The Monkey ec-1

by Robert Crais

  A guest house had three separate facing doors, like a triplex. The door farthest away from us opened and two thugs came out with Perry Lang between them. The boy was blindfolded and his left hand was heavily bandaged. He walked the way you walk when you haven’t slept well in a while. I felt Pike shift next to me. Good luck, and bad. Good luck, that the boy had been brought here. We wouldn’t have to force his whereabouts out of anyone. It wasn’t smart for them to have him here, but Sanchez said they’d moved the boy this morning. They’d probably been keeping him in a safe house, but decided to bring him closer in case something went wrong with the ambush and they needed a little extra leverage. Maybe I should call Poitras. I could tell him the kid was here and he would act on it. But maybe by the time I got to a phone and called the cops and the cops got here, the Eskimo would’ve come and gone and taken the boy with him, maybe not quite as alive as last reported.

  Bad luck because of Gambino. How many Arizona soldiers did he have hanging around the guest house and the main house and the garage? What would Gambino do when Pike and I made our move? Normal business practice would be noninterference. But he was a guest in Duran’s home. They were friends. Besides that, he wouldn’t know for sure if we weren’t coming for him. Shit.

  Gambino left the barbeque and sloshed across to the main house. He carried a Coors and belched so loudly we could hear him sixty yards away. Classy. He didn’t bother with the walkways. Guess he didn’t give a shit if he tracked messy into his good friend Domingo Duran’s home. Maybe he figured Mexicans didn’t mind.

  The two guys holding Perry stopped outside of the guesthouse, talking, then one of them continued on with the kid across to the main house. The second one came our way, toward the garage. We dropped along the row of oleander until we were out of sight of the rear yard, then came out onto the walk.

  “If we’re going into the main house,” Pike said, “we’re not going to do it through the back. Too many people.”

  We were zipping along, backpedaling along the walk toward the garage. “Did you see a way in through the front?” I said.

  “Sure. Windows. Doors.”

  Smartass. “You always carry lipstick in your truck?”

  “You wouldn’t believe what I got in there.”

  The walk ended at a door off the rear of the garage in a nice circular spot strewn with pretty white rocks. There was a heavy adobe wall to the right, as thick as but lower than the main wall, extending from the garage to the main house. To the left the grounds sloped away to an open rolling lawn. It was through the door or across the lawn. On the lawn, we could be seen. The door was locked.

  We stepped back off the walk into the shrubs and waited. There were footsteps, then the second thug came along, hissing air through his teeth and digging in his pocket. When he stopped at the door and took out a silver key, I stepped out and hit him once in the ear, hard. He sat down and I hit him again. Pike picked up the key. “Not bad.”

  I waffled my hand from side to side. “Eh.”

  Pike put the key in the lock and opened the door. A short Mexican with a broad face and a gray zoot suit took one step out, pushed a gold Llama automatic into Pike’s chest, and pulled the trigger. There was a deep muffled POP, then Pike came up and around with his right foot faster than I could see. There was a louder sound, what you might hear if you drop an overripe casaba melon onto a tile floor. The Mexican collapsed, his neck limp. Pike looked down at himself, put one hand over a growing spot high and to the right of his chest, then sat down. “Keep going,” he said. “Get the kid.”

  I felt like I might scream. I looked at him, nodded, then pushed through the door. Forward. Never back up.

  There were three Cadillac limos, two Rolls-Royces, and a bright yellow Ferrari Boxer in the garage, but no more thugs. I went out to the edge of the motor court and looked at the front of the house. Another limo was there. A service drive branched off the motor court and ran around to the side of the house, then looped back around to the garage. That would be the kitchen. I walked out across the motor court to the service and followed it around to the side of the mansion. Maybe the way to get the kid was to walk up to things and shoot them and when I ran out of things to shoot I’d either have the kid or be dead.

  The service drive led to a carport attached to the house. There was a single door there, and a little metal buzzer. When I pushed the buzzer a tiny woman, as nicely browned as good leather, opened the door. She looked disgusted. “? No mas comer! ” she said.

  “Do you speak English?”

  “No, no.” She shook her head and tried to push me out of the door. Probably thought I was one of Gambino’s goons.

