Fiction 2, Chapters 13 & 14
Copyright © 1992
Chapter 13
"I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak;
I smell sweet savours, and I feel soft things.
Upon my life, I am a lord indeed,
And not a tinker, ..."
Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare.
Katherine's apartment building was unique in its architectural style, for Corpus Christi at least. Basically round, its circumference would have looked scalloped in a top-view drawing.
Only two blocks back from the Gulf, the apartment had a southern exposure. At first, we sat on the small balcony and just relaxed. The Gulf and harbor were on our left and the setting sun was on our right as we each sipped a Tangueray martini. Our first toast was to the absent vermouth.
My tour around the apartment had been fairly quick.
Katherine had furnished the four generous rooms in a modified southwestern style. The walls were painted a smooth, light adobe color in the living and dining rooms, subdued orange in the kitchen and dusky blue sand-finish in her bedroom.
There were a brown leather sofa and two matching easy chairs in the center of the living room, surrounding a glass and marble coffee table. Two Navajo sand-paintings were displayed on one wall there, and a Piet Mondrian reproduction fit in well on the opposite side, offset by a small beadwork tapestry. Filled bookshelves lined the living room walls beneath the art-work, and all of the man-made illumination in the room came from baked clay table lamps with parchment shades, placed on the bookcases.
The kitchen was reasonably large and well equipped, lit by spotlights contained within conical ceramic bowls hanging from the ceiling over the work areas. There was a counter and a wide doorway between the kitchen and the dining area, which abutted the living room. A wrought-iron lamp __suspended on a long black chain from the ceiling__ held real candles and hovered over the center of a large, circular glass table-top and base. The table was escorted by four white wickerwork chairs.
Except for the kitchen with its vinyl flooring and the bathroom with its tile, the floors were all of satin-finish, varnished oak planks. They were reluctantly covered here and there with beige and white rectangular rugs. I think they are called Rya rugs.
In the bedroom, the furniture was sparse, enlarging the area. Only a queen-sized platform bed, covered by a Navajo rug, along with a black lacquer dresser with full-length mirror and a similar night-table occupied the room. Except for a chrome reading lamp on the night-table, the lighting was soft, dim and indirect, from valances overhead on the longer walls.
A hint of lilac floated in the bedroom; sandlewood in the dining room. And, on each side of the balcony doors, there were glass stands, with a variety of flowering plants on each scenting the evening air.
Dinner was everything she promised: spaghetti; also meatballs, Caesar's salad and garlic bread.
-What the hell!-
If we were both gobbling the garlic I could still get lucky, so I took it easy on stuffing myself. Lean, not mean, was the idea. The wine was a Gallo Reserve Hearty Burgundy, one of the best American table reds.
-My name is Bond, James Bond, and I have a license to bloat-
Sunset was no great shakes but the company made up for it.
We sat on her balcony, seven floors up, and avoided three subjects: the upcoming violence and the future beyond, if any, were two. I didn't know exactly what the third was, but I knew it was waiting somewhere in the wings, and had to do with children___and shadows.
I would know soon; I can't help it.
Don't think that the evening was haunted. It wasn't. We both enjoyed put-on jokes and campy humor, and we shared many companionable enthusiasms, even one for long stretches of appreciative silence. Some were unexpected reversals: Katherine loved T.S. Elliot, and my favorite poems were sonnets.
The evening caressed us with breezes from the sea and eased us gently together into night-time. There was a CD player with a round-table pushing her stereo system and five albums in a row could be selected and played __an evening's worth of music__ without interruption.
There was some Chris Isaak, a local boy, I think; a symphony: Mozart's Fortieth in G-minor; "Phantom"; Borodin's "Steppes"; and some Bach, by Segovia. Isaak uses the minor keys a lot to unlock his music. I'm not a big fan of contemporary pop or rock, but this lad is good, really good. There's a flavor of Roy Orbison in both his music and his voice, and the voice is technically better. At times, Isaak sounds more like Elvis Presley and that's not too shoddy. Somehow it all blended; it blended beautifully.
I didn't sleep on the couch that night; I slept with Katherine.
