Daryl said, “This sucks.”
Maybe he should join the Air Force.
Daryl's older brother, Todd, was already over there. He had a cushy job working on trucks at an air base near Saigon and said it wasn't so bad. You got to screw around a lot, smoke all the pot you wanted, and fuck good-lookin' gook women for twenty-five cents a throw. His brother made it sound like goddamned Disneyland, but Daryl figured with his rotten luck he'd probably have to carry a gun and get shot.
“Fuck.”
At eight o'clock, Daryl shut the lights, turned off the pumps, locked the station, and headed down the street, wishing he could stop in a bar. Eighteen years old being old enough to kill gooks, but not old enough to down a beer when you were thinking about it.
Daryl was thinking that he could drown his sorrow between Candy Crowley's legs if the fat psycho bitch would ever come across. He was almost there last Sunday, when the nutty bitch got it in her head to burn a cat. You just had to shake your head sometimes, where she came up with stuff like that. But it seemed to get her righteously damp, and Daryl thought he'd finally get the old ball between the uprights, as it were, when that weird kid spoiled the deal. Another fuckin'nut. That kid had taken the best beating that Daryl Haines ever dished out, and he just wouldn't quit. Didn't cry, either, not even after Daryl scrambled his eggs for him. You'd think the goddamned cat belonged to the kid, the way he carried on, but Daryl had stolen it from Old Lady Wilbur, his next-door neighbor.
You just had to shake your head.
Daryl was still thinking about it when this voice said, “Daryl.”
Daryl said, “Yeah?”
The kid stepped out from behind this big azalea bush, his face swollen and lumpy with bruises. A big piece of tape covered his nose, and black stitches laced his lip and left eyebrow like railroad tracks.
Daryl, feeling righteously cranky because he'd been drafted, said, “You want some more, you little fuck, you picked the right time. I'm goin'to Vietnam.”
But that didn't impress the kid, who suddenly had a Louisville Slugger baseball bat in his hands and hit Daryl on the outside of the left knee as if he was swinging away for the green wall at Fenway Park.
Daryl Haines screamed as he fell. It felt as if someone had sewn an M80 in his knee and touched the sucker off. Daryl clutched at his knee, still howling as the kid brought the bat down again. Daryl saw it coming and raised his hands, and then a second M80 went off in his right arm. Daryl screamed, “Jesus Christ! Stop it! Stop! Don't hit me again!”
The kid tossed the bat aside and stared at him. The kid's face was empty, and that scared Daryl even more than all the gooks in Vietnam.
The kid kicked Daryl in the side of the head, kicked him again, then leaned over and punched Daryl three fast times in the face. Daryl's sky filled with a million little sparkly stars against a black field, and then Daryl puked.
“Daryl?”
“Uhn …”
“It's not over until I win.”
Daryl spit blood. “You win. Jesus Christ, you win. I give up.”
The kid stepped back.
Daryl was crying so bad he felt like a baby. The kid had broken his leg and arm. Jesus, it hurt.
“Daryl.”
“Please, Christ, don't hit me again.” Scared the kid was gonna bash him some more.
“How could you want to hurt something so weak?”
“Jesus. Oh, Christ.”
“You ever do that, Daryl, I'll find you and kill you. That cat would kill you if it could, but it can't. I'll kill you for it.”
“I swear to Sweet Jesus I won't do that! I swear!”
The kid picked up his bat and walked away.
Twelve weeks later, after the casts were removed and the last of the stitches had come out, the Army doctors finally did their examination. Daryl Haines was determined to be 4-F due to a permanently disabled left knee. Unfit for military service.
He did not go to Vietnam.
He never tried to burn another cat.
21
• • •
His eyes opened, and Pike was as alert as if it were the middle of the afternoon, not two in the morning. Sleep would not come again after the dream, so he rose and pulled on briefs and shorts. He thought for a moment that he might read, but he usually exercised after the dreams. The exercise worked better for him.
