The Kill Riff (7 page)

    Highway 101 would have cut two hours off the northward haul, but Lucas had chosen the Pacific Coast road out of Los Angeles. He had never before taken the scenic route. Now the sun was fizzling out into the sea, and the ocean's uninterrupted surface began to resemble a trackless black desert. A wasteland. Out there, beyond a certain point, one would drop right off the curvature of the Earth. Lucas was pleased he had driven this way, pleased he had done something for the sheer pleasure of it.

    It was compensation.

    Miles to the north, the crate waited, like buried treasure.

    He was doing the right thing. If not, he had Burt, his ally, to worry about him and steer him right if he needed steering. Past him was Sara. Problem dealt with and filed.

    Lucas tooled into the night, toward home base.

    

    

    THE BALD BLACK MAN STOOD an enormous six five, and his shoulders seemed a yard from end to end.

    He strode down the long, carpeted hallway on broad bare feet thick with calluses. His toes gathered against the shag as he walked with feline grace, barely disturbing the still air as he cut through it. He was wearing a fighting costume tunic and trousers of black silk. It was not a karate ghi, nor did it feature a belt. The business of colored belts was for faggots. You could be strangled with your own belt in a close fight.

    Workout sweat glistened on the man's shaved pate. On the right ear, gold studs traversed the fossa of the helix; the lobe was pierced by matching golden rings. A perfect two-carat blood ruby decorated his left ear. His lower jaw was massive, almost prognathous. His teeth were huge and perfectly aligned, except for a pair of large canines that looked like fangs and had displaced the bicuspids behind them. His eyelids seemed thick, and he did not blink often. His eyes were the color of strong, steaming coffee, liquid and unrippled. They drew in everything.

    From the open door at the far end of the hall, a television set burbled. He recognized Eva Gabor's mangling of the English language and guessed that a Green Acres rerun was on.

    The man also heard the creak of a bowstring being drawn back, the pung of release, the hiss of the tripleedged deer arrow, the thunk of the strike. Like Heimdall, the Norse god who stood sentry over the Bifrost and whose senses were so acute that he could hear grass growing and see the wool as it emerged from the flesh of sheep, the black man clad in black silk was especially receptive on all sensory levels. He heard the archer release his breath. From the sound of the exhalation, he knew the arrow had found the intended target. It was not a sound of disappointment. He stepped forward.

    "Horus." Gabriel Stannard knew who had entered the room behind him. "How goes the sparring?"

    "I am pleased," said the huge black man. His voice was gorgeously deep and mellifluous. "In another twenty years, perhaps fifteen, I may achieve a glimpse of the total balance I seek." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "As is, I can tear ass outta any ten white guys. Especially the mindless ones, the iron pumpers, the artificial body inflaters. They know not what they do."

    "Cut some slack, Horus. Hoisting is good for the bod. Makes the teenies cream." Stannard drew another deer arrow from the leather quiver strapped to his naked back and slotted it into the custom bow. "Spare me the speech on how it's all fruitless labor, lifting to no end, huh? Check out these triceps, man. Eat your heart out."

    Stannard pointed the bow and arrow toward the sky, pulled the string slowly parallel to his right cheek, and tilted down to sight. He bulged in all the right places. His golden, artificially curled hair bounced in sweaty loops. He was bare-chested, clad in skintight red leather pants, belted with silver conchos so large they resembled wrestling awards. His feet were installed in a worn pair of felony fliers-black Converse All-Stars. His sculpted physique glistened. Horus heard the languorous, nasal intake of air as Stannard aimed and froze.

    He held the pose, muscles rigid in isometric competition, for several long moments. Then he released.

    The shaft sliced the air at top speed and ate up sixty feet of distance in the blink of an eye. At the far end of the oblong chamber, it embedded itself square in the groin of a straw-backed, life-sized cardboard cutout of a policeman waving his hand. Officer Mort, the Friendly Cop, already had arrows sticking out of his face and chest. An arrow hole pierced the palm of his upraised hand.

