shots, no one showed it. Burgers still sizzled, music still played, men and women still laughed. I was vaguely aware that Ellen Lang, sitting out in Pike’s Cherokee without benefit of laughter or music or gaiety, might have heard the shots. And having heard them, might be on her way to call the cops.
I pulled him up again and we went out the living room, up a monstrous semicircular stairway to the second floor. Voices and the sound of closing doors came from the back of the house. On the upper landing, I said, “Where are you taking me?”
“Offishe.” He looked to the left down a curving hall. “Door, wish a couple guysh. Go shrough into she offishe.”
“Just a couple of guys, huh?”
“Yesh.”
“There another way in or out?”
He looked confused, then shook his head. It hurt him to do that. “I don’t live here, man. It’sh tight. Shoundproo.”
Shoundproo. Perfect.
“Why are you people here?”
His eyes flagged and he started to crumple. I hoisted him up, gave him a shake, asked him again.
“Bushnesh,” he said.
“Business. Dope deal?”
He nodded.
The hall was long and paneled with a very rich grade of walnut. Impressive. The St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco has walls like that. I stopped us before we got to the door, held up the Beretta, and touched my lips.
He said, “I beliee you.”
A slim, well-manicured Mexican sat at a bank president’s desk and spoke into a phone. A tall, blocky blond guy had half his ass on the edge of the desk, listening in with his arms crossed. Across the room there was a handsome copper-facaded door that would lead to Duran’s sanctum sanctorum. The blond guy was in a pale yellow sport coat. The Mexican wore a charcoal gray Brooks Brothers three-piece and looked better than the blond guy. Executive secretary, no doubt. He was speaking English, asking about the noises he’d just heard. I shoved Mr. Teeth in through the doorway, walked in after him and shot the Mexican and the blond once each. The hollow- points flipped the Mexican over backward out of his chair and knocked the blond guy off the desk.
I looked at the door. It was thick and heavy and I didn’t know how I was going to get in there. No knob. Knock, knock, knock, Chicken Delight! There would probably be a buzzer somewhere around the secretary’s desk that would make little metal gears push little metal rods to swing open the door. They would have to be strong rods. It was a big door.
Mr. Teeth and I were halfway across the outer office when the copper door opened and Rudy Gambino stepped out, saying, “The fuck’s goin’ on out-”
He had a Smith Police Special in his left hand. He dropped it when he saw me.
“Back up, fat man,” I said.
He backed. And in we went.
37
Perry Lang was not in the room.
Domingo Garcia Duran was sitting on a maroon leather couch under a wall of black-and-white photographs. Most of the shots were of bullrings and bulls and Duran, I supposed, in his Suit of Lights. Still others showed Duran with other matadors and Duran with various political personalities and Duran with assorted celebrities. Everyone smiled. Everyone was friends. Hooray for Hol-ley-wood! There were trophies and black horns mounted to teak plaques and tattered black ears mounted to still other teak plaques. Gray-black hooves stood hoof up off little wooden pedestals like demented ashtrays. You could smell death in the room like mildewed satin. A cape was hanging off a tall leather pedestal near the window, and crossed swords like the ones on the front gate, only real- size, were fixed on the wall above it. The walls were hung with oil paintings of bulls and an enormous life-size rendering of Duran poised for the kill. Still more statues of bulls and matadors and men on horses with long lances lined the bookcases.
“Really, Dom,” I said. “A bit much, don’t you think?”
Rudy Gambino said, “Your ass is shit, bubba.”
I said, “I got the gun, Rudy.”
There was a marble coffee table in front of Duran with an open briefcase on top of it. The briefcase was filled with neat stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Duran’s well-worn bent sword was on top of it. Duran leaned forward, picked up the sword, and closed the case. Estoque, Pike had said. The sword used for the kill.
I pushed Mr. Teeth down onto the floor and told him to stay there, then pointed the gun at Duran. “I want the boy now, Dom.” I could see Pike bleeding to death out in the yard. I could see Sanchez getting loose, getting Ellen’s gun…
Rudy said, “The fuck is this, Dom? He knows who I am.”
I fired a round into the couch next to Duran. The leather dimpled a foot from his shoulder as the bullet yanked through the cushion. The high-velocity load was so loud my ears rang. Rudy jumped but Duran didn’t, and he never took his eyes off me. Balls, all right. He said, “We will trade.”
I shook my head. “Get me the kid.”
Rudy moved forward, swinging his right arm in a broad gesture and talking to me like we were used to this. Maybe he was. “How the hell you know who I am?”
“I stayed at the same hotel as you once. In Houston. I saw you walk through the lobby.”
“Bullshit.” He shook his finger at Duran. “No one’s supposed to know I’m here, goddamnit. Carlos and Lenny find out I’m here right now instead of in Colombia I’ll have to go through all kindsa shit.”
“Shut up, Rudy,” I said. “You cutting out your partners is the least of your worries.” I didn’t know who the hell Carlos and Lenny were. But there was a briefcase of money on the table. Carlos and Lenny thought Rudy Gambino was in Colombia. There was a known dope connection between Gambino and Duran, as well as a history of investment partnerships. It looked good that Gambino was moving dope through Duran to cut out the middleman.
Gambino screamed, “I ain’t cutting out nobody, goddamnit!”
I fired another round, this one slamming through a picture into the wall beside Duran. Four inches from his ear. He didn’t flinch. I wouldn’t be that good. “I take the kid, and I go for the police,” I said. “If you’re good, you can make an airport.”
He didn’t say anything.
This wasn’t working. I was making a lot of noise and taking a lot of time and not getting any closer to Perry Lang. Sooner or later someone would come. When enough someones came, that would be it.
“Okay, motherfucker,” I said, “bring me to the kid or eat one.” I aimed the Beretta between Duran’s eyes. I meant it.
He shook his head. “No. I do not have to.”
Something hard pressed against my neck and the Eskimo said, “That’s enough.”
Rudy Gambino hopped over, jerked my gun away, then hit me in the face twice with his right hand. His punches split my lip but didn’t put me down. “Now what you got?” he shouted. “You got dick is what you got!”
Gambino went over to Mr. Teeth and kicked him. “Eddie?” Eddie was passed out.
Duran leaned forward again and tapped the marble table with the sword. He said, “Here is how I will deal with you. I will kill you, and I will kill the boy, and I will kill the mother, and then it will be done.” He looked serenely calm as he said it, almost in repose, and I knew this must be the way he used to look when he faced the bulls. Assured and in absolute control of the pageant. The Bringer of Death.
“But you won’t have your property.”
He shrugged. “The property was never what was important.”
“Sure.” The Eskimo was an enormous presence behind me, something dark and gargantuan and primordial. I
