Bullets of Rain (22 page)

    It was logical, in a skewed, Bizarro-World way. Art had protected himself with dead bolts, alarms, shutters, fail-safe systems, armament, supplies, and a floor plan intended to defy the fury outside. He was inside, not coming out. Anything that happened had to come to him. At first crash, his assumption was that the northeast corner of the house had collapsed due to the storm, but standing in the kitchen, the garage a single secure door away, above and past the hellish buffet of wind and bulleting rain, he could hear a big-block car engine strain to reach high revs, then die all at once.

    Art had bypassed the house's few security cameras to save the batteries, and the little screen matrix for observing zones in sequence was powered down anyway. Screw it; he had a backup-a wide-angle peephole port in the garage door. The glare of the lights in there was harsh, and something black and hugely indistinct was shoved near enough to the obverse of the door to cause a large cataract of black on the lower left of the field. Art could perceive everything else with clarity.

    The prow of a large black car was jutting through the lower right side of the garage door. The strutted metal of the door was peeled back like foil. Miraculously, the heavy-duty door track and horizontally shot bolts had withstood getting rammed; Art guessed an impact speed of twenty-five miles an hour, practically pokey. Factoring in a stranger not used to the convolutions of the drive, the slick surface, and the current conditions, twenty-five per was probably about the best that could be mustered. Automobile industry impact tests were carried out at that speed. Baby seats and airbags and seat mounts were approved for hitting cinderblock walls at that speed. The velocity had been good enough to punch a corner out of the garage door and rear-end the Jeep, shoving it diagonally to scrape the Jag's dusty finish, jostling the fancier car into the mobile tool rack, scattering the tools, its right headlamp denting the doors for the generator mount. The panoramic peephole view was partially blocked by the broadside of the Jeep. When Art squinted to figure out what was what, he saw the pilot-side door of the intruder car open. A large man rose from the car. The door was so long that it chocked with a squeal against the garage frame and the man was forced to step over it. The window had burst from the collision and pieces of it glittered like quartz in the hot light from the floods. The man had a baseball bat.

    No worries, as Art had said once or twice before. The house door had a cross-braced aluminum core, like a webwork of little girders, and the hinges were on the inside of the sandwich. The frame into which it was mounted was completely unbreachable. The only way anything was coming through that door would be if Art opened it. The instant he saw the ballbat, and perceived the intended threat, Art opened the garage door.

    Because: He was calm. The person who had just landed was not. He was seething with violent intent and brandishing a club, ready to yell and bash. Art already had a gun in his hand, feeling that if this was more blowback from Price's party, what was about to happen lacked even the thrill of a new experience. He could clip this one if he misbehaved. Art opened the door because he was utterly, almost uncannily at ease with whatever the storm decided to toss at him today. He wanted to unplug the Little Leaguer in the garage before the guy realized there were useful tools sitting right in front of him, or perhaps damaged the generator with his Louisville Slugger. He was similarly expecting to power his way into the house. Art had surprise and distance to his advantage. Reach out and touch someone, hard enough to knock them down. That's what guns were for. That's what he had always been told.

    He didn't say a word. Banging back was sufficient to catch the attention of the intruder. The large man in the water-speckled leather jacket cut loose a long, vowel-rich howl and tried to charge with the bat, but the Jeep blocked his trajectory. Art sniffed, and squeezed off rock steady. The hardball round caught the man in the right biceps and spun him as if he'd run full speed into a fence post. He dropped the bat and jackknifed across the hood of his own car.

    He slid, then stuck halfway to the floor, dangling. As Art picked his way across the garage, he could hear the man making tiny gasping noises, hyperventilating.

    There-Art had just shot another human being with a gun. Rubicon crossed. Lorelle's arguments decomposed to hash. The difference between talking and doing, demonstrated. A threat handily abated. No need for a pump-up of anger, a trade of insults, or a stairstep series of escalating warnings. Just open the door and shoot the guy.
Hello? Bang.
Done deal. At last.

    Art's heart was thudding triple time and his neck felt hot and prickly. His hands were sweating.

