Robert Crais - Free Fall

The guy in the long coat got out of the Monte Carlo and went to one of four metal garage doors built into the building and pushed it open. No locks. There were neither cars nor signs nor other evidence of human enterprise outside the building, but maybe inside was different. Maybe this was the Eight-Deuce clubhouse, and inside there would be pool tables and a soda fountain and clean-cut kids who looked like the Jackson family playing old Chubby Checker platters and dancing like the white man. Sure. Welcome to The Killing Zone.

When the door was open the Bug drove into the building.

Bone Dee said, “Follow him.”

I followed. The Monte Carlo came in after me and then the guy in the long coat stepped through and pulled the door down. Nothing inside, either. The building was as empty and as uncluttered as a crypt.

When the door was down Bone Dee reached over, turned off the ignition, and took the keys. The guy in the long coat came over with the double-barreled twenty. There were no lights and no windows in the place, and the only illumination came from six industrial skylights built into the roof. No one had washed the skylights since they had been installed, so the light that came down was filtered and dirty and it was hard to see. One of the skylights was broken.

The guy in the coat made a little come-here finger gesture with his free hand and said, “Get outta there, boy.”

I got out Bone Dee got out with me.

The guy in the coat said, “I like that old Corvette. You get dead, can I have it?”

“Sure.”

He ran his hand along the fender as if it were something soft, and would appreciate tenderness.

The doors on the Beetle opened and the two guys in there got out with James Edward Washington and pushed him toward me. The Monte Carlo opened up at the same time and three guys came out of there, two from the front and one from the back. The guy from the Monte Carlo’s backseat was holding a Benelli combat shotgun and the two from the front were carrying AKs like Bone Dee. The guy who’d been in the backseat of the Beetle had put away the Taurus and come up with an old M-1 carbine. You count the double twenty and figure for handguns, and these guys were packing serious hurt. I spent fourteen months in Vietnam on five-man reconnaissance patrols, and we didn’t carry this much stuff. Of course, we lost the war.

I said, “Okay, are you guys going to give up now or do I have to kick some ass?”

Nobody laughed. James Edward Washington shifted his weight from foot to foot and looked as tight as a hand-me-down shirt. A fine sheen of sweat slicked his forehead and the skin beneath his eyes, and he watched the Monte Carlo like he expected something worse to get out. Something worse did.

A fourth guy slid out of the back of the Monte Carlo with the lethal grace of an African panther. He was maybe a half inch shorter than me, but with very wide shoulders and very narrow hips and light yellow skin, and he looked like he was moving in slow motion even though he wasn’t. There was a tattoo on the left side of his neck that said Blood Killer and a scar on the left side of his face that started behind his eye, went back to his ear, then trailed down the course of his cheek to his jaw. Knife scar. He was wearing a white silk dress shirt buttoned to the neck and black silk triple-pleated pants and he looked, except for the scar, as if he had stepped out of a Melrose fashion ad in Los Angeles Magazine. Bone Dee handed him the Dan Wesson. The other three guys were watching me but were watching the fourth guy, too, like maybe he’d say jump and they’d race to see who could jump the highest. I said, “You Akeem D’Muere?”

D’Muere nodded like it was nothing and looked at the Dan Wesson, opening the chamber, checking the loads, then closing the chamber. “This ain’t much gun. I got a nine holds sixteen shots.”

“It gets the job done.”

“I guess it does.” He hefted the Dan Wesson and lined up the sights on my left eye. “What’s your name?”

“Elvis Cole.”

“What you doin’ here?”

“My buddy and I were looking for a guy named Clement Williams for stealing a 1978 Nissan Stanza.” Maybe a lie would help.

Akeem D’Muere cocked the Dan Wesson. “Bullshit.” Nope. Guess a lie wasn’t going to help.

I said, “Why’d you force the Washington family to drop their wrongful-death suit against the LAPD?”

He decocked the Dan Wesson and lowered it. “How much you know?”

I shook my head.

D’Muere said, “We see.” He wiggled the Dan Wesson at Bone Dee and the other guy with an AK. “Get on this fool.”

Bone Dee hit the backs of my knees with his AK and the other guy rode me down and knelt on my neck. Bone Dee knelt on my legs. The guy on my neck twisted my head around until I was looking up, then put the muzzle of his AK under my ear. It hurt.

Akeem D’Muere stood over me. “It be easy to kill you, but easy ain’t always smart. The people I know, they say you got friends at LAPD and you turnin’ up dead maybe make’m mad, maybe make things even worse.”

Something moved across the skylights. Pike, maybe.

“Still, I can’t let you keep runnin’ around, you see? Things gettin’ outta hand and they got to stop. You got to stop. You see that?”

“Sure.” It was hard to breathe with the guy on my back.

Akeem D’Muere shook his head. “You say that, but it just talk, so I gotta show you how things are.” Akeem D’Muere went over to James Edward Washington, touched the Dan Wesson to James Edward’s left temple, and pulled the trigger. The explosion hit me like a physical thing and the right side of James Edward Washington’s face blew out and he collapsed to the concrete floor as if he were a mechanical man and someone had punched his off button. He fell straight down, and when his face hit the cement, a geyser of blood sprayed across the floor and splattered onto my cheeks.

I went as stiff and tight as a bowstring and pushed against the men on my back but I could not move them. James Edward Washington trembled and twitched and jerked on the floor as a red pool formed under his head. His body convulsed and something that looked like red tapioca came out of his mouth. The guy in the long coat who had opened and closed the big door went over to James Edward and squatted down for a closer look. He said, “Look at this shit.”

The convulsing peaked, and then the body grew still.

Akeem D’Muere came back, squatted beside me, and opened the Dan Wesson’s chamber. He shook out the remaining cartridges, then wiped down the Dan Wesson and dropped it next to me. He said, “The fuckin’ bitch next. She started this.”

I blinked hard five or six times, and then I focused on him. It was hard to focus and hard to hear him, and I tried to think of a way to shake off the men on my back and get to him before the AKs got to me.

Akeem D’Muere smiled like he knew what I was thinking, and like it didn’t really worry him, like even if I tried, and even if I got out from under the men and past the AKs, he still wouldn’t be worried. He looked over at the others. “You got the keys?”

Bone Dee said, “Yeah,” and held up my keys.

Akeem sort of jerked his head and Bone Dee went to the guy with the carbine and they went out of my field of view to my car.

Maybe thirty seconds later Bone Dee came back and Akeem D’Muere went over to James Edward Washington’s body. He touched the body with his toe, then shook his head and looked at me. “Don’t matter none. This just another dead nigger.”

I tried to say something, but nothing came out.

Akeem D’Muere turned away. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Bone Dee and the guy with the carbine got back into the Volkswagen and Akeem D’Muere and the guy with the Benelli riot gun went to the Monte Carlo. The guy on my shoulders stayed there and another guy with an AK went to the Monte Carlo and stood by the open passenger door, ready to cover me. The tall guy with the double twenty opened the big doors. When he did, something outside made a loud BANG and the tall guy was kicked back inside and Joe Pike came through fast, diving low and rolling toward the Volkswagen, then coming up and snapping off one shot at the guy on my shoulders and two shots through the Volkswagen’s driver’s-side window. The bangs were loud and would’ve been Pike’s .357. The first bullet rolled the guy off my shoulders and the two in the Volkswagen pushed the driver over into the passenger side on top of Bone Dee. Pike yelled, “Down.”