Eye of the Burning Man: A Mick Callahan Novel (The Mick Callahan Series) (3 page)

"That's romantic."

"I'm not sure he'd look at it that way. Good show?"

"Good show."

"Suitably impressed, Madam?"

She nodded. "The lady is impressed. Do you want to stop for a coffee somewhere to unwind, or just take me home?"

I put his arms around her. "That depends."

Leyna giggled. "On what?"

I kissed her. She kissed back, pressing her lean body against mine. Finally, we broke away. "It depends on whether or not I'm staying with you in the 310 area code tonight."

Leyna raised her hands to cup my face. She stroked my ear and whispered, "818, you're invited."

I locked up rapidly; we walked down the plushy carpeted hallway, through the metal security door and past the empty reception desk. I flipped the exterior lights over to motion detector mode, made sure the coffee maker was off, and opened the front door. We stepped outside, into a reasonably pleasant evening. The odd quirk about L.A. heat waves is that the parking lots and backyards end up cooler during the night than the buildings they surround.

I passed my hand in front of the motion detector and the parking area lit up. My dusty old blue Chevy was halfway down the row, standing alone. Her shiny black BMW convertible was beside it. I put my right arm around her waist and shifted the briefcase to my left hand. Leyna snuggled in close. Our hips bumped as we walked along, lost in lust.

"My car or yours?"

Leyna wrinkled her nose. "Mine, of course."

The bushes near her BMW stood tall, grew thick. One rustled a bit, just a flicker of movement. I caught from the corner of my eye and hesitated, almost causing Leyna to stumble. The hairs on the back of my neck fluttered. I responded to something deep in my mind, the voice of my abusive stepfather:
Stay awake, damn you, boy! You got to keep your eyes peeled . . .

I shifted my weight and rolled Leyna around to the left. Another rustling sound. My mouth went dry. The quicksilver ice of adrenaline pumped through me as I used peripheral vision to track the brush. I kept my face turned forward, towards the BMW.

I spoke in a normal tone. "Where is your apartment again, above or below Wilshire?"

Leyna looked puzzled. After all, I'd driven her home several times. "Below, are you tired, or something?" We were almost to her car.

"Get down!"

The brush exploded. I shoved her onto a small patch of dirt near the asphalt. Leyna howled as she scraped her knee and elbow.

I was facing a strange apparition: One huge ape of a man dressed entirely in dark clothing. He wore a navy watch cap pulled down over his head, and his features were covered with a plastic Halloween mask that had been spray painted black. One arm was stretched out towards me, as if pointing to something back at the radio station. A prominent tattoo on the forearm showed a black stick figure in a circle of reddish fire.

"What the . . ."

But then, in that giant fist, Leyna saw the small gun. She screamed.

"Shut her up," the man whispered. "One more sound and I splatter your brains all over the car."

I stood quietly, taking the measure of my opponent.
Watch his eyes, boy, the eyes always tell you what's coming
. I figured the man for six four. He probably weighed two-fifty, maybe thirty or more pounds more than me.
Maybe there's a way out of this. See what he's after.

"I don't have much money. You can have what I've got."

"How much?" the big man hissed. The whisper was theatrically exaggerated, the sibilance of a large snake.

"I'd have to look," I said. "Maybe sixty bucks."

"And the Beemer?"

"Sure. And the car."

A black glove pointed to Leyna. "Maybe I'll take her, too."

"Not a chance." I shook my head but did not move my body. "Don't even think about it."

"Why not, motherfucker?"

"Do you want the sixty bucks, or not?" I asked, pleasantly. "No hassles that way."

"I'll take whatever I want. Including her."

He is going to kill you both, he's only playing around.
"Relax. Don't worry. I can't identify you."

"Huh?"

"I'll just tell the cops we got jumped by some steroid junkie with shrunken balls who thought he was Zorro."

The eyes behind the mask widened slightly. The gun moved a fraction higher. The man tensed, debated pulling the trigger. I went in very low, swept my right arm up and away. The gun fired once, but I barely heard it.

