Hip Cities and Lost Souls

Chapter 16

Email to Al Sullivan

Life percolated at Hollywood and Vermont with an almost air of normality, shucking the head shops and haberdasheries of the hip part of the Boulevard for more conventional stores. Health food and sidewalk cafes made Lance think of Greenwich village. There were even students wandering around from the college farther down on Vermont. Live music curled out of several small club doorways with imitations of Dylan and acoustic Beatles. There were few tourists, jesus freaks or bikers, but plenty of hippies-- strangely settled hippies with babies slung on their backs, and chicanos standing beside them waiting for the buses to East L.A.

Ice cream shops seemed popular here, and even this late, many remained open. The glow of Woolworths window and other similar stores gave the neighborhood a lived-in look that Lance envied. He wondered why he and Sarah hadn't discovered this part of L.A. earlier, and if it wasn't too late to find a small apartment here. And a job. And maybe a sense of place which neither seemed to have. A few Eastern European food shops remained open as well, bins of fresh vegetables spilling out onto the sidewalk like Korean shops in New York, the smell of cheese and sausage drawing his attention away Lance's reason for being here.

Now and then a grey bus pulled to the curb, emptying its load of tourists into the thinning crowds. But they dissipated quickly, with cameras and unfolding maps of Hollywood, and headed West to the glitter and stars, or sharply east towards ABC studies tucked neatly in the back streets like some insignificant dive.

Gays moved along the opposite side of the street in what appeared to be a less flamboyant gay district of poster shops and Victorian clothing stores. Many floated along the sidewalk in bright blue or yellow jackets trimmed in red or green, with brass buttons and flowered patches, feathered hats on their heads.

Dan stayed on the east side of the street, working his way slowly from store front to store front, eyeing passing strangers as if any one of them would be his ex-friend. Macrobiotic restaurants replaced the delicatessens, with mystic books stores and tarot readers in between. Visions of the old life. The fun and romance of the Summer of Love clinging to the doorways and people.

And yet, Lance could feel doom hanging over it all-- the sense that it might all evaporate tomorrow. It showed in their eyes and in their wavering smiles. It showed in the lazy step which kept them lingering before each institution, as if they needed to memorize the details.

It was 9:30.

One by one the remaining shops closed their doors, extinguishing their lights. Only the cafes farther down remained, music and other activities fed by a more lively crowd of gays and students. The back drop of music made for an eerie air among the darkening stores, ghostly voice echoing from the Greek face of the bank near the corner.

Dan dragged Lance up the dozen steps to the seclusion of columns around which a deep shadow had settled. Wine bottles and the smell of urine hinted of a seedier night life. But Lance saw no hobos sleeping there.

Dan crouched behind one of the columns and stared down at the street. The crowds shrank more quickly, as the proprietors of the shops made for parked automobiles.

Finally, when the cars had driven off and the buses had picked up the workers for other parts of L.A., silence came-- filled only with the distant chatter of the cafes and the low hum of cars moving along the freeway up and behind them.

It took awhile-- maybe fifteen more minutes. But the figures appeared one at a time, popping out from the shadows like pale faced ghosts. The first of these was a pudgy man, dressed in a baggy suit and drawn down hat, resembling a businessman or mobster, and yet for Lance, it lacked credibility. Like a child dressing up in his father's clothing.

"Is it him?" Lance asked.

Dan squinted, pushing up the floppy brim of his cowboy hat for a better view. "Can't tell," he mumbled. "But this guy's about the right size and height."

This surprised Lance. He'd half expected some towering mythological giant, a Sherlock Homes type, tall, gaunt, steely-eyed. The man near the curb twitched nervously, glancing up and down the sidewalk, more store keeper than drug dealer.

"Ut oh," Dan said. "I think I see the trap."

"Where?"

"There, and there, and there," Dan said and pointed to several parked cars along the street. One car sat slightly north of them. One to the south on the other side of Vermont. A third car faced them from out of the mouth of Hollywood Boulevard. "It looks as if the cops knew everything well in advance."

"Cops? Are you sure?"

