Wrong Place, Wrong Time Page 11

  I’d been shot at before, too, at various times. None of those occasions had been particularly good and this time was just about as bad as it got.

  Unless it has happened to you, it is hard to realize how demoralizing it is to be unarmed, curled into a ball, and shot at by an unknown, unseen attacker. There is no focus, no one to fight, no way to fight back. All you can do is lie there and stay calm and be ready to take advantage of whatever happens next. Which is not easy.

  I hate that feeling.

  “What are you squirming around so much for?” Thorney said grumpily. “He can’t shoot through all this brick and dirt.”

  “He wouldn’t have to shoot through it,” I said, “if he just came across that little courtyard and around the corner down there.”

  The screams and shouts went on in the background while Thorney digested that little tidbit. “I don’t suppose you brought a gun with you,” he said finally.

  “You ‘don’t suppose’ entirely correctly.”

  A woman shouted from one of the stores, “The police are on their way. Stay down, people. Just another few minutes.”

  The man yelling “no, no, no” switched to “thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Thorney grunted, “No shots for a while. I wonder if he’s gone.”

  “Well, don’t stand up and look, Rambo.”

  He turned his craggy head just far enough to give me a dirty look.

  Perhaps three minutes later, we heard the sirens. Then there were running feet and hoarse shouts. Soon a bullhorn-distorted voice told us everything was fine now, but we should stay put while the officers cleared the area.

  Which meant the shooter had gotten away.

  Thorney and I scooted up and sat leaning against the planter. The long muscle down my right shin twitched and jumped uncontrollably. I felt like running around the block or fighting someone or—it didn’t matter much what I did; anything to get rid of that nervous energy and the dull, brassy taste at the back of my throat.

  Thorney felt it, too. He swallowed loudly and shuddered. He grinned a wobbly, lopsided grin and rubbed his left knee. “Getting kind of old for this falling-down stuff.” Then he draped his wrists over his raised knees and stared at them. “I don’t know how long it’s been since anything like this happened to me,” he said. “I’m out of practice.”

  “You don’t get used to being shot at, Thorney.”

  “Hmmph! Only some nut,” he said. “Or a holdup.”

  “Don’t bet on that!” I said it more angrily than I intended. “He was after us.”

  “Naw,” Thorney said.

  “Think about it,” I said. “There were only three shots, they were all aimed at us, and when the shooter got short on time, he cut and ran. That makes it a thinking man’s attempt at a hit. Loonies shoot at random targets, and they almost always wait around until the cops come to kill them. It’s like they’re committing suicide, but they want company.”

  “Hmm,” Thorney said. “You might be right.”

  “Trust me. He was shooting at us. What bugs me is I don’t know which one of us was the target.”

  I found myself wondering what heavies were on the Gortner payroll besides Dave, the boxing chauffeur. I had hoped my demonstration with the ball bearing had impressed Judge Gortner enough to quell the teenage terrorism problem. Had he only upped the ante instead?

  No, that was crazy. No one would escalate a problem from teenagers breaking windows to shooting up a shopping mall. Come on!

  So say the shooter was after me. The phony bounty hunter was still out there; maybe I was getting closer to him than I thought. But why try for me now? A shopping mall was a lousy place for a hit; it was crowded with witnesses, it had limited escape routes for the shooter and reasonable cover for the victim.

  And, dammit, he could have tried for me anytime, but this was the only place Thorney had been out in public since the vandalism problem blew up. Which seemed to validate the first premise: the shooter wanted Thorney, not me.

  Come to think of it, it didn’t have to be Judge Gortner who was after Thorney Maybe it was Judge’s son, Tom. Maybe he—

  “Anyone hurt here?” The cop asking the question was a burly, redheaded guy. He glanced at us quickly, then swiveled his head back and forth to look up and down the mall. “It’s all over now. You gentlemen can stand up.”

  We did. Thorney needed a hand up and he limped at first, favoring his sore knee.

  There were eighteen or twenty of us who came out from behind walls and columns. No one had been hit. The cops chivied us into two lines and an officer went down each line, taking notes and asking everyone what they’d seen. Other cops went into stores to interview people there.

