by John Shannon
“Hell, Ken, he’s probably got missiles and Claymores, but he hasn’t used any of them.”
“The night is young,” Ken Steelyard said.
“We’re staying the night?”
“We’re here for the duration, Jack, and you’re drafted. You’re the one who started talking to him, offering your friendship. I’m giving you the chance to try to save him from suicide by cop. We got a field office with cots and supplies in that place two blocks up from the cafe, calling itself a cat food research center.”
“Please, Jack,” Gloria said. “Help us stop him before he hurts somebody.”
When he thought it over later, he had to admit to himself that some part in his decision was played by the thought of staying near the policewoman.
“I’ll have to call Maeve to get her to feed my dog.”
She offered him her slim cell phone.
Dec 24 Late
I was obviously mistaken to treat them as honorable adversaries, even him. No more words. Too late for words.
Nineteen
Am I Ready?
“We don’t really know for sure he’s on the island,” Jack Liffey said.
The three of them had motored slowly around the eerily deserted streets for two hours, getting the feel of the entire island—and incidentally, Jack Liffey thought, displaying him in the passenger seat, where they’d moved him. Overripe bait. Pier 200, a giant new container terminal, had just been completed out into the bay, and farther east, almost as much work was going on building China’s new container terminal on the flattened naval base. But apparently the work wasn’t urgent enough to go to double shifts, as both sites were quiet as the grave—this particular night, anyway.
Gloria Ramirez had brought along some more background information she’d dug up on Terminal Island. It was a weird place, in civic terms, and always had been: two ports side by side, two cities, Los Angeles and Long Beach; two tax and customs districts sharing the one artificial island, which had been built out of landfill in the early twentieth century on the site of two tiny islets that had been called, heavy with omen, Rattlesnake Island and Dead Man’s Island. The site had only been chosen as LA’s port after a near shooting war between competing railroads, with the despotic Collis P. Huntington and his Southern Pacific Railroad insisting that LA’s port be built fifteen miles west of downtown on land he owned in Santa Monica. At the same time, two other railroads insisted, just as fiercely, that a free port be built in the marshes to the south.
Eventually the marshes and the channel were dredged out, a huge breakwater built, and the natural little islets extended and reshaped to become Terminal Island. The harbor was about as artificial, Jack Liffey thought, as everything else about Los Angeles. But he rather liked it that way, this wonderful fraudulence that meant people didn’t take things, or themselves, too seriously.
They’d had a beer at the cafe to wind down, and, at closing time at ten, they’d been shooed out by the owner. They took one last drive around, with everything shut now, and parked at the cat food research facility that Steelyard had commandeered as home base.
“Shit,” the cop said as they got out and approached the building.
“I guess we know now,” Gloria Ramirez said. If they hadn’t been sure Ozaki was on the island, they knew now.
The door of the office had a playing card stuck to it with a simple drawing pin. It looked like the king.
I grow tired of fighting, but I cannot spare those who challenge me.
Steelyard went straight back to the car and flicked the button on his radio mike a couple of times. Then he changed his mind and hung it back up.
“He’ll have a scanner,” he said to no one in particular and took out his cell and hit a speed-dial button. “Yeah, Captain. It’s Steelyard. He’s here, all right, left us another card on the command post. Once the last workers are off, can you get our teams to lock down all the bridges until dawn? And have them watch the undersides of the bridges, too. Let’s not let him shinny out on the superstructure. And keep watch for swimmers, or suspicious trails of bubbles. And any boats, obviously.”
There was a long pause. “We don’t need a posse, Dave, but you could have a chopper standing by if you want. We can handle this. He’s not going into hiding. He’s coming after us.”
He shut the phone with a flourish, as if cutting his boss off in midsentence. “No little dink fucks with me,” he said. “I don’t care what color his beret was.”
“That’s not a helpful attitude,” Jack Liffey said. “You’re just pushing Joe to the wall. He’s not so little, by the way.” He looked at Gloria for help.
“How about the LAPD’s negotiating team?” she suggested.
