The bouncer collapsed flat on the canvas as if every hard thing in his body had been smashed to jelly.
A spasm of coughing I couldn’t control ripped through my throat hard enough to make my eyes tear. For a moment while I coughed I thought I saw the bouncer try to rise, jerked upward by the autonomic misfiring of his nerves. When I was able to blink my sight clear, however, I saw that he hadn’t moved. Shallow respiration stirred him slightly. A couple of his fingers twitched—the involuntary sign language of pain. But he was out cold.
Around the room, people yelled hoarse triumph or disgust, but I ignored them. I already had enough disgust of my own—and way too much alarm. If Moy didn’t get here soon, with enough men—not to mention guns—I might have to tackle the goon myself. Or let him walk away. And I was no match for him. Coughing tugged at my guts like Muy Estobal’s bullet. If I went up against that thug alone, I wouldn’t stand a chance.
I hadn’t given the 911 dispatcher very good directions.
My target stood untouched by the noise like a man who didn’t care what had just happened. After a minute or so while bettors counted their winnings or cursed their luck, another bouncer got into the ring to check on the dragon tattoo. With a little rough persuasion, the tattoo finally lifted his head, tried to lever his arms under him. The other bouncer offered to support him, but he shook off help and gradually worked his way upright one joint and muscle at a time. Staggering, he struggled between the ropes and down to the floor on his own.
From the tray of the’ nearest waitress, he grabbed a beer and chugged it. Then he shambled toward the back of the room as if he considered himself fit for duty.
He didn’t once look at his opponent.
The heavyset man remained in the ring, but no one accepted his challenge. Still coughing, I watched him scan the room for a volunteer, but when he turned toward my table I ducked my head. If he hadn’t recognized me yet, I didn’t want him to do so now.
My heart lurched painfully when he said, “You. Big guy.” Despite his battered face, he had a voice like slow silk, liquid and threatening. “I don’t like the way you look at me. Get up here.”
I glanced aside at Sternway, but he concentrated on the goon. His face held no expression of any kind.
I nudged his arm. “Moy isn’t here yet,” I breathed between muffled coughs. “It’s your turn. Challenge him. Keep him busy.”
Sternway shifted toward me slowly, regarded me as if for a moment he’d forgotten I existed. Swallowing unnamed emotions, he asked, “That’s who you spotted at the tournament? I didn’t realize—” Abruptly he leaned closer. “Shit, Brew,” he whispered, “that’s Turf Hardshorn. This is the only place I’ve ever seen him.
“I don’t know his real name. They call him ‘Turf’ because he always ‘plants’ his opponents.”
The man in the ring said something I didn’t hear. Probably a mortal insult.
“So challenge him already,” I told Sternway tensely.
Earn the right to sneer at me.
“Are you crazy?” he retorted, still whispering. “Didn’t you watch—?” He pulled back a few inches. “He’s the only fighter I know who scares me. I’d rather take on that bouncer blindfolded.”
I couldn’t read the look in his eyes. He may’ve been challenging me himself. Daring me to call him a coward—
I certainly hadn’t earned that right.
The heavyset man raised his voice. “You with the cough. I’m talking to you. Don’t you have any guts? Or maybe you’re an undercover cop.” He waved his hands in front of his face. “You stink like a cop. I can smell it from here.”
Shit. Oh, shit. With just a few words, he’d shifted the whole club against me. If I didn’t do something about it—fast—I’d be lucky to get out of here with only a few crushed bones. A couple of men were already on their way out of their chairs, spitting hostility as they rose. The bouncers moved to block the exits. Everyone else glared all kinds of murder in my direction.
“Back me up,” I hissed under my breath at Sternway. Although he’d already said that he wouldn’t. “Unless you want Bernie’s killer to get away.”
Then I raised my face to the ring.
Baring my teeth like the grin of a fright mask, I leaned back in my chair and spread my arms. “Well, if those are my only choices,” I drawled so that the whole room could hear me, “I guess I’m just gutless.”
