Gecko

by Ken Douglas

  Gecko

  Ken Douglas

  Ken Douglas

  Gecko

  Chapter One

  It rained just before dawn the day Jim Monday’s mind was invaded. The streets in Long Beach’s fashionable Belmont Shore district were slick and wet. Dew glistened from the palm fronds. A cool breeze drifted in off the ocean. A late morning chill hung in the air.

  “ Where am I?” He heard the words in his head as if they were his own thoughts, but they weren’t. He stepped around a puddle, stopped at the crosswalk.

  “ Where am I?” He heard it again, looked up, shaken. The light was still red.

  “ Did you hear a word I said?” David asked. David Askew was both his lawyer and his best friend.

  “ I’m sorry, I didn’t. My mind was wandering,” Jim said.

  “ Okay, I’ll ask it again. Do you think there’s any chance you can talk her out of this?”

  “ I tried, but she’s in love with him.” He spat the words as he glared across the street at the corner building of Cobb and Cobb, Attorneys at Law. In minutes he would be in the second floor office of Frank Cobb, the younger, signing half his life away.

  “ Are you going to be civil?” David asked.

  “ If she’s alone, yes. If Kohler’s there, I don’t know. I’m afraid I might hit the bastard.”

  “ You better not.”

  “ I know, but it tears me inside out.”

  “ Just don’t hit him,” David said.

  Jim glanced upward as the words were leaving his friend’s lips and his eyes locked onto Dr. Bernd Kohler, the man who had taken his wife away. Even from across the street, Jim could read the stare.

  Hatred, pure and evil.

  “ Calm down,” David said. “Keep your head and we’ll get through this.”

  The light changed, they stepped into the street and started to cross, Jim fighting to control his anger.

  “ Jump Back!” the voice in his head screamed and Jim Monday was taken back to a country he’d spent half a lifetime trying to forget. A place where when men yelled words like, Take cover, Drop, Hit the deck, or Jump Back, you obeyed, or you died.

  Jim jumped back.

  And his life turned into a slow motion horror show as a gray Buick Regal screamed around the corner, picked up David on its grille, smashing his body the way a handballer smashes the ball, sending the human missile flying twenty feet through the air, where it careened onto the sidewalk, stopping only when it blasted into the Spanish bay window of Cobb and Cobb, sending shards of glass hailing down, covering the body with red rainbow sparkles as the sun gleamed off the bloody glass.

  It happened so fast and so slow.

  “ Where am I?” He heard the voice again as he looked up to see the scowl on Kohler’s face. And he saw green as the scowl changed into a snarl. It was as if his whole world had shifted to green. Killing green. The green jungles of so long ago. The kill or be killed jungles.

  “ What’s happening?” The voice wouldn’t stop.

  Jim pushed it from his mind as he faced away from Kohler and moved toward the broken body of his friend, fighting to shake the numbness as he started across the street. He wanted to cry out, but couldn’t. Then he heard the thick German accent he had come to loath.

  “ Out of my way, I’m a doctor.”

  Jim turned and saw Bernd Kohler, shoving through the crowd, his shoulder length, gray hair flying in the breeze, glowing in the sun. Julia was trailing in his wake, wearing an expensive summer dress, one of her many designer creations.

  They approached David’s body at the same time, wife, husband and lover. Kohler bent over the body and Jim Monday’s mind clicked out of shock. He watched as Kohler reached for David’s lifeless pulse. Then clarity struck him. Kohler watching from above. The hatred in his eyes and all of a sudden the green came back. Kohler seemed to be covered in it. An evil green. The man’s mouth was open wide, snarling words with green tinged teeth.

  And now Monday knew. It was as if his subconscious had painted the world green, making it obvious to him. Kohler had been waiting for the car. The doctor had tried to kill him, but had killed his best friend instead.

  Rage roared through Jim Monday, ripped him raw. He saw the man for what he was. A cold killer after his money and his wife. Again he was back in the green jungles that he had fought so hard to forget. He turned from a reasoning man into a crazed kid soldier and he saw the enemy.