He put on the blue Nike running shoes, then buckled on a small fanny pack, not bothering to turn on the lights. He was comfortable in the dark. Years ago, the Marine doctors told him that his excellent night vision was due to high levels of vitamin A and “fast rhodopsin,” which meant that the pigment in his retinas which responded to dim light was very sensitive. Cat eyes, they called it.
He let himself out into the cool night air, and stretched to loosen his hamstrings. Even though he often ran forty miles a week, his muscles were loose from the years of yoga and martial arts, and responded well. He settled the fanny pack on his hips, then jogged out across the complex grounds, through the security door, and into the street. The fanny pack held his keys, and a small black .25 caliber Beretta. You never know.
Much of his running was done early like this, and he found peace in it. The city was quiet. When he chose, he could run on the crown of the street, or through parks or across a golf course. He enjoyed the natural feel of grass and earth, and knew these feelings were resonances from his youth.
He ran west on Washington Boulevard toward the ocean, taking it easy for the first quarter mile to let his body warm, then picked up his pace. The air was cool, and a ground fog hazed the streets. The fog caught the light and hid the stars, which he didn't like. He enjoyed reading the constellations, and finding his way by them. There was a time as a young Marine when his life depended on it, and he found comfort in the certainty of celestial mechanics. Two or three times every year, he and his friend Elvis Cole would backpack or hunt in remote terrain, and, during those times, they would test themselves and each other by navigating via the sun and moon and stars. More times, Pike would venture out alone to remote and alien locales. He had learned long ago that a compass and GPS could fail. You had to look to yourself. You could only depend upon yourself.
Images came. Flashing snapshot pictures of his childhood, of women he had known, men he had seen die, and men he had killed. Of his friend and partner Elvis Cole, of the people he employed in his various businesses. Sometimes he would ponder these images, but other times he would fold them smaller and smaller until they vanished.
He followed Washington Boulevard as it curved north through Venice, then left Main for Ocean Avenue, where he could hear the waves crashing on the beach below the bluff.
Pike increased his kick past the Santa Monica Pier, past the shopping carts and homeless encampments, extending his stride as he worked his way to a six-minute-mile pace. He sprinted past the Ivy-by-the-Shore and the hotels, feeling himself peak, holding that peak, then throttled back to an easy jog before walking to the rail at the edge of the bluff, where he stopped to look at the sea.
He watched ships, stars on a black horizon. A breeze caressed his back, inland air drawn to the warmth of the sea. Above him, dried palm fronds rustled. A lone car slid past, lost in the night.
Here on the bluff overlooking the water, there were green lawns and bike paths and towering palms. A bush to his right rustled, and he knew it was a girl before he saw her.
“Are you Matt?”
She was tentative, but not afraid. Early twenties or late teens, with short hair bleached white, and wide brown eyes that looked at him expectantly. A faded green backpack hung from her shoulder.
“You're Matt?”
“No.”
She seemed disappointed, but was completely relaxed, as if the reality that she should be frightened of a strange man in so deserted a place had never occurred to her. “I guess you wouldn't be. I'm Trudy.”
“Joe.”
He turned back to the lights on the horizon.
“Pleased to meet you,
Joe. I'm running away, too.”
He considered her briefly again, wondering why she had chosen those words, then returned to the ships.
Trudy leaned against the rail, trying to see over the edge of the bluff to Palisades Beach Road. She gave no indication of leaving. Pike thought that he might start running again.
She said, “Are you real?”
“No.”
“No kidding, now. I want to know.”
He held out his hand.
Trudy touched him with a finger, then gripped his wrist, as if she didn't trust her first touch.
“Well, you might've been a vision or something. I have them, you know. Sometimes I imagine things.”
When Pike didn't respond, she said, “I've changed my mind. I don't think you're running away. I think you're running toward.”
“Is that a vision? Or something you imagined?”
She stared up at him as if she had to consider which it might be, then shook her head. “An observation.”
“Look.”
