by Sol Stein
Buzz brought the helicopter down lower and made a pass over Cliffhaven. Almost everyone was now staring up at the solitary Bell Ranger.
Buzz pulled upward and away to where he could get a better view of what had caught his eye.
“Hey, Ed, that fire could jump the road about two hundred yards downhill. It narrows between big rocks. Very thick brush on both sides. Better get the Coast Guard rescue choppers at Monterey plus Fort Ord’s Hercules if you want to get these people out in time. Ed, you better drop some organized heads into the compound real quick from the look of things. I’ll stick long as I can, over.”
A few minutes later he got back on.
“Lot of people crowding the low end of the swimming pool now. It must be hot as hell down there. Isn’t room in the pool for everybody. Also we’re getting uphill combustion, I’d say upwards of twenty acres flaming or gone. This is a fast one.”
Ballard checked his fuel gauge, then made a sweep of the periphery.
“Hey, Ed,” he called. “Choppers on the way? Good thing. Listen, something crazy. The parking lot here’s got just a few cars and a pickup truck. Doesn’t make sense with all those people. But just east of this place there’s a gorge I just buzzed. It’s filled with auto junk, most of it complete cars. Think there’s some kind of racket going on here? What? No, more’n a hundred. If they’ve got gas in the tanks… You’d better get a command post set up fast. And, Buddy, better get here soon, my fuel gauge’s telling me to head home. Over.”
*
Henry looked up at the trusties and decided he’d better stand. Shamir had thought of the same thing at the same time. Pity Jake wasn’t here, that would make three against three.
Blaustein, still slumped against the wall, spoke to the trusties first. “I didn’t do anything,” he said.
The leader of the three looked at Blaustein with contempt. Then he spoke, his hand encompassing the blaze. “You started all this.”
It wasn’t a question. Henry acknowledged the deed with silence.
The leader of the trusties seemed nervous about what he wanted to say.
Finally, it came out. “We three think you did right. We were wrong to play ball with Clifford.”
“And now you’re afraid of being punished.”
The man nodded. This is as it always is, Henry thought, the sides change, the worm turns.
“What should we do?” the man asked.
“Fools,” Henry said. “For a start, take your armbands off.”
All their heads turned at once. Blaustein, who’d sidled along the wall, now suddenly stood and ran as fast as he could.
*
“What’s the matter, Clete?”
Dan Pitz’s voice had come up right behind him. Clete signaled for the hose he was holding to be turned off. When the water pressure eased, he put the hose on the ground but kept his foot on it to keep it from rolling about, spewing the remains of the water.
“It’s like trying to piss at a bonfire,” Clete said. “We’re making no headway at all.”
“It’s too bad Mr. Clifford won’t let us call in the pros.”
“And let them see what we’ve got here?” Clete wondered about this new guy’s guts.
Certain now that no one was within hearing distance, Dan said, “I’m sure that chopper called in the feds.”
“Then we’ve got to do something about all those people in the swimming pool.” Clete was looking in that direction.
“Jesus, some of them are heading toward the road.”
“I have an idea,” Dan Pitz said, “if you’ll listen.”
“I’ll listen okay.”
“I’ll make a deal with you,” the new manager said. “When this is over…”
“Yeah.”
“I won’t identify you, if you won’t identify me.”
Clete looked Dan in the eye. So this was the tough guy picked by Clifford.
Dan put his hand out to clinch the agreement.
Clete extended his right hand to shake Dan’s, and also his left to grab Dan’s underarm just above the elbow, and with that perfect grip, threw Dan Pitz to the ground on his back. He could see the surprise in Pitz’s face and took advantage of it to put his knee in Pitz’s chest as he pinned his arms.
“You stupid son of a bitch, you’re worried about me identifying you, you chicken-livered idiot? What about all those Jews? Maybe they won’t remember the face of the new guy, I don’t even know if they’ve seen you, but they’ll sure as hell remember me. Now listen!” Clete let Pitz’s left arm go and put his right fist in Pitz’s face. “I’m going to get the weapons from the closet behind the reception desk. We’ll distribute them to the staff members we can find real quick and set up a barricade at the road. Any Jews try to get down it, we shoot. Understand?”
Dan nodded. He would have nodded whatever this nut said, as long as he could get away. In a second Clete was gone, running toward the reception building.