“How are they going to talk to him, scatter pinochle cards from a chopper? This is none of their business. I want him.”
He had his key in the door to the little building before she yelped. “Stop! Booby traps!” He scowled at her and pushed the door open.
“If he’s going to hit me with a daisy cutter or a Claymore, so be it. I figure him for a man-to-man kind of hitter. All that samurai honor stuff.”
Jack Liffey nodded. “I doubt he’ll use anything that isn’t face-to-face. He’ll give you an even break, at least in his mind. I’d guess he’s well past punishing his dad’s old enemies. He’s only after us because we’re getting in his face. On the whole, I’d rather be in Vegas.”
“Have you got a gun?”
“I don’t carry a gun. I don’t even have a detective license. What would I do, pistol-whip runaway kids?”
“Bully for you.” Steelyard bent down and pulled a little .38 snub-nosed revolver out of an ankle holster and held it out to him. “You are hereby deputized.”
Jack Liffey looked the little pistol over as if it were a large dead insect. “This is, like, accurate to maybe fifty feet?”
“It’s better than throwing rocks at him.”
“Put it back on. It’s yours. It’ll only get me hurt.”
Steelyard shrugged and snapped the pistol back onto his ankle. They walked together through the wreck of the office, studying Ozaki’s handiwork. The three old canvas army cots had been sliced to ribbons, as had a big plastic-laminated map of Terminal Island tacked to the wall. Papers from a filing box were strewn everywhere, torn and mangled. Two pairs of binoculars had their lenses shattered, and a strange piece of apparatus, like a big toaster with a telephoto lens, was mashed out of shape. “That was a heat imager,” Steelyard explained. “You can see a body right through a wall. Took a lot to get my captain to borrow that from the spooks. They’ll be pissed.”
After the tour of the three rooms that were to have been their command post, there was little they could find left in usable condition. Some army MREs—meals ready to eat. A bottle of water. It was just possible that the foam mats meant to soften the cots could be chivied back together on the floor, even after a bad slashing. And, strangely enough, there was a small porcelain decanter of Tsuru Japanese whiskey sitting in the middle of the back room. Like a peace offering—or maybe a thumbed nose.
“Nobody touches that,” Steelyard said.
“I don’t drink,” Jack Liffey said.
“It’s late. I’m tired. I think I’ll have some,” Gloria Ramirez said, going into open revolt.
Maeve wasn’t sure what she felt about her grandfather. Obviously he was trying hard, but there was a closed door to his inner world—his dog spots, as he put it—and he wasn’t offering her a way past it. If he was really as bigoted as her father thought, he would hardly be getting along so well with Ornetta, yet Maeve still sensed that he was condescending to both of them, as if he had to appease a couple of trained animals to effect an escape.
She let herself into the condo, unlocking to the noise of the hysterical dog on the other side of the door. Loco leaped joyously onto her shoulders.
“Down, c’mon, down, boy. You’ll get fed, honest.”
When the dog persisted, she settled onto her knees, wrestled one arm
around him, and stroked his breast, down between his forelegs, as her father had shown her. He’d told her it was a universal soothing action for canines—even ones that were half coyote—and it seemed to work. Loco settled onto all fours and seemed hypnotized into swaying back and forth.
She laughed softly, imagining using the same stroke to pacify her grandfather, and seeing him sigh and settle back on his haunches to sway a little and gush cheerily about all his former hates: “Ohh, love those Mexican Americans. Black culture is so rich. Gays are sooo stylish.” Yet he made her uneasy, and she was sure contempt simmered inside him.
“I wish we could help Dad, Loco, but I don’t see how we can. He said on the phone you were to get a special treat. That’s his guilt speaking, but you know that, don’t you? I guess it means I thaw the T-bones in the freezer. Let’s figure out something we want in exchange from him. Maybe make him take his own father to dinner.”
Gloria Ramirez had drunk most of the little bottle of Japanese whiskey and was now squatting and tearing apart plastic pouches from the MREs, naming the foods as she found them.
