He was spoiling the breeze. Here I was pinned at knife point to a wall, and what crossed my mind just now was how good the breeze felt.
He let me have a bit more of the knife. “You’re really fucking sweating, pal,” he said, the same glib amused tone in his voice.
All I could do was bug my eyes out a bit.
“I’ll bet he can sweat more than that,” the twin said.
“Gosh, I don’t know. I’ve given it my best shot. You care to take a stab at it?” He grinned. “Get it? Take a ‘stab’ at it?”
“Guess I may as well,” the twin said.
From his pocket he quick-drew a long knife identical to the one his brother held. He snicked it open and walked over. He put it up alongside his brother’s knife. This close up you could see that they were virtually identical. Eerily so.
The first twin took his knife away and was starting to back off when I heard the footsteps behind them. By the time they turned, I had already had a look at who had appeared.
Somehow Lynott had figured out I was in trouble and enlisted three of his fellow survivalists. The four of them in their fatigues ringed the doorway. They had enough weaponry to blow away half the city.
“Jesus Christ,” the first twin said.
His brother, keeping the knife right at my throat, turned around and saw the good ol’ boys. “God damn,” he said.
“You two look like some kind of fruits to me,” Lynott said, stepping out onto the balcony.
“Are you for real?”
“You give me half a chance, you pervert, and I’ll show just how real I am.”
It happened in an instant, and I only noticed it because they were standing so close to me. A kind of telepathy. One twin looked at the other, and before anybody could do anything, they dove straight from the ledge three stories down into the water.
The four guys in the khaki uniforms took this as a perfect excuse to start a war. They stood on the ledge and fired into the water below, where the twins could be seen swimming in the rapid current. You had your ROK assault rifle. You had your Max 11 semiautomatic. You had your FAMAS submachine gun. You even had your MPRG riot gun. So many rounds were fired in so short a time that the balcony was engulfed in smoke, and I had to crush my hands to my ears to protect my hearing.
The twins, meanwhile, had gone underwater and were out of sight.
I finally got the cavalry to stop firing only by going up to Lynott and grabbing his elbow. “They’re gone!” I screamed over the barrage of firepower.
“That’s what they want us to think!” he screamed back.
By now, of course, there were only slightly more sirens going off in the streets below than had gone off in Berlin in the spring of 1945. The police take a decided interest when citizens decide to unleash this kind of exchange.
Lynott frowned, looking as if he’d just found out that his wife slept around. Glumly he gave the signal to the others to stop firing. They did so with the same gloomy expression. Damn but they looked disappointed.
“Now, the cops are going to be up here and asking questions. But we’ve got a perfectly good excuse,” Lynott said. “I happened to come up here looking to see if my old buddy Dwyer was doing okay, him being pretty dejected lately and all, and I happened to see these two pretty boys holding knives on him. So I went and got some of my buddies, and by God if we didn’t end up savin’ Dwyer’s life.”
For all his hokum, he had in fact saved my life.
“I appreciate it, you guys, I really do. I mean I don’t think it was necessary to use quite as much firepower as you did, but what the fuck.”
“Absolutely right. What the fuck. Just as long as you’re willing to say that to the cops.”
Which I did five minutes later when a couple of guys from the SWAT team plus maybe half a dozen guns-drawn uniformed officers swarmed around the balcony. The survivalists were told to put their guns down and their hands up. Then the detective in charge came over and asked “just what the goddamn fucking hell” was the idea of scaring the shit out of half the city and endangering the lives of anybody who had the misfortune of being in or around the river.
“Couple of fags,” Lynott said.
As you can imagine, the detective did not look impressed.
22
There was a drive-up phone two blocks away. When I pulled in, I realized I didn’t have the proper change. I had to go next door to a chain drugstore. The clerky little guy didn’t look happy about breaking a five for me. I spent a college summer working retail. In that business you get to hate people, so I couldn’t blame the guy.
Back in my car I called Donna.
After she said hello and before she could say anything else, I said, “There’s a set of twins who just tried to get the tapes from me. They may know about you. To be safe I want you to leave there, go over to that restaurant where we’ve been meeting and wait for me.”
A man’s voice came on the other end of the phone and said, “That won’t be necessary.”
For an awful moment I had an image of the twins standing on either side of her. But how could they have gotten there that quickly?
Then the echoes of the voice told me who I was talking to. Chad. Her ex-husband. That emissary from Country Gentleman whom God had created just to make me feel inadequate.
“Hello, Chad.”
“Hello, Dwyer.”
Nobody would ever accuse us of sounding like long-lost buddies.
“I believe I was speaking to Donna,” I said.
“I’ll give you your nerve, I’ll say that for you.” Despite the deep rich tones of his voice, there was a prissy, judgmental quality to his voice that came naturally, I suppose, with all his money, good looks and tireless self-confidence.
“I’m not following you here, Chad.”
“You’ve involved my wife in a murder. This is the second time. The first time her life was in danger. And now it is again.”
“She’s your ex-wife, Chad. Not wife.”
“That’s between Donna and me and is subject to change.”
In the background I heard Donna say, “Oh, Chad, please let me talk to him.”
“I heard that, Chad,” I said.
“I’m taking my wife to our cabin for the weekend,” Chad said- He used the term “wife” very freely for a man who’d dumped her for a younger woman and then reappeared only when he got bored.
“Chad, dammit, give me the phone,” Donna said.
Chad covered up the receiver. Behind his hand I heard arguing. Finally the receiver sounded free, there was a pause, and Donna said, “I’ve listened to all the tapes now. I’m afraid there’s no really specific information. Nothing more than I told you about.”
“Damn,” I said.
“Just one thing. The last couple of tapes he started dating. You know, when he pressed the record button he’d say ‘March nineteenth’ or something. Anyway, on one of the last dates he says, ‘I made the deal tonight. It will mean I get to go to California. But I’m scared that somebody will find out.’ Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
There was another pause. Then, in the background, Chad said, “I really don’t want to wait until these twins or whoever they are get over here, Donna.”
Then Donna said to me, “I suppose we’d better be going.”
“I suppose.”
“You don’t sound so good.”
“I don’t feel so good,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“Well.”
“Yeah. ‘Well.’ ” I sounded bitter and sorry for myself. Not exactly becoming.
In the background Chad said, “Donna, for God’s sake, if you can’t hang up, I will.”
“Good-bye, Dwyer.”
“Good-bye.”