JL02 - Night Vision (34 page)

“Check D. H. Lawrence’s line.”

“Not Chatterly, Chattery.”

“Never heard of her. Now see here, Biff, you have no right to interfere with—”

But I hung up the phone. I was running back to Cindy’s place, having sidestepped the big black dog.

Something was wrong.

People tell you they feel things, something that’s going to happen, and you laugh. But there is a chill behind the laugh.

I felt something that made me hurry.

My old car was still in the space in front of Cindy’s townhouse. Next to it was a mud-splattered jeep that wasn’t there ten minutes ago.

The front door was cracked slightly open. Had I left it that way or did someone else? Why had I left? Because, smart guy that I am, I figured if the murderer was typing away, he couldn’t be here. Now I fought the urge to burst through the door, gaff swinging. I entered without a sound and stepped into the small foyer. The paper walls of the Japanese den were in front of me.

From the living room I heard a man’s voice. It was familiar but I could not place it.

I crept around one corner, holding the gaff at my side. I heard Pam. “But
why
must you? It’s so terribly cruel.”

Calm, collected Dr. Maxson. What a pro. Trying to talk her way out of it. Using her experience with rapists and killers. Buying time. Waiting to be rescued by the blockhead who left her alone.

The man’s voice now clear: “Once I got used to the blood, there was nothing to it.”

I turned the corner, and there he was, his back to me. He wore brown pants, black leather boots, and a buckskin shirt with fringes. The back of his neck was bronzed from the sun. In his right hand he held a knife with sawteeth that could chop down a redwood. The knife was pointed directly at Pamela Maxson’s sternum.

Two steps and I could lunge at him, take him down with a shoulder in the small of the back. But if he turned, I’d catch a foot-long blade in the belly. So I bent at the waist, put a hand on a knee, carefully picked up my right leg, extra high, then gently placed my right foot down on the outside of the ball, rolled to the inside, and finally brought down the heel silent as a wish.

Then I did it again with the left foot. Why not? He’s the one who taught me the Tom Cat Stalk.

My second step was perfect. Even I didn’t hear it.

Pam was facing him, the blade of the knife inches from her chest. “Surely you can’t go on with your bloodletting, oblivious to the consequences.”

Then she saw me. Her eyes widened.

No, Pam, no! Look away.

I hurried the next step. I didn’t snap a twig or step on a squirrel’s tail. But he heard me. It could have been his woodsman’s ears. More likely it was the crash of ceramic bowl on tile. Moving too quickly, I had swung the gaff to one side where it clipped the bowl, sending it to the floor. So there I stood, one knee tucked under my chin, broken pottery covering my socks.

Tom Carruthers pivoted and glared at me. “You!”

“Me.”

He smiled ruefully. “Of course. I should have recognized those foolish sneakers out front.”

“Okay, Carruthers. It’s all over. I’m going to take you in. Now either drop that knife, or I’m going to jam this—”

“Jake,” Pam interrupted. “Perhaps—”

“Why not try it?” Carruthers offered, gesturing with the knife. In the light of a Japanese lantern, the blade shone red.

I circled to my right, keeping the knife in view. He circled to his right. He had the sharper weapon; I had the longer. I raised the gaff as if it were a foil. I got into the classic fencing position, feet at right angles, right foot and knee pointed at my enemy, and shouted, “On guard,” as if I were Errol Flynn. Then I advanced, my feet skimming the floor in the two-count tempo.

“Jake, he’s—”

“Not to worry,” I called out.

Carruthers raised the knife in the saber grip, thumb on top, four fingers below. He stood with left foot forward, shoulders square, left hand extended to block any blows, right hand back, protecting the knife, out of my reach.

“I’ll gut you, lawyer,” he said through clenched teeth.

“No!” Pam shouted.

I skimmed forward some more, then lunged, aiming at his heart, the
prime quarte.
If he’d been a tarpon, I’d have nailed him. But Carruthers parried with his free arm, taking a glancing shot. He flexed his knees and came forward, going for the throat. I leaned to the right, lengthening the distance he had to go to reach me with his right hand. When his knife shot forward, I sidestepped, letting the blade go by my neck, and at the same time I swung the gaff up and bounced one off his right hip,
quinte septime.
Carruthers brushed it off and said something impolite, accusing me of intimate relations with a close family member.