I slammed into the man, drove him back into the Chevrolet and head-butted the Halloween mask. He grunted.
Take this bastard down hard
, my stepfather whispered,
or you're dead.

I bounced off a solid wall of gym-rat muscle. He clawed desperately for purchase as the gun came back down. Leyna now had her purse open, her cell phone in hand. She was screaming for the police. Her voice seemed to come from another dimension.

To my horror the .22 started to shift towards Leyna, so I grabbed the thick wrist and let my body go slack. My weight forced his arm down towards the dirt. Another POP followed as I freed my left hand and grabbed at the crotch of the black jeans, clenched my fist fiercely and twisted the testicles. The man bellowed and brought the gun down on my forehead. The world whistled the National Anthem.

My eyes filled with blood but I knew better than to release the gun hand so I used my body weight again and dragged the man into an awkward position; he ended up bent in half with his knees buckling. I forced the gun hand inward and began to pressure his fingers, trying to force the guy to shoot himself in the stomach.
Teach him not to fuck with you, kid.

The man released the weapon and swung. He caught along the right side of my jaw. I fell backwards and forced the gun to spin away across the pavement towards Leyna. I kicked up at the attacker, but the bigger man dodged. I got up, spun around on one knee and got back to my feet.
Now do it, just do it!
I was probably quite a sight by now; face contorted with anger and smeared with my own blood.

A cold, weirdly comfortable flower of rage blossomed. Without the gun, the man was just another mean-spirited bully, like all the ones I'd downed in a dozen pointless fights as a kid, or during the dark days of my drinking career. He was my stepfather, Danny Bell.

"Okay, asshole." I wiped the blood away. "Let's dance."

POP.

The two of us turned towards her, startled, and discovered that Leyna now had the little .22. She squeezed the trigger again and it went POP another time. That bullet shattered one of the white lights high up on the lamppost, plunging the area into darkness. She lowered the gun further. It hit me that the first bullet had gone up into the sky. She was getting a feel for the weapon, trying to zero in. I looked back at the bad guy.

The man in black leaped impossibly high, rolled across the roof of the BMW, and raced back into the thick brush. He was gone so quickly it was as if he had never existed.

"Leyna?"

She did not answer, just clung to the now wavering pistol.

"It's over. He's gone."

Leyna dropped the gun and sank to her knees. I was still feeling half berserk from the confrontation. I walked in circles for a few moments, kicking at my car and swearing; tense, dizzy, and shaking from unused adrenaline. Finally I sat down next to her. I ripped a piece of my shirt away and held it against the scalp wound. "You okay?"

Leyna didn't answer.

I shrugged. "That's a dumb question, right? Me neither."

Moments passed. Heavy tires roared down the deserted alley and into the dusty parking lot, fierce headlights pinned us. LAPD in a good old black and white, bright colors whirling on top.

"Keep your hands where we can see them."

I pointed with a weary arm to the fallen pistol. "Only one gun here, guys. It's a little twenty-two. He jumped us and then ran off into the trees."

"Did you call us, ma'am?" the other cop asked. He was approaching fast, one hand on a holstered Glock. Meanwhile his partner examined the darkened area and ran his flashlight beam through the flattened brush.

"Footprints here, Larry," the partner said.

"I got shell casings," the one called Larry said. He picked them up with a pencil and dropped them into a baggie. He resembled me a bit, similar in build with the same dark hair and eyes, but more Italian than Irish in appearance. He also had a long, straight nose that wasn't broken, unlike mine. He squatted down next to Leyna. "Someone tried to rob you? Then fired at you?"

"I shot at him with his own gun."

"What did he look like?"

I suddenly felt sick, but hurling in front of Leyna was not an option. I put my head between my knees. "He was a big son of a bitch, bigger than you and me. I'd make him six three or four, and going about two fifty and change."

"What was he wearing?"

"Dressed in black, spray painted some kind of a generic Halloween mask to cover his face. Tattoo on the forearm, a little stick man in a ring of flames or something like that."

"Was he after money?"

"Maybe."

"The BMW?"

I raised my head, answered without thinking. "Maybe her."

