64 – The Denver men again

 

 

The "We never close" sign blinked orange in the window, more prominent in the growing dark than the conventional Pioneer Market sign. Several cars had pulled up to the curb with people at the take-out counter. Sunset Boulevard traffic whirled by, despite the traffic light. Sinister figures in cut-off denim jackets leaned against the counter eyeing Mike and Dan as they cross the street from the park. Around their ankles, empty hamburger bags swirled like sage brush. Mike glanced back. Lights from distant traffic twinkled through the trees but no sign of pursuit.

 "Inside," he said, motioning Dan towards the double doors.

 Dan paused, studying the park's low wall and overflowing tree branches, both hands gripping pistols.

 Denver men! Here in L.A.!

 The chill of it ached in his bones. He felt giddy from it, and strangely relieved, as if the burden of expectation had been lifted from his shoulders. He could quit worrying about when it would happen and happily die.

 Though now he had to wonder how they'd found him-- perhaps as part of some more devilish scheme the way Marie's father's men had been, a distraction thrown into the mix to keep things interesting.

 "Dan!" Mike hissed again. "Get inside."

 Dan nodded, the right-hand door sticking as he pushed on it. The narrow aisles greeted him with anxious Chicanos and stoned hippies, all looking at the pistols in his hands-- each fully expecting the obvious, frowning when Dan and Mike pushed passed them up the aisle.

 "We've got to get away from the windows," Mike said, pushing on, passed tin-can displays of spanish vegetables and bags of beans and rice. Back to the rear frozen food case.

 "Who knew it would come to this?" Dan said head swirling with inappropriate humor. "Dying with the frozen fish."

 "Shut up," Mike growled, crouched behind a stack of cans, eyeing the front door.

 Outside, on the other side of the grease-stained glass, the Denver men in their grey suits came to a halt. They peered in. Dan stiffened and lifted one of his pistols. Mike knocked it down.

 "Don't," he whispered. "They haven't seen us yet."

 "Why give them a chance?" Dan asked. "They're only going to kill me when they do."

 "Or move on without us," Mike said. "Around here, one hippie looks just like another to them. Take off the hat."

 "What?"

 Mike grabbed it and shoved it into the frozen case. It pressed against the glass like some exotic fish, brown and crumpled. The men stared back at Mike. Dan sagged, the pistols down into a bin of walnuts. He looked stoned with his eyes closed. But the stare of the men moved on, and after a moment, both vanished back into the night.

 "Oh God!" Dan moaned and leaned back against the glass.

 "Now I wish we had the van," Mike said. "It's a long walk around the park back to Dale's. I wonder where Bobo and Lance got off to."

 "Probably the loony bin with the way Lance was acting," Dan mumbled, recovering some of his color, though he made no move to recover his hat. "I thought the cops were going to hop all over us when he screamed."

 "They should have. Some of them started to. But I think Demetre's holding them back to see if Buckingham's here in his net. He doesn't care anything about us little fish right now."

 "Was Buckingham there?"

 Yeah, Buckingham was there. Floating out in the dark. Mike felt him the way one twin felt another. As if it was his own reflection showing in the water as he walked. Part of him. Inside and outside his head. He wanted to shake the feeling off, but couldn't. It had already wrapped itself around him like a shroud.

 "I think he's watching the store," Mike said. Like a cat. Playing with his victims before devouring them.

 "So what do we do?" Dan asked, lifting his weapons again like the useless claws to an already crippled lobster. "We can't stay here all night.

 "You're right. But we're rested now. And less panicked. Maybe we can think our way out of here."

 "Can thinking stop bullets."

 "We'll stay out of the park and take the long way around. Down Alvardo to Beverly, then cut back towards the park to Dale's. If that doesn't confuse the son of a bitch, nothing will."

 "That'll take an hour," Dan protested.

 "At least, and by then, things should have calmed down a bit. Cops get bored easy when nothing's happening."

 "Sure," Dan mumbled. "But Demetre's bound to think I screwed him over."

 "Better that than Buckingham thinking we set him up."

 "All right, all right," Dan said. "Let's get on with it. I'm not fond of walking this neighborhood after dark..."

