Hooligans Part 46

"You mean against the law, that kind of wrong?"

She nodded.

The din in Casablanca had become hazardous to the health. The music kept getting louder, the dancers more frenetic, and the special effects more surreal. The lights went out, strobes reflected off smoke and fog, lasers crackled from one side of the room to the other.

I got that weird feeling in the back of my neck again. This time when I turned I thought I saw someone, but it was a momentary flash through light spasms and haze.

DeeDee shrugged her shoulders as though a cold wind had blown by her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I guess all the noise and-"

"Why don't we get out of here," I suggested. "I'll call a cab. We can go someplace and talk over coffee."

"I have my car," she said. "That was part of the deal. Lark would get your buddy and the car, I'd get you and keep mine."

"Did you rehea.r.s.e this act long?"

She laughed. The idea of leaving seemed to brighten her. I paid the bill and we elbowed through the crowd and left.

The street was empty except for the eerie gas lamps flickering along the river's edge through the mist.

The hazy figure of a man stepped briefly through one of the halos, half a block away.

Barely audible over the din from Casablanca, a car door opened and closed.

We started toward the circular iron stairway that led up to the promenade. The street echoed with the throbbing of the music. The damp fog settled over us. Our footsteps sounded like horse's hoofs on the cobblestones.

I heard the car start. Then the stick dropped into place. It started to move, slowly at first.

No headlights.

Through the mist I could see the mouth of an alley thirty feet away.

I said to DeeDee, "Listen to me carefully. When we get to that alley, I'm going to shove you in. Start running. I'll be right behind you."

"What-" she started, but the tires behind us bit into the cobblestone street and squealed to life.

"Let's go!" I yelled, and started running, pulling her beside me.

Headlights pierced the gray swirling world around us. The car was beading in on us. I was almost dragging her as we reached the narrow pa.s.sageway between two old warehouses. I shoved her in. There were half a dozen garbage pails piled up at the mouth of the alley.

"Down!" I yelled, and shoved her behind the cans.

The car, a black Pontiac, swept by a moment later, its brakes squealed, and there were three shots. I didn't hear them; they exploded against the cans and the wall behind us.

I clawed for my .357 and gave them three back. They smacked into the side of the car and it suddenly backed away from the mouth of the alley.

I looked behind us. The alley was about a car and a half wide, two hundred feet long. No doorways, although there was a loading platform and alcove about halfway down. The loading platform lip jutted three feet into the alley. There was dim light at the other end.

"We're going to run for it," I said. "I'll be behind you. If you hear any shooting, keep running. If they come after us in the car, keep running."

She looked at me, terrified.

"Go, now!" I gave her a shove.

She pulled off her shoes and took off. I went after her. She could move, I'll give her that, even in stocking feet on cobblestones. We were almost to the end of the alley when I heard the rumble of the sedan.

The car had gone around the warehouse and was in front of us. Its headlights burst back on, turning the swirling fog into dancing halos.

"d.a.m.n," I cried, spinning her around. We dashed back the way we had come. The car screamed around the corner behind us. I heard a pop, heard the slug wheeze past my ear, heard rubber tearing at cobblestones. Light flooded the alley.

We ran to the loading platform and I dove up onto the lip, pulled her on top of me, and rolled over against a metal door at the back of the loading alcove.

The driver of the car swerved toward our side of the alley, saw the platform lip too late. Metal screamed against wood. The corner of the platform pierced a headlight, ripped through it, and tore part of a fender away. The sedan lurched sideways, its tires trying to get a grip on the cobblestones as it skidded sideways and raked the opposite wall with its rear end. Sparks showered from its tortured rear end.

The gunner was undaunted by all the action. Three more shots spanged off the metal door behind us.

Among other things, I'm a rotten shot. But my .357 was equipped with phosph.o.r.escent T-sights and I swung the heavy pistol with the car, steadied my hand, lined up the little green b.u.t.ton on the end of the barrel with the notch in the back sight, and started shooting at the face leering in the rear window. Three slugs splattered the rear windshield.

They were playing hardball. The sedan slammed to a stop and I could hear the driver slapping it into reverse. Before he could let out the clutch I heard a cannon explode at the other end of the alley. It exploded three times. Two shots blew out the rest of the rear gla.s.s. The third one streaked off the rear b.u.mper, an inch above the gas tank.

Stick's voice yelled down the alley: "Go for the tires!"

Followed by another blast that sparked off the cobblestones barely an inch off target.

That whiskey-troubled voice was the sweetest sound I have ever heard.