"If they're not, then I'm Charlie Manson."

"You mean he called the cops?"

"Or dropped a little tip to them, yeah," Dan said, snorting out each word like a slowly riled bull. "Which just about seals the case for our old friendship. I'll kill the fucker when I get my hands on him."

He rose as if to plunge down the stairs at the pudgy man, but Lance grabbed his arm.

"Wait! Listen!"

Dan stopped. The sound of roaring motor cycles echoed out from Hollywood Boulevard as several gleaming machines appeared, Billy Night Rider in their lead with red bandanna flapping from his throat. He looked every bit an outlaw with motorcycle for a steed. He and his gang skidded to a stop in front of the nervous little man.

The sudden interruption staggered the plump figure back a step or two before he turned and bolted away. He charged south first along the east side of the street, only to stop short at the sight of two suited figures stepping out of the shadows. Others leaped out of a parked car.

"Halt," one of them said. "We're the police. Put up your hands."

The little man, caught between the dismounting bikers and the waiting police, darted sideways across Vermont. The cops shouted and charged after him. As did Billy for the moment.

It took Billy that long to recognize the situation, as more police leaped out of cars behind him. He and his bikers halted right in the center of the street, looking like confused children caught in a sudden rush of traffic.

"Back," Billy shouted. He swung his shotgun around and pulled the trigger. The closest cop took the blast fully in the chest.

Lance screamed: "NO!" and lunged out from behind the pillar, nearly killing himself in the descent down the stairs. Dan grabbed him a few steps later.

"Where the fuck are you going?"

"The cop," Lance said, breathlessly. "He's hurt."

"So let the fuzz take care of him!"

"I can't," Lance said, dragging Dan's fingers loose as he continued his plunge, down the stairs and into the street. Other gunfire sparked from the dark doorways up the block. Firefight! someone screamed in his head, as he stumbled over what might have been the curb or a body or the ruins of a burned out hut, the jungle of wires and street lights vanishing for that moment into a maze of confused images. The choppers! Where were the Choppers? Why didn't someone call for Med-vac?

The police dove behind cars, as more bikers appeared out of the mouth of Hollywood boulevard, bikers bearing shotguns and automatic weapons, chopping up concrete and metal with their advance. The cops fell back, shooting to cover their retreat, obviously unprepared for two dozen weapon-wielding warriors. Though Lance saw someone on a radio screaming for help.

The point became moot. Billy and his gang remounted their machines and sped away, retreating back the way they'd come, shooting one last salvo at the cops as they did.

"Damn you, Lance," Dan grumbled, jogging behind Lance and into the suddenly silent street. In the distance, the wail of sirens came, but like the voice of some unreal spirit never quite able to materialize. It was the voice of choppers, teasing waiting soldiers with their slow advance, as if they would never arrive.

"You're going to get us busted," Dan said, ducking down behind a car as Lance did. But Lance had gone onto auto-pilot. His head spinning with unreality, seeing jungle where there was none, hearing moaning men where only one lay in the center of the street-- driven forward by instinct. He could no more help himself than he could overseas, when men crying for their mothers begged him to kill them. When the only mercy he could give their dying were prayers he no longer believed.

He fell to his knees at the side of the moaning man, tearing free the clothing from around the wound. Most of the blast had missed him. A hurried aim of a frightened biker saving the cop's heart. But the blast had taken away most of the man's right side, blood and guts pouring down into the street like globs of pink and red gelatin.

Dan wretched.

"Give me your jacket," Lance demanded.

"My jacket? Why?"

"Don't argue with me. Just hand it over."

Dan complied, pealing the tanned leather from his thin frame. Most of the fringe had broken or worn away. But Lance took it and slid it under the fallen cop, then folded it up around the wounded side, tucking the interior back into the body. He yanked his own belt from his waist, tightening it around the make-shift tourniquet, pulling it as tight as he could.

"Get to a phone," he yelled at Dan. "Call for an ambulance. Quick!"