“I don’t think so,” the goon replied smoothly. “I think you’re a cop. You want to bust us all and make yourself a hero.”
Half the fighters in my vicinity looked like they were about to jump me. I heaved a dramatic sigh and climbed heavily to my feet. “In that case—” Deliberately I faked insolence to disguise the fact that I knew I was about to get killed. Unless Stern way actually did back me up. “Since we’re doing all this thinking anyway, I think we should take it outside. That way”—I rolled my eyes—“if I’m a cop I can’t bust anyone else. And if I am a cop, you won’t have to worry about witnesses.”
I had the small satisfaction of hearing Sternway groan quietly, seeing the goon tilt back his head in surprise. But it didn’t last long. A heartbeat later my challenger smiled. “I like it,” he answered, slick as silk. “Let’s go.”
Slowly, taunting me, he stripped the pads from his hands and feet. Then he vaulted lightly over the ropes, dropped to the floor, and headed for the exit in the far corner of the room.
I didn’t have any choice. I had to follow him. Denying myself so much as a glance at Sternway, I started to pick my way between the tables in the same direction.
I wanted the .45. More than that, I wanted Ginny. I’d walked into worse trouble than this when I knew she had my back. Or when she needed me to cover her. Without her I felt truncated in some profound way, almost unmanned—
Unfortunately my target didn’t give a shit how I felt. Sternway probably didn’t. Bernie and Alyse were past caring, and Ginny had walked out on our partnership. Moy wasn’t here. No one gave a flying fuck at the moon about any of this, except me.
I wasn’t sure that the crowd would let me go, but they did. Men and women fired obscenities as I passed, and one clown actually tried to spit at me—without much success—but none of them got in my way.
Like Jesus lugging his cross up Golgotha, too doomed for any kind of rescue, I crossed the room toward the far exit.
My target pulled the metal door open and let it swing shut after him. The dark outside seemed to swallow him before the door closed.
Before I could try to catch up with him, the bouncer with the dragon tattoo planted himself in front of me.
“Not that way, motherfucker,” he grated. “You use the fucking front door.”
The fury in his eyes suggested that he blamed me for the beating he’d just taken. He wouldn’t have been in the ring at all if he hadn’t wanted to repay my sarcasm. I’d created this whole mess myself when I’d first entered the club.
If the heavyset man escaped now, I might never find him again. A goon with a name like “Turf Hardshorn” wasn’t likely to have a published phone number, or even a steady address.
I moved straight at the bouncer like he wasn’t there.
Eagerly he. spread his arms, stepped forward to meet me.
Hurrying too much to think or hesitate, I aimed both my arms under his right and heaved them up and around, sweeping his arm past me. Then I braced my left hand behind his shoulder and shoved as hard as I could.
I got lucky. He’d pushed forward to counter my sweep, and his own momentum helped me send him headlong into a cluster of seated spectators.
Before he could disentangle himself from fallen chairs and sprawling patrons, I reached the door.
Then I was out in a service alley. Light from the street limned the edges of the buildings, but their shadows obscured the alley, filling it with darkness. A stink as thick as syrup told me that I stood near an untended Dumpster before my eyes adjusted enough to discern the outlines of its bulk between me and the stree
t. Dimly I made out darker shapes that resembled litter and trash cans. Rectangles of midnight in the opposite building suggested sealed doorways, boarded windows. Other than that I couldn’t see a thing.
My target might’ve been right behind me, waiting for the perfect moment to break my back, and I wouldn’t have known he was there. Until the door to the club opened again, letting out a wash of illumination, and Sternway stepped into the alley, I was blind in every way that mattered.
Fuck. Fuck and damn.
In the brief moment before the door closed again, I saw what I feared most. Sternway and I were alone. The heavyset man had already fled. Or hidden somewhere.
Which told me that he’d definitely recognized me. Whether he’d killed Bernie or not, he had no intention of getting caught.
The information did me no good whatsoever.
“Shit.” The rank air aggravated my throat, triggered another coughing spasm. I had to wheeze for several seconds before I could tell Sternway, “He got away.”
