The Bum's Rush (27 page)

"Oh God," she groaned. "I'm sick in the morning anyway. Oh God."

Miss Goza continued her devotional services as I
ran flat out up to Fiftieth and then cut east toward Duvall's place in
Ravenna, avoiding the University Village traffic knot, running behind
fraternity row, dropping down the hill onto Twenty-second Avenue,
remembering what Rebecca had said about construction in her
neighborhood and staying on the arterials.

I took Fifty-fifth all the way to the top of the
hill and turned left and then left again toward Thirty-fourth Avenue. I
slid to a stop. Goza had stopped groaning and sat white faced,
breathing deeply.

Selena Dunlap, sleeping bag hanging from her
shoulder, was striding north down Thirty-fourth Street beneath the arch
of bare trees, away from the city. Her loose-jointed stagger suggested
that Duvall would be well advised to check the perfume supply. Rebecca
was half a biock behind, wearing her black spandex biking outfit, her
cellular phone dangling from her wrist as she walked along. I got out
and stepped up onto the sidewalk in Selena's path.

"Get the hell out of my way!" she shouted. "I've had all a you I can stand. You just stay the hell away from me."

The area adjacent to her left eye was puffy and
beginning to turn purple. She was going to have a hell of a shiner. I
opened my mouth.

As if to answer, she spun on her heel, dropped the
sleeping bag, and shook a fist at Rebecca. "I told you to stop
followin' me," she said.

Duvall had a scrape on her chin and the beginnings of a minor mouse on her cheek. She gave me a sheepish look.

"You ought to see the other guy," she said.

I said I figured I had, stepped around Selena, and inserted myself between the women.

Selena poked me in the chest. "You just don't get
it, do you? I'm outta here. You got that? Got some friends hitching
down to the Bay Area. I'm goin' with 'em. You wanna play your little
games, you do it without me." She turned to leave.

"You want a bunch of strangers to end up with his money?"

She closed the distance between us. "I don't want
nothin' from that boy, you hear me? It's me shoulda had things to give
him, not the other way 'round. Only thing he ever got from me was the
thing that killed 'im. All I ever gave him was the get-high monster.
It's hereditary, you know. He'da never been an addict--"

"Lukkas did not get high." Beth was emphatic,
standing at the curb holding the little jacket around her. "Get a life.
An addict. Duuh."

Selena squinted down at her. "And what in hell is this?" she demanded of me.

"Her name is Beth Goza."

"Well, Miss Beth Goza, let me tell you somethin'.
What you oughta be doin' instead of standin' out here in the street,
pokin' your nose into where it don't belong, is to be lookin' high and
low for your hairdresser so's you can kick her ass. Whoever it was give
you that rinse surely deserves a whippin', I can tell ya that. Ain't
nothin' on God's green earth got hair that color 'ceptin' one of them dumb-ass troll dolls."

Goza looked my way. "What did she say?"

"And what's all that metal shit you got hangin' offa you, girl? Kerrrist, you look like a walkin' junkyard."

The girl opened her mouth, but Selena stayed at it.
"And one more thing, while I'm at it, just so's we understand each
other. You make that duuuuh noise at me again, and you're gonna have
trouble breakin' up the lumps in the stew, if you catch my drift."

With that, she pushed me aside and began weaving up the street. I followed, yapping at her heels like a terrier.

"Anybody ever tell you, you're pretty damn
judgmental for a woman who once left town on the back of a Harley
behind a guy with MOM tattooed across his forehead," I said.

She slowed and then stopped altogether. "Rufus," she said. "For crimeny sakes, how do you know about Rufus?"

I told her about old Clark Bastyens's story.

"Busybody," was her only comment before she once
again swayed up the street. I stayed with her. "There's more involved
here than just you."

"Not for me, there ain't," she countered.

"I think that girl's pregnant with Lukkas's baby."

Again she stopped. This time she turned back my
way. "Well, we ain't never gonna know now, are we? The boy's dead. He
ain't here to speak for himself, now is he?" She dismissed me with a
wave. "Hell, that's something a live man can't hardly be sure of. The
dead, hell man, they got no chance, they're just dead." She started to
leave.