But others came up from the shadows, cops stopping a few feet away, studying Lance and their fallen comrade, their weapons drooping down at their sides. Some uniformed. Others in various civilian disguises. All stared with horror. They'd not seen this kind of thing before despite their tour of the street. But no one was immune to it. Even hardened soldiers stared.

"Didn't you hear me?" Lance screamed. "Get an ambulance."

Demetre's black face floated down from out of the crowd, large hands hooking into Lance's armpits, drawing him up, as if out of a dream.

"There's no hurry," the black cop whispered, pulling Lance farther from the body.

"But he's going to die," Lance protested, his hand sticky with the man's blood. The way they'd been sticky even in his sleep in Nam.

"He's already dead."

***********

They shuffled him aside, sitting him down on the stoop of a store as the professionals took over, the spurt and static of police radios filling the night the way the music had earlier. He and Dan had been told to wait.

We may need you as witnesses, one of the uniformed cops told them. But few paid them much attention, and eventually, officers frowned in passing as if forgetting why they had been retained. Only a frowning Demetre noticed them near the end of the ritual. Perhaps he even steered the others away, mumbling something about not needing their testimony after all. It wouldn't be reliable anyway, Lance heard him say.

Dan stammered and grunted curses between whole chains of near-death coughing, muttering to himself as he stared into the flashing lights about pacifists and cops.

"I'm going to wind up in jail because of you," he told Lance at one point when the police stomped around, trying to decide whether he and Dan were witnesses or part of the crime.

But later, an hour or more, when they'd faded into the background, Dan plotted their escape.

"We'll just start walking," he whispered. "If they stop us-- well, we're no worse off then we are now."

Lance shrugged, his whole interior rattling with empty echoes, as he always had after a fire fight, as if each battle had left him a little lessened. He didn't even have Sarah to go home to, to cry over it, to hold or hug him, saying it was all right now. Another echo of Nam. Lovers, yes, but none he could trust with the deep feelings. Always the indifference silence. The lack of comfort. That was the real hell of war. No one to heal the deeper wounds for those walking, talking men of arms who on the outside appeared untouched.

Dan grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. He followed behind the man, stumbling like a robot with a missing gear or two. They slipped into one dark doorway, stared back, then when no one noticed, moved to the next, eventually dragging themselves up the stairs to the near-black shadows between the bank columns.

Only this time, their hiding space wasn't empty.

"You!" Dan roared, his voice echoing off the glass and stone as he leaped at the pudgy figure. "I'll kill you!"

The man jumped aside, but couldn't elude Dan's grasp and went down in a heap with Dan on his chest. He was the same figure they had seen earlier waiting. Somehow he had eluded both bikers and cops.

"Hello, Danny-boy," he said in a wheeze.

"Don't hello me, you little fuck. Where's my money?"

The figure frowned, and despite his odd position seemed perfectly composed, wearing a grey three piece suit more fitting on a banker than a drug dealer. He had the air of conformity, with his short hair properly balding at the top and rear with strands combed across his forehead in an attempt to save dignity.

"Money?" he asked.

"From the goddamn Denver connection you ripped off!" Dan barked. "Don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about. I'm in a mood to murder you as it is."

"Danny-boy. You get so excited. But this hardly seems the proper time or place to discuss such matters."

"It's the only time or place you've got. So talk."

"No," the man said, so matter-of-factly that even Dan blinked.

"What do you mean, no? Aren't you listening to me? I'm going to kill you!"

"Better you than some stranger, I suppose," the man said.

Dan rose and dragged Bobo to his feet.

Standing nose to nose, they looked like Abbott and Costello, with Bobo a whole head shorter than Dan. And yet, Bobo had stature, wide-shouldered and dignified, with a sense of importance that went beyond his wrinkled suit. He bent and retrieved a crushed bowler hat from the ground.

"Look what you did!" he said, waving the hat under Dan's nose. "You know how much this cost me? You don't have any class, Danny-boy. That's you're problem."

"Don't give me that shit," Dan said. "If the hat cost you anything, then you got it wholesale."

Indeed, even Lance seemed drawn to the man, the round face beamed of trust and friendliness, his sparkling eyes straight out of a photo of Santa Claus.

