The Kill Riff (41 page)

    She backed off, lowering her eyes, hating herself for rolling into a surrender position so quickly. She had known physical power games for too long to permit herself anything but an instinctive survival response.

    He took that for an answer and stalked out of the bedroom. Wordlessly.

    Sertha felt weaker than ever. Her knees did not want to bend in the correct directions. A nasty, ice-pick headache made itself at home behind her left eye.

    She stared dully at the telephone. The light board was dead now, inactive.

    Enough time had passed that she would have to unearth her book and page up the number she knew she had to call.

    

    

    NO POLICE AWAITED THEM AT the Oildale airfield, but what eventually happened was not pretty.

    Stannard jumped from the Cessna before Horus wheeled it around to full stop. His blood sang with electricity as his white-gold hair flew in the backwash from the twin props. "No cops!" he shouted into the wind. "We caught 'em circle-jerkin!"

    Cannibal Rex refused to budge from the aircraft until it was stilled down to the engine vibrations. He climbed out with a large zippered nylon duffel slung over one shoulder. The finger-bone earring jogged spastically as he wrestled with the bag's weight. When both boots were solid on runway tarmac, he scanned the night and the tiny airstrip from within his murky wraparound shades. So what.

    Before them were two dilapidated hangars of rusty corrugated steel. Fastened to the side of one like a moray on a whale was a battered, single-wide mobile home-a sixteen-footer whose traveling days were long past. Inside it Stannard found a middle-aged fellow tucked into a greasy jumpsuit, feet propped on an old army-issue desk, attention funneled into a dogeared copy of Penthouse that was two years shy of current.

    Above the man's head was a mimeographed sign that read WE DON'T GIVE A DAMN HOW IT S DONE IN LOS ANGELES.

    Stannard knew he should play it broad, firm, and definite. "Hi there." He nailed the man with the intense, ice-blue gaze he kept powered up for the shutterbugs from Rolling Stone and thrust his open hand unavoidably forth. Hicks always thought you could take handshakes to the bank.

    George Kellander's wife, Margie-Marie, had always told him that he tried to do too many things at once. Right now George needed to get his big engineer boots down from the desk, finish dislodging a stray piece of ham from between his two front teeth, put Stacey Butterick (August's Penthouse Pet, a couple of birthdays removed) on hold, and deal with the stranger who'd barged into his little office. George was zipped inside of what Margie-Marie called his "overhaul overall." An oval name tag sewn to the breast declared him to be Georgie O.-O for Oswald, his middle name-in embroidered red script.

    He draped the Penthouse over the desk edge to hold his place. August indeed. He had no idea why those crazy-as-a-shitfly New York publishers dated magazines so far in advance. Some computer bullshit, most likely. His visitor looked like one of those windblown Hollywood faggots. Crazy as shitflies, everybody in Hollywood and New York. They didn't know squat about how the real world functioned. Probably because most of them were hustlers and queers and dope addicts, all hot for each other. You'd never see a sweet piece like Stacey Butterick walking the streets of Hollywood, no sir. The Penthouse copy said she was a small-town girl from

    Lebanon, Indiana, and why would they lie about something like that?

    Nevertheless, the stranger's hand was out, and George took it. The force of Stannard's grip reassured him a bit. George tried to be polite and surreptitiously wiped his hand on his overhaul overall. You never knew which one of these guys might be carrying AIDS around.

    The visitor's white-blond hair was wound into a bunch of tight little curls, the way the coons over in Ruckerville favored their hair. His clothes were pure faggot-jeans too close at the crotch, yellow cowboy boots, some kind of fruitcake black deerskin shirt that laced up the front. He was wearing an earring. That was a sure sign. But George had forgotten which ear meant AC and which DC. The earring was a tiny double-bladed axe in pewter. It hung upside down. George couldn't even guess what that might mean.

    But the guy obviously had muscles on his muscles. George knew that gayboys were into bodybuilding, and this guy was just too handsome. For somebody like this to come blowing in on the ass end of a storm might mean serious trouble, and a guy would have to be a little crazy to fly around in weather like this. Just what the hell did he want?

    Stannard cut loose a bright burst of smile and teeth. "Georgie, I got me a slight emergency here, and I think you might be able to help me out. I'm needing a car. I gotta get someplace in a hurry with no hasslements."

