Fala Factor (25 page)

“You got a family, Elmo?” I said, shifting the .38 to my left hand.

The question puzzled him. “Family?” he asked, glancing down at the dog in his arm as if it could answer this tough one.

“You know, father, mother, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, things like that?” As I asked the question I pretended to take a deep breath and moved my right leg a step toward the door.

“Everybody has a mother,” he said suspiciously. “You don't get born without a mother. You making fun of my mother too?”

“I'm not making fun,” I said, calculating my chances of getting back to the hall. The howling dog behind me was going wild. “I'm trying to get to know you. Your mother ever see you wrestle?”

“My mother's a Methodist,” he said threateningly.

“Fine with me,” I said. The gun had dropped a fraction and was aimed at the right side of my chest and not the middle. “And your father?”

“My father's …” he began, but I never found out what his father was because I went out the door.

Bass was fine on his feet but he left a hell of a lot to be desired with a pistol. By the time he got off a shot I was in the dark hall. The animals behind me were going mad, and as I turned to aim at the door in case he followed me, I lost my .38 again. I had been fascinated by the sweat on Bass's brow as he looked down at my pistol. But I hadn't noticed my own body fluids. The gun had flown out of my sweating hand as I went through the door.

Light from the animal room cut far down the hall. I scrambled for Olson's office. I'd go for the window, hide in the dark, and fight another day. I could hear Bass coming for me when I found the right door and pushed through. A bullet crackled into the hall behind me, and I stumbled forward for the window. My hand hit something on the desk, and I tripped forward to the sound of classical music filling the room. I almost made it to the window, would have, too, if I hadn't hit my leg on the corner of the one chair in the room. Pain from my sore rib shot through me as the light came on.

“No,” Bass shouted.

I stopped and turned around slowly.

“I'll get the money,” I said over the sound of a happy flute and violin.

“I don't believe it,” Bass said, advancing on me, the confused black Scottie still under his arm. “I don't believe someone who laughs at a person's mother.”

“I never …” I began, my back against the window, but he wasn't listening. He put the black dog down. Then he put his gun away and took a step toward me.

“You do something to me, and you'll never get the money,” I warned, one hand out to stop him.

“I never wanted the money, he said. The violins went mad behind us and the little black dog decided to leap into my arms instead of running for cover. I caught him and considered throwing him at the advancing Bass, whose gray eyes danced with joy at the prospect of hurting.”

“I'm going to do you,” he said.

The dog licked my face. I dropped him gently to the ground, turned slowly to Bass and said, “You're giving …”

The idea was reasonably good. I'd used it before, in fact a few seconds earlier in the animal room. It worked this time too. Bass never knew the punch was coming. It was perfect; a hard, short right to the solar plexus followed by a left to the side of his head. I can't say the punches had no effect on Bass—after all he was almost human—but the effect registered very low on his Richter scale. My left hand hurt like hell.

“Okay,” I said, breathing heavily as his hand found my neck. “Now you know I mean business.”

“I'm going to turn your head around,” he said happily. “I can do it. I did it once.”

“I believe you,” I said, preparing my last move, a knee to the groin, which I was afraid would either have no effect or be stopped by the former pro. I never had the chance to find out.

“Bass,” came a gentle voice over his shoulder.

Bass turned to the door and found Jeremy Butler looking comfortingly massive in black pants and a black long-sleeved turtle-neck sweater. Before I left for the clinic, I had called Jeremy for backup. He was right on time.

No one can move as fast as Bass then did, certainly no one his size and bulk, but Jeremy had told me he was fast. I had seen Keaton play with him, but this was. a small room and there was no place to hide. Jeremy was ready for him, but the rush sent the two of them thundering out of the room into the hallway. The building shook and I jumped forward, going for the gun Bass had dropped. I couldn't find it, but I was on my hands and knees accompanied by the violin and flute as I looked and heard the two men in the hall bang off the walls.