Leyna gasped and shuddered. She pulled away from me. The cop looked at her, puzzled. He eyed my lacerated forehead. "You need me to call an ambulance for that?"

"No. Just a scalp wound. I don't have a concussion or anything. Don't sweat it." Another police car rolled up. The young cop waved them away and they drove off again. The San Fernando Valley gets pretty busy on a Saturday night.

The cop asked for some ID and we gave up our driver's licenses. He began writing in a notebook, then paused and chuckled. "I thought I recognized you. You're Mick Callahan, that radio guy. You were a Navy Seal, right?"

"Half-assed. I made it through BUDS and jump school." Damn, I get sick of that question. "I washed out while I was still on probation."

"I wore the trident," the cop said, proudly. "Only did one hitch, though. I didn't much like getting shot at."

"Yeah, me neither."

"You used to be on television too, didn't you? You got fired for getting in a fist fight one time."

Jesus, you're not doing me any favors, here.
"Yeah, but that was all a few years ago."

The cop shook my hand. "Officer Larry Donato," he said. He spoke in short, choppy authoritarian sentences that belied the wide-eyed, pleasant expression on his face. "I used to watch your show when I was a kid."

When you were a kid, huh?
"Gee. Thanks."

The cop tore some paper out of his book. "Hey, can I get your autograph?"

"As long as it's not on a ticket." I was hoping Leyna was impressed. I looked. She wasn't. I signed.

Donato took the paper, folded it, and stuck it in his shirt pocket. "Thanks a lot."

"You're welcome."

Larry chuckled. "Funny story, Mick. My cousin says she busted you once, but let you go. Nice girl, tough as nails. Works Hollywood, mostly in prostitution. Name of Darlene Hernandez. You remember her?"

"Yeah." I shrugged, genuinely embarrassed. "I did a lot of things when I was drinking. Getting arrested wasn't usually one of them. It stands out in my mind. Uh . . . tell her I said hello."

Leyna Barton blinked. Her jaw dropped open. I struggled to save the situation. "It was a long time ago, Leyna. I had some serious problems. I don't drink any more, you know that."

Larry Donato gave me his card. "I'm not kidding. I really was a fan. Take this and hold onto it. It has my cell number on the back."

"Why?"

"In case you need to reach me."

"What for?"

"A favor. Whatever. I'm a cop, remember? And I'm thinking you might need me."

Leyna Barton said, "Why is that?" She was pale and seemed one pubic hair from emitting a shriek.

Donato chuckled. "He pisses people off sometimes, Miss Barton. It's part of his act."

I sighed. "Oh, give me a break. Couldn't it have been a simple armed robbery?"

"Maybe."

"But?"

"Why a little twenty-two, except maybe to keep the noise down? This parking lot is pretty out of the way. Me, I'd say the perp knows you. Otherwise, why was he right here waiting?"

I had one eye on Leyna Barton. I was losing ground rapidly. I felt like kicking Donato in the shin.

"Hey, it seems to me somebody was out to do you for personal reasons."

"Think so?" It was the partner. He had just tuned in. "Maybe they should come with us and see some mug shots."

"You see too much television, Bobby," Donato said. "Besides, they said he was wearing a mask, didn't they?"

"Oh. Right."

I was watching the death throes of my love life.

Leyna went grim. "You really think this might have been something personal, Officer Donato?"

"I'd say it's more than possible. This is the parking lot of a radio station, lady. Not a lot of cars around here, so we sure can't rule that out."

They filled out the rest of the paperwork in a hurry. "You guys don't need to come down to the station," Donato said. "It's not like I don't know where to find you if I need you."

"Thanks." I tucked the business card into the pocket of my jeans. "And thanks for this, too."

"Don't mention it. Thanks for not laughing at me when I asked for your autograph."

"I never laugh at people with guns."

We were both numb and exhausted, but I followed Leyna home, over Benedict Canyon and down below Sunset. When we parked, I approached her car and tried to lighten the mood with a joke. She got out in silence. I walked her to her apartment building, but she stayed two feet ahead on the pavement, head down. She would not kiss me goodnight.