  I showed her the gun and jerked my head out toward the front gate. “Vamoose!” Then I went into the kitchen.

  Manolo was eating a sandwich at a chopping block table. His jacket was off and he was wearing a shoulder holster over a blue shirt with white collar and cuffs. When he saw me, he clawed at his gun. I shot him twice. The hollow-points picked him up and kicked him back off the stool. The 9mm high-velocity loads echoed like a cannon in the tile kitchen.

  I went out through a serving hall and into a living room that made Barry Fein’s place look like a phone booth. Gambino’s hood was coming in off the. balcony with his shotgun. When he saw me he said, “What the hell was that?”

  I said, “This,” and clubbed him in the side of the face with the gun. He stumbled and dropped the shotgun but didn’t pass out. I pulled him up to his feet and shook him and pressed the muzzle up under his jaw. “They just brought a kid in here. Where?”

  “I swear to God I don’t know. I swear.”

  I hit him in the mouth with the butt of the gun. His teeth went and blood sprayed out along my arm and he went down to his knees. “Where?”

  “Shwear to Chri I dunno.” Hard to talk with a ruined mouth.

  “Where’s Duran?”

  “Offishe. Upshtairs.”

  “Show me.”

  I could see out the elegant French doors, across the patio and the lawn to the poolhouse. If they’d heard the shots, no one showed it. Burgers still sizzled, music still played, men and women still laughed. I was vaguely aware that Ellen Lang, sitting out in Pike’s Cherokee without benefit of laughter or music or gaiety, might have heard the shots. And having heard them, might be on her way to call the cops.

  I pulled him up again and we went out the living room, up a monstrous semicircular stairway to the second floor. Voices and the sound of closing doors came from the back of the house. On the upper landing, I said, “Where are you taking me?”

  “Offishe.” He looked to the left down a curving hall. “Door, wish a couple guysh. Go shrough into she offishe.”

  “Just a couple of guys, huh?”

  “Yesh.”

  “There another way in or out?”

  He looked confused, then shook his head. It hurt him to do that. “I don’t live here, man. It’sh tight. Shoundproo.”

  Shoundproo. Perfect.

  “Why are you people here?”

  His eyes flagged and he started to crumple. I hoisted him up, gave him a shake, asked him again.

  “Bushnesh,” he said.

  “Business. Dope deal?”

  He nodded.

  The hall was long and paneled with a very rich grade of walnut. Impressive. The St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco has walls like that. I stopped us before we got to the door, held up the Beretta, and touched my lips.

  He said, “I beliee you.”

  A slim, well-manicured Mexican sat at a bank president’s desk and spoke into a phone. A tall, blocky blond guy had half his ass on the edge of the desk, listening in with his arms crossed. Across the room there was a handsome copper-facaded door that would lead to Duran’s sanctum sanctorum. The blond guy was in a pale yellow sport coat. The Mexican wore a charcoal gray Brooks Brothers three-piece and looked better than the blond guy. Executive secretary, no doubt. He was speaking English, asking about the noises he’d just heard. I shov
ed Mr. Teeth in through the doorway, walked in after him and shot the Mexican and the blond once each. The hollow-points flipped the Mexican over backward out of his chair and knocked the blond guy off the desk.

  I looked at the door. It was thick and heavy and I didn’t know how I was going to get in there. No knob. Knock, knock, knock, Chicken Delight! There would probably be a buzzer somewhere around the secretary’s desk that would make little metal gears push little metal rods to swing open the door. They would have to be strong rods. It was a big door.

  Mr. Teeth and I were halfway across the outer office when the copper door opened and Rudy Gambino stepped out, saying, “The fuck’s goin’ on out-”

  He had a Smith Police Special in his left hand. He dropped it when he saw me.

  “Back up, fat man,” I said.

  He backed. And in we went.

  37

  Perry Lang was not in the room.