We made love, but not the way of love that I had anticipated. As we left the balcony, I stopped in the doorway and lightly touched her shoulder, and she turned to me as if to say something; though she made no sound. With a hand lightly on each shoulder, I kissed her on the cheek and murmured, "Thank you."
She smiled, very tentatively, and lightly kissed my lips. Then, pressing against me, she stood on tip-toe, and slid her arms up between mine and around my neck. Sweet lips touched my cheek and followed a dotted line to my mouth. Her upper lip was firm on mine, her lower lip soft and quivering, first above, then below mine, then above again.
The kiss went on forever. I lightly touched the center of her upper lip with the tip of my tongue. Her teeth parted to reveal her tongue to mine, to tease my tongue and lips at times and, in between, I probed with mine to explore a new world. My aforementioned tingle was running rampant through a body that was suddenly eighteen again.
It couldn't really go on forever. She parted our lips, and when I left reality, for the illusions of the outer world, I found that it was her eyes that were now kissing mine.
"I don't know what to say, Katherine. It's not fair to you, I know, but I feel like a teenager."
"It's all right," she responded. "Don't be sorry. I have to be honest with you, Richard: There can't really be anything like this for me. I like you, I really do. I enjoy your company and I enjoyed our kiss, but there's no more than that for me. There can't be anything more. When I asked you up I didn't really want more than this, but I hoped things had changed. I don't know why things should have. I haven't. Something inside me won't let me go. Something I can't let go either, and can't deal with; something that died for me long ago that I can't bury____ Something."
She didn't pull away and I didn't let her go.
Instead, I held her close until I felt the moisture against the side of my throat. Her tears were streaming now and her legs went weak, so that she sagged in my arms. I bent to place an arm under her thighs, and carried her into the bedroom. There, I sat with her on the edge of the bed and stayed with my arm around her, until I could feel her straighten up.
I said to her, very quietly, "It's all right. I'll be here if you need me, just outside, Ok.?" She smiled and nodded. Then I went into the living room to check out the couch.
Katherine had already taken some sheets and a pillow down from a hall closet, so all I had to do was strip to my underwear, shed a tear and have a wash in the bathroom before going to bed.
I wondered if sleep would come. I wondered why I was trapped on the high ground between floods of feminine tears. I did what I do best; I just wondered.
"Richard?"
She was dressed in pajamas and still crying silently, standing in the bedroom doorway. I got up and went to her, to shield her and keep her safe from the night.
"Please, just keep holding me. Right now I need you as a friend, to hold me." She was trembling in my arms.
"Always, Katherine," I promised.
I led her into the bedroom and guided her to the bedside.
We sat there together again for a few minutes, just holding hands, until her shivering subsided. Then I put Katherine to bed, but she simply could not release my hand. I circled the bed and lay down with her. After a few minutes of soft encouragement, she turned to me. I gathered her into my arms and held her throughout the night.
There were dreams: plaintive dreams, panic dreams, yearning dreams; somehow I could tell them apart. I'd hold her tighter then and whisper to her. The shivering, trembling, and even shuddering would slowly diminish. Sometimes she would come half-awake and whisper back. I don't remember exactly what was said, but it got us through the night, together.
I woke gently to find her eyes on mine, her fingers touching my lips. I smiled for her fingertips and fell into her blue-sapphire eyes.
"Did you sleep well, Love?"
"Love, Richard?"
"Of course, is there any doubt?" I asked softly.
"Yes, I'm full of doubt."
"Doubt yourself, if you will. I prefer not to, Katherine."
"Not to doubt yourself? Or me?"
"Neither, Love." I became aware, awakening, that my left arm was asleep, under her waist, and terminated with a hand on her hip. The thumb of my right hand, resting on top of her left side above the waist, was in contact with an erect nipple.
I asked her pardon. "Old habits die hard, my love, and you are kind. I hope that you're not offended." I didn't move my hand, though.
"Richard," she said with an embarrassed laugh at her own predicament, "if I could have moved my left hand without waking you, I would have." Katherine was blushing furiously then, and not entirely from distress.
I became aware that my thighs had trapped her hand between them, very aware. We laughed until the bed shook. And it shook for quite a while after we stopped laughing. Quite a bit, for quite a while. The taut wire tingling up the front of my backbone had finally roped a heifer.