  When the cop working our line got to Thorney and me, we told him what we’d seen: nothing. Then I left Thorney with strict orders to stay near the cops while I found out who was ramrodding the investigation.

  His name was Jefferys. He was a stocky, balding, black lieutenant, and he was busy. My winning smile and PI license bought me only five minutes of his time.

  The time limit was no problem; Jefferys didn’t know much. The shooter was a man who was either medium height or tall; he wore a track suit or a shirt and jeans or overalls colored dark gray, black, or blue. He had also worn a ski mask or a beret and a scarf or he had a big, bushy beard and sunglasses. He carried a shotgun, a rifle, a machine gun, or, incredibly, a samurai sword.

  Jefferys sighed and said, “I mean, really, who needs eyewitnesses when all you get is this kind of shit.”

  “It was not a shotgun,” I said. “And if it was an automatic weapon, he used it on single fire. Judging from the ricochets, I’d say a rifle, shooting a hot, fast load.”

  Jefferys riffled quickly through a notebook, found the page he wanted, and said, “Okay, well, thanks, but we already found two .270 shell casings.” He turned to another page. “Oh, and there was a car double-parked by the entrance with the motor running. We think that’s how he left.”

  “Do you have anything on the car?”

  Jefferys put the notebook away and said grimly, “Just think of it as a rainbow made by General Motors or Ford or Chrysler but maybe it was a Jap import, okay?”

  “Gotcha,” I said. “Thanks.”

  He had already turned away to talk to a uniformed officer. I went back to where I’d parked Thorney.

  He was standing near two patrolmen, eavesdropping on their conversation with a woman who kept saying she had been “almost killed.”

  She was a trim-looking, excitable brunette who had been trying on a tennis outfit in a sports store. One of the ricochets had apparently gone through the front window, traveled the length of the store, and finally punched through both walls of the changing room. The woman swore up and down she had felt the breeze when the bullet went past her “um, derriere” just after she put on the “darlingest little tennis dress ever.”

  She was still wearing the short frilly dress. Like the two young cops, Thorney gave close attention to the site of her almost-wound. She repeated her story two more times; Thorney bent way over and carefully eyed her backside each time.

  Finally I said, “Come on, you horny old goat. Let’s go get a drink.”

  He gave me a deadpan look. “Beth would raise hell if I was to have a drink after all this excitement. My heart, you know.”

  “Who’s gonna drink it, you or Beth?”

  He nodded and fell into step with me. “That’s a good point,” he said. “And after that, what?”

  “After that, we run in a couple of shooters for our side, then I go find the bad guy. Just like in the movies.”

  Thorney nodded. “Fine. After you find him, I’ll cut his balls off.”

  “You know, Thorney,” I said, “I really am thinking about that adoption thing.”

  Chapter 24

  Organizing protection for Thorney was easy. As soon as we arrived at my house, I phoned Cowboy and Mimi. But it was not easy to explain who the opposition was. Or who I thoug
ht they were. Or even who they might be.

  The only players I could identify were a smarmy pretty boy, a punchy boxer, two gawky teenagers, and a silver-haired, kindly grandfather. I told Cowboy all that on the phone, which was not much fun, because I knew I sounded like a little kid. Hey, there are monsters in my bedroom closet, really and truly.

  “We could jest shoot anybody we happen to see,” Cowboy said. “That make you feel any better?”

  I said, “You know how complicated these things get at times. Just think of this as one of those times.”

  “Hell’s bells, Rafferty.” He pronounced it hay-ell’s bay-ells. For some reason his drawl was thicker on the telephone. “It’s jest that if we knowed who the bad guys are, then we wouldn’t have to hole up nowhere. We could go kick ass instead.”

  “Can’t be helped, Cowboy. And I don’t know how long this might take, either. Are you and Mimi available for, oh, say, up to a week?”

  “Shore. Mimi’s sister is here, but that ain’t no problem. She’s catchin’ a plane back to Louisville this afternoon, anyway. Airport’s kind of on the way to your place, so it’ll all work out fine.”

