by Neil Russell
Kim smiled as the kid approached. “Hey, birthday boy,” she said, “how about springing for a rose for the lady?”
As I reached for my money clip, the kid was about ten feet away. He smiled and put his hand in the basket. He came out with a 9mm Beretta.
And everything went into slow motion.
He shot Kim in the face. I watched the hole appear, then fill with blood. I started to get up, and the kid casually pivoted and shot me in the chest. Then again…and again. And I was falling, and dishes were breaking. Somewhere, somebody screamed.
Kim just sat there, her head lolled back, her open eyes staring, but seeing nothing.
Just as I lost consciousness, something slipped through the fog, forcing me to remember. Like Tino, the kid had a spider tattoo on his forearm, but this one only had one leg.
9
Pain and Memories
Cedars-Sinai is a very good hospital. And it was close. It had to be. I was mostly dead when they got me there.
I regained consciousness long enough to see the Code Blue team scissoring off my clothes and jamming needles into my arms and legs. Then a pretty, young Asian lady wearing a tiny jade Buddha around her neck loomed over me with a long hypodermic. There were drops of sweat running down her forehead, and one of them started to fall. Suddenly, the sound of my heart pounding in my ears slowed and began to fade. I closed my eyes. From someplace far away, I think I heard a Marlboro-tuned voice growl, “Hit him! Now!” Then the darkness came, and I rushed into it.
In the movies, the hero gets shot, pulls himself off the operating table and goes after the bad guys. It doesn’t work that way. The pain is beyond excruciating, and there aren’t any he-men. Everyone asks for drugs—lots of them. Especially after they hack off a rib that looks like a pack of wolves have been fighting over it, reassemble a lung and dig half a dozen furrows through your upper body, chasing fragments.
One of the shots had gone through my left hand, chipping off pieces of bone along the way. The doctor said it was probably the bullet that had been meant for my head, but I’d instinctively raised my hand, and the slight trajectory change had been enough. You don’t usually say thanks for more pain, but this time I did.
Mallory moved into the Sofitel Hotel down the street and was with me every minute. Ordering a special bed to accommodate my size, feeding me when I could eat and listening to me babble in delirium. I know I said some things to him that were cruel. But that’s why he’s the valet. He’s the better man.
Men who’ve been on the cover of Forbes and pretty young women don’t get gunned down in Beverly Hills without a media firestorm. Because they deal with so many celebrities, Cedars is used to stiff-arming the paparazzi, but this was beyond even their capabilities.
Mallory asked my friends not to visit so they wouldn’t get caught in the frenzy. He also hired round-the-clock security. Even then, some parasites still squeezed through. And I even had to admire the guy who bribed his way onto the window washing detail and took my picture from the rig.
I was half-in, half-out for a week, and all I really remember is that I kept getting Kim’s and Sanrevelle’s faces mixed up. Sometimes, I would be trying to save Sanrevelle again, only she looked like Kim. And once, I was on fire, and Kim and Sanrevelle were just watching me burn. Watching like I had when both of them died.
Two special women. Two dead women. Both only an arm’s length away. And I had done nothing for either of them. Nothing. Hospitals give you time to remember things you don’t want to.
But sometimes, they also spring the lock on the place you store memories that should be visited more often. The ones you can’t talk about but that help define you.
“Hey, Mister, wake up. Hey, Mister…Mister…”
The small voice penetrated the fog in my head, but I couldn’t seem to turn to see who it was. Strange. I’d never had that trouble before. Okay, let’s try something easier. Just open your eyes.
I sent the command, but nothing happened. It stayed dark, even though I was sure there was light out there. Then I felt something running down the side of my face, pooling under my cheek. Something wet…warm.
I heard heavy surf. Very close. I listened for seagulls, but the waves were too loud. Then from very far away, a deep-throated engine. A motorcycle maybe? As it came closer, it wasn’t a motorcycle. It didn’t rumble, it pounded like a giant pair of wings. Whumph! Whumph! Whumph!
