15••••

LIKE EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD, I HAD SEEN TOO MANY movies. I expected Hyland’s place to be a large estate, a fortress with high walls and a massive gate guarded by a brace of men with automatic weapons, but it was just a good-sized brick house on a suburban lot with a four-foot-high chain-link fence. A man stood beside the gate, but it was wide open, and he was obviously bored stupid as he slumped against a gatepost. In the flash of our passing headlights, I recognized him as a man I had seen drinking coffee in a truck stop in Sheridan, Wyoming. Even standing guard, he looked like a trucker with bleary eyes, swollen feet, and itchy hemorrhoids. I, on the other hand, had come dressed for the party, decked out like a mercenary in jungle boots and a tiger-striped fatigue uniform, even done up in blackface like a night-fighter, and armed to the teeth, a K-bar combat knife strapped to my calf, a .38 S&W Airweight in a shoulder holster, and the silenced .22 Colt Woodsman under my belt.

As we drove past Hyland’s gate, Trahearne laughed and asked, “You loaded for bear, boy?”

“Be prepared,” I said. “That’s my motto.”

He sneered. “That’s for Boy Scouts.”

Before I could answer, Stacy said, “He’s just jealous because he doesn’t have a uniform.” Which shut Trahearne up.

She dropped me around the first curve north of Hyland’s gate, and I crept back up the ditch toward the fence corner. Once there, I vaulted it, then bellied slowly toward the back of the house, watching for the other guard. I found him peeking through a slit in the blackout curtains at a back bedroom window. Some guys just can’t get enough of that sort of thing. Even though the mountain air was chilly, the air-conditioning unit was going full blast. I used the noise for cover and walked up behind him. It seemed a shame to spoil his fun, but I sapped him silly, then trussed him like a pig for slaughter. When I finished with him, I took his place at the window.

Banks of movie lights filled the large bedroom with white heat that seemed intensified by the huge mirror over the king-sized bed. A naked black woman sat on a stool, fanning herself with one hand and smoking a joint with the other. On the bed, a blond, tanned guy was being worked over by a chesty girl in shorts and a halter, her head bobbing at his crotch with an angry exasperation. Two guys stood beside the camera chatting and smoking dope, and a short, fat fellow paced around the room talking to himself. In the shadows beyond the lights, Hyland and Torres sat on a couch, flanking a woman with a ton of blond hair who wore a flimsy robe, a very blank expression, and too much make-up. Hyland had a tall, cool drink in one hand. The other was draped casually over the blonde’s shoulders, where it kneaded her large, firm breast regularly, as if he were exercising it. Only when I glanced at the woman’s face again, did I recognize Melinda, then I looked away as quickly as I could.

At the gate I was supposed to wait for Stacy to stop the car on the highway to ask the guard for directions, but when I went around the house to wait for her, he was off in some other world. I walked up behind him and put him to sleep too. When Stacy stopped the car, I stepped out of the shadows and waved her into the driveway. She cut the lights and pulled in.

“Just a second,” I told her, “I’ve got to finish gift-wrapping this one.”

She stomped on the emergency brake and followed me behind the shrubbery. As I leaned over to finish taping the guy’s ankles, Stacy jerked the sap out of my back pocket, and before I could stop her, she had flattened his nose, crunched some teeth, and given him a lump as big as a walnut between the eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered as I wrestled the sap from her.

“That’ll teach the motherfucker to shoot dogs,” she said calmly.

She went back to the car, and I had to rummage around behind his gag for fragments of teeth so he wouldn’t choke to death, but it was a hopeless task. I cut the gag off him. His mouth was going to hurt so bad that he probably wouldn’t make much noise. If he woke up at all. The knot between his eyes looked nasty, maybe fatal, and I knew that Stacy didn’t need his death on her conscience.

It had been a long day, so I rode up the driveway on the car fender, then hopped off and removed the valve stems from the tires of the three-quarter-ton Dodge van and the black Continental. Sitting on four flats, the vehicles looked comic, but I was too tired to smile. As Stacy turned the car around to face down the driveway, I used the keys I had taken from the guards to try the garage door that opened into the kitchen, but it wasn’t locked. I dropped the keys on the steps and went back to organize Traheame and his shotgun.

