So what, then? They probably knew that Davey was still in the area, but no more than that. If they’d been close enough on his heels to know he was hiding inside the Christmas store, he’d never have had a chance to call me.
I slowed as I neared the next block and took a right off of Harvard. Letting the Cavalier glide, like I was looking for an open space. The Hill never has street parking, but everybody tries.
The car caught up to a lean guy with a black cap walking parallel. He turned and stepped closer, bending to try to peer in my window. A sharp, goateed face. Wet and angry. He wore a stiff-looking leather coat. I kept pretending to search for parking as I cruised past.
Three doors farther down was the Christmas store. Holiday Haus, it was called. Not that anyone was calling it much in early summer. The place was shuttered. Dead season.
I drove around the corner. A service alley ran the length of the long block, between the row of shops and the looming apartment buildings behind it. The alley was wide enough for trash trucks to drive through and empty the bins.
When the Cavalier was level with the alley, I stopped and turned off the headlights. The alley was well lit. I could see all the way down, maybe seventy-five yards to the other end. Nothing moved. The rain was a little harder now. Another minute passed.
Then someone leaned out of one of the doorways, three steps up from the pavement of the alley. Just a dark torso and head, like a silhouette target. The figure stayed there for a few seconds, looking at my idling Cavalier. Then it faded back into the doorway.
It could be somebody waiting to catch his ride to the early shift. Or grabbing a smoke in the alley because his girlfriend won’t let him light up in the apartment.
But I caught the same vibe from him as I had from the rat-faced guy out front. Way too edgy to be a citizen. Bad-asses, Davey had called them. Stone killers, for a few kilos of junk.
Fuck, this was not how I was supposed to be spending my graduation week.
It wasn’t too late to get the cops here. The precinct was barely ten blocks away.
But if the cops grilled Davey—and me—they might want to talk to Dono, too. Maybe even start wondering why he was out of town. Would the attention be a problem for him right now? What was he into?
I could handle it myself. Had to.
Okay. So look at it the way he would.
The first need, always, is an exit route. At least one open path that will stay clear. The Holiday Haus was only a third of the way down this side of the alley. It wasn’t too far to make a run for the car, if I could get Davey out of there.
Too many moving parts, Dono would say. One man whose location you know, another on the move. And maybe they had even called for help. Too many gears that might grind me up.
So improve the odds, boy. If you can’t simplify the situation for you, make it more complicated for them.
I put the Cavalier next to a fire hydrant and left the doors unlocked.
There was a small pile of broken cinder blocks against the apartment building wall by the alley. I leaned down and picked out a piece about half the size of a thick paperback. It had a good heft.
In the alley I jingled my keys and put the chunk of cinder block up to my ear, like it was my phone.
“Hey,” I said into the chunk, “it’s me. Just getting home.”
The silhouette was still standing in the apartment building’s doorway. I went up the stairs, sluggishly, fumbling at the keys.
“Fuck no,” I said, chuckling, “I’m not that drunk. Not yet.”
Up close the silhouette became a man, a jowly white guy around thirty with a blue parka and hair cut so short that most of his head was scalp. He leaned against a wall covered with a hundred flyers for bands and shows and furniture for sale. I nodded to him as I approached.
“Hang on,” I said into the chunk. I looked up at the guy. “Locked out?” I said.
He shook his head once, cheeks wagging, and turned his attention back up the alley.
I nodded understanding and went past him, still jingling the keys, and as I came to his blind spot, I spun and smacked him hard on the back of his bristly skull with the flat of the cinder-block chunk. He fell forward onto his knees. I hit him again, in the same spot, and he collapsed completely, face-first onto the landing. Blood spattered off the chunk onto his parka.
Oh, shit. I’d panicked and hit him way too hard. The hood of the parka had fallen over the side of his face like a shroud. I tugged it back to look at him.
Breathing. Maybe. I felt the side of his neck. Yeah. Definitely a pulse there, or maybe that hammering was all me. Then he exhaled, and his warm breath made a wisp of vapor in the night air.