“Cheez Whiz, dry crackers, some kind of chicken noodles.” She was discarding as fast she opened.
“I think you’re supposed to heat the entrée,” Jack Liffey said. “Those things have a pretty good reputation, especially if you grew up on C rations. Ham and motherfuckers, I’ll never forget those—that was ham and limas. Nobody would trade you a dead rat for those.”
Ken Steelyard was sitting on a second crate of MREs in the corner, cradling his pistol and trying to think. Gloria found some kind of food bar called a “Hooah!” and began nibbling on it. Jack Liffey squeezed the soft cheese out of a plastic tube onto a cracker and took the whole thing in one bite.
“If you kids are through playing with your food, we have to address what to do.”
“This is your war now,” Gloria said. He could hear a bit of slurring in her voice. “I take no responsibility for this childish duel. We should have retreated from the island long ago and called in a tactical search team.”
“They’d clomp around like a bunch of Dickless Tracys, and he’d either get away in the confusion or slaughter them all.” Steelyard must have been thinking of calling for some kind of assistance, though, because he took out his cell phone, turned it on, listened, and stared evilly at it. “No dial tone.”
The policewoman handed her phone to Jack Liffey while she tugged greedily at the packaging of a big burrito she had found, and he pressed the “on” button. Nothing happened. In a few moments a little amber LCD display lit up on the screen: No signal. He passed it on to Steelyard.
“How the hell has he done that?” Steelyard complained.
“He’s knocked out the cell tower on the island.”
“We’re line of sight to at least three other repeaters on the mainland.”
“Maybe he’s found a way to jam the local carrier signal. I said, don’t underestimate this guy. I’m sure it’s too much to hope any hardwired phones in this building are working. Maybe you should check the radio in the car.”
Steelyard killed the lights and studied the world outside through the venetian blinds on the front window for a long time before venturing out. He was soon back.
“Shit on a stick,” he said. “All four tires are flat, and nothing works. The doors won’t even open.”
“I’ve seen this movie,” Jack Liffey said.
“I surrender,” Gloria said. “Let him take me prisoner. You can trade me for some real food and another bottle of this Tsuru.”
“What movie?” Steelyard glowered.
“Well, it might be Rio Bravo, or it might be Assault on Precinct 13,” Jack Liffey said. “They’re basically the same movie. Though in both of those, there were a lot of bad guys, not just one. Did you find an ace on the car?”
“No.”
“That’s good. It’s his last card. I’d say, when you see an ace, kiss your ass good-bye.”
All of a sudden, they felt a faint rumble in the floor, like a subway train passing deep underground, though there were no subways on Terminal Island, and as yet no night trains either.
“I hope he doesn’t have an Abrams tank,” Jack Liffey said.
“That’s strange. Once that guy shut the cafe, there shouldn’t be a soul on the island but us and him. Not counting the prison, which is locked down. I had the bridges blocked.”
“Well, there’s some kind of machinery running. Maybe somebody’s night-loading a ship.”
“I like it,” Steelyard said. “It could help us if there’s normal activity.”
“Right now I’d like a helicopter out,” Jack Liffey said.
“I might, too, but how do I call for it? Set the building on fire?”
“It’s a thought.”
“Last time I talked to the captain, I asked him to seal the place off and let me handle it. I must have caught this from you. I thought I could talk Ozaki in, and a bunch of leadfoot SWATS trotting around—hut-hut-hut—would just spook him.”
The next sound was a sudden snuffle and then the dull thunk of a soft weight going over slowly, followed by a snore. Gloria Ramirez was keeled over, asleep on the floor. The innocent look she wore reminded him almost unbearably of the way she had looked in his bed, and he wanted to snuggle up next to her, rest his arm over her, and sleep this horrible night away. “We could hide until morning,” Jack Liffey said. “I saw a couple of places when we were cruising around.”
“No, I want to bring in this guy. Nobody is Superman.”
