Hooligans Part 68

"My name's Kilmer, to see Mrs. Raines," I said.

He checked over his clipboard, leafing through several sheets of paper, and shook his head.

"Not on the list," he said.

"Would you give her a call? She probably forgot. It's been a rough day for her."

"I got a 'no disturb' on that unit," he said.

"She's expecting me," I said, trying not to lose my temper.

"There's no Kilmer on the list and I got a 'no disturb' on that unit," he said, politely but firmly. "Why don't you go someplace and call her, tell her to call the gate and clear you."

I showed him my card and his eyes stuck on the first line-"Agent-U.S. Government"-and stayed there until he looked back up.

"My brother's a city cop," he said, looking out the window at nothing in particular. "He's taking the Bureau exams in the fall."

"Fantastic. You know what's going on up there at Mrs. Raines' place, don't you?"

"You mean about Mr. Raines?"

"Yeah."

"Terrible thing." He looked back at the buzzer and asked, "This official?"

"What else?" I said in my official voice.

"They got tough rules here, buddy. n.o.body, not n.o.body, goes in without a call from the gate first. It's in the lease."

"Like I said, she's expecting me; probably forgot to give you the name with everything else that's going on. Why don't I ride through?"

"h.e.l.l, I'll just call her," he said. "Guest parking is to the right, behind those palmettos."

I pulled in and parked in the guest lot, which was so clean and neat it looked sterilized. When I got back, the guard had his grin on.

"A-okay," he said, making a circle with thumb and forefinger. "You were right, she forgot. First walk on the left, second unit down, 3-C."

I thanked him and headed for 3-C. The place was as quiet as the bottom of a lake. No night birds, no wind, no nothing. Pebbles crunched under my feet when I reached the cul-de-sac. It was a cla.s.s operation, all right. Each condo had its own pool. There wasn't a speck of trash anywhere. Soft bug-repellent lights shed a flat, shadowless glow over the grounds.

Three-C stood back from the gravel road at the end of two rows of azaleas. It seemed like a cathedral on Christmas Eve. I pressed the doorbell and chimes played a melody under my thumb. Chains rattled, dead bolts clattered, the door swung open, and she was standing there.

The events of the last twenty-four hours had taken their toll. Her eyes were puffed, her face drawn and sallow. Grief had erased her tan and replaced it with a gray mirror of death. She closed the door behind me and retreated to a neutral corner of the room, as though she were afraid I had some contagious disorder.

"I'm glad you're here," she said, in a voice that had lost its youth.

"Glad to help," I said.

"n.o.body can help," she said.

"You want to talk it out?" I suggested. "It helps, I'm told."

"But not for you, is that it?"

I thought about what she'd said. It was true, there were few people in the world I could talk to. A hazard of the profession.

"I guess not," I said. "n.o.body trusts a cop."

"It's hard to realize that's what you do."

I looked around the place. It was a man's room, no frills, no bright colors. The color scheme was tan and black and the antique furniture was heavy and oppressive. The walls were jammed with photographs, plaques, awards, all the paraphernalia of success, squeezed into narrow, shiny bra.s.s frames. The room said a lot about Harry Raines; there was a sense of monotonous order about it, an almost urgent herald of accomplishment. A single flower would have helped immensely.

Oddly, Doe was in only one of the pictures, a group shot obviously taken the day the track opened. The rest were all business, mostly the business of politics or racing: Raines in the winner's circle with a jockey and racehorse; Raines looking ill-at-ease beside a Little League ball club; Raines with the Capitol dome in Washington soaring up behind him; Raines posing with senators, congressmen, governors, generals, mayors, kids, and at least one president.

"Didn't he ever smile?" I asked, looking at his stern, almost relentless stare.

"Harry wasn't much for smiling. He thought it a sign of weakness," Doe said.

"What a shame," I said. "He looks so unhappy in these photographs."