The ground began to shake, and suddenly, all other sound and sensation were lost. Then there was a terrible wind, blasting sand into my nostrils, and I couldn’t breathe.
I came awake in the chopper. A medic was holding a chunk of white nylon the size of a pencil stub under my nose. He pulled it away, rolled it between his fingers, then pushed it under my nostrils again. Something stung all the way to my brain, and I started to cough, violently.
Over the thundering rotors, I heard the small voice again. “Is Mister gonna be A-okay?”
I recognized the accent, and the voice. It was the same one I’d heard when I’d grabbed the kid and started running. Then the fire had rained down, and I’d dropped and pulled him close, curling myself around him. I remember thinking I was a lousy shield, but I was all there was.
Then nothing.
The hospital was old but clean. Sunlight splashed across the ceiling, and through the open windows I could hear exotic birds calling to one another and an occasional monkey chattering at some unseen irritant. The lone nurse attending to the ten of us in the ward was stiffly starched and dressed in a long white dress. Her winged hat made her seem larger than she was. A nun. She was young and darkly attractive. When I tried to speak, she put her finger on my lips and shook her head.
My bed had been made for much smaller patients, and my feet hung over the end past my ankles. I wiggled them, and they worked. A relief. The only pain I felt was a dull headache and a slight burning under the bandage on my left arm. Otherwise, nothing.
I took my time and worked my legs around to the side of the bed. I rolled onto my right shoulder, pushed up with my elbow and, with leverage from the steel headboard, struggled to a sitting position. I breathed heavily, gathered my strength and stood.
The room spun wildly, and I found myself draped over the nun’s shoulder. I wondered how she could hold me. Then I was lying down again.
I slept.
Later, the rest of J-Team came to see me. Six of them. Snake Gonzales hadn’t made it. They sat around my bed, and we talked. Made some bad jokes. Got wet eyes. When they were gone, I slept again.
The name patch over the left pocket of the 3-star’s jungle camos said Starkweather. We were sitting in a tin-roofed shack, where, during the day, it would have been too hot to draw a breath. But in the dark, with the door propped open and a sea breeze, it was comfortable enough.
There wasn’t much furniture. A couple of folding chairs in front of a field desk, but in keeping with the scrounging ability of enlisted men when it comes to commanding officers, somebody had rustled up an executive chair for the lieutenant general. A couple of flies the size of bumblebees lazed languidly under the battery-powered desk lamp that threw a jaundice-colored light over everything.
The general reclined in his chair and put a well-shined canvas boot on the desk. “How you coming along, Sergeant?”
“Fine, sir,” I answered. “I’d like to rejoin my team.”
“Mind telling me what you were doing running after that goddamn kid when you knew the F-16s were coming in to pound the beach?”
“Protecting an asset, sir. And my team. He was our translator, and he knew where we were headed.” I hesitated.
“Something else, Sergeant?”
“Sir, I don’t believe he was trying to run away. I think he just got disoriented.”
“Scared, you mean.”
“Almost as much as I was.”
The general smiled, and it was an easy one, creasing his face pleasantly. “Well, I hope he lives a long happy life and names his firstborn after you.”
<
br /> “That should be interesting. All he ever called me was Mister.”
Starkweather reached for a pack of cigarettes, offered me one. I took it, then his lighter. We smoked in silence. Finally, he said, “What the hell is a guy your size doing in Delta Force, anyway? They like them tough, but they don’t like them over 6-3.”
“They were desperate to beat Airborne at basketball.”
He laughed again. “How’d it work out?”
“Another well-planned, well-executed Delta mission.”
“Congratulations, the only thing they usually win is the fight after the game.”
“We did okay there too.” I ground out my cigarette on the dirt floor. “Sir, I’m J-Team’s Number 2, and I do the underwater work. I’d really like to get back.”
Starkweather leaned forward in his chair. “Why didn’t you tell somebody who the fuck you were when you joined the army?”
