THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE (45 page)

Truth of the matter, Ramirez was held in place by a large nail jutting out from the river rock wall. His checked-flannel jacket had caught on the nail when he slumped forward from his legs not giving him support. The heavy gauge nail was from the previous Christmas when Trinda had hung a giant stocking of presents for everyone in the house. Held as such, Ramirez was only too vulnerable to whatever Goldman dished out.

"...
I crushed the others to be by your side, oh Sister Libertine, you are my blackened bride ..." 

Goldman had to act quickly if he was to save Michelle. She looked like a pale wax effigy on the blood-stained floor. An effigy who needed to be rushed to a hospital in the back of a siren-blaring ambulance. Again time was crucial. Goldman executed a perfect Three Inch Floating Punch (a damaging concussion strike he'd only practiced on sparring dummies in Billy Georgia's Baltimore dojo) to the front of Ramirez's head. The Cuban's skull all but split from the shocking blow, like a watermelon still intact from a great fall. Goldman executed a second, more powerful punch and was presented with the sickening sound of Ramirez's skull mortally fracturing. To Goldman's relief, the powerful blow dislodged his opponent.

Ramirez thudded onto the floor and twitched spasmodically, only to become as lifeless as a toppled statue.

Goldman was indifferent to his adversary's death, taking a step back from the corpse. His racy mind looked about the room, his limbs primed for further violence should anyone else attack him. He hadn't killed a man before and knew he would reflect on it at a later date – but certainly not now. He grabbed the electrical plug and yanked it from the power point, instantly killing the bright lights and blaring music. Silence claimed the shadowy room and only emphasized the all-out carnage of recent minutes.

He raced over to Michelle and stroked her pallid cheek. 'Oh God,' he sobbed, 'I'm so sorry ... so very sorry.' He wanted desperately to undo the horror that had happened, to whisk her away to a sunny land of happy endings, to dance hand in hand with her through an alpine meadow. But the body-littered room pressed in on him like the dreamscape of a hellish nightmare. It seemed he just might collapse, just might curl up and assume the catatonic position of the terminally broken. But he forced himself, if only for Michelle's sake, not to be paralyzed by the violence that had erupted in the house.

Amidst the silence he heard a faint chomping sound. Scarlett was feeding on Martinez's shotgun-blasted chest. Goldman recoiled, but returned his attention to the business at hand. He believed police would soon arrive, along with paramedics, but of course he wasn't certain. Only a few un-silenced gunshots had been fired. Large verdant grounds and tall walls separated neighbours in this well-to-do part of town. He looked with dismay at the shot-apart telephone. He wouldn't rest until he personally called the emergency number. He bent forward and kissed Michelle's cheek, only to get a better sense of her dwindling body heat and pulse.

'Hang on, babe! Please!' Tears welled in his eyes. He didn't want Michelle to suffer, didn't want her to die alone in this accursed house. How could he just walk away from her? His mind swam helplessly. 

Still, he couldn't afford the luxury of aggrievedness. He had to act and save this special woman. There was no other consideration. He kissed Michelle one last time and got to his feet. He grabbed Ramirez's Uzi from off the floor and forced himself not to look at the lifeless bodies about him as he headed for the door. The coppery smell of blood and the biting smell of cordite from gunfire assaulted his nostrils as he neared the stairs.

He slipped on a spent bullet casing and stopped in his tracks. His drug formula was scattered on the coffee table. Leaving it behind would only connect him to the felonious mayhem in the house. He stopped at the coffee table and made an effort not to look at Sorenson and his girlfriend on the blood-spattered sofa.

But as he scrolled the formula's pages into the back of his jeans, he gazed at the murdered couple. The grisly tableau fixed him to the spot. Time and place slipped away as he moved back in time to when he was a teenager in Woomera, South Australia. One afternoon he and two local boys had gone off with rifles into the red desert. After cresting a rise, they came across dead animals. Kangaroos and dingoes shot, stabbed, and left to the elements. A young and impressionable Goldman had gazed at the remains of a kangaroo and her joey. An unknown party had shot the baby kangaroo and, by the look of it, stomped the poor creature to death, causing its digestive organs to burst open. The creature's fly-blown insides and blood-matted fur made Goldman vow not to kill wildlife again; and he'd made good of the vow. 

