But the gunshot didn’t even slow him down. He kept coming and now she saw someone behind him. Nighthyde, had to be. They seemed to be moving in slow motion as thoughts raced through her head. Fire again or wait and get a better shot? If the gun held six, she only had two left.
Every fiber in her being said run. She took off toward the pier, running for all she was worth. It was close. Was it going to be her salvation or her tomb? She didn’t want to die. She had so much to live for, her unborn child, Jasmine. From deep inside she pulled out that extra bit of energy, that piece of heart she needed to increase her speed. She pumped her arms the way Olympic runners do to get their legs to match the killing rhythm.
The pier loomed larger out of the pounding rain with every breath, with every step. Almost there. Something grabbed her around the waist, killed her wind. She dropped to the wet sand, breathless, felt the gun ripped from her hand.
Somehow one of them had gotten in front of her.
It was all over now.
But it wasn’t.
She heard a gunshot, gasped when she saw Scarface stop, as if a giant hammer had smashed into his chest. Arms flailed, windmilling around his dying body, fighting for balance, fighting to stay on his feet. But in a heartbeat the battle was lost and Scarface flopped face forward onto the sand.
“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Darley Smalls dropped to his knees. Rain washed through his beard. For an instant she was worried about the baby, but she was fast getting her breath back. It was going to be okay.
“She’s gonna be fine.” Now Theo Baptiste was on his knees. She saw the gun in his hand. He’d shot Scarface. There was nothing wrong with the gun. It had been her. She’d been scared, too scared to shoot straight.
“There’s another one.” Maggie grabbed the gun from Theo’s hand. Turned as Horace Nighthyde came charging forward. He hadn’t seen them, low as they were. Maggie took aim, steadied herself, and shot him between the eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maggie flipped the burgers on the grill, added some barbecue sauce. Jasmine had told time and again that she had always liked her meat well done, but Maggie persisted in eating it medium-rare. She laughed every time Jasmine said it. She took hers off the grill.
“You might as well eat it raw,” Gordon said.
“Not you too.” Maggie laughed.
“Me too.” Gordon was stretched out in a lounge chair, eyes shielded from the sun with a new pair of reflective sunglasses. Jasmine and Sonya said they made him look like an old highway patrolman and they constantly teased him about not having a motorcycle. The kids loved him, probably because at heart he was a kid himself. It was as if he’d been a part of their lives forever instead of just six months.
“Such a nice day,” Gay said from the lounge chair next to Gordon.
The sun was hanging low, an orange ball over the ocean. Jasmine and Sonya were laughing and dancing in and out of the surf, but their parents had them in sight from where they relaxed in front of Maggie’s Condo.
“Oh shit!” Maggie staggered back from the grill.
“What?”
“It’s time!”
“Now?” Gordon went white.
“Get the girls,” Gay told him as she jumped from her chair. She was at Maggie’s side in an instant. “Just take it easy. We’ll get your bag, then we’re off to the hospital.”
“Yeah, the bag,” Gordon said.
“Get the girls!” Gay said.
“Yeah, yeah.” Gordon took off for the beach gate.
Maggie barely remembered the ride to the hospital. The labor pains were like a mule kicking her in the gut. She thought she was going to die. At the hospital, a young man and woman in white helped her from the back seat of Gordon’s clunky looking Ford into a wheelchair. In no time, she was in the delivery room looking up at Gordon’s masked face.
“I’m glad you’re here.” She squeezed his hand, then yelled as a monster pain ripped through her.
“Push,” Gordon said.
“I am.”
“Again.”
“I am!”
“Harder.”
“I am, God dammit!”
“I see the head,” someone said.
“Push. One more time. A big one.”
“I’m pushing!”
“It’s a girl!”
“A girl.” Maggie sighed, then drifted off.
She woke in a cool hospital room. Gordon’s smiling eyes were the last thing she’d seen in the in the delivery room and they were the first thing she saw when she woke up. He was always there for her.
“Where’s the girls?”
“Down the hall with Grandma Debra, looking at the baby.” Gay was next to Gordon, wearing the biggest smile Maggie had ever seen.
“I’m cold.”
“I’ll get a blanket.” Gordon pulled one off the bed next to hers, draped it over her. “Do you have a name yet?”
“Yeah, I do,” Maggie said. It seemed they’d talked about nothing else for the last month. A million ideas, a million rejections. Maggie wanted something original, but not something corny. She wanted the baby to have a name that stood for something. A name she could live up to.
“Well?” Gordon said.
“Darley Theo Kenyon.”
“After the men under the pier,” Gordon said. “I like it.”
“Yeah, after them.” She sighed, closed her eyes for a few seconds and cast her mind back to that night.
“Are you alright?” Theo had asked her after she’d shot Horace Nighthyde.
“Yeah.” But she thought she was going to be sick. Maybe she’d never really be alright again.
“You get up now and go back to your life.” Rain cascaded through Darley’s dark hair, sluiced around his black face. “Me and Theo will take care of things here.”
“What?”
“He means we’ll take care of the bodies,” Theo said. “No need for you to be concerned. So let me help you up.” He rose, took her arm, helped her to her feet.
“We’ll walk you to your car.” Darley took her other arm.
Halfway they ran into Gay coming toward them out of the rain.
“She’s with me,” Maggie mumbled.
“She can see that you’re safe from here.” Darley let go of her arm.
“Can you stand by yourself? You okay?” Theo was still holding on to her.
“Yeah. I’ll be alright.”
“Then we’ll leave you now.” Theo let go and the two men backed away into the rain. And the bodies of Horace Nighthyde and Scarface the Yakuza thug turned up the next morning in a parking lot across from the police station.
Also that morning, Gordon called Larry Striker and made the deal. If Striker left them alone, forgot they existed, then they’d forget about him, Nighthyde, Congressman Nishikawa and what had happened to Norton’s mother and Wolfe’s wife and son.
Striker agreed and more than lived up to his end of the bargain. Somehow he’d assisted the Long Beach Police Department and the Lakewood Sheriff’s in connecting the bodies in the parking lot with the ones in Lakewood. With his help, the police concluded that Horace Nighthyde had walked in on two Yakuza thugs right after they’d murdered his mother, and chased them as they ran out the back door and went over the fence where one of them killed the neighbor’s dog. Nighthyde caught one and killed him. Then he tracked the other one to the parking lot, killed him, then put the gun to his own head.
How Darley and Theo got the bodies all the way downtown, Maggie never knew. But she owed them a debt, thanks at least. She’d gone back to the pier several times after dark, but they were never there. They’d disappeared, leaving her with nothing but the memory of the rough men who lived a rough life. Two great bears she’d never forget.
“Mrs. Kenyon.”
Maggie opened her eyes, looked up.
“Detective Norton,” she said. “Believe it or not, I was just thinking about you.” Norton was wearing khaki Docker’s and a pink Hawaiian shirt with hula girls on it. He looked as if he were on vacation. But the expression on the albino’s face said he wasn’t. He looked serious, dead serious. No wonder the girls called him the Ghost.