by J. R. Rain
She spotted me first, eyes widening. I didn’t fault her. My eyes would widen too if I saw me coming.
Now I heard the whispery sound of heat being withdrawn, hammers snapped back, and shotguns pumped. I also heard the snap of switchblades.
I stepped around the fire. Someone stood quickly from a plastic chair. That someone got kicked back into said plastic chair, to tumble ass backwards into the sand. People moved toward me, but I had a bead on the man in the wicker chair.
A man who finally looked at me.
I could have been wrong—and the evening light was murky at best—but I was fairly certain his left eye was washed out, like a broken egg yolk in a sunny side up that got away from the chef. According to Camry, he was blind in the washed-out eye. I might have felt sad for him, except that I caught sight of the girl next to him, a girl sporting fresh bruises along her arms and upper thighs.
Steel Eye was faster than I expected. He was up and moving, reaching behind his back, and withdrawing a pearl-handled revolver.
Or rather, trying to.
Turns out I’m pretty fast too, especially now that my leg had been healed by God. Funny story.
I took two long strides and just as Steel Eye was bringing his weapon up, I drove my fist straight into his mouth and heard a sound that I knew to be teeth breaking.
The punch was delivered with a lot of momentum, too. Not to mention I had put all of my weight in it. The result was pure mayhem. If Steel Eye wasn’t such a big son of a bitch himself, I might have broken his neck. As it was, his head snapped back, and he staggered backwards. He would have fallen if I had hadn’t grabbed his collar and spun him around. I brought up my own gun and pressed it against his temple, then faced the others. A half-dozen guns of varying shapes and sizes were pointed at us.
“What?” I grinned, perhaps a little too big. “Do I have something in my teeth?”
y punch had been a little harder than I had intended. Blame it on adrenalin. And having all those weapons pointed at my back.
The result was that Steel Eye was mostly limp in my hands and I was doing all the work of keeping the son-of-a-bitch on his feet. He stood maybe an inch or two shorter than me and had shoulders nearly as wide. Both of which made keeping him up on his feet while I held a gun to his head all the more difficult. Luckily, I thrive in difficult situations. Or so I tell myself.
“Who the fuck are you?” asked the girl who was standing now. She had a tasteful skull tattooed on her stomach, the teeth of which were biting down on her bellybutton.
“I might have made a wrong turn somewhere.” I shrugged, holding Steel Eye mostly up on his feet. “Does anyone know where the IHOP is?”
A handful of bikers took a step forward. That handful had enough facial hair to carpet a small dining room. Shag, of course.
“What the fuck?” one said. Hard to tell who said what, since there were a lot of them and the firelight only reached so far.
“That’s what I said,” I agreed. Steel Eye was coming back to the land of the living, grunting and shaking his head. I held him even tighter, digging the Walther into his temple. He was in for a rude awakening, literally. “Here I am looking for an IHOP. The guy at the gas station said to make a right at the dirt road to nowhere.” I nodded. “Come to think of it, I made a left at the dirt road to nowhere.”
“Let him go,” said a big black guy who was, yes, even bigger than me.
“No can do,” I said. “Steel Pecker and I are going down in a blaze of glory. Okay, that might have been more suggestive than I intended.”
“Get him,” said the big black guy.
“Take another step toward me, and I blow your intrepid leader’s brains out.”
The intrepid leader was putting two-and-two together. He was also now fully awake. He struggled in my arms, but I was stronger. I knew this because I was stronger than most people. He fought me briefly, then gave up, especially when I dug my gun harder into his temple. Steel Eye might have grunted. Then again, that might have been me.
The two guys on either side of me stopped inching toward me. They looked uncertain. Steel Eye waved them away. Then he tried to speak, but gave that up quickly enough. My forearm, I was certain, was crushing his larynx.
“You shoot him,” said the black guy. “And we shoot you.”