“You stay outside,” I told him as I checked again to be sure that he didn’t have a shell in the chamber. “Don’t come inside unless you hear gunfire, and if you do come inside, don’t shoot anybody until you’re sure who they are. Right?”

“Teach your grandma ‘to suck eggs,” he said.

“That’s my line,” I said.

He glared at me. “I had a platoon on the ‘Canal when you were still in diapers.”

“Just stay outside,” I said, “and try not to think about it.”

He grunted, and that sounded like the closest I could get to an agreement. I changed clips in the .22 so I would have three rounds of rat shot above six rounds of hollow-point hot loads, then I got a Browning 9mm automatic out of the car for Stacy, jacked a round into the chamber, and left the hammer back.

“If it happens,” I said, “hold it like I showed you and aim for their kneecaps and keep pulling the trigger until it’s empty.” She nodded, breathing shallowly, her eyes wide. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Let’s do it before I change my mind,” she said, and followed me into the house.

As we eased through the darkened rooms, she covered me while I cut telephone wires, which I had forgotten to do outside. Every time I glanced over my shoulder, she was standing in a crouch, the heavy automatic clutched in her right hand, her left hand holding the right wrist, the pistol covering the rooms in long, smooth arcs. She seen too many movies too. I just hoped that she would pull the trigger if I needed her. After we had checked both floors and found all the rooms empty, we paused at the bottom of the stairs to catch our breath, then went down the hallway toward the bedroom where they were filming.

I listened for a moment at the door. Somebody was complaining about the working conditions, the late hours, and the dubious physical accomplishments of some so-called actors. “Have you ever had an erection?” the voice inquired as I opened the door, stepped in, and shot the top off Hyland’s glass with the hollow point in the chamber. Just foi: the effect.

“Everybody be calm,” I said as Stacy backed into the corner beside the door. “Be real calm.”

It almost worked. Everybody froze for a second. Except for Torres. With one smooth motion, he stood and reached under his left arm. At seven feet, a -round of .22 long rifle shot will pulverize a rattlesnake’s head, and when I shot Torres in his right hand, it seemed to explode, but he didn’t make any more noise than the silenced round.

“You’ll have to hire somebody to wipe your ass and pick your nose,” I said. He chuckled and let his hand fall to his side.

As if that were some sort of signal, the film crew broke out in a fit of small movements and aimless chatter, but as soon as Stacy swept the automatic across them, they all stilled and shut up. All but the chubby director.

“All right,” he demanded, “what’s going down

here?”

“If he opens his mouth again,” I said to Stacy over my shoulder, “blow the back of his head off.”

He opened his mouth, then shut it quickly as he looked down the barrel of the automatic. He took another look, sighed, and fainted into a puddle.

“All you film folk,” I said, “I want you lying flat on the bed, face down, with your fingers laced behind your necks. Right now.” Melinda stared at me, confused, but when I jerked my head, she dashed for the bed and joined the scramble for a place.

“Now, you two gentlemen assume that old familiar position against the wall behind the couch,” I said to Hyland and Torres. They were too tough to hurry but they got there anyway. “If they lift a finger,” I said to Stacy, “start pulling that trigger and don’t stop until it’s empty.” She nodded and moved to my left to cover the two men while I patted them down. Hyland was clean, but Torres had been reaching for a .357 magnum Colt Python with a six-inch barrel. “It’d take you a month to get this sucker out,” I said as I unloaded it, but he didn’t answer. He just leaned against the wall, watching the blood from his hand creep down the’ plaster. “Now, you boys just stay right there,” I said as I stepped away and tossed the Colt under the couch. “We’re going to have a little conversation.”

“What do you want?” Hyland asked calmly.

“The girl,” I said, “and a little satisfaction.”

“Take her,” he shrugged, “enjoy her to your heart’s content, buddy, because you’re a dead man.”

Just to see ifhe was as tough as he acted, I skimmed him across the buttocks with another round of rat shot.

“Jesus Christ,” he wailed, and broke into a slick sweat.

Torres glanced at Hyland with contempt, then at the .22 with interest. I fired the last round of shot into the row of bottles standing on a dry bar against the far wall.

“That’s the last round of rat shot,” I said, “and I don’t know how far you’d get with a hollow point between the eyes, but you can try it if you want to.”