He dusted himself off, inspecting the suit for tears. "No class," he mumbled again, then stared straight at Dan, those same eyes suddenly hard. "Now what are you going on about?"

"I told you not to deny things, Bobo, old pal," Dan said. "I've been to Denver. I know the score."

"A misunderstanding," Bob said, straightening his tie in the reflection of the dark glass bank door, picking a small speck from it. "I can explain everything if you give me a chance."

"All right, explain," Dan said, drawing Mike's pistol from his pocket. "Then I'll kill you."

"All this talk of killing is hardly a positive attitude," Bobo said. "But I told you. This is all wrong. It's a long story and perhaps we can talk over coffee somewhere."

"Coffee?" Dan bellowed, shoving the gun up under Bobo's multiple chins. "That's it! I'm going to do it."

Lance grabbed Dan's arm. "No," he said.

Dan stared at Lance. Perhaps he saw a bit of the fury of war seeping out of Lance's head, through the gnarled expression.

"You're right," Dan said softly. "I won't get my money killing him now. We'll take him back to the apartment where I can take my time squeezing the truth out." He grabbed Bobo's arm and propelled him down the stairs.

"Unhand me!" Bobo protested. "I won't be treated like this, Daniel! Not even by you."

"Save your demands," Dan said. "You have enough to worry about keeping your hide."

***********

Mike answered the door with a pistol in his hand, yanking Dan and the others in by the arm. He looked scared, and peered out through the peep hole the minute he'd locked the door again, pressing himself against it with a heavy sigh.

"The pigs were here," he said finally.

"What for?" Dan exploded.

"Eviction," Mike said. "They didn't come to the door, but I heard the old lady downstairs arguing with them. She called them on some other pretext, and they told her she needed a city marshall. But she's peeved and didn't want to hear any of it."

Dan glared at Lance. "You didn't pay fucking rent?"

"No money," Lance said. "I've been looking for work. But you know how that's been going."

"Ah shit!" Dan said, banging the wall with his fist. "Now we're all going to wind up on the street."

"I could get you money," Bobo said, drawing Dan's angry stare.

"You could, could you?" Dan said. "Like the million dollars in freshly marked bills, perhaps?"

Bobo blushed. In the lamp light, he looked even more ordinary than he had on the street, a slightly overweight middle class man, lost in the strangeness of drug dealing. His face and expression seemed utterly trustworthy, just the kind of man a child might come up to with some problem. Even Lance found himself attracted to his demeanor when Bobo's innocent stare went from face to face pleading his case.

"I don't have that money any more," the round man said.

"Then I'll take the drugs."

"I don't have them either."

"You're contradicting yourself, Pal," Dan said. "If you sold the drugs then you have the money-- and I want it."

"I reinvested the money."

"Then uninvest it."

"I can't. It's out of the country."

"Bullshit!"

"No, honest. I'm waiting on a huge shipment even as we speak."

"Of what?"

"Heroin."

"What? Since when have you become a heavy weight?"

"And since when would any one put up the cash up front?" asked Mike.

"This is different," Bobo said, untangling himself from Dan's grip. "This is a special deal."

"Like hell," Dan said.

Stalemate! Lance thought-- One face pressed against the other, nose to nose without hope of resolution. Like war. Or the steps leading up to it.

"Can we just sit down or something," Lance said, the smell of drying blood around him like bad perfume.

"No time," Mike said. "I need the keys to the van if I'm going to meet with Buckingham."

Bobo turned, his smug expression vanishing into a mask of utter horror, the trusting eyes widening, the unmoving lips sputtering: "Buckingham? What on earth would anyone want with him?"

Mike's brows folded forward as he studied Bobo more closely. "Nothing you'd be interested in," he said in a low voice. "Unless, of course, you are Buckingham."

"Me?" Bobo said, looking honestly shocked. "What ever gave you that idea?"

"Rumor," Dan said. "It seems to be all over town."

"Then rumor's wrong this time, Danny-boy," Bobo said, sagging a little. "If anything, the dude's out to kill me."