"I don't know if this changes anything, Richard, except that I never would have imagined that it would happen to me again. What hope do you see for us?"
"Honestly, Katherine? It depends on whether I survive the next few days. Then __given that survival__ our future together or apart will depend on just that, on hope. If we give in to despair, we'll betray the hope and faith of those who loved us once and love us now. Would you do that?"
She sighed and waited a few moments before answering, "Not when you put it that way."
"How would you like it put?" with a little Groucho.
"Really now, we have to get up sometime."
I exerted the force of my personality.
She laughed, "Excuse me, you're already up, I see."
And I was. After I demonstrated my theory of tingling, she got up there again as well.
I've heard that an television interviewer once asked Richard Burton, long after the second divorce, what he most fondly remembered about Elizabeth Taylor. He replied, "Her breasts. She has the most beautiful breasts."
Katherine had the most beautiful breasts, slightly pear-shaped; they were firm and heavy in the hand. Her nipples __pink and perfectly conical in repose__ would turn to ruby domes when teased by my lips and tongue. She certainly had wonderful thighs, as well; slender and smoothly muscled, with the tendons just barely outlined as she drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them.
Her full hips were firm and supple in every aspect, but soft to my caresses. The dimple above and between them almost appeared to be a happy little face. I remember that Katherine would not believe that or let me take a picture to prove it to her. I really did appreciate all of her many parts.
I am without her now. But when our time together comes to mind, as the embers of an evening fire grow dark, memories of her laughter and her smiles are foremost in my mind. Then, after that____ I remember her beautiful breasts.
"My despair has real roots, as you put it before, not imaginary ones," Katherine said. The tone of her voice suggested that she expected a __typically male__ dismissive response from me. After all, "afterglow" can only last so long.
But, to her regret and mine, that was not the way it would be.
"I know that, Love," I admitted.
Her "secret" guilt was no mystery; neither to me, nor to you. Yet that was the case only because I had cared enough to look deeply into her paintings and __thereby__ her soul. And with me, you have done so as well. For any of us, the mirrored wall surrounding our secluded heart is only a one-way illusion. But any breach of that illusion is a terrible attack on our core being.
I could not escape my weird any more than Katherine could.
The vision of a still-born baby boy took me then __lying between a woman's legs__ in a pool of blood and afterbirth. Aborted by a cruel blow __a kick and a flight of stairs__ the child opened his eyes and his soul to me. And they were mine.
The bridge of time between us was longer by far than eternity and shorter than a moment; no time at all. The spirit of his comatose mother cried with an agonized passion for____
No! No! I cried in a man's voice, not a boy's. You have no right! There must be Justice; there must be Punishment; there must be Damnation. You cannot forgive! You cannot cry for Him, plead with Him for a comforting touch. You must not....
She reached out for Him.
But His stern face turned away from her and captured me. Your rajd mawker would nijaish dooker, but you will, He said. You will serve my purposes.
I will not! I screamed. I will not serve.
My young body slipped from the grasp of His eyes and ran; ran and ran; ran away to hide myself from Him. Fate __or dementia__ was playing with me, and chords of unearthly thunder shuddered through me. The storm would not be controlled. Futile! But the shade of that woman __who had been helpless to protect herself or her son__ shielded me __her daughter's son__ from its fury.
The storm raged on and on, and then passed on __just as great a tempest__ but now further and further away from my sheltered place____and time.
-Strange to say: With all of its turbulence, that seizure brought me a measure of inner peace, and gave me an assurance of the path that I had to follow-
"What are you thinking Richard? You look so strange."
My only response was to hold her tighter.
After a few moments to compose my thoughts, I was able to continue.
-Just as though I weren't out of my mind-
"We both became adults in the late sixties, Katherine, and there was an age __not a decade__ between our childhood and that time. That was true for both of us. I've seen your shadows; I know your pain. And I hope that pain will be allowed to pass away someday. That pain belongs to you, not to those children who were never born."
I held her closer to me so she didn't have to meet my gaze. My grandmother's Voice was strong in me then.
"Katherine, if you could tell your husband about them now, he'd say this to you: Those children now live in you; in your hopes and dreams. They will live again in those you cherish, just as parents who die too soon may live through their children."
