Horace sat outside at the picnic tables in front of the Taco Bell on Fourth Street in Long Beach and watched the sunset as the cars went by. On the table in front of him was his usual, five tacos and a large Pepsi, but he couldn’t eat. Half a day had passed since he’d talked to Ma on the phone and he was still seething. Someone had turned him into the IRS. It burned him. With every fiber in his being, he wanted to know who’d done it.
Lucky he thought fast. Telling Ma he was going to Mexico with Sadie bought him a few days, but it wasn’t enough. Once those IRS guys got their teeth into you, they never let go.
Maybe Striker could help him out. Those Jap business types he worked for must have plenty of high powered accountants on their payroll. Already feeling better, he chomped down on a taco. But that woman better be dead the next time he talked to him. He didn’t want to have to explain why she was still walking around if he was gonna ask him for help with one of those accountants.
He jumped from the table, grabbed the bag of tacos, gulped at the Pepsi on his way to the van. He could be at her place in thirty minutes. He ate as he drove, his mind on fire. He saw himself knocking at her door. She opens it. He pushes her inside, sticks her with the knife, then he’s outta there.
Then the mind pictures screeched to slow motion. What if the kid was there? Could he do another? What choice did he have? His earlier plan had been to sneak in around midnight, do the woman and get out of the apartment without anyone the wiser. But now, with this tax thing, he didn’t have the luxury of waiting. He wanted to call Striker as soon as possible, get the feds off his back.
In Huntington Beach, he parked on PCH, got out of the car, walked around the fenced complex to the bike trail that ran along the beach side of the condos. It was dark now.
A couple of kids, teenagers, a boy and girl, passed him on Rollerblades. He turned and watched as they zoomed along the concrete trail. Young love, he understood that. It’s what he had with Sadie. Somebody pumping a mountain bike was coming fast, whizzed by the blading teens. In an instant it was past. Horace spun around, grabbed onto the fence and scrabbled over it, landing like a cat on the other side.
He darted a look around. Nobody had seen. He stood and started for her condo, swinging his arms as he walked, as if he had every right in the world to be where he was.
Her condo was dark. He knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again, louder. Still no joy. He had the picks out and the door open in seconds.
“Anybody home?” He pulled the Beretta out of the shoulder holster. “Anyone home?”
Again, no answer.
He holstered the gun, pulled the knife out of his hip pocket. He pushed the button, flicked it open, closed it, did it again. There was nothing for it but to wait. Sooner or later she’d come home and that would be it. He closed and flicked the blade open again.
Elvis was playing on the jukebox as Gordon left his tip on the table. He’d had the burger and fries, finished up with apple pie and vanilla ice cream. Seldom did he eat so much, but tonight he was ravenous. His emotions had run the gamut the last couple of days, from the unbelievable low when he thought he’d discovered Maggie dead behind the Whale, to the exaltation that shocked through him when he discovered her at the other end of his gunsight only last night.
And he’d spent the day as a cop. Something he hadn’t done in years and it wasn’t over. Tomorrow he would face down Larry Striker and make everything okay for Maggie. He’d never felt so alive.
Outside, he inhaled the night air, looked to the heavens, sighted the Big Dipper, the only constellation he could identify. A slight breeze was blowing as he jogged across PCH at the Main Street light. He waved to the security guard, got a nod and a smile back.
He walked along the fence, the bike trail and the beach on one side, the walkway through the condos on the other. He ran his fingers through the chain link, like a kid would a picket fence on his way to school just before summer vacation. He felt like a kid, too. And it was a change he liked. Somewhere along the line he’d blinked and gotten old.
Close to Maggie’s condo now, something moved in the bushes outside the front door. Gordon stopped, hand still on the fence. Often times he sat on his front porch and watched the cat from next door stalk a bird across the street at the beach. The animal could sit forever without moving a hair. He was that cat now as he took silent breaths, waiting, watching.
It moved again.
It was an animal. At first he thought maybe it was a cat, he had cats on the brain, but as his eyes got used to the dark he saw that it was a possum. He smiled, started for the door. The possum scurried between the hedge bushes and the wall, ducking out of sight.
He keyed the lock, entered, laughing at the possum, when something smacked into him. Gordon rolled with the punch as the lights came on.
“Fuck! Where is she?” The man was wiry, with squinty eyes and he had a gun pointed at Gordon’s belly. There was no doubt it was Horace Nighthyde. He looked like a ferret.
“What are you doing in my apartment? What do you want?” Gordon reached up, massaged his jaw. It was going to be sore in the morning, if he lived to see the morning.
“Don’t give me any crap. This isn’t your place and we both know it, so tell me what I want and I’ll be out of your face.”
“Can I get up?” Gordon pushed himself to his feet without waiting for a reply. His own gun was in Maggie’s bedroom in a bureau drawer, the others out in the trunk of his car. None of them any help now.
“I said, where is she?” Nighthyde had sweat running down his forehead. His gun hand was shaking.
“Who?”
“Don’t play stupid with me. I followed you from that bar in the Shore to that fag place the other night. You went in, I saw.”
“That’s why you dumped the body there, because you saw us together?”
“So, tell me where she is and you can live to go there again.” Nighthyde’s dark eyes glowed, the pupils were pin pricks, as if he’d been doing drugs. Was it fear?
“Come on, Horace. How many people are you going to kill because you fucked up and shot Frankie Fujimori by mistake?” Gordon edged to the right.
“Don’t move.”
“I’m just going over to the sofa. You popped me a good one, I’m a little dizzy.”
“What do you mean, mistake?” Nighthyde motioned toward the sofa with the gun, signaling it was okay for Gordon to go over and sit.
“Your pal Striker screwed up.” Gordon eased over to the sofa, sat down with a sigh. He continued to rub his jaw as if he were in pain. “Fujimori was a child molester and a killer of little girls, but not the man you were supposed to kill.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know another Japanese man, a guy named Ichiro Yamamoto was in that store. I know he used to work for Congressman Nishikawa and that he was selling out Nishikawa to the cops on a diamonds for weapons scam. I know Striker used to work for Nishikawa and that the company he works for now operates with Yakuza money. I know Nishikawa’s thick with the Yakuza and I know he hates the idea of some little punk sending him to jail.” The last two were a guess, but he thought the odds were pretty good they were as true as everything else he’d said.
“Striker woulda told me if I got the wrong one.”
“No he wouldn’t, you fucked up and the next day Yamamoto decided to clam up. He told the cops he made up the whole thing and with that, the need for Striker to have him hit went away. So even though you got the wrong guy, Striker couldn’t tell you because he needed you to get rid of the witness.” Gordon was really guessing now, but it all made sense. It couldn’t have happened any other way.
“Aw fuck.” Horace felt drained. The guy on the couch was too scared to lie. Horace wanted to puke. He’d killed that old lady and the fucking kid for a mistake. For a God dammed mistake.
“You don’t look so good, Horace.”
“Shut the fuck up. Fucking faggot, think you know it all.”
“Gordon,” the fag said.