 Mike took a deep breath and nodded, pushing up the narrow aisle, feeling the odd tingle again, ignoring it-- his senses were confused by the night and its accumulated dangers. And yet... he hesitated at the door.

 The spanish clerk eyed him suspiciously. "Hey man, what you steal, eh?" The man grabbed Mike's arm.

 "Calm down, Chico," Dan said, shoving the man out of the way. "We're not shoplifters..."

 The first shot shattered the glass doors. And Dan's head jerked up to look, only to catch the second shot full in the chest, his spine blown out the back of him in a spray of blood and flesh.

 Mike wheeled around and fired twice, catching one of the suited men in mid-charge. A third shot aimed at Mike went wild, pinging off tin cans like a furious bee.

 The other man's footsteps clicked along the sidewalk as he ran. Mike didn't pursue, but knelt down beside Dan who had crumbled to the floor.

 The clerk stared down in frozen horror, then let out a yelp and a string of Spanish. Mike paid no attention, even as the man ran for the phone.

 "Dan?" he said.

 The figure on the floor squirmed but didn't answer, coughing up blood in the process of speech. But if there had been words attached to the action, they died with the blood.

 "Damn you, Dan," Mike growled. "Didn't I tell you to be careful?"

 A thousand times. Here and in New York. But Dan had never been the kind to take advise, from friends or doctors. At least now, he wouldn't die of disease. Mike let the man's head down gently. There was no time to grieve. Later, when everything got straightened out. When Buckingham was found and disposed of. When he could think. Now the shots would only have attracted attention. Police attention. And Buckingham's. Out there in the dark, people made decisions, undercover cops leaping up at Demetre's command to find out what had happened, to close in on this spot in the mistaken presumption they had snared their man. Meanwhile, the ghost would head away, out from the circle. But to where?

 Dale's?

 That seemed to closest refuge now. And possibly the only place where Buckingham could have hidden over the last few weeks, paying for invisibility in drugs. Perhaps the man had disguised himself as a true believer, slipping away while the others partied.

 It was also the place to which Bobo would run upon hearing the shots, no doubt thinking to cut off the villain's retreat and eke revenge of his own.

 Somewhere between here and there, Buckingham would see him, Buckingham's instincts warning him of the danger the way Mike's instincts would have warned him.

 Bobo had to be stopped. No time for the indirect route around the park. Mike would have to chance slipping through the closing net of police. He re-gripped the sweaty handle of his pistol and plunged out the shattered glass door.

 "Don't move!" Demetre shouted, stepping out from the shadows of the park gate, a shotgun leveled at Mike's chest.

 Mike staggered back, staring at the enraged black face moving towards him. Buckingham? Maybe there had been some validity to Dan's theory. Maybe Demetre had lied all along. And yet, it still didn't come together in Mike's head. Demetre had had opportunities to kill Mike. Times alone where no one would have known the better.

 Instinct and logic said Demetre was not Buckingham, and instinct was all Mike had at the moment.

 "Don't stop me, Demetre," Mike warned. "People's lives are on the line here."

 "You mean like this fellow's?" Demetre asked, pointing towards the fallen Drug company man with the barrel of the shotgun.

 "No, more like the man back inside the store," Mike said.

 Demetre glanced around Mike as other cops arrived, cops in hippie clothes and tourist clothes, and suits straight out of Brooks Brothers. The tall black cop's expression tightened, emphasizing his scar.

 "That's Newhaul, isn't it?"

 Mike nodded.

 "You shoot him?"

 "No way," Mike growled. "That asshole did." He jabbed his own weapon at the dead man on the sidewalk. "There was another asshole just like him, but he got away."

 "No he didn't," Demetre said. "We snatched him. And now we got you."

 "But you don't have Buckingham," Mike said. "And if you don't let me go, Buckingham's going to have a few more victims to brag about."

 Mike's voice sounded strange, much like the pleading voice that had asked a judge to spare him his kid, that had begged for a chance at a normal life, that had cried later from the rooftops of Detroit when Demetre had snatched them away again.

 Demetre's shotgun lowered. "All right," he said. "My car's around the corner."

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