I should have been able to sense her dread, but I was still too busy exploring my own universe. So I persisted, absorbed. "Your children will pass from you __to live again__ through all of the children of this world. You will have found your way to give them their birth and their life."
She withdrew and recoiled, asking, "Who are you?" I could hear her hatred __at my intervention__ in her voice and almost smell it on her breath. That body I remembered as lovely and soft was tense to the snapping point, pushing and pulling itself apart.
My mind was half-way between us again, back in and of the present.
"Just myself," I answered her, "and sometimes I think that I'm all of those I have ever loved __as well__ just as you are. It's just me, a friend and lover, whichever you want or need."
"How did you know?" she demanded. Katherine felt as if she'd betrayed herself, or I had. But how could I love her, and not know? And how could I explain my inheritance, my gift, my curse? It is worth a "Tinker's Damn," but just barely.
I thought of a good comparison. "Are you color blind, Katherine?"
"No," she murmured.
"Have you ever taken a color vision test, the one with colored dots in patterns?"
"Yes, I have. The cards full of dots and numbers. Why do you ask?"
I reflected for a moment and then continued. "Suppose that __out of many colors that you could see just like everybody else__ there was one special color, just one that only you could see held patterns. And no one else you knew could, or would, see those patterns?"
She was silent for a minute or so, until she asked, "Is it as lonely as it sounds?"
"Yes, Katherine, when that color comes up."
"Why did this happen? Why did we happen?" Her questions were born of a new grief.
"I wish I could tell you, Love. I wish I knew. All I can do, like you, is hope for the best."
I called Stretch at the campground office, and asked him to take a walk down to the trailer. He was to knock on my door and carry on a conversation, just as though I was there. Hopefully, we could keep everybody satisfied as to my whereabouts for awhile longer.
No such luck!
He called back fifteen minutes later to say that the door had been ajar. He'd had to pry it a little to open the door, which was jammed, not locked. The trailer had been trashed again.
She spoke very little when we picked up the Star-light scope, or stopped at the ATM, or as we headed north on Route 35 to Holiday Beach. They were not like the silences we had shared before.
* * * * * * * * * *
-Nijaish lajd, nijaish shan thorrys-
Neither shame nor love speaks.
* * * * * * * * * *
Weller was concealing himself within some discarded oil rig equipment on the lot next door to Quirk's campsite.
The field of view was perfect, letting him observe the only vehicular exit of the trailer park and both doors of Quirk's trailer without shifting position. The only problem was they had to keep two men, with a radio each, watching the north side and the back of the camp.
There were only two cars, and they'd thought three radios would do. But __with the Mex in the car to the north and Dillon in back on foot__ Weller had to wave signals to Doc, who was parked off the road with his car near a public phone. Weller's Lincoln was too conspicuous for this kind of work. Even at that, the radio reception was spotty. It was barely good enough to reach both the other radios right now.
It was unseasonably warm even in the shade, and the mosquitos were having a feast on his city-bred blood. He wished he had brought some beer but that would have pissed off Salburton.
For some reason he's got the Indian sign on me, Weller thought. Even though he's just a little piece of puke, he's got me under his thumb. So far, I ain't got nothing out of this deal but a fancy car and some throw-around money. It ain't much of a deal, but right now, it's the only one in town. There's something about the little weasel, though, that I can't figure. If I ever find out what the fuck it is, I'll be the one doing the yelling around here.
Chapter 14
"What, would you make me mad?
Am I not... by present profession, a tinker?"
Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare.
I didn't want to stop in Rockport but Katherine __the quiet Shrew__ was adamant.
Most likely, that was a reaction to our conversation of the morning. There were some small deliveries that she had to pick up at her studio and deliver to Tivoli, a town well on the other side of Holiday Beach from Rockport. I turned on the scanner about half a mile from the studio and trailer campground, and parked. We listened for an impatient ten minutes before I reluctantly gave her the go-ahead to pull in the back driveway to her studio.
Katherine got out while I stayed slouched in the front passenger seat, sunglassed with a hatbrim pulled low over my eyes, as though I had a hangover.