"Dissatisfied," she said. Resentment crept into her tone. "He was never satisfied. Even winning didn't satisfy him. All he thought about was the next challenge, the next victory, another plaque for his wall. This was his place, not mine. I'm only here because it's convenient. As soon as this is all over, I'm getting rid of it. I'm sick to death of memorials, and that's all this house is now."

"How about you, did you satisfy him?"

"In what way?" she asked, her brow gathering up in a frown.

"I mean, were you happy together?"

She shrugged.

"We had all the happiness money can buy," she said ruefully. "And none of the fun that goes with it."

"I'm sorry," I said, feeling impotent to deal with her grief. "I'm sorry things have turned so bad for you."

She sat down primly, her hands clasped in her lap, and stared at the floor.

"Oh, Jake, what happened to it all?" she said, without looking up. "Why did it shrivel up and die like that? Why were we betrayed so? You, Teddy, Chief, all the things that had meaning for me were ripped out of my life."

"We all took a beating," I said. "Poor old Teddy got the worst of it."

"Teddy," she said. "Dear, sweet Teddy. He didn't give a d.a.m.n for the Findley tradition. In one of his letters from Vietnam he said that when you two got back, he was going to buy a piece of land out on Oceanby and the two of you were going to become beach b.u.ms. He said he was tired of being a Findley. It was all just a big joke to him."

"We talked about that a lot," I said. "Sometimes I think he was halfway serious."

"He was serious," she said, sitting up for a moment. "Can't you just see it? The three of us out there telling the world to drop dead?" She looked up at me and tried to bend the corners of her mouth into a smile. "You see, I always knew you'd come back here, Jake. Sooner or later Teddy would get you back for me. Only what I thought was, it was a glorious fantasy, not a nightmare. Then Teddy died and the nightmare started and it never ended and it keeps getting worse."

She picked at a speck of dust for a moment and then said, "The G.o.ds are perverse. They give lollipops to children and take them away after the first lick."

I wanted to disagree with her, but I couldn't. What she said was true. It's called growing up. In her own way, Doe had resisted that. Now it was all catching up to her at once and I felt suddenly burdened by her sadness. Not because of Raines' death-there was nothing to be done about that-but because of what they didn't have when he was alive; because the bright promises of youth had become elusive; because the promises of the heart had been broken. I remembered Mufalatta's story about the two violins. She was playing a sad tune and my violin was answering.

"Harry knew from the start that he was second choice," she went on. "I never deceived him about that. But I tried. In the beginning we both tried real hard. Then Chief got more and more demanding and t.i.tan started talking politics and Harry started changing, day by day by day, and pretty soon I was just part of the territory to him. Just another plaque on the wall. I wanted the commitment, Jake. Oh G.o.d, how I wanted that. And now I want him back. I want to tell him I'm sorry, that it was all a . . . a . . . "

She shook her head, trying to find a way to end the sentence, so I ended it for her.

"An error in judgment?" I suggested.

She looked up at me and said, "An error in judgment? What a cheap way to sum up a life."

I was trying to think of a way to tell her about Sam Donleavy, but I didn't have a chance to get around to it.

"I can't stay here, Jake," she said, staring at the pictures on the wall. "Every place I look I see him." She looked at me. "Drive me out to Windsong, will you, please? Get me out of here."

"Let's go," I said. I could tell her on the way out.

She did whatever women do before they leave the house-it seemed like an eternity of puttering around-then we left and walked back to my car. We didn't say anything but she clung to my arm so hard it hurt.

The security guard flagged me down as we drove toward the island.

"You got somebody waiting for you?" he asked.

"Why do you ask?"

"There's this black sedan down to the right. Pulled up just after you went in. He's been down there ever since."

I squinted through the dark and could see the car, half a block away, sitting on our side of the street. It could have been one of Dutch's hooligans, but I didn't recognize the car.

"Can you tell how many there are?"

"Just the one," he said.

"Maybe he's sleeping one off," I said.

"Yeah, well, just thought I'd mention it," the guard said.

"Thanks. "

"My pleasure."