  “Good. Which sister? Marie?”

  “Naw, this is Mimi’s kid sister, Myra. Don’t think you’ve met her. She looks like Mimi, but she’s taller.”

  “Oh.” I could have guessed that much; everybody was taller than Mimi. “My place later, then. Oh, and the target is an old man named Thorneycroft. You’ll like him.”

  “That don’t matter,” Cowboy said. “If you want him to stay alive, he stays alive whether we like him or not.”

  How’s that for guaranteeing your work?

  Thorney and I roamed around my house, not doing anything in particular, getting in each other’s way while we didn’t do it. At that time I was renting a small cottage on Palm Lane, out by the Dr Pepper plant. There wasn’t much room in the little house, certainly not room enough for two large men with time to kill.

  While I was busy doing nothing, I found a note I’d written to myself the night before. It was a list of Ortega case things to do. I had to find out if Diego had earned his fifty bucks and I had to work through the customer list and I had to see what Ricco had learned about John “from next door” Barcola and—

  “Hmmph,” Thorney snorted. “Of all the …”

  He had turned on the TV in the middle of a newscast. They were running a Middle East film story. A group of men in civilian clothes cavorted around a dusty street, celebrating something by firing AK-47s into the air. They were firing long, long bursts, twenty rounds or more. It was definitely amateur night at the war; they must have burned out a dozen gun barrels while we watched.

  I said, “You suppose there are any birds left in that part of the world?”

  Thorney harrumphed again.

  I sighed and shoved the Ortega case list into my pocket. “Now, then, Mr Warmth,” I said, “let’s talk about what we’re going to do with you.”

  “Do with me? What am I, some shirttail boy? You damn well don’t have to ‘do’ anything with me.”

  “Thorney, stop and think, will you? Until I can find out what the hell is going on, you’re better off out of circulation.”

  “You don’t know he was shooting at me in the first place,” Thorney said. “Suppose I spend two weeks hiding in some cellar, then we find out he was after you all along? Or that it had nothing to do with either of us, like I said before.”

  “You are becoming petulant and a pain in the ass,” I said. “Cowboy and Mimi will be here soon, then I can go to work. I think we’ll put you into a motel.”

  Thorney shook his head and sighed dramatically. That was probably meant to tell me I was overreacting. He didn’t refuse to cooperate, though, which seemed to be Thorney’s version of a ringing endorsement.

  I dug an old sports bag out of the bottom of the hall closet and filled it with various things that went bang. Thorney spotted the little Ithaca pump with the short barrel. Well, shortened barrel. Okay, sawed-off barrel.

  “Aren’t those things illegal?” he said.

  “Yep. Loud, too.”

  After a while Thorney fell asleep in his chair. I watched television. Daytime television to boot. Well, the idea was to kill time. Why not bore it to death?

  About three o’clock I saw Mimi come up the walk. There was no sign of Cowboy.

  Thorney was awake at the moment, and it wouldn’t hurt him to meet Cowboy and Mimi in their, um, natural element. I hauled my gun bag into my lap and became very busy with it.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Hey, get that, will you, Thorney?”

  “Haw.” He smirked. He hauled himself out of the chair and walked stiffly toward the door. “First you want to wrap me up in cotton, then you’re sending me out into the street, practically.”

  “Just answer the door, will you?”

  “Keep your shirt on,” he said, and swung open the door.

  Mimi stood on the step with her western hat held in front of her. She wore jeans and boots and a fringed western-style jacket.

  “And what can I do for you, young lady?” Thorney asked. He was suddenly courtly and avuncular.

  It was a natural mistake to feel macho and parental around Mimi. She’s only four and a fraction feet tall, after all, and she has this round, cheerful face and big, big eyes. She looks so damned innocent.

  “Afternoon, sir,” Mimi said. “Could you kindly direct me to—” Then she saw me and nodded cautiously.

  “Come on in,” I said. “Everything’s okay.”

  “Oh, good,” she said, and stepped inside. She put her hat on the coffee table. The 9mm Beretta she’d been concealing behind the hat went into a holster on her right hip.