He relaxed and leaned harder against the wall, but before I could start the conversation, Trahearne lurched into the room, shouting, “Where is she!” as he jacked a round into the chamber of the riot gun, then let it off into the ceiling. The large mirror exploded like shrapnel, a bank of lights flared, then went black. Hyland rolled over the arm of the couch to hide behind it, and Torres shoved off the wall, heading like a mad bull toward Stacy and the automatic. He didn’t even glance at me and didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think the little girl would have the nerve to pull the trigger, and it was very nearly the last mistake he ever made.

Stacy fired five rounds as quickly as she could pull the trigger, holding low. But the automatic jerked a little higher with each shot. The. first splintered the floor between his feet, the next two went between his legs, and Torres could see what was coming. He hit the floor-in a headfirst slide. When he finally halted his skid, Stacy had stopped firing, and he glanced up. She held the pistol steadily pointed at his head. How she had missed him at that range with five rounds, I’ll never understand. Torres couldn’t either.

“Enough,” he whispered, then crawled back to the couch. “You mind if I lie down for a minute?” he asked.

“Be my guest,” I said.

He climbed up on to the couch and rested his head on the arm that Stacy had blown to stuffing and splinters.

“How the fuck did I miss?” she asked herself.

“Where’s my wife?” Trahearne said. The gunfire had brought him to a dead halt too.

“I thought I told you to stay outside,” I said, but he didn’t even look at me. “She’s over there.” I pointed to the pile of people who had hidden behind the bed. Trahearne handed me the shotgun and went to get Melinda. “Get her out of here,” I said as he helped her up, clucking like a mother hen.

As they walked past me, Melinda slipped the wig off and dropped it on the floor. Traheame tried to kick it but he missed and would have fallen down if Melinda hadn’t grabbed him. Even with her cropped hair and smeared make-up, she still looked worth a man’s blood, maybe even his life. A line of red from a small cut ran down her smooth cheek, and as she glanced at me, I could see she was crying as they made their way across the littered room.

The film crew had moved off the floor back onto the bed, and they were examining their wounds from the flying glass. From where I stood, nothing looked too serious, just small cuts. The male star had the worst one, a shard of mirror about four inches long sticking through the loose muscle below his left shoulder blade. When he started whining about it, though, the black girl jerked it out and told him to shut up.

“Mr. Hyland,” I said as I walked over to the end of the couch, “you can come out now.” He didn’t, though. When I looked over the arm, he was crouched in a puddle of blood. One of Stacy’s rounds had blown the side of his head all over the wall. It was an incredible effort, the hardest of the whole lousy night, but I turned to Stacy and said, “Mr. Tough Guy’s over here in a dead faint. Why don’t you herd those other folks down the hall to the bathroom so they can clean up.”

She nodded, then jerked the automatic at the people on the bed. The black girl had to slap the male star to get him going, and the head girl and one of the cameramen had to carry the director, but they got it together, finally, and trooped out the doorway.

“Is he dead?” Torres asked as soon as the room cleared.

“He’s all over the wall, man,” I said as I walked over to the dry bar and picked up a bottle of Scotch out of the broken glass. “Let’s go to the kitchen and have a

drink.”

“That’s the first good idea you’ve had tonight,” he said, then rolled off the couch and stood up. “Maybe the first good one in your whole life.”

I stuck the .22 under my belt and propped the shotgun across my arm. Torres shut up. As we left the room, I cut off the light and closed the door.

“Doesn’t taste like Chivas, does it?” Torres asked as we lifted our glasses.

“Right now it tastes like shit but it tastes great,” I said. On the way to the kitchen, I had locked the crew in the bathroom and sent Stacy outside to cover the front of the house. Just in case the gunfire had attracted anybody’s attention, I told her.

“Hyland,” Torres went on. “He buys four-ninety-eight Scotch and pours it into a Chivas bottle, then the dumb son of a bitch expects nobody to notice it.”

“Nice eulogy,” I said.

“More than he deserves,” Torres suggested. “What happens now?”

“Depends on how you want to play it.”

He took a long swallow of his drink, then stared at me. “Okay, let me lay it out for you,” he said, then held up his hand wrapped in a bloody dishtowel. “I think my working days are over, man, and I’m used to living good … “

“All your days were nearly over,” I interrupted.