Steel Eye didn’t like this logic. He gestured toward his men to back the fuck off; that is, if I correctly interpreted his frantic waving. The two guys to my right and left did just that, backing into the shadows. Meanwhile, Steel Eye and I backed up against the boulder behind us, removing the possibility of someone getting a potshot behind me. I suppose someone could always drop from above. But that was a big boulder, and these guys were drunk.
“You’re a dead man,” said the black guy who, come to think of it, might have been the official spokesperson for the Devil’s Triangle.
“There’s a very good chance that a lot of us might die tonight,” I said. “Steel Eye would be the first.” I gave the black guy the hard stare. “And you would be the second. What happens after that, I leave to the fates. Or to divine providence.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means God will decide who lives and dies. But not you, my friend. I kill you next.”
The black guy blinked. I don’t think he liked me. “Well, fuck you, asshole.”
Yup, definitely didn’t like me. “That’s the spirit.”
“He can’t breathe,” said another guy.
“He’s not supposed to breathe,” I said. “He’s supposed to listen.”
Still, I loosened my grip a little. Truth was, he was fighting for breath.
“Fine, motherfucker.” A young guy held his gun out toward me. “The fuck do you want?”
“What I want,” I said, and then tightened my grip on their esteemed leader, “is for all of you to throw your weapons aside.”
“Fuck that and fuck you.” He held the gun out, pointed at my face. A clean shot would get me. He was too drunk for a clean shot.
Steel Eye motioned frantically, and slowly, one by one, they all tossed aside their weapons. Most landed in some nearby bushes that, I suspected, doubled as urinals.
“The knives, too,” I said. “Anyone knows that any biker worth his salt has a knife or two. Go on.”
They did so. A half-dozen blades flashed through the night air, to disappear out of the firelight and in the surrounding shrubs.
“Now,” I said. “Let’s talk.”
uck you,” said one of them.
“That’s one way to start,” I said. “But here’s another: I was hired by a very frightened, albeit somewhat belligerent, young lady named Camry to protect her.”
This got some nods, frowns, an inhalation or two. Steel Eye, still trapped in my stranglehold, didn’t move or make a sound.
“I happen to take my job seriously, as you can see. Some might say too seriously.”
This elicited a grunt or two. I heard some whisperings under some breaths. Those whisperings might have suggested that I was a dead man. I laugh in the face of such whisperings.
I went on, “I’m here for one reason and one reason only: Your abusive leader, Steel Something-or-other—”
“Steel Eye, asshole,” came a chorus of grunts, along with a “dipweed” and a “dumb ass” or two. What was a dipweed?
“Right, of course,” I said. “Steel Eye. How could I forget? Anyway, Steel Eye had every right to be upset. Hey, another man fucked with his girl. I get it. But I’m not here to talk about that man. I’m here to talk about Camry.”
They all stared at me, faces blank but alive in the firelight. A stiff wind made its way through the Pit. A dozen or so beards lifted and fell in unison. Two bikers were still wearing sunglasses, despite the fact the sun had set awhile ago. I admired their dedication.
I continued, “Camry has decided to end her relationship with Steel Eye. Apparently, she did so in grand fashion, by messing with another guy and then splitting in the night. A he
lluva way to make an exit, but that’s beside the point.”
“What the fuck is he talking about?” One of them said to another. Hard to say who spoke, since most of their lips were buried deep within wiry facial hair.
I powered on. “That’s where I come in. Somehow, someway, she ended up in my office, drinking my coffee, and looking for help. I happen to have a soft spot for damsels in distress… or anyone in distress, for that matter. Call it a weakness. Call it mildly heroic. Call it stupid.”
“We’ll call you a dead man soon,” said someone nearby.
I ignored the comment, although I did spot the speaker this time. I logged him away for future reference. He seemed the type to carry out the threat. Then again, most of them did.
“So, here is my proposition: Camry moves on with her life. In fact, I am going to help her move on, with a new name, a new identity, new everything. I doubt any of you will find her, but here’s the catch: If I so much as catch a whiff that one of you is looking for her, I will be back.”
