Lone Wolf #8: Los Angeles Holocaust (10 page)

He was forcing Calabrese’s men into a premature move.

He sat there in the car. After a while, a half-demolished Impala, two forms huddled inside, poked its way through traffic and came parallel to his window. He rolled it down, looked across, exchanged a look with the man in blue sitting in the passenger’s seat, the deaf-mute driving. Was that legal? he wondered vaguely. Deaf people weren’t supposed to drive; they couldn’t hear horns behind them, train whistles, officers’ commands, whatever, the state motor vehicle bureaus had laws against that kind of thing. But then again maybe the deaf-mute wasn’t really deaf and then again, being able to hear nothing while driving would certainly instill a certain calm in a man, a tendency not to get rattled.

“Don’t cross us,” the man in blue said flatly although there was a little tinge of uncertainty back of this, “that’s all I can tell you.”

“I won’t cross you,” Billings said, “do you think I’m crazy?” He wrenched the wheel, pulling the car slowly out of the space while the Impala drifted up a few feet beyond, gave him clearance, allowed him to pass, and then settled into a steady pace behind him. Thinking no, he really wasn’t crazy, not at all. He had no intention of crossing them. He would take them to the trailer park, point the way in, leave them to their devices, and get the hell out of there with his ten thousand dollars. He doubted if they would follow him, and even if they did, he figured that he could outrun them in this thing, particularly considering the condition of their car. He would take the ten thousand on the front end. After all, the front end was best. Let Calabrese do the mopping up. The shit would only wind up in his hands eventually anyway, and these two men, Wulff and the black partner, were doomed. No matter what happened, matters pivoted around those two constants: Calabrese getting the drugs, the two men dying. Take your ten grand and get out.

He put the car into a steady, grinding forty, showing nothing of the potential for cornering, the accelerative power that the three hundred and ninety ci’s under the hood gave, lulling the men behind, maybe, into the feeling that he had a junker. He was swinging in and out of the lane, driving easily, pausing every now and then while idling at traffic lights to pat the ten grand in his pocket. Ten grand in cash was nothing to Calabrese but it was the largest amount Billings had ever had altogether in his life. Out of the miniscule downtown area the roads opened up, traffic thinned, he and the Impala formed a caravan that way. They closed within a mile of the Idle Hour in only twenty minutes. That was good; much longer than that and they might have gotten very nervous and restless, thought that they were being conned in some way. That was one of the reasons why he had arranged to meet where he had. A short drive. Give them little time to think.

They were in the junkyard of America now: used car lots, fast-food franchises, miserable motels slammed up against the low hills of the landscape. The first sign for the Idle Hour came up; it was on the right, hitting him so suddenly that Billings instinctively gasped with surprise, the drive much shorter than he had thought. It must have seemed longer the first time around, stalking them, because he had been terrified that they would detect his tail at any time and pull him off the road; then, too, the careful drives that he had made here subsequently to see that they were still tucked away had been made under similar conditions of tension. It had been a risk all of those times, a terrific risk, but he had ten grand in his wallet and that payoff reduced the tension a little, even in retrospect. It had been worth it after all; ten grand was nickels and dimes to Calabrese, not much probably even to these two clowns trailing him, but to Billings it was plenty. It could finance a new life. He looked back into his rear-view mirror, seeing them come up closer behind him, pressed the hazard flashers to show that he was slowing, and then motioned with his right hand off the wheel. Five hundred yards up the road there was a small arrow under the lettering IDLE HOUR: TRAILER PARK, and then taking off the hazards he cut slowly into the shoulder lane bumping along at ten miles an hour, his right flasher indicating the turn.