“No shit,” he sighed. “I still don’t know how that chick missed me.”

“I wish she had missed Hyland,” I said.

“If you don’t tell her, man, she won’t know,” Torres said, “and in a way she did both of us a favor.”

“How’s that?”

“He’s the sort of dumb bastard who would have taken this personally,” Torres said. “He didn’t know when to cut his losses.”

“And you do?”

“Right,” he answered. “Look at it like this, man, Hyland was an idiot—I mean how dumb can you get, making flicks in your own place—and the uncle who got him into the business is no longer in business, if you know what I mean, so there are a few people who won’t cry when they find out Hyland is out of it, you see.”

“And you’re one of them?”

“I know more about his business than he did,” Torres said, “and with him out of the way, I can step in and run it right.”

“So I just walk away with the girl? Clean?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Except for one thing.”

“The forty thousand?” “You got it,” he said.

“That was a long time ago.”

“Right. But everybody concerned knows about it,” he said.

“I think you’re jerking me around,” I said, “trying to make a little profit on the side.”

“Can you blame me, man?” he said, then grinned. “And I ain’t kidding you, if I had that forty K, there would be a lot less heat.”

“That’s your ticket to the movies, isn’t it?” I said.

“You got it.”

“Not in my pocket,” I said, “but if you’ll give me sixty days, I’ll do what I can.”

“Quicker would help,” he said.

“Listen, don’t press me,” I said, “not when I’m holding this shotgun.”

“Aw hell,” he said, then waved his bloody hand at me. “If you were going to kill me, man, you’d’ve done it right out of the bag instead of screwing around that dumb shit rat-shot bit. It’s too messy, man—dead, I’m just more trouble than it’s worth, but alive, I can clean up this end.”

“Sixty days,” I said, “and no promises.”

“Okay, what the hell, it’s worth it,” hesaid. “Deal?”

“I’ve got to have an edge,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Your prints on the piece that killed Hyland,” I said, “and the account books out of his safe.” “Or what?”

“Or I’m talking to a dead man,” I said. “I’ll leave you in the room with Hyland, the Browning in your hand, the .22 in his, and take my chances.”

“The pieces aren’t registered to you, huh?”

“Out of Arkansas,” I said, “as clean as whistles.”

“You ain’t exactly a model citizen.”

“I’m no kind of citizen at all,” I said.

“You get the piece, I’ll get the books,” Torres said calmly.

“You get the books, I’ll watch.”

“Right,” he said, then knelt in front of the sink cabinet, opened it up and removed what looked like ten years of accumulated kitchen cleaning materials. He lifted the floor of the cabinet to expose a round safe sunk into the concrete foundation. He worked the dial, and paused before opening the door. “The first thing out, man, is a piece, but it’ll come out slow,” he said, then opened it up and lifted out a nickel-plated .32 automatic and handed it to me.

“A beautiful piece,” I said as I unloaded it.

“Yeah,” Torres said, “he must’ve paid at least twenty dollars for it.” He laughed, then stood up and handed me a stack of narrow ledgers. “Can I ask one more

favor?”

“What?”

“If you send me copies of these,” he said, “it’ll make the changeover all that much smoother.”

“Okay.”

“I almost believe you,” he said.

“You mail me a receipt for a thousand-dollar contribution to the humane society,” I said, “and I’ll mail you copies.”

“You got it, man,” he said. “I’m sorry about the dogs. Hyland, he hated dogs and when this bulldog bit him on the ankle, he went crazy. I tried to stop him, really, but he—”

“Just shut up,” I said as I leveled the shotgun at his nose. “You got it?” He nodded. “Now let’s go get the Browning.” I herded him outside, took the automatic from Stacy, then prodded him back into the kitchen. “Unload it,” I told him, “and wipe it clean, then reload it.” He did it quickly and professionally. I didn’t even have to tell him to take each round out of the clip. When he finished, he found a large plastic bag and dropped the piece in it. “Now let’s go down the hall and pick up those five pieces of brass,” I said.

“You’re a careful son of a bitch,” he said as he handed me the plastic bag.

“That’s what I’m doing here,” I said, “practicing my careful act, scumbag.”

“You don’t have to insult me,” he said as I followed him down the hall.