“Yeah, fuck you.”
“I thought you might say that. But wait, there’s more. If I so much as see a biker sniffing around my place, my shop, my girl, within a hundred square feet of me, I will be back.”
This got some chuckles. These guys weren’t used to being threatened. They, perhaps, had never been threatened in all their lives. Being threatened was new to them. Hell, they were the ones used to doing the threatening.
“Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I won’t be back alone,” I said.
And with that, I raised my gun and fired into the air.
Nearly a dozen figures stepped out of the darkness, each holding weapons of their own, and each looking more amused than the other. Except for one, of course. Spinoza, I was certain, had forgotten how to crack a smile. Then again, knowing his past, I didn’t blame him.
“I will be coming back with them.”
here were ten of them.
I wouldn’t have expected anything less. Mixed with the ten were two cops who didn’t have to be here, two cops who were risking their careers and livelihoods—and lives—to be here with me now. As the men stepped into the firelight, weapons raised nonchalantly, I smiled and nodded at my good friends, Sanchez and Sherbet, homicide detectives with LAPD and Fullerton Police Departments, respectively. Sherbet was sweating a little. He was a bigger guy, and the evening was warm. He nodded at me and turned his attention back to the group of ruffians before him.
“Looks like you got the party started without us,” said an older guy who probably shouldn’t have been here, but had demanded to come anyway. His name was Aaron King, although he always reminded me of someone else. Someone I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Anyway, Aaron smiled at me and winked… and I almost had it… but lost it again. Who, dammit?
“It wasn’t much of a party,” I said. “Until Numi showed up.”
“Is that a black joke?” said the big Nigerian. “Or a gay joke?”
Numi was new to the private investigator business. Mostly, he had taken over another friend of mine’s business. A friend who had now passed. A friend who had had the uncanny knack of finding the missing. I wasn’t entirely sure Numi had gotten over our mutual friend’s death.
Rest in peace, Booker.
“Neither,” I said. Numi was one of the few men on planet earth who would make me pause before a fight. “It was in reference to your lighthearted and jovial nature.”
Numi shook his head and continued scanning the Pit.
“What the fuck is going on?” said one of the bikers. That someone might have been about fifty-five, with a full gray beard stained with tobacco and God knows what else.
“It’s called friendly banter, asshole,” said Nick Caine, another friend of mine who’d swung by a day earlier. Synchronicity at its best. Standing in the shadows behind him was his manservant or friend—I was never sure which—named Ishi. Notably, Ishi was brandishing what appeared to be a machete.
Sweet mama.
Nick, an old-school relic hunter in the Indiana Jones tradition, was sporting a sawed-off shotgun and a revolver. He was, of course, freshly returned from God knows where, uncovering God knows what, and running from God knows who. Nick and I go way back. I think we had met in a bar. I think he had pissed me off. I think he then bought me a drink. I think buying me a drink is always the best way to soothe the savage beast… and to win my undying friendship.
Nick had shown up at my office doorstep with a friend of his, a private eye named Max Long. Max hailed from a town called Mystic Falls, and he was my kind of guy: tough, fast talking, and good with a gun. I had asked if he was working on anything interesting in Mystic Falls, and he said something to the effect of: “You have no idea.”
Anyway, Nick, Ishi, and Max were here now, and that’s all that mattered. Ishi didn’t say much. Then again, I wasn’t entirely sure he spoke English, and I sure as hell didn’t speak Tawakankan, which may or may not be a made-up language.
“What do you say, Monty?” I asked my private investigator friend, Marty Drew, who now ran around looking for ghosts with his wife and medium, Ellen, a sweet lady who kind of freaked me out. “You see any spirits here?”
“There’s spirits everywhere, Jim,” said Monty. “At least, that’s what my wife tells me.”
Monty, I knew, was a skeptic at heart. But apparently, he’d seen some shit that he doesn’t want to talk about. Maybe it’s best he doesn’t want to talk about it. I like my little world just the way it is, free of ghosts and things that go bump in the night.
