L.A. Wars (15 page)

Just as his face was about to smash into the wall, Hawker made a last-ditch effort. He dropped to one knee and thrust forward with his upper body.

The momentum carried Amin over him. The chain jerked violently away from his neck as the huge man tumbled into the knee-deep water.

Hawker threw himself onto Amin's massive shoulders and used his elbow like an axe, to chop down hard on the back of his neck.

Amin bellowed like a wounded animal. They were both in the water now. Amin struggled to his feet and swung a giant right fist at Hawker's head. Hawker caught most of it with his forearm, but the force of the punch still knocked him down.

Amin lunged at him, but Hawker rolled away. They both floundered to their feet, but Hawker was a step faster. He launched a sizzling left hook into the big man's ribs, then followed with three quick rights that cracked Amin's face open.

From somewhere a knife appeared in Amin's hand. Hawker clubbed him once more in the face, then tripped his legs from under him. As he went down face first, Hawker locked his hands on the back of Amin's neck, holding the grotesque face underwater.

Amin struggled savagely for half a minute, then drew still.

Hawker let the corpse drift away as he climbed wearily to his feet.

“Impressive, Hawker,” said a voice. “Damned impressive. You killed six out of seven. But six out of seven isn't good enough in a game like this. Now you're going to die.”

Hawker turned to see Sully McGraw standing a few feet away, his revolver beaded on Hawker's chest.

“You make me sick, McGraw.”

The fat man allowed a thin smile to cross his lips. “Because I double-crossed my fine, upstanding neighbors? Tsk, tsk. Or because my business partners are”—his eyes surveyed the carnage meaningfully—“I should say
were
drug addicts and criminals? Either way it doesn't bother me, Hawker. My neighbors in Hillsboro are fools. And these dead lunatics made me a lot of money. They stole cheap. And I sold expensive.”

“So now you're a rich and happy man,” Hawker said with heavy sarcasm. “How long did it go on, McGraw?”

“From the moment I got smart and decided the life of the poor but honest businessman was for schmucks. Owning a pawnshop, I got plenty of hot stuff offered to me. So, about four years ago, I started going for it. Built up a nice little organization. The more money I made, the more shops I bought. Every now and then I'd stage a fake break-in just to keep the cops from getting suspicious. It was going real smooth until you showed up, Hawker.” McGraw drew back the hammer of the revolver.

Hawker's mind raced, looking for some opening. McGraw was about ten feet away from him—too far to try to jump him. And the knee-deep water would make any running impossibly slow. Hawker kept talking, fighting for time. “And what about your drug connections, McGraw?”

He shrugged. “What this scum did with their money was no skin off my nose. If they wanted to buy and sell drugs, that was their business.”

“But you knew about their Hollywood connection?”

“Julie Kahl, you mean? She was just a dumb little mixed-up girl. Wanted to be a star, and her daddy didn't have the pull anymore. So she tried to worm her way in with the drugs. Virgil suspected, but he never had the balls to do anything about it. But she was strictly nickel-and-dime stuff.” McGraw's thin smile grew wicked. “America would crap its pants if Hollywood's main drug connection was ever caught. But you'll never have a chance to find out, Hawker, because I'm tired of talking. And I'm tired of looking at that ugly broken nose of yours.” He gripped the gun in both hands. “Have a nice trip to hell, Hawker—”

“I'd be dropping the gun, if I were you,” interrupted a voice from the shadows, “unless you're interested in making the same journey.”

McGraw's face went white. He hesitated as if about to drop his gun, but then he pivoted and began to fire wildly toward the trees.

A deeper
ker-whack
erupted twice from the bushes. Sully McGraw buckled over as the slugs slammed him backward.

McGraw gasped as he struggled to turn his revolver toward Hawker. Hawker watched with a mild and distant interest as McGraw died with his eyes open, glaring at the California night sky.

“Nice shooting,” Hawker said to the voice's unseen owner.

“Coming from you, that's a high compliment indeed.”

Holding a .44 automatic, Lieutenant Detective Walter Flaherty materialized from the shadows.

sixteen

“Good evening, Detective Hawker.”

