what. I said, “Only pussies kill seals and polar bears.”
The Eskimo smiled.
I threw an ashtray at him. It bounced off his arm.
He smiled some more.
I threw a Waterford lamp at him. He batted it aside.
There are any number of innovative ways to best an opponent. I simply had to think of one.
The Eskimo came for me. I faked to the outside, planted my left foot, and roundhouse kicked him in the face. His head snapped back and his nose burst into a red mist. He looked down at himself, then charged again. I dropped, spun, and kicked the outside of his knee. His leg buckled and he went down. I went in close, hitting his smashed nose with the heel of my hand and driving in behind it hard with my knees. His head rocked back and his eyes looked funny. I hit him with my left hand and lost a second knuckle. Bruce Lee could fight a thousand guys and not even split a fingernail. Karma. I saw Duran moving toward Ellen, walking across the room, the little sword in front of him.
“Ellen,” I said.
The Eskimo came up from underneath, locked his arms around my chest, and squeezed. It felt the way they describe a massive coronary: your lungs stop working, an elephant sits on your chest, and you know with absolute certainty that you are going to die.
Ellen stepped toward Duran and there was a loud BANG, louder than before because she was in the room now. Duran missed a step, then kept going, holding the sword straight out now and picking up speed.
I hammered down into the Eskimo’s face, hitting him on the top of the head and in the temples and in the eyes. He squeezed his eyes tight and hugged me closer. I felt something snap in my lower back. Short rib. What the hell, don’t need’m anyhow.
Ellen’s gun went off again. BANG.
I wanted to yell for her to get out of here, but knew if I gave up what breath I had I wouldn’t get any more. I stopped punching and tried to dig my thumbs into the Eskimo’s eyes, but he pressed his face into my chest. Everything in my peripheral vision began to grow fuzz. From out of another solar system I heard a gutty choonk-choonk-choonk, choonk-choonk. The HK. Pike. Not lucky for them, finding Pike. Ruin their whole day.
I reached above my head and brought my elbow down on the crown of the Eskimo’s head. A sharp pain lanced up my arm and another rib went, this one higher in my back.
Ellen’s gun sounded again BANG. Duran stopped and staggered sideways a step. Then he went on.
I brought my elbow down again, and this time the Eskimo sobbed. I did it again and his arms loosened. Whenever I hit him, something hot flashed in my elbow, letting me know the bone was broken. That didn’t seem to matter much. Not much mattered at all. Life’s priorities tend to shift when you’re in the process of dying.
I was seeing mostly gray shadows and squiggly bright things. I heard another BANG. That would be six. Ellen wouldn’t have any more. I hit the Eskimo again, and this time his arms released. I backed away, sucking air, each breath sending razors through my chest. The Eskimo tried to stand, pushing himself up onto one leg, then the other. He looked at me, swayed, and fell. Some tough sonofabitch.
Domingo Duran was on the floor at Ellen’s feet. She lowered the gun. Then she spit on him. She hadn’t moved, or flinched, or cowered. She hadn’t backed up.
I walked over to her, but it took a while. Not much was working right. I seemed to go sideways when I wanted to go straight, and I very badly wanted to throw up.
“Perry,” I said. “Perry.”
Then there was a lot of noise in the hall, and I dropped down to the rug, trying to find my pistol. I couldn’t and I started to cry. It had to be there somewhere. I had to find it because the game wasn’t over. It couldn’t be over until we had the boy, only the goons were coming and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to stop them.
Men with blue rain shells that said FBI or POLICE on the back came in with M-16s. O’Bannon was with them. He saw Ellen Lang, and then he saw me, and he said, “You sonofabitch.”
I remember smiling. Then I passed out.
38
For one of the few times in my life, I thought wouldn’t it be grand if I smoked. I was in the Hollywood Presbyterian Emergency Room watching the nurses, one nurse in particular, and waiting for my elbow cast to dry. They had the cast held away from my body by a little metal and plastic brace. A kid waiting to get his lip stitched asked me how I’d busted it, and I said fighting spies loud enough for my nurse to hear. All I needed now was a London Fog slung casually over my shoulders and a cigarette dangling from my lip, and she’d probably rape me.
Poitras came though a set of swinging doors, with O’Bannon playing shadow. Poitras was big and blank and carrying two Styrofoam cups of coffee. They looked like thimbles in his hands. O’Bannon looked like he’d bitten into a Quarter-pounder and found an ear. Everyone in the waiting room stared at Poitras. Even the doctors. What a specimen.
“My,” I said. “What a delightful surprise.”
Poitras held out one of the coffees. “Black, right?”
“Black.”
The doctor had put three layers of tape around my ribs, splinted my hand, and given me an analgesic, but it still hurt to reach for the coffee. Driving would be an adventure.
“How’s the kid?” I said.
They’d found him hidden away in a closet on the first floor. He was still blindfolded and didn’t know what was happening. “Okay,” Lou said. “Cleaned up his hand, gave him some shots. You know. His mom took him down to the cafeteria. He wanted a hamburger.”
One of Duran’s thugs had put an ice pick through the boy’s hand to make him scream. I didn’t know who. With any luck I’d killed him. “You talk to him yet?”
“Mm-hmm.” Lou said, “You left a lot of bodies back there, Ace. Sorta like Rambo Goes To Hollywood.”
I nodded.
“Between you and Pike and Mrs. Lang, if we include the one in Griffith park, looks to be eleven stiffs.”
“Me and Pike. Mrs. Lang had nothing to do with it.”
“Yeah.”
O’Bannon leaned toward me. His face was very tight and getting tighter. If it got much tighter his brain would probably pop out. He said, “Goddamn you, you ruined four months of undercover work, do you know that? We knew Gambino was setting up a move with Duran. We had his phone bugged, his bed bugged, his goddamned jock strap bugged. We ate, slept, and shit with that sonofabitch.”
“I can tell,” I said. “Try Lavoris.”
Poitras said, “They had the house across the street. You had two Feds watch you and Pike hop the fence, wondering what the hell was going on. They like to shit, you and Pike jogging down the road like a couple of National Guardsmen, Pike with that howitzer of his, paint all over his face.” Poitras looked at O’Bannon and made a hard, nasty grin. “Only no one could make a decision until the big boss got there. No one knew jack shit who was doing what since no one had been told anything.” O’Bannon chewed at his lip. Poitras finished, “They thought you guys might be cops, so they just sat on things until Mrs. Lang went in through the front gate. Then they hoofed it across the street.”
I nodded. Figured it had to be something like that. If Ellen had called the cops, blue suits and prowl cars would’ve come.
O’Bannon said, “We ran an efficient, tight, secure operation.”
“Swinging,” I said. The coffee felt gritty in my mouth, like it was mostly sediment. Maybe I should ask the nurse to have a look-see.
“Goddamnit,” O’Bannon said, “do you know how much this has cost the taxpayers?” Poitras said, “Shit.”
O’Bannon’s Stanford Law/three-sets-before-breakfast tan was a nice mottled color. He said, “We were finally going to nail Gambino and Duran both. They were making a major cocaine buy together. We had them, and you fucked it up, Cole. You were ordered to stay away from this and you didn’t. Your goddamned license is mine. ”