Spiral (53 page)

Braking hard, then jamming the accelerator, Haydon cut in front of traffic and flew into a cross street, then into a one-way street going the right direction for one block, then into another one-way street going the wrong way. He made the block, and entered Main Street one block from the entrance of the Golden Way Motel. Merging with the traffic flow, he went past the motel entrance and turned under the belly of the expressway, cutting his headlamps to parking lights as he jumped the curb and drove along between the cement columns toward the motel on the other side of the derelict chain-link fence.

He cut the parking lights, and the black Vanden Plas melted into the larger darkness as he rolled to a stop. For five seconds he sat in the pitch shadows and listened to the traffic booming overhead as he looked at the end of the motel. He knew the place, knew the numbering system, knew that he was looking at the brick wall of Room 326 through the windshield.

He flipped the central locking system as he got out of the car, slammed the door, and started running toward the twisted chain-link fence, which resembled the barbed concertina wire of a war zone. He cursed as he accidentally kicked a bottle and sent it spinning across the cement, shattering into an expressway pillar. Crouching down to his hands, he scrambled onto the wire, catching a shoe heel in the twisted mesh, finally getting to the other side at the end of the near wing of the motel. He looked up at the walkway of the third floor, where half the lights outside the room doors were burned out, including the one at 326.

Running down the sidewalk, he cut across the grass between the pool and a hedge and barged into the motel office, where a startled night manager held the newspaper-covered bottom of a bird cage in his hands and gaped at Haydon over the counter.

"Police," Haydon snapped, holding up his shield. "I need a passkey."

The clerk continued to gape, frowning myopically at the shield shaking in front of his face, starting to set down the tray. Haydon yelled, "Passkey, dammit!" The manager flinched, dropping the tray and flipping bird lime and seed hulls into the air, but he was already going after the key.

"Patrol cars are on the way," Haydon said, as the manager fumbled open a drawer under the counter and slapped the key down on a copy of a city map covered with plastic. "Stay down, stay out of the way," he said, grabbing the key.

He cut across the grass the way he had come, sweat suddenly popping out of his pores. Reaching the bottom of the stairs at the soft-drink machines, Haydon pulled his Beretta and started up. He was making the turn on the second-floor landing when he heard thefirst distant sirens and quickened his pace. When he came up on the third-floor walkway, he paused briefly to get his bearings.

Behind him lay the rest of the walkway that formed the shorter, bottom branch of the L-shaped complex; then a corner, and the rest of the L running out past the pool. To his immediate right was a small alcove with an ice machine and two doors on either side, probably supply rooms.

The walkway railing, and the courtyard three floors down, were on his left as he looked toward the doorway of room 326, the last room on the end, three doors away. About twenty feet on the other side of 326 was the steel railing of the expressway, with cars and trucks roaring by at eye level. It occurred to him that anyone driving by could look out his window and see him crouching on the landing with his gun drawn.

But he had more immediate problems:

Would all three of them be in the same room with Arizpe?

Or would they have another room?

Had they posted a lookout?

If so, had he already been spotted?

If he was able to catch them by surprise, what were the odds they would not have their firearms in hand? His mind didn't stay on the Mac-lOs.

The sirens grew louder. He could only blame himself for that.

He moved on until he was standing beside the door of 325. He put his ear to the door, a stupid gesture, with the expressway rumbling like a train twenty feet away. Standing back against the brick wall, he tried the door handle, which didn't budge. He moved closer to 326, stopping next to its sliding glass window to see if there were any cracks in the edge of the curtains. There weren't.

Stepping across in front of the door, he stood with his back to the expressway, his shoulder against the brick wall on the left side of the door. A diesel trailer truck whined past, and a blast of wind and grit whipped his suit and the oily stink of diesel filled his lungs as he touched the doorknob. This time the expressway noise was in his favor, making it difficult, if possible at all, for anyone inside the room to hear the tiny clicking of the turning knob. But it was locked. Staying clear of the door, he used his left hand to slip the passkey into the keyhole, the Beretta upright beside his head. He could expect the chain to be latched. He turned the key.

