The Starshine Connection (11 page)

He could not see Kiko, only the
cholos
surrounding him. The closest assailants froze, their eyes registering the size of Lucius’s hogleg. He had the trigger thumbed
all the way back.

The gang members scattered in every direction they could improvise, which included over each other, in an insane spread, like
ants on a hill. Slayton shouted, but nothing came of it.

“Don’t shoot them!” he tossed back at Lucius, as he bounded toward where Kiko lay on the ground.

The low-riding Chevy was blocked off, and the
cholos
gave it up, since it would not get them anywhere. People inside El Condor were already gawking out the door to see what the
commotion was about. The door was in Lucius’s direct line of fire. They ducked quickly back inside the bar.

Slayton had also already made the other two cars. One bracketed each end of the street. The El Condor was in the middle, and
escape was neatly cut off.

Chasing the
cholos
would be stupid. Slayton gave it up even before he rounded the east end of the weather-worn building, turning back just as
Lucius shouted, “Ben! He’s hurt!”

He ran back. Kiko had not gotten up, and Lucius was kneeling over him. Kiko was slathered messily with dirt from where he
had squirmed around in the muddy puddles formed by the mix of the dirt with his own blood.

Lucius’s free hand came up lacquered in fresh blood. “Jesus Christ, Ben, he’s been stabbed—oh, god, more than once—look!”

There were at least a dozen knife wounds and one knife still in his body, as the men discovered when they rolled Kiko to a
sitting position against the Chevy. His eye lids were closed, as though he were asleep. He tried to inhale, choked loudly,
and then sneezed, blowing a spray of blood and snot over Lucius and Slayton. He was attempting to talk, but could not.

“He’s had it,” Slayton said, barely above a whisper. He had seen enough death to say so unreservedly. Hating himself for what
had happened, he nevertheless forced the question out: “Kiko! Kiko!. Mercy—is she here? Is she inside? Did you
see
her?”

Kiko nodded. The movement was painful to him, and he keeled forward, trying to grab Slayton for support. Slayton went down
on one knee and caught him. The people in El Condor were still gaping like frightened idiots. It would do no good for him
to exhort them to phone a paramedic unit on behalf of the neighborhood joke, the local moron, the imbecile who would go down
on a
cholo
for a drink, or who would make an ass of himself just to avoid a beating. No way.

Kiko’s breath hitched, and he was gone. Slayton felt the body against his diminish. The arm around his shoulder, which had
been hanging on so desperately for life, went permanently limp, and dangled. Wordlessly, Slayton lifted the dead man in his
arms and took him back to the Trans-Am. Lucius knew he would take the body back with him to the morgue, that he would oversee
its disposition, that though Kiko had been a pauper, he would not go to the grave that way. Slayton had buried several of
his friends. Lucius did not expect him to change his ethics now.

Kiko was light, almost too light for a person who had, a moment before, been living and breathing. Slayton laid him gently
down on the back seat of the Trans-Am. He knew that Mercy, if she had been in the bar at all, was gone by now—had fled with
all the others who might have something to bide from the police, who were sure to show up soon. The low-riders bracketing
the street made no move. If the cops were to show up, they’d leave. Slayton decided to wait a while.

He pushed the tilting seat back into place and punched open the glove compartment. Inside was his nickel-plated .45 automatic,
holding—as usual—a nine-shot clip of scooped and crosshatched dumdum loads, with the hammer down on another load in the chamber.
The audience from the bar caught a glimpse as he hefted it, and they faded inside again—those few who had remained and not
fled through the rear door.

As Slayton walked past Lucius, he said, “Get in there. Mercy’s not around, but see if you can find us a shot or two of decent
whisky.” With no protest to offer, Lucius swung his own pistol to his side and pushed into the El Condor.

Slayton put his first slug through the windshield of the Chevy. Glass blew inward all over the tuck-and-roll upholstery, and
someone inside the bar screamed in panic. The bullet plowed into the seat, spreading and flattening and destroying the center,
knocking chunks of yellow foam out to float in the air. The dumdum slugs were designed for close-range demolition on a particularly
sloppy scale.

