warranty package.
I knocked his knife hand wide with a sweep of my arm and drove my forehead down into his nose. I missed but caught his chin, and then he wheeled and stabbed the knife back at my side, and I caught his wrist awkwardly, and we fell. There were no direct punches, no clean kung fu angles, just glancing blows, grappling, and almost instantaneous exhaustion. In the tight space, we kicked our bodies around, fighting for position, walking the walls in a thoughtful sort of slow motion as our clothes twisted and our breathing grew harsh.
Methodically, he gained position on me, driving a knee into my side, leaning over me and turning his sweaty wrist in my grip, trying to free his knife hand. Our faces stayed close enough to kiss, a drop of perspiration threatening to fall from the tip of his nose, those bared teeth grotesque in close-up. The bitter scent of his skin factory grime and chemical soap pervaded the narrow hall. He got the bar of his forearm across the bridge of my nose, prying his knife hand free. My flailing shoe caught the footlocker, jammed it against the wall for resistance, and I shoved, flipping onto my stomach and trying to take his arm with me.
His knife hand popped loose.
I was on my stomach, Frankel straddling my back with both arms free, the knife lost from my field of vision. I scrambled on the floorboards but was pinned, so I bucked to keep him off balance. Each unguarded instant seemed an impossible duration.
His knee braced against the wall, setting his weight. A sharp intake of breath and a whistle of fabric as he drew an arm back for the plunge.
My escaped pen spun lethargically across the floor. I lunged, straining, getting it at my fingertips. Closing the plastic Bic into the vise of my fist, I rotated and jammed the uncapped point into the meat of Frankel's outer thigh. He let out a hiss, his swipe thrown off by our twisting momentum, the blade embedding in the wall and releasing a puff of drywall dust. I jammed the heel of my hand north, cracking his nose, the pain raising him to a bent-legged hover. Shoving free, I hooked his ankle with a foot, knocking him down onto his ass. His hands, bloodless from the pressure, gripped his thigh around the pen. As crimson blotted the white leg of his Dickies, I leaned over him, squeezed a handful of his hair, and ripped.
I ran, his fingernails scrabbling against the walls behind me as he pulled himself up. I pitched forward against the front door, banging it open, and stumbled down the stairs. Junior and Xena filled the Highlander's windows, the whites of their eyes visible across two lanes. As I dodged traffic, Junior turned over the engine and flung my door wide. Keeping my left hand curled tight to trap the protruding hairs, I fell into the driver's seat and peeled out, door slamming on its own as the Highlander hurtled forward.
Morton Frankel stood at a tilt on the second floor, two red hands curled around the railing like talons, watching us go.
Chapter 33
Lloyd blocked the gap in his doorway with his body as if nervous I'd muscle my way inside. A lab drone had told me he'd gone home early today, so I'd raced over after leaving an excited Junior at the curb outside Hope House. Xena, snoozing in the Guiltmobile's backseat, would live another day in Casa de Danner. Lloyd had listened to my account impassively, not budging from his post.
'I can't help you anymore, Drew.'
'This is it, Lloyd. It all hinges on this.' I lifted the plastic Baggie so he could see the six of Morton Frankel's hairs pressed inside. Four had nice follicular tags, white dots of flesh, attached to the roots. DNA treasure troves.
'We took a gamble on you coming into the lab last night, but now word of your visit's gotten around. Henderson himself was waiting at my bench this morning. I can't lose my job, our health insurance.' His voice trailed off. 'Things aren't good here, Drew. That's why I'm home.'
'I'm sorry.'
He stared at me. 'I'm sorry, too. But I can't help. I'm barely staying afloat here.'
'Where else can I go?'
'Go through official channels.'
'You and I both know I can't do that without landing in jail.'
'Have someone take a look at that eye.'
'That's not gonna get these hairs run for DNA.'
'You obtained them unlawfully. You broke in to his apartment. That's illegal and unethical. You crossed a line, Drew. It's not my fault that you can't get anyone else to cross it with you.'
'This guy framed me. He knows who I am. Where I live. Which means he'll come after me. I'm in a jam here, Lloyd.'
'And I'm not? I raced home today because Janice got a nosebleed that wouldn't quit. Forty-five minutes before we could get the platelets in to stop it.' He dropped his gaze, unwilling to look me in the face. 'I'm sorry, Drew, but Janice and I have to look out for ourselves.'
The door rasped closed. I stood holding the six hairs, listening to his retreating footsteps.
'Know what happens when someone punches you in the face? It hurts. That's it. No white bursts before the eyes. No blinding flashes. It just fucking hurts.'
Patiently waiting for me to finish, Chic dabbed at my swollen eye with a Q-tip dipped in alcohol. 'And unlike Derek Chainer's bullet grazes along his shoulder and them pretty shiners he come down with, it gonna hurt for more than one chapter.'
'Yeah, I was full of shit about that, too.' My right eye throbbed as if someone were pressing a stove coil against it. The image my bathroom mirror threw back at me was not a pretty one. The skin around the eye had gone parchment yellow and had a papery look to match. Broken vessels squirmed from the lids like the locks of Medusa. A half-moon at the temple, where the flesh had split, glittered darkly.
We felt Big Brontell's approach through the floor; he'd gone down to get his gear. 'What's Newt Gingrich doin' in there?' he called out.
'Moaning, mostly,' Chic said.
Big Brontell entered, the first-aid box like a travel sewing kit in his massive hands. The most professionally successful of the multitude of Chic's brothers, he was a charge nurse at Cedars-Sinai Hospital and spent much of his time repairing his brethren after motocross crashes, electrical shocks, or enigmatic altercations. He looked like Chic, only Supersized.
Chic and Big Brontell's arrival had interrupted a bout of furious writing, the words flying out of me as if I were taking dictation rather than making them up. I'd almost forgotten I'd called on my way back from Lloyd's to enlist their help; when the doorbell had rung, I'd started, anticipating Mortie bearing a boning knife and a horsey grin. I'd answered the door, gun in hand, and Big Brontell had chuckled and said, 'How you like that for racial profiling?'
The strands of Frankel's hair, preserved in the Baggie, rested on the counter by the sink. They'd been hard- won, and I wasn't going to let them out of my sight my own paranoid evidentiary chain of custody. Chic's deadbeat-mom-and-pop tracker had uncovered nothing new linking any element of the case to Delveckio or Cal Unger or to Bill Kaden, whom he'd tossed in for free. And he'd yet to come up with anything salient on Frankel, so those hairs, for now, were all I had.
As Big Brontell began stitching me with surprising grace and care, I kept my gaze on those six brown hairs, grasping for solutions, options, new avenues. 'Why can't you have any brothers who are criminalists?'
Big Brontell said, 'We got plenty who are criminals.'
He finished, and I thanked him and walked them down. At the door Chic set his hands on my shoulders and leaned forward so our foreheads almost touched. 'You keep that gun near and call if you need me, hear?'
'I hear.'
'You're splashing through dangerous waters, Drew-Drew. Might want to slow down for a time, drift with the currents.'
'If I can just get one of those hairs run for DNA, I'm thinking I can close this whole thing up.'
Chic smiled knowingly; I rarely said anything that surprised him. He jerked his head, indicating the sunset that was now my right eye. 'Juss remember,' he said, 'your best thinking got you here.'