  Thorney stared at her.

  Mimi trotted over to my chair and pushed her cheek out to be kissed. “Hey, you growly old tomcat,” she said. “Where you been? Haven’t seen you for months!”

  “Hi, Mimi. Cowboy jumped the back fence, did he?”

  Mimi nodded and opened her jacket. She had an Uzi slung under her right arm. She unclipped the sling and laid the Uzi on the table beside her hat. “We didn’t know for sure what was going on, so …”

  Thorney shuffled backward until my easy chair caught him behind the legs. He sat down. He didn’t say a word. It was an interesting change.

  I went to the kitchen and opened the back door. Cowboy slipped through the opening and smiled lazily.

  “How do, boss-man. Mimi in already?”

  “Yeah. Come on through. You want a beer, coffee, anything?”

  Cowboy shook his head. He carried a riot shotgun, the police/military version with a pistol grip but no stock. That was all I could see, but I was fairly sure that was not his only weapon.

  In the living room I introduced Cowboy and Mimi to Thorney. They both “how do”-ed politely; Thorney pointed at Cowboy. “Hang on,” he said. “I’ve seen him before. In an old movie, maybe.”

  “James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven,” I said.

  “That’s it!” Thorney said.

  Cowboy sighed. He hates that.

  Mimi giggled and scratched her forearms where the throwing knife sheaths chafed her skin.

  Chapter 25

  With the pleasantries over we went to work. Cowboy and Mimi had arrived in two pickups, which made us a three-vehicle convoy to Thorney’s house.

  After we’d opened and checked through the house, Cowboy and Mimi each pulled back to cover a different end of the street. I stayed with Thorney.

  He’d gotten a little testy as the day wore on; he tried to give me a hard time. But he finally packed a bag, and we locked up the house. He kept forgetting which doors he’d already locked and I think we shut off the water main three different times, but what the hell, it was a pretty tough time for the old goat. He was entitled.

  We left then, with no sign of the opposition. We didn’t pick up anyone on the way either—with three cars, it was easy to be sure.

  By four-thirty tha
t Tuesday afternoon, we had Thorney tucked into an upstairs room at a Harry Hines Boulevard motel. I’d never been there, but Cowboy recommended the place for hiding out. We took two connecting rooms where a pair of longish corridors met at a right angle. From the door of either room, you could see anyone approaching while they were still twenty yards away.

  “We’ve looked at a whole bunch of these places, Cowboy said, “and I reckon this one’s got the best killin’ zones in town.”

  We let Thorney pick which room he wanted; the other became the guard barracks, command bunker, whatever. Cowboy and I reminded each other to park well away from the motel. I went over the ground rules with Thorney; stay away from the windows, no room service, and live out of a suitcase.

  “If we have to evacuate,” I told him, “there won’t be much time.”

  Cowboy tossed two bags into a closet. “Damn straight! I ain’t waitin’ for no toothbrush packin’.”

  Mimi assembled shotguns and stacked them in corners with a box of shells beside each one. Then she laid her Uzi on the bed and looked around the room with her hands on her hips. “Not bad,” she said. “Nice and homey.”

  I didn’t feel all that homey. It had already been a long day and it would be longer. I was suffering from Hilda-deprivation. I went to Thorney’s room and dialed Gardner’s Antiques.

  She was out. Damn. I didn’t leave a number.

  I phoned Beth Woodland next; I didn’t want her to think Thorney was missing and drag the cops into this. Beth was good about it, even when I wouldn’t tell her the name of the motel. I also toned down the shooting and deleted Cowboy’s comment about the five-star killing zones. Then I gave Thorney the phone and went into the other room.

  Cowboy was coming back from a trip to his pickup. He lugged a large canvas bag that clanked solidly when he put it down. He took an industrial-size electric drill out of the bag and fitted a masonry bit into the chuck.

  Mimi had already marked Xs on the wall on each side of the room’s main door; Cowboy began to drill holes there, leaning hard against the drill as the bit squawked its way into the concrete blocks.