Breakdown - [Nameless Detective 19]

by By Bill Pronzini

  He turned tail and ran.

  I would have caught him in the first twenty yards but I slipped on the wet pavement, ricocheted off a parked car and down to one knee. By the time I got my feet under me again he had opened up a thirty-yard lead. He ran in a loose-jointed zigzag fueled by terror, throwing wild looks over his shoulder as he pounded across the streetcar tracks and out onto 48th. Beyond, on the Great Highway, the vague lights of an oncoming car sliced through the fog from the north. If Vega saw the lights he misjudged the nearness of the car; he barreled up across the landscaped median strip between 48th and the highway, kept right on going under the furry red don’t walk signal.

  Squeal of brakes, long angry horn blast, the headlights pinning him for a second, then veering away as the car swerved. The front bumper hit him, but the car was almost stopped by then and it didn’t knock him down. He bounced off in a kind of lurching pirouette, stayed on his feet, and plunged upward along the wide sandy path that led to Ocean Beach.

  I lost sight of him for a few seconds; the fog had him in a tight gray embrace. As I pelted across the median strip, the car frog-hopped ahead through the crosswalk and stalled. I ran around behind it. The engine roared just as I cleared the fender, and the pavement took a skin of rubber off screaming tires; the driver did not want any part of Vega or me or our trouble.

  When I came up onto the sandy trail I saw Vega again through rents in the mist, slogging upward less than twenty yards away. The sand was wet but not hard-packed and he couldn’t generate any speed. Neither could I, after another few strides along the path. But I seemed to be gaining on him anyway.

  Over the pound of blood in my head I could hear the breakers for the first time—a dull muffled roar punctuated by the rasp of my breathing and the whisper and grind of my shoes digging into the sand. Years since I’d been to this section of Ocean Beach, before the sewer project began, but they couldn’t have widened or altered the shape of it much: low dunes flanking the trail here, stretching out parallel to the Great Highway; from the dunes to the waterline, fifty yards of flat, sandy beach . . . nothing on it but driftwood and sand dollars, dog crap and human litter. There was no place for him to go or hide out there. If I didn’t lose him in the fog . . .

  Now he was up to where the trail crested and then dropped down to the flat part of the beach. The mist was thick here, eddying close to the ground and as wet as rain; I had to keep swiping at my eyes to clear moisture out of them. At that I saw him only in disjointed glimpses, as if he were a figure in one of those flickery early silent films.

  Ten yards separated us now. He threw another look over his shoulder, and when he saw how close I was, panic drove him sideways over the waist-high chain link fence that bordered the path. On hands and knees he scrambled through ice plant and tule grass, up the side of the nearest dune.

  I vaulted the fence in an awkward twisting motion, came down wrong and sprawled out on my face in a clump of ice plant. Its slick, wet, swollen leaves had the feel of a dead man’s fingers. I clawed up through it, getting my legs under me. Vega was almost to the top of the dune, but when he caught hold of a clump of grass to pull himself the rest of the way, it tore free in his hand and he slid partway back down. That gave me just enough time to get a hand on his ankle. He flailed wildly with his feet, kicked free, managed to pitch his body over the top of the dune. But I was still right behind him, digging hard into the sand. When I came up over the top he was scrabbling through a shallow depression to the base of the next dune. He wasn’t going to have enough time to climb that one and he knew it; he twisted around so that he was on his back, facing me with his legs and arms up like a cat in fighting position.

  I threw myself at him. One of his knees dug into my belly, made me grunt in pain, and he shoved me off with enough force to roll me over. Wet sand got into my open mouth, down into my throat; I gagged, spat, shook my head as I scraped back onto my knees. He was right there, trying awkwardly to kick me in the head. I went at him again, knocked him backward. But I could not get my body on his, could not find enough leverage for a solid blow.

  We punched at each other, squirming and sliding around. Neither of us did any damage. He kept screaming at me the entire time, garbled Mexican obscenities in a gasping voice soaked in fear. He thought he was fighting for his life. Maybe he was. The rage in me was as black and merciless as death.

  The skirmish seemed to go on and on, like that dream where you’re trying to run away from something, or toward something, and you can’t move your arms and legs except in a dragging way that is savagely frustrating. It couldn’t have lasted more than a minute; it seemed ten times that long. We might have kept it up to the point of exhaustion if I hadn’t failed to protect my head after a wild swing. A handful of flung sand caught me full in the face and for a few seconds I went blind.

  I reared away, pulling in on myself like a turtle while I struggled to clear my vision. But he didn’t press his advantage. Instead I heard him going away from me . . . flight, not fight. Through stinging eyes I looked for him, didn’t see him. But I could hear him—down now, not up. Then I knew where he was.

  I scrambled across the width of the depression, came up at the edge of the slope that dropped off to the flat part of the beach. Fog roiled around down at the bottom, making Vega seem two-dimensional, wraithlike, as he got his feet under him. He looked up once to where I was and then began to run toward the hidden surf.