"Oh?" asked Dan.

"At least someone's tried twice, and from what I've heard, this Buckingham has been butchering dealers from here to St. Louis."

"You have other enemies," Dan noted. "Like the ones you've been ratting on to the pigs."

"I know it all looks bad, Dan," Bobo moaned. "But I thought I could handle things. I thought once I got rid of all the filth we could set up a more equitable system."

"We?" Dan said, leaning towards the man, his moustache dusting the man's twitching cheek. "I don't think I had any part in your extended plans."

"But I contacted you, didn't I?"

"Only because I have something you want."

A slow, boyish grin spread across Bobo's pudgy face, changing him, the trust vanishing into something more impish. "I did hear you had some drugs, Danny-boy."

"And you would like some, I suppose?"

Bobo licked his lips and glanced around at the others before nodding at Dan. "That was the whole point of the meeting."

"Then why the hell did you call in the cops, asshole," Dan yelled and would have grabbed Bobo's throat again if Mike and Lance didn't hold him back.

"I didn't, honest," Bobo said. "You think I would have risked showing up there if I known it was a trap?"

Dan pondered this a moment, seeming to cool a little in the process. "I have to admit you have me there. But if you didn't call the cops, who did?"

"Who else knew?" Mike asked. "I mean besides us and Billy."

"Free Press Bob knew," Lance said.

"But he wouldn't call the cops," Dan snapped.

"Maybe he would," Bobo said. "The man doesn't like me very much."

"He doesn't like anybody much, but the cops even less. Maybe they snagged his messenger."

"Or maybe Demetre's a mind-reader," Mike mumbled, pacing the room, still holding his pistol. "I don't like any of it. Too many cops getting shot, making things impossibly hot for all of us."

"Well, I didn't shoot any of them," Bobo protested.

"No," Dan said. "But it was your deal."

"And ours," Mike said. "Eventually, people are going to start tracing some of this back to us. We've got to settle things and get out of sight."

"Out of sight where?" Dan moaned. "We're not going to even have this place left if the old lady downstairs get hold of a city marshall."

"She won't," Mike said. "Not tonight anyway. My concern is Buckingham. Bobo says he's not him. It might be true. Or it might be a ploy to get the dope back."

"It's not. I'm not him."

"Well, I have a way of finding out."

"How?" Dan asked.

"We keep hold of him while I keep my rendezvous with Buckingham. If no one shows up..." Mike spread his hands. "Want to come with me? I could use back up."

"What about him?" Dan asked, hooking his thumb at Bobo.

"Lance and Marie'll watch him."

"Me?" Marie moaned from her bed of pillows in the corner. "You're not leaving me behind again!"

"It's too dangerous, Marie," Mike said, his face tightening as if remembering some dark vision.

"But you said no one might be there."

"I know what I said. Just don't argue. Come on, Dan. I don't want to be late."

Dan hesitated, his fingers gripping and ungripping the handle of his pistol as he eyed Bobo-- the full conflict spread across his face in twisted lines and the deep-red complexion of a resisted cough.

"Watch him carefully, Lance," he said, but stared at Bobo. "You lose him and I'll be pissed."

The door slammed behind them. Bobo smiled, his expression again unconcerned.

"So you're my jailer. How nice," he said, looking around for a seat, finally settling for a position on the pillows next to Marie. "Got a joint?"

***********

A dismal London fog stretched over Venice, softening the edges of its wooden and concrete world, trapping its odd-shaped structures into islands of white. Pieces of boardwalk popped out of it as he walked, like elbows and knees, with the occasional glowing glass face of a store front. A candle shop. A closed breakfast emporium. Leather and other crafts adding to the mood.

The haziness annoyed Mike. He liked details. Sharp, clear images from which he drew deeper meaning. Now he felt blind, his fingers blunted by objects as they came into contact. Even air seemed against him, refusing to release its secrets, swirling around him as he stepped, playing tricks on his sense of distance.