  Domingo Garcia Duran was sitting on a maroon leather couch under a wall of black-and-white photographs. Most of the shots were of bullrings and bulls and Duran, I supposed, in his Suit of Lights. Still others showed Duran with other matadors and Duran with various political personalities and Duran with assorted celebrities. Everyone smiled. Everyone was friends. Hooray for Hol-ley-wood! There were trophies and black horns mounted to teak plaques and tattered black ears mounted to still other teak plaques. Gray-black hooves stood hoof up off little wooden pedestals like demented ashtrays. You could smell death in the room like mildewed satin. A cape was hanging off a tall leather pedestal near the window, and crossed swords like the ones on the front gate, only real-size, were fixed on the wall above it. The walls were hung with oil paintings of bulls and an enormous life-size rendering of Duran poised for the kill. Still more statues of bulls and matadors and men on horses with long lances lined the bookcases.

  “Really, Dom,” I said. “A bit much, don’t you think?”

  Rudy Gambino said, “Your ass is shit, bubba.”

  I said, “I got the gun, Rudy.”

  There was a marble coffee table in front of Duran with an open briefcase on top of it. The briefcase was filled with neat stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Duran’s well-worn bent sword was on top of it. Duran leaned forward, picked up the sword, and closed the case. Estoque, Pike had said. The sword used for the kill.

  I pushed Mr. Teeth down onto the floor and told him to stay there, then pointed the gun at Duran. “I want the boy now, Dom.” I could see Pike bleeding to death out in the yard. I could see Sanchez getting loose, getting Ellen’s gun…

  Rudy said, “The fuck is this, Dom? He knows who I am.”

  I fired a round into the couch next to Duran. The leather dimpled a foot from his shoulder as the bullet yanked through the cushion. The high-velocity load was so loud my ears rang. Rudy jumped but Duran didn’t, and he never took his eyes off me. Balls, all right. He said, “We will trade.”

  I shook my head. “Get me the kid.”

  Rudy moved forward, swinging his right arm in a broad gesture and talking to me like we were used to this. Maybe he was. “How the hell you know who I am?”

  “I stayed at the same hotel as you once. In Houston. I saw you walk through the lobby.”

  “Bullshit.” He shook his finger at Duran. “No one’s supposed to know I’m here, goddamnit. Carlos and Lenny find out I’m here right now instead of in Colombia I’ll have to go through all kindsa shit.”

  “Shut up, Rudy,” I said. “You cutting out your partners is the least of your worries.” I didn’t know who the hell Carlos and Lenny were. But there was a briefcase of money on the table. Carlos and Lenny thought Rudy Gambino was in Colombia. There was a known dope connection between Gambino and Duran, as well as a history of investment partnerships. It looked good that Gambino was moving dope through Duran to cut out the middleman.

  Gambino screamed, “I ain’t cutting out nobody, goddamnit!”

  I fired another round, this one slamming through a picture into the wall beside Duran. Four inches from his ear. He didn’t flinch. I wouldn’t be that good. “I take the kid, and I go for the police,” I said. “If you’re good, you can make an airport.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  This wasn’t working. I was making a lot of noise and taking a lot of time and not getting any closer to Perry Lang. Sooner or later someone would come. When enough someones came, that would be it.

  “Okay, motherfucker,” I said, “bring me to the kid or eat one.” I aimed the Beretta between Duran’s eyes. I meant it.

  He shook his head. “No. I do not have to.”

  Something hard pressed against my neck and the Eskimo said, “That’s enough.”

  Rudy Gambino hopped over, jerked my gun away, then hit me in the face twice with his right hand. His punches split my lip but didn’t put me down. “Now what you got?” he shouted. “You got dick is what you got!”

  Gambino went over to Mr. Teeth and kicked him. “Eddie?” Eddie was passed out.

  Duran leaned forward again and tapped the marble table with the sword. He said, “Here is how I will deal with you. I will kill you, and I will kill the boy, and I will kill the mother, and then it will be done.” He looked serenely calm as he said it, almost in repose, and I knew this must be the way he used to look when he faced the bulls. Assured and in absolute control of the pageant. The Bringer of Death.

  “But you won’t have your property.”

  He shrugged. “The property was never what was important.”

  “Sure.” The Eskimo was an enormous presence behind me, something dark and gargantuan and primordial. I could feel the gun there, hovering. I took deep breaths through my nose, filling my lungs with air, trying to will my body to relax, to calm. Pranayama. Start with the feet. Prepare yourself. Focus ki. If Gambino or Duran moved close enough, if I could move fast enough… If I couldn’t, it wouldn’t make much difference.