    The car was the black Buick Riviera Art had noticed parked at Price's. The driver was Bryan, the Bry-Guy. A nasty triangular curl of sundered metal from the garage door had impaled one of his sculpted pecs, and he hung bleeding like a hooked fish. The gunshot had caused plaster dust to sift down from the ceiling. There was no need for another round; Bryan 's hitting arm was thoroughly wrecked.

    As unexpectedly as love at first sight, Art's anger grew a full hard-on. "You dumb piece of shit," he said, grabbing Bryan 's good arm to flip him over. The spear of metal ripped free and Bryan howled again, this time for real, as his prospects turned to cowflop and he fell, gracelessly, onto his face.

    "Suhn… of a… bitch…"

    Kick him in the stomach to shut him up, Art's feverish new attitude suggested. That worked pretty well, too.

    Bryan woofed and curled, trying to go down fighting, failing.

    What was with this egregious, machismo programming? This strut and preen, these bad-motherfucker muscles and hairy-armpit jerkoff had been obsolete a thousand years ago, and counted for nothing when one was beaten without a fight.

    Helpless before Art was a caricature of every cliched masculine trait he loathed. Bryan attempted to hoist himself using his left arm. Art pegged him in the ribs with another kick and dumped him onto his back. Bryan tried to contract, then swooned.

    This felt sort of… good.

    When Bryan 's pain yoked him back to consciousness, his head dipped as though he was fighting off a serious nod. He gradually registered the duct tape securing his wrists to a bolt-anchored rack. When he perceived the plastic sheeting spread around and beneath him, panic zipped to and fro in his eyes, and Art was glad to see it.

    "Pretty embarrassing, isn't it, tough guy?"

    There was blood on Bryan 's mouth, from where he'd bitten through his tongue. "My arm," he managed, through clenched teeth.

    "What about my garage?" said Art, leaning in, placing the muzzle of the Heckler-Koch between Bryan 's eyebrows. "You know what a rolling door like that coats? No, of course you wouldn't. You ever have to pay for anything, you fucking imbecile?"

    During Bryan 's unscheduled nap, Art had backed out the Buick and whanged the garage door with a rubber mallet until the lower bolt could be roughhoused into the slot. If the bolt was drawn, the door edge would explode loose like a catapult. The car was crippled, the radiator trash-compacted into the engine and frothing coolant; after wheezing six feet in reverse, the motor shuddered, died, and would not restart. Then, methodically, Art had returned to the house, reloaded his gun to full capacity with 124-grain Federal Hydra-Shok hollow points, trussed Bry-Guy to the rack, finished his sandwich, calmed Blitz down, and donned a fur-ridged weatherproof parka.

    "Please,'' said Bryan. His teeth were starting to chatter.

    In Bryan 's pocket Art had found a fang-bladed Kaiser lock-back knife with a serrated tip, which he used to slice away Bryan 's jacket, making sure the Bry-Guy could see and recognize it, as it calved thousands of dollars' worth of buttery leather with razor-blade ease. Sure enough, Bryan had one of those idiotic barbed-wire tattoos around his right biceps. The rattlesnake in Art's chest was fully awake now, hot-eyed, pissed off and buzzing. He pegged Bryan 's skull with the gun, mostly because of the tattoo. The bullet puncture was still exsanguinating freely. Bryan could not see most of the damage, but if he lived, his arm would be useless for half a year from bone frags and trauma. Gore slicked his bare shoulder and glued flat leather to his back. The corrugated lip of the garage door had sliced a diagonal flap from his chest, straight through one nipple. Art assessed the wounds, then stepped back and laughed. "Wow-get a load of you."

    "Cold." Worse, when you were splayed out cruciform, with no way to hug yourself.

    "Sure is. Guess you better start talking, to stay warm.''

    "I can't-breathe-'' His movements were weak and vague. Frigid blades of air sneaked past the rents in the door in regular gusts. Bryan felt every degree. For every breath he gulped, vapor twinned from his nostrils and was snatched away by the moving air.

    "I got a blowtorch over there that'll heat your sorry ass up doublequick if you don't stop whining."

    "What… do you want me to…?''