I found the gun under the desk along with the dog. I gave the dog a pat on the head, took the gun, and scrambled, breathing hard, into the hall. They weren't there, but I could see where they had taken their battle. I picked up my own .38 in the hall and, a gun in each hand, went into the room full of cages.

By the time I got there, they had crushed two cages, releasing one cat that came flying past me, and they had done serious damage to the front of the cage with the one-eared shepherd.

Jeremy and Bass were grunting, hands clasped and held high like two grotesque ballet dancers.

“Stop right there,” I said, holding out my guns like Bill Hart in
Hell's Hinges
. When Bill Hart did it, the whole town full of bad guys put up their hands and backed away. Bass and Jeremy paid no attention.

“I've got the guns,” I said as they disappeared behind a row of cages. “Are you two listening to me? I've got the guns and they shoot bullets that make holes in people and things.”

To prove my point I fired Bass's pistol, a .45, into the ceiling. It recoiled in my hand. I didn't want to get my .38 dirty. I hated to clean the damn thing. My shooting had no effect on the two lumbering figures, who came crashing around the cages and would have rolled over me if I hadn't jumped out of the way. The one-eared dog went crazy and threw himself against the door. The door cracked open and the dog, surprised, came out awkwardly. He was full of anger, but the dog never thought he'd have his bluff called. Now he had to decide who to bite. He looked at me and I aimed the .38 his way.

“I don't know if you know what this is, Vincent,” I said, “but one of them blew your ear off. One more step and you're going to have to learn sign language.”

Sure, I knew he couldn't understand the words, but I hoped the heartfelt sympathy would make an impression. It didn't. He snarled once and, white-bandaged ear flashing, leaped out of the door and into the hall.

I went for the hall and saw him attached to Bass's arm. From where I stood, Jeremy needed the help. Bass had managed to get behind him and was trying to do something to Jeremy's right arm, probably the Australian double clutch. Jeremy was straining to keep his arm from bending.

The dog's teeth went deep into Bass's arm, but Bass didn't seem to notice. Bass didn't let go of Jeremy or let out a yell. His teeth were clenched as he brought his head down hard so his skull cracked into that of the dog. The dog let go, fell on his behind, and began to yelp in pain. He scooted past me, back to his cage, and huddled in the corner.

The attack had given Jeremy enough help to break away from Bass. He turned, reached down between his legs, and pulled Bass's right leg forward. Bass hit the floor hard enough to send shock waves to Tarzana.

Bass's arm was bleeding, but the look on his face indicated a frantic joy as he scrambled up. He was panting like the animals behind me as he got a fresh grip on Jeremy's head and tried to bring his skull against Jeremy's as he had done with the dog, but Jeremy pulled away, hit the wall with his shoulder, and threw his full weight into the bleeding Bass, who fell backward.

Something broke—I heard it snap like a loud Rice Krispy. The snap came just as the flute recording ended. Jeremy got to his knees. Both of the massive figures were breathing hard, but no harder than I was.

“My arm is broken,” Bass observed without surprise or apparent pain.

“You kill women,” Jeremy said, getting up. “You kill people, animals.” He helped Bass up and went past me into the examining room.

“Who set this up” I said, waving my guns around to no effect. “Where is Jane Poslik?”

Bass looked at me blankly as Jeremy tried to stop the bleeding from the dog bite.

“I don't talk,” Bass said, looking at me calmly.

“I can get you to a hospital or I can reset it,” Jeremy said to Bass.

“Reset it,” he said.

Jeremy did and Bass looked at me without expression through what must have been a hell of a lot of pain.

As he fixed the splint, Jeremy repeated my question.

“Where is Jane Poslik?”

Bass's eyes were closed. I assumed he was being stubborn, but Jeremy stood up and announced that he had passed out from the pain.

“You can hide it, mask it, but stopping the pain is something few can do. It creeps in, won't go away. There are Yoga techniques, but Bass never had the intellect or the spirit for such things. He is a monster, Toby, but he is a monster with pride. You will not get your answer from him.”

