The Throat (79 page)

I wiped my
face with a handkerchief and got out to look at the damage. The man in
the blue car would be swept along until the next exit, at least a mile
away. He had put three long silver slashes down the side, buckled in
the metal between the wheel and the door, and punched a lot of dents
along the entire length of the car. I leaned against the car and
breathed hard for a while, watching the ghostly traffic move along the
highway in the fog. After a while I realized that I was on the off ramp
to the south side of Millhaven, twenty minutes from Livermore Avenue.
In all the excitement, I had reached the exit I wanted in the first
place. I think I had forgotten that I had a destination.

I got back
into the car and pointed it toward Pigtown. The uneasy thought came to
me that the man in the blue car would already be traveling back toward
me.

I didn't look
at my watch until I saw the vague shape of the St. Alwyn towering over
Livermore Avenue, and then I was surprised to see that it was ten to
eight. Time seemed to have simultaneously speeded up and slowed down.
The little hooks and ratchets in my back pulsed and burned, and I kept
hearing air horns and seeing the blue car slamming toward me. As soon
as I saw a parking spot, I moved up and reversed in. The right front
tire rubbed against the dented shell, and the entire body of the
Pontiac shuddered and moaned.

I paid the
meter an hour's worth of quarters. Maybe Glen-roy's appointment had
been called off; maybe his visitor was delayed by the fog. I had a
feeling I knew what kind of appointment it was, anyhow. Meetings like
that don't take long. I locked the car, shivering a little in the fog.

The hotel was
two blocks away. I hugged myself against the cold, walking through the
thin layers of gauze. The street lamps
cast feeble yellow orbs, like Japanese lanterns. All of the shops were
closed, and there was no one else on the street. The St. Alwyn receded
as I walked toward it, as a mountain backs away when you approach it.
Behind me, a distant, momentary crackle tugged at my subconscious, then
died. I took another couple of steps and heard it again. This time I
recognized the sound of gunfire. I turned around, and there came
another rattling burst from off on the other side of the valley and a
little way south. The sky held a faint orange tinge. If I'd been closer
to Messmer Avenue, I would have heard fire gobbling up stores and
houses.

The hot
circle below my right shoulder blade began to sing more loudly, but
that was a phantom, like the pain in a severed leg. It was just memory,
brought back by the sound of small arms' fire. I crossed the next
street in the fog, and then I couldn't take it anymore. Directly to my
side, rising up two stories of solid darkened brick, was the old annex
of the St. Alwyn, now a Valu-Rite pharmacy. I went over to the wall,
bent my knees, and pressed my back against the cold brick. After a
couple of seconds, the heat and pressure began to shrink. Real relief
from phantom pain, as good as a Percodan. If I could press my back
against the cold wall for an hour, I thought, all the bolts and fish
hooks could go back to their rusty sleep.

I was
standing half-crouched against the wall when a curly-haired young
character in a black sleeveless T-shirt and baggy black pants came
hurrying out of the arched little alleyway. He took a quick, automatic
glance in my direction, turned away, then gave me a double take. He
stopped moving with a kind of indolent, theatrical slowness. I pushed
myself away from the wall. He was going to say something about the
rattle of gunfire coming to us from the ghetto at that moment.

He grinned.
That was disconcerting. He said, "You stupid fuck," even more
disconcerting. Then he took a step near me, and I recognized him.
Somewhere on the other end of the brick alley, tucked behind a dumpster
or nestled in at the back of a liquor store, was a dark blue car with a
lot of dents and scratches on its left side. He laughed at the
recognition in my face. "This is beautiful," he said. "I don't believe
it, but it's beautiful." He looked up and spread out his hands, as if
thanking the god of lowlifes.

"You must be
the new Billy Ritz," I said. "The old one had a little more style."

"Nobody is
gonna help you now, shithead. There's nowhere you can go." He reached
behind his back with his right hand, the muscles popping in his biceps
and shoulders, and the hand came back filled with a solid black rod
with shiny steel tips on both ends. A long blade popped out of the
case. He was grinning again. He was going to have a good day, after
all, and his boss was going to think he was a hot shot.