Now, in this house of the dead and dying, Goldman stood gun in hand before Sorenson and his girlfriend, the fly-riddled carcasses from his childhood superimposed on the hapless couple. With the red sands of the past blowing hauntingly about his feet, he was conscious of primitive origins, of a primeval violence genetically encoded in his body. Tonight he'd killed to stay alive. Tonight he'd been forced into the competitive brain game that has played on this water-enriched planet since earliest dawns. It seemed his years of education, learned social skills and heartfelt vows of betrothal, had not expunged base instincts. He was at best a polished animal, or so he saw himself at this crestfallen moment.

Still, he was alive. He'd beaten impossible odds and his only hope lay in saving Michelle. She was the only ray of light in his ever darkening world. Her death would be his, no less. With unflagging resolve, he climbed over the dead gunmen on the stairs and hurried off into the night.

THIRTY ONE

Goldman crouch-dashed across the lawn. He moved past the black Porsche that used to belong to Sorenson, past the yellow muscle car which used to belong to Thirteen, past the silver Nissan Skyline which used to belong to Eighteen. He paused beside the rented Datsun Stanza before slipping into the shadow of the sandstone wall fronting the property. His frayed nerves and aching limbs spoke of an urgent need to rest. His throat was parched and his ears rang dully from the shotgun blasts back in the house. But he ignored his body's protests.

He moved out from behind the wall and looked up and down the street, noting only parked cars and the crisp, driven sounds of wind-blown leaves. He'd planned to climb over Thirteen's back fence and surreptitiously make his way up to Westwood Boulevard. But he could get lost, could be encumbered by who knew what dog or fence. Nor did he want to drive the rented Datsun for fear of drawing attention should other gunmen be watching the house. Though many gunmen had been killed Goldman reasoned a worrying number could still be stationed outside, especially as he knew General Turner was behind the surprise attack. The general could have a small army at his disposal. From the top of his head, Goldman couldn't fathom how Turner had tracked him down, but he knew this was the case as Ramirez had mentioned the general's name back in the house. Ramirez, the man he'd killed ... Goldman brushed the thought aside and refocused on the business at hand. What to do?

He didn't want to ask a neighbour for use of their phone as his bloody, dishevelled appearance and impromptu cover story would probably cause most people to call police. No, he would only waste valuable time explaining himself on someone's doorstep. And he didn't want to be in spitting distance of Thirteen's house once authorities swooped on it, which could be any moment. Michelle's near-lifeless form flashed in his mind. He had to find a public phone. He gripped Ramirez's Uzi and moved furtively onto the street.

When Goldman stepped over the dead gunmen on Thirteen's stairs, Commando C member Bruno Lozano had crept along the outside of the house. Lozano was confident the men of Unit One had everything under control (the house was reportedly occupied by a bunch of teenage toughs). Hence he'd come alone, though armed, to find out why Carrasco had broken radio contact with the men of Unit Two. It was probably some technical fault with the radio headsets. Lozano tried the back door, found it locked. Surprised, he drew his unregistered handgun and sprinted to the front of the house. He braced himself and stepped through the open doorway.

Ferdinand Espinosa, Marco Alsina and Carlo Matilla, the other men of Unit Two, were parked farther up the street in Espinosa's pale blue Cadillac. They hadn't heard the gunfire in Thirteen's house due to their own excitable chatter and being parked too far away. In any case they were keen for the Westwood operation to end. More important business awaited Commando C tonight.

Ramirez's men were scheduled to meet a Jamaican posse in a deserted Compton warehouse in two hours time. The newly conglomerated gang had begun an aggressive push onto a lot of established turf, notably firebombing one of Ramirez's downtown brothels. It'd happened the night of the week the brothel specializing in S/M, discipline and bondage was closed. No one was hurt, therefore, but the Jamaicans insisted they'd do the same to Ramirez's biggest brothel
Sweet Secrets
on a Friday night, if Ramirez continued to buy wholesale cocaine from his Colombian suppliers. The Jamaicans wanted Ramirez to buy cocaine from them, and had offered him an enticing kilo-price. However Ramirez believed the Jamaicans' hidden agenda was to destroy him and his network. The deserted Compton warehouse meeting had all the earmarks of an ambush.