    Art backhanded him, whiplashing his neck and bringing new blood from his tongue. "Don't waste my time, fuckstick. You came over here in a goddamned hurricane just to drive your car through my house. Am I wearing a fucking Pirates uniform? You think I was gonna pitch you a few lowballs, easy hitters?" He picked up the - unused baseball bat. "This could come in very handy."

    Bryan said, "Suzanne."

    "Speak up, Bruno, I don't think I caught that."

    "You took her away…"

    It was too easy, too stupid, too reactionary, too goddamned male. Bryan had got all het up and thought all he needed to wield dominance were his car keys, a ballbat, an address, and his bulgy macho self.

    Bryan 's head clunked against the aluminum rail. Keeping it aloft was too draining. He was blacking out again.

    Art prodded him. "Where's Suzanne?"

    "Left her," Bryan croaked, his eyes indicating the garage door, meaning out there. Outside, somewhere. Probably dragged by the hair.

    Art still had other things that would be exciting to say. Things like:
Then you get to stay here and bleed. Or you're really too dumb to live, aren't you?
Instead, he checked the restraints, pocketed the single spent cartridge from the floor (always recycle your brass), then marched back to his kitchen for a beer, since it was getting a bit chilly in the garage.

    He chugged a Dixie Double Hex and fed Blitz the rest of the ham a chomp at a time while he sorted through the junk he had stripped from Bryan 's pockets. Besides the wicked knife, there was a slim wallet holding $1,500 in cash and a full house of platinum cards. His driver's-license photo resembled a Polaroid mug shot, the colors muddy, his eyes glinting like mineral chips. No business cards; Suzanne had said Bryan never did anything that could be mistaken for work. There was a flat plastic backup key for the Buick, and a couple of broker's cards bearing San Francisco contacts. Scrawled on the backs of these in various inks was an assortment of names and phone numbers-new women, dope dealers, opportunities for fun awaiting. His trousers-a twenty-nine-inch waist, Art noticed- yielded up a two-gram coke vial attached to a silver chain fob, and a Zippo lighter featuring an enameled red devil girl Art recognized as a Coop special. Bryan had left his own keys in the ignition of the Buick. A burnished pillbox held five or six of Price's special capsules in dividered grape felt. One of them had fallen apart, spattering the rest. It was a different mix; black particles to white in almost equal ratio.

    In the bedroom Art dug into the gun safe and wired a Shark shoulder holster around himself, for the pistol. He mufflered his face and found a pair of clear goggles, the kind of eye protection normally used for metalwork or sanding. With the parka and boots, he looked geared up for an arctic expedition. After cutting the power and putting the alarms on standby, he posted Blitz in the garage to stand watch over the unconscious Bry-Guy.

    "
Wenn er sich bewegt, machst du in kalt
," he said, liking the sound of that, wondering where he'd picked it up.
Kill him if he moves
.

    He popped one of Bryan 's black-and-white pill stash. If he was going to forge a one-man expedition into the storm, a "mild accelerator" was practically a must.

    

    

    Suzanne was probably dying of exposure, somewhere between his house and Price's.
Dumb bitch
. Art wasn't precisely sure where the urge to search for her came from. Rescue? He felt like yelling at her, maybe cuffing her face back and forth until some common sense dribbled into her brainpan. Payback? He wanted to countermand the image of himself as a talker. Time to get proactive.

    The parka increased his mass and gave the storm more to push against. Walking compelled him to incline sixty degrees versus resistance that felt corporeal, like giant hands that chased him in a circular pattern, trying to collect and lift him. Most of the shove was east to west. From the head of his driveway he could see the feebly glowing taillights of a car, and he worked his way north on the feeder road to marry up with it.

    It was a pathetic Volkswagen bug-the one he'd seen on the road yesterday-tipped onto its starboard side, its nose trenched into sand, the windscreen spiderwebbed by a huge sycamore limb that had seemingly dropped out of orbit. No occupants. Apparently some of Price's guests had gotten evacuation into their minds a tot late, and when the carapace of this vehicle proved inadequate, they'd bared themselves to the elements. Art could not make out any bodies in the immediate area; there was a good chance the Bug's passengers were huddled uphill, stuck to trees like slugs, praying to gods they didn't believe in, hoping nothing else fell on them as they froze to death.