The Smith and Wesson was in my hand, resting on the seat. The windows were all opened and the motor was left running. I was seated toward the center of the Caprice, almost between the bucket seats; both to allow freedom to acquire targets on the right, and also to more easily slide into the driver's seat, if necessary.
While Katherine was in her studio, the scanner came to life.
A man's voice said, "There's a car in back here. A woman drove in. There's a big guy with a beard sitting in the car." It didn't sound like a cop; no radio procedure.
"Check it out." A clear, melodic tenor voice came through the "white noise," but it sounded like chalk on a blackboard to me.
It was time to get out of the car while I still had some freedom of action. I hoped that it would shield me as I walked around the side of the studio away from the campground. The hidden watcher was probably back there behind me. The scanner got tucked into one jacket pocket and the pistol __with the hand holding it__ was stuffed into the other one.
The scanner squawked, "He just walked around the other side of the place the woman's in." -Thanks for your location, pal!-
The piercing voice responded. "Find out what he's up to. Can you see the license number?"
"No," came the reply through the static, "but I think it's Texas."
"Thanks a lot! Get going, Dillon!" The sound of static ceased.
He could come around the corner tight, with a peek, or loose in the trees, which would give him a better closing angle and some concealment. He had a choice; I didn't. I retreated about 20 feet out and 20 feet back behind a large oak and turned down the scanner. It was a nice day, and a nap would have been welcome.
He came around tight.
And I had to close in as fast as I could without warning him. Fortunately, the area around the building was cleared of trees and bushes for about 10 feet out, and the ground cover was soft. I was going to try to clip him on the head with the pistol.
Instead, I got an elbow to my gut just below the solar plexus, just above where it might have ruptured me. Then it was my turn, faster than I could think. My pistol slammed his pointed elbow, which gave a painful crack.
His revolver fell to the ground. He yelped like a coyote but wasted no time, turning on the ball of his left foot.
He tried a spin-around back kick.
So I kicked him hard in his dancing nuts while he was playing Kung Fu, about three-quarters through his move. Clutching his groin, he fell silently to the ground.
What can I tell you? It's a pattern; I'm good at patterns. He got me a little too. The sole of his shoe had just barely scraped the tip of my nose.
"Dillon" was making some noise now; a thin keening sound inhaling, low groans on the exhale. The way his body was clenched said he was alive, but regretting it.
I kicked the poor bastard over on his chest, and knelt between his shoulder blades to flatten him out. No resistance; so I put my pistol away and used his shirt collar to strangle him. Not kill him; just apply thirty seconds or so of knuckle pressure on both carotid arteries.
-It was a mercy-
Patting him down didn't come up with anything special, just the usual civilian ID and credit cards; so I smashed the fingers on both hands. What else? They were still clenched and it didn't take much more effort than stepping on them. I was going that way, anyhow and I really didn't want to deal with him again any time soon.
It was like stereo: His transceiver and my scanner whispered at me, "Dillon? Dillon!"
I threw the transceiver in the woods but hung on to the revolver, a Colt hammerless .38 with a two inch barrel. You never know.
Katherine was out in front, waiting for me.
"What hap____"
I ran for the driver's seat, and yelled, "Hop in! They've found us."
We hopped in and tore out of there like a bat out of hell. -Quick, Watson. The game's afoot- It's a good thing she's tall because, even so, it took me forever to readjust the seat on the run.
A little geography lesson is in order.
There's a Route 35 that runs north-south through Aransas Pass, Rockport and Fulton. It's mostly one lane, each way. Almost any auto going your way is going to look as though it's either following or overtaking. You can't safely tell if you're "it," because there's nowhere to turn off for miles at a stretch that isn't a dead-end.
It's possible to take a couple of farm roads through to somewhere else but the same limitations apply to them, only more so. We passed the turn-off for Holiday Beach doing about sixty. There's the occasional radar trap on this leg of the road and I couldn't afford to be stopped by a trooper, either.
"What are you doing?" Katherine demanded. "You missed the turn."
"Sorry, Love! Right now, the last thing I want to do is lead them to the cottages. I'm headed for the Sanctuary."
