Play It Again (27 page)

And even closer with the next lunge. Dexter came right at him again without pausing, and R.J., whirling to the side, felt a red-hot pain along his cheek.

R.J. grunted involuntarily with the sting of Dexter’s blade. He jumped back, raising a hand to his cheek. It had missed his eye by about an inch and a half.

He was not going to make it. Dexter was too fast, too revved up, and he was getting stronger and faster while R.J. got slower and weaker.

The odds were just too long. He was going to die here.

R.J. had moved in a full circle in his clumsy attempts to stay
away from the point of Dexter’s foil. He was now once again facing Casey on the bed. And as his gaze fell on her, she made frantic signals with her eyes.

R.J. stared, and as he did Dexter came again.

Because he had been distracted he was half a second slow and barely managed to get his arm up in an instinctive cover-up move. The point was aimed at his throat. It found his arm instead.

“Aahh!” R.J. cried involuntarily as the point plowed into his left bicep. He could feel the tissue of his muscle clinging to the steel blade as Dexter pulled it out and quickly stepped back again.

In spite of the pain, in spite of the fact that his first look had nearly allowed Dexter to skewer him, R.J. looked at Casey again.

She was waggling her eyebrows frantically. In other circumstances it would have looked comical.

He shook his head slightly; it didn’t make any sense.

She rolled her eyes downward, toward her feet. And as he watched, Casey lifted her feet slightly, showing him that they were tied together but not tied down.

And then Dexter was at him again. R.J. beat aside the point and stepped to the side, trying to keep an eye on Casey for another clue. What could she be trying to say that was so important? He was fighting for his life and hers—and losing. What could she possibly have to tell him that—

Her feet. They were not tied down. She could move her feet.

Move them in a kick, for instance.

R.J. swore, wiping the blood and sweat from his eyes. If he could maneuver Dexter just right, with Casey’s help he’d have him off-balance. And then…

Dexter lunged again. R.J. batted at the point furiously and
stepped to the side. The sword still plowed a furrow along his forearm.

This was no good. If he waited to react to Dexter, he’d be shish-kabobed in two more minutes. He had to be proactive about this, move Dexter into a position where Casey could help. But as he gathered himself for his own lunge, Dexter made a rapid series of passes with the foil.

R.J. ducked the first, batted away the second, and felt the third slip into his thigh with shocking pain. As Dexter ripped out the point, R.J. knew he could not stand too many more wounds like that one.

If he was going to survive, and have any chance at all to take Dexter out, it had to be now.

R.J. circled to his right, away from the point of Dexter’s sword. He was limping heavily, and everything hurt like hell.

“You have fought well, my friend,” Dexter said, and his face became heroic. “But your cause is hopeless. And so I
must—”

R.J. had heard enough. He knew enough about theater to know that there was never any action during the hero’s monologue. The hero—and Dexter thought of himself as the hero—had to have his say, for as long as he felt like saying it.

This was his chance.

R.J. jumped. With all his strength he swung the plastic sword at the foil, knocking it to one side. But before he could bring his hands back again Dexter had stepped smoothly to the side.

He stopped two feet from the edge of the bed, two feet from Casey’s reach.

“Well done,” Dexter said. “You have—”

R.J. jumped again. This time Dexter saw it coming and stepped to his left. Into position.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” he said. “But you—”

And Casey swung her feet. Every muscle in her body stood out with the effort as she planted the point of her two big toes squarely in the back of Dexter’s legs.

Dexter buckled.

R.J. jumped at him.

Dexter’s reactions were faster than anything R.J. had ever seen before. As his knees gave way from Casey’s kick and he went backward, he still managed to bring the point up and hold it out toward R.J. as he fell back onto the bed.

R.J. could not stop his leap. If he could have, he wouldn’t have. He knew this was the only chance he was going to get. Holding the stupid little plastic sword in front of him he continued his dive onto the falling killer.

R.J. saw the point of the foil come up and managed to twist aside slightly. But it still took him through the shoulder, and he felt it pierce him and poke out through the back of his shirt. The pain was worse than anything else he could remember. It was a live, red-hot thing chewing at him, and time slowed down as the whole world refocused around that pain.

But then there was the hard, slow-motion impact as he crashed into Dexter. The plastic sword smacked into Dexter’s sword arm with the full weight of R.J.’s body behind it. Dexter’s hand fell away from the grip, and for a moment he lay stunned and unmoving.

In that moment R.J. closed his fingers around Dexter’s throat.

It felt better than sex, drugs, or booze. It was the purest, cleanest, wildest, most satisfying thrill R.J. had ever felt. He forgot about the sword sticking out from his shoulder. He forgot about Casey, still flailing her gorgeous naked legs at Dexter’s head. He forgot about his mother, his son, his whole life, as the feeling of his fingers squeezing on Dexter’s throat became everything there was and he wanted it to go on forever.

R.J. squeezed. He didn’t feel Dexter’s increasingly ineffective blows hitting him. He didn’t notice when the blows slowed, then stopped.

He didn’t even see Dexter’s face turn red, then blue, and finally almost black, his tongue hanging out. All he saw were those pale, unblinking, emotionless, bottomless gray eyes, and the eyes made R.J. squeeze on, harder and harder.

He knew he was getting weaker as he lost more blood from his shoulder. Things started to go dim, and he didn’t hear the terrible small crunching sounds from Dexter’s throat, didn’t see that Casey’s thrashing was a different kind now as she tried to get him to stop squeezing the lifeless husk of John Dexter.

Just before he passed out, R.J. thought he heard something, at last.

It was a voice, calling out, “Police! Freeze!”

It sounded a lot like Henry Portillo.

CHAPTER 34

They kept R.J. overnight in the hospital. The emergency-room doctor, a young guy with pimples and red hair, made a lot of jokes about pincushions. R.J. didn’t laugh.

