sedan followed. It came through at a creep, the guy in the passenger seat pointing to the south and the driver sitting high to see what he was pointing at. Whatever he saw he didn't like it, because he made an angry gesture and looked away and that's when they saw me. I jumped the Corvette into their path and got out of the car with my hands clear so they could see I had no gun. The kid with the butch bounced out and started yelling into a handi- talkie and the Hispanic guy was running toward me with his badge in one hand and a Browning 9mm in the other. Floyd Riggens was roaring toward us from the far end of the lot. Thurman wasn't with him. Thurman wasn't anywhere around.
The Hispanic guy yelled, 'Get your hands up. Out and away from your body.' When the guns come out there's always a lot of yelling.
The guy with the butch ran over and patted me down with his free hand. I made him for Pinkworth. The other guy for Garda. While Pinkworth did the shakedown, some of the people from the tour buses began to gather on the walk and look at us. Most of the men were in Bermuda shorts and most of the women were in summer-weight pant suits and just about everyone held a camera. Tourists. They stood in a little group as they watched, and a fat kid with glasses and a DES MOINES sweatshirt said, 'Hey, neat.' Maybe they thought we were the CBS version of the Universal stunt show.
Garcia said, 'Jesus Christ, we've got a goddamned crowd.'
I smiled at him. 'My fans.'
Pinkworth looked nervous and lowered his gun like someone might see it and tell. Garcia lowered his, too.
Riggens's car screeched to a stop and he kicked open the door. His face was flushed and he looked angry. He also looked drunk. 'Stay the fuck away from my wife.'
Garcia yelled, 'Floyd,' but Floyd wasn't listening. He took two long steps forward, then lunged toward me with his body sort of cocked to the side like he was going to throw a haymaker and knock me into the next time zone.
He swung, and I stepped outside of it and snapped a high roundhouse kick into the side of his head that knocked him over sideways.
The fat kid said, 'Look at that!' and the fat kid's father aimed a Sony video camera at us.
When Riggens fell, Garcia's gun came up and Pinkworth started forward, and that's when Joe Pike reared up from behind their car, snapped the slide on a 12-gauge Ithaca riot gun, and said, 'Don't.'
Garcia and Pinkworth froze. They spread their fingers off their pistol grips, showing they were out of it.
The crowd went, 'Ooo.' Some show, all right.
Joe Pike stands six-one and weighs maybe one-ninety, and he's got large red arrows tattooed on the outside of each deltoid, souvenirs from his days as a Force Recon Marine in Vietnam. He was wearing faded blue jeans and Nike running shoes and a plain gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and government-issue sunglasses. Angle the sun on him just right, and sometimes the tattoos seem to glow. I think Pike calls it his apparition look.
I said, 'Gee, and I thought you'd got lost in traffic.'
Pike's mouth twitched. He doesn't smile, but sometimes he'll twitch. You get a twitch out of Pike, he's gotta be dying on the inside. In tears, he's gotta be.
I took Garcia's and Pinkworth's guns, and Pike circled the blue sedan, finding a better angle to cover Riggens. When he moved, he seemed to glide, as if he were flowing over the surface of the earth, moving as a panther might move. To move was to stalk. I'd never seen him move any other way.
Garcia said, 'Put down that goddamned gun. We're LAPD officers, goddamn it.'
Pike's shotgun didn't waver. An older woman with a lime green sun hat and a purse the size of a mailbag looked at the other tourists and said, 'Does the bus leave after this?'
I pulled Riggens's gun and then I went back to Pinkworth and Garcia and checked their IDs. Pink-worth said, 'You're marked fuck for this, asshole. You're going down
'Uh-huh.'
Riggens moaned and sort of turned onto his side. His head was bleeding where it had bounced on the tarmac, but it didn't look bad. I took the clips out of the three police guns, tossed them into the blue sedan's backseat, then went back to Riggens. 'Let me see.'
Riggens pushed my hand off and tried to crab away, but he didn't do much more than flop onto his back. 'Fuck you.'
Pinkworth said, 'You're in a world of shit. You just assaulted a Los Angeles police officer.'
I said, 'Call it in and let's go to the station. Maybe they'll give Riggens a Breathalyzer while you guys are booking me.' You could smell it on him a block away.
Garcia said, 'Quiet, Pink.'
A green four-door sedan identical to the other two cop sedans came toward us across the lot. Riggens was still trying to get up when the green car pulled in behind him and a tall guy with short gray hair got out. He was wearing chino slacks and a striped short-sleeve shirt tucked neatly into his pants and short-topped Redwing trail shoes. He was tanned dark, like he spent a lot of time in the sun, and his face was lined. I made him for his mid-forties, but he could've been older. He looked at Riggens, then the two cops by the blue sedan, and then at Joe Pike. He wasn't upset and he wasn't excited, like he knew what he'd find when he got here and, when he got here, he knew that he could handle it. When he saw Joe Pike he said, 'I didn't know you were in on this.'
Pike nodded once.
I gave them surprised. 'You guys know each other?'
Pike said, 'Eric Dees.'
Eric Dees looked at me, then looked back at Pike. 'Pike and I rode a black-and-white together for a couple of months maybe a million years ago.' Pike had been a uniformed LAPD officer when I'd met him. 'Put away the shotgun, Joe. It's over, now. No one's going to drop the hammer.'