-Trust me to choose a "sanctuary" for what would probably turn out to be the scene of a murder-
It took almost twenty minutes, and there are a couple of branches in the roads to it that allowed us a fair chance to shake any followers. The road-side was covered with yellow tickseed, occasional patches of pink thistle or white prickly poppy, and the scintillating colors dazzled the eye as we sped by.
The important thing about the Aransas Wildlife Sanctuary is that it has a one-way vehicle loop that is intended for viewing the wildlife. I thought that it should be equally effective for spotting a tail that doesn't belong to an animal.
Although the sanctuary isn't really patrolled, there are strong legal warnings against vehicles leaving the pavement; a prohibition that I was prepared to ignore. Any civilian going out of his way to follow me would have to be a bad guy. Dillon had been in no shape to give anybody a description of our car, so they would be coming after a bearded guy and a woman in a car, period.
I turned the scanner up and adjusted the squelch for the maximum, noisy sensitivity.
"Look, Katherine! I can drop you in Tivoli, and then turn around to go to the bird sanctuary. You'd be out of it."
"Not on your life. This is my car, mister, and you'd better not damage it." There was fury in her voice.
We hit the turn-off just in time. I know that because __as soon as we did__ the scanner came alive to announce it. "Weller, they turned off at the sanctuary. Can you hear me?"
No answer.
Of course that didn't mean that my tail didn't hear an answer, or that whomever he was reporting to, "Weller" -file that- hadn't heard him. Just beyond the visitors' center __we by-passed it__ there was a place where the one-way loop, that started about a mile up the road, rejoined our road at an acute angle.
I stopped dead just beyond, and backed up the loop exit until we were well out of sight. The next vehicle going by was a Jeep Cherokee with a single male driver. Most visitors were at least couples, so he was probably our man. I pulled back out onto the road, well enough behind to stay out of his sight until the loop. As soon as we hit the loop entrance, I sped up until we were in his rear-view mirror. We were about a quarter the way around the loop when we came to good place to pull off through the sparse underbrush. I dropped back until he was out of sight again.
He had to have seen us.
"Here we go." We pulled off onto a sort of trail where the ground was pretty firm, and drove about a quarter of a mile. I pulled around and behind a large copse of Live Oaks.
"When he slows and still doesn't see us coming on, he'll back up to follow us. I've got to get him. He can probably connect you and your car with me." It's not really difficult to get a name and address from a license plate almost anywhere.
"You're not going to kill him, are you?"
"No, just knock him on the head. They say a concussion wipes out short-term memory, about fifteen minutes. That should do it."
And I say, the pig will fly! There were always the alligators.
This is probably a good place to pull a poor-man's Melville and give you more background than you want on the wildlife in the refuge. While there are legends of the pirate __Jean La Fitte__ burying treasure chests here, the real treasures are colonies of whooping cranes, brown pelicans, bald eagles, alligators and sea turtles.
The whooping cranes, in particular, have a story of survival to tell that borders on the miraculous. Their heyday was probably ten thousand years ago, just after the last ice age. They've been going downhill ever since. There were still thousands here flying back and forth from the semi-tropics to the sub-arctic each year, up until the Civil War era. By World War Two, another cultural milestone, there were possibly thirty, total.
Now, there are three hundred at most, after forty years of trying on the part of humans and cranes.
I have a lot in common with all the cranes there along the Texas Gulf coast, sand cranes as well as whooping cranes. They and I have our summer range in northern Canada or Alaska. Mine runs from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, and from James Bay, off Hudson Bay, to the MacKensie River, or to the Yukon as it flows into the sea near the Bering Straits. And during the winters, I meet my summer friends, the cranes, down there in the Texas Tropics.
Someday, if the unlikely subject of human beings comes up among the surviving species of Earth, whooping cranes and dolphins may have a mitigating word to say about us. The others, including the whales -if there are any left- won't want to hear it.
I promise: Nobody that day was eaten by alligators. It's still worth noting that there are almost three hundred of them there, and the biggest top the scales at around fifteen feet and five hundred pounds. They say you can estimate the total length of an alligator in feet by measuring the distance between its eyes in inches, but I had forgotten my ruler that day.
It's not really trivia, when you think about it.
