One of Us (23 page)

"What the fuck," I panted, "was that all about?"

Deck's arm was still around her neck, but her body was shaking less. He had his head in close to hers, and was stroking her hair with his other hand. Laura's eyes stayed locked on me, heavy with fury and shame.

She kept repeating the words like an automaton wearing down, until finally I understood what she was saying.

"Monica is my mother."

SHE WOULDN'T SAY any more. We all sat in our places for a few minutes, catching our breath, feeling the fire in the room gutter out. Then Laura struggled out of Deck's grip and went into the bathroom, slamming the door loudly behind her. Deck and I looked at each other and couldn't find anything to say. He used a cushion to mop up the cup of coffee that had gone supernova. I went back into the kitchen to make some more.

A few minutes later I heard Laura emerge from the bathroom. She muttered an apology, then sat back down on the sofa. I kept out of sight, manufacturing hot drinks so slowly, I almost went into a Zen trance. I heard Deck ask Laura a question, something uncontroversial, and after a long silence she answered. He started telling her about some of the stuff on his walls. I didn't get the sense this was an excitement explosion for her, but at least she seemed to be listening.

I decided to stay in the kitchen a little longer. Deck is one of those people you can't help liking. I'm not. People find it enormously easy. Some of them don't like me several times a day, just to keep their average up.

I perched on a stool and had a cigarette. My face hurt, and when I wiped my finger under my nose, it came away smeared with blood. Also I thought she might have cracked one of my ribs. I hoped not, because cracked ribs are a pain in the ass. I have a couple on my right side which are weak now, and each time they get rebroken, you're looking at about four weeks of significant discomfort, without anything to even show people.

To pass the time, I wondered how long it would be before Travis tracked me down. As far as I was concerned, losing the tail wasn't breaking the terms of our agreement, but the lieutenant would probably feel different. I also thought about my chances of making bail on the bank job, and fixed the odds at less than nothing. I drank my coffee and listened to the murmur of Deck's voice, Laura's occasional grunts.

Then I heard a sound coming from the front of the house. At first I didn't know what it might be, then I knew where I recognized it from.

It sounded like a car, driven fast, roaring down the road toward the house. Maybe more than one car, in fact. Maybe three.

Time seemed to slow, like a pianist doing a melodramatic rallentando. As I swung my head, mouth gathering to shout to Deck to look out the window, the back door to the kitchen burst open and someone thrust their head inside.

"Quick," Helena said. "Hap, you've got to come with me."

I stared at her, blinked twice. There was a scream of brakes from the front of the house, the sound of doors being thrown open. I heard Deck leap to his feet and swear inquiringly; then the sound of running feet and the door downstairs being blown off its hinges.

But what I saw was Helena's face. Soft skin over sharp bones, dark brown hair and ice-blue eyes. Maybe a few more lines, a little deeper than they used to be. Otherwise, exactly the same.

Footsteps running up the front stairs to the door.

I shouted Deck's name, dragging my eyes away from Helena. Deck reacted instantly, grabbing Laura by the arm and hauling her off the sofa. As I yanked my gun out, I felt a hand grip mine, yank me toward the back door.

Helena hissed: "Hap, for fuck's sake—
now!
"

Laura stumbled over a rug and fell to her knees. Deck turned to help her up. The first shotgun blast hammered into his front door—wood splintered instantly, followed by the sound of an explosive kick. I started to run to help Deck, but Helena wouldn't let go, and pulled me back toward the door. I whirled to face her, and she yanked my face close to hers. "Come with me now," she said. "Or I'm leaving you here."

I heard Deck and Laura running toward us. Helena turned on her heel. I hurtled after her out onto the landing and clattered onto the stairs. Deck and Laura were a few paces behind, but Helena was right, as always—I couldn't help them run. They had to do it on their own.

There was an enormous crash as Deck's front door was finally smashed to pieces, then the sound of shouting. I tripped and nearly fell headlong down the stairs, but flailed out and grabbed a rail just in time. Helena was pattering down the metal steps in front of me, lithe and fast, and for an absurd moment all I could focus on was the length of her slim back, and the kick of her hair as it bobbed and swung.