“Except Superman. Think about it, Ken. Is this just payback for breaking your model train? Man, you and I may have played together in grade school, but I don’t want to die for your train layout.”
For a moment they both watched Gloria Ramirez sleeping. Her hands were palm-to-palm and tucked under her cheek, like a child miming sleep, and her breathing had settled into a soft gasp and flutter. Jack Liffey desperately wanted to kiss her.
“I’m a cop,” Steelyard said. “Bringing him in is my duty.”
“Forget the cop shit for a moment. He’s got us trapped in here. He knows where we are, and we haven’t got a clue where he is. I don’t know what you did in the Big ’Nam, but I reckon he’s got martial skills you’ve never heard of. What are you carrying?”
“Glock nine-millimeter. I’ve got a spare magazine in a pouch on the shoulder holster. There’s an AR-15 in the trunk of my car out there.”
“Want to bet? You’ve also got your ankle backup, that Chief’s Special thirty-eight, with six shots. As far as we know, he’s got a sniper rifle with night vision, a bazooka and a mortar, and probably an F-16 warming up. And he could hurl all that in the channel and still kill us both in a second with a piece of old Styrofoam. He might be in the next room right now.”
Involuntarily they both looked at the dark doorway.
“Ken, he didn’t seem to me to be a bad guy, but he’s been nursing his father’s hurt all his life. People can back off their own fights, but his father isn’t around to give him permission to back off. I don’t have any idea what that kind of obsession does to you. If they’d picked up all the Irish and put them in concentration camps, maybe I’d be pissed off, too. You know, I’m sure the furniture was never really the point. It was just something to focus on. He wanted his dignity back. He wanted to be respected. He wanted to respect himself again.”
“That’s a long time ago, Jack. We can’t do anything about that.”
“You had a lousy childhood. Can’t you see how you might have gone bad?”
“Oh, I see it perfectly. I see the day the McGreevy boys almost enticed me into breaking into a car that looked abandoned up in the hills near Miraleste. But I didn’t do it. It was wrong.”
“So instead you emptied your mom’s purse, put all your possessions on a Greyhound to Fresno, and decided to run away. What were you, thirteen? We don’t always make good choices.”
“The guy’s a loose cannon, and it’s my responsibility.”
“He’ll be just as caught if SWAT finds him in daylight tomorrow. He’s playing warrior, and he’s got himself all twisted up inside to justify it. You’re just giving him the adversary he wants. I tried to befriend him, but I don’t think it got through. I don’t think his world can handle friendship.”
“This is my friend.” Steelyard indicated his pistol.
“Damn it, Ken. He can trump you. It’s dark out there, and dark is his element.” He pointed at the sleeping Gloria, whose forehead now had wrinkled up in worry. “Look at her and see if it doesn’t remind you of the value of life. There’s something about her that’s completely outside this haze of hormones you and I walk around in. I don’t want to go down in a blaze of glory tonight, whatever cowboy movie you’re acting out.”
“I thought I could count on you, Jack.”
Jack Liffey thought about it for a moment. “You can’t. Not for a death duel.”
Steelyard unstrapped his .38 and slid it across the floor. Jack Liffey slid it right back. “I don’t want a weapon.”
Steelyard set his hand on it. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Fuck you, then, Jack. I’m ready.” Ken Steelyard snapped the snub-nose back into his ankle holster. “I told you he wasn’t Superman.”
Steelyard went to the cobwebbed water cooler in the corner, removed the empty water bottle, then tipped the sheet-metal base onto its side. He tugged out of the base a disassembled deer rifle and a big Starlite scope. “I’m Superman.” It took him only a few seconds to assemble the rifle.
“I can see like daylight with this. He can run around in those black PJs all he wants, and I can still punch his ticket. Am I ready?” he shouted at Jack Liffey.
“Huh?”
Something a little spooky had come into his eyes. He stood, slung the rifle over his shoulder and grabbed Jack Liffey’s shoulders and shook him. “Am I ready? Come on. Say it, damn it! I’m ready! Say it now!”