The Bum's Rush (32 page)

The pressure was ungodly. My head was roaring. I
was beginning to see spots. I clawed at his hands, searching for a
finger to mutilate. The pressure only increased.
Great silver flashes of salmon rilled my brain. The fish had faces. I
kept prying at the interlocked fingers. I was fading. Other fingers
pried at my fingers. Lots of fingers.

The grip on my throat eased slightly and then
slipped altogether in the collected sweat and blood. I rolled away.
Kept rolling until I hit a tree. I rose and stood, swaying. Norman was
there. The extra fingers. Above the roaring of my head, a siren
approached. Cherokee knew what it meant.

He rushed Norman. Norman hit the dirt. Cherokee
sailed over him. Before he could right himself, I waded in, throwing
haymakers. The first one landed behind his right ear, drawing a grunt.
I landed a wild right flush on his nose, feeling the warm spray of
blood and spittle in the air around me. Norman waded in, throwing
vicious punches of his own. Even against the two of us, Cherokee gave
as good as he got. The years of self-defense classes faded away. This
was primal. I was back in the schoolyard, bringing them up from my
knees with my eyes closed.

With a sick tearing sound, Norman went down to a
straight-legged kick to the knee. Cherokee now turned his attention to
me. He shot a karate punch to my face. I parried. My forearm went numb.
There was no pain, just the big smile as he loaded up for another
attack.

Norman grabbed him around both ankles and pulled.
Cherokee went down hard on his chest. At the moment when he looked up
at me, I attempted to break Tom Dempsey's NFL field goal record with
Cherokee's head. I missed. My toe landed squarely on his throat. He
croaked and gasped at the impact. He stared bug-eyed at me, tearing at
his own throat with puzzled hands.

Norman and I no longer mattered. Something had broken in there. He clawed at his throat. He began to
convulse, shaking so violently he tore himself free from Norman, who
still had him by the shins.

Suddenly he lay still, only his mountainous chest
moving up and down as he fought to force air in and out of whatever
small opening still remained in his throat. His fists were clenched in
the effort.

The whoop, whoop of the sirens was close now.
Everything was quiet except for Cherokee's labored breathing. Norman
stayed down. I swayed in the breeze. My right arm hung useless at my
side. Norman's leg jutted from beneath him at an impossible angle. He
stared at it. We still hadn't spoken when the first wave of cops
arrived.

.. the Rainman . ..

I leaned back against the bar and watched. If you
didn't know any better, you'd swear they were partying again. That
they'd all gotten up early and taken up precisely where they'd left off
the previous evening. The fact that they were partying still could only
be properly appreciated by trained medical professionals and similarly
disposed degenerates.

I'd taken Selena and Beth to see my cousin Paul the
banker. At first he'd been dubious about arranging a line of credit for
either of them. As he began to check out my story, his veneer of bored
cynicism was replaced with an escalating sheen of corporate greed.
After fielding a series of return phone calls, he'd leaned over to me,
eyes hooded, whispering in my ear. "Conservatively, after Uncle gets
his bite, after the state, after every damn thing, allowing for a
twenty-percent deviation and possible massive embezzlement, these two
stand to split about fifty-five million." He held up a finger. "And
that's without the new CD. The service fees alone on this account--" he
started. Overcome with emotion, he waved himself off."Boggle the mind,"
he finished.

If my lip had been smaller than a pizza, I would
have grinned. As it was, I contented myself with a meaningful nod.
Credit was forthcoming.

Selena had been standing for drinks for the better
part of three days. The party was in full swing. Norman tromped to the
far side of the snooker table. His right leg encased in a blue plastic
walking cast, he bent awkwardly at the waist, took dead aim, and
miscued the ball up over the rail and onto the floor, where, much to
his displeasure, it was kicked, soccer style, from patron to patron as
he limped vainly about attempting to reacquire the vagrant sphere.

The rest of the crew was sitting at the bar lending
support to the Seattle Supersonics, who, by virtue of having won sixty
four games, were now engaged in a spirited second-round playoff
encounter with the Houston Rockets. Having won the first two games here
in Seattle, they had gone into Houston for game three carrying the
highest of hopes. With six minutes to go in the third quarter, they
were down eighteen.

The door opened. Jed James and Karen Mendolson
stepped inside and waited for their eyes to adjust. Jed caught my
profile and wandered over.

"Hey, big fella."

"Hey," I said.

Karen was still standing just inside the door, her
hands thrust into the front pocket of her sweatshirt, looking as if
she'd rather be modeling thumbscrews.

"You think this is gonna work?" Jed asked.

"God only knows," I said.

