Robert Crais - The Monkey

Gambino left the barbeque and sloshed across to the main house. He carried a Coors and belched so loudly we could hear him sixty yards away. Classy. He didn’t bother with the walkways. Guess he didn’t give a shit if he tracked messy into his good friend Domingo Duran’s home. Maybe he figured Mexicans didn’t mind.

The two guys holding Perry stopped outside of the guesthouse, talking, then one of them continued on with the kid across to the main house. The second one came our way, toward the garage. We dropped along the row of oleander until we were out of sight of the rear yard, then came out onto the walk.

“If we’re going into the main house,” Pike said, “we’re not going to do it through the back. Too many people.”

We were zipping along, backpedaling along the walk toward the garage. “Did you see a way in through the front?” I said.

“Sure. Windows. Doors.”

Smartass. “You always carry lipstick in your truck?”

“You wouldn’t believe what I got in there.”

The walk ended at a door off the rear of the garage in a nice circular spot strewn with pretty white rocks. There was a heavy adobe wall to the right, as thick as but lower than the main wall, extending from the garage to the main house. To the left the grounds sloped away to an open rolling lawn. It was through the door or across the lawn. On the lawn, we could be seen. The door was locked.

We stepped back off the walk into the shrubs and waited. There were footsteps, then the second thug came along, hissing air through his teeth and digging in his pocket. When he stopped at the door and took out a silver key, I stepped out and hit him once in the ear, hard. He sat down and I hit him again. Pike picked up the key. “Not bad.”

I waffled my hand from side to side. “Eh.”

Pike put the key in the lock and opened the door. A short Mexican with a broad face and a gray zoot suit took one step out, pushed a gold Llama automatic into Pike’s chest, and pulled the trigger. There was a deep muffled POP, then Pike came up and around with his right foot faster than I could see. There was a louder sound, what you might hear if you drop an overripe casaba melon onto a tile floor. The Mexican collapsed, his neck limp. Pike looked down at himself, put one hand over a growing spot high and to the right of his chest, then sat down. “Keep going,” he said. “Get the kid.”

I felt like I might scream. I looked at him, nodded, then pushed through the door. Forward. Never back up.

There were three Cadillac limos, two Rolls-Royces, and a bright yellow Ferrari Boxer in the garage, but no more thugs. I went out to the edge of the motor court and looked at the front of the house. Another limo was there. A service drive branched off the motor court and ran around to the side of the house, then looped back around to the garage. That would be the kitchen. I walked out across the motor court to the service and followed it around to the side of the mansion. Maybe the way to get the kid was to walk up to things and shoot them and when I ran out of things to shoot I’d either have the kid or be dead.

The service drive led to a carport attached to the house. There was a single door there, and a little metal buzzer. When I pushed the buzzer a tiny woman, as nicely browned as good leather, opened the door. She looked disgusted. “? No mas comer! ” she said.

“Do you speak English?”

“No, no.” She shook her head and tried to push me out of the door. Probably thought I was one of Gambino’s goons.

I showed her the gun and jerked my head out toward the front gate. “Vamoose!” Then I went into the kitchen.

Manolo was eating a sandwich at a chopping block table. His jacket was off and he was wearing a shoulder holster over a blue shirt with white collar and cuffs. When he saw me, he clawed at his gun. I shot him twice. The hollow-points picked him up and kicked him back off the stool. The 9mm high-velocity loads echoed like a cannon in the tile kitchen.

I went out through a serving hall and into a living room that made Barry Fein’s place look like a phone booth. Gambino’s hood was coming in off the. balcony with his shotgun. When he saw me he said, “What the hell was that?”

I said, “This,” and clubbed him in the side of the face with the gun. He stumbled and dropped the shotgun but didn’t pass out. I pulled him up to his feet and shook him and pressed the muzzle up under his jaw. “They just brought a kid in here. Where?”

“I swear to God I don’t know. I swear.”

I hit him in the mouth with the butt of the gun. His teeth went and blood sprayed out along my arm and he went down to his knees. “Where?”

“Shwear to Chri I dunno.” Hard to talk with a ruined mouth.

“Where’s Duran?”

“Offishe. Upshtairs.”

“Show me.”

I could see out the elegant French doors, across the patio and the lawn to the poolhouse. If they’d heard the shots, no one showed it. Burgers still sizzled, music still played, men and women still laughed. I was vaguely aware that Ellen Lang, sitting out in Pike’s Cherokee without benefit of laughter or music or gaiety, might have heard the shots. And having heard them, might be on her way to call the cops.

I pulled him up again and we went out the living room, up a monstrous semicircular stairway to the second floor. Voices and the sound of closing doors came from the back of the house. On the upper landing, I said, “Where are you taking me?”

“Offishe.” He looked to the left down a curving hall. “Door, wish a couple guysh. Go shrough into she offishe.”

“Just a couple of guys, huh?”

“Yesh.”

“There another way in or out?”

He looked confused, then shook his head. It hurt him to do that. “I don’t live here, man. It’sh tight. Shoundproo.”

Shoundproo. Perfect.

“Why are you people here?”

His eyes flagged and he started to crumple. I hoisted him up, gave him a shake, asked him again.

“Bushnesh,” he said.

“Business. Dope deal?”

He nodded.

The hall was long and paneled with a very rich grade of walnut. Impressive. The St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco has walls like that. I stopped us before we got to the door, held up the Beretta, and touched my lips.

He said, “I beliee you.”

A slim, well-manicured Mexican sat at a bank president’s desk and spoke into a phone. A tall, blocky blond guy had half his ass on the edge of the desk, listening in with his arms crossed. Across the room there was a handsome copper-facaded door that would lead to Duran’s sanctum sanctorum. The blond guy was in a pale yellow sport coat. The Mexican wore a charcoal gray Brooks Brothers three-piece and looked better than the blond guy. Executive secretary, no doubt. He was speaking English, asking about the noises he’d just heard. I shoved Mr. Teeth in through the doorway, walked in after him and shot the Mexican and the blond once each. The hollow-points flipped the Mexican over backward out of his chair and knocked the blond guy off the desk.

I looked at the door. It was thick and heavy and I didn’t know how I was going to get in there. No knob. Knock, knock, knock, Chicken Delight! There would probably be a buzzer somewhere around the secretary’s desk that would make little metal gears push little metal rods to swing open the door. They would have to be strong rods. It was a big door.

Mr. Teeth and I were halfway across the outer office when the copper door opened and Rudy Gambino stepped out, saying, “The fuck’s goin’ on out-”

He had a Smith Police Special in his left hand. He dropped it when he saw me.

“Back up, fat man,” I said.

He backed. And in we went.

Perry Lang was not in the room.