My fingers on his neck were an inch above a thick line of ink. I pulled the parka back farther. The tattoo went down past his collar, some messed-up design of arrows and swastikas and the top half a couple of letters in Gothic script—NF.
I’d seen the art before. Nation’s Fist. A white-power bunch, mostly rural and definitely small-time, compared to the bigger supremacist gangs that made their trailer payments running drugs or guns in the Northwest. None of the Hitler lovers could push any real weight, not compared to the Mexicans or the newer Russian families.
But they were sure a shitload tougher than just Davey and me.
It wouldn’t be long before Rat-Face finished checking the front of the block. Would he stay out there? Or come back here to meet his buddy?
I quickly rummaged through the skinhead’s pockets. Not easily. He was two hundred pounds of deadweight lying facedown and wearing a thick parka. He had a cell phone, more like a walkie-talkie, and a bunch of random crap like candy and half-chewed toothpicks.
Stuffed into his waistband was a target pistol, a Ruger Standard. I could smell burned powder under the bite of the cold air. Probably the same gun that had shot Bobby Sessions. I’d never liked Bobby, but the sight of that gun made me feel a little better about hitting the skinhead with a brick.
I stuffed his walkie-talkie in my pocket. The gun was a tougher choice. I didn’t want to carry around a murder weapon. But I really didn’t want this asshole to wake up and come after Davey and me with it. I tore one of the flyers from the wall and wrapped the pistol’s grip to take it with me.
I glanced around. No movement up or down the alley. I took a deep breath and flew off the landing steps, running all the way to what I prayed was the right door for the Holiday Haus. It had no window and no knob on this side, just a spring lock. I had to peer closely to see that the door had been jimmied. I stuck my fingernails in the gap and pulled it open a few inches.
“Davey?” I said into the darkness inside.
A sudden rustle of movement. “Van?” His voice was so soft that I hardly heard it.
“Let’s go, damn it. Come on.”
“I can’t.” A whispered wail.
I swore to myself and slipped through the door, into the void. With the front windows shuttered, the shop had the devouring blackness of an underground cave. I didn’t dare move, in case I knocked over something large and noisy.
“What the fuck, man?” I said.
“Wait.” More rustling, and I realized that Davey was crawling closer to me. I knelt to meet him. The Ruger in its paper wrapping banged on the floor tiles, and I put it down. Fucking thing was cursed.
“We have to go, Davey. Now, while he’s still on the street.”
“Wait, goddamn it.” I could hear his palms slapping the floor as he crawled, but I still couldn’t see a thing.
I smelled something sharp. Piss. Davey had hosed down his pants.
“We have to run for it, D. Right now.”
“I can’t—” he said, and I reached out blindly and grabbed him. One of my hands caught him by his long hair. I clamped my other hand over his moaning mouth and shook him like a dog on a rat.
“You move, you moron, or I will leave you here. You understand? You want my help, you do what I fucking say.”
He stopped making noise and nodded
, over and over, until I let him go.
I felt for the knob of the door behind us. “We’re going right. Dono’s car is just up the street. Don’t look around, just run.” If Rat-Face was anywhere nearby, at least we’d be a moving target.
I swung the door open, and we exploded out into the alley. The electric lights were blinding after the pitch black of the shop. I squinted and kept going, hell-bent for the end of the alley. Davey’s footsteps behind me, fast and light. We sailed past the high landing where I’d conked the skinhead. I couldn’t see his body through the glare of lights and the blur of our run. We ran. Around the corner, sneakers skidding on the wet pavement, the Cavalier ten yards up by the fire hydrant and shining like dawn.
Then I was slammed sideways by a bullet train. I bounced hard off a parked car, reeling. Something smashed my ribs, and all the air was gone from the city, just like that. I was on my knees. Davey’s voice, then a cry of pain. Hands pulled me up, and I saw a big fist curled and ready, way up over my head. Bad. I ducked. The fist hit me on top of my skull, making a light that put all other lights to shame, and I heard another yelp. I fell back against the car and stayed there.