    That was Horus' entrance cue. The room seemed to shrink when it filled up with the big black man, and George's eyes hastily digested a flood of new input.

    Stannard then brought into play the only other thing hicks swore by-hard cash on the deck. He drew out his wad and began thumbing up Franklin notes. "Now, you wouldn't know where I maybe could rent transportation like that for, say, an hour or so?"

    George nervously considered the huge bald bodyguard with the ear studs, then the newly born fortune in Stannard's hand. It helped him keep his gaze off Stannard's bulging package-as George's old navy buddies designated it during jump practice from the high board. He didn't want this bend-over boy to get the idea he was interested or something else perverted.

    George forgot all about L.A. queers and perversion when Stannard slapped a thousand, bucks down on the desk next to Stacey Butterick's moment of glory.

    George only looked at the money once. He felt safer since this was a game he knew how to play. "Well now," he said, stroking his chin, pretending to think. "Well now. I just might be able to give you boys a hand at that. An emergency, you say?"

    "I gotta get my pal here to the doctor real fast."

    George glanced at Horus. He drew his clasp knife out and unhinged it to pick at his teeth, purely as an innocent gesture clarifying that there should be no funny business. "What's the matter with him?"

    "He's got a throat problem. Altitude makes him lose his voice. It's happened once before. Might be serious."

    Horus pointed to his neck, grimaced, and shrugged.

    "Well now. The only car I have here is my son's car. It's my only car on account of my truck is laid up with valve problems and won't be ready till Thursday. Now, I don't know if I could let you drive my boy's car, even if I was inclined to… uh, rent you it. It's his property, after all."

    Stannard peeled away another five hundred bucks as though the dirtier bills in the stack offended him. "Like I said, we're kind of in a hurry." Another smile. Wham!

    George's eyes were catching the light from the money more often. He narrowed them and tried for shrewdness. "You boys wouldn't be robbers, or wanted by the police, or something like that, now, would you?"

    "I've never been arrested in my life," said Stannard, giving George his press profile one more time. "Not even for jaywalking. And if we were bad guys… why, hell, we would have just coldcocked you and taken your son's car, instead of leaving your son an extra chunk for his kindness. And yours." He slid the wayward stack of bills closer to George, who suddenly needed to clear his throat.

    "Don't look like it could do any harm, at that." He was wrapped up in dreams of untaxable income that Margie-Marie would never have to know about, if he could get his boy Clyde on the phone quick enough. He could slide some cash to Clyde, and they could both prosper. The evening was beginning to look less rotten, despite the dog weather.

    On the other hand, if he said no, there might be guns and trouble and ugliness. George smacked his lips to clear away the taste of stale ham. "Er-could I have another one of them?" He indicated the stack of hundreds. "You know, for beer money?"

    "Sure thing, Georgie." Stannard's smile did not waver. "Keys first."

    George produced Clyde's keyring from a coverall pocket and tossed it. Stannard caught it one-handed and dropped an additional hundred-dollar bill onto the stack. "You're a real prince, Georgie."

    Then blondie and his nigger buddy were out the door.

    George resumed his chair with a twinge of excitement tickling his belly. Definitely Los Angeles, he thought. Probably one of those billionaire hippie kooks. Maybe bank robbers, with a hot haul. Either way, from this moment on the money before him did not exist. He folded the stack double and stuffed it into the same pocket from which he'd fished the keys. He knew Clyde's personal stuff was gone from the glovebox-that was SOP when loaning your car to your old man.

    George picked Stacey Butterick up to tell her the good news.

    Cannibal Rex had been sharp enough to stay out of George Kellander's sight. He might have queered the deal.

    Horus found Cannibal occupying himself with the American 180, removed from the black duffel bag. He had fitted in a stretch clip and waved the weapon around. In the time it had taken to procure the car, he had obviously paid a visit to his cocaine vial as well.

    Clyde's wheels were parked-almost hidden-by the backside of the trailer. Stannard discovered he had rented a refurbished 1971
Dodge Charger with Hooker Headers
, a paint job that was mostly gray primer, and road-grabbing mags. He jumped in and fired die engine.

    It was good.

    The ass of the Charger was radically jacked, and the powerhouse grumbled liquidly as Stannard twisted the padded-doughnut steering wheel and made it emerge, like a big cat slinking forth from a cave.