Methodically, Slayton blew away each tire in succession. After the minor explosions of air, the car sank down onto its rims
like a wounded animal. Another shot, and a cascade of black oil dribbled from its underbelly. He paced around it, like a browser
at a supermarket, pausing to smash the driver’s window with a flat-handed blow. He angled the .45 inside, and took out the
dashboard instruments with a single violent shot. Glass and plastic shrapnel bounced around inside the car as Lucius reemerged,
toting his gun in one hand, and a bottle of Jack Daniels in the other.

Across the lot, the Bronco fired up and sped away too fast, bouncing over the unpaved surface behind the bar.

Slayton took a long pull of the whisky. “Give me your gun,” he said to Lucius, after handing him the automatic. He knew that
Lucius would be packing the heaviest loads the monster Magnum could handle.

Slayton cocked the hammer and put three well-placed shots through the hood of the Chevy, neatly drilling the engine block
and rendering the entire car a nonmobile collection of worthless junk. He handed the warm Magnum back to Lucius, and heaved
the nearly full whisky bottle through the front windshield, or what remained of it. He thought that his message was pretty
clear.

He had resisted the urge to destroy the gas tank from a distance, send the whole offensive pile of
cholo
trash up in a teeth-wracking explosion, give the cops a fireball to fix location by. When the bottle crashed through the
front of the car, the picture in Slayton’s mind had been of Kiko, with the switchblade hanging out of his stomach.

He turned back to the Trans-Am. The guards on the opposing ends of the narrow street had vanished.

“What now?” Lucius said.

“The cops are on their way. Let’s wait for them and have them escort us the hell out of here.”

The red message light on Slayton’s hotel room telephone was flashing urgently as the men walked into the room. It was the
only light disrupting the uniform darkness, and it was the color of danger.

It took the desk clerk a few seconds to find the memo. Slayton assumed it would be something from Winship. If the right honorable
Senator Franklin Reed were tied up in the Starshine ring, as Slayton suspected he might be, the intramural meddling with the
investigation would be first-class, unlike the CIA amateurs assigned to the townhouse of Reed’s main subordinate. Perhaps
the implication of Reed was just another in a complex web of smoke screens.

The number was local. Slayton flashed it toward Lucius, who shook his head. “Can we get some room service booze or something?
All of a sudden I feel like ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.”

“In a minute.” Slayton dialed the number. Seven rings later, just as he was about to give up, the call was answered.

“Yeah?” A woman or girl answered, a faint trace of Spanish inflection coloring her pronunciation.

“I received a message at my hotel telling me to call this number. Well?” Now Slayton was in no mood for games.

“Oh,” she said, realizing who he was. Her voice went up in pitch. “Oh! Hold on a second, could you?”

The receiver was clunked down, and Slayton heard hurried footsteps and a slammed door. It was rather like listening to an
old episode of “Doc Savage” on the radio. The footsteps returned.

“Thank god you called! I’ve been worried sick about that whole thing at the El Condor. Poor Kiko. I can’t believe he’s dead—”

“Hold it,” Slayton cut in. “Is this Mercy?”

“Yeah, right. I thought you knew.”

Slayton motioned rapidly toward the phone and Lucius rushed over. “You were at the El Condor when our little Anglo party got
rough.”

“You were driving a silver Trans-Am,” Mercy said coolly. “I got there a few minutes before it happened. I was—I had a date,
you understand?”

“A fat Mexican cowboy driving a Bronco?”

“Yeah, right. Raoul Cerritos. He only hangs around the barrio because it’s family, you know, but he makes more money than—”

“How did you know to call here?” Slayton’s questions were almost formal, clipped of emotion. Lucius realized he was still
angry—whether at himself or at the unsavory turn events had taken, he could not tell.

“Kiko had a matchbook from the Hyatt. He told me about you. He said you were his friend, that the
cholos
chased you and you got away.”

“He went into that place to drag you out,” Slayton said, bitterly. “He thought you were his friend, too. Poor son-ofabitch
got gaffed like a trout because his friends turned out to be full of shit.” Mentally he yelled at himself:
ease off, godammitl

Mercy said nothing, her stream of words abruptly cut off by Slayton’s invective.

“Sorry,” Slayton said. “Listen, we can’t come down into the barrio again; they know who we are. We’ve got to talk.”

