Crashed (42 page)

And it was just a few minutes, even during rush hour, to where I was headed.

My watch made it 6:20. The world was mainly headlights and rain, plus the drama of the occasional fallen branch, supernaturally wet and leafy, in the middle of the road. Long red spectra of brakelights traveled the night, as the car ten or twelve ahead of me slowed and glowed red and passed it on to the one behind, and so on until my own foot hit the brake and left me motionless on a shining street, the car standing still while my mind moved a million miles an hour, mostly in unpleasant directions.

But I learned a long time ago not to linger on the things that might kill me. If you’re not capable of figuring out how to get past all that and move toward solutions, it would probably be better not to break the law for a living, which, despite the appeal of short hours and long pay, more or less guarantees that you’re going to be in constant contact with dangerous people. And
once in a while, in the natural order of things, one or more of these people will want to do you harm.

But this was ridiculous. I’d been a career criminal for seventeen years, and I’d never had so many people willing to stand in line to make me dead. And what had I done? One little burglary, and a contract job at that. I’d stolen something from someone who could afford to lose it, who in the larger scheme of things was entirely unharmed; I hadn’t taken the presents from under some poor kids’ Christmas tree or mugged some domestic worker and grabbed her week’s pay. I’d ripped off a couple of pictures from a rich man—a
gangster
, for Christ’s sake—and it felt like the whole world was pointing guns at me.

It was enough to get me mad. I don’t get mad often, but I get mad
thoroughly
. I was already absolutely greased about Jimmy’s murder, and now I was getting mad on my own behalf, too.

I finally made it through the light at Mulholland but instead of dropping down the other side of the hill into the Valley I turned left and followed the Drive north along the spine of the hills, the clouds to my right pale and spectral with the light from the Valley floor. Up here, the rain was a little thinner than it had been at Whelan’s chateau, or so it seemed. I wasn’t really paying attention to it. I was sorting things in my mind: first this, then that, what if this, what if that? No matter what order I stacked things, there were still a couple of wild cards. I was barely conscious of having swung left onto Coldwater as I started back down toward the Los Angeles basin.

A few minutes later I made the right I’d been looking for and stopped the car about halfway up the hill. I didn’t want headlights or noise to announce me. Feeling like I was on a fool’s errand, and that I didn’t know anyone better qualified to run one, I hiked on up the hill, sticking to the asphalt to keep my feet from getting any wetter than necessary until I realized I was already soaked to the bone. Where was Jake Whelan’s Mr. Umbrella when I needed him?

I cut to the right, heading around the big gate, the rain coming down heavily enough that I didn’t have to worry about the sound of my feet in the grass. The sky went white above me, and the landscape brightened for an instant, flat as paper and highly detailed, and a moment later heaven growled and then the growl died off to a bottom-heavy grumble.

The flash of light had reoriented me. I knew exactly where I was, and I knew that I needed to take the path to the right, following the slope of the hill. Despite the reduced visibility in the rain, despite the tall bushes everywhere, I found myself moving bent at the waist, trying to reduce my silhouette, trying to remain invisible as long as possible.

The pathway curved again and widened, and I could feel, rather than see, the bulk of the big gray stone, and just as I knew for certain it was ahead of me, the world lit up again, and I saw Thistle’s dad’s rosebush and, in front of it, the crumpled form, the out-thrown arms, the sopping clothes, the tangle of soaked hair, the long smears of black, no,
red
, running down the soaked blouse, and as clearly as if she had been standing behind me I heard my daughter’s voice, heard her say:
dead wet girl
.

“You’re home,” I
said into the phone. At the sound of his voice it felt as if something had been lifted off my heart. We were tearing down the hill at an unwise speed.

“I am,” Doc said.

“Don’t go anywhere. I’m coming as fast as I can.”