We'd passed a spot where he'd have to go slow to turn in the available radius, and keep both hands on the wheel. Dropping back __and taking care not to trample the bunched cordgrass or kick any venomous snakes__ I waited. And waited. The mosquitoes didn't. I was nowhere near the water __but even so__ my imagination insisted that the world smelled like alligator.
After twenty minutes, I gave up on the ambush and went back to Katherine.
She was waiting for me with a gun at her head, held by a tall, thin, Spanish looking guy. He wore a dandy's mustache and tooled, Mexican boots.
But the important accessory was his pistol, a Browning Buck-Mark Target 5.5. That .22 can be deadly in the right hands, with the right load. It was definitely big enough to stop Katherine's clock, and small enough to do it without making a racket. A "plinker's" gun___or a hit-man's.
The Jeep Cherokee was parked on the other side of her car.
The Spaniard said loudly -very clearly and without any noticeable accent- "Get rid of your gun, and do it very carefully, or I will kill her. Now!"
He should have had me put my hands over my stupid head and turn around, but he couldn't figure how to hold on to Katherine and disarm me personally at the same time, and he wanted to see what my hands were doing.
"Don't hurt her!" I cried. My voice was weak, desperate, agonized.
I slowly pulled my jacket back on the right, so that he could clearly see what I was doing. The strap came away from the snap fastening on the outside of my holster and __with one thumb and forefinger__ I pulled the pistol out. He was right-handed, so I tossed it well to my left, his right. Then I cringed a little.
He nodded slightly, satisfied, and relaxed some of the tension in his stance. I moved toward him slowly, my hands spread harmlessly, while he was defused and barely starting to think about his next moves. One of the two pre-visualized outcomes of his last move had occurred, and he was no longer set for immediate reaction.
When I was about fifteen feet from him, I asked weakly, "What do you want from us?" Then I slowly, very slowly, drew the captured .38 from my belt.
He couldn't believe what he was seeing. His gun was already pointed halfway between Katherine's head and me, and he couldn't make up his mind about the extremely mixed signals that he was getting.
The twenty-two might not stop a big guy like me from shooting him unless he got a lucky shot through the center of my skull, but even that was a better defense than shooting a hostage who wasn't threatening him, and who had turned out to be useless except as a shield. Maybe!
I thumbed the latch and opened the cylinder to check the number of rounds. To all appearances, that was the only care I had in the world. It was as though he wasn't even there. I didn't play cowboy, and slowly closed the cylinder gate with a slight "click."
The hammerless revolver had to be cocked with considerable deliberation. -How, you ask? I'll tell you later-
His face was wild, and the pencil-thin mustache began to get the trembles as he tried to say something. But nothing except air came out of his wobbly lips, as I slowly raised my arms with the gun cradled in both hands.
I aimed at Katherine -Don't think!- in line with his heart. -God help us all- There was no trigger slack left; it was tight. -Now!-
He dropped the .22. I immediately pulled high, off Katherine. It was like lifting a huge weight though, almost impossible to do without squeezing the trigger but I did it. It was like a hexed knife that, when bared, must be bloodied before it can be resheathed.
The swarthy Spaniard turned to run. -My turn now- The revolver followed him like a dowsing rod. -Your turn's up- It followed him all the way to the Jeep, lusting to shaft him like some kind of Turkish impaler.
But Katherine____ -Her face! Her eyes!-
She was too near the line of fire.
-It's over-
So I let him go and the weapon I held cursed me for my weakness.
Still there wasn't much chance that Zorro would turn south to face his maniacal employer. The radio was still on the hood of the Caprice. The big, bad macho man wasn't about to face anybody like "Jaws" with a report that he had lost his prey, his weapon and his communication. He'd likely be hiding out north of Houston by nightfall.
Katherine slowly sagged to the ground, trembling with shock. And I began to unwrap my frozen right hand from the grip and trigger housing of the pocket revolver, one locked finger at a time.
-Thank God, it's over. For now, anyway-
First things, first! The damned hammerless had to be uncocked, without killing myself or Katherine.
This model was one of those compromises that never makes anybody happy. Colt had shrouded the short hammer, so it wouldn't catch in clothing as it was drawn. That's why they make a few of them; some people like it that way. This model had a narrow gap in the center of the shroud, however, allowing a knurled button to protrude, so it could be cocked.