Hawker stepped out of the fountain and inspected McGraw's body. “I never thought I'd be saying this, but I'm damn glad to see you, Lieutenant.”

“Ah, sure, and I'm growing rather fond of you myself.” Flaherty walked around the fountain, touching bodies with the toe of his brown shoes. “The lawyers aren't going to make a cent off these lads, are they?”

“How did you find me? How did you know where I'd be?”

Flaherty sniffed and blew his nose. He was wearing a gray tweed jacket and baggy pants. He stuffed the handkerchief into his back pocket. “The marvelous recording machine back at your little cottage told me. Interesting conversations those Panthers and Satanás had. They do have the poet's touch with profanity, don't they? I cringe to think how my dear Irene would react if she heard such talk.” Flaherty smiled. “When they said they would meet at a neutral park, I immediately knew it would be Hyde Park.” He winked. “I know the territory, you see. And I've also come to know you. I suspected you would be here.”

“You broke into my place? You had a warrant, I suppose.”

Flaherty's face created a mock look of chagrin. “Ummm … I did not. And I'm rather ashamed. Are you going to tell?”

“I don't think it'd be much of a bargaining tool with the Los Angeles district attorney.”

“What? No, I suppose not—upstanding man that he is. Wouldn't carry much weight at all, I'm afraid.”

“You decoyed me, Flaherty. You put another man on as my tail. I should have known. He was just a front, wasn't he?”

“Not at all, not at all—do you think I'm a sneak?” Flaherty looked offended. “I found the files you sent very interesting. It didn't tell me anything I didn't already suspect, but it gave me sufficient leverage for a fine and proper arrest warrant. It is, in fact, the very reason I stopped by your cottage. I was going to honor you with an invitation to come along.” He shrugged. “Obviously that was impossible, since you weren't there. I gave the detective who was supposed to be watching you a regular tongue lashing, I did—then sent him and two other men to make the collar by themselves.”

“Johnny Barberino.”

“Of course.” Flaherty pulled his jacket open and holstered the .45 as he sat on the fountain's rock ledge. “I actually owe you a great debt, James. I'd been trying to break this ring for the last five months. Of course, I knew most of the particulars, but, as you well know, getting court-worthy evidence is sometimes a difficult matter. You shook things up. You created in them the proper atmosphere of chaos—and chaos begets mistakes. Barberino assigned the poor lad with the red beard, Conor Phelan, to kill you. That was a mistake. McGraw there, rest his evil soul, began liquidating some of his properties—properties with value all out of proportion to his legal income. That was another mistake. And then I got a call from a rather plump blond secretary at World Film Studios—”

“But you'd already been there.”

Flaherty held up one finger in characteristic exclamation. “Yes, but I went to see Johnny Barberino's file—not Julie Kahl's. I was as surprised as you may have been to discover that last summer while she was on vacation, she worked as an extra on one of Barberino's films.” Flaherty meshed his hands together. “It all fit. The street gangs. Julie Kahl's murder. Sully McGraw. And Barberino.” Flaherty chuckled. “And do you know why the secretary called me? She had failed to get your name. You were just a bit too charming, James. The young lady wanted to see you again.”

“Great,” said Hawker ruefully. He stood. “So now you read me my rights and take me in?”

Flaherty ignored him and held out his hand, palm up. “Ah, it's a fine, soft night, isn't it? Maybe just a touch of rain in the air.” He looked at Hawker. “I'm out for my evening stroll, you see. It's not my night to work.” He considered the sky again. “Yes, indeed, a lovely evening.”

“A cop is always on duty. You're an agent of the court, even when you're off duty.”

Flaherty snapped his fingers. “I've erred again, blast it! What you say is true, of course. Just like the search warrant business. I really must sit down with all the rules and regulations one afternoon and give them a thorough read. These mistakes will be the end of a struggling career, if I'm not careful.”