“Ummm,” Doc said. “This isn’t a good—”

“No. Whatever you have to do, no. I’ve got Thistle, and she needs attention—some stitches, maybe some blood, and God knows what else. Just stay where you are.” I closed the phone and followed the curve of the canyon to the right, and Thistle toppled across the seat toward me, dead weight, and landed against my shoulder. She said, “Uuhhhhh.”

“Hang on,” I said. “You’re okay now. You’ve lost some
blood, you’re exhausted. We’re going to see Doc, and he’ll get you back together.”

“No,” she said. It was barely a whisper.

“No? No what?”

“No. No shots. Don’t want …”

I said, “Fine.” She put a hand down on the seat to push herself upright, and I said, “Careful, you cut that hand to ribbons. You’ll be lucky if you didn’t slice a tendon.”

“Cut him,” she said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her bare her teeth. “I cut him.”

“I know. I saw the blood.”

“Jennie,” she said, her spine straightening slightly. “Wendy.” “They’re okay. A friend of mine has taken them somewhere else.”

“I want … I want to see.” She stopped talking and let out a rush of air. Her head was hanging down, and the ropes of wet hair caught the headlights of an oncoming car. A drop of water detached itself from one of them and began its fall, and then the light was gone.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Listen, you can talk to them. I gave them phones. Do you want to talk to them?”

“Yes. Please.” She turned her head, and she was smiling. “They were … brave,” she said.

“I know, I was there. Hang on, let me get them. I punched in the speed-dial and said, “Take it with your right hand, the one that isn’t cut.”

“ ‘Kay,” she said, stretching out the hand, and at the sight of the slender fingers, the intricate and harmless frailty of her hand as I put the phone into it, the anger I’d been feeling about the situation I was in, about all of it, exploded in my chest. It was a thick red smoke, so real I could feel it in the back of my throat and so harsh I could taste it. I had to force myself to focus on steering the car. People were going to pay, if not for what they wanted to do to me, then for what they’d already done to Thistle and Jimmy.

“Wendy,” Thistle said in a voice like ripping silk. “You, you … guys, you’re okay.”

I could hear Wendy’s voice, high and excited, on the other end of the line, and after a moment, Thistle gave a ragged little laugh. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine. Wet. Junior says … says you went somewhere.”

Wendy talked and Thistle listened as I made the left onto Ventura, heading for Encino, for Doc’s house. “Quarter-pounder?” Thistle said, telling me where Louie had taken the girls for dinner. “Oh, you luckies,” she said. “I want—no, I don’t want—I don’t … I don’t want anything. I’m glad you’re okay.” She closed the phone without saying goodbye. “I hurt,” she said.

“Almost there,” I said. “Doc’ll give you—”

She said, “Where I was.”

“Where—what? What do you mean, where you were? Rose Haven? Your father’s—”

“The
movie
,” she said. “I was … I was going to do …”

“You didn’t,” I said. “You won’t have to.”

“It’s okay to hurt,” she said. “I can learn to hurt.”

I said the only thing I could think of. “You’re stronger than you think.”

“I’m a fuckup. But I can hurt.”

“Let’s take care of the cuts,” I said. “Then I think you could use about two days’ sleep. Hang on, honey, we’re here.”

I pulled the car to the curb. Doc’s house was a low cinderblock one-story, what they used to call a rambler, probably built in the early fifties, with a picture window looking out on a small front yard. Someone had drastically over-pruned the orange tree to the right of the sidewalk, cutting the branches back almost to the trunk. The stripped tree made the yard seem barren. The street was wide enough for tanks to pass each other, and a streetlight shone right down on us: a nice, safe neighborhood. I went around, opened Thistle’s door, and leaned across to undo the seatbelt, since it fastened on the left side, beneath the ravaged
hand. Then I helped her out and she leaned against me as we went up the sidewalk to the door.

“I’m okay,” she said, but she was putting most of her weight on me.