  “ I can’t think like this.” Another thought that wasn’t his, but agony and anger forced it away.

  He reached out to Kohler from behind, grabbed his silver hair in a tight fist, jerked the doctor to his feet. Kohler screamed as Jim spun him around. He screamed again when Jim smashed him in the face with a stiff left, catching the doctor halfway between the right cheek and his aquiline nose.

  Then he delivered a punishing blow to the doctor’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. He was pulling his balled fist back for the killing blow, when a huge black arm snaked around his neck and another, with a mammoth hand attached, grabbed his fighting arm and locked onto it like a vice latched onto a piece of copper tubing, one mistake and the tube snaps.

  The other officer wrapped a hand around Jim’s right wrist, the one still holding Kohler aloft.

  “ Let him go,” a deep bass voice commanded.

  Jim was powerless.

  The two strong policemen had reacted with lightning speed to Jim’s attack on Kohler, saving the doctor’s life and saving Jim from a murder charge. There was no point in resisting. He relaxed his hand, relaxed his rage and sagged into the strong arms of a strong cop. The policemen, intent on restraining him, had forgotten about Kohler. When Jim let go of the doctor’s hair, he collapsed on the sidewalk with a bone cracking sound.

  “ Shit,” the bass voice said, “that had to hurt.”

  Jim hoped so.

  He felt his arms being pulled behind his back. He heard, more than felt, the click of the handcuffs. Then there were sirens and more police telling everyone to get back, but none of it made sense to Jim’s fogged mind. He was marginally aware of being pulled away from the awful scene of David’s bloody body and the sight of his wife cradling the gasping doctor in her arms. He thought she might have been crying. He couldn’t be sure.

  “ Lower your head,” someone commanded and Jim felt a slight pressure against the base of his skull, guiding him into the back of the police car.

  “ This is not right.” The voice in his head again, but Jim Monday was in no condition to wonder about strange voices. The burly policeman started to close the back door of the cruiser and the voice screamed, “I can’t take anymore.” Jim Monday started to pass out.

  “ No! Don’t turn out the lights! Don’t make it dark!” the voice screamed and with an effort driven by fear and rage, Jim rocked onto his back, pulling his knees to his chest. He screamed, thrust his legs forward, feet connecting with the door inches before it closed, catching one of the cops by surprise, busting him in the chest, like a powerful steam engine, knocking him back and onto his backside the way cowboy heroes did to cowboy bad guys all those years ago.

  “ Jesus!” the other voice said, “are you all right, Washington?”

  “ Get the son of a bitch, Walker,” the cop named Washington boomed. And Officer Walker yanked Jim out of the car, slamming him onto the pavement.

  “ Put him back in the car,” Washington said.

  Walker picked Jim up as if he weighed no more than a pillow.

  “ Careful,” Washington added, “don’t break anything.”

  Walker wasn’t careful. He tossed him into the backseat with too much force. Jim screamed as a sharp crack sent pain stabbing up his right arm.

  “ Don’t you listen, Walker? I said careful.”

  “ Sorry,” Walker sai
d, but he didn’t sound very sincere to Jim.

  “ Now what are you guys going to do?” a young officer said, addressing the two policemen.

  “ What else can we do? We take him in,” Washington said.

  “ Like that? Aren’t you in enough trouble? The last thing you need is another brutality case.”

  “ Washington didn’t bust him up. I did,” Walker said.

  “ Yeah, but Washington’s in charge.”

  “ How do we handle this mess, Lieutenant?” a fair-haired, uniformed sergeant asked.

  “ Not lieutenant anymore,” Washington said. “You’re in charge, Sam. You out rank me now. It’s your show. You tell me what to do.”

  “ It doesn’t seem right.”

  “ It’s the way it is. What do you want me to do?”

