The Judas Goat s-5

by Robert B. Parker

  He nodded, reversed his hands on the shotgun and swung it like a baseball bat. He hit Paul across the base of the skull with the stock of the shotgun, and Paul went down without a sound. Zachary fired at me and missed, and I chopped at his gun hand with the barrel of try gun. I missed, but it caused him to jerk his arm and he missed again at close range. I tried to get my gun up against him so I could shoot without hitting anyone else, and he twisted it away from me with his left hand and it clattered on the floor. I grabbed onto his right with both hands and pushed the gun away from me.

  Hawk hit him with the shotgun but Zachary hunched his shoulders and Hawk hit him too low, catching the massed-up trapezius muscles. While I hung onto his right arm Zachary half spun and caught Hawk with the left arm, like the boom coming across on a sailboat, and sent him and the shotgun in different directions. While he was distracted I was able to get his grip loosened on the pistol. It was the strength of both my hands against his fingers and I almost lost. I twisted his forefinger back as hard as I could and the automatic hit the cement floor.

  Zachary grunted and folded me in against him with his right arm. He brought the left one around too, but before he could close it around me Hawk was back up and got hold of it. I butted Zachary under the nose and then twisted down and away. He flung Hawk from him again, and as he did I rolled away from him and back up on my feet.

  There were a lot of people around now and I heard someone yelling about police and there was a kind of murmurous babble of fright in different languages. Zachary had backed a couple of steps away from us, against the wall, Hawk was to his right and I was to his left in a ring of people milling about. Zachary’s breath was heavy and there was sweat on his face. To my right I could see Hawk moving into the boxer’s shuffle that I’d seen him use before. There was a bruise swelling along the cheekbone under his right eye. His face was shiny and bright and he was smiling. His breath was quiet, and his hands moved slightly in front of him, chest-high. He was whistling almost inaudibly through his teeth, “Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me.”

  Zachary looked at Hawk, then at me. I realized I was in almost the same stance Hawk was in. Zachary looked back at Hawk. At me. At Hawk. Time was with us. If we held him there, in a little while there would be cops and guns and he knew it. He looked at me again. Then took a breath.

  “Hawk,” I said. And Zachary charged. Hawk and I both grabbed at him and bounced off, Hawk from his right shoulder, me off his left thigh: I had tried to get low but he was quicker than he should have been and I didn’t get down low enough fast enough. The milling crowd scattered like pigeons, swooping aside and settling back as Zachary burst through them, heading for the ramp. I tasted blood in my mouth as I got up, and Hawk’s nose seemed to be bleeding.

  We went after Zachary. He was pounding down the ramp ahead of us. Hawk said to me, “We can catch him okay, but what we gonna do with him?”

  “No more Mr. Nice Guy,” I said. My lip was puffing and it was hard to speak clearly. We were out of the stadium now, past two startled ushers and running along the outside terrace that led down to the eating and concession areas.

  Zachary went down the stairs two at a time at the end of the terrace. He was agile and very fast for a guy the size of a drive-in movie. He cut left at the bottom of the stairs toward the swimming and diving building. I put a hand,on the railing and vaulted over the retaining wall and landed on him eight feet below. My weight hitting him made him stumble forward, and we both sprawled on the concrete. I had one hand locked around his neck as we hit, but he rolled over on top of me and tore loose. Hawk came around the corner of the stairs and kicked Zachary in the side of the head as he started to get up. It didn’t stop him. He was on his feet and running. Hawk hit him with a right hook in the throat and Zachary grunted and ran over Hawk and kept going. Hawk and I looked at each other on the ground.

  I said, “You may have to turn in your big red S.”

  “He can run,” Hawk said, “but he can’t hide,” and we went after him. Past the swimming arena Zachary turned right up a long steady hill toward the park that spread out around that end of the stadium complex.

  “The hill’s gonna kill him,” I said to Hawk.

  “Ain’t doing me that goddamned much good either,” Hawk said. But his breathing was still easy and he still moved like a series of springs.

  “Three hundred pounds moving uphill is going to hurt. He’ll be tired when we catch him.”