Luckily, he knew where Ann kept the key. He opened the second drawer on the right and lifted the tray from the cash box. It wasn’t there! He rummaged through the various keys quickly—ah, there it was! He opened the cupboard. There were twelve guns of various makes, mostly .38s. He scooped up several boxes of ammunition from the bottom of the cabinet, stashed them and all the guns but one in the canvas log carrier by the fireplace. It wasn’t a good way to carry anything, but he didn’t see any better way. He was off, shoving his own weapon behind the belt of his jeans.
He couldn’t see Dan Pitz anywhere. He looked anxiously around for Robinson or Trask. Not to be seen. What he did see were about eight or ten of the Jews within a hundred yards of the road. They were dripping from the pool, most of them. And glancing around, as if expecting to be caught if their plans were known. Where the hell was Charlotte? He could sure use her.
Quickly, Clete found five staff members, then saw four more and called them over, handed out the weapons, explained what the Jews were doing, and what his plans were. He jammed the extra gun into his waistband, handed out the ammunition, and had everybody load up, while he did the same. He threw the log carrier to the side and then, on the run, the others following him, went to head off the residents at the top of the road. He remembered the sawhorses and the two-by-six painted with “No Exit” behind the sentry house—he could use them, but they wouldn’t really hold a crowd back. He’d make a barrier of bodies, that would keep them away!
In no time Clete had the armed staff members lined up in front of the barrier, several of them frightened by the changed circumstances.
“Don’t you worry none,” Clete said. “When I’m through, there won’t be any witnesses.”
“What are you going to do?” asked the staff member next to him.
“Everybody!” Clete yelled, feeling a rush of excitement as the idea in his head bloomed. He had the feeling he was a natural leader, long repressed, now out from under jerks like Dan Pitz and raring to go. “Count your rounds,” he shouted.
The residents approaching the barrier stopped their forward movement.
“Okay,” Clete said, so the staff members could hear him. “Let’s make every shot count. We’ll put the bodies in the dump truck, and the ones we don’t shoot, we’ll put them in the big van and run it and the truck into the gully. Remember, no witnesses!”
There were more than a dozen residents now not more than ten yards away. Way behind them, after the stragglers, a whole mob from the pool was headed toward the barrier. Let them come, thought Clete. It’s easier if they head for us than if we have to chase after them.
“Remember,” Clete said, raising his pistol to eye level, “don’t waste shots. Aim for the one directly in front of you. Everybody ready?”
The others took aim, some of them unsteadily.
“Fire,” Clete said. His shot hit the man he was aiming at in the center of his chest. He could see the reaction on the man’s face, a great gasp as he fell backward. Clete got a lot of satisfaction from being that close, but something
bothered him. The volley he had heard didn’t sound like a dozen shots. He glanced right. Obviously some of the guys had not fired. Slim, the tall guy from Pasadena, had lowered his pistol to his side.
Clete went up to him. “What’s the matter, Slim, chicken?”
Slim didn’t say anything.
Clete was a lot shorter than Slim and felt that way as he stood close. Slim didn’t see Clete raising the pistol to his midriff, he just felt the sudden blow into his belly as the shot resounded. He fell, writhing, and Clete stepped on his right wrist and got the gun away from him, then left him lying there, screaming.
“Anybody else chicken?” Clete asked, shouting so he could be heard against the roar of the fire.
Nobody said anything.
He then ordered them to take aim. The residents, meanwhile, were backing off, and Clete ordered the line of staff members forward. He wanted his targets within easy range.
It was at that moment that he saw the figure running toward the periphery of the compound perhaps a hundred and fifty yards away, but he recognized her. That Minter woman, the one he hated most, was trying to make her escape through the brush that was not yet burning. She was a fool. That area would be ablaze in minutes.
“Hold everything,” he yelled, signaling the others to lower their weapons, and took off after her. He’d make an example of that cunt. He’d execute her in a really fine way in front of everybody.
She saw him coming and knew who he was. She also saw the upraised pistol in his hand. Phyllis Minter could have made the woods, but she deliberately stopped, turned, and waited for him.
“Well, if it isn’t little prickle with a big gun,” she said. “Looks like your fun park is burning down.”
“Just the woods, jewbaby. We’re keeping the rest intact for all your relatives. Now march!” Clete waved the pistol in the direction he wanted her to go.
Phyllis had no intention of obeying orders from this weasel. She held her middle finger up.
Clete hated obstruction from anybody, but especially from women and Jews. He slammed at Phyllis’s upraised finger with the butt of his gun.
“You missed,” she said, pulling her hand smartly away. Then, with her knees bent, she reached into her boot for the knife she had secreted there.
Clete had his plan in mind. He’d make her undress in front of everybody right by the barrier, and then he’d shoot her point blank into the furry triangle, tearing her cunt to pieces. He’d just have to get her knife away first.
