No time to wrap my hands, or to think about anything else but the few minutes ahead. I tossed my bag onto the mound of basalt behind the ring, stripped off my shirt, and started inhaling huge lungfuls. Maybe I could surprise the big fucker with speed. Or maybe I could convince him to stand in front of a dump truck while I ran him over.
“Okay, we got another hunnerd,” Roddy called. “Anybody else? No? Come on, Rénald ain’t that tough.”
The crowd laughed. My slaughter was going to be slapstick.
The warm night would help. I was feeling about as loose as I would get. I didn’t shadow-box. I just took in air and thought very hard about how I might survive.
My inaction had attracted attention. “You better fucking fight,” Bomba said from his spot at ringside.
I ducked under the orange barricade. On the opposite side, spectators moved the barrier aside to let big Rénald enter. His grin was still in place, with a touch of anticipation.
“Going . . . going . . . all right, let’s do this!” Roddy shouted.
Rénald wasted no time. He closed fast, looking to jam me into a corner. I sidestepped once, then again, as he pursued. I shot out a jab and narrowly ducked his answering hook. Two more jabs and a lot of backpedaling. Rénald shrugged off my punches and kept his smile. Shit. Little stings weren’t going to keep him off me.
He lunged, trying to grapple. I spun to the side and he grabbed my left arm with one hand. I put everything I had into a straight right, and it gave me an instant to tear myself from his grip. The crowd jeered. I feinted a kick and it didn’t fool him.
Rénald didn’t seem frustrated. He just inexorably closed the distance between us, confident that I’d run out of room, or luck. I was wary of kicking, knowing he was looking to catch my leg. If he got me on the ground, his weight advantage would make the rest of my night short and extremely painful. I was so busy making sure he didn’t trap me against the barricade that he nearly took my head off with a leaping left hand.
I kicked at his knee and threw a combination, not even trying for damage, just giving him distractions. He batted the punches away and lunged again. This time I was ready. I slipped to my right and stuck a knuckle-twisting jab into his throat, and stomped hard on his foot. His arm swatted me aside, almost lifting me off the ground, but he hissed with pain.
No grin anymore. Rénald came after me even faster, limping but very game. The crowd howled.
“Kill the fucker,” Bomba said. Behind him, Hinch was laughing.
The mound of basalt was behind me. I feinted and ducked, desperate for any edge. Rénald threw two fast hooks. The second connected and numbed my forearm. Any more of those and I wouldn’t be able to make a fist. He reached again. I slipped and turned, peppering jabs, feinting the same stomp, and when he drew his foot back in haste I spun and kicked his leg. The steel toe of my workboot speared him in the thigh muscle and he yelled.
Rénald punched me in the neck. I knew it was going to hit an instant before it did, but the knowledge did me no good. My head went as bright as the stadium lights. I was fairly sure I was moving my feet, but not certain. Where was he? The crowd howled. There. Coming straight at me, hands grasping.
I threw. Rénald barreled into me, as one of my desperate punches took him full in the nose. His rushing weight knocked me backward, toppling the barricade, and we both fell. Not as far as we should have. Rénald landed half on top of me. Something like claws tore into my back. We were on the mound of black basalt. I thrashed, almost swimming sideways in the sharp rocks. He had a grip on my arm. I punched and missed. I couldn’t get my feet under me. Neither could Rénald. The gravel rolled and shifted beneath us. Rénald clutched at me, for balance as much as leverage, and I grabbed his small fingers and bent them back until they snapped. He roared and tried to tackle me, to crush me into the rocks, but his lunge had no force on the unstable mound. Every small movement brought more rocks tumbling from the steep hill above us, in a slow steady avalanche. Rénald was up to his knees in it. I stayed nearly flat. Choking clouds of slate-colored dust enveloped us. The crowd sounded like a high wind, coming in straight off the plains and picking up speed.
Rénald’s meaty fist nailed my breastbone. The pain banished the last of the brain fog. I let the current of rolling basalt carry me lower, where I could roll onto solid ground. I tottered to my feet. Rénald was still struggling against the tide. I picked my way through the rocks, into his blind spot.
He knew what was coming, but couldn’t free his great weight from the consuming rocks to turn and meet me. I made it quick. One punch to his neck, in just about the same spot where he’d nearly put my lights out, and a whipping hook to his jaw that shuddered from my fist all the way down to my toes. Rénald wasn’t fully unconscious. He wasn’t even horizontal, with the gravel up to his thighs holding him erect. But he was done.
I staggered back over the toppled barricade and into the ring. The crowd was yelling, but I was more aware of the black sweat rolling down my face. I took in huge chest-popping gulps of air and looked for Fekkete. His baleful gaze met mine.
I hope I cost you a fucking mint, asshole.
Spectators were in the ring now, slapping me on the shoulder, raising my hand, helping Rénald get free. My bag. I turned to look at the hill of gravel. The bag was gone. Buried, with my keys and Corcoran’s tracker. It hadn’t been far from where Rénald and I had finished our fight. I pulled away from the fans and lurched back to the mound.