His idea had been that they would fall back into line behind him, at the entrance to the park he would quickly accelerate, spinning out and getting away from there at fifty miles an hour, leaving them to their own method of figuring out where Wulff was in the park, which trailer was his. That had been his plan and figured out coldly beforehand it had been a good one, had made as much sense as not leading them here until he had the money and was in his own car…. But these men worked for Calabrese, even if they were fools they would not be total fools, there was some aspect of professionalism and anticipation in them after all, Billings realized … because the Impala sailed along in the right-hand lane, closed alongside Billings, and then almost casually cut him off, the mute yanking the wheel imperceptibly, the Impala sliding crosswise. Billings braked desperately, cursing, the Ford sliding along on the gravel almost swaying into the Impala, but even as he was pounding the wheel the man in blue on the passenger side had rolled his window all the way down, was shouting out to Billings. “All right,” he said, “where are they?”

“They’re in there,” Billings said, finally contriving the sedan to a halt, his palms so damp that they almost came off the wheel. He pointed at the sign. “Right in there.”

“Good,” the man said. “Lead us in.”

“I don’t have to lead you in. That wasn’t part of the deal. I told you they were in there and that’s enough. They’re in there.”

“You must think we’re stupid,” the man said. If he had been confused and taken by surprise on the street the drive had, seemingly, given him plenty of time to bring himself together again; the uncertainty was gone. “How do we know they’re in there, how do we know that this isn’t just a big rib?” A bus came lumbering in the passing lane, traffic behind it already clumping up as the slow-moving vehicle had been forced to the outside. Faces like flowers peered out of the cars, looking at them coolly.

“Lead us in there,” the man in blue said. “Show us where they are.”

“That’s no deal,” Billings said, “no deal at all,” and reached to roll up his window. There was a gun, suddenly, in the man’s hand. A miniature, it glinted at him from the cave of his palm, held almost casually.

“Please,” the man said, “you’ve fucked us up plenty already. Don’t fuck us up anymore, okay? I don’t want to kill you. Take us in there, point out the trailer they’re in, let us make a quick check. If it’s as you say it is you’re out of this and ten gee’s richer.” He gestured with the gun. “People are starting to look,” he said. “Be reasonable now. Don’t be a fool. Cooperate.”

Billings nodded slowly, reached out to crank up the window. “No,” the man said, “no, no, don’t think of that. Leave the window open. You need the breeze for all that sweating you’re doing. Just drive. Drive the car, that’s all I ask.”

Billings nodded again, feeling very old, feeling at bay, and dropped the car back into drive. The wheels spun on the gravel, then lurched the car forward; it crawled down the shoulder at five miles an hour. No way to get out of the box; the Impala was still wedging him in, crowding him over on the left. He had no choice, he had to lead them in and that knowledge, that acceptance coming through him finally, resulted oddly in a relaxation of the tension, even a faint wisp of exaltation. It was always that way when you knew you were committed passing any point of refusal; had he not known it a thousand times, the needle sliding in cooly, past the dark veins, into the bruise of the body itself? Of course, he had been there; he had seen it all before. One way or the other it would be over soon. If nothing else, that could be counted on. five minutes, ten minutes, and it would be done. He would be out of this with ten thousand dollars and a new life opening in front of him at the age of forty-seven or he would be dead. No more middleground. People dwelt in the middle, on the margins, all of their lives: that was death, that was what was killing them more than mortality itself, the slide toward emptiness, the absence of clear choices, but it had never been that way for him. Once again he was in a high, clearly-defined area where the right would happen or the wrong would happen but he would never be the same again. Yes, he thought, that was what might have driven him to the needle in the first place; that might have been precisely it. The need to cut loose, the need to take the high, deadly ground. The need to get off the margin forever.

He was bumping down the miserable road of the trailer park now, the guard nowhere to be seen, the barricade off-angle, crazily on and off the road. A stroke of luck this, the guard not being here, because he knew that the men behind him would almost certainly have killed him to gain entrance. That was the way it was. Behind that spot, angling off to the right, just barely he could see the top of Wulff’s trailer, the yellow U-haul parked beside it linked to the Ford sedan, the ruined Cadillac a little further on.