Only sound seemed the same, emphasized even, with little clinks and thumps telling him of activity on either side. Muffled voices passed him in the dark. Dan clamored up from the parking lot, appearing abruptly, his droopy hat dripping drops of moisture down onto his moustache. He shook his head.

"I don't like any of this," he said. "Maybe we can set up another meet for a better night."

"I don't think Buckingham would oblige. This seems like his kind of night. But if your friend is Buckingham, then we don't have to worry, do we? You have the pistol I gave you?"

Dan patted the pocket of a corduroy jacket. One of Lance's, hanging loose upon the thinner man's shoulder, like a clown's outfit. Few would mistake Dan for anyone dangerous.

"All right," Mike said. "We stick close until we figure out who we're looking for."

They moved slowly, each looking around despite the blind white, drifts of sand rising suddenly under the feet, heavy with the wet air. Mike smelled the salt. He couldn't remember the last time he had seen the sea, or touched it-- though in his memory, it had always seemed inaccessible, like a wall built to keep him in.

He remembered Brownsville, Texas just before Demetre busted him, and the brown water of the gulf bubbling up at his feet like someone's sewer. He'd hated the water and the smell of entrapment. His sixth sense screaming: Something's wrong! He hadn't listened. He'd blamed the water. The Gulf. And the misery south of the boarder.

Yet back east, along the Jersey coast, he'd seen a different sea, one stretching out its endless palms to the sky, hinting not of imprisonment, but of eternal hope-- giving him the sense that he could sail out into it and never return. It helped erase the earlier impressions. It began percolating the idea of another country. If only he could slip out under the net which kept people locked into America.

Politicians and historians liked to paint America as something free, Mike knew better. Free, maybe, if one could swim far enough and long enough. But a boat without numbers and a man without a pass port stood no chance. America was a society of proper identification, not so different from the Germany the Nazis imprisoned with tattooed numbers and gas chambers. And Mike needed someone to print those papers for him, unlocking the doors which barred him from the open sea. A benefactor who could walk him through each steps with the proper bribes and a full, clean set of ID.

"Mike?" Dan whispered. "Slow down."

Mike, with moist brow and palms, paused, his flat face a web of lines. His reflection showed in one of the shop windows. A sad, sagging figure over dressed for Southern California despite the fog, isolated from anything physical by the utter whiteness around him.

"Sorry," he mumbled as Dan caught up with him. "I'm lost in thought."

"Which'll get us both killed if you keep on," Dan muttered, tugging at the wet ends of his moustache as if they hurt, his gaze narrowed and studying the fog. "I know I'm supposed to watch your back. But not from fifty yards. Not in this stuff."

"I'll be careful," Mike said, voice still dreamy. "But I'm lost as to what to do? Should we just stand here and wait for someone to contact us?"

"Damned if I know," Dan said, lighting up one of his brown cigarettes, only to immediately plunge into a fit of coughing. He crushed the cigarette under his boot. "Maybe you should keep moving, let someone approach you and hope it isn't a cop."

Mike nodded and moved ahead, losing Dan again, and the shop, and the sense of North, south, east or west. L.A.? Hardly. San Francisco, maybe. The worn wood structures popped out at intervals, all part of some fantastic set to a Dickens film. Indeed, except for the blinking orange neon light in the coffee shop window, all might have been another, similar time, and he, a more typical villain-- the kind of which only the local sheriff hunted. And not with any great intent. Edwardian clothing hung in several of the windows, echoing the sense of lost time. Even the signs had been carved with Middle English spellings, fancy e's added to the end of ordinary words.

"Dan? Are you there?"

"Right here," the voice said, coming out of the fog. Dan appeared a moment later. "You got a problem?"

"Only in my head. I don't like the fog. I don't like walking around making myself a target."

Mike had been here before in daylight, and the wooden structures stretched along the beach only for a few blocks. But in the fog, they seemed to go on and on as he walked. And his senses rocked with the feeling of being watched. The cat's eye of a hungry killer waiting for him to walk through the cross-hairs of a gun sight. But no shot sounded during his first stroll south, nor did anyone step out of the fog to greet him. A few happy hippies stumbled by, grinning at him and the fog as if both were part of their personal trip. And a few crowds of drunken socialites came, giggling, and vanished, the echo of their laughter dying behind him.

