38 – Shoot out in Griffiths Park
A
click of keys or loose change gave the figure away, stiffening Mike as he
walked. He glanced back and saw someone slipping in and out of islands of
shadow on the park side of the street. The half-moon face illuminated briefly
by a light over the triangle.
He stopped. Los Feliz rose in an arch up from
Hollywood Boulevard, skirting the rocky foundation of Griffiths Park. The
streets of Hollywood hills rising from it, up the layers of the mountain to the
stilted houses and glass walls of L.A.'s jet set. The glowing eyes of each
house confused him. He hadn't intended to come this way, but had wandered up
and around by accident, seeking the least used avenues in which to think-- his
mind a jigsaw of illogical images: Tucson, his kid, the dope, the bust. Each
event clicking off one after another. Inevitable. Irreversible. Like some sort
of extended suicide.
Demetre bothered him most of all, a loose
screw in a delicate machine, capable of wrecking everything. Mike didn't
completely trust the man or his instincts as a cop. What would stop him from
finishing what he'd started?
Perhaps Mike had intended to hide in the park,
changing his mind when he thought of the muggers, perverts and bikers for which
he could be mistaken. The cops patrolled the place regularly.
His fingers brushed the hard handle of the
pistol in his belt. He studied his pursuer. The figure had stopped, too-- just
beyond the last string of lights on the upper curve. The shape of a flat-topped
Spanish-styled hat showed against those lights, like the ghost of Zorro who had
pranced these hills centuries earlier.
Sloppy, he thought. Mike could have killed the
figure with such a backdrop of lights. And yet the figure struck him as
professional in every other way, the movement as familiar to him as a twin's,
almost Indian in style. But the impatience ruined everything. The anxiety
obvious even from a distance.
Demetre?
No, too small and agile for his ilk.
But the sense of the hunt vibrated here. But
which hunter? Dan's Bobo? Or maybe Buckingham himself?
Did Buckingham know already of Mike's search?
Mike had meant to stop at the Free Press office on his way back from Demetre
but had forgotten.
He moved, this time quickly, his boots
clacking like horseshoes on the sidewalk. He stepped into the street, then
across it. No sense in trying to be cute. Vermont Avenue brought bright lights,
crossing Los Feliz then winding up into the hills. He turned up, ignoring the
broader street and its string of closed stores.
Plenty of places to hide down there, he
thought. But he no longer wanted shelter.
The climb hurt his stiff legs. Too many days
on the road. His muscles used to driving not climbing. Around him, a miniature
wilderness, low trees and shrubs marking the boundaries of rich people's
houses. Fancy cars snuggled into angled driveways like hibernating creatures.
Some rose sharply from the road. Others descended. The lights from each house
filtered through the leaves with snatches of music and laughter.
And below and beyond the houses, L.A.
stretched out like a sea of glittering stars. The beauty of it awed Mike, but
deeper inside, it reminded him of just how far humanity had spread its
over-populated disease.
Behind him, his pursuer followed, whispering
step lost in the party noises around him. Mike climbed more vigorously,
twisting with the road till it came back upon itself only higher up in the
mountain. Down through the trees and the breaks of houses, he could see patches
of road upon which he'd just come. He could see the ghost following in its leap
from shadow to shadow.
Yes, yes, keep coming, Mike thought. A little
higher up and he would have the fool.
After another compete twist in the road, he
saw the others. A clumsily moving mass of human flesh rising up along the
lowest loop behind Mike's ghosts. A full dozen moving figures who cared nothing
about noise, laughing and cursing, smashing bottles on the roadway.
Bikers!
Or pseudo-bikers. Mike couldn't tell from
here. Plenty of both came and went from the park. They seemed like a pack of
wolves following a trail. Mike's ghost noticed them, too, stopping abruptly to
stare back-- so alarmed as to have paused in a pool of light, verifying Mike's
earlier impression of Zorro.
The ghost seemed to draw a weapon.
Mike ran-- a deliberately loud run with boots
thudding the pavement and gravel. The sound carried back down the hill in
echoes. The head of the ghost jerked up and froze, seemingly unable to make up
its mind as to what action to take. Then, after a moment, it resumed chasing
Mike.
Farther down the loop chain, the bikers
howled, picking up their own pace for a more boisterous pursuit.
"Come back!" they shouted.
"We're not going to hurt you."
Mike's ghost picked up speed, abandoning its
previous care, running full tilt up hill.
Mike reached the crest of the hill and an
entrance to the park. It startled him. He'd forgotten how large a park
Griffiths was or that there were other ways into its tangle besides the long
green strip of land down near Los Feliz and Western. Two low concrete and stone
columns abutted the road with a veil of trees echoing them beyond, forming a
dark wall of darkness.
Images of the park came back to him. A Greek
theater. A bird sanctuary. A municipal nursery. The park even had its own
planetarium. But all did not sit close up on each other like things did in
Disneyland. From lower down, nearer Hollywood, he could have seen bits of them
over the lips of the trees, a bald head of a mountain rising up out of it, its
forehead marked with the famous white letters of Hollywood.