He leaned across the seat, turned to the Impala which was turning close, gestured violently toward the trailer, pinning them, giving them the signal … and then he yanked the wheel hard left, looking for the sweeping U-turn that he could just make and which would carry him past the Impala, up the path to safety … but he never made it. Something hit him in the neck, stinging and then dull, a feeling of wetness, and as he was sliding into the seat thinking, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, they shot me, more in amazement than anger, he had had this fully calculated.
Why would they shoot him now?
As he was sinking to the seat a roar hit him and then another roar, a whole series of implosions battering and battering away through the blindness that was his sight.

And the world blew up.

The first explosion sent them locked together, sprawling on the floor, the second lifted them as if in a gigantic fist and hurled them across the tilted floor and into the wall, but it was Williams, more alert than Wulff, who was screaming, “Christ, Christ, they’ll get the ordnance,” and Wulff was able to break the hold, then, fighting to do so, coming off Williams’s body, their contact gelatinous in retreat. And then yet another explosion hit them, this one breaking in the walls of the trailer and sending little fragmentation pellets through the opening pores. Wulff rolled on the floor, absorbing the impact, the world shaking, body shaking, then came up with the pistol in his pocket to find that Williams had already, using the stock of the one rifle they had brought in here, battered open the door. They looked out into the damp air. They looked out into horror.

A junk Impala was lying down the path fifty yards or so, next to it a Ford had skidded completely around breaking the path of the Impala, but then again it might have been the Impala hitting the Ford broadside. In either case the Impala was surrounded by little puffs and plumes of dust, and even as Wulff looked another grenade, unmistakably it was a grenade, came sailing from an area behind the car, turning lazily in the air, heading toward the top of the trailer. Wulff could see it all happening; the grenade would hit, it would explode, force would drive it downward, breaking the trailer in five or ten pieces, those pieces imploding around him. There would be one shrieking, burning instant of torture in the last blaze of which he would see Williams … and then they would be dead … both of them. The panorama cleared again; no trailer in the landscape but the grenade did not hit the trailer. Something caught it in the angle of flight, maybe a breeze, most likely a prayer, and it hit the ground some ten yards in back of the trailer still rolling, turning like an egg on the ground, rolling into a small clump of trees which went up with a dull roar, the foliage catching the fire and fragmentation. Flat dud, flat failure, the grenade captured by the earth … and by that time Wulff, too, had his pistol out, was firing in the direction of the car.

Williams, following the rifle, allowing the rifle to guide him more than he exerted control, was coming out in front of the trailer now, the stock of the rifle buried deep under his armpit, the recoil causing him to groan and give a little ground reciprocally as he got off three, then four shots in the direction of the rear of the Impala. The trailer itself was on fire, little crowns and plumes of haze surrounding it, but Wulff was not concerned by that; he was not concerned either with the faces that were beginning to peer out of the trailers, the dull threads of scream that he heard intermingling with the sound of ordnance. No, the thing to do was to get to the source of those grenades before yet another one could come … He heard a scream then, something behind the Impala hit, and a man leaped up from behind the car as if on strings, his face contorted, blood coming from all the crevices, then disappeared behind the car.

“Cover me!” Wulff screamed to Williams over the noise. “Goddamnit just cover me, I’m going in there.” He went into that terrain in a low crawl, holding the pistol over his head, clearing it from the dirt, thinking that this was insane; he was asking for cover from a man who not two minutes before he had been trying to pound into unconsciousness, who had been trying to do the same to him … but Williams could be trusted, he knew that, what had happened in the trailer had nothing to do with what was happening now. It was from an excess of knowledge, too much realization that they had attacked one another and now that was over; the real enemy lay before them.