His prism eyes lasered into Hawker's. “But as it stands now, Detective Hawker, you are a free man. I've yet to see you kill anyone, and if you've been as careful here as you've been in the past, you've left no prints, no registered weapons that can be traced to you … nothing at all but circumstantial evidence. And frankly, you've probably saved a fair number of innocent lives—not to mention suffering and taxpayers' money—in killing those you did. They will not be missed. Indeed, we are better off without them.”

Hawker studied the little man before him for a time in silence. Finally he nodded. “I've met a lot of cops and a lot of detectives in my career, Walter. And if they were all after me at once, you're the only one I would really be worried about.”

“Ha! Well, that is flattering. And if it's true, then I suggest you take the morning plane for Chicago. Because tomorrow afternoon I will come after you, Detective Hawker. And, as much as I'd hate it, I'm afraid I'd be forced to take you to prison.”

Flaherty stood and took Hawker's outstretched hand.

Humming a strange little tune then, he strolled off into the shadows of Hyde Park. Hawker watched until he was gone, then began to collect his gear.

seventeen

At one
A
.
M
. Hawker telephoned John Cranshaw.

Hawker's single bag was packed, and he had readied the two crates of weaponry—and another crate with his computer—for pickup by an express freight carrier and shipment back to Chicago.

There was a seven
A
.
M
. flight to O'Hare, and Hawker planned to be on it.

Cranshaw answered on the second ring.

“James! You should have been there! Where the hell were you? It was great—”

“Calm down, John.” Hawker laughed. Cranshaw's enthusiasm already told Hawker what he wanted to know—but he listened anyway.

“James, it was perfect!” Cranshaw chuckled. “We met just like you told us, and we put on those T-shirts you ordered. There were about twenty of us, and everybody was bitching and moaning about having to wear these stupid shirts—but we were all really just trying to cover up how damn scared we were.”

“I don't blame you,” Hawker put in.

“So we marched right down Hillsboro Boulevard. We could see those bastards waiting for us—both street gangs, the Panthers
and
the Satanás. Hell, there must have been forty of them.

“But the men were great, James. Stuck right to formation, just like you trained us. We got closer, and closer, and damned if we couldn't see their expressions change. The bastards were scared, James! Half of the youngest members just turned tail and ran. Some little Hispanic kid led them away, yelling something about hawks. I mean, it was like those black T-shirts with the big white bird head on the front just scared the crap out of them. Can you imagine? Why in the hell would that scare them, James?”

“It's a mystery to me,” said Hawker. “I just thought it would be nice if you had a sort of uniform.”

“Well, those T-shirts are our uniforms now, you can bet on that. There were about twenty gang members left, and we went right through them with that wedge formation. Then we broke into our five-man teams and went to work. Hell, those hoods were so confused and scared it didn't last more than five minutes. They ran like scared rabbits. I'll tell you, James, you've never seen so many proud middle-aged men in your life. We've got our neighborhood back, James. And for the first time in a long while, we've got our pride.…”

The two men talked for a while longer as Cranshaw discussed specifics, described small problems that would be fixed in the future, and lingered over funny anecdotes. He finally let Hawker hang up—but only after he had promised to return someday to Los Angeles.

Hawker wondered if he really would.

From the refrigerator he took a fine and bitter Guinness and popped it open. He found stationery and composed a note. It was his final goodbye—a farewell to Melanie St. John.

The desk was littered with crumpled paper by the time he had a paragraph that was satisfactory. That done, he took a long hot shower, opened another beer, then walked barefooted through the sand and the shadows toward the beach-side mansion built high in the trees.

A balmy wind blew off the Pacific. Far out on the horizon Hawker could see the faint lights of a freighter. They twinkled in the rolling darkness like stars.

Hawker walked up the asphalt drive. There were lights on in the house, and as he got closer he could see that someone was sitting on a deck chair on the broad, open porch.

It was Melanie.

Hawker's plan had been to tack the note to the door, return to his cottage, and get a few hours of much-needed sleep before catching his plane.

But it was too late for that. Her voice called out softly, “James? James, is that you?”

“Just wanted to leave you a note. I'm leaving in the morning, and I just wanted to say—”

“Wait. Don't go yet. I'll be right down.”