  Ahead of us Zachary churned on. Even at fifty yards we could see the sweat soaked through his striped shirt. Mine was wet too. I glanced down as I ran. It was wet with blood that must be running from my cut lip. I looked at Hawk. The lower half of his face was covered with blood and his shirt was spattered too. One eye had started to close.

  We began to close. All the years of jogging, three, four, five miles a day, was staying with me. The legs felt good, my breath was coming easy and as the sweat began to come it seemed to make everything go smoother. There weren’t many people here. And the ones we saw didn’t register. The running got hypnotic as we pressed after Zachary. A steady rhythm of our feet, the swing of our arms, Hawk’s feet were almost soundless as they hit the ground going up the long hill. Near the top we were right behind Zachary and at the top he stopped, his chest heaving, his breath rasping in his damaged throat, the sweat running on his face. Slightly ahead of us, slightly above, with the sun behind him, he stood and waited, high and huge, as if he had risen on his hind legs. We had bayed him.

  28

  Hawk and I slowed and stopped about five feet away. Two athletes, a man and a woman, were jogging and they stopped a short distance away and stared.

  Hawk moved to Zachary’s right. Zachary turned slightly toward him, I moved a little more to his left. He turned back. Hawk moved closer. He turned slightly toward Hawk and I edged in. Zachary made a grunting sound. Maybe he was trying to speak. But it came out a kind of snarling grunt. He took a step toward me and Hawk stepped in and hit him again in the throat.

  Zachary croaked and swung at Hawk. Hawk had moved out of reach and I was inside of Zachary’s arm hitting him in the body, left, right, left, right. It was like working on the heavy bag. He croaked again and squeezed his arms around me. When he did, Hawk was behind him, hitting him in the kidneys, left hook, right hook, the punches thudded home without any seeming effect. He squeezed harder. He was going to do me in, then turn at Hawk. I chopped both hands in along the edge of his jawline, where his head joined his neck. He squeezed harder. I was beginning to see spots. I put both hands under his chin and pressed my back against his grasp, pushing his head back very slowly. Hawk stepped around and, one finger at a time, began to pry his hands loose from each other. The grip broke, and I pushed free.

  Hawk hit him with a combination left jab, right hook right on the chin. It snapped Zachary’s head back but that’s all. Hawk stepped out away from Zachary, shaking his right hand. As he did, Zachary caught him with the back of his right hand and Hawk went down.

  I kicked Zachary in the groin. He half turned and I half missed, but he grunted with the pain. Hawk scrambled away and got to his feet. He was covered with blood and so was Zachary. We were all bleeding now and smeared with each other’s blood. Zachary was breathing hard. He seemed to be having trouble, as if his throat were closing where Hawk had caught him earlier. In the distance was a siren but no one was where we were.

  Hawk circled in at Zachary, bobbing a little. “Nigger,” Zachary rasped. He spit at Hawk. I circled the other way. We kept narrowing the circle. Finally we were too close. Zachary got hold of Hawk. I jumped on Zachary’s back and tried to set a full nelson. He was too big and too strong. He broke it on me before I could set it, but Hawk got loose and pounded two more punches into Zachary’s throat. Zachary grunted in pain.

  I was still on his back. We were both slippery with sweat now, and blood, and rancid with body odor and exhaustion. I got one arm partly under his chin but I couldn’t raise it. He reached behind him with his right ar
m and grabbed me by the shirt. Hawk hit him again, twice in the throat, and the pain was real. I could feel the tremor in his body, and the croak was more anguished. We were making progress.

  He hauled me up over his shoulder with one arm, got his hand inside my thigh and threw me into Hawk. We both went down and Zachary came at us kicking. He got me in the ribs and I saw the spots again. Then I was up and Hawk was up and we were moving in our slow circle. Zachary’s chest heaved as he dragged air in. In front of my eyes, exhaustion miasma danced. Hawk spit out a tooth. The siren was louder.

  Hawk said, “We don’t do him in soon, cops will be here.”