But he'd never come up into the park this way
and felt disoriented. The trees seemed to close him in.
The bikers shouted. The footsteps of the ghost
sounded louder, closer, drawing up in him the increased beat of his own heart.
The old excitement coming again. Like it did driving the trucks of dope over
the Mexican border. Like when he'd set the fuse to bomb a bank.
Beyond the entrance, the road curved with
soft, angled embankments rising to either side, thick enough with tree trunks
and underground to provide cover. He rushed up one side and into the shadows
where he stopped and crouched, his pistol out.
The ghost appeared an instant later, stopping
just as Mike had.
"Over here," Mike hissed, pushing
his hand out to wave the figure forward. The ghost did not hesitate, leaping up
the embankment as Mike had done. But the minute it reached cover, Mike grabbed
it, pushing his pistol under the brim of the hat.
"And why exactly were you...?" He
sputtered to a stop. Chris' broad face grinned up at him.
"Hello, Michael," she said softly.
"Fancy meeting you here."
The urge to pull the trigger surged in him.
Like a thoughtless impulse over which he had no control. But the pistol lowered
as he stared at his ex-wife and her disguise.
"Why are you following me?" he asked
sharply.
"I wanted to see where you were
going," Chris said and freed herself from his now-limp arms. "I saw
you wandering around Hollywood. You looked lost. I was afraid you'd get
yourself in trouble."
Mike's teeth ground together. It was her usual
logic, twisting things every so subtly.
"I would have been fine if you hadn't led
that pack of wolves up here," Mike growled.
A flicker of shame showed briefly in Chris'
eyes as she glanced back down towards the road. The grumble and laughter echoed
off the mountain side as the bikers advanced.
"They must have been lying in wait down
on Los Feliz," Chris said. "But I've got a gun, Michael."
"Which is likely to attract a police
patrol if you use it," Mike said.
"So? Do we run?"
"Not unless we want them tracking us all
night. I've got a better idea."
He led her out of the trees and back down to
the roadway, pausing at the edge where the shadow of trees formed a deeper pool
of darkness.
"Take out your pistol," he said.
Chris complied. The first of the gang appeared
around the curve. Shaggy figures stopping short as Chris and Mike stepped out
into the light with pistols raised.
"Just hold it right there," Mike
said in a tone of voice he himself had heard a thousand times. He needed no
badge for them to stop. "And what exactly are you people up to?"
"You the fuzz?" one of them asked.
"What do you think?"
"Well, we didn't mean nothing,"
another said. "We were just going up into the park."
"The park's closed after dark. Why don't
you go home?"
"Why don't you drop dead," a new
voice said, coming up behind the band of shaggy wolves, a shotgun in his hand.
"What's the matter, Mister Day? You don't remember me?"
Mike's stomach tightened. "Billy?"
"Good guess," Billy Night Rider
said, shoving people out of his way, his blond hair shimmering silver in the
dim light. "I heard you were in town. But what are you doing impersonating
a cop?"
"What are your hounds doing hunting
me?"
"Nobody was hunting you, Day. We were
hunting..." Bill leaned closer and squinted at Chris, then laughed.
"Well, I'll be! That's your Ex, isn't it? When did you two get back
together."
"We haven't. We just happen to be
here."
"Like Frank and Jesse happen to be
brothers. Bullshit. What are you up to?"
The hard eyes peered up at Mike from the soft
incline, the hunger and suspicion exactly the way Mike remembered it, waiting
with jealous anticipation for his own chance in the Big Time-- too mean for the
Hell's Angels. Too sane for the asylum.
"Nothing, damn it! Just leave us
alone!"
Billy's mean face grew meaner. "Maybe
somebody hired you, eh?" he asked, shifting his feet; his gang shifting,
too.
"Hired me? For what?"
"To help clear us out of town."
"What for?"
"To make it easy to take over."
Mike laughed. "Now who's full of shit,
Billy. I don't even like this town, let alone wanting exclusive rights to
it."
"Maybe you don't. But the man who hired
you might."
Mike squinted, trying to study the subtler
features of the man's bloated face. What was he saying? Who was he talking
about?
"And just exactly who do you think hired
me?"
"Do I have to name him?"
"You do if you don't want a bullet in
your head," Mike growled.
The big man's hands fiddled with the shotgun
while staring straight up at Mike-- the debate obvious in his eyes, timing out
his own reflexes, then with a sag, he seemed to decide not to risk it.
"Bobo," he muttered.
An immense wave of relief washed through Mike,
and he laughed, the echo of it carrying into the hills on either side of the
road. He wanted to hug the man for being so simple.
"I'm not associated with Bobo in the
least," Mike assured him. "Dan's looking to scalp the man, too. Go
talk to him."
"So that's what they were after,"
Billy mumbled.
"Then you saw them already?"
"They were around asking questions. But
so have others."