Ice formed in
my stomach, in my lungs, along the inside of my chest. This was fear, a
lot less of it than I had felt on the highway, and useful because of
the anger that came along with it. I was safer here on the sidewalk
than I had been tearing along on a fogbound highway. Nothing was going
to come at me that I couldn't already see. I was probably twenty-five
years older than this creep and a lot less muscular, but at his age, I
had spent an entire summer in a sweatbox in Georgia, dealing with lousy
food and a lot of determined men coming at me with knives and bayonets.

He jabbed at
me, just having fun. I didn't move. He jabbed again. I kept my feet
planted. We both knew he was too far away to touch me. He wanted me to
run, so that he could trot up behind me and clamp his left arm around
my neck.

He prowled
toward me, and I let my arms dangle, watching his hands and his feet.
"Jesus, you got nothing, you got no moves at all," he said.

His right
foot stabbed out, and his right arm came up toward me. I felt a blast
of mingled adrenaline and rage and twisted to my left. I grabbed his
wrist with my right hand and closed my left just above his elbow. In
the half-second he could have done something to get his momentum back,
he swiveled his head and looked into my eyes. I brought up my right
knee and slammed my hands down as hard as I could. I even grunted, the
way they recommended back in Georgia. His arm came apart in my
hands—the two long bones snapped away from the elbow, and the big one,
the radius, sliced through the skin of his inner arm like a razor. The
knife clunked down onto the sidewalk. He made a small astonished sound,
and I got both hands on his forearm and yanked it, using as much torque
as I could. I was hoping it would come off, but it didn't. Maybe I was
standing too close to him. He stumbled in front of me, and I saw his
eyes bulge. He started screaming. I pushed him down, but he was already
crumpling. He landed on his side with his knees drawn up. His chest was
sprayed with blood, and blood pumped through the ragged hole in his arm.

I walked
around him and picked up the knife. He was still screaming, and his
eyes looked glazed. He thought he was going to die. He wasn't, but he'd
never really use his right arm again. I walked up to him and kicked the
place where his elbow used to be. He passed out.

I looked up
and down the street. There wasn't a person in sight. I knelt down
beside him and shoved my hand into the pocket of his pants. I found a
set of keys and a number of slippery little things. I threw the keys
into the storm drain and put my hand back into his pocket and came out
with four double-wrapped little plastic envelopes filled with white
powder. These I dropped into my jacket pocket. I rolled him over and
picked the pocket on the other side. He had a fat little wallet with
about a hundred dollars and a lot of names and addresses written on
little pieces of paper. I lifted the flap and looked at his driver's
license. His name was Nicholas Ventura, of McKinney Street, about five
blocks west of Livermore. I dropped the wallet and walked away on legs
made of air. At the end of the block I realized that I was still
holding his knife. I threw it into the street. It bounced and clattered
until it was a dark spot in the fog.

I had seen
him before, waiting with three other men at a round table at the back
of Sinbad's Cavern. He was part of the talent pool. I turned into Widow
Street and got myself up the steps to the St. Alwyn's entrance on my
air-legs. I felt sick and weary, more sick than weary, but weary enough
to lie down for a week. Instead of adrenaline, I could taste disgust.

The dried-out
night clerk looked up at me and then elaborately looked away. I went to
the pay telephones and called 911. "There's an injured man on the
sidewalk alongside the St. Alwyn Hotel," I said. "That's on Livermore
Avenue, between South Sixth and South Seventh. He needs an ambulance."
The operator asked my name, and I hung up. Out of the sides of his
eyes, the clerk watched me move toward the elevators. When I pushed the
button, he said, "You don't go up without you go through me."

"I'll go
through you, if that's what you really want," I said. He moved like a
ghost to the far end of the counter and began playing with a stack of
papers.