Once told of the indecent proposal, Ramirez's LA-based Colombian associates had sold him a pair of Armbrust Short Range Anti-Tank weapons, replete with Latam Target Markers and a dozen 300mm AT projectiles. The Colombians had bought the modern expendable weapons from Manuel Noriega, an acne-scarred colonel in the Panamanian National Guard. Noriega was the head of G2, Panama's national intelligence agency which had jurisdiction over Panama Customs. The enterprising colonel had even promised shoulder-fired RBS 70 Ray Rider Anti-Aircraft weapons that would prove ideal, the Colombians knew, against the DEA-sponsored helicopters increasingly patrolling Colombian highlands.

With Armbrust-armed men placed strategically along the backstreet leading to the Compton warehouse grounds, the carloads of Jamaicans arriving for the meeting would be in for an unpleasant surprise indeed. As it turned out, two Armbrust Anti-tank weapons were in the trunk of Espinosa's pale blue Cadillac.

Bruno Lozano was shocked to see the tangle of dead men on the stairs. His chest tightened and he lost his bearings for a vulnerable moment. His heart thudded against his ribs as he gripped the newel post of the banister.
Madre de dios,
were the killers still afoot? Holding his Browning 9mm handgun at chest-level, he moved cautiously up the stairs.

Before he came off the staircase proper, he looked with narrowed eyes into the unfamiliar room. He moved his semiautomatic pistol defensively in front of him. The poorly lit room was unnervingly quiet. Wind whistled under eaves and only highlighted his unease as he stepped hesitantly forward. He recognized the acrid smell of cordite and came to an abrupt stop.

His mind reeled from the carnage about him.

It wasn't possible. After a long, dizzying moment, he shouted into the mike of his radio headset, '
Muerto! Muerto!
Everyone's dead! Ramirez. No, Ramirez. Gacha ... Martinez ... Carrasco.' He glanced back at the staircase. 'Nazario ... Cortez ... Ruben ...Coloradas ...
Muerto! Muerto!
They're all dead!'

Espinosa tightened his grip on the wheel, his bony knuckles white with tension. He couldn't believe what he was hearing through his hands-free headset. Everyone in the house was dead? How in God's name was it possible?

'They're all dead!' he said to Matilla and Asina. '
Muerto!
'

'Diga otra vez?
' Matilla pulled on his wispy goatee beard. Though he'd drunk a six-pack of beer, the unexpected news chilled him to the bone. His leathery face broke into a scowl and his hands balled into fists.

'Que pasa?
' Alsina sat in the backseat and was no less shocked than his colleagues. He ground his teeth in protest. 'Are you sure?'

'
Muerto!
Everyone's dead!' Espinosa shouted.

'Mirar
,' Matilla said. 'Over there.' The others looked to where their beer-drinking colleague pointed. In shifting patterns of light (palm fronds swayed in front of overhead lights), the Cubans saw a hunched man brandishing an automatic weapon as he stole across the street several car lengths down from Espinosa's Cadillac. That the armed stranger came from the house Erasmo had gone into was the unspoken consensus between the Cubans. By the fact of his escape, this slinking 
gringo
 had probably murdered the men back in the house. Very likely he was the target of the operation. 

Goldman saw the silhouettes of men in the car ahead and dropped to the sidewalk. Icicles of fear embedded themselves in his spine. He wasn't sure if the men were part of the team that had stormed the house or not. Luckily they were a good distance from him. With brazen nerve, he uttered a short prayer, bent forward, and dashed across the poorly lit street. He reached the sidewalk opposite and hunkered down beside a parked car, hoping he'd escaped the men's attention. A narrow backstreet was nearby. An avenue of escape.

He popped up and peered at the men in the car. They seemed unaware of his presence. Cloaked in shadow and painfully aware each minute was vital to Michelle's injuries, he made a crouched-run for the backstreet.

Espinosa gunned his Cadillac to life and screeched from the curb. Alsina hung from the rear passenger window, looking much the predator as he gripped an Ingram submachine gun. Espinosa didn't doubt this scuttling man was responsible for his comrades' deaths. His mind reeled. The men who'd stormed the house were dead? Ramirez was dead? Before he could incinerate the scumbag Jamaicans? It didn't seem possible, but somehow Espinosa knew it was.

The craggy-faced Cuban stomped the accelerator and slewed his big blue sedan into the narrow thoroughfare. His car's rear end struck a glancing blow to a parked Dodge Charger, smashing one of its four headlights. Espinosa bit down on a wood toothpick and swore the DGI
perro
caught in his car's headlights was as good as dead.