I saw Davey. He was on the ground, scrambling like a bug. The skinhead was lurching toward him, clutching his hand. I pushed at the car, seeing if I could stand. Yes.
The skinhead saw the movement and turned back to face me, slowly. The side of his head was dark with blood. Right. Because I’d hit him. No brick in my hand now. He lurched my way. I tried to get my fists up where they might do some good.
A wasp flew past my head with a snap. The skinhead and I both turned to see where it had come from. Rat-Face was running toward us, up the wet slope of the hill, twenty yards away. Another snap and flame spouted from the gun in his outstretched hand.
I threw myself toward the skinhead. We crashed together like exhausted linebackers and collapsed to the sidewalk as Rat-Face fired again. He was much closer now. I tensed. The next bullet would tear through my guts.
A shot sounded, then another. I looked up and saw Davey, still on the ground, sitting up with the skinhead’s Ruger in his hand. He fired over and over into Rat-Face, who was already sagging to the pavement. Somebody converted the Ruger for auto, Dono’s voice said. It’ll keep shooting as long as he holds the trigger down. Davey had a stranglehold on it.
The skinhead wasn’t moving. Hadn’t moved since we’d hit the ground together. Out cold again? In the flashes from Davey’s shots, I saw a little black hole in the skinhead’s face, just under his right eye. His other eye was open, unseeing. The tip of his tongue showed between his teeth.
I had to move. Up.
Davey’s hands were still around the Ruger and still pointing at Rat-Face’s limp form on the ground. The gun was empty, its breach locked open. I swatted it out of Davey’s hands. He had his driving gloves on. No fingerprints. I’d teased him about those dumb-ass things before, but right now they were better than money.
I hauled Davey to his feet and got us staggering toward the Cavalier. We leaned into each other.
I got the driver’s door open somehow and shoved Davey across the seats. He didn’t make a sound. A woman’s voice yelled from up on the apartment block, asking what the fuck was going on. I fell into the car, started the engine, and hit the gas so hard it took the tires two seconds of spinning and spraying rainwater to grab the road and launch us up the hill and away.
Leave the headlights off. I opened the windows to listen. No sirens that I could hear. Okay. We had a few minutes, maybe. Think. Two bodies on the ground behind us. We were seen. The Cavalier was seen. Somebody could have called in the license plate.
“Van,” Davey said.
“Shut up.” The Cavalier wasn’t in Dono’s name. If the plates were run they would match another owner of a Chevy in the same color or maybe even a false identity of Dono’s. Either way it was a dead end. If we could ditch it.
I could still get us out.
Davey had one hand on the dashboard, his forehead resting against his arm. “Holy shit. We made it. We’re alive.”
I rolled the windows back up and made myself ease off on the gas. We rolled up Pike. A block to our left, police cruisers flashing red and blue at the reservoir. They’d found Bobby.
“I shot that dude,” Davey said. “I thought he shot you, and I just—Oh, fuck me. I can’t believe it. Did you see?”
Although I really wanted Davey to shut up, maybe it was better that he talked. Vomit out all the words now. Because I was sure as shit counting on him to keep his mouth shut after tonight.
The best thing right now was to get off the streets. The Cavalier could stay hidden in the garage until Dono got back into town. Safest place. I’d calm Davey down and drop him at home. We could talk through this whole freaking night later.
“You want to hear something funny?” Davey said. He made a noise that was half whine, half laugh. “In the shop back there. When you grabbed me?”
“Yeah?”
“I thought you were Dono. I thought that you’d brought him along and I just hadn’t realized it before that moment. I would’ve sworn it was him. You scared me so much I forgot to be scared. You know?”
“Yeah.” I knew. I knew exactly how scary my grandfather could be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE SEATTLE CENTRAL LIBRARY was a busy place in late afternoon. I stood at the railing watching the crowd below streaming in and out of the doors off Fifth Avenue.