I rapped
twice on Glenroy's door. Nat Cole was singing about Frim-Fram sauce
with shifafa on the side, and Glenroy called out, "Okay, I'm coming." I
could barely hear him through the music. The door opened, and Glenroy's
eager smile vanished as soon as he saw my face. He leaned out and
looked around me to see if anyone else was in the corridor.

"Hey, man, I
said for you to come before eight. Why don't you go downstairs, get a
drink at the bar, and then call me from the lobby? It'll be okay, I
just need some time, you know."

"It's okay now," I said. "I have something for you."

"I got some private business to do." I palmed two of the packets and
showed them to him. "Your man had an accident."

He backed
away from the door. I walked toward the table with the box and the
mirror. Glenroy kept his eyes on me until I sat down. Then he closed
the door. I could see caution, worry, and curiosity working in his
eyes. "I guess I should hear this story," he said, and came toward the
table like a cat padding into a strange room.

Glenroy took
the chair across from me, put the palms of his hands on the table, and
stared at me as if I were some neighborhood child who had suddenly
displayed a tendency toward arson. "Were you waiting for a grown-up
delinquent named Nicholas Ventura?" I asked.

He closed his
eyes and blew air through his nose. "I want you to talk to me," I said.

He opened his
eyes as soon as I began to speak, and now he looked at me with an
unhappy pity. "I thought I told you about staying out of trouble. You
looked like you understood me."

"I had to
take a trip today," I said. "Ventura was waiting for me. He tried to
run me off the highway, and he nearly managed to do it."

Glenroy let
one hand drop to the table and pressed the other against his cheek. He
wanted to close his eyes again—he'd have closed his ears, if he could.

"Then I came
here," I said. "I parked a couple of blocks away. The accident was that
he saw me when he was coming here to make his delivery. He brightened
right up."

"I got
nothing to do with him, except for one thing," he said. "I can't
explain him to you."

"He pulled
out a knife and tried to kill me. I took care of that. He isn't going
to talk about it, Glenroy. He'll be too embarrassed. But I don't think
he'll be around anymore."

"You took his
merchandise away from him?"

"I went
through his pockets. That's how I learned his name."

"I suppose it
could be worse," Glenroy said. "As it is, I'm glad I'm getting on that
plane to Nice the day after tomorrow."

"You're not
in any danger. I just want you to give me a name."

"You're a
fool."

"I already
know the name, Glenroy. I just want to make sure all the edges are
nailed down. And then I want you to do something for me."

He rolled his
head sideways on his palm. "If you want to be my friend, give me that
merchandise and leave me out of it."

"I'm going to
give it to you," I said. "After you tell me the name."

"I'd rather
stay alive," he said. "I can't tell you anything. I don't even know
anything." But he straightened up and pulled his chair closer to the
table.

"Who was the
detective that Billy Ritz worked with? Who helped him plant evidence,
after he killed people?"

"Nobody knows
that." Glenroy shook his head. "Some people might have worked out that
that kind of business was goin' on, but those people made sure they
stayed on the right side of Billy. That's all I can tell you."

"You're
lying," I said. "I'm going to flush that shit down the toilet—I need
your help, Glenroy."

He glowered
at me for a moment, trying to work out how he could get what he wanted
without endangering himself. "Billy was connected," he said. "You know
what I mean? He was all over the place."

"What are you
saying? That he was an informant for more than one detective?"

"That was the
word." He was deeply uncomfortable.

"You don't
have to tell me any names. Just nod when I say the name of anyone who
used Billy as a source."

He chewed on
it for a time and finally nodded.

"Bastian."

He did not
react.

"Monroe."

He nodded.

"Fontaine."

He nodded
again.

"Wheeler."

No response.

"Hogan."

He nodded.

"Good God," I
said. "What about Ross McCandless?"

Glenroy
pursed his lips, and then nodded again.

"Any more?"

"Someone like
Billy keeps his business to himself."

"You didn't
tell me a thing," I said. This was far truer than I wished it to be. At
least Glenroy had nodded when I said Paul Fontaine's name, but he had
not given me the confirmation I wanted.

"What was
that thing you wanted me to do?" he asked. "Throw myself in front of a
bus?"