What were the odds that they would be looking at the knob, that they would see the movement?

He was afraid to open it enough to see if the chain was in place. That they would see.

The sirens were on Main, maybe three blocks away.XX

He stepped in front of the door and kicked it open, the chain snapping like a gunshot, but flying apart as Haydon crouched in the opened doorway and yelled, "Police!"

The man sitting in the chair on the other side of the naked, bloated figure was already turning, stretching for the machine pistol on the round table, had his hands on it when Haydon's first two shots caught him behind his right ear and the back of the neck, blowing his glasses through the air and hurling him across the top of the table, arms flying out against the blast. Two steps inside, Haydon's eyes locked on the open bathroom door. The stench of feces and something medicinal. Expecting something from the bathroom. Then the cold shock of gunfire from the room next door, someone running on the walkway. He whirled around even as he,feared shots in the back from the bathroom, lunged to the door and saw theTirst police car screaming, sliding, bouncing into the drive from the street, his eyes still on it when the Mac-10s opened up from somewhere on the stairs, turning the windshield white as it kept coming, crashing across the hedge, the sidewalk, into the Coke and 7-Up machines at the bottom of the stairs, the booming impact and the walkway shuddering, the unit's flashers still turning, splashing colors in the courtyard.

As the second car careened into the drive, Haydon ran the length of the balcony to the corner of the L, sprinted through the breezeway to the railing that looked out over the back of the motel into a descending spur of the freeway, saw Negrete already on the fence and the second man turning to cover him, the muzzle bursts of the Mac-10 looking brighter than he would have imagined as he fell back against the wall. Instantly he was up again to see the second man scaling the fence, but Negrete didn't stop to cover him. He kept running, through the dead and brittle weeds, to the cover of the long slope of the descending spur. Haydon steadied the Beretta for the long shot at the man on the fence, who, suddenly realizing he was exposed, tried to fire the Mac-10 as he straddled the fence. Haydon fired four times, five, and the man was kicked backward, one foot catching in the top wire, hanging him upside down. Freakishly, the Mac-10 fired somehow, the recoil whipping his limp arm like a loose water hose spraying ,45s. Then it stopped.

Negrete had disappeared into Montrose.

Haydon ran back to the front of the motel courtyard to the walkway railing. There were two more units in the drive now, another one coming in, and more sirens. There were policemen running along the walkways, two coming at him.

"There's one man down on the fence behind the motel," Haydon yelled. "He's got a Mac-10, but I think he's dead. Another one, also armed with a Mac-10, is on foot heading into Montrose, maybe Brandt, Flora, Westmoreland, those streets. Get every available unit out in there. He's extremely dangerous. They've got to be
careful.
If there are any questions I'll be in room 326. Send the medics up when they get here."

"You Detective Haydon?" the officer shouted. "We're supposed to see Detective Haydon."

"Yes, hurry." He stopped. "What about those guys in the car down there?"

"They're dead, sir."

"Okay, hurry," Haydon repeated, and headed toward the last room on the end.

There were three patrolmen in the room, one on the other side of the bed squatting down, checking the man Haydon had shot, the other two staring unbelievingly at the grossly protuberant Arizpe, not sure what to do.

"Is he alive?" Haydon asked, pushing between them.

"I..." One of the patrolmen turned and rushed out of the room.

Rubio's dark body had taken on an appearance that bordered on the abstract. His splayed figure alone was psychologically disturbing, bringing to mind the carcass of an animal slaughtered and dressed. Bloated out of proportion, he did not so much lie on the bed as quiver at points upon it, the torture having caused every muscle and sinew to contract in a rigid, unyielding spasm that arched his back to the point of snapping, and thrust his bulging stomach in the air so that his torso touched the bed only across the tops of his shoulders and where his heels dug into the mattress. His head was thrown back and his mouth was locked open with a rubber hose snaking from it, leading into the bathroom. The bed was soaked, some of it was water, some of it wasn't, and Arizpe glistened with an oily perspiration. The stench was unbearable.