  I threw myself over the edge, half-slid and half-rolled down the incline. By the time I fetched up at the bottom, he had disappeared. I ran staggering in the direction he’d gone. Ran blindly, waving my arms in front of me in a witless effort to tear away more of the mist. There was pain in my chest now and I couldn’t seem to take in enough air.

  The ocean’s thunder grew louder, the sand underfoot a little more firmly packed: I was nearing the waterline. Icy wind, thick with the smell and taste of salt, burned my cheeks and numbed my bare hands. Another ten feet and the fog parted enough so that I could make out the surf foaming up white over the sand, the waves riding high and angry before they broke. Vega wasn’t anywhere in the fifteen-yard stretch visible ahead.

  Which way, left or right? I started left, but to the right a gap like a doorway swirled open in the mist and I thought I saw something moving over that way. I changed direction, lurching badly now because each step sent splinters of pain up into my crotch. Ten feet, fifteen . . . and there he was, just out of reach of the frothy tongues of surf. Not running anymore; down on hands and knees, crawling through a scatter of flotsam and jetsam.

  I plowed toward him, swiping at my eyes to keep him in focus. He heard me coming. Pulled himself around and then, when I was only half a dozen strides away, heaved staggering to his feet. He had something long and dark and bulky in one hand—

  Piece of driftwood, watch out

  —and I broke off to one side an instant before he sprang at me, swinging the driftwood club at my head. I heard the rush of it going past close; heard him grunt and curse. The unchecked thrust had put him off balance. I twisted back, down to one knee, and pitched myself at his legs. My shoulder caught him a glancing blow over one knee, sent him spinning away into the surf.

  I made it to my feet, saw him trying to do the same. A wave broke against the backs of his legs and toppled him again. Without hesitation I went out there after him.

  It was like wading into Arctic waters. The surf boiled around my ankles; the sand shifted under my feet, so that I had to flap my arms to maintain balance. There was a treacherous undertow along here; if you got caught in it it would drag you straight out to sea. Vega fought free of its pull before I reached him, came all the way up shaking his head and blowing like a sea lion. He still had the piece of driftwood clenched in his hand. As soon as he located me he lunged, arm upraised—and another wave smacked him, a big one this time, and hurled him past me and then knocked me tumbling after him.

  Salt water poured into my mouth and throat and took my breath away. The churning surf
roughed me this way and that before it finally let me go. I flopped over, fighting for air, and dug my hands into the running sand to keep from being dragged backward. I couldn’t get my legs under me before the next wave broke; instead I scuttled forward crablike, so that when the surf foamed around me again I was far enough up on the beach to avoid being submerged. When that wave receded I crawled another few feet, lay still in a pile of slimy seaweed, gasping and coughing water out of my lungs.

  Vega, I thought then, and rolled over, tensing, ready to fend him off another time. But he wasn’t anywhere near me. I didn’t see him at all until another breaker finished punishing the beach; then I spotted him, all humped and bobbing like some sort of sea creature. When the surf released him he made little trembly movements but didn’t try to get up. Hurt? Or faking it? No, he’d been too wrought up to think of clever games, particularly when he was being thrown around by an angry sea.

  I stood—and fell right back down again; my legs felt numb and wood-block heavy. I crawled partway to where he was, held myself in place as another wave mauled him, then tried again to stand. This time I was able to keep my feet. Another wave surged and ebbed. I let the receding water pull me along, leaned down and got hold of his jacket collar and started to drag him inland. The next wave and the shifting sand threw me down but it didn’t make me lose my grip on Vega’s collar. I got up and kept on dragging him. Maintained my balance somehow when the next one splashed down and kept right on dragging him until my legs gave out on firmer sand.

  I sat there shivering, sobbing a little from exhaustion. Thinking—when I could think clearly again—that I was lucky not to be dead. Not by Vega’s hand; from a stroke or a heart attack. Fifty-eight years old . . . you can’t punish your body this way at my age and expect it to keep chugging along in fine shape. The pain was still there in my chest, a tightness with a little pulsating core. Not out of the woods yet . . .

  When I had enough strength I crawled over next to Vega and pushed him onto his back. He was alive but not conscious, his face twisted into a grimace of pain; I could see his chest moving, hear strangulated sounds in his throat. Swallowed water, I thought, and I turned him on his side again so he wouldn’t suffocate on it. He quit making the choking sound; water dribbled out of his mouth. But his breathing stayed irregular, and when I felt his pulse it was weak. Hurt when the wave knocked him down and pummeled him . . . but in the dark I couldn’t tell where or how badly. Chances were he needed medical attention, and soon, before pneumonia set in.

  Let the son of a bitch die, I thought.

  No, I thought, no. The rage was seeping out of me now, and along with it the scum of bloodlust. There was nothing more Vega could do to me. He wasn’t my real enemy anyway; he was just a soldier, a weapon primed and aimed by a general behind the lines. The general was my real enemy. And the general had to be Coleman Lujack. How else would Vega have known where to set up in ambush for me? Nobody other than Glickman and the Lujacks had been told about my undercover work at the Hideaway. Ithad to be Coleman.