“At the risk of sounding out of line, General, who am I?”
“From what I’m told, some kind of British royalty.”
“That was my father, sir. He was titled, but not royal. I’m just a sergeant.”
“But you’re also a Brit—even though you don’t talk like one. And heir to some kind of goddamned business empire.”
“Technically correct, sir. But the business is in the hands of professional managers. I do have dual citizenship, but I think of myself only as an American.”
“Well, some very high-placed folks in London seem to have a problem with that kind of simplicity. And when word reached them that you’d almost been killed, they demanded we put you on the next available flight.”
“Begging the general’s pardon, sir, but I have no interest in going to the UK. I’m a Delta operator.”
“So now you’re a Delta operator attached to an ally. The decision was made way the hell up the chain of command, Sergeant, and it’s not open for debate. Draw your travel orders from my aide. That’s all.”
I arrived at 10 Downing Street in civilian clothes accompanied by a Mr. Vickers, who had lectured me in his office beforehand. “The prime minister is extremely busy, and though he’s asked to see you, it’s only perfunctory. So you’ll listen, say nothing, and we’ll be out of there in ten minutes. Do you understand?”
I looked at Vickers, a dour gent with some vague title in the Home Office. He had graying hair and an ill-fitted glass eye that maintained a position looking off to the right. And so far, he’d shown no indication he knew how to smile.
“Perhaps I could answer his hello. You know, just so he’ll realize I’m not deaf.”
Vickers’s sense of humor must have resided in his missing orb, because he gave me a look that would have chilled stone.
We were ushered into the PM’s study, a tightly organized room down the main hallway to the left. Number 10 is a rambling warren of niches, passageways and offices stretching two blocks and housing a maze of staff and electronics. To thwart a bomb blast, none of the rooms in front is used except for formal occasions, making the already jammed facility mostly windowless and claustrophobic.
As Vickers and I waited, I admired a portrait of Crom well over the fireplace and the hand-bound collection of Sir Winston’s books behind glass an arm’s length from the desk. When the prime minister appeared, he was taller than on television. His rugged face housed a pair of bright, insightful eyes and a good smile. It was the kind of face people instinctively liked. A politician’s face.
He crossed the room and took my extended hand in both of his. “Mr. Black. I’m so pleased to meet you. You’re taller than your father, but you look just like him. He was one of my role models.”
“Thank you, sir. Mine too.”
“Something not easily said about a newspaper publisher,” he laughed.
The PM suddenly noticed my companion. “Ah, Vickers. No need for you to stay. I’ll send Mr. Black home in my car.” He turned back to me. “You’re staying at Strathmoor Hall, I assume?”
“I didn’t know how long I’d be here, so I booked a room at the Lanesborough.”
Vickers cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Mr. Prime Minister, but I know how busy you are. I could just wait.”
There’s something about power. When it speaks, no matter how softly, the words take on weight. The PM’s were like blocks of concrete. “Mr. Black and I have a great deal to discuss, and I’m certain you have pressing issues of your own. You’re dismissed, Vickers.”
Vickers disappeared like a puff of smoke in a gale.
The PM led me further down the hall to a comfortable sitting room. A valet brought us tea, and as he was leaving, the PM told him we weren’t to be interrupted.
“May I call you Rail?”
“Of course, sir.”
“I know you’re unhappy about being sent here.”
“It’s just that I would have preferred not leaving my team. And, sir, I’ve cross-trained with British Special Forces, and there is no skill I have that they don’t.”
He took a sip of tea. “Except that none of them is named Black. And none of them is the controlling shareholder of several of our largest companies.”
We’d each said our piece, so it was time for me to listen. “Sir, if I can be of any assistance, of course I’m ready to serve.”
“Thank you, Rail. I know you mean it, and I’m deeply appreciative. You remember the Ravensheart family, don’t you?”
“If you mean Stanley, I was an altar boy at his wedding, and if I’m not mistaken, he and his father visited us once on Clarissima.”
