Trautmann grunted, and tagged me hard in the ribs with a short left. Then he grabbed a massive handful of my sweatshirt and dragged me in close and brought down two big, fast overhand rights. I caught some of them on my left arm, but not enough. His fist was like a sack full of cobblestones, and now my left arm was numb. A few more of those would send me down. I stepped in closer to him and jammed my left thumb at his eye. He saw it coming and turned his head, but he didn’t see my right thumb. It caught him in the soft part of the throat, under his Adam’s apple, and I dug in hard. He gagged and drew back a little, and when he did I slammed my head down on his nose. I heard a liquid crunch.
“Fuck!” he roared, and I pushed him away and my shirt tore and he stumbled backward, holding a hunk of it. “Motherfucker!” he yelled. He scrabbled upright and had his hand on his gun and stopped when he saw the Glock in mine.
He stood there, coiled in a half crouch, breathing hard, his hand on the butt of his gun, looking at me. His nose was bleeding and it was pulpy looking and might have been broken. There was an angry purple patch at the base of his throat, and a welt on his cheek. But there was no hatred in his eyes and no anger-no emotion at all-just cold appraisal.
My heart was pounding, and it was tough to hold the gun steady. Feeling was coming back in my right arm, but I didn’t know how it’d take the recoil if I had to shoot him. Then he dropped his hand and put his palms out and stood up, relaxed and smiling. I took a deep breath and stepped back a couple of paces.
“I guess we’re not going to have that talk, huh?” I said, after a while. Trautmann snorted.
“Oh, we’ll talk, Johnny,” he said, chuckling. His voice was raspy. “I’ll do a little homework, and then we’ll have a long talk. See, I know something about you now. I know you’re not just a pussy PI like I thought. I know you’re quick, and you take a punch pretty good. And next time we talk, I’ll know even more. We’ll have a great fucking conversation.” He blew his nose onto the pavement, and a lot of blood came out. He looked at it and shook his head and smiled. “That’s a promise,” he said, and he went through the doors into the mall, laughing to himself.
I walked back to my Taurus and leaned against it and took some deep breaths. I looked around. The lot was quiet. The traffic on Roslyn Road was sparse and distant. It was a quiet, cold, gray day. It was barely nine-thirty. The adrenaline was starting to ebb, and my arms and legs were shaking. Pain was starting to register. The cut above my right ear was bleeding down the right side of my face. The other side was tender and starting to swell, and the inside of my mouth was cut. I was pretty sure I had a busted rib, and my arms would soon be a purple mess. I got in the car and drank some water and breathed some more. I put my gun on the seat next to me, and then I left Roslyn Meadows, and drove slowly and carefully back into the city.
Chapter Seventeen
“Ai-yah,” Jane Lu gasped, “what happened to you?” She was getting off the elevator as I was getting on. She was dressed in an orange turtleneck, khaki pants, and a black leather jacket. Her perfect brow was knit with concern, and her mouth was set in a small frown.
“I’d smile insouciantly, but my face hurts too much. What are you doing home now? I thought you had a real job.” It was Friday afternoon, and I was just back from the St. Vincent’s emergency room, where I’d been poked, prodded, scanned, and pronounced more or less fit. Rest, ibuprofen, call if I started seeing things, lay off running for a couple of weeks. The pills they’d given me hadn’t fully kicked in, and I was still enveloped in a thin haze of pain.
“I’m the boss, I just pretend to work,” Jane said, distractedly. She was looking at the bruising along the side of my face and the cut above my ear. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said.
“Have you seen a doctor?” she repeated.
“Yes, and I got a clean bill of health,” I answered. “No broken bones, no concussion, didn’t even need any stitches. Just a cracked rib. Not bad, all things considered.”
“What happened?” she asked, still examining my face. She reached up and, very lightly, touched my left cheek. It was an unconscious gesture on her part and completely unexpected. I felt the delicate contact of her fingertips like an electrical surge, and I flinched in surprise. She withdrew them quickly. “Did I hurt you? I’m sorry.”
“No… no, it’s okay.” I shook my head. That hurt.
“So, what happened?” she asked again.
“Workplace injury,” I said
“Nice workplace. Do you need anything? From the drugstore, or the market?”
“Thanks, but I’m fine.” She nodded but continued to frown.
“Well, if you do…” She reached into her tiny black purse and pulled out a business card and a pen and wrote quickly. “My office number is the same as Lauren’s; my home number is on the back. Give a call.” She handed me the card, and then she was gone. I got on the elevator and pushed 4. I looked at Jane’s card on the way up. Her writing was precise and angular, like the writing on a blueprint. Her fragrance lingered faintly.
I hadn’t seen Jane since Thanksgiving, when we’d shared the ride home. She’d sat wrapped in a big, black coat in the back of the cab, and I’d watched the play of light and shadow over her face as we rolled through the quiet streets. She hadn’t said much, but when she did speak, her soft voice had sounded close, as if her lips were at my ear. Heat seemed to emanate from her, like a kind of perfume.
Jane’s cell phone had chirped just as the cab slowed in front of our building, and it had startled us both. She’d answered, and listened in silence for a few moments. When she did speak, it was in Chinese. I didn’t understand a word of it, but I saw tightness in her face and heard frustration and annoyance in her voice. She’d switched to English at the end.
“Look, I’m busy right now. And I don’t know why we keep having this conversation-especially now that the day is over. I’ll call you tomorrow.” She’d snapped the phone shut. I’d seen her to her door, and there’d been a brief, confusing silence before we’d said good night.
I put her card on the kitchen counter, took off my jacket, and winced as muscles slid over my cracked rib. The pain was annoying, but, in truth, I’d gotten off easy. A couple of inches this way or that, a half step here, a half second there, and I would have gotten my ass severely kicked. I’d been lucky, and I knew it. But I wasn’t up to deep contemplation of fate just then. What I needed was a soak, some food, and a lot of sleep.
I ran a bath and stripped off my clothes. My arms and shoulders were already looking like an LA sunset, and my side, around the busted rib, was a purple egg of pain. They’d look worse before they looked better. I eased myself into the tub, and sank down till just my head was above the water. I didn’t come out until I was wrinkled and rubbery and my pain was at a respectable distance.
I pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt and flicked on some lights against the fading day. A couple of calls had gone to voice mail while I was in the tub, and I retrieved the messages. One was from Mike’s secretary, Fran. I’d left Mike a rambling message before I’d gone to St. Vincent’s. Fran had called to tell me he was in court all day, but that he wanted me to meet him for lunch tomorrow, at his place.
The other message was from Clare. Her voice was nearly lost in the traffic sound. “Hi. I’ll be down in your neck of the woods later on. Hope you’re around.” Great.