"It's okay," I told DeeDee. "It's Stick. We're home free."

I lined up my little green sights and put two slugs into the left rear. The tire blew like a hand grenade going off. The driver shifted gears and roared off in retreat, the deflating tire peeling off the rim and the steel hub shrieking along the street. The hubcap spun off and clattered loudly against one wall.

The ruined sedan plowed into the garbage cans, showered them into street and river, screeched around the corner, and was swallowed by the fog.

I turned back to DeeDee, who was leaning against the metal door. Her eyes were the size of full moons.

"Okay?" I asked.

She stared at me for several seconds and then nodded furiously.

"Are you good on numbers?"

"I w-w-work in a b-b-bank, remember," she stammered.

"B-G-O-3-9-6," I said.

She repeated it. "Is that the license?" she asked.

"Right. "

A moment later the Stick came running up, his .357 in hand.

"You two okay?" he asked breathlessly, I threw my arms around him.

"Yeah, and d.a.m.n am I glad to see you," I said, bear-hugging him. "Where the h.e.l.l did you come from?"

"When we left the place there was a joker standing up the street under a light," Stick answered. "So we stopped at the edge of the park for a couple of minutes, just in case."

"So that's what that was all about," Lark pouted as she brought up the rear. "I thought it was love."

Stick gave her that crazy look of his. "It was both, darlin'," he said. "I doubled up."

"Whatever that means," she said.

"It means we're still alive," I said, "for which we'll be eternally grateful. "

"Just part of our twenty-four-hour service," he said gleefully. "Keeps us on our toes."

I helped DeeDee off the platform and she sighed and fell up against me. I could feel her heart thumping against my chest.

"C'mon, we'll follow you pal," Stick said, pulling me up the alley by the arm. "Dutch is right. You're dangerous when you're out alone."

52.

DEEDEE.

At DeeDee's suggestion, she and I went back to her place. It was ten minutes away, in the restored section of town not far from where Della Norman and Tony Logeto had died a few days ago.

On the way she asked, "Shouldn't we report this to somebody?"

"I'm one of the somebody's you report it to," I said. "Besides, the car's probably registered to some nonent.i.ty. By now they've either dumped it in the river or dropped it at some body shop. We'll never see it again."

"You seem to know an awful lot about these things."

"It's what I do."

"I thought you just did investigative work."

"Sometimes it upsets people."

"Upsets people!" she cried. "Is that what you call it?"

The house was tucked among s.h.a.ggy oaks, a two-hundred-year-old Revolutionary house that had been meticulously restored, as had the others on the street. It was like stepping into the eighteenth century. The inside was just as authentic. It was a museum piece, filled with bric-a-brac, old etchings and maps, and antique furniture that was as authentic as it was uncomfortable. There wasn't a cushion in the living room.

"This was my inheritance," she said. "Dad didn't have much, but he bought this house for a song when it was a falling-down wreck. He and Tony did most of the restoration work themselves. It took them years."

"Does Tony live here with you?"

"Sometimes," she said vaguely. We made small talk for ten or fifteen minutes, trying to talk past the awkwardness of the situation. Finally I got Lark's phone number and she went off to make coffee.

Lark answered the phone after eight or nine rings. Her voice was still sultry, but not quite as pleasant as earlier in the evening.

"h.e.l.lo?" she said tentatively.

"I'm sorry to bother you," I said. "DeeDee gave me your number. I need to talk to the Stick. It's very important."

"Who?"

"Mickey."

"You could have waited just about two minutes more, you know," she said, "just two little minutes."

"This'll take about thirty seconds."

"Trash. The spell is broken."

A moment later Stick's whiskey tenor rasped its h.e.l.lo.

"Sorry to bother you," I said, "but there's something I didn't tell you back there."

"Yeah?" His interest was lukewarm.

"I got a good look at the shooter in the car. It was Turk Nance."

"Is that supposed to be a surprise?" he replied.

"Just thought you'd like to know," I said.

"Breakfast," he said. "I'll meet you at the hotel at nine. We'll grab some groceries and go hunting."

"You sound out of breath. Have you been jogging?"

"f.u.c.k off, Kilmer."

Click.

DeeDee returned with the coffee. We sat on matching highback deacon's benches, facing each other across a rock maple serving table.

"Okay," I said. "Where were we?"

She stirred cream into her coffee and tasted it before she answered my question.

"I haven't seen or heard from Tony since Sat.u.r.day. It's really uncommon for him to go more than a day or two without a call."