He threw himself backward and down, twisting as he went, struck the floor too hard with his shoulder, gasped in pain, and rolled out of the dining area, out of the line of fire. He scrambled behind a chair in the living room and finally got his gun out of its holster.
Perhaps six or seven seconds had passed since Bobby had fired the first shot.
Someone was saying, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," in a quivering, high-pitched voice.
Suddenly, Tony realized he was listening to himself. He bit his lip and fought off an attack of hysteria.
He now knew what had been bothering him; he knew what they had overlooked. Bobby Valdez was selling PCP, and that should have told them something when they saw the state of the apartment. They should have remembered that pushers were sometimes stupid enough to use what they sold. PCP, also called angel dust, was an animal tranquilizer that had a fairly predictable effect upon horses and bulls. But when people took the stuff, their reactions ranged from placid trances to weird hallucinations to unexpected fits of rage and violence. As Eugene Tucker said, PCP was poison: it literally ate away at brain cells, rotted the mind. Supercharged on PCP, bursting with perverse energy, Bobby had smashed up his kitchen and had done all the other damage in the apartment. Pursued by fierce but imaginary crocodiles, desperately seeking refuge from their snapping jaws, he had squirmed into the cupboard under the sink and had pulled the doors shut. Tony hadn't thought to look in the cupboard because he hadn't realized they were stalking a raving lunatic. They had searched the apartment with caution, prepared for the moves that might be expected of a mentally-disturbed rapist and incidental killer, but unprepared for the bizarre actions of a gibbering madman. The mindless destruction evident in the kitchen and master bedroom, the apparently senseless writing on the walls, the disgusting mess in the bathroom--all of those were familiar indications of PCP-induced hysteria. Tony never served on the narcotics squad, but, nevertheless, he felt he should have recognized those signs. If he had interpreted them properly, he most likely would have checked under the sink, as well as anywhere else conceivably big enough for a man to hide, even if the quarters would be brutally uncomfortable; for it was not uncommon for a person on an extremely ugly PCP trip to surrender totally to his paranoia and try to hide from a hostile world, especially in cramped, dark, womblike places. But he and Frank misinterpreted the clues, and now they were up to their necks in trouble.
Frank had been shot twice. He was badly hurt. Maybe dying. Maybe dead.
No!
Tony tried to push that thought out of his mind as he cast about for a way to seize the initiative from Bobby.
In the kitchen Bobby began to scream in genuine terror. "Hay muchos cocodrilos!"
Tony translated: There are many crocodiles!
"Cocodrilos! Cocodrilos! Cocodrilos! Ah! Ah! Ahhhhh!"
His repeated cry of alarm swiftly degenerated into a wordless wail of agony.
He sounds as if he's really being eaten alive, Tony thought, shivering.
Still screaming, Bobby rushed out of the kitchen. He fired the .32 into the floor, apparently trying to kill one of the crocodiles.
Tony crouched behind the chair. He was afraid that, if he stood up and took aim, he would be cut down before he could pull the trigger.
Doing a frantic little jig, trying to keep his bare feet out of the mouths of the crocodiles, Bobby fired into the floor once, twice.
Six shots so far, Tony thought. Three in the kitchen, three here. How many in the clip? Eight? Maybe ten.
Bobby fired again, twice, three times. One of the bullets ricocheted off something.
Nine shots had been fired. One more to go.
"Cocodrilos!"
The tenth shot boomed deafeningly in the enclosed space, and again the bullet ricocheted with a sharp whistle.
Tony stood up from his hiding place. Bobby was less than ten feet away. Tony held the service revolver in both hands, the muzzle lined up on the naked man's hairless chest. "Okay, Bobby. Be cool. It's all over."
Bobby seemed surprised to see him. Clearly, he was so deeply into his PCP hallucinations that he didn't remember seeing Tony in the kitchen archway less than a minute ago.
"Crocodiles," Bobby said urgently, in English this time.
"There are no crocodiles," Tony said.
"Big ones."
