Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“Are you all ready to go?” Kathy asked him.

“The camera and binocs are right by the car keys,” he replied. “Ready when you are.”

“Well, we’ll be another fifteen minutes, that’s all,” she said. “Why don’t you stuff your nose back in the paper, and we’ll holler.”

There was nothing in the paper he wanted to read, nothing new on the crash.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he said. “I’ll go get the car gassed up. Save some time.”

“Double-park and wait for us in front,” Kathy suggested. “We can bring the cooler, two tough old broads like us. That way, you won’t have to put the car back in the garage.”

“You sure you can wrestle that thing? You’ve got half a Safeway store in there.”

“Oh, Da-a-a-a-d,” Melissa bleated at him again. “Women are as strong as men and not nearly as likely to get hernias.”

Pace and Kathy exchanged amused glances.

“Where’d you learn about hernias?” he asked his daughter.

“In school, in hygiene class,” she said as though he should have known. “You shudda seen the boys blush when the teacher talked about sperm cords. It was too cool.” She broke down in a spasm of giggles.

“Right. Ho-kay.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“We’ll meet you downstairs,” Kathy said, rescuing him. Then she lowered her voice. “You’d better get out of here while you can.”

He slung the camera over one shoulder, the binoculars over the other. “Don’t forget to lock up,” he called back inside and closed the door.

He was whistling for sheer joy when the elevator stopped in the garage beneath his building. The shaft occupied an area as large as three parking spaces. The doors opened facing the west wall, which was lined by a row of end-in parking spaces that sloped upward and around to the right to upper-level parking and then around again to the garage door. The east wall was the same, except for the three spaces lost to the elevator shaft. Pace thought he lucked out when it came to parking assignments. His space was the first one next to the concrete wall of the shaft, a perfect spot, particularly when he had a large load of groceries to carry.

He noticed the lights over his space were out—as were those on the opposite wall—throwing the area into a darkness in which his car was little more than a silhouette. The building-maintenance people would have the lights replaced in a few hours.

He used his back to block the elevator door open for a few seconds, using the light to find the keys to the car’s door lock and the ignition. He walked behind the vehicle and came up on the driver’s side.

It could have been a shadow, or a hint of movement, or the slightest sound—he had no idea what—that made the back of his neck crawl as surely as if a garden spider were picking its way through his hair. He stopped by the driver’s door, his eyes probing the shadows that had gone from harmless to ominous in the space of a few seconds. He saw nothing and was chiding himself about fear of the dark when a powerful pair of arms grabbed him from behind. The right arm encircled his neck, threatening to strangle him; the left dragged his left arm behind him and twisted it upward toward his shoulder blades. Pace thought surely a bone would snap. The car keys fell to the concrete floor and skittered away, sounding eerily like a half-dozen rats frightened by a sudden light.

Pace was about to yell when a huge figure rose up in front of his car’s grille, advanced on him in two steps and drove a fist into his gut, just below the point where the two sides of his rib cage turned up and joined at the bottom of the sternum. The blow drove every cubic inch of usable air from his lungs, and he felt certain the breakfast in his stomach would soon follow. His knees buckled. He would have fallen but for the assailant holding him up.

“You feel like you’re gonna die, and you are, but not right this second.” The voice rasped from behind his left ear. He could feel the hot breath on the side of his face, and he would have detected its slightly sour smell had he been able to inhale at that moment.

This can’t be happening! Not here. Not today.

“Where’s your wallet, asshole?” the voice behind him rasped again, and this time Pace got a whiff of rotting teeth. He didn’t answer the question—he wasn’t certain he could talk yet—and his captor jerked his left arm a little higher. This time he felt muscle tear in his shoulder, and he found enough breath to groan.

“I asked you a question, asshole. You hear okay?”

Pace nodded.

“Then you gonna give me an answer?”

“T-To what?” His voice was barely a whisper.

“Whatsa matter, you don’t hear so good after all? Or maybe you don’t understand? Maybe we gotta help you understand.”

The man in front smashed the left side of Pace’s face, snapping the reporter’s head into the shoulder of the arm still wrapped around his throat. The ring on the assailant’s hand cut Pace’s cheek to the bone. Blood coursed into his mouth, down his neck onto his shirt, and he thought he would black out. He wished he had when a fist smashed into the place below his sternum again, driving out what little air he had been able to restore to his tortured lungs. Again his legs buckled. The man behind him released Pace’s neck and used his free hand to pin Pace’s right arm. His captor changed position only to give his partner a shot at the right side of Pace’s head. It came as another backhand blow, although this time Pace saw it coming and slipped it, avoiding a broken jaw. Nonetheless, the blow packed enough power that the world in front of his eyes misted over in red, then went out of focus.

Let it be over.

Pace felt his arms released, and he felt them fall dead at his side as he started to sag. But the man in front grabbed his shoulders and held him upright. The man behind drove both his fists into Pace’s kidneys. This time he knew he groaned; he heard himself clearly. His shoulders were released, and he pitched forward. The big man in front did nothing to break his fall. He sidestepped Pace’s body easily, letting him crash into the driver’s door and slam onto the cement floor. The jolt of the fall started lightning bolts of agony dancing through his nervous system.

Pace felt one of his tormentors dip into the hip pocket of his blue jeans and slide out the folding canvas sport wallet there while the other pulled the Seiko chronometer from Pace’s left wrist and twisted the gold and black-sapphire ring from his right ring finger.

“Another victim of senseless violence in our crime-ridden capital,” one of them said.

Pace was turned over on his back, and he saw a form standing above him with something in its hand. There was a click as a long blade snapped into place. He tried to squirm away, but the second man pushed his booted foot into Pace’s torn shoulder, holding him down.

“Finish it, and let’s get out of here,” the man said to his partner.

The one with the knife dropped to one knee beside Pace, and at the same moment, the reporter heard a new voice.

“Hey, what’s goin’ on over there? Ya’all get ’way from him!”

It was Howard, the day maintenance chief. Pace recognized his Southern drawl.

The one kneeling beside Pace jumped to his feet. “Let’s go,” he whispered to his partner. “Hit the guy and knock him down.”

Pace heard the two sprint away, and then he heard Howard yell. He heard a body fall, accompanied by the sound of splintering glass.

Gingerly, fighting off nausea, Pace crabbed around to see what was happening. Howard was struggling to his feet, being careful not to cut himself on the shards of neon tubes lying shattered over the garage floor.