“It’s easy to get to the Hyatt from here. I can catch a bus—”

“No, you don’t have to do that. Another car will be easy to arrange.” He glanced at Lucius, who nodded affirmatively.

“No,” she said. “It’s okay. I can handle L.A. mass transit faster than you can dig up another car. Give me a room number,
okay?”

Slayton felt a pang of warning. It seemed too easy. It could, therefore, be some kind of trap. “Eleven-oh-four,” he said,
naming the room on the floor above him.

“Knock like shave-and-a-haircut?”

“Do you do that usually?”

“Hey man—you would not in your wildest imagination dream of what some guys ask me to do.” She was slightly indignant.

“Sure I would,” Slayton said, a hint of his old humor coming back for the first time that night. “Some of those positions
wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t been born.”

“Oh Christ, a smart guy.”

“Just get here,” Slayton said, voice growing flinty again.

“Yeah, right. G’bye.” Dead line.

“What now?” said Lucius, by now committed and indefatigable.

“Now we perform that good old Treasury Department standby,” said Slayton, shucking his bloodied shirt. “The stake-out.”

Mercy had changed into a wool turtleneck and black slacks tight enough to be stylish. The way she walked on top of the very
lofty heels indicated she had had a lot of practice at it, and even at a distance Slayton could tell she had stripped away
most of the makeup he had spotted on her at the El Condor. She was attractive, but a bit flat-featured, looking more Oriental
than Mexican. Obviously familiar with the layout of the Hyatt, she beelined for the bank of elevators.

She had barely rounded the corner of the lobby when the boy tailing her came through the sliding doors of the main entrance,
struggling to appear casual in an environment that was clearly alien to him. He looked furtively around, and grew panicky
when he did not spot the woman.

Slayton punched the
out
line on the courtesy phone as Mercy waited for the elevator.

“Hello, Slayton again. Yeah. Listen, you’ll find a chopped Dodge full of very sultry Chicanos in the parking lot of the Hyatt.
They probably won’t be doing anything but obstructing a corner. Make up some excuse and get them out of my hair. There’ll
be one more you can pick up from hotel security. Right. Tank them for twenty-four hours. There’s a chance that we’ve got accessories
to aggravated assault and homicide. Yeah. Gotta go. ’Bye”

Mercy stepped into the elevator as Slayton hung up. The
cholo
had spotted her, but missed the car, and stood patiently waiting to see what floor she got off on. Across the lobby, the
security man who had lobby duty for the night already had his eye on the kid. Nonchalant, Slayton walked up behind the teenager,
almost certain now that it was one of the hyena pack involved in the El Condor stabbing.

Later, the guard would swear that what he saw take place was an outright attempted mugging in the Hyatt lobby, foiled by the
intended victim. What actually happened was that the boy began to turn, and Slayton caught his head in a flat, open-handed
swing that connected with his right ear and imploded the eardrum on impact. The boy reeled drunkenly, and Slayton put the
heel of his right hand into his open forehead, snapping his head backward and causing him to slip on the wax finish of the
floor. The security man was rushing over as fast as his bulk would permit. He made it in time to hear the heavy thump of the
cholo’s
head introducing itself to the tiles of the floor. His feet jerked into the stupid splay of unconsciousness as Slayton, in
a single blurring motion worthy of a magician, dropped his wallet and picked it up again.

The guard did not have to be convinced of anything.

“I saw a police car in the parking lot, dealing, I believe, with some friends of this gentleman here,” Slayton told the guard.
“No harm done. I’m in 1004 if you need me; name’s Slayton. Now pardon me, officer, but I’ve got to catch up with my wife.”
He tugged a thumb toward the closed elevator doors. The car had stopped at the eleventh floor.

The security man nodded quickly as Slayton jumped into a free car. There was no hurry. The
cholo
remained kayoed as he was swept up off the floor.

As usual, the elevator ascended with the slowness of a worker paid by the hour. Slayton, pumped up with adrenalin from the
takeout of a few moments before, punched the fake wood paneling in a frustrated, irrational attempt to goad the car into speed.
The elevator crawled.

The doors opened, and Slayton sprinted out into the corridor. He almost collided with Mercy and Lucius as they rounded the
corner together.