I hadn’t wanted to carry the sawed-off in my trunk for fear of getting caught, and lately it seemed as though being stopped was a daily thing, but now I was ready to take the risk. I had time enough to go home, get the shotgun, and still make the meeting. But one other thing first.
In my mind I replayed the voice on my cell phone—Duross’s, I was convinced. It told me things: that he’d known I had been at Travani’s house, that perhaps he’d come back and seen me. It told me that there was evidence, probably incriminating, or why risk going back? Most important, it told me that he had Nicole. He had no reason to kill her, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t. He had to be feeling desperate right now. I needed to let him believe that I had found something before the cops came.
The video store was a little mom-and-pop operation on Westford Street. I asked the clerk, an Indian or Pakistani woman, if she had blank videocassettes. When she finally understood me, she said she didn’t have any blanks. All right, I said, I wanted to buy one of her rentals.
“You don’t have member card?”
“I want to buy one,” I said. I had my wallet out and drew out a twenty.
After I made her understand, she took the money and asked me what I wanted. I said it didn’t matter. “Do you want Tom Cruise? He is very popular. Or Julia Roberts?”
As I hurried toward my car, a black SUV with a stainless steel push bar rolled up onto the curb, cutting me off and almost pinning me against the adjacent building. Louis Hackett got out of the passenger side. “I thought that was your heap,” he called. “Been looking for you.”
“I don’t have time right now.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I hope not. It’s the only one I have. I’m in a rush.”
“Yeah, to see me. I asked you nice, even warned you, but did you listen?”
The driver’s door opened, and Squisher Spritzer climbed out and walked around the back of the Toyota. Hackett said, “You know, Rasmussen, maybe it isn’t you, maybe you’re just some dumb prick who wandered into the sound stage and ruined the whole shot, and the director’s got to yell, ‘Cut!’ and waste a bunch of time getting everything set up again. Yeah, I really think that’s what it is—you’re a fuckup.”
“Look, I’ll meet with you—we’ll huddle, we’ll hondle, whatever you want—but it’s got to be later.”
He jabbed a finger into my chest. “You know, this is the kind of bullshit I hate.”
My face grew hot and there was a thumping throb in my head. I felt time slipping away from me.
“But it’s like that day on the river,” he went on, “when the restaurant owner knew someone was skimming, only he didn’t know who. Somebody’s got to be an example.” He looked at Squisher and made a sideways motion with his head. “I’m gonna cruise around the block.”
I opened my mouth to speak, and Squisher punched me. It was a short, straight blow that hit my chest like a pickup truck. It emptied my lungs. I staggered a few steps back on the sidewalk, dropping the videotape. He locked his arms down against mine, pinning them to my sides. He head-butted me, which touched off a blitz of light. My legs went gimpy He let go and stepped back, probably to let me drop. I didn’t. He saw the cassette lying there and stomped it with a snapping crunch, as if it were Julia Roberts’s fine-chiseled bones breaking—and mine next. I submarined
a punch to his gut. It was like hitting a slab of butcher block. He knocked my next swing aside and hit me again. I got my hands up, but he chopped me in the throat. I gagged. He rammed me back across the sidewalk. My head and elbow cracked hard against the brick wall of a building.
Pain. I was treading in foggy water, trying to keep afloat. He was so close that his feet were bumping mine, like a clumsy dance partner’s. I tried to raise an arm to push him back. My elbow felt like it had broken glass inside. He pressed nearer, squeezing with his thick arms. He was so close his face was a blur, pocked like a hazy moon. His cigar breath and cheap aftershave dizzied me. He could kill me. That quickly the thought came. There were no controls on the man; he would cripple me, or worse, as surely as he’d dropped a man into the Harlem River or mauled an opponent in the ring. Another moment and I’d have breathed my last. Already my vision was starting to speckle with light. I saw one chance to survive.
Bracing my shoulders on the wall, I jacked a knee up into his groin, hard as I could. His cheeks bulged bullfroglike and he gasped a chestful of breath into my face. I kneed him again. His eyes rolled and he shuffled back, a look of agony and surprise stamped on his face. He began to moan, as if the pain were starting to build. I’d have let it end there—I wasn’t out for torture, only survival—but I knew that if he came around, it was going to go worse for me. Pushing past the hot ache in my left elbow, I gripped his lapels, both hands clutching hard on the slick polyester fabric. I swung him around. I dropped my shoulder and drove him against the building. He hit it and bellowed like a bull. I pulled him toward me, more pain in my elbow He twisted in my grip as I started to slam him back. I missed the wall and we hit a plate glass window with a thump. A sign read MEMBERS ONLY: PLEASE SHOW ID. It was a health and fitness club, I saw. Beyond the reflection on the window, several women had quit whirling away on Exercycles and gaped out at us. Squisher reached for me, and I drove him back one more time. He went through the glass like a dump truck. There were screams. I reached in with my good arm and hauled Spritzer out. His coat was shredded, and there were speckles of blood staining the fabric.
My breath heaving, I eased him down on the sidewalk. “Can’t you read? Members only.”