Above me a massive tidal wave of glass loomed. It started at the floor of the lobby and launched upward in a dizzying slope four stories high. The weight of it was oppressive, translucent or not. If it had all been made of concrete, people might have turned and fled back to the street, overwhelmed by claustrophobia.
I looked at my watch—16:45. I’d been waiting and checking out the crowd for two hours, fading back every time a patrol cop walked through the lobby.
Davey walked through the security scanners twenty minutes later, carrying a blue nylon duffel bag. Like most of the tourists, he did a double take at the menacing wall of glass. He wore a couple of layered T-shirts over the same tattered black jeans I’d seen the other night, and no coat.
He looked around and found the escalators I’d told him about—glowing lemon yellow neon—and then saw me standing above at the railing. At least he didn’t wave.
I scanned the crowd again. High-school and college students with laptops, mostly, and a few older folks reading magazines. Almost everyone, young or old, had on earbuds or headphones. It was a good place for a private conversation.
“You look like shit,” Davey said once he’d joined me at the top.
“Did you get into the house?”
He nodded, so jazzed he was almost bouncing. “I can’t believe that spare key is still there. It was so rusty I was afraid it was going to break off in the lock. Didn’t Dono ever notice the loose brick in the backyard?”
“Focus, Davey. Were the cops watching the place?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s why it took me so long. I had to go in through the back door.” He frowned. “But I got bad news, too. The truck is gone.”
“Gone how?”
“I looked where you told me. An empty space. I even checked the other levels in the garage, to make sure. It’s gone, man.”
The cops had been all over Pioneer Square. Guerin could have had them looking for Dono’s truck as well as for me.
If they had the truck, then they had Formes’s laptop and thumb drives already. I’d lost my wheels—and the Browning—but the silver lining was that SPD might already be trying to break Formes’s encryption. Guerin might be listening to the recording of Dono’s shooting within hours.
Davey handed me the blue duffel bag. I led him away from the balcony and the lounging patrons to a tunnel connecting the third floor with stairs leading up and down. The tunnel and stairs were painted a vibrant scarlet, walls and floor and ceiling. It was like being inside an artery.
I unzipped the du
ffel and looked in. Dono’s cell phones from his hidden compartment were on top of a pile of the old man’s clothes, along with his large ring of keys. The box of shells for the .32 was wedged against the side, along with my passport and papers.
“I always loved that little squirrel hole of your granddad’s,” Davey said. “So cool.”
“Thanks for this, Davey. You took a big chance.”
Davey fingered one of Dono’s shirts. “I hope these fit. I tried to find the largest stuff he had. So are you going to keep this up?”
“What?”
“The need-to-know crap. Come on, you ask me to put together what looks like an emergency-vacation kit for you. I don’t ask why. And I deliver. At least tell me what kind of shit you stepped in. I know you found a dead body—”
“Two bodies.”
His smile disappeared. “Somebody else? After that woman?”
I told him about the bugs and Julian Formes. And why I couldn’t let the police take me in, because after they were done, they’d hand me off to Captain Unser like a relay baton.
When I finished, Davey was staring at me as if I’d lit my hair on fire. “Fuck. I mean, goddamn, Van.”
“That’s why I want to keep you out of it. Too much heat.”
“Screw that.”
“What are you so pissed off about?” We were starting to attract curious glances from the people walking through the bloodred passageway. A couple of them were library personnel.
“I’m pissed because while all this is happening, I should have your back. While it’s happening, not just when you’re ready to skip town again.”
“I’m not skipping town.”
“I owe you. And fuck you, you owe me a chance to make it right.”
“You owe your family to stay out of jail.”
“Ten years, Van. You left and didn’t say a word. At least have the balls to admit you’re mad at me. I deserve that.”
Five minutes with Davey and we were arguing like we were teenagers again. I hefted the duffel. “You already helped with this.”
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