  I was shivering badly now: move or run the risk of catching pneumonia myself. I got up slow, stayed up, but my legs trembled with weakness. And even though the chest pain had finally eased, my breathing was still labored and short. There was no way I could carry Vega from here to the Great Highway. Leave him where he lay, then; no other choice. I put my back to him, smudged him out of my mind, and set off through the clinging sand.

  I don’t know how long it took me to find the trail and climb off the beach. I don’t know how many times I fell and got up again. Fatigue and the shroud of fog robbed me of any sense of time or distance. At first, when I neared the dunes, I couldn’t find the path; I slogged south along the base of them and there it was. Then I didn’t have enough strength left in my legs to walk all the way up the incline, and I had to crawl the last ten yards or so to where the trail crested. I stayed there on all fours, peering over toward Taraval.

  An L Taraval streetcar was sitting at the line’s terminus, an oasis of light in the mist. But there were no police cars, no activity of any kind. The disarming of Vega, the foot chase, had gone unnoticed by anyone except the driver of the car that had almost hit Vega, and like most urban dwellers these days, he’d chosen to pretend it had never happened.

  I waited until the streetcar moved up past the Hideaway before I stood again. I walked down to the bicycle path that flanked the Great Highway on this side, turned onto it. Nearby was one of the old beachfront convenience stations, locked at night these days because of vandals. I leaned against its wall, resting, while a car pulled up to the curb on 48th and somebody got out and went into one of the buildings. Then I crossed the highway, crossed 48th into Taraval—all in a gait as tanglefooted as a drunk’s.

  I had dropped my keys when I took the revolver away from Vega, but I did not have to hunt for them; they were lying right there in the street and I stepped on them when I walked up alongside the car. With the key ring in hand, I fumbled around under the car and found the gun—lightweight belly-gun, from the feel of it. I had to use the door handle to haul myself up so I could unlock the door. Then I collapsed inside.

  For a couple of minutes I sat with the engine running and the heater on high, rubbing my hands and face dry with the car blanket. The gun I locked away in the dash compartment. The mobile phone then: 911, a terse message in a voice that didn’t sound like mine, telling the Emergency Services operator where Vega was and that he might be badly injured, and a fast disconnect when the operator asked my name.

  It would take the paramedics and the first police car not much more than five minutes to get here, which didn’t leave me enough time to hunt up Vega’s Buick and search it. Just as well; I was in no shape to do any more shambling around on the street, and I had already used up most of my allotment of luck. Wasn’t likely there’d be anything incriminating in his car anyway.

  I put mine in gear and headed home to do more battle, this time with my own private demons.

  * * * *

  Chapter 16

  You think you know, based on past experience, exactly how your mind and body will react to a certain set of stimuli —but you’re not always right. The subconscious has its own perversities. I thought that when I was alone in my flat the episode with Vega would trigger another anxiety attack, or at least an edgy and mostly sleepless night. I thought that Saturday, when it finally came, would be one of the now-rare bad days—and that I would have to spend part of it wiring myself back together again.

  None of that happened. I soaked in a hot bath for an hour with no slippage of calm, I took some aspirin and nonprescription cold capsules, I went to bed and to sleep right away —such a deep, exhausted sleep that I neither dreamed nor woke up until an hour past dawn. And when I awoke I felt all right: a little shaky, my limbs full of aches and sharp pains, my chest tender and my breathing scratchy, but with my mind clear and my nerves at ease. I didn’t even have a runny nose from the wetting in the ocean.

  I put myself through my normal routine of exercises, a half hour’s worth, taking it slow at first until cramped muscles relaxed and the stiffness and shakiness were gone. A shower and two cups of coffee used up another half hour. By eight thirty I was dressed and on my way out of there.

  No more pussyfooting around, not after last night. Coleman Lujack and I were going to have it out.

  * * * *

  First stop: Containers, Inc. Coleman’s Imperial wasn’t on the lot; neither was anybody else’s car. The factory was shut down as usual for the weekend.

  All right.

  I drove back to 101 and headed south toward Burlingame.

  * * * *

  Just North of the airport exit, the mobile phone buzzed. When I picked up, Eberhardt’s voice said, “Yeah, I figured you’d be on the move already. Where are you?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m asking you, that’s why.” There was an edge to the words. “Where?”

  “Down the Peninsula. On the way to see Coleman Lujack.�
��

  “What for?”

  “Ask him some questions.”

  “About Rafael Vega, maybe?” he said.

  “Among others. Why? Something about Vega?”

  “You don’t know, huh?”

  “No. What should I know?”

  “You go to the Hideaway last night?”

  “Yeah, I was there.”

  “Anything happen? Say between ten and eleven?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Vega, goddamn it. You have a run-in with him?”

  “What’s this all about, Eb?”

  “Vega’s in the hospital,” he said. “Found on Ocean Beach last night, half-drowned, with a concussion and a couple of compressed vertebrae in his neck. Somebody put in an anonymous call, told Emergency Services where to find him.”