  “ Take your prisoner by Community Hospital. Get him fixed up. Then bring him in and get a statement. We’ll handle everything here.”

  “ All right, Sam.”

  “ And Lieutenant?”

  “ Yeah, Sam.”

  “ If it means anything, I think you got a raw deal, all the boys do. That son-of-a-bitch had it coming. We think you were too easy on him.”

  “ Thanks.” Washington moved toward the passenger side of the car. “You drive,” he told Walker.

  “ But you always drive?” Walker slid behind the wheel.

  “ Not today.”

  “ Keys.” Walker held out his hand. Washington fished into his pocket, handed them over.

  They were a half mile from the hospital when Washington said, “Turn right.”

  “ Huh?”

  “ Just do it.”

  Walker turned into an alley and parked.

  “ It’s daylight, Hugh.”

  “ I’m not gonna hurt him. I just wanna ask a few questions before he gets himself lawyered up.”

  “ In the six months we’ve been partners I’ve never mentioned your brutality case, but I hear that’s what you did with the child molester.”

  “ That’s what I did.”

  “ I hear you almost killed him.”

  “ Yeah, I beat him to a pulp, then kneed his balls so hard, he’ll never be able to get it up again.”

  “ Why?” Walker asked.

  “ The fear in that little girl’s eyes tore me up. That baby-raper was going to use her and kill her. I wanted to make sure he never got the chance again.”

  “ So you weren’t thinking clearly?” Walker shut off the engine.

  “ My mind was working fine.” He got out of the car, stretching as he looked up and down the alley. It looked to Jim as if he was trying to cover the fact that he was checking to see if anybody was watching.

  “ Don’t hurt him,” Walker said as Washington climbed into the back.

  “ I won’t, I just wanna ask him a few questions.”

  Jim pushed himself as far from the big man as possible, but there was nowhere he could go. His retreat was blocked by the locked door.

  “ Don’t hurt me anymore,” the voice in his head pleaded.

  “ Quiet! I’m not a coward.” Jim thought it must be his subconscious and he didn’t understand, because he’d never plead, never beg.

  “ I didn’t say anything,” Washington said. “And I don’t think you’re a coward. I just want to talk a little before we get to the hospital.”

  “ You scare out a lot of confessions this way?” Jim asked.

  “ Some.”

  “ They stand up in court?”

  “ Some. I’m a big man, big boned. Frightens some people.”

  “ I killed a couple of baby-rapers once,” Jim said, ignoring Washington’s statement. “I caught them right after they raped a young mother and her little girl.” He was looking through Washington, speaking like he was in a trance. “I shot them both in the balls. Then I blew off their knee caps and sat and watched them scream and bleed to death. That’s what got me caught, watching them die. I could’ve killed them quick and got away, but I didn’t and it cost me four long years.”

  “ Jesus.” Walker crossed himself.

  “ And you know what,” Jim continued, “even though it was the worst four years of my life, if I had it to do over again, I’d kill them slow again.”

  “ What have we got here?” Walker said.

  He didn’t get an answer. The men in the back were quiet, staring at each other. The silence was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot and the pinging of shattering safety glass as a bullet lanced through the rear window.

  “ Go, go, go!” Washington shouted, but Walker didn’t need any urging. He started the car in an instant, pulling the gear shift into drive with his foot already on the floor. The new Ford cruiser shot out with its rear wheels spinning.

  A second shot rang out, ricocheting off the rear bumper, but before the gunman could fire a third, Walker had the car sliding around the corner. One hand on the wheel, the other on the mike.

  “ Officers under fire! Alley behind Tenth, east of Park, turning north onto St. Joseph.”

  Walker stomped on the brakes as soon as they were out of sight and no longer a target. He leapt out of the car with his gun drawn, instinctively opening the back door. Monday and Washington scrambled out. Washington also had his gun drawn. There was the sound of a siren off in the distance.

  The two policemen ignored Monday as they ran, hoping to get a shot at their attacker, but by the time they reached the corner, the alley was empty. They turned and walked back to the car, only to discover their prisoner gone.