It cost me four minutes of digging and two raw hands to find where the bag had come to rest. At some point during our frantic scrambling Rénald or I had stepped on it. My phone was cracked. The tracker was completely destroyed, the rubber case torn and the interior works clogged with smoky grit.
Fekkete was gone. I saw Roddy in the ring, trying to make his way toward Rénald through the knots of spectators drunkenly reenacting the fight. I shoved men aside and grabbed him.
“Where’s Fekkete?” I said, lifting Roddy up onto his toes.
“Whoa, I got your money. Easy.” He fumbled for the bills and pressed them into my hand. “Good fight, okay?”
“What’s he drive?”
“Huh?”
I slapped him. Shook him alert. “Fekkete. What’s his car?”
“Fuck, man.” He flinched as my hand went up again. “It’s a Boxster! You know, a Porsh. A yellow one. Don’t hit me.”
I dropped Roddy and ran toward the parking lot. Fekkete might still be around. Maybe I could get the tracker onto his car, somehow, in the traffic jam getting out of here. Already a field of taillights glowed, as cars negotiated their slow trickle onto the access road.
Less than one day left in my deadline to deliver Fekkete. If I missed him here, the hunters might decide they had little use for me, or O’Hasson.
There. A glimpse of yellow in the waiting line, three hundred yards farther on. Close to the road. A car near it turned, headlights sweeping across, and I caught sight of the low-slung lines of the Porsche.
Too far to run. By the time I made it to the truck and worked my way through the traffic jam, Fekkete would be miles away.
“You were a good bet.” The motorcycle mama, cruising up from behind me on her Harley. “Still no shirt, too. Even better.”
“I’ll give you five hundred bucks to borrow your hog for ten minutes,” I said.
She looked nearly as stunned as Roddy had when I’d slapped him. “You what?”
“I have to catch that car. He owes me.” I held out the bills.
“Shit, cowboy.” She grinned at me, half-stoned and all sultry, before swinging a leg off her bike. “I’ll trust you for it.”
I slung my bag over my shoulder and climbed on. The softail surprised me, leaping forward at the first touch of the throttle. I was out of practice, and even when I’d drifted around the Southeast on bikes with other soldiers, I’d been used to smaller machines. I got the Harley steady and gunned it, racing down into and along the dry ditch, passing the cars in a burst of speed. Behind me, I heard the biker chick whoop encouragement.
The Porsche was gone. He’d already made it to the access road. Which way had he turned? I pulled right and let the engine do the work as the front tire caught the earth, and the Harley carved a path up the berm that separated the quarry from the road. Dirt and rocks flew in a spray behind the rear wheel. I nearly lost control as the bike shuddered up the uneven slope. Then I was over the crest and onto the grassy earth on the other side. There. A yellow streak flashed past. Fekkete had turned right, away from the steady stream headed for the freeway. The Harley hit pavement and I flew after him.
I caught a break. A four-way stop, half a mile farther on, where Fekkete had to wait for a sixteen-wheel tractor to lumber its slow way through the intersection. I took the bag off my shoulder as I pulled up alongside, and brought out the Smith & Wesson to aim it at his front tire.
“Let’s have that talk,” I said.
Fekkete tried to hit the gas, and stalled the engine. Not his night.
“You are sure that you can make O’Hasson do what you want?” Fekkete said, five minutes later. We had pulled over to the side, Fekkete still in his Boxster, me still on the Harley. “He will bring the gold? All of it?”
“Minus whatever he may have spent to hire muscle. That’s why I need you,” I said. “You protect me. I make sure he cooperates.”
His eyes narrowed. “But you don’t hire men yourself.”
“I don’t have money. That cash I made off you tonight is everything I got. And who would believe a crazy story about gold, except you?” I slapped the roof of the Porsche, friendly-like. “So I tried to steal from Pacific Pearl. My mistake. Water under the damn bridge. This way, you get half of it back, and I get my hands on O’Hasson. The little shit almost burned me alive.”
I didn’t need Fekkete’s cold stare to tell me he was already thinking about how to dispose of both me and O’Hasson once the gold was in sight.
“How will you do it?” he said.
In answer, I showed him a picture on the cracked screen of my phone. Cyndra O’Hasson, sitting expressionless with a copy of last Sunday’s Seattle Times in her lap. The chair she was sitting in was from Addy’s dining table.
“His child,” said Fekkete.
“You missed her in Reseda. I didn’t.”
He nodded. Almost happily. Maybe I really could make O’Hasson jump on command.
“I know a place to bring him,” he said.
“So do I. I’ll tell you where when it’s time for you to move. Not before.” I put the phone away. “No tricks.”
He nodded and gave me a chilly smile. Of course I would say that. Neither of us believed it for a moment, but it was nice to observe the formalities.