I tumbled onto the ground a few paces after her, and remembered the car I'd stowed behind the building the night before. Helena followed my eyes. "Got the keys?" she asked, racking a cartridge into a gun that had appeared from nowhere. It was bigger than mine, naturally. I shook my head, craning my neck to see that Deck and Laura had only just made it onto the platform above. "No time, then," Helena said, "just run."

Obediently I started to stumble backward, shouting up at the others to hurry. And I saw:

Laura and Deck, frozen in motion. Deck just ahead, but Laura coming on fast, head ducked and face trapped between fear and determination. Deck already reaching for the banister, eyes judging the angle to throw themselves at the stairway.

Then, behind them, an explosion of yellow light. At first I thought it was muzzle flare, but the light was too soft and too large and came on far too slowly. Not an incendiary device either—because there was no sound except a deep humming that made my teeth vibrate. Two figures slammed out of the kitchen, the point men in suits. Deck's head turned; I heard the crack of a shot from Helena's gun, which didn't seem to change anything; a whisper of a scream from Laura, as if heard from the end of a tunnel through the center of the earth.

The light changed, condensed into a white bulb around Laura and Deck. The top of it scrolled twenty yards up into the sky, until it looked more like a column. Still running backward, still trying to shout, I tripped and slammed into the ground. As Helena tried to pull me to my feet, it happened.

Deck's face changed. At first it just seemed to smooth out, then bits of it faded away. The parts I'd never really noticed disappeared, leaving only his eyes and cheekbones and mouth. The same was happening to Laura, but faster. Within two seconds all I could see was two terrified circles. I felt an odd twist of emotion toward the circles, something inappropriate and strange— and for a second I thought I saw something in the air above the house, like an empty room formed out of air. The vibration got louder and faster, pulling at my mind like hooks into memory. The remaining fragments of Deck's and Laura's faces glowed for a moment, as if glimpsed in a photograph of long ago.

Then they weren't there anymore.

The white light disappeared as if turned off at a switch. No more men came out onto the landing, and the first two seemed to have vanished. I turned, looked at the street out in front. The cars had gone. All that was left was the back door flapping open in a nonexistent breeze, and absolute silence.

CHAPTER TWELVE

An hour later we were in Venice. I sat on a wall looking across the beach at the sea. Helena stood five yards away, reloading her gun. Apparently she'd emptied a whole clip into the figures on the staircase. Hadn't made any difference. The exchange of this piece of information was the only conversation we'd had, which was just as well. I didn't really have it in me to shout at Helena, and so I wished she'd just go away. The moon was out, turning shredded clouds into pale rips in deep blue cloth. The beach was too wide for me to hear more than a faint whisper of the tide massaging the water line, like someone gently rubbing their finger across a rough piece of paper. A jogger passed behind us on the pavement, measured taps fading in and out of the darkness like an asteroid temporarily swinging through our orbit, someone gliding along the regular rails of an explicable life.

Helena and I had stood motionless for a full minute after the white light disappeared, heads swinging back and forth like two cats trying to work out where a moth had gone. Deck's back door flapped for a few more moments, then gradually became still. I ran up the stairs and checked the apartment. It was empty, and apart from a couple of overturned chairs and a pile of big splinters of wood in the hallway, completely undamaged. There was no sign of a big impact, no evidence of scorching.

I knew where Deck kept his tools, and quickly yanked his bedroom door off to serve as a replacement front door. It seemed important at the time. The door fit, more or less, and I secured it as best I could with a chair under the handle. I also threw the memory equipment into one of his closets and covered it with junk.

Then we left, expecting the cops to arrive any second, drawn by reports of noise and violence. But as we walked quickly away, I saw nobody hanging out of windows or gathering in the street outside. We looked around, expecting to see at least one person staring and saying "What the heck?"

Nobody. Like it never happened.