He squared up again, and I resumed the fencing position, right foot forward. He slashed downward, going for my front leg. Unsporting. I skimmed backward, then, as he advanced, brought the gaff up hard, slapping the steel blade of the knife. The screech of metal on metal. He didn’t lose his grip, but I did, the gaff skittering across the floor.

Oh shit.

He had a knife and I had two hands and a gimpy knee. There are ways to disable someone with a punch. A good shot to the ear can burst an eardrum, cause nerve shock or a concussion. A solid punch to the weak bone of the temple can cause unconsciousness and even death if a hemorrhage results. A blow to the throat can sever the windpipe. But you have to get close enough, and if the other guy has a survival knife with sawteeth, you have to avoid spilling your guts on the floor.

He shifted the knife to an icepick grip, took two steps forward, slashed left, slashed right, then went overhead and brought it down from the top. I could have tried a fancy move to either side, but there comes a time when you stand your ground. There is a concept in martial arts known as harmony. Don’t oppose the force of your opponent. Harmonize with it. Where your opponent is strong, yield to him, and as he overextends or goes off balance use your strength against his weakness. It is the yin. Then, where your opponent is weak, overpower him with your strength. The yang.

In the gym you practice the harmony and study diagrams of stick figures using motion and misdirection and leverage to throw opponents around. Here, staring at the glinting blade coming down, I didn’t know yin from yang. I just shot two hands up on either side of the descending arm and caught his wrist in a figure-four armlock. He was pushing down, using all his triceps, taking advantage of the angle, but I was bigger and stronger and had two hands against his one and was pushing the knife back toward his ear. Which meant his left hand was free. Just when I was wondering where it was, he plowed a short hook into my rib cage. I heard a crack and felt the pain, and the knife came two inches closer until I steadied myself and pushed right back. He was winding up for a bigger punch, so I just tucked my chin onto my chest and exploded straight up with a burst from the legs, my skull smashing him under the jaw. He yelped and staggered back, his mouth spurting blood where he had bitten cleanly through his lip. My head was ringing, Pam was screaming something at me, and little black flashes were lighting up my eyes. The knife was somewhere on the floor.

As he tumbled backward I came at him, shoulders square, legs pumping, head up, a decent linebacker making a tackle. My legs were a little shaky and I didn’t have enough drive. I hit him too high, and he refused to fall, but I drove him backward until we both hit a wall, Japanese prints clattering to the floor. I had him wrapped up, and we danced that way a moment, his blood smearing my face. Then he brought a boot up high and crashed it down into my left instep where my hundred-percent-wool sweat sock did little to cushion the blow. I tottered backward, hopping on one foot, cursing, the pain closing my eyes. I lost my balance just before I hit the tearoom wall. If you’re going to crash through a wall, ass over elbows, a paper wall is best. It didn’t hurt a bit, my foot and head and ribs hogging all the headlines in the pain department.

I was lying on the low-slung tea table amid rice cakes and bamboo mats when Carruthers appeared, poking his head through the hole I had carved in the wall. I didn’t know if I could stand up. He just looked at me.

“Milk or lemon?” I asked.

He growled like one of his large, furry forest friends and stepped through the wall toward me. I rolled off the table into a crouching position and told myself I was just getting warmed up. I wanted to hit him on the side of the neck just below and slightly to the front of the ear. If I could smash the jugular vein, the carotid artery, or the vagus nerve, I could put him into shock. But I couldn’t put any weight on my left foot and didn’t know how I’d get anything behind the punch.

He just stood there bleeding onto his buckskin, bent at the waist with hands on hips, sucking great gulps of air. “Hunters have rights,” he said.

“What?”

“And trappers too.”

I thought about it. “Man is the hunter. Right, Carruthers?”

“Right.”

“You hunt them for the beauty of their skins.”

“That, and for food.”

“Food?”

“You animal-rights nuts have gone too far,” he said, still huffing. “First furs, then what, beef and chicken?”