"Others?" Mike said with a note of
alarm. "Like who?"
Billy's broad face brightened as his eyes
became devious again. "Wouldn't you
like to know."
"Out with it, Billy," Mike said.
"I'm in no mood for games."
"People," Billy said. "I don't
know who all they were. Some in suits that might have been cops. Others who
looked like freaks who might have been cops, too."
"And what kind of questions were they
asking?"
This time, Billy's face went dark as he shook
his head from side to side. "Bad things, man. Talk about some character
named Buckingham."
The chill rose and fell inside Mike, but he
kept his face unaffected. "And what did you tell them?"
"What could I tell them when I didn't
know anything."
"You've never met Buckingham?"
"Hell no," Billy said, spitting
again. "And I don't intend to. From what I've heard he's nothing but bad
news. Killed some of my Frisco connections. Rumor has it he's on the warpath,
killing everyone who gets in his way."
"Warpath? You mean he's an Indian?"
Mike said, truly startled for the first time.
"That's what I've heard," Billy
said.
Stark images raced through Mike's head,
flashing of faces he'd seen, Indian activists he had known along the road, from
the crowd currently occupying Alcatraz to the throng that had waylaid them on
the road. But none seemed to fit the frame he had built for Buckingham in his
mind.
Something snapped. A branch maybe or a loose
piece of gravel farther up the road. His attention focused upon the low sound
and a different chill touched him.
They'd been careless, letting their voices
rise in a dangerous place. He glanced at Billy and the other man had noted the
sound, too, stiffening, his finger curling around the shotgun trigger.
Now, Mike heard the movement of feet and the
under-lying hum of several automobiles. The raspy whispered voice of a police
radio sounded somewhere in the mixture, confirming his suspicions.
Mike grabbed Chris' arm and leaped up the
embankment towards the trees. Billy motioned stiffly for his boys to move. But
the searing search light from up the road caught him full in its circle.
"Don't move," the voice behind the
light said.
The biker's shotgun boomed.
Out went the light.
"Get!" he screamed as more lights
rose and gunfire from the bikers took these out as well.
Mike sagged against a tree trunk, breathless,
the panorama of fighting before him like an illusion. He made out two police
cars, one up the road, the other down behind the gang. He could only guess the
number of cops, there weren't many. At least one had gone down with Billy's
initial blast. The other bikers had silenced those below, leaving only the
intermittent flashes of gunfire from under the upside car.
"Let's hope he doesn't get to a
radio," Mike muttered.
"No problem," Chris said, crouching
near him, her pistol balanced in the crook of her arm. She fired once. The
cop's answering flashes ceased.
Mike yelped and snatched the pistol out of her
hands. "Why the fuck did you do that?"
Chris looked hurt. "I thought that's what
you wanted, Michael."
"To kill a cop? No way! Leave that to
Billy's crowd. I'm not stupid. Those sons of bitches stick together. God! They
fry people in this state for less. Come on. Let's get the hell out of here
before all hell breaks loose."
He grabbed her hand and dragged her higher
into the hills, beyond the shield of trees into the rugged soil beyond, weeds
and dull grass and jutting teeth of stone. They could have been on the surface
of the moon.
Mike stopped.
"What's the matter now?" Chris
asked, still annoyed at his scolding, refusing to understand the fury with
which cops reacted.
"We're going the wrong way."
The great white letters spelling out Hollywood
loomed above them like some new generation Stonehenge.
"There's nothing up this way but
rock," he said. "We've got to get back down into the city and get
ourselves lost." There would be helicopters and dogs, and hundreds of
enraged uniformed men, beating the bush. "We have to go down."
"Fine," Chris said. "Lead
on."
Already sirens wailed the distance. Mike angled
southwest, back into the trees. The land formed a V before them, Vermont Canyon
yawned with the road winding along its rim. The red splash of approaching
police lights light up the road from Los Feliz like a false dawn. City and
county cops most likely, answering the call of fallen comrades.
Mike felt sick to his stomach.
"We have to cross the road," he
said, squinting to see the curved top of the planetarium on the west ridge.
"Otherwise, they'll cut us off."
"Then get on with it," Chris
growled, her dark face shimmering red with the sweat and lights, her eyes hard
the way they had been years earlier in Tucson.
Even here, the ground had become a scraggly
moonscape, opening up into sudden holes or drops as they descended. By the time
they reached the road, Mike's legs and ankles bled. He spat out the dust, but
it infected his lungs and eyes. He glanced to the left and saw evidence of the
battle scene farther down the road, now blistered with slashes of light and
whispering radios.
"I say we skip the climb and stick to the
road," Chris said, staring up the other side of the gully. "It comes
around the planetarium, too-- and we won't kill ourselves getting there."
"But we might wind up in a jail
cell," Mike mumbled, though felt no more like climbing than Chris did.
"All right. But let's be quick about it. God only knows what we're going
to do once we get there."
"We'll climb down into valley, of
course," Chris said, taking him by the arm in a burst of energy.
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