"It's easy enough to find out," I said.

"Yeah, and how's that? All we got's"--she pointed back at Beth--"that thing's word."

"Oh, no. We've got a whole lot more than that."

"Like what?"

"We've got the woman who claims to be the mother. And we got '' I searched for a word. I settled for "samples from Lukkas."

For the first time, she seemed to pay attention.
"What did you say? You say they got parts of the boy, like, stored away
someplace?"

I went for the throat. "A bunch," I said. "They've even got the plate they took from his arm."

She started to speak but instead seemed to fall
inward. I kept at it. "A sample from the girl and a sample from Lukkas,
and we can tell for sure. No doubt about it."

"They can do that?" 1

"Easy," I said. "DNA testing."

"They got that thing from his arm, eh?"

"In a little glass jar," I added.

I thought I detected a slight sag in her shoulders
as she walked over and put the nearest oak between us, leaning back
into the thick gray bark. I moved forward. She cast me a sidelong
glance. "Jesus, bird dog," she said after a minute, "you could fuck up
just about anything, now, couldn't ya?"

"Just can't stay away from those porcupines."

"Think you'da learned to run like hell by now."

"You would be the world's foremost expert on running from it, now, wouldn't you?" I said.

She bounced off the tree. "You listen here, you " -m

I straight-armed her back against the tree. "She's
right, you know. Lukkas didn't take drugs. Didn't drink either. Not
even the people who assumed that his behavior must have been caused by
drugs can say they ever personally saw him take anything. They just
assumed."

Duvall from behind me. "Leo," she said urgently.

She stared out over my shoulder. I turned around.
Selena craned her neck in that direction. The back third of a gray van
slid slowly from view behind the corner house.

"That the one been tryin' to clean your clock?" Selena asked.

I made it a point not to look that way. "Yup."

I kept my eyes on Selena's. "We need to get you and Rebecca and the girl out of here," I said.

"I can take care of myself." A wry smile touched
her lips. "And your lady friend there ain't no shrinkin' violet
neither," she said, gingerly fingering her swollen eye.

"The girl couldn't find her butt in the dark," I said.

Selena bobbed herlieavy eyebrows. "Why ain't I surprised?"

"Must be 'cause you're such a fine judge of character."

"It's back," Selena said without moving her lips. "I can just see some of the front end stickin' out. He's turned it around."

"What say we head back the way we came?" I suggested.

She didn't argue. Selena retrieved the sleeping bag as we turned our backs on the van and started back down the uneven sidewalk.

I talked as I walked. "Rebecca. You take these two
back to the house. When you get there, call the cops. Stay on the
sidewalks and hustle your bustles."

Beth Goza began to object, but with Rebecca latched
onto one arm and Selena lifting her by the other, traction was at an
all-time low. Her booted feet barely touched the ground as she flew
openmouthed down the street as if swept along by the breeze.

Resisting the temptation to glance over my shoulder, I stepped off the curb and into the Fiat. Before
snapping the seat belt around me, I pulled the 9mm out from under my
coat, checked and rechecked the safety, and then set it on the
passenger seat. I pulled the door in and checked the mirror. The van
was now fully out from behind the house.

I pulled the door until it clicked and then backed
the Fiat into the street and began a slow K-turn maneuver, taking ;|
four tries to do what I could have done in two. By the time I got it
finished, the van was no longer in sight. I started back up
Thirty-fourth Street.

At the corner, I whipped the wheel hard to the
right and gave the little car everything she had. It wasn't nearly
enough. The roar of a big V-8 assaulted my ears. The van filled my
mirror. As I pulled the shift lever down into second, the van rammed me
from behind, sending the car into a series of small swerves. The van
hit me again before I could recover from the first. This time I could
feel the snapping of the plastic taillights as I nicked one of the cars
parked nose-to-tail along both sides of the streets. The wheel tried to
escape from my grip, but I muscled the Fiat back under control.
Redlined in second gear, I lifted my foot from the accelerator and
allowed the force of the screaming engine to slow the car enough for me
to slide left around the next intersection.