“Stanley is Lord Ravensheart now. His father passed on several years ago. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind picking up your acquaintanceship again. He’s managed to get himself into a bit of unpleasantness that could be embarrassing to a great many people.”
“Can you tell me what kind of unpleasantness?”
He hesitated. “I’d rather not.”
“Then may I speak frankly, sir?”
“By all means.”
“Presumably, there are others you could have asked to pal around with the new Lord Ravensheart who could do a much better job of collecting gossip among the idle rich than I.”
I had made my point, and I could seem him wrestling with what he wanted to tell me. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, “Stanley’s fallen in with some folks who want to assassinate me.”
I don’t think I could have been more surprised. “Well, he was always a horse’s ass, but assassination? Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. They’ve even hired a shooter. A very competent one, I’m told. From somewhere on the Continent. And they’ve given him a timetable.”
“For God sakes, why?”
“Back at Cambridge, I wrote my thesis on the inevitability of independence for Northern Ireland.”
“True independence, not reunification?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. In the short term, there would be political turmoil and perhaps even some bloodshed, but the oil wealth of the country would eventually force the factions to sort it out, and we could all get on with business. No more military drain on our economy and a trading partner of real importance.”
“But you haven’t advocated such a position as prime minister.”
“No, and I’m not certain I will. Timing is everything. However, Lord Ravensheart and his coconspirators, all of whom have significant portions of their wealth tied up in the status quo, have convinced themselves it’s imminent.”
“That’s the problem with going through your whole life never having heard the word no. You can start to think like a Menendez brother.”
“I like that,” the PM smiled. “But let’s hope Stanley’s chap is a better shot. I’d prefer not to roll around on the floor while someone pours birdshot into me.”
The man had a sense of humor.
“Isn’t this something for the police?” I asked.
“It was one of their informants who provided what I’ve told you. But Stanley’s little club is made up exclusively
of members of the Derbyshire crowd, meaning they speak only among themselves. So we don’t know everything—or even everyone who is involved. Besides, I don’t want them in jail. That would mean trials, and nobody’s served by that…except, of course, the press.”
He stopped and looked at me, and I could see that he knew how vulnerable he’d made himself by saying what he’d just said to someone who owned several hundred newspapers. He didn’t need to worry, and I told him so.
“What do you want to happen to them?”
“I just want them to get back to fox hunting and fucking each other’s wives.”
I must have dozed off again, because all of sudden Mallory was standing over me with a breakfast tray from the Sofitel. I told him what I’d been remembering.
He gave me a wry smile. “I’ve never been sure saving the life of that particular prime minister was all that admirable, but from my standpoint, it’s been a lot more interesting living in California than rambling around Strathmoor Hall with no one to talk to but a flatulent cook.”
10
A Couple of Cops and a Tiger
The cops came, of course. In the early going, the place was swarming with Beverly Hills detectives who looked and dressed like the citizens they served, meaning lots of gym work and very sharp clothes. The Colombo look doesn’t fly at BHPD, which occasionally earns them static from other law enforcement types. But when you’re dealing with people who think fast food is a brisk sushi chef, you get a lot farther if you don’t show up sporting three shades of plaid. The chief once told me that being a good cop and knowing which tie goes with which shirt aren’t incompatible skills. I agree.
But well-dressed or not, they’d all been warned by Jake Praxis, who’d somehow shown up at the hospital an hour after I’d been shot, to not even breathe in my direction unless he was present. And when one captain tried an end-around, Jake buttonholed him and said that if he did it again, he’d drop the chief as a client.
So when the medical staff finally okayed an interview, Jake, attired in his jury-best, sat in my green La-Z-Boy, dangling an Italian loafer, while Detective Sergeant Dion Manarca, a stocky guy with a prematurely gray crew cut, opened the session. His partner, a piranha-eyed skeleton named Pantiagua, stood off to the side, one hand in his pocket, absentmindedly clicking a Zippo.