"The girl really didn't want to come."

"You got any better ideas?"

Selena looked up from her drink and caught my eye.
I used a big wave of the arm to beckon her over. She showed a lopsided
grin, said a few words to Big Frank, and rolled my way, walking as if
the soles of her boots were rounded, dragging the butt of her pool cue
along behind her like a stubborn puppy.

"Hey, bird dog," she slurred. "Where you been? The party's just gettin' on here." She leaned heavily on the cue with both arms.

"Got somebody I'd like you to meet," I said.

Selena took one hand away from the cue and waved as if shooing flies.

"Well, trot 'em out, bird dog. I guess I sure as hell owe ya one."

Jed thrust Karen Mendolson out from behind his
back. She stood awkwardly at the end of the bar. Selena looked her over
from head to toe and then refocused on me. "So," she said.

"This is Karen Mendolson."

Selena offered a bleary hello and looked back my way.

"You're up, Lena," Waldo hollered from the snooker table.

"You ever seen Karen before?" I asked.

Selena blinked three times, attempting to focus on the girl's face.

"Never in all my days," she said.

"You sure?" I pressed. "Take another look."

"You gonna shoot or what?" Waldo wailed.

"Hold your water, Waldo," Selena shot back.

Selena stepped in closer, getting almost nose to nose. A glimmer of recognition elongated her face.

"Maybe I have," she said finally. She touched Karen's forehead. "You the one threw that funeral for old Earl, ain't

ya?"

"Yes," Karen said.

Selena looked over the woman's shoulder at Jed and me.

"Miss Mendolson has a problem we thought maybe you could help her with," Jed said.

"Why not?" Selena said affably. "Hell, all of a
sudden, everybody wants somethin' from old Selena. Kenny wants a new
truss. That crazy old Ralph wants me to buy
him a friggin' hospital bed, for chrissakes. Frank wants one of those
Everest mountain sleepin' bags. Ain't no end to it at all. People think
this shit grow on trees." She refocused on Karen Mendolson. "What's
your problem, Missy?" she said with a smile.

Karen told her. Selena knit her brow several times during the story, but remained silent.

"And you just give it all away?" she asked incredulously when Karen fell silent. She looked to me for confirmation and got it.

"Hell, girlie, you might even be dumber than old Lucky dog here."

Karen jammed her hands back into her pockets and started to turn away. Selena stopped her. "You play snooker?" she inquired.

"Some," Karen said tentatively.

Selena handed her the cue. "Let's see what you can do," she said.

''Wadda you think?'' I asked Jed as the women crossed the room. "They gonna make Conover for Lukkas Terry?"

Payton sidesteps it up the floor, Casell on his hip . .. Jed pursed his lips. "Touch and go," he said. "Pretty

much depends on the analysis of the syringe. If it matches the Terry sample, there's a lot better chance." "If not?"

"He's hired Stan Rummer to defend him."

Stanley Rummer was locally renowned for being able to

take a simple traffic infraction and turn it into a three-ring

circus of such interminable duration that he simply wore

judges and juries down. Two solid months of having their

spines crushed by the benches in the King County
Courthouse generally worked wonders on even the most spiteful jury.
What was certain was that, whatever happened
to Gregory Conover, it was likely to be well into the next millennium
before it actually came to pass. Jed read my thoughts.

'With Rummer rambling on, God only knows when the estate will finally settle."

Foul on Kemp. That's his fifth. The Sonics can't afford ...

"Where's the Goza kid?" he asked.

"Getting a tattoo."

He arched an eyebrow at me.

"On her back," I finished.

"This Space for Rent?" he inquired.

We shared a snicker. The game went to commercial. "How short is she?" I asked, nodding at Karen Mendolson.

"Still about fifty-five hundred bucks."

"If she comes up with the dough, will they prosecute?"

"Oh, they'll huff and puff, but I don't think so.
Marty Kroll has got her a therapist. The kid's making all the right
moves. Considering all of it. The Earl thing. What she did with the
money. How she paid it all back. At most, a misdemeanor. Probably just
probation."

Ralph leaned over the bar and came back with the
remote. He began changing channels. The bar erupted in disapproval. He
stopped on 23. Same Sonics game being telecast on Turner. Terry
snatched the remote and switched it back to NBC.

Big Smooooth, from behind the arc ...

"Maybe they ain't gettin' beat so bad on that other channel," Ralph suggested to the assembled multitude.

The bar went silent but for the rustle of eyebrows,
as narrowed eyes looked from each to each. George smiled for the first
time in a week and threw an arm around Ralph's shoulder. "Ralphie boy!"
he said.