49 – Venice
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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