Breakdown nd-18

by Bill Pronzini

  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.”

  “What’s his condition?”

  “He’s alive. If he’s lucky he won’t be permanently paralyzed.”

  “He do any talking?”

  “No. Able but not willing.”

  “Police find his car?”

  “Not far away and nothing much in it. Don’t you want to know which part of the beach?”

  “I can guess.”

  “Yeah. You didn’t have anything to do with it, huh?”

  “What would you do if I did?”

  “Knock some sense into your head-that’s what I’d like to do. What happened out there?”

  “I’m not going to talk about it on the phone, Eb.”

  “Come over to my place, then.”

  “No. Not now.”

  “When?”

  “Later. Later today.”

  “What’re you up to? What do you want out of Coleman?”

  “I told you-the answers to some questions.”

  “You think he sicced Vega on you, is that it?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Listen, you rock-headed bastard, you do anything to him …”

  “I’m not going to do anything to him. I’m just going to talk to him.”

  “Like you talked to Vega last night?”

  “I didn’t talk to Vega last night. I didn’t hurt him either.”

  “But you were out there on the beach with him. You’re the one made the anonymous call.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “What’s the matter with you lately?” Eberhardt said. “You used to play things by the book. Now you go around busting laws left and right. You want to lose your license again?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You still there?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Well then talk to me, for Christ’s sake. Tell me the truth for a change. Every time we talk lately, you either lie through your teeth or futz around with half-truths. I’m your partner and your friend; I’m on your side. Don’t you know that?”

  “I know it,” I said.

  “Then tell me what the hell’s going on.”

  “Later. After I talk to Coleman.”

  “If it’s not too late by then.”

  “It won’t be too late.”

  “I’ll be home all day,” he said, and banged down the receiver at his end. Hard.

  What’s the matter with you lately?

  Rhetorical question, Eb, I thought. How can I explain it to you when I don’t fully understand it myself?

  * * * *

  Coleman Lujack’s house was a two-story mock Tudor just across the northwestern dividing line between Burlingame and exclusive Hillsborough. The fact that his was a Burlingame address probably saved him a couple of thousand dollars a year in property taxes, woodsy Hillsborough land being worth much more per acre than that of its neighbors.

  Before I got out of the car I took Vega’s gun-a Charter Arms.38 Special-from the glove compartment and flipped open the gate. All five chambers were full. I emptied out two of the cartridges, rotated the cylinder until one empty chamber was under the hammer and the other next to it in the firing line; then I slipped the piece into my jacket pocket. I might need the threat of it, but I did not want to use it except as a last resort. The empty chambers were a buffer against another onslaught of black fury and sudden impulse. A man who doesn’t respect his weaknesses, new or old, is a damned fool.

  I went up through a formal rock garden to the front porch. There was a burglar alarm system wired into the house; the tiny red warning light on a panel next to the door indicated it was switched on. I rang the bell anyway. Rang it two more times before I gave up and walked around to the driveway. At the garage I found a window to peer through. There was a car inside, but it wasn’t Coleman’s Imperial; it was a low-slung white foreign job. His wife’s probably.

  I quit his property and began canvassing the neighbors, telling them it was urgent that I get in touch with Coleman. The third one I tried, an athletic young woman in jogging cloth
es who lived across the street, told me Coleman and his wife had gone off about six o’clock last evening. As far as she knew, they hadn’t returned.

  “They took suitcases,” she said. “I happened to notice him putting them into the trunk of his car. So I guess they went away for the weekend or longer.”

  “Would you have any idea where?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  I spoke to three other neighbors. None of them had any idea, either.

  I wondered if Eileen Lujack did.

  * * * *

  She wasn’t at home. Or at least she didn’t answer the bell, even though I worked on it pretty good.

  Out with one of her friends, probably, I thought. She wasn’t the type who would be comfortable alone, especially at such a painful time in her life. The question was how long she’d be gone-a few minutes, an hour or two, the whole day?

  Back in the car, I rolled the window down and sat there waiting. The sky was clear down here, the day warmish for January; people were out in the yards of two of the neighboring houses, normal people doing normal Saturday morning things like gardening and tossing a football around. A couple of them began to pay attention to me after half an hour or so. It doesn’t take long for curiosity to turn into apprehension, and I wasn’t up to any hassle on a day when I was not one of the normal people myself. I gave Eileen Lujack another five minutes. When she still didn’t come, I went.

  * * * *

  There was some sun and blue sky in Daly City too, though it was fighting a losing battle with the fog. By mid-afternoon the area would be socked in again. On Atlanta Street, as on Sweet William Lane, people were outside taking advantage of the good weather while it lasted. Teresa Melendez wasn’t one of them, but at least she was home. Or her Honda Civic was anyway.

  I parked across her driveway and went up and leaned on her doorbell. No response. But when I let up on the button I thought I heard steps inside; then the curtain in the adjacent window flicked a little and I had a glimpse of her face as she peered out. I pushed the bell again and said loudly, “You’d better talk to me, Teresa. Unless you want to talk to the police instead.”