    "The dick shot. End of the line." Stannard propped the bow against a leather director's chair and drank from a quart tumbler of sun tea full of ice and sliced limes. "Go for it," he said to Horus, who watched with folded arms and a Bhudda-like impenetrability of expression. "Plug one through the badge on his cap, I dare ya."

    Horus hefted the bow, notched an arrow, and did just that. Stannard applauded. Horus just shrugged.

    "Joshua called," Horus said. "Your friend with the plastic gun has been discharged from Olive Grove."

    Stannard's glass hesitated halfway to his mouth. "Is that so?" He had to consciously avoid touching his right eyebrow. The fine hairs there were neatly bisected by a shining diagonal strip of scar tissue. Having photographers favor his left side had become second nature after all this time.

    Horus' gaze found the hairless scar.

    "Do you have any special instructions for Joshua?"

    Stannard took another slug of tea. "Let's be magnanimous. Bygones are bygones, right? Tell Joshua to report any unusual movement. Beyond that, I ain't interested in the fucker as long as he stays the hell away from me."

    The radio phone extension on the director's chair twittered. Stannard looked at Horus. Horus made a face. "Pick it up yourself," he said.

    Stannard smeared perspiration away with the crook of his muscular arm and telescoped out the unit's antenna. One Katrina van der Leewon, she of the perfume inheritance, long, long legs and energetic Swedish body, had debarked from her limousine and awaited his pleasure in the swimming pool wing.

    Horus noted the way Stannard's ice-blue eyes smoldered with memory. It was his job to keep track of such things. "Are you positive you want nothing done?"

    "Nothing yet," muttered Stannard, almost subaurally.

    "You will notify me immediately if you-"

    "Yeah, yeah. Don't fret it, Horus old chum. I'm cool."

    Horus nodded solemnly, wheeled about, and was gone.

    

    

    As he walked down the hall, reflecting on what a marvelous body Ms. van der Leewon possessed (Stannard had invited Horus to watch a videotape of them making love in the Playboy bed he'd had installed in 1982), he heard a crash, followed by a sizzling, popping noise, and knew that his employer had just put an arrow through the TV set.

    The little hardware store bag was of very thick brown paper. Inside it was a brand-new heavy-duty padlock and a pre-stressed, case-hardened steel hasp. Lucas dropped it on top of the pile of supplies and groceries he'd hauled into the cabin from the Bronco.

    He had sneezed almost instantly upon forcing the stuck door open. There was quite a lot of dust.

    The cabin's walls were of split logs. It had a brick fireplace. A large central room branched off into a tiny kitchen area with about two feet of counter space. In the opposite comer was a tiny five-by-five room with a wooden door. The cabin stood above the hillside on concrete pillars and had a good board floor and a hurricane-proof roof. The roof was currently supporting about two tons of leaves and pine needles.

    Sometime, perhaps last summer, a tree branch had blown through the north window on the uphill side. It still hung above a scatter of dusty glass shards. Lucas was glad he'd brought a boxful of domestic cleanup gear.

    The outhouse, twenty-five paces to the southeast of the rear door, was a spectacular mess. The wooden seat had warped and split and was totally unserviceable.

    Lucas began enumerating a list of things to bring down from San Francisco.

    The first night, by firelight, after he'd done a general cleanup and installed the industrial-strength hasp on the door of the tiny room, he'd unscrewed the collar nut of his folding army spade and reversed the blade, using the tip to pry up five of the central floorboards in the main room.

    Digging down three feet, he uncovered the crate.

    He heaved it out of the earth, shoveled the dirt back into the hole, and nailed the floor planking back into place. The exterior of the crate was no different from that of a recently exhumed coffin. The wood was molder-ing, corrupted. The long-rusted nails protested removal with grating screeches; their heads, once levered up, broke off in the claw of Lucas' hammer. He split the wood along the grain and pried it away like a sculptor chipping away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.

    The footlocker was filthy, but less corrupt. The hasps and metalwork were corroded and dull. He brushed away free dirt. The lock was a loss, and he used the hammer and a screwdriver to break it.

    The hinges gave way and crumbled apart when he opened the lid, which fell back and crashed to the floor.