"Jesus Christ." The patrolman who had been examining the dead man had stood up, and turned to Rubio. He looked like a veteran patrolman, his dark hair going gray, his body a little chunky. His name was Aledo, and his eyes followed the hose into the bathroom. "Shit, damn!"

Haydon saw the stethoscope twisted under the leg of the dead man on the overturned table, hurried over, and pulled it out. He bent down as he put it on, and placed the stainless-steel disk on Arizpe's chest. There was a heartbeat, erratic, but it was there. He turned to Aledo. "Make sure the water's off."

"What the hell
was
this?" Aledo asked, but he didn't wait for an answer.

Haydon pulled off his coat and flung it over a lamp as he looked at the second patrolman's nameplate. "Thomas, give me a hand. We've got to get the hose out of him."

The young patrolman, who was thin and fair, almost frail in appearance, started rolling up his sleeves as he looked at Arizpe's dislocated eye.

"Water's off," Aledo shouted.

"What about untying him?" Thomas asked.

"Not yet," Haydon said.

"Son of a bitch!" Aledo gasped. He had come back to the bed. "Look what they did to his dick, will ya?"

The young patrolman put one knee on the bed and held Arizpe's head as Haydon grasped the hose. It didn't want to come out.

"Maybe we'd better leave it." Thomas sounded as if he was holding his breath.

"He'll die," Haydon said, working with the hose.

"You gotta cut him loose," Aledo said.

"Yeah, okay," Haydon said, pulling more firmly on the hose until it began to give. A lather of dirty pink foam started boiling from Arizpe's mouth.

"That's from his lungs." Thomas spoke rapidly. "Something's wrong with his lungs."

Aledo had his pocket knife out, cutting the nylon cord at Arizpe's ankles, then moving up to the wrists, which he finished cutting just as the end of the surgical hose came out of Arizpe's mouth, bringing a gush of grumey fluid with it. Freed, Arizpe began to tremble, then shudder, as if someone were shaking the bed.

"Oh, damn," Thomas said, pushing off the bed and backing away, knocking over the television as he retreated. Haydon backed too, stumbling on the man he had shot, grabbing his coat from the lamp as he moved around the foot of the bed with Aledo, who was stunned by what was happening.

Arizpe's shuddering became violent, his monstrously enlarged stomach with its distended navel heaving convulsively. Suddenly the Indian's good eye opened wide and rolled upward. His arms began to flail uncontrollably as he appeared to try to sit up, his head jutting forward with the effort, an awkward wallowing man-frog. Then his mouth yawned open and he disgorged, almost spewed, a thick, arching torrent that splattered the length of the bed, nearly to the wall.

"Oh, my God," Aledo yelled, as Haydon shoved him toward the door, where the three of them stood dumbfounded, horrified. Arizpe, no longer a man but a bloated thing bucking in a broth of its own fluids, ejaculated again and again the remnants of his own tormented viscera.

Haydon's senses miscarried. In a momentary failure of synapse, his brain simply refused to process what he was witnessing. When he recovered, he was in the room alone, and the unreal spectacle, the desolation of Rubio Arizpe's suffering and death, filled the room. The assault on his returning senses was intolerable. He backed out and closed the door.

Chapter 55

T
HERE
were half a dozen or more units in the courtyard of the Golden Way Motel, as well as several ambulances, and the arriving television trucks. Haydon stood a minute in front of the door he had just closed, then looked to his right, where the rows of balconies were lined with motel guests in various stages of undress. The flashers from the police units flickered off their faces, all of which seemed to be turned toward him, their blank stares jumping off and on like neon lights.