Three coyotes had appeared at the edge of the light, having worked their way up the bluff from the Palisades. Two of them sniffed at one of the garbage cans that dotted the park, the third trotted across Ocean Avenue and disappeared in an alley. They looked like thin gray dogs. Scavengers.
Trudy said, “It's so amazing that wild things can live here in the city, isn't it?”
“Wild things are everywhere.”
Trudy grinned at him again. “Well. That's certainly deep.”
The two coyotes suddenly came alert, looking north toward the Palisades an instant before Pike heard the coyote pack's song. Their singing rode down on the breeze coming out of the hills, and Pike guessed their number at between eight and twelve. The two coyotes by the garbage cans looked at each other, then lifted their snouts to test the air. You're safe enough, Pike thought. The others were at least three miles away, well up in the canyons of the Palisades.
The girl said, “That's such a terrible sound.”
“It means they have food.”
She hitched her backpack. “They eat people's pets. They'll bait a dog away from its home, then surround it and rip it to pieces.”
Pike knew that to be true, but still. “They have to live.”
The singing grew to a higher pitch. The two coyotes by the garbage can stood frozen.
The girl looked away from the sound. “They have something now. They're killing it right now.”
The girl's eyes were vacant. Pike thought she didn't seem to be within herself, and wondered if she was with the pack.
“They'll pull it to pieces, and sometimes, if too much blood gets on one of their own, the others will mistake it for the prey and kill their own kind.”
Pike nodded. People could be like that, too.
The singing abruptly stopped, and the girl came back to herself. “You don't say very much, do you?”
“You were saying enough for both of us.”
The girl laughed. “Yeah, I guess I was. Hope I didn't weird you out, Joe. I do that to people sometimes.”
Joe shook his head. “Not yet.”
A black minivan turned off Wilshire and came along Ocean Avenue, washing them with its headlights. It stopped in the middle of the street near where the coyote had crossed.
Trudy said, “Gotta be Matt. It was nice talking with you, Running Man.”
She hitched the backpack, then trotted to the van. Trudy spoke to someone through the passenger's window, then the door opened, and Trudy climbed in. The van had no plates, and no dealer card, though it gleamed with the newness of a vehicle just driven off the lot. In seconds, it was gone.
Pike said, “Goodbye, Running Girl.”
Pike glanced toward the garbage cans, but the coyotes were gone. Back to their own place in the hills. Wild things lost in the dark.
Pike leaned against the rail to stretch his calves, then ran inland up Wilshire.
He ran in the darkness, away from cars and people, enjoying the solitude.
Amanda Kimmel said, “Good riddance!”
Seventy-eight years old, loosely wrapped in skin that made her look like a pale raisin, and with a left leg that tingled as if bugs were creeping in all the little wrinkle troughs, Amanda Kimmel watched the two detectives sneak out of the house they were using to spy on Eugene Dersh and drive away. She shook her head with disgust. “Those two turds stand out like warts on a baby's ass, don't they, Jack?”
Jack didn't answer.
“Wouldn't cut the mustard in Five-O, I'll bet. You'd have their sorry asses back on the mainland faster than rats can fuck.”
Amanda Kimmel dragged the heavy M1 Garand rifle back to the TV and settled in her BarcaLounger. The TV was the only light she allowed herself these days, living like a mole in the goddamned darkness so she could keep an eye on all the cops and reporters and nutcase lookieloos who had been crashing around outside since they'd learned her neighbor, Mr. Dersh, was a maniac. Just her goddamned luck, to live right behind the next fuckin' Son of Sam.
Amanda said, “This is the shits, ain't it, Jack?”
Jack didn't answer because she had the sound off.
Amanda Kimmel watched Hawaii Five-O reruns every night on Nick-at-Nite, feeling that Jack Lord was the finest police officer who ever lived, and Hawaii Five-O the finest cop show that had ever been made. You could have your Chuck Norris and Jimmy Smits. She'd take Jack Lord any day.