He heard the whine of Williams’s rifle as another shot was put down and then he was into the middle of it, crawling behind the Impala. Two men were lying there. One, a tall man, was playing stupidly with a grenade between his crossed legs as if it were a toy of some sort, trying to formulate a series of gestures which were appropriate to the grenade but failing, muttering to himself, spittle coming from his lips. A bright bloodstain was in the center of this man’s forehead and without thinking about it further Wulff doubled the blood, raising the pistol, pumping a shot as near to the hole as he could get it. The man grunted once, almost gratefully, Wulff thought, spun and fell over the grenade, his body holding it like a cup. He had taken a shot in the cerebrum, Wulff thought, that had destroyed the higher intellectual faculties but with his last energies he had still been trying to figure out what the grenade was for, exactly what to do with it. A good organization man to the last. Next to him, a man who might have been immaculately dressed a little while before, wearing a blue suit, bloodstains on his tie, was squealing and mumbling, trying to raise a revolver, not quite able to make it. His body glistened with a thousand cuts and violations; somehow a grenade had gotten hold of him and torn him open but he too was still determined, still trying to get a job done and the higher intellectual faculties with him seemed to be functioning nicely as he raised the gun in slow-motion, sweat coming out of his face, mingling with the blood, trying to level the gun down on Wulff.

“Son of a bitch,” the man said, and each word was a breath, each breath a further explosion of blood. “Dirty son of a bitch.” His finger was looped around the trigger and only then did Wulff, waiting it out until the last moment, shoot the gun out of the man’s hand. It spun twinkling downrange, the man in blue caving forward again, lying on the earth, pounding his fist against it like a frustrated child. “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch,” the man was saying, and uprange Williams’s rifle went off again. A bullet came across the distance and smashed into the small of the man’s back. Little fingers of blood sprang out. The man screamed weakly. Wulff aimed the pistol carefully and shot the man in the head. He died quickly, gratefully, the pistol flying away from him.

Wulff stood up slowly, giving Williams plenty of time to see him then, giving the black man plenty of time to adjust himself to the realization that it was over. If Williams was going to shoot him this would certainly be the time, but he had faith. He had a complete and sudden faith in Williams; the man was working with him, not against him, he was not going to shoot Wulff. Slowly he waved his arm, standing to full posture, motioning toward the ground, and from the trailer Williams exposed himself, holding the rifle at port arms, then raising it slowly above his head.

Up and down the path now there were little flames. Wulff could hear the sound of their faint crackle and behind that he thought that he could hear the sound of voices as well. Not the propietorship, of course. If anyone was going to get killed in the Idle Hour it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the owners who would surely have taken cover, but it would instead be some wretched tenant who had booked space next to a travelling assassin. That would be just about the way it would go, but Wulff did not want to think of the voices now, let them react to this as they would. His time in the Idle Hour was most certainly completed now. Most of the grenade fires were starting to go out on their own. There was a ragged glaring blaze up beyond in a grove near the gate, but some men had already come out of one of the trailers, a bright, blue job, and were throwing coffeepots and frying pans filled with water on it. That was not the problem. Wulff waved the all-clear to Williams again, stood, looked at the two corpses on the ground bleeding thickly into the foliage, red and green smeared throughout and then he went to the Ford sedan where he thought that he had seen something moving just a few minutes before. He peered in through the window. A man lying flat on the seat, head under the steering wheel, looked back at him. There were small bloodstains around his ears and hinted at behind the neck, but Wulff could see nothing mortal. The man tried to raise a hand with effort, finally got a finger moving. Late forties. There was a gun on the floorboards to his right.

“I think I’ve got a broken back,” the man said, “you’ve got to get me out of here.”

Wulff looked at him, said nothing.

“Didn’t you hear me?” the man said in a high voice. His speech faculties were certainly unimpaired. “I said, I think the sons of bitches broke my back. I’ve got to get some help. I’m paralyzed.”

“Who brought them here?” Wulff said.

“What? What’s that?”

“I said, who brought those men here?” He looked back at the Impala and the two corpses.