Standing next to Monty was another good friend of mine, private investigator Roan Quigley. Yes, a fancy name for a thug. In a way, we were all thugs. We just practiced our thuggery mostly on the right side of the law. And, yes, private investigators often stay in touch, especially when we need a little help. Like now, although I wasn’t entirely convinced that I needed help tonight, but, hey, a little backup never hurts.
Roan had been doing a pretty good job of disappearing of late. He still wouldn’t tell me where he disappeared to, but I would wear him down eventually and get to the bottom of it.
Rounding out the ten was another good friend of mine from Los Angeles, park ranger Jack Carter, who might have the coolest job of all of us. He had a cute daughter who may or may not be smarter than all of us.
“All of you are dead,” said a big guy in the front row. The big guy might have been drunk.
“Who said that?” asked Numi.
“I did, motherfucker.” The guy stood and faced the Nigerian. “Big man with your gun.”
I watched Numi step around the fire, slip his gun behind him in his waistband and hit the big guy even harder than I might have hit Steel Eye. We all watched the guy tumble head over ass—and very nearly into the fire. When he was done tumbling, he didn’t move. He might have been dead. No one seemed to care.
“Now.” I grinned at this motley gang, both mine and the Devil’s Triangle, as I released Steel Eye, who spun around and faced me. “Do we have an agreement?”
The man with the washed-out eye studied me closely, then looked at my rag-tag gang, each wielding their preferred weapon, and each looking ready to use it. Finally, he nodded. “We do, and you can go fuck yourself.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said.
t was an hour or so later, and we were at a place called Patty’s, a dive bar a few dozen miles away, just outside of Palm Springs.
Monty the ghost hunter was playing darts with Nick Caine and Ishi. All three, I thought, could use some work on their technique. Jack the Park Ranger and Roan my disappearing investigator friend were taking it to a few unsuspecting drunks at the pool table. I happened to know that Jack and Roan were better than most at billiards, although I’ve been known to give them a run for their money. Max Long, the private eye out of Mystic Falls, was currently doing his damndest to impress a pretty young waitress. His smile might have been winning her over. Detective Sherbet had left after a few drinks. I was about to make a jok
e about drinking and driving, until I remembered that drinking and driving wasn’t very funny. Sherbet patted me on the shoulder as he slipped out. He looked older than I remembered, and far more tired. It might have been well past his bedtime. Aaron King left soon after. Earlier, Aaron had seemed a little too eager to jump on stage for his turn at karaoke, belting out “Love Me Tender.” That he had sounded exactly like Elvis Presley concerned me more than it probably should have.
Now there were four of us at the bar, drinking, our elbows up on the scarred, aged wood. We could have been cowboys from days of old. But we weren’t. We were private eyes and thugs, and damn good at both. I was drinking Blue Moon Pale Ale and remembering fondly my detective friend out of Boston, a big guy named Spenser, who was, last time I checked, nearly as tough as me, although I wouldn’t want to mess with his friend Hawk.
Private eyes are a weird breed. We come in different shapes and sizes. Some of us are brawlers. Others are computer nerds. All of us live on the fringe, much like those bikers. We just follow the law a little more. Not always, granted. But usually.
Spinoza was sipping water. My old friend had given up the hard stuff long ago, after the accident with his son. I would have given it up too. Spinoza, the smallest of all of us, was leaning back against the bar, an elbow propped up behind him, watching Max work his magic on the waitress. Or trying to. Spinoza gave the impression of not listening, or of being easily distracted. I think that was his M.O. I knew the little bastard was hearing everything within twenty feet of him. Occasionally, he and Numi commented on Max’s pick-up technique.
“That won’t be the end of it, you know.” Sanchez sat next to me.
“I know,” I said.
“Some will come looking for you.”
“I know that, too,” I said.
“You gave Steel Eye a shiner.”