    Cannibal Rex grinned at Horus, brandishing the 180. "
Budda budda budda budda,
" he said. "
Kapow. Kapeewingg!
"

    "Seems like everybody in the sticks has a set of wheels like this stashed somewheres," Stannard said as his private assault force boarded. Horus took the blue vinyl bucket next to him while Cannibal Rex piled into the cramped backseat with all their hardware. "Nothing else to do in the sticks except watch TV, make babies, and work on your engine."

    Stannard's limbs seemed to merge with the pedals and gearshift and foam doughnut. His stark blue eyes considered every piloting contingency; as the car warmed to him he seemed to mutate into a hybrid of driver and machine. Behind the cold epinephrine sweats and the mental shields that had settled in to opaque the hard blue of his eyes, what he was thinking was not an open topic. He drove. The car responded to his firm hand. Outwardly, he looked like he was digging it mightily.

    He sprayed Kellander's trailer with peel-out mud. In seconds open roadway was unreeling in front of them, faster and faster.

    They were five minutes from the first police roadblock.

    

    

    The rotor of the L.A.P.D. helicopter whipped up a tornado of wet leaves and litter at the north end of Vista View Park. Some spectators had already gathered, people whose dinners and favorite TV shows had been disrupted by the hellacious eggbeater racket. Sullen teenagers loitered, shrugging at the
pow-wow
of waiting cop cars. There was a sheriffs cruiser, a highway patrol Land Rover, and an unmarked car, dead gray, circled in readiness.

    The chain of events Sara had set in motion with her phone call to the authorities from the storm-beleaguered motel room on the Pacific Coast Highway was ending here, tonight. The police had taken the information supplied by her, formed logical outlines in their inevitable Joe Friday way, and chased them like a rat in a cheese maze. The most obvious conclusion had been drawn, and the chopper had been dispatched to land in Vista View Park, which was the most practical place to set down according to local law enforcement concensus.

    The sniper pinched the bridge of his nose hard, pushing down to duct pressure from his sinuses. He had popped pseudo-ephedrine hydrochloride to handle the altitude and quick descent, but for him there was always residual twinge in his head, like a warning sign. He shut his eyes and turned the moment into a bit of Inst-food meditation, a shot of stilled-pool mental calm on the run. Then he wired his stainless-steel-rimmed shooter's glasses around his ears and snugged his ballcap down tight as the chopper settled heavily on its runners.

    The pilot dealt him a good-luck punch to the bicep; the sniper returned a cocked smile and a mirthless little salute. A topcoated form disengaged from the nearest car and humped up to slide back the door. The sniper and his long, waterproof rifle case were gone, double time.

    The unmarked car had blackwalled tires, a red bubble light on the rear deck, and a whip antenna that thrashed about in both the man-made wind of the chopper blades and the more formidable wind of the storm, which was marshaling for a renewed siege. The sniper ducked inside, and before his door was shut the whole convoy lurched into motion, gouging ruts out of the wet turf, flashbars igniting and bathing the park and nearby homes in red-and-blue light.

    Marty Danvers hung his headset on the throttle and grimaced up at the turbulent night sky. The lull in the rainstorm had provided an almost perfect window to permit his full-tilt jump from Los Angeles to Olive Grove, and now that his pet helo was grounded he acknowledged that he'd have to hang out awhile. He dropped his rain hood over his head and got out to chock down the props with roped weights. Then he unfolded the couch behind the two front seats, looped a single-phone headset around one ear to monitor the police band, and found his place in the latest Trevanian paperback. Waiting was dandy. He was getting hazard pay for flying up here in the storm.

    Little by little the gawkers dispersed, returning to their meals, to the cool fire of their video windows on the world. That was what you did in a place like Olive Grove. You commuted, you ate, you reproduced, you watched a lot of television. You got cable. You achieved a tranquility that was rarely disrupted by noisy urban intrusions like helicopters. The next day, at work, you talked about the weather, what TV shows you watched… and the damned helicopter that came in the night and woke up your babies. You swapped theories about what a helicopter might be doing in Olive Grove, over coffee at a place that invariably served "home cooking.'' Surely this was nirvana, for anyone who had survived World War Two and the turbulent 1960s.