“What are you—”

A gunshot inside a small apartment makes a terrible racket. Especially when the bullet connects with a large Oriental vase. Carruthers hustled out of the tearoom. I limped to the opening. “If you two boys have finished your macho game, perhaps we could have a little talk,” said Lady Chattery, her two hands gripping my blue steel revolver, a perfectly furious look on her beautiful face.

***

There was no use putting the sneakers back on. Galoshes wouldn’t fit over my swollen left foot. My ribs were throbbing, my head was on fire, and my ego was under siege.

“Apologize? Apologize for what?” I asked.

“For attacking Mr. Carruthers. Just as you attacked poor Clive and Francis. I’m beginning to think your hostility has its basis in a true psychosis, Jake.”

Carruthers sat on the sofa, smiling, if that’s what it was, under a towel of ice cubes fastened to his mouth. I surveyed the damage. Shards of ceramic pottery covered the floor, ink prints dangled at crazy angles on the living-room wall, and the tearoom was a shambles of splintered wood and ripped walls. In about three minutes, we had transformed Cindy’s townhouse from Oriental Moderne to post-Apocalypse.

“I was trying to save your life. I thought Davy Crockett here—”

“You thought! You might have killed him.”

“Sorry, I’m not used to seeing strange men brandish knives at my lady friends.”

“Humghfeeldauhdeer,” came a sound from under the icy towel.

“What?”

“He was showing me how to field-dress a deer,” Pam explained helpfully.

“Is that different than city-dressing one?” I asked.

Carruthers dropped the towel. His face was not a pretty sight. “I was advising against making the incision between the hind legs. Cut into the sternum and go back toward the pelvis. It’s not a bad job if you don’t mind being up to your ears in blood and offal.” His voice was thickened by a swollen tongue.

Pam said, “And I told him how barbarous and cruel it was, hunting those fine animals. And then you came in and…and pounced.”

I turned to Carruthers. “What the hell were you doing here?”

“I was in town and stopped over to see Cindy. The door was open, so I—”

“You know Cindy?”

“Sure. Barely Legal. We don’t go out that often, what with her import-export friend and my living so far away. But she’s the first down-to-earth woman I’ve met in Mia-muh town.”

“Cindy?
My
Cindy?”

My foot was propped on the phone directory and swaddled in ice. Elevation and cold. Every team trainer worth his smelling salts knows that.

My ribs were swathed in Ace wrap. They only hurt when I breathed.

My head was bobbing on ocean swells. Two Darvons and a grapefruit juice with Finlandia, a linebacker’s Sunday-night beddy-bye cocktail.

I was dreaming of sunny days and force-four winds, watching a nine-foot sliver of fiberglass jumping three-foot chop. I looked around inside the dream and couldn’t find Pam Maxson or anyone else. A lousy, no-bikini dream. I looked at the sailboard, but I wasn’t there. It was a board without a sailor, skimming the waves, darting on a broad reach along a rocky coast. The board jibed, its inside rail digging hard, the tail shooting a plume of water. Then, like a riderless horse, it sped toward open sea.

Someone called my name.

It didn’t sound like Pam.

I reached across the bed. Empty. The sheets cool.

“She ain’t here, Jake.”

Funny how dreams can seem so real. I smelled a cigarette and I don’t smoke.

I opened my eyes. The paddle fan clocked its slow turns above my head. A toxic green glow filled the room, my neighbor’s mercury-vapor, anticrime light, seeping through open shutters, mixing with the smoke. So I was in my bed in my house. All alone. Except for the voice.

“Got trouble keeping them in bed, do you, Jakie?”

I tried lifting my head. It weighed a ton. Someone was standing by the window, looking out, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. I saw him in silhouette, a strong, bulky shadow in the noxious haze. “Nick?”

“Who’d you expect? Felix Frankfurter?”

I lifted myself to an elbow. “What’d you do to her, Nick?”

“Her?”

“Pam. She doesn’t know anything. You didn’t have to—”

“Easy, Jake. You’ve had a hard night.” He exhaled a trail of smoke, iridescent and willowy in the gaseous light. “You know, I made a real mistake appointing you.”