"Well," Dan said after a full walk up and back. "I guess that just about settles it..."

"Day?" a harsh voice sounded out of the shadows on the sea-side of the walk way. Mike whirled around, but could barely make out the dark figure seated on the bench, a squat silhouette. "Michael Day?"

"Maybe," Mike said, motioning for Dan to stop a few feet to his right in the fog. "It depends on who wants to know. Are you my English friend?"

"Not him," the man hissed. "But from him."

"He sent you?"

"No. He doesn't know I'm here."

"But you gave Free Press Bob the message?" Mike asked, confused, taking a full step closer to the man. The mist peeled away and the gnarled face became clearer-- the broken nose and jaw like pieces to a jig saw puzzle, yet one not quite set into its proper pattern. He was an older man, with a stare half prize fighter's, half a DA's. His clothing worn, yet expensive, part of some earlier era L.A. when trench coats and loafers were in fashion. But the skin had a tint to it even in the dark, and time could not disguise the overall shape of the face and head.

Indian.

A ragged, worn, even broken indian. But the blood screamed out to Mike in its unmistakable voice, like drums pounding in his ears with a message of mutual history.

"Yeah, I gave it to him," the man said. I heard you were looking for Buckingham and I came to warn you."

"About what?"

"About him wanting you dead."

"He told you that?"

"No one told me nothing. I've never seen him in the flesh. But I've gotten orders. And everyone of them is about you. Where you are and what you're doing. This dude thinks of nobody but you."

"Why are you telling me this?"

The man grinned. It was a slopping thing with half the mouth drooping the wrong way. "Because you're you," he said. "Most of us would work for you if you had an organization. But that's not your way. We know about the raw deal you got with the law. We've had raw deals, too. But you fight back."

Something tightened in Mike's stomach, the echo of Demetre's words rumbling through his head. "Look, pal," he said. "Get to the point. What exactly are we here for? You want me to run? You could have said as much in the note."

"No, man, you miss the point. No one gets away from Buckingham. He's on you like a hound, sniffing out your trail. I don't know why he hasn't killed you yet. But he will unless you get him first."

Mike sagged against the rail, high tide breaking at the foot of the peer-- rushing in with a roar then a retreat of popping bubbles. "If I could find him on my own, I wouldn't be here," he said.

"But you have to find him," the man insisted.

"How? Tell me that, friend, then you'd really be helping me!"

The man licked his lips and glanced around, then leaned forward as if to whisper something-- and then, his face blew apart.

Mike didn't even heard the shot, only its echo, blood and brain spraying across him like a heavy rain. Dan leaped onto him, knocking him to the boards. But no second shot sounded.

"Which direction?" Mike asked, struggling to get the pistol out from his belt.

Dan pointed east with the other pistol. "I saw a flash just from the edge of the walk. A lucky shot from that distance," he said. "He might have been aiming at you."

Mike listened. The whisper of running feet rose from that direction, down off the boardwalk on the sandy asphalt.

"Come on," he said, leaping up, grabbing Dan as he charged. He stopped again and crouched at the stair down, waiting for another shot, waiting for the pain to erupt from his own chest or face.

Boom! The shot came, but it did not appear aimed at Mike. The flash dying in the fog. Another shot sounded-- the monstrous explosion of a shotgun or rifle erupting in the darkness like thunder.

Then silence.

"What do you think?" Mike asked. Dan's face stayed hidden under the drooping brim of his hat. But the hand holding the pistol shook.

"I'd say everything's wrong?" his scratchy voice said finally, followed by a string of coughs.

"Yeah," Mike agreed, then ran again, down the stairs to the street, where the fog hung a few feet above the asphalt, leaving things clear beneath. In the middle of the parking area, Mike found the body of a fallen biker.

"One of Billy's boys," Dan said, turning the face towards the distant street lamp, though identification was impossible. Half this face was missing, too.

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