I took Jeremy's word for it and suggested that he take Bass to his place and keep him secure until I figured out what to do with him. I couldn't turn him over to Phil, not without some evidence, not without a confession, which it didn't look as if I would get. Jeremy lifted the unconscious Bass onto his shoulders, refused the gun I offered him, and went to the door.

“That music playing when I came in,” he said. “Mozart's Sonata Eleven in A. Please check the record for me.”

As he stood in the door under Bass's weight, I went to the turntable and checked the record. He was right.

“In music Olson had some taste I guess, but not in friends,” I said. “Some of us do better than others that way.”

“You are a sentimentalist, Toby,” he said and went down the hall with his burden.

Finding the missing Fala was a slight problem. I put my .38 in my cracked leather holster, removed the bullet clip from Bass's .45, and went to the room of cages. The animals wanted no part of me. They had had enough. The dog I was looking for wasn't there.

I went through the hall and into rooms one at a time, coaxing and calling. I found the big cat on a shelf, his green eyes glowing at me. He hissed and I stayed away It took me about five more minutes to find the dog squeezed under a cabinet. I pulled him out whimpering, held him, petted him, and told him everything was going to be just great, that huge cans of Strongheart were waiting for him, that he'd soon be back standing up and breathing dog breath on the president. It helped a little.

I started down the hall for the front door, the dog cradled in my arms, and almost ran into the beam of a flashlight through the window. I pulled back against the wall and heard voices outside.

“I don't hear anything,” said a man.

“Maybe they're just hearing things, a dog or something going screwy,” came a second male voice, younger.

“Dogs don't sound like guns,” came the first voice impatiently. “The guy over there said it was a gun.”

“So,” said the other guy, “do we go in or what?”

“We go in,” sighed the first cop. I eased back down the corridor, trying not to trip over the debris of the battle. I wished I had turned the lights out in the animal room, but I didn't have time to do it now. Balancing the dog, I turned off the light in Olson's office and went for the window. Behind me I could hear the door to the clinic open. I eased the window open with one hand.

“You hear that?” I heard the young voice coming down the hall.

“I heard,” came the other voice as I put one leg through the window. The tape pulled against my chest as I bent over and got out, trying to keep the dog from getting hurt.

A breeze caught me, and a wet chill ran down my back. I was sweating again. The light went on in the room a few feet behind me, and I ran like hell.

I was about thirty feet away and slowed down by two guns and a dog, when the voice called, “Hold it, police.”

Maybe I could have stopped and explained. Maybe I would have wound up back in Phil's office with the dog but no murderer and some very bad headlines for the Roosevelts. So I kept running. The cop fired, but I could tell from the sound that he wasn't shooting at me. Given another few hundred thousand miles of push, he might have hit the moon. My chest was burning like dry ice had been pressed against it. I don't know if they followed me. Maybe they did. I was back on the street and ducked into the nearest clump of bushes. I gave it a full twenty seconds, was sure no one was behind me, and in spite of the pain and the dog licking my face, I ran for the corner, rounded it, and got to my car. It would have been nice if the night were over, but I knew it was just starting.

Getting the front door open when I got to Mrs. Plaut's rooming house was a minor but distinct problem. I was afraid to put the dog down, afraid that he'd make a run for it. So I used my key and kept saying “Good boy,” as I let myself in. The house was dark. The time was after eleven. By the glow of the forty-watt night light at the top of the stairs, the dog and I moved without a fall, bark, or comment from a resident.

I was almost at the top step when the dog began to whine. It started low and then rose.

“Cut it out,” I whispered, but he didn't cut it out. I had two choices. I could either run for my room and try to keep him quiet or I could recognize what he wanted and go back outside. I went back down the stairs and let us out quietly. The dog whined all the way.

When I got him down the porch steps, I held onto him tightly while I got my belt off and looped it around his neck. With one hand on my pants and another on my belt serving as a leash, I let him lead me to the curb. I was on the way back to the porch when the front door opened and I started working on a lie, but it wasn't needed.