  Rudy Gambino leveled the 9mm at me and said, “This kinda shit ain’t supposed to happen when I’m here, Dom.” When he said “Dom” there was a sharp pow out in the secretary’s office. A red spot grew low on Gambino’s abdomen. As he looked down at himself there was another pow , this one closer, in the doorway, and his right leg kicked back and he fell.

  Ellen Lang stood in the doorway with my. 38, right arm out straight, left bent at the elbow and cupping the right, just the way Pike taught her. The lipstick didn’t look silly anymore. She was dark and alien and threatening, the way guys in the Nam who wore paint had looked. Duran saw the lipstick and smiled.

  When the Eskimo’s gun moved I went into him, grabbing his gun hand with both of mine and forcing it in toward the elbow and away from his body. The gun kicked free and the Eskimo hit me on top of my right shoulder with an MX missile. My whole side went numb. I stayed inside, wrapping his hips and lifting and driving him away from the gun. His hands came down on my back, he pushed backward, and I let go. He landed on the floor sideways and went over on his hands and knees. I drove straight in with a power kick to the ribs and followed it with two punches, one to the same spot on the ribs, the other behind his left ear. The head punch broke one of my knuckles. Head punches will do that. I hit him a third time, this one beneath the ear where it was softer. The Eskimo grunted and heaved himself up. He didn’t look too much the worse for wear. You couldn’t say that about me.

  Ellen was still in the door. Duran was on his feet now, saying something to her, but I couldn’t hear what. I said, “Only pussies kill seals and polar bears.”

  The Eskimo smiled.

  I threw an ashtray at him. It bounced off his arm.

  He smiled some more.

  I threw a Waterford lamp at him. He batted it aside.

  There are any number of innovative ways to best an opponent. I simply had to think of one.

  The Eskimo came for me. I faked to the outside, planted my left foot, and roundhouse kicked him in the face. His head snapped back and his nose burst into a red mist. He looked down at himself, then charged again.
I dropped, spun, and kicked the outside of his knee. His leg buckled and he went down. I went in close, hitting his smashed nose with the heel of my hand and driving in behind it hard with my knees. His head rocked back and his eyes looked funny. I hit him with my left hand and lost a second knuckle. Bruce Lee could fight a thousand guys and not even split a fingernail. Karma. I saw Duran moving toward Ellen, walking across the room, the little sword in front of him.

  “Ellen,” I said.

  The Eskimo came up from underneath, locked his arms around my chest, and squeezed. It felt the way they describe a massive coronary: your lungs stop working, an elephant sits on your chest, and you know with absolute certainty that you are going to die.

  Ellen stepped toward Duran and there was a loud BANG, louder than before because she was in the room now. Duran missed a step, then kept going, holding the sword straight out now and picking up speed.

  I hammered down into the Eskimo’s face, hitting him on the top of the head and in the temples and in the eyes. He squeezed his eyes tight and hugged me closer. I felt something snap in my lower back. Short rib. What the hell, don’t need’m anyhow.

  Ellen’s gun went off again. BANG.

  I wanted to yell for her to get out of here, but knew if I gave up what breath I had I wouldn’t get any more. I stopped punching and tried to dig my thumbs into the Eskimo’s eyes, but he pressed his face into my chest. Everything in my peripheral vision began to grow fuzz. From out of another solar system I heard a gutty choonk-choonk-choonk, choonk-choonk. The HK. Pike. Not lucky for them, finding Pike. Ruin their whole day.

  I reached above my head and brought my elbow down on the crown of the Eskimo’s head. A sharp pain lanced up my arm and another rib went, this one higher in my back.

  Ellen’s gun sounded again BANG. Duran stopped and staggered sideways a step. Then he went on.

  I brought my elbow down again, and this time the Eskimo sobbed. I did it again and his arms loosened. Whenever I hit him, something hot flashed in my elbow, letting me know the bone was broken. That didn’t seem to matter much. Not much mattered at all. Life’s priorities tend to shift when you’re in the process of dying.