with shiny steel tips on both ends. A long blade popped out of the case. He was grinning again. He was going to have a good day, after all, and his boss was going to think he was a hot shot.
Ice formed in my stomach, in my lungs, along the inside of my chest. This was fear, a lot less of it than I had felt on the highway, and useful because of the anger that came along with it. I was safer here on the sidewalk than I had been tearing along on a fogbound highway. Nothing was going to come at me that I couldn't already see. I was probably twenty-five years older than this creep and a lot less muscular, but at his age, I had spent an entire summer in a sweatbox in Georgia, dealing with lousy food and a lot of determined men coming at me with knives and bayonets.
He jabbed at me, just having fun. I didn't move. He jabbed again. I kept my feet planted. We both knew he was too far away to touch me. He wanted me to run, so that he could trot up behind me and clamp his left arm around my neck.
He prowled toward me, and I let my arms dangle, watching his hands and his feet. 'Jesus, you got nothing, you got no moves at all,' he said.
His right foot stabbed out, and his right arm came up toward me. I felt a blast of mingled adrenaline and rage and twisted to my left. I grabbed his wrist with my right hand and closed my left just above his elbow. In the half- second he could have done something to get his momentum back, he swiveled his head and looked into my eyes. I brought up my right knee and slammed my hands down as hard as I could. I even grunted, the way they recommended back in Georgia. His arm came apart in my hands—the two long bones snapped away from the elbow, and the big one, the radius, sliced through the skin of his inner arm like a razor. The knife clunked down onto the sidewalk. He made a small astonished sound, and I got both hands on his forearm and yanked it, using as much torque as I could. I was hoping it would come off, but it didn't. Maybe I was standing too close to him. He stumbled in front of me, and I saw his eyes bulge. He started screaming. I pushed him down, but he was already crumpling. He landed on his side with his knees drawn up. His chest was sprayed with blood, and blood pumped through the ragged hole in his arm.
I walked around him and picked up the knife. He was still screaming, and his eyes looked glazed. He thought he was going to die. He wasn't, but he'd never really use his right arm again. I walked up to him and kicked the place where his elbow used to be. He passed out.
I looked up and down the street. There wasn't a person in sight. I knelt down beside him and shoved my hand into the pocket of his pants. I found a set of keys and a number of slippery little things. I threw the keys into the storm drain and put my hand back into his pocket and came out with four double-wrapped little plastic envelopes filled with white powder. These I dropped into my jacket pocket. I rolled him over and picked the pocket on the other side. He had a fat little wallet with about a hundred dollars and a lot of names and addresses written on little pieces of paper. I lifted the flap and looked at his driver's license. His name was Nicholas Ventura, of McKinney Street, about five blocks west of Livermore. I dropped the wallet and walked away on legs made of air. At the end of the block I realized that I was still holding his knife. I threw it into the street. It bounced and clattered until it was a dark spot in the fog.
I had seen him before, waiting with three other men at a round table at the back of Sinbad's Cavern. He was part of the talent pool. I turned into Widow Street and got myself up the steps to the St. Alwyn's entrance on my air-legs. I felt sick and weary, more sick than weary, but weary enough to lie down for a week. Instead of adrenaline, I could taste disgust.
The dried-out night clerk looked up at me and then elaborately looked away. I went to the pay telephones and called 911. 'There's an injured man on the sidewalk alongside the St. Alwyn Hotel,' I said. 'That's on Livermore Avenue, between South Sixth and South Seventh. He needs an ambulance.' The operator asked my name, and I hung up. Out of the sides of his eyes, the clerk watched me move toward the elevators. When I pushed the button, he said, 'You don't go up without you go through me.'
'I'll go through you, if that's what you really want,' I said. He moved like a ghost to the far end of the counter and began playing with a stack of papers.
I rapped twice on Glenroy's door. Nat Cole was singing about Frim-Fram sauce with shifafa on the side, and Glenroy called out, 'Okay, I'm coming.' I could barely hear him through the music. The door opened, and Glenroy's eager smile vanished as soon as he saw my face. He leaned out and looked around me to see if anyone else was in the corridor.
'Hey, man, I said for you to come before eight. Why don't you go downstairs, get a drink at the bar, and then call me from the lobby? It'll be okay, I just need some time, you know.'
'It's okay now,' I said. 'I have something for you.'
'I got some private business to do.' I palmed two of the packets and showed them to him. 'Your man had an accident.'
He backed away from the door. I walked toward the table with the box and the mirror. Glenroy kept his eyes on me until I sat down. Then he closed the door. I could see caution, worry, and curiosity working in his eyes. 'I guess I should hear this story,' he said, and came toward the table like a cat padding into a strange room.
Glenroy took the chair across from me, put the palms of his hands on the table, and stared at me as if I were some neighborhood child who had suddenly displayed a tendency toward arson. 'Were you waiting for a grown-up delinquent named Nicholas Ventura?' I asked.
He closed his eyes and blew air through his nose. 'I want you to talk to me,' I said.
He opened his eyes as soon as I began to speak, and now he looked at me with an unhappy pity. 'I thought I told you about staying out of trouble. You looked like you understood me.'
'I had to take a trip today,' I said. 'Ventura was waiting for me. He tried to run me off the highway, and he nearly managed to do it.'
Glenroy let one hand drop to the table and pressed the other against his cheek. He wanted to close his eyes again—he'd have closed his ears, if he could.
'Then I came here,' I said. 'I parked a couple of blocks away. The accident was that he saw me when he was coming here to make his delivery. He brightened right up.'
'I got nothing to do with him, except for one thing,' he said. 'I can't explain him to you.'
'He pulled out a knife and tried to kill me. I took care of that. He isn't going to talk about it, Glenroy. He'll be too embarrassed. But I don't think he'll be around anymore.'
'You took his merchandise away from him?'
'I went through his pockets. That's how I learned his name.'
'I suppose it could be worse,' Glenroy said. 'As it is, I'm glad I'm getting on that plane to Nice the day after tomorrow.'
'You're not in any danger. I just want you to give me a name.'
'You're a fool.'
'I already know the name, Glenroy. I just want to make sure all the edges are nailed down. And then I want you to do something for me.'
He rolled his head sideways on his palm. 'If you want to be my friend, give me that merchandise and leave me out of it.'
'I'm going to give it to you,' I said. 'After you tell me the name.'
'I'd rather stay alive,' he said. 'I can't tell you anything. I don't even know anything.' But he straightened up and pulled his chair closer to the table.
'Who was the detective that Billy Ritz worked with? Who helped him plant evidence, after he killed people?'
'Nobody knows that.' Glenroy shook his head. 'Some people might have worked out that that kind of business was goin' on, but those people made sure they stayed on the right side of Billy. That's all I can tell you.'
'You're lying,' I said. 'I'm going to flush that shit down the toilet—I need your help, Glenroy.'
He glowered at me for a moment, trying to work out how he could get what he wanted without endangering himself. 'Billy was connected,' he said. 'You know what I mean? He was all over the place.'