“You sure?” Sternway answered out of the gloom. He sounded unnaturally casual. “I’ve seen him fight before. I don’t think you scare him that much.”
Shit again. Apart from the distant reflections from the street, I might as well have had my eyes shut. Sternway was right. That goon didn’t fear me at all. And I was the only witness who could connect him to Bernie and The Luxury—
Darkness this thick might conceal him anywhere in the alley.
Sternway had come this far with me. I guess that meant I could trust him.
I wanted to be near a wall, protect myself from attack on at least one side. Involuntarily curling my fingers around the butt of a gun I didn’t have, I moved softly toward the Dumpster.
“What is this, a game?” I rasped loudly. I couldn’t sound as casual as Sternway, and didn’t try. Instead I covered my pounding heart and ragged breath with harshness. “You can’t just step up and fight? We have to play hide-and-seek first?”
“Great idea, Brew,” Sternway snorted, scorn as thick as the reek of garbage. “Piss him off even more. Who knows? He may forget he can tear out your liver with both hands tied behind him.
“This isn’t a goddamn anthill.”
I’d never heard him swear before. He was trying hard to warn me, but I didn’t know how to heed him.
“Maybe,” I muttered, mostly to myself. “Maybe not.” I reached the Dumpster, felt the rough iron with one palm, then set my back against it. It felt impossibly cold. I didn’t think anything in Carner ever cooled down that much. “Depends on what crawls out.”
Without warning the darkness seemed to swirl and solidify, concentrate into a swift shape. I barely got my forearms up in time to prevent a blow from clanging my head off the side of the Dumpster.
I’d been hit that hard before. Bullets carried about the same punch. And once Muy Estobal had given me a beating that damn near crippled me. But still—When it happened, it wasn’t something you could brace yourself for, or hope to absorb. My arms would’ve been equally effective against a wrecking ball.
A series of hits so quick that I couldn’t distinguish them from each other drove between my forearms, dug into my floating ribs, slammed at my scarcely healed guts. By the third or fourth impact their force was all that kept me upright, nailed to the Dumpster when every clenched or rigid thing inside me had already been shocked into pudding. As soon as the hitting stopped, I folded helplessly to the pavement.
The fall didn’t hurt. I had the sensation that I’d simply floated to the ground, drifting and curling from side to side like a sheet of paper in a slight breeze.
Some detached part of my brain imagined fancifully that as soon as I struck the cement I’d roll sideways, hauling up my knees and arms to ward off more blows. Surely there were more blows coming, I didn’t doubt that for an instant. My assailant had no reason to stop. Why should he? I wasn’t dead yet. Hell, I hadn’t even been damaged as much as humanly possible.
He didn’t stop. I heard more punches, heavy as sandbags, emphasized by grunts of effort and the skittering slap of fast bare feet. For some reason, however, none of them seemed to touch me, despite the fact that I lay sprawled on my face, still pretending that soon I would start to roll, prepare to defend myself.
I wasn’t being hit at all.
Somehow I wedged my arms under me and managed to heave my head off the pavement.
The darkness of the alley seemed deeper than it had a few seconds or minutes go. Or maybe I’d just forgotten how to see. A strange dance of gloom—obscurity wrapping and blowing around itself—may’ve been taking place a short distance in front of me. Or not. Maybe the dance was inside my head.
Nevertheless the sounds of battle continued. Expelled breath. Punished flesh. Still nothing struck me.
By degrees I understood that Sternway had come to my rescue.
Anson Sternway, who usually made my nerves squall with dislike. Who had told me, He’s the only fighter here who scares me. Who had no detectable reason to care what happened to me.
HRH Anson fucking Sternway was about to get himself killed because I’d asked him to back me up. Because I’d made myself a target by taunting the bouncer at the front door.
That I felt.
Wobbling like a drunk, I got my legs under me and stumbled upright.
