Robert Crais - Stalking the Angel

I said, “That’s it, Eddie.” I picked up the Dan Wesson, then edged forward and pulled the girl toward me. She tried to jerk away, but she didn’t try very hard. Maybe she was tired.

Eddie’s face was dark. “Don’t touch her, dude.”

I pointed the gun at him. “Get out of the way.”

Eddie put himself in the center of the door and shook his head. “You want the Hagakure, take it, but Mimi stays with me.”

I looked at Pike. His glasses caught the light and showered it around the room.

“Make your brain work and think about this, Eddie. I’m going to see that she gets help. I’m going to see that she’s made right.”

Eddie Tang shook his head. “No.” He took a step toward us. Me with the Dan Wesson, and Pike with the High Standard, and he took a step toward us.

I aimed the Dan Wesson at his forehead. “Eddie. Get real.”

Eddie’s shirt was wet and sticking to his skin. He yanked off the tie, and most of the shirt came with it. The tattoos writhed and glistened like living things. They crawled up his biceps, over his shoulders, and down across his chest and abdomen. Dragons roared and tigers leaped and samurai warriors locked swords in combat. Red, white, green, yellow, blue. Brilliant primary colors that made him look feral and monstrous and of the earth. He went down low and stared at us.

Pike’s mouth twitched.

I said, “Joe. Not you, too?”

Joe Pike raised the High Standard level with Eddie’s heart. “Your call.”

Some days. I pushed Mimi to the side and put down the Dan Wesson and Pike dropped the High Standard and Eddie Tang launched two spin kicks so quickly that they were impossible to see. Mimi screamed. Pike rolled under the first kick and I pushed myself sideways and hit Eddie’s back. Pike came up and snapped a roundhouse kick to the side of Eddie’s head and punched him in the back of the neck and the kidneys. Eddie’s body tightened like a single flexed muscle and he shook it off. I’d seen Pike crack boards with that kick.

Mimi screamed again and ran forward, scratching and hitting, and Pike pushed her down hard. She stayed there, holding the crumbling Hagakure to her breasts and watching with wide eyes.

We kept Eddie between us, moving on our toes and staying out of reach. Eddie was big and strong and knew the moves from a thousand tournaments, but tournaments weren’t real. Real is different. If it wasn’t, maybe we’d be dead.

Outside, there were no more shots and no more cars racing away. Voices came through the house and then faded and there was nothing. Maybe everyone was gone and we were all that was left, men alone in a dark wood, fighting.

We moved so that Eddie could never long face either of us. If he turned toward one, the other had his back. Pike would strike, and then me, and both of us worked to stay away from his hands and feet. He was faster than a big man was supposed to be, but having to work against two of us took away his timing. He couldn’t get off the way you can get off one-on-one, and after a while he began to slow. We hit the big muscles in his back and his thighs and his shoulders, and he slowed still more. The certainty that had been in his eyes began to fade. It made me think of King Kong, fighting the little men for the woman he loved.

Far away, maybe on the other side of the lake, there were sirens. Something flickered on Eddies face when he heard them, and he glanced at the girl. When the cops got here, she would go back, and he would go back, but they wouldn’t go back together. He made a deep grunt and he tried to end it. He turned his back to Joe Pike and came at me. I backpedaled and Pike came in fast. Eddie ran me back against the doorjamb. He snapped a fist out and the fist hit the jamb and shattered wood and plaster. I rammed the heel of my hand up into the base of his nose and something cracked and blood spurted out and he grabbed me. Pike wrapped his hands around Eddie’s face and dug his fingers into his eyes and pulled. Eddie let go and jerked an elbow back and you could hear Pike’s ribs snap. I hit Eddie with two quick punches to the ear and followed them with another roundhouse kick that again snapped his head to the side. He staggered, but stayed up, and I said, “Shit.”

The sirens howled closer and closer until the sound seemed to come from every direction, and then they were at the front of the house. Eddie was in the middle of the room, sucking air, with Pike and me on either side. Back where we started. Only now there was sweat and blood and cops at the door. Eddie looked from me to Pike to the girl, then lowered his hands and stood up out of his crouch as if someone had called time out. The girl said, “Eddie?”

He shook his head. There were tears coming down his face, working into the blood. He had given it his best, but it hadn’t been enough.

I said, “It’s over, Eddie.”

Eddie looked at me. “Not yet.” When he said it, he looked old.

Eddie Tang stepped over the fat guy and pulled Joe’s shotgun from beneath the Mustache Man. He looked at it and then he looked at Joe Pike. There were more voices outside and somebody yelled for somebody else to watch himself. Mimi said, “Shoot them, Eddie. Shoot them now .”

Eddie said, “I love her, man.” Then he tossed the gun to Joe, bared his teeth like something crazed and primal, and charged straight ahead with a series of power kicks that could knock down a wall. Joe Pike fired four rounds so quickly they might have been one. The 12-gauge blasts in the small room made my ears ring and the buckshot load carried Eddie Tang backward through the French doors and out into the night. The four spent shells bounced off the ceiling and hit the floor and spun like little tops, and outside a cop voice shouted, “Holy shit!”

When the shell casings stopped spinning there was silence.

For the longest time, Mimi Warren did not move, then she looked at me and said, “I don’t feel anything.”

I said, “Kid, you’ve had so much done to you that the part that feels went dead a long time ago.” Maybe Carol Hillegas could fix it.

Mimi cocked her head the way a bird will, as if I’d said something curious, and smiled. “Is that what you think?”

I didn’t move.

She said, “I’m such a liar. I make up stuff all the time.”

I went to her, then, and put my arms around her, and she started to scream, flailing and thrashing and trying to get to Eddie, or maybe just trying to get away from me. I held on tight, and said, “It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.”

I said it softly, and many times, but I don’t think she heard me.

The mountain cops were pretty good about it. The sheriff was a guy in his forties who had put in some time with the Staties and knew he was in over his head when he saw the mess. His partner was a jumpy kid maybe twenty-one, twenty-two, and after enough gun-waving the sheriff told him to put it away and go get an extra pair of cuffs out of the cruiser.

They found some clothes for Mimi, then cuffed us and drove us down to the State Police substation in Crestline, about a thousand feet lower on the mountain. The Crestline doc got pulled out of bed to check us over and tape Pike’s ribs. Mostly, he looked at Mimi and shook his head.

When the doctor was finished, a state cop named Clemmons took Pike’s statement first, and then mine, all the while sucking on Pall Mall cigarettes and saying, “Then what?” as if he’d heard it a million times.

After I had gone through it, Clemmons sucked a double lungful of Pall Mall and blew it at me. “You knew the girl was in there, how come you didn’t just call us?”

“Phone line was busy,” I said.

He sucked more Pall Mall and blew that at me, too.