“Listen to me, Cahill,” I said. “You’re making a big mistake.”
“You listen, slick. You shag ass out of here right now, no more crap, or I hurt these two. You understand me?”
Matt’s hand was on the vase.
“Suppose I don’t?” I said. “You going to shoot me down in cold blood?”
“Maybe. You want to find out?”
“You ever killed anybody, Cahill? No, I don’t think so. Not with a gun anyway. You’re not that cold-blooded.”
“You don’t know me, you don’t know what—”
Matt swung the vase up and chucked it, all in one quick blurred motion. Oh yeah, a ballplayer — a good one, thank God. The vase slammed into the side of Cahill’s head, knocked him sideways and his hot eyes out of focus. The crack of the pottery shattering and Cahill’s pained bellow and Kay Runyon’s startled cry all seemed magnified, like eruptions blowing away the silence.
Matt was closer to Cahill and I had the couch to get around; he got there first, hurling himself at the bigger man just as the gun came up in Cahill’s hand. The thing went off and Kay Runyon screamed, but the muzzle was pointed downward; the bullet burrowed harmlessly into the floor.
The force of the kid’s lunge drove both of them, reeling, into the far wall. They bounced off, into another table; the table buckled and collapsed under their combined weight, brought them down with it in a tangle of arms and legs and broken wood. I saw the Saturday night special pop loose from Cahill’s grasp, but when I went after it somebody’s leg flailed out and tripped me, sent me sprawling into the back of the couch. Kay Runyon made another noise; I heard Cahill say “Shit!” explosively. I got my footing back, turned in time to see him punch Matt over the eye and break free. He looked for the gun, but I was already lunging for it. I scooped it up, swung around with my finger sliding through the trigger guard.
Cahill wasn’t going to fight me for it. Coward underneath all that hard-ass exterior: he’d turned tail and was running for the hallway.
I yelled for him to stop but he didn’t break stride; he veered away from the front door, though, instinctively realizing I could see him if he tried to get out that way, take a clear shot at his back. He charged ahead into the kitchen. I started after him, but Matt was on his feet by then and between me and the hall. His mother and I both shouted his name, a half-beat apart so that the effect was of an echo. He didn’t listen to either of us. Just pelted, head down, in Cahill’s wake.
I lumbered around the couch, got past Kay Runyon. “Stay here, call nine-eleven,” I told her, and ran on through the hall into the kitchen.
It was empty; Matt had just slammed out the back door. I yanked the thing open, went onto the porch. Cahill was off to the right of the studio, barreling across the lawn toward the fence that separated the Runyon property from the pedestrian ladder street beyond. Matt was twenty yards behind him and gaining.
At first I thought Cahill would slacken speed and jump for the top of the fence, try to scale it. But no, he kept right on going full tilt toward the access door. He hit it like a bull smacking into a bullring walclass="underline" head lowered, shoulder up, legs driving. The lock burst loose in a shriek of metal and wood, the door flew outward, boards splintered loose from the fence and the whole thing wobbled and sagged. Somehow Cahill kept his balance, turned uphill on the ladder street. Matt was right behind him. I could hear the two of them pounding up the steps as I ran across the yard.
When I came out onto the street and looked upward, Cahill was on the concrete halfway up, trying to use the iron side railing to give himself greater impetus. But Matt was younger, faster; he caught Cahill by the shirt, yanked him back and around, and smacked him full in the face. I saw blood spurt, heard Cahill roar with pain. Then they were locked together, slugging at each other; and then they were down on the landing, rolling around in an even more frantic embrace.
Cahill had the greater strength, would have won the wrestling match inside of two minutes. But I was up there with them in less than one, jockeying to stay out of harm’s way so I could draw a bead on Cahill’s head. He gave me the opening I was after when he rolled on top of the boy and reared back to throw a punch. I clouted him on the right ear with the flat barrel of the Saturday night special. It stunned him; a grunt came out of his throat and he tried jerkily to turn my way. I clubbed him again, and a third time as he was toppling sideways. The third blow laid him out facedown on the dirty concrete, kept him there.
There was a shout from near the top of the hill. A bearded guy had his head poked over a privet hedge, peering down at us. “What the hell’s going on down there?”
I called back, “Dangerous police situation, don’t interfere,” and his head vanished instantly. I could hear other voices now, here and there in the vicinity, and they kept up an intermittent chatter. But nobody else ventured out onto the ladder street, wholly or in part.
I looked over at Matt. He was sucking at a knuckle, his eyes still bright with rage.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. His shirt was torn, one arm and one cheek were gouged and bleeding, and he was going to have a honey of a black eye before long. “You?”
“Pretty good now.”
“I hope you busted his fucking skull.”
“I didn’t hit him that hard. You took a stupid damn chance, jumping him like that inside. And then chasing him out here. You could have got yourself killed.”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had enough of his crap. You know?”
“I know,” I said. “Real well.”
“You want me to call the cops?”
“Your mother should already have done that. You better go and tell her you’re all right.” I shifted the Saturday night special to my left hand, hauled my keys out and gave them to Matt. “Then go out to my car and bring the handcuffs from the trunk. They’re in a box in there.”
“Right.” He trotted away down the steps.
I sat in a patch of warm sunlight and listened to the neighbors and watched Cahill. He was beginning to stir around. Pretty soon he lifted himself onto all fours, raised his head. His nose was bent and crooked, leaking blood; Matt had busted it as effectively as Cahill had busted his father’s. When his eyes cleared and he saw me he tensed, started to pull his feet under him.
“Don’t even think about it, slick,” I said. “I’ll shoot your eye out if you don’t sit still and keep your mouth shut. Believe it. It’d be a pleasure.”
He believed it. He sat still and kept his mouth shut, before and after Matt brought the handcuffs.
Chapter 19
Narrow and several blocks long, Mountain Lake Park is tucked away behind Lake Street apartment buildings and stands of tall cypress and eucalyptus. The little lake there reaches up into a corner of the Presidio army base. It used to be called Laguna de Loma Alta, Lake of the High Hill, after the Presidio’s four-hundred-foot elevation; “Mountain Lake” is a poor substitute. Thick shrubbery rims it to the waterline, except for a thin stretch of beach on the south end. Ducks, swans, and patches of tule grass occupy its relatively clean waters. Soothing, well used, and safe in daylight — that’s Mountain Lake Park. Just the kind of place where a paranoid munchkin would feel secure.
I got there just past four. My meeting with Annette Olroyd was supposed to have been at three, but the law had kept me at the Runyon house until three-thirty. Branislaus had come out, among others, and before and after Eddie Cahill had been carted off to jail there were strings of questions to answer. When I saw I wasn’t going to get away in time to keep the three o’clock appointment, I’d called Ms. Olroyd and switched the time. She hadn’t liked that, but I’d soft-talked her into it. It was even money as to whether or not she would actually show up.