The effort hurt as if parts of my body had been violently removed, but it cleared my vision a bit. Swirl after swirl, the dark dance resolved itself into two shapes hurling everything they had at each other. I couldn’t tell which was which. Gasps and sodden thuds seemed to arise from everywhere in the alley at once.
Sternway was fighting my fight. Gritting my teeth, I leaned what was left of me into motion.
I intended to put a stop to it. By falling on both of them, if I had to.
Out of the confused struggle, an unidentifiable voice gasped words between the blows. I heard them one at a time, registered them as discrete events. When I finally put them together, they said, “What the fuck are you doing?”
The next instant, one of the fighters let out a raw howl like the kiais I’d heard at the tournament. At the same time, he swung a fist like a sledgehammer into the other man’s throat.
The sharp wet crack of a crushed larynx stopped me like I’d been punched in the chest. When one of the obscured shapes went down, I nearly fell with him.
From somewhere nearby, a location I couldn’t identify, it might’ve been anywhere in the alley, Sternway’s voice panted, “I shouldn’t have been able to do that.” Despite his exertions, he sounded entirely calm. “My night vision must be better than his. I’ve seen him counter attacks like that a dozen times.”
He may’ve been justifying himself—
Crumbling to my knees beside the downed fighter, I groped at him until I reached his slack jowls and the liquid pulp of his larynx. Blood still oozed from the tears in his throat, but I couldn’t find a pulse at his carotid artery, or in his wrist. As soon as I touched his chest, I knew he was gone. I’d handled enough corpses in my life to recognize the limp defeated feel of lifeless skin and muscles.
What the fuck are you doing?
When he left, he’d taken my only link to Bernie’s killer with him.
18
Baffled and beaten, I bowed my head over Turf Hardshorn’s body. For a while I couldn’t think. Hell, I could hardly feel. I hurt too badly. A persistent ringing troubled my ears. Parts of my chest felt like they’d died a while ago.
“He’s dead,” I muttered hoarsely. I had to acknowledge the loss somehow.
“I know,” Sternway said in the background. “I felt his windpipe go.” A moment later he added unnecessarily, “He would’ve done the same to you if I hadn’t stopped him.”
What the fuck are you doing?
I couldn’t imagine what to do next.
But I couldn’t just kneel there until the end of time. My duties didn’t end with this death. The fact that I’d failed Bernie tonight—and Alyse—didn’t give me the right to s
urrender. It just meant that I’d have to try harder.
Which was a conclusion I’d grown accustomed to over the years.
Fumbling through the pain in my ribs and stomach and head, I got one hand on the cell phone and called 911.
Sternway said my name, but I had no energy to spare for him.
I’d go mad if Moy had ignored my summons.
When I told the dispatcher who I was, she instructed me to hold on. In fifteen seconds she connected me to Detective Moy.
“Axbrewder, where the hell are you?” He sounded bored despite the high-pitched whine in my ears. “Those were some shitty directions you left for me.”
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d been left. Since any information I produced now was bound to be worse, I forced myself to my feet and handed the phone to Sternway.
“Tell him where we are.”
Some of the dead patches along my ribs contracted. Others spread out like oil spills.
Through the obscurity, Sternway’s shape gave off the charged impression of a man with something important to say, but he didn’t hesitate. He identified himself to the phone, said a few things that must’ve made sense to Moy. By the time he hung up, I could see red and blue lights strobing on the sides of the buildings.
The detective had been that close—If I hadn’t given him shitty directions, he might’ve been able to rescue me.
That was usually Ginny’s job.
The ringing took on a vague resemblance to music. I thought I recognized the animal husbandry section from Handel’s Messiah. All we like sheep.
Sternway poked the phone at me. “Axbrewder,” he said again. “We need to talk.”
Vaguely I accepted the phone, put it away. “About?”
“I backed you up.” He pitched his voice so that it wouldn’t carry. “Now it’s your turn. Don’t say anything about the club.”
I stared at him past a shroud of darkness. For a moment I couldn’t think of a response. He wanted to protect his peculiar taste in recreation—I understood that—but the distortion of his priorities confused me anyway.