Amanda settled back, had a healthy sip of scotch, and patted the M1 lovingly. Her second husband had brought the M1 home from fighting the Japs a million years ago and stuck it under the bed. Or was it her first husband? The M1 was as big as a telephone pole, and Amanda could barely lift the damned thing, but what with all the strangers creeping around outside these days as well as her living next to a maniac, well, a girl had to do what a girl had to do.
“Right, Jack?”
Jack grinned, and she just knew that he'd agree.
The first few days, armies of people poured through her neighborhood. Cars filled with rubberneckers and mouth breathers. Numbskulls who wanted their picture taken standing in Dersh's yard. (Get a goddamned life!) Reporters with cameras and microphones, making God's own noise and not giving two hoots and a damn who they disturbed. She'd even caught one reporter, that horrible little man on Channel 2, tromping through her roses as he tried to get into Dersh's yard. She'd cursed him a blue streak, but he'd gone ahead anyway, so she turned on her sprinklers and hosed the weaselly sonofabitch down good.
After that first few days, the crush of reporters and numbskulls had slacked off because the cops ran out of places to search, so there wasn't much for the TV people to tape. The cops pretty much stayed on the street in front of Dersh's house, leaving when he left and coming when he came, except for the cops who sucked around the empty house next door at four-hour intervals. Amanda suspected that the reporters didn't know about the cops in the house, which was fine by her because the cops made enough noise by themselves, managing to wake her each time the shifts changed, because she slept so poorly what with the leg and all.
“Being old is hell, isn't it, Jack? Can't sleep, can't shit, and you don't get laid.”
Jack Lord punched a fat Hawaiian on the nose. Yeah, Jack knew that being old was hell.
Amanda drained the rest of her scotch and eyed the bottle, thinking maybe it was time for a little refill when a car door slammed, and she thought, “Those goddamned cops with their noise again.” Probably forgot their cigarettes up in the house.
Amanda shut the TV, then dragged the big M1 back to the window, thinking that she just might scream holy hell at the bastards, keeping her up like this, only it wasn't the two cops.
Between the half-moon and the streetlamp, she could see the man pretty well, even with seventy-eight-year-old eyes and a belly full of scotch. He was walking from the street down along the alley toward Dersh's house, and he certainly wasn't a cop or a reporter. He was a large man, dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt without sleeves
, and something stuck out about him right away. Here it was the middle of the night, dark as the inside of a cat's butt, and this asshole was wearing sunglasses.
Her first thought was that he must be a criminal of some kind—a burglar or a rapist—so she hefted up the M1 to draw a bead on the sonofabitch, but before she could get the gun steadied, he disappeared past the hedges and was gone.
“Goddamnit! C'mon back here, you sonofabitch!”
She waited.
Nothing.
“Damn!”
Amanda Kimmel propped the M1 against the window, then went back to her chair, poured a fresh slug of scotch, and took a taste. Maybe the guy was some friend of Dersh's (he had male friends visit at all hours, and she certainly knew what that meant), or maybe he was just an after-hours lookieloo (Lord knows, there'd been plenty, often dressed more oddly than this).
The short, sharp bang damned near knocked her out of her chair.
Amanda had never in her life heard that sound, but she knew without doubt what it was.
A gunshot.
“Holy shit, Jack! I guess that sonofabitch wasn't a lookieloo, after all!”
Amanda Kimmel scooped up her phone, called the police, and told them that Eugene Dersh had just been murdered by a man with red arrows tattooed on his arms.
PART TWO
• • •
22
• • •
The morning heat brought the smell of wild sage up from the canyon. Something rumbled far away, a muffled thumping like the sound of heavy bombs beyond the horizon. I hadn't thought of the war in years, and pulled the sheet over my head.
Lucy snuggled into my back. “Someone's at the door.”
“What?”
She burrowed her face into me, her hand sliding across my side. I liked the dry heat of her palm. “At the door.”
Knocking.
“It's not even seven.”
She burrowed deeper. “Take your gun.”
I pulled on gym shorts and a sweatshirt, and went down to see. The cat was squatting in the entry, ears down, growling. Who needs a Doberman when you've got a cat like this?