Unable to react in tune, the rocketing van slid
past the intersection, screeching to a halt on locked wheels, then
burned out backward and followed in my wake. I stayed off the
arterials, running in the neighborhood where the blocks were short and
the Fiat's cornering advantage could keep me away from my more powerful
adversary. By now Duvall had called the cops. In this neighborhood,
somebody on every street we went down was probably calling them too. It
was just a matter of time.

The van was twenty yards behind and closing fast
when I slid around Thirty-first Street and headed north again. Three
orange-and-white barricades stood like urban hurdles halfway down the
block. Two six-foot piles of light brown dirt bracketed the barricades
like bookends. Dig we must. Instinctively, I lifted my foot.
Immediately, the van filled my rear vision. I put my foot back down and
sprinted down the street. The van was so close that I could hear the
squealing fan belt over the roar of the engines.

As the front wheels of the Fiat rolled onto the
dirt left behind by the backhoe, I crimped the wheel all the way to the
left and stood on the brakes. The residual soil allowed the little car
to slide effortlessly around to the left until I was facing directly
toward the hurtling van. When I lifted my foot from the brakes, the car
continued left, off the roadway, slamming into the pile of dirt
collected by the curb. The Fiat embedded itself in the fine loam like a
horseshoe buried in a much-used pit. Dirt and fine pieces of stone
showered over the hood as the van slid by, locked wheels tractionless
on the slippery dirt.

From the side of the rear window that wasn't
covered with dirt, I watched as the skidding vehicle scattered the puny
barricades like tenpins, crushing the center one beneath the frame,
sending the other two flying toward the gutters.

The front of the van slammed into the far side of
the ditch, centering just below the Chevy emblem, smashing hard enough
to shake the ground beneath the car like a minor earthquake. The
driver's foot still held the pedal to the metal. The engine, locked in
some lower gear, screamed in protest. The rear wheels, in the air now,
whined around at preposterous rpms. I sat and waited either for the
van's door to open or for the engine to succumb to the abuse. No such luck.

I grabbed the 9mm from the floor where it had
fallen and stepped out into the street. The noise was horrendous. I
flicked the safety off.

A loud, electronically amplified voice boomed from behind me.

"Put the gun down. Put the gun down and put your
hands behind your head. Now!" it screamed. Two SPD blue-and-whites
blocked the street behind me, their doors thrown open, their uniformed
passengers spread out, using cars for cover.

I held both hands above my head, making damn sure to move slowly. ;

"Squat down. Put the gun in the street."

I did it.

"Back up. Stand back up."

I complied.

"Turn around."

Smoke was beginning to come from the engine area. The rear wheels were slowing down.

"Put your hands behind your head and back up toward me."

At about my fourth backward step, a young Asian officer worked his way around the front and picked up my automatic.

"On your knees," the voice boomed.

"I have an ankle gun," I said to Officer Park.

"On your knees," the voice repeated. Like hell. I stood still.

Two pair of hands grabbed my forearms, bent me forward at the waist, and forced my hands behind my back.

As they applied the cuffs none too gently, Patrolman Park removed my ankle gun.

"I'm a private investigator," I said. "Both guns are licensed. Copies of my licenses are in the glove compartment."

From the far side of the trench, two burly
officers, vests worn over their uniforms, approached the van in combat
stances. Park leaned into the Fiat and began rummaging around in the
glove box.

One of my keepers, a thin African-American woman,
released my left elbow and began to approach from the rear. Gun drawn.
One slide step at a time. She put her back against the van and slid
slowly up to the driver's door. Her gold plastic tag read B. Ferguson.
The two cops on the opposite side of the ditch were aiming over the
tops of the piles of dirt, directly into both doors. The one on the
driver's side nodded.

Ferguson moved her revolver to her left hand and
used her right hand to push the button on the door handle. Without
warning, the door sprang open, bouncing on its hinges. A massive ball
of pink plopped down onto the pavement, slid feet-first over the edge,
and disappeared down into the trench.

Ferguson turned back this way. "Call for an ambulance."