Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

Ivers knew he had the Cane Cutter, and so he whipped out his revolver even as he ran toward the battered Buick, shouting, “Police. Step out of the vehicle!”

But the Buick coughed into life and tore straight for Ivers, whose approach sent him into the vehicle even as it struck him, sending him to the right of the driver's side window, stunned and unconscious, his single reflex shot striking the rear left fender, ricocheting to put a hole through the gas tank.

The smell of gasoline rose with the warm whoosh of air left in the wake of the speeding Buick. Ivers lay in the street unconscious, his dress hiked up to his thighs, some of the leaking gas lapping at his skirt, his Jockey shorts and knee-length hosiery displayed for all to see, his barrel-round legs splayed apart.

Several of the sailors converged on him, one shouting for someone to call for an ambulance, a second trying to assess the damage, when a third tossed down his cigar. The gasoline ignited, turning one of the white-uniforms into an inferno, scattering the others. The fire raced to Ivers's prone form, engulfing him whole.

Several of the sailors sat on their burning friend and beat the flames out while Ivers screamed in pain. One sailor tore off his white jacket and smothered Ivers with it, killing the flames that'd already badly burned him.

“ Call 911! Get a goddamned ambulance!”

“ Forget that!” shouted the sailor who'd saved Ivers. “Run into the Army hospital! Hell, it's right here!”

In a few minutes a base hospital wagon screeched onto the scene and the medics took over. The sailor had minor burns, but Ivers was in shock.

Police cars arrived with floodlights and sirens, backing onlookers away. The call for officer down had not gone out, no one knowing that the big man in drag was a cop until one of the medics scooped his wallet from a scorched purse and handed it to one of the policemen to notify next of kin.

“ Jesus, Steve, this guy's one of ours,” the cop said.

The senior officer. Steve Fausti, stared at the badge and identification and then up at the ambulance with Ivers and the injured sailor as it raced for the nearby military hospital.

“ Nate Ivers, Midtown Unit,” said Phil Janklow, the younger officer.

“ Yeah, he's one of their training sergeants. What the hell gives? You think he's maybe queer?”

The first cop shrugged. “If so, looks like he hustled the wrong sailor.”

“ What the hell happened here?” Fausti, now holding tightly to Ivers's wallet and pointing it like a weapon at the sailors, demanded of the three on the grass who were trying to sober up long enough to figure out just what had happened. “I want some fuckin' answers. What happened here?”

“ Ivers's service revolver,” said the younger of the two cops, approaching his partner with the gun. “One round discharged, still hot.”

“ Sure it's hot. There was a friggin' fire here,” said Fausti, pointing out the remaining flames that licked up from the pavement. The place was thick with gas fumes.

The sailors helped one another from the grass, their whites stained with soot, oil, grass and what one termed grue. “You guys aren't going shipboard tonight,” Fausti assured them, and this sent up a group groan with expletives.

“ Fun and games over, boys. Now we can talk here, or you'll talk to a detective downtown. What's it going to be?”

“ Follow that gasoline trail, asshole,” said the sailor who'd saved Ivers from any further hurt, his white jacket missing. “That's the guy who hit-and-run your man.”

A second sailor intervened, waving his arms, his freckled, Iowa farm-boy face as sooty and grass-stained as his uniform. “Your guy was playin' chicken with a '69 Buick sedan with bad tires and leakin' gas like a somma-bitch.”

The third sailor, breathing into the cop's face, added, “Your guy pulled his gun. but the driver hit him before he could get a round off.”

“ That ain't right, Pete. He fired a shot,” said the jacketless one.

“ Slug must've hit the gas tank,” suggested the Iowa boy.

Fausti turned to his partner and said, “You got that, Phil? This clown wants us to go away, to follow a gas leak.”

“ Goddamnit, that's how it went down. Your guy was trying to stop a car with his body.'“

“ How many in the car?”

'Two, I think. Two was all I saw get in.”

'Two?”

“ A guy and a babe.”

“ What'd they look like?”

“ Kanakas.”

“ What'd they look like?” Phil Janklow repeated his partner's question, ready to take notes on the answer.

The sailor shrugged. “I tol' ya, kanakas. They all look alike to me.”

Phil came over and whispered in his partner's ear. “Maybe we ought to try — “

“ Try? What the fuck're you talking' about, Phil? Try what?”

'Try followin' that trail left by the gas leak.” He pointed to the lingering, scattered flames on the pavement.

“ Shit, Phil, we've got a crime scene on our hands here, and the book says we sit on it until homicide detectives arrive. What's going to happen to us if we go off like fuckin' Sherlock Holmes after a fuel slick?”

“ Homicide?” asked one sailor sober enough to overhear. “Attempted vehicular manslaughter, if you're telling the truth, sailor.”

“ Christ, what reason I got to lie for?”

“ Could maybe've happened another way.”

“ You can't take the word of three U.S. sailors?”

“ I wouldn't take the word of the whole damn Seventh Fleet, pal.” Fausti smiled, watching the sailors' dismay as they kicked about the earth and shook their heads. “It ain't in my job description. Just cool your heels until we can corroborate your story, okay?” He sent Phil into the crowd for anyone who'd volunteer as a witness, and Phil came back with a mix of white tourists, Japanese and Polynesians. They all bore out the sailors' account before the detectives arrived on scene. Fausti told his younger partner that they had done their jobs by the book, so nobody could find fault with the approach they'd taken at the scene.

“ Another night of fun in paradise,” said one of the HPD detectives who asked for a rundown from Fausti and his young partner.

“ Yes, sir… well, the hit-and-run victim was a training sergeant from Midtown, HPD.”

“ You don't say?”

“ Officer Nate Ivers, and he discharged his weapon at the assailant.”

“ Ivers? Christ, I know an Ivers,” said the second detective to his partner. “He's been on a one-man crusade for Kaniola's killer. Damned fool's gone off the deep end, Jack.”

“ Where'd you say he was taken?” asked the first detective.

“ DeRussy medics took him in there,” replied Phil, pointing.

“ Let's go see if he's conscious and talking.”

Young Janklow pulled away from his partner's grasp, stopping the two detectives, informing them about the gas spill and asking, “You think maybe we ought to try to pick up the trail and follow it?”

The detectives laughed in Phil's face, and without saying a word, they walked back to their unmarked cars, where they talked and laughed as if what Phil had said was the funniest joke they'd heard in years.

“ I told you to forget that shit, Phil. You sounded like the fuckin' Hardy Boys.” Fausti slapped his notebook closed and put it away.

“ If we'd got on it right away maybe-” You know how damned fast a fuel spill evaporates in this climate,” said Fausti, trying to ease the bruise to his partner's ego.

“ Yeah… well, that's the friggin' point, and all those bozos can do is laugh at us?”

“ You, partner… they were laughing at you.” Fausti turned to the crowd, shouting, “Okay, folks, show's over. Go'bout your business. Enjoy our fair city… the Jewel of the Pacific…”