-It's a bitch to do under any circumstances, much less in a firefight-
Then I retrieved the Smith & Wesson 59, blew it off and replaced it in my holster. Katherine needed my help to stand up, and we walked together over to her car. She sat in the passenger seat with her feet on the ground and legs open, head down between her knees, while she held my hand.
After a minute, her hand dropped mine.
-You don't feel any worse about me than I do, Love-
Walking around the front of the Caprice, I bent over to pick up the .22 Browning and removed the transceiver from the hood. They were beginning to give me ideas. When we did get back on the road, we went north again to Tivoli and then on a roundabout detour south, back to Aransas Pass. From there, Katherine took the wheel and I shared the floor in back with some of the lighting units. We headed north again to Holiday Beach.
We didn't say much and when we got to the cottages, she went into hers to lie down for a bit before she left for good. My heart was with her but I knew there was nothing that I could say. Her mind might tell her that I had saved her life, as well as my own, but her heart would still be filled with the memory of betrayal and fear.
The face of that betrayal would be my face.
The name of that fear would be my name.
I kept myself busy with my fortifications for the whole afternoon.
Her "Goodbye" had a note of finality, like the original, "God be with you." I hoped that someday she would forgive, even if she could not forget.
* * * * * * * * * *
-Tha buer jawled, thotha nuggies styrickd-
The lady departed, but the guns remained.
* * * * * * * * * *
Weller was working up a rage about the Mexican taking off from the stakeout, without waiting for instructions over the radio.
The trouble was Weller had sent Doc around back, one way __in his sedan__ and the Mexican, the other way __in the Jeep__ while he, Weller, covered the front. But Doc hadn't had a radio, and Weller hadn't had a car, and the "goddamned Mex didn't have a brain." He still hadn't been heard from.
"I'll skin him alive!" Weller shrieked.
"Listen to me. You're only thirty-five, Weller, and you've got your best years in front of you." It was no use; the creature would not be placated.
The Chairman was searching for some reaction in Weller's blank eyes, some clue to what might be going through his mind besides blood-lust. Christ! If he was an albino, at least they'd be pink, he thought.
"Listen up," he demanded. "I know what you're going through. There are times when it feels good to punish people. You know, punishment is personal____" He stopped suddenly, aware his private enthusiasms were getting in the way of business. "I mean, that's Ok, but when you have to hurt somebody else, because they're in your way, it's not personal; you know, Weller? It's just business, you know? You can't blow everything just because you've got an itch. How about a little self-control?"
Weller, for the first time, raised his eyes. He seemed to peer into the Chairman's soul through one-way mirrors, and a feral light came into being that hadn't been there before when anyone important was looking.
Uh-oh! he thought. "I'm trying to explain something here that's not getting through, Weller. Let me ask you a question? You think you're tough, don't you?"
This time he wanted an answer and was ready to push for one, if necessary. It was not.
"You'd better know it!" Weller asserted.
The Chairman took the implied threat without showing any reaction except for contemptuous amusement, though it wasn't easy to maintain his composure between the thrill and the chill that ran through him. But, right now, nothing was as important as staying on top, not even if it meant laying off the counterfeit deal. Pushing too hard on that right now wasn't the answer; patience would be. The new player __Quirk or whoever__ could have gotten away clean, at least with the software, if he had in fact possessed it. But, Quirk was back, and he and his trailer both had already been tossed a couple of times. Now, he had disappeared again.
Maybe the son of a bitch has found the stuff; maybe not, he thought,
If Weller's men can catch Russell, though, all the bases are covered. Even if he doesn't have the software or the receipt with him, he'll know where the supplies are stored. Just find the paper and ink, that's all. Sooner or later, Quirk will be coming to get them.
The Chairman made up his mind.
"You're going to love this, Weller," he assured his creature. He gloated over his plan. "You're really going to love this. Leave those clowns you've got in Aransas and on the bridges, and make sure they really know how important it is that they get hold of my nephew. I'll let you skin them alive if they don't. You and I are going back to Houston tonight, along with those two pals of yours that you put so much stock in. I've got a lesson back there for you all, that even somebody like you will understand."
You are at Fiction 2, Chapters 13 & 14