"No. There aren't any crocodiles."
Bobby squealed and jumped and whirled and tried to shoot at the floor, but his pistol was empty.
"Bobby," Tony said.
Whimpering, Bobby turned and looked at him.
"Bobby, I want you to lay face-down on the floor."
"They'll get me," Bobby said. His eyes were bulging out of his head; the dark irises were rimmed with wide circles of white. He was trembling violently. "They'll eat me."
"Listen to me, Bobby. Listen carefully. There are no crocodiles. You're hallucinating them. It's all inside your head. You hear me?"
"They came out of the toilets," Bobby said shakily. "And out of the shower drains. And the sink drain, too. Oh, man, they're big. They're real big. And they're all trying to bite off my cock." His fear began to turn to anger; his pale face flushed, and his lips pulled back from his teeth in a wolflike snarl. "I won't let them. I won't let them bite off my cock. I'll kill all of them!"
Tony was frustrated by his inability to get through to Bobby, and his frustration was exacerbated by the knowledge that Frank might be bleeding to death, getting weaker by the second, in desperate need of immediate medical attention. Deciding to enter into Bobby's dark fantasy in order to control it, Tony spoke in a soft and reassuring voice: "Listen to me. All of those crocodiles have crawled back into the toilets and the drains. Didn't you see them going? Didn't you hear them sliding down the pipes and out of the building? They saw that we'd come to help you, and they knew they were outnumbered. Every one of them has gone away."
Bobby stared at him with glassy eyes that were less than human.
"They've all gone away," Tony said.
"Away?"
"None of them can hurt you now."
"Liar."
"No. I'm telling the truth. All of the crocodiles have gone down the--"
Bobby threw his empty pistol.
Tony ducked under it.
"You rotten cop son of a bitch."
"Hold it, Bobby."
Bobby started toward him.
Tony backstepped away from the naked man.
Bobby didn't walk around the chair. He angrily pushed it aside, knocked it over, even though it was quite heavy. Tony remembered that a man in an angel dust rage often exhibited superhuman strength. It was not uncommon for four or five burly policemen to have difficulty restraining one puny PCP junkie. There were several medical theories about the cause of this freakish increase in physical power, but no theory was of any help to an officer confronted by a raging man with the strength of five or six. Tony figured he probably wouldn't he able to subdue Bobby Valdez with anything less than the revolver, even though he was philosophically opposed to using that ultimate force.
"I'm gonna kill you," Bobby said. His hands were curled into claws. His face was bright red, and spittle formed at one corner of his mouth.
Tony put the big octagonal coffee table between them. "Stop right there, dammit!"
He didn't want to have to kill Bobby Valdez. In all his years with the LAPD, he had shot only three men in the line of duty, and on every occasion he had pulled the trigger strictly in self-defense. None of those three men had died.
Bobby started around the coffee table.
Tony circled away from him.
"Now, I'm the crocodile," Bobby said, grinning.
"Don't make me hurt you."
Bobby stopped and grabbed hold of the coffee table and tipped it up, over, out of the way, and Tony backed into a wall, and Bobby rushed him, shouting something unintelligible, and Tony pulled the trigger, and the bullet tore through Bobby's left shoulder, spinning him around, driving him to his knees, but incredibly, he got up again, his left arm all bloody and hanging uselessly at his side, and, screaming in anger rather than agony, he ran to the fireplace and picked up a small brass shovel and threw it, and Tony ducked, and then suddenly Bobby was rushing at him with an iron poker raised high, and the damned thing caught Tony across the thigh, and he yelped as pain flashed up his hip and down his leg, but the blow wasn't hard enough to break bones, and he didn't collapse, but he did drop down as Bobby swung it again, at his head this time, with more power behind it this time, and Tony fired up into the naked man's chest, at close range, and Bobby was flung backwards with one last wild cry, and he crashed into a chair, then fell to the floor, gushing blood like a macabre fountain, twitched, gurgled, clawed at the shag carpet, bit his own wounded arm, and finally was perfectly still.