  “ We’re in for it now,” Washington said.

  “ Come on, get in,” Walker said. “He couldn’t have gotten very far.”

  “ Over here.” Both officers turned toward the voice.

  “ There, I think, between those two houses.” Walker pointed to an area between two houses covered in green bushes, a perfect hiding place for a child playing hide and seek.

  “ I need some help here, I don’t think I can get up by myself,” Jim called out.

  “ You didn’t think you could hide from us for long did you?” Washington helped Jim up.

  “ I wasn’t hiding from you.”

  “ Then who?”

  “ The shooter, the man trying to kill me.”

  “ What makes you think it was you he was after?” Washington said as the sirens got closer.

  “ Someone tried to run me down on Second Street, but they got the wrong man. Makes me think the shooter was trying for me. Unless of course you guys get shot at all the time.”

  Two police cars came skidding around the corner onto St. Joseph, one from the alley, the other from the north, boxing them in.

  “ For Godsakes get these cuffs off. I think my arm is broken and besides, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “ Turn around,” Washington said. Jim obeyed and Washington unlocked the handcuffs. “Now don’t go making me sorry I did that.”

  “ Are you crazy, Washington?” Walker said. “Didn’t you hear what he said about killing and going to jail? Now you go and take the bracelets off. You think that’s smart?”

  “ Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but I think I can trust him.”

  “ Holy shit, Washington, look at your car. Looks like someone put a bullet through the back window,” an approaching officer said.

  “ Went in but didn’t go out, looks like,” a second uniform said.

  “ Doesn’t look like it hit anything inside. Must have gone out one of the open windows.”

  “ Driver’s window. You driving, Washington?”

  “ No, Walker.”

  “ Damn, Walker,” one of the young cops said, “you’re one lucky policeman, must’ve missed by inches.”

  “ Motherfuck!” Walker crossed himself again.

  “ Okay, boys,” Washington said, “show’s over, let’s clear out! The natives are getting restless.” Doors were opening and curious people were starting to fill the street.

  “ Yep, time to move,” Walker said. “We got a casualty to get to Community.�
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  “ Okay, take your man to the hospital. We’ll clean up here and calm the common folk,” the first uniform said.

  “ I think we can leave the cuffs off.” Washington opened the rear door for Jim, waited while he climbed in, then closed it. The two police officers got in front and once again started for the hospital.

  At the hospital, Washington and Walker were called upon to keep order between a battling couple. She had given her husband a broken nose, he’d given her a black eye. So they turned their prisoner over to the staff in the emergency room while they kept the peace. By the time the officers had calmed the quarreling couple, Jim was fixed up and ready to go.

  They did a good job.” Jim held his right arm up, showing it off. It was in a cast from the wrist almost to the elbow. He was lucky, he thought, he could still drive and dress himself.

  “ Now we go to the station.” Washington’s tone was more subdued. Jim thought he probably didn’t get too many prisoners paying their own hospital bill after the police had roughed them up.

  “ All right, I’d like to get this over with,” Jim said.

  “ That’s right, you’re a big man,” Walker said as he came into earshot from the other side of the emergency room. “You’ve done time. For murder, isn’t that what you said? So why did they let out after only four years if you killed two people?”

  “ The war was over. They let us come home.”

  “ Where did you do your time?” Washington said.

  “ In a small camp south of Hanoi.”

  “ The child molesters you killed were Viet Cong?”

  “ Yes.”

  “ And you could have gotten away if you would have killed ’em quick and quiet?”

  “ Probably.”

  “ Why didn’t you?” Walker asked.

  “ I was a little upset.”

  “ Boy, you and me are gonna get along fine.” Washington said. “It’s a shame we gotta take you in, but that man you half killed is gonna press charges, sure as I’m my momma’s son.”

  “ I understand.”

  “ You know,” Washington said, “we’ve been through so much together and we don’t even know your name.”