I heard her spin the cylinder on the. 38 and looked up in time to see her slipping bullets in. The flashlight beam struck Blinky squarely in the face.
A gunshot and a scream.
“ You shot me! Jesus Cristo, Jake, she shot me in the fucking leg! I’m bleeding. She broke the bone. Jake!”
I kept quiet. I did not want to get shot in the leg or anywhere else.
I stayed huddled behind the right rear wheel of the Silver Queen’s chariot. Another gunshot, and the sound of glass shattering. Above me, the lady’s hair had fractured into a thousand shards and cascaded over me. I stayed put, struck a match to the rock floor and lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite. I crouched there, letting the fuse fizzle and crackle, keeping the flame between my cupped hands so it would not glow in the darkness, trying to figure what to do next.
I tried to calculate how long the fuse took to burn. I counted off the seconds, measured the inches, then realized it was about ten seconds from blast off. Extending my arm, I tossed a hook shot in the general direction of the entrance to the cavern. As I did, a flood of thoughts engulfed me. I didn’t know the strength of one stick of dynamite. Probably more pow than a string of Chinese firecrackers, but not enough to bring down the roof. Right? Didn’t Blinky talk about a circle of sticks just to knock a hole in rock wall? As my arm was following through on a pretty healthy toss, I thought of the old Road Runner cartoons. Wasn’t Wile E. Coyote always tossing dynamite and having it tossed right back?
I intended it as a diversion. A little boom, and I would dash.. .
“ Shit! Shit! Shit!”
All these years I’ve known Jo Jo Baroso and never had she been so scatological. Of course, then, I’d never thrown a stick of dynamite at her before.
The floppity-flop of her rubber boots across rock. A stomping sound.
“ You’re crazy, Jake!” Her voice, just this side of hysterical. “You’ll kill us all. These timbers aren’t stable.”
At least she hadn’t thrown it back at me.
From somewhere in the darkness, I heard the whimpering of my client who liked the privilege that kept me from testifying against him, but refused to adhere to any laws himself.
“ Blinky, how about it?” I shouted out. “Is it safe?”
“ Blow her up, Jake. Send her straight to hell.”
I peered out from behind the chariot’s wheel and saw the flashlight beam play across the floor until it found Blinky, curled up alongside an ore cart. “Jake, she’s going to shoot me again. No, Josie, no!”
“ I’ll take care of you later,” Jo Jo said, then turned the beam toward the Silver Queen. It flicked off, and I knew she was walking this way. I didn’t hesitate. I struck a match, lit the fuse, stepped into the open, and tossed it underhanded along the rocky floor. It bounced two or three times, the fuse burning green in the darkness.
I heard Jo Jo mutter the same monosyllable. I heard the boots slapping the rock. I watched the lit fuse, tried to memorize the spot in the darkness as she approached it. The glowing fuse disappeared under a stomping boot and I charged the spot. I was going to hit her head on, legs churning, and wrap her up, a picture-perfect tackle. I was going to drive her to the floor and do something I’ve never done before: I was going to hit a woman.
She must have heard my leather soles smacking the floor. Or my labored breathing. Or her instincts were just too sharp.
I saw the flash from the muzzle before I felt the impact.
The bullet caught me in the right shoulder. It was a clean through-and-through that didn’t strike a bone, a major blood vessel, or a steel pin that acts up when it rains. I felt a burning, the trickle of warm blood, and then a sharp pain as if an ice pick had been jammed into me and was still there.
I was still on my feet, but wondering why.
Shouldn’t I be on the ground or something?
The flashlight flicked on, bursting through the darkness, illuminating a craggy formation of blue limestone and dolomite above me. I turned, tucked my head, went into a crouch and rolled onto my good shoulder, scrambling back behind the chariot.
Another gunshot, and again the Silver Lady took one for me. Or maybe it ricocheted off Plutus, one of the little diapered gods at her side. I felt around in the darkness for the last stick of dynamite. Where the hell was it? I found the big silver wheel of the chariot, ran my hand along the ground, and there it was. I drew a match from my pocket, struck it, and nothing happened. My pants, still soggy from my bodysurfing in the tunnel, had moistened the tip. I found another match. Soaking wet. Another one, same thing.
I breathed on the first match, trying to dry the phosphorous, wiped it in the dust, struck it again. Nothing, and now the tip started to crumble.
I heard Jo Jo’s footsteps getting closer.
One last time, and it caught. I let the flame grow a second, then lit the fuse, waited a second and threw the dynamite as far as I could. I wanted to sail it over Jo Jo’s head to get her turned around. When she headed to stomp out the fuse, I’d rush her again, but this time, I’d zigzag. waited to hear the dynamite hit the ground, but instead of the smack against hard rock, I heard a soft thump.
Then I heard Blinky’s yell. “Jake, ay, mierda! Jake, maldito sea , it’s on the timber over the ledge. I can see the fuse burning.”
Then I heard Jo Jo. Her vocabulary hadn’t improved. I watched the flashlight beam playing across the rocks above the ledge. Finally it stopped at the juncture of a vertical and horizontal timber. Wedged between them was a stick of dynamite with a glowing fuse.
The timber was at least twelve feet off the ground. In my younger days, I could dunk a basketball with a running start, but the basket’s only ten feet. Twelve feet was out of the question.
“ Jake, come here!” Jo Jo shouted at me. She was directly in front of the Silver Queen, maybe fifteen feet from the pedestal.
“ Why, you want a clean shot at me?”
“ No, you’ve got to put out the dynamite. Now!”
“ Throw your gun over here, and I’ll do it,” I said, though I didn’t have the slightest idea how.
“ Chingate!”
Well, at least she had expanded her stock of words. “The gun. Throw it out.”
“ First, the dynamite.”
“ No, first the gun.”
“ Would you two stop arguing and do something?” Blinky had picked up some rocks from where he was lying and was tossing them at the dynamite. I couldn’t see where they landed, but I didn’t think he was going to win a teddy bear at the county fair.
“ Jake,” she said. “Now!”
I quietly climbed up the rear pedestal of the silver lady’s chariot. Jo Jo turned the other way, her flashlight aiming a beam at the sizzling fuse. I hopped into the back of Cleopatra’s barge and shimmied up a silver pedestal until I could get my hands on top of the canopy. I hoisted myself up, swung a knee on top, and looked out at the darkness. I was twenty feet above the floor of the cavern. The fuse was still burning.
“ Jake, where are you?”
The flashlight beam was there below me. I could creep to the front of the canopy and leap at her. It wouldn’t be chivalrous, two hundred twenty-some pounds smacking into her, probably breaking some bones, but at the moment, she had the gun, and I was out of tricks.
I took a step to the front of the canopy.
“ Jake, where are you? There isn’t time!”
“ Josie,” Blinky called out. “We gotta get outta here. Help me into the tunnel.”
I took another step.
“ No,” she called back. “If that timber goes, this whole chamber will be sealed off. The statue will be crushed.”
I took a third step.
And the Silver Queen came to life. At first, I thought the two Greek gods at her side were moving backward. But they were standing still. Which meant we were moving forward.