  “I know,” I said, and moved in on Zachary again. He swung at me massively, but slow. He was tired. And was having trouble breathing. I ducked under the arm and hit him in the stomach. He chopped down on me with his fist but missed again, and Hawk hit him again in the kidneys. Hard expert punches. Zachary groaned. He turned at Hawk, but slowly, ponderously, like the last lurch of a broken machine.

  I hit him in the neck behind the ear, not boxing now, throwing my fist like a sling from as far back as I could pull it, letting my whole two hundred pounds go into the punch. We had him now and I wanted to end it. He staggered, he half turned back. Hawk hit him as I had, haymaker right-hand punches, and he staggered again. I stepped in close and hit him again in the solar plexus, right, left, right, and Hawk caught him from behind with first his left elbow, then his right forearm, delivered in swinging sequence against the back of Zachary’s neck. He turned again,-and swinging his arm like a tree limb he knocked Hawk sprawling.

  Then he lurched at me. I put two left jabs on his nose but he got hold of me with his left hand. He held me by the shirtfront and began to club me with his right fist. I covered up, pulling my head down inside my shoulders as far as I could, keeping my arms beside my head, elbows covering my body. It didn’t help much. I felt something break in my left arm. I didn’t hurt much, just a snap. And I knew a bone had broken.

  I drove the side of my right fist into his windpipe as hard as I could and brought my forearm around and hit Zachary along the jawline. He gasped. Then Hawk was behind Zachary and kicked him with the side of his foot in the small of his back. He bent back, half turned, and Hawk hit him a rolling, lunging right hand on the jaw, and Zachary loosened his grip on me and his knees buckled and he fell forward on his face on the ground. I stepped out of the way as he fell.

  Hawk was swaying slightly as he stood on the other side of Zachary’s fallen body. His face and chest and arms were covered witth blood and sweat, his upper lip was swollen so badly that the pink inside showed. His right eye was closed. His sunglasses were gone and much of his shirt was shredded. One sleeve was gone entirely. A part of his lower lip moved and I think he was trying to smile. He looked down at Zachary and tried to spit. A little bloody saliva trickled on his chin. He said, “Honkie.”

  My left arm was bent a funny way above the wrist. It still didn’t hurt much but my hand twitched and jumped involuntarily and I knew it was going to hurt. The front of my shirt was gone. My chest was covered with blood. My nose felt like it was broken too. That would make six times. I stepped toward Hawk and staggered. I realized I was weaving like he was.

  A Montreal police car, with the light flashing and siren whooping, came up the road toward us. Several people were pointing up in our direction, running toward the car. The car came to a skidding halt and two cops rolled out of it, guns in hand.

  Hawk said to me, “Didn’t need no fucking cops, babe.” I put my right hand out, palm up. It was shaking. Hawk slapped his down limply on it. We were too tired to shake. We simply clutched hands, swaying back and forth with Zachary motionless on the ground in front of us.

  “Didn’t need no jive-fucking cops, babe,” Hawk said again, and a noise came hoarsely out of his throat. I realized he was laughing. I started to laugh too. The two Montreal cops stood looking at us with the guns half raised and the doors of the cruiser swung open. Down the hill another cop car was coming.

  One of them said, “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  “Je parle anglais,” I said with the blood running off me. Laughing and gasping for breath. “Je suis Americain, mon gendarme.”

  Hawk was nearly hysterical with laughter. Now his body was rocking back and forth, hanging on to my good hand.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the cop said.

  Trying to control his laugher, Hawk said, “We just copped the gold medal in outdoor scuffling.” It was the funniest thing I’d ever heard, or so it seemed at the time, and the two of us were still giggling when they loaded us into the car and hauled us off to a hospital.

  29

  They set my arm and packed my nose and cleaned me up, and put me in the hospital overnight with Hawk in the next bed. They didn’t arrest us, but there was a cop at the door all night. My arm was hurting now and they gave me a shot. I went to sleep for the rest of the day and night. When I woke up, a man in plain clothes was there from the RCMP. Hawk was sitting up in bed reading the Montreal Star and sipping some juice from a big styrofoam cup through a straw from one corner of his mouth. The swelling was down a bit in his eye. He could see out of it, but the lip was still very puffy and I could see the black thread from the stitches.