I pulled out of the security drive and turned left, away from the parked car. It pulled away from the curb without showing any lights and fell in behind us. I drifted, letting it pull closer. As usual, my gun was in the trunk.

"Hook up," I told Doe.

"What?" she said.

"Your safety belt. Hook it up, and hang on."

She groped for the belt and snapped it across her lap.

"What's the matter?" she asked, urgency creeping into her voice.

"We've got company," I said, hooking up my own belt. "Just hang on. It'll be like the old days in the dune buggy."

I waited until the car was ten feet behind me, then slammed down the gas pedal and twisted the steering wheel. The car leaped forward, its tires tortured by the asphalt, and then spun around. I hit the brakes, straightened it out, and left rubber all over Palm Drive as I headed in the other direction.

The other driver was faster than I figured. He swerved and hit my left rear fender. I lost control for a moment, spun wheels, hit gas and brakes trying to get it back, leaped over the banquette, missed an alcove of garbage cans and Dempster Dumpsters, and wasted about thirty feet of the fence surrounding the compound. My car came to a halt, its ruined radiator hissing crazily.

I fumbled with the keys, got them out of the ignition, jumped out, and ran back toward the trunk. The other car did a wheely and headed back toward me, stopping ten feet away. I was still struggling with the trunk latch when I heard Turk Nance say from behind me: "You need driving lessons."

While we were looking for him, Nance had followed me.

Doe was out of the car beside me.

"Get back in the car," I said as quietly as I could.

"What's going on?" she squealed.

Too late. Nance was standing in front of me, his Luger at arm's length, pointed at my face, his reptile eyes dancing gleefully, his tongue searching his lips.

I reacted. Without thinking. Without figuring the odds. Without thinking about Doe.

It was like an o.r.g.a.s.m, a great flood of relief. All my frustrations and anger boiled up out of me into a blind, uncontrollable rage. Nance was more than just a psychotic who had killed people I knew and who'd tried to kill me. He was every broken promise, every shattered dream, every p.i.s.sed-away value in the last twenty years of my life.

I didn't think. I grabbed the gun by the barrel and twisted hard, heard the shot and felt the heat surge through the barrel, burn my hand, and howl off down the street. I hit him, knocked him into the alcove of garbage cans, hit him again, kneed him, thrashed him back and forth, from one wall to the other, and then hit him again and kneed him again. He started to fall and I held him up and kept hitting him. I could hear Doe screaming my name hysterically but I couldn't stop. Every punch felt good, every kick. He started screaming, trying to get away from me. His shirt tore and he fell to his knees and scrambled toward the street like a crab. I slammed my foot down on his ankle to stop him, twisted it, and hit him in the back of the head several times with my fist until my hand was burning with pain. I dragged him up and kicked him in the small of his back and he vaulted in a clean diver's arc into the garbage cans.

It wasn't enough. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up a garbage pail lid and slammed it down on his head, three, four, five times, until it was a mangled wreck, then threw it away, dragged him to his feet, and jammed my knee into his groin again. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt, held him, and hit him half a dozen more times, short, hard shots, straight to the face. I hit him until he was a b.l.o.o.d.y, limp rag.

Doe was leaning against the wall, her hands stifling her screams, her eyes crazy with fear and shock.

"Stop it, Jake, for G.o.d's sake, please stop it!" she cried.

I dragged him up and threw him across the hood of the car, picked up his Luger, and jammed it into his throat.

The entire exhibition had taken about thirty seconds.

"You f.u.c.king Mongoloid!" I screamed in his ear. "That's three strikes. You're out."

"No, no, no!" Doe screamed.

The security guard was in the street, blowing his whistle, not sure whether to pull his gun or not.

"Call this number," I yelled to him, and barked out the number of the Warehouse. I repeated it.

"You got that?" I demanded.

"Yes, sir!"

"You call it now, tell whoever answers that Jake Kilmer wants company and not to waste time getting here."

"Yes, sir." He dashed back inside the security house.