    Inside, the ten-mil plastic insulator was yielding to the touch, like a fresh mushroom. Styrofoam peanuts charged with static clung to it. When Lucas used his Buck knife to slit the sleeve open, he fancied he could hear a vacuum hiss. The packing material had remained fresh and crepitant.

    He cut the sleeve wider and pulled it open. Demons flooded out of the footlocker to wrap him up in their embrace.

    

    

    GARRIS WAS BUMMED.

    He could see his reflection, minuscule and distorted, in the tiny blue plastic window of the computerized cash register. He had just keyed in and turned it on; it hummed accusingly at him. Next to an incomprehensible numeral code in neon blue, his abbreviated image looked harried. As the manager of
On the Brink
, one of the Bay City's most self-important rock shops, he had a lot to answer for.

    
Releases This Week
had been taped to the top of the register. New Stones-not a compilation or tour album. Sting single. Pat Benatar. New live Slayer, from Metal Blade Records. Maybe new Prince. New Peer Gynt, for upstairs. None of them were in yet. A cursory examination of the A&M order proved that Flash had fucked up. The stock numbers were in the wrong columns. The amounts were wrong. Everything was wrong.

    "Okay, new rule," Garris sighed to the empty store. "No more dope smoking in the stockroom while we're doing record orders."

    The cash drop had been short for two days running, and some coin rolls had mysteriously evaporated. Garris suspected Diamond Ed had been dipping the till to (a) upholster his mad money stash for cocaine or (b) meet his rent because he'd blown his wad on blow already.

    Last Thursday Garris had strolled into the stockroom after returning early from a crosstown shipment pickup. There he had discovered Charity kneeling in front of Ronnie Colvin with her mouth full. Ronnie's Jordache jeans were pooled around his ankles. The expression of torpid bliss on his face shifted to stark, bug-eyed terror at Garris' unannounced entrance. He fainted before Garris could fire him. Charity had licked her lips like a cat, and Garris knew he held only the ashes of what passed for a relationship. In retrospect, the worst part was that now Garris would have to fill in for Ronnie in the classical music department until a new warm body could be hired.

    On the floor behind the counter, leaning against the videotape shelf, were three teetering columns of priced records waiting to go into the bins. That was supposed to have been done on Saturday, Garris' only day off.

    Wrong.

    Two minutes past opening, and On the Brink already seemed too glaring and bright by half. Garris was in a state his mom always termed "cross-eyed with bad anger."

    Fucking cretins, was that all he was capable of hiring? First order: Bum the oil. Recheck the books. Redo the orders. Screw severance for Charity; she could keep the Human League promotional stuff she'd appropriated. Tomorrow afternoon could be spent bartering comp albums and deejay pressings in return for reliable emergency help-Mitchell from the Broadway store, Bianca, who could really rise to a crisis, and for sure Mickey, who wanted everybody to call him Slitboy but was a bonafide stocking and checking fool. Mickey would hold out for drugs but would settle for weed, and Garris always had a bribe lid or two stashed in eternal readiness.

    Garris fought not to plod as he trudged up the wide, Christmas-tree-lit stairway to the Classical Music Nest and fired up the lights. Banners bearing the dour visages of Perlman, Ax, and Pavarotti wafted in the breeze from the air-conditioning vents. Lined up behind the counter were posters featuring famous composers. Garris had pet names for all of them. Mahler was the Mad Doktor. Franz Liszt was Son of Lovecraft. Mendelssohn was Santa Claus Meets the Hell's Angels. Beethoven was the High School Principal. Waist high on the counter was a blowup of Charles Ives with the eyes cut out. Ronnie Colvin had liked to kneel and peer out through the eyeholes like a Chinese manservant in some Victorian murder mystery. There was also a chaotic handwritten chart, much annotated, listing the film scores of John Williams and the classical music from which each score had been plagiarized. Ronnie really had a hard-on to berate Williams. Garris thought that the chart would go, but Peeping Charles could stay. So much for Ronnie's contribution. Let Charity try to blow him full of minimum wage.

    He shut down the cooler. It was nearly forty-five degrees inside the store. He'd turned it on automatically, without thinking. Winter was hanging on too long. It should, by rights, be balmier.