But when he was lying in bed later, he smiled a lot. It might have been the painkillers kicking in. The feeling of relief from all those stab wounds was enough to bring a smile to the face of a gargoyle.

And then, maybe it wasn’t just the painkillers. It might have been the visitors.

Hookshot came by. They’d refitted his hook, and he was even wearing his black silk jacket.

R.J. looked at him fondly. “How in the hell did you get that jacket back so fast?”

“Benny brought it by.” Hookshot laughed. “Kid’s got a heart under all that mean. Lookit here!” He held up the sleeve and the tail of the jacket to show where the ice pick had pierced them. The holes were neatly mended. “Benny took it over to Mendlebaum, got it patched.”

“Nice kid,” R.J. said, drifting a little from the drugs.

“Bullshit,” said Hookshot. He took a slip of paper from the jacket’s pocket. “Gave me the goddamn bill.”

R.J. smiled, and he came as close to laughing as he could with all those damned tubes going in and out of him.

“Anyway,” Hookshot said at last, “I’ll leave you folks be. You mend up, brother.” He snapped a half-salute with his gleaming silver hook and was gone.

R.J. reached out to the side of the bed. A hand met and held his, and he looked up into Casey’s eyes.

Casey had stayed with him in the ambulance the whole way to the hospital, right beside him, not letting the paramedics bully her out of the way. Uncle Hank had been along for the ride too, flashing his badge when they tried to put him off the ambulance. But Portillo had finally left when they got R.J. patched up and into a bed. He’d said he was going to get the door fixed at R.J.’s apartment and camp out there.

Casey stayed. And all through the night, as R.J. drifted in and out of a lightly drugged sleep, Casey was there beside the bed, watching him, even holding his hand.

In the morning, before he was released, R.J. had three more visitors.

He had just finished his breakfast when he heard hard shoes in the hall. They were cop shoes, no question. For some reason cop shoes always sound different. The cop might be wearing the same shoes as anyone else, but they had a sound all their own. It was a little harder, a little brisker.

And sure enough, the sound paused at his door and Lieutenant Kates came in, followed by Bertelli and Boggs. At the door, Kates turned to Boggs and said, “Wait in the hall.”

R.J. grinned. He could see Boggs hated that, hated it like hell, but he shut up and did what he was told. R.J. knew it was the only apology he was going to get from Kates. It was enough.

Bertelli, standing behind Kates, gave him a quick grin and a thumbs-up.

“Well, Brooks,” Kates said, looking at him with faint distaste. “Pretty close to a major fuckup. Pardon my language, Miss Wingate.”

“Don’t give it another fucking thought, Lieutenant,” she said sweetly.

Kates took a breath, then heard what she’d said and turned to look at her. But Casey looked innocently back and Kates was obviously not sure he’d heard it. He cleared his throat and looked at Bertelli, who was trying not to laugh, and then at R.J., who smiled at him.

“Go on, Fred,” R.J. said. “What were you saying?”

But Kates was blushing. In the end, he could only stammer out a few vague statements encouraging R.J. to be more cooperative in the future.

R.J. was glad to agree. For the first time in weeks, he believed there was going to be a future.

Kates left, dragging Boggs with him. Bertelli hung behind just long enough to shake his head at R.J. and Casey and tell them, very softly, “shame on youse.” Then he was gone too, his cop shoes clicking after the others.

“You talk to your mother with that mouth?” R.J. asked Casey.

She snorted. “You should hear what my mother says back.”

* * *

They got back to his apartment a little bit after noon. R.J. was surprised at how weak he felt. But as the doctor reminded him when he checked out, he had lost a lot of blood and would need to take it easy for a few days.

R.J. didn’t need the reminder. With the sling and the dozen or so bandages hanging from his body he felt like a medical experiment gone bad.

Uncle Hank was waiting for them at the apartment, and true to his word, he had managed to get the door fixed. R.J. paused to admire the new door. Uncle Hank stood beside him.

“Steel-reinforced,” he said, rapping on the door with his knuckle. “I had them put in steel around the frame, with six-inch bolts to hold it in. And two new deadbolts, top and bottom.” With a small flourish, he handed the new keys to R.J.

“For Christ’s sake, Uncle Hank. What in hell did you think I keep in here?”

The older man looked slightly hurt, but he smiled through it. “You,
chico.
You keep
you
in here.”

There was nothing much to say to that. So R.J. leaned on Hank’s arm and let him help him through the door.

“Sit,” Portillo told him. “Just sit. You need to eat something.”

“What are you thinking about feeding him?” Casey asked with a raised eyebrow. “The doctor gave strict orders—”

Portillo cut her off. “I have been dealing with wounded men my whole life. I know what to feed him.”

“Nothing greasy or spicy, not for at least three days.”

“Is
that
what you think about Mexican cooking? Because—”

R.J. raised his voice as much as he could and butted in. “Guys? Can you get me to the chair and
then
kill each other?”

Casey took one elbow and Henry the other, and he managed to sink weakly into the easy chair, beside a frantically blinking answering machine. He sat for a moment with his eyes closed and then reached over and played back the messages. He could hear Casey and Portillo fussing around together in the kitchen.

Probably arguing about what sort of gruel I can have, he thought with a very feeble smile.

He rolled the message tape.

The first call was from Pittsburgh. The nasal voice identified herself as Barbara, the drama professor he’d spoken to at Carnegie-Mellon. She said she’d gotten the picture and was pretty sure it was a former student, John Dexter.

R.J. snorted.

The next was from Arthur in Hollywood. He said he’d had a bit of luck and thought he’d found someone to identify the picture. It looked rather like a chap named Dexter, quite a good actor, really.