We didn't say anything. Just kept walking, a couple of yards apart, until we found ourselves in the old neighborhood. Almost like we were going home. Then I abruptly lost interest in going any farther, and set up camp on the wall.

Helena finished with the gun and stuck it in a shoulder holster. Stood with her hands on her hips.

"What happened back there," she declared, "wasn't normal."

"No shit."

"We've got to tell someone about it."

"Tell them what? That two people and three cars just disappeared? And tell who, exactly?"

"But who are those guys?"

"Why don't you tell me? You seem to be pretty far ahead of the game."

She sat on the wall a yard or two away. "All I've been doing is following you. I saw you run from them at your apartment. Saw them arrive at the Cafe. Saw the cars on their way tonight."

"So why have you been sticking so close?"

She looked down, kicked at the sand. "I've been watching out for you."

"Right," I said. "Not hunting me down?"

"Don't be a prick, Hap."

"So you're not in the frame for a whack on me?"

"Yes, dear, of course I am. And why do you think that might be?"

"Because I didn't massage you enough?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

I stood up, started walking. "Never mind."

She caught up with me, grabbed my arm, and spun me around. "I took the contract because it was there. Someone wanted you dead, enough to put out a big open call. I've got a certain reputation, and I'm a made girl. I thought if word got around I was on the case, maybe other contractors would stay out of it. In other words, that you'd be safe for a while."

I looked her in the eyes, knew she was telling the truth. "Thank you," I said.

She nodded. "Okay. So be nice."

"Helena, give me a break. I haven't seen you in a long time. You know what you did. Then suddenly you're following me around and saving my life and—"

I stopped, not wanting to say any more.

She smiled: "It's good to see you again. Hap."

Not a helpful thing to hear, and kind of a selfish thing to say. Hurt and anger were fighting it out for supremacy in my mind, searching for some arrangement where they could both speak at once. I snapped: "Is it?"

"Don't you think so?"

"I don't know, to be honest. You've had a couple of days to get used to the idea, do a bit of fieldwork on the life and habits of the lesser-regarded Hap Thompson. I don't know shit about you anymore."

"Well, I've still got the same job, and I still live in LA and I'm going out with someone." She named a local mob figure about ten years older than me. That hurt, but not as much as I would have expected.

"Good for you," I said. "So how exactly am I supposed to react? Do tell."

She tried to take my arm again. "You're supposed to walk with me down to the water and tell me what's going on." My head shook violently, outside my control. I didn't want to walk down to the beach with her, to do anything we used to do. "Or we can stay here," she said. "Whatever. I just want to help. Hap. Tell me what's going on."

After a while, and only because my legs started to ache from standing in one place, we did start walking. And if you're walking on a beach, you're going to wind up going down toward the sea. It makes sense. We walked along the damp sand, a few feet above where the swell petered out, and in time I realized I was looking for sand dollars, even though it was too dark and the tide wasn't right. I kept on looking anyway. That's what beaches are for.

In the meantime, I told Helena about Lieutenant Travis— though not about the deal I'd struck—and what had happened at Hammond's house,- about Laura and Quat and how I'd ended up in this mess, right back to when I first met Stratten. Even a little about life before then, the years spent traipsing from state to state. All I could find to say about that time was that I was watching myself getting older, and that it was taking too long. So I stopped talking and walking, and turned to face the sea.

Helena looked at me for a long while. I didn't turn my face toward her. I didn't want to be able to see her. I knew she wanted to ask me other things, and that if I looked at her, she'd take that as a signal to start. I'd had a long fucking day. Being in her company again was too weird for words, and the air between us seemed to pulse with the things that should and shouldn't be said. At one moment it was like nothing had ever changed, and then the next it was like I was with a stranger I couldn't possibly have met before. Talking with her used to be as natural as breathing, a living shorthand honed by affection and understanding. Now it felt like I was standing on a strange planet wearing an oxygen mask, because I didn't know what the atmosphere contained, whether it would nurture or kill me.

"I don't want to depress you any further," she said eventually, "but this Stratten character is the guy who's taken the hit out on you."