Even in paralysis, the man’s eyes turned cunning. “Brought who here?” he said. “Brought what? I was just driving in here. Then there was some shooting. They started to shoot at me and then they were throwing grenades. You saw the whole fucking thing.”

“You brought them here,” Wulff said.

The man’ cheeks began to twitch like frog’s legs. “Get me out of here,” he said, “you want me to die? You want me to die in this fucking trap? It’s not right, you’ve got to help me—”

“You brought them here,” Wulff said, “you led them in. You spotted us for them but you weren’t able to get clear. You got caught by surprise. They double-crossed you. You were on the kill list, too.”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything? Goddamnit it, I’m dying.”

“I recognize you,” Wulff said, “don’t you think I know who you are?”

“Listen,” the man said, “that doesn’t have to do with anything. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I wanted—”

“Santa,” Wulff said. “Santa Anita. The grandstand. You think I’m a fucking fool?”

Williams was waving at him from the steps of the trailer, apparently trying to indicate that someone was coming. All right. That would be the next thing to deal with. He could already see, inclining his head, the guard trudging his way toward the trailer very slowly, holding a rifle extended. Pick him off here? He thought, well, that would be a pleasure. If he had to do it he would without a second thought. Still, it might not be necessary just now.

“I’m no fool,” he said, turning back to the man. “I know exactly what’s going on. I know what the game is; I know what you had in mind. You were going to finger us and take off. That was all.”

The man on the seat tried to move. The effect was perhaps an inch of elevation, holding his buttocks off the seat, but for what this was costing him it was obvious that he might as well have been beaten with clubs, slashed with razors, the agony came out of him in little gasps and tiny screams. “Please,” he said, “please don’t do it.” He looked at the revolver in Wulff’s hands. “You wouldn’t—”

“I wouldn’t?” Wulff said. “I wouldn’t? You died in the accident, remember? A couple of guys came in here, no one will ever know who, and started to throw grenades around. Unfortunately you got in the way of one and got yourself badly mangled. Maybe you tried to intervene and they had to put a shot through your throat.” He levelled the pistol. “There’s got to be an end to this,” he said. “Somewhere along the line it’s just got to stop now.”

He shot the man in the throat.

Pain, death restored the man as the efforts of a hundred surgeons might not have. He flopped around on the seat like a fish, his face, despite all of the agonies of the body, strangely composed, the eyes welling inward as if for strength. His hands squeezed once, reaching down toward his belly as if there were something that he could grasp; he seized his navel, pounded the skin, twitched and gathered it together and then rolled, fell to the floor of the car, his legs, comically held by the steering wheel, coming straight upright. Wulff looked at the soles of the man’s shoes, ripple-soles, encrusted with little pellets of dirt. They lashed out once, those shoes, like a laboratory animal already dead and dismembered being given a testing electric shock, and then the man lay very still on the floor doing nothing. Wulff, meaning to fire a single precautionary shot, found that his hand locked on the trigger and he put two, then three, finally four shots into the corpse, firing spasmodically, gasping with the release as the bullets went in, watching the body flop around through death with an almost sensual pleasure. Only when the gun was empty did he stop, the gun falling away, his hand lolling open-palmed against his waist. Then slowly, slowly Wulff trudged up the hill back toward the trailer, feeling much older suddenly, feeling that he had learned something about himself that he would rather not know, a knowledge that he could not quite bear and yet which he would have to internalize along with everything else because not to do so was to lie. He would not lie to himself. If nothing else he would hold onto that.

But he had learned what he would rather not have known.

He was just like them. When it came right down to the confrontation he probably enjoyed administering death just as much as they did. Because it was a condition of the business.

As a narco he had suspected it but there was a lot of knowledge you could duck in the police department, and besides that narcos never had to use their guns. But it had caught up to him now. It had caught up to him good.

There was less and less difference between him and the enemy.

The guard was screaming at Williams.