“Come on, jewbaby,” he said, “let’s have the knife.” He held out his left hand for it, keeping the muzzle of the gun pointed in her direction. Were the others watching from a distance?
“Sure,” Phyllis said. “If you promise not to shoot.”
“Why would I shoot you, baby? You know what I want to do to you. How can I do that if you’re dead?”
Phyllis made as if to lay the knife down in Clete’s outstretched palm, moving two steps closer to do so. She’d noticed that Clete didn’t have as much knowhow in handling a gun as some of the men she’d known; he was pointing it at the sky, not at her. With a determination born of her lifetime of grievances, she suddenly thrust the knife at Clete’s chest.
Clete’s instinct was to block her arm the way he’d been taught, but the upraised palm of his left hand put him in the wrong position, and as he brought his gun arm slamming around it was too late, he felt the puncture in his chest, my God, she had the strength of a man as she shoved the blade all the way in. He looked down and saw the handle protruding grotesquely and felt himself falling forward as she stepped back to be out of his way. It was important, he thought, not to fall face down on the handle, and, as if everything were working in slow motion, he found the strength to turn as he fell, falling on his side, then rolling onto his back, looking for Phyllis Minter through the haze of his eyes. The bitch he had wanted to get more than any other was standing not four feet away. In the distance people were running away from the barrier at the road, scattering everywhere, and what was that up in the air, helicopters? It was all the fault of the Hebewoman, distracting him, tempting him to murder as she had tempted him to sex. He raised the gun, holding it in both hands so his aim wouldn’t shake, though he knew he was shaking, and though Phyllis Minter stepped back and instinctively ducked her head, that wasn’t where Clete was aiming when the gun roared.
*
Henry, Margaret, and Shamir had come from around the corner of the buildings in time to see, at a distance, the barrier at the road, with several bodies lying on the ground nearby like a scene from a war newsreel. They saw the row of armed staff members, all looking in the direction where Clete was fighting with a woman Margaret immediately recognized as the one she’d played basketball with.
Henry saw clearly, in a way he would never forget, the woman push the knife into Clete’s chest as if all the strength in the world were suddenly hers. He was halfway there, sprinting, by the time Clete, on his back on the ground, raised the pistol at the woman.
“Clete!” Henry shouted with all his might, hoping to distract him, but Clete, on the ground, heard nothing but the inside of his own head saying, “Fire.”
The bullet shattered Phyllis’s pelvis, plunging into her intestines. She thought of her father, as she fell, who had not been shot in the war and had then received his fatal bullet in a Manhattan taxicab. Her vision was blurred, strangely, as were her thoughts. She had no heir to mourn her, she thought. Perhaps she would not die. Oh God, she didn’t want to die.
Henry kicked the gun out of Clete’s hand, but it hadn’t been necessary. He was unconscious. When Margaret caught up, she knelt by Clete’s side for a moment and saw what had to be done. Mustering strength, she pulled up as much of Clete’s T-shirt as she could get in her hand and pressed the wad of cloth against the hole in his chest. It was probably no use unless he could be gotten to a hospital right away.
“Please, Margaret,” Henry was saying, “the woman.”
Of course, the woman. She should have tended to her first. “Hold this,” she instructed Shamir, showing him how to press down on the wad of cloth to stem the blood flow.
“If we put a tourniquet around his neck, the blood would stop,” Shamir said, but his remark went unheard.
Shamir held the blood-soaked cloth tight against Clete’s chest with his left hand and with his right fished into Clete’s pockets. He found what he was looking for in the first one, a yellow-and-blue plastic Cliffhaven tag with Clete’s passkey. Now they could open the rooms that still had residents behind locked doors.
Kneeling next to the Minter woman, Margaret noticed two things. How beautiful her face was, despite the pain, and how desperate her condition seemed. There was obviously a great deal of internal bleeding. She guessed, and she was given to correct guesses in matters of this sort, that the bullet had shattered bone, and the bone fragments had in turn become multiple bullets, tearing her lower abdomen as if she’d been hit with a bursting shell. What good was it to be a doctor now, without morphine, without surgical equipment, or blood to replace the blood that was staining the ground?
Margaret did what she could for Phyllis Minter. The rest needed to be done in an operating room by a surgeon very soon. In dreams you ran away from terror but your legs wouldn’t move fast enough, and you wondered could you get away in time. In life the future was more precise. Within ten or fifteen minutes this woman would die, she was already on her way to death, and nothing available could stop it.
A familiar sense of