  “My name’s Morgan,” the man from RCMP said. He showed me his shield. “We’d like to hear about what happened.”

  Hawk said, with difficulty, “Paul dead. Kathie shot him with the rifle while he trying to escape.”

  “Escape?” I said.

  Hawk said, “Yeah.” There was no expression on his face.

  “Where is she now?”

  Morgan said, “We’re holding her for the moment.”

  I said, “How’s Zachary?”

  Morgan said, “He’ll live. We have looked into him a bit. He’s in our files, in fact.”

  “I’ll bet he is,” I said. I shifted a little in bed. It hurt. I was sore all over. My left arm was in a cast from knuckles to elbow. The cast felt warm. There was tape over my nose and the nostrils were packed.

  “Naturally with the games established in Montreal we kept a file of known terrorists. Zachary was quite well known. Several countries want him. What business were you doing with him?”

  “We were preventing him from shooting a gold medalist. Him and Paul.”

  Morgan was a strong-looking middle-sized man with thick blondish hair and a thick mustache. His jaw stuck out and his mouth receded. The mustache helped. He wore rimless glasses. I hadn’t seen those for years. The principal of my elementary school had worn rimless glasses.

  “We rather figured that out from the witnesses and what Kathie told us. That doesn’t appear, incidentally, to be her real name.”

  “I know. I don’t know what it is.”

  Morgan looked at Hawk, “You?”

  Hawk said, “I don’t know.”

  Morgan looked back at me, “Anyway the rifle with the scope, the mark on the wall, that sort of thing. We were able to figure out pretty well what the plan had been. What we’re interested in is a bit of information on how you happened to be there at the proper time and place. There were quite a number of weapons at the scene. None of you seemed able to hang on. There was a thirty-eight caliber Smith and Wesson revolver for which you have a permit, Mr. Spenser. And there was a modified shotgun, which is illegal in Canada, for which there is no permit, but for which your companion seems to have had a shoulder rig.”

  Hawk looked at the ceiling and shrugged. I didn’t say anything.

  “The other guns,” Morgan went on, “doubtless belonged to this Paul, and to Zachary.”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  Morgan said, “Let us not bullshit around anymore. You are not tourists, either of you. Spenser, I have already checked you out. Your investigator’s license was in your wallet. We called Boston and have talked about you. This gentleman,” he nodded at Hawk, “admits only to being called Hawk. He carries no identification. The Boston Police, however, suggested that
a man of that description who used that name was sometimes know to associate with you. They described him, I believe, as a leg-breaker. It was not a pair of tourists who took Mr. Zachary, either. Tell me. I want to hear.”

  I said, “I want to make a phone call.”

  Morgan said, “Spenser, this is not a James Cagney movie.”

  I said, “I want to call my employer. He has a right to some anonymity and the right to be consulted before I violate it. If I violate it.”

  Morgan nodded his head at the phone on the bedside table. I called Jason Carroll. He was in. I had the feeling he was always in. Always at the alert for a call from Dixon.

  I said, “This is Spenser. Don’t mention the name of my client and yours, but I have finished what we agreed I’d do and the cops are involved and they are asking questions.”

  Carroll said, “I think our client will not approve of that. Are you at your Montreal address?”

  “No. I’m in the hospital.” The number was on the phone and I read it off to him.

  “Are you badly hurt?”

  “No. I’ll be out today.”

  “I will call our client. Then I will be in touch.”

  I hung up. “I have no desire to be a pain in the ass,” said to Morgan. “Just give me a few hours till I talk with my client. Go out, have lunch, come back. We cleaned up something for you. We prevented a very bad scene fo you.”

  Morgan nodded. “I know that. We are treating you very nicely,” he said. “You’ve had experience with the police. We don’t have to be this nice.”

  From the next bed Hawk said, “Haw.”

  I said, “True. Give me a few hours till I hear from my client. ”

  Morgan nodded again. “Yes. Certainly. I’ll be back before dinner. ” He smiled. “There will be an officer outside your door if you need anything.”

  “He got on a bright red coat?” Hawk said.

  “Just for formal occasions,” Morgan said. “For the Queen, yes. Not for you.”