“You’ll be better in a few minutes,” I said as the door opened and Doc stood there, and licked his lips, and just as I registered that something was wrong with his eyes, he was shoved aside, hard enough to knock him off his feet, and a long arm snaked out and circled Thistle’s neck, and I found myself looking into the barrel of a gun with Eduardo standing behind it.

He hauled her in by the neck, straight through the door as though she weighed nothing, and her feet caught on Doc’s legs, and she went down in a heap. Eduardo didn’t even glance down at her, just took a step back, kicking her once in the hip, and said to me, “Get in here.”

I thought about it for a second and said, “No.”

“Then I shoot her,” he said. There were bandages all over his gun hand.

I said, “Great. Point the gun down. I fucking dare you.”

He blinked. “You don’t think I can put one in her and still get you?”

“I don’t think you could hit yourself in the balls if you had all day to aim.”

“You fucker,” he said. He pronounced it “focker.”

“Okay,” I said. “You win. You said the bad word first. How you doing, Doc?”

“I’m okay.” A nice-looking woman who matched the description Louie had given me stood wringing her hands behind him. “My wife is okay. I’ve had better conversations.”

“Fine,” Eduardo said, having used the interval to work things through. “Then I shoot you first.”

“Why didn’t you say that at the beginning?” I said. “
What
is it you want me to do?”

“Get in here.”

“Sure. Okay. Kind of a jam-up, though. Maybe one or two people should get up. You wouldn’t want me to trip or anything. I might sue.”

He backed away, leaving the left side of the door clear. “Through here. Just get your ass through here.”

“On the way,” I said. I paused partway in. “Do you want me to close the door?”

“Uhh, yeah,” he said.

“Good thinking,” I said. I came the rest of the way in, avoided stepping on either Thistle or Doc, both of whom were looking up at me, and pulled the door closed. “Now what?” I said.

“Now stand there and shut up.” He took another couple of steps back and wiggled the gun back and forth in the bandaged hand a little to make the point that he could aim it at any of us who earned it, and then he pulled out a cell phone. With both eyes on me, he pushed a button and waited.

“Speed dial,” I said. “What did guys with guns do before speed dial?”

“Fucking shut up.” He practically jumped to attention. “No, Tony, no, not you. Listen, I got her. I got her right here.”

Tony said something, and Eduardo said, “Encino. Like near Hayvenhurst. Umm, Doc and Doc’s wife and the guy she hired, the crook. Yeah, both of them.”

I said, “The
crook?
”

“He’s talking too much,” Eduardo said, apparently in response to a question from Tony. “Yeah, no problem, I can bring her. The house or the office? Yeah, yeah, okay.” He closed the phone, tried to slip it into his pocket, and missed the pocket. He looked down for a second try, and I got the automatic out and shot him in the right shoulder.

The impact spun him around, the gun in his hand spraying bullets into Doc’s paneled walls as he reflexively pulled the trigger, and I covered the distance between him and me in a single
leap and slammed my own gun against the side of his skull, hard enough to leave an imprint in the bone. His legs went loose, the muscles slack and purposeless. He took two aimless steps away from me, reminding me of the dog that had climbed the stairs with the dart in him, and just as I was about to hit him again, he collapsed, taking a table and a small mirror down with him.

“Get something that will put him out and keep him out,” I said to Doc. “Don’t be stingy with it, either. He’s got the body mass of a whale.” I took his gun and patted the parts of his body that were accessible and then rolled him over with my foot and checked the rest of the likely places. Doc had gotten up and was helping Thistle to her feet while Mrs. Doc fussed around with shaking hands, brushing at her husband’s jacket. “She needs some stitches in her hand,” I said. “And my guess is that she’s dehydrated and maybe a little bit in shock. And she’s lost a bunch of blood.”

“I’ll see to it,” Doc said.

“Great. But with all due respect, can you please get the shit you’re going to shoot into this behemoth?”

“On it,” Doc said, hurrying into the next room.

“Doesn’t look so big now, does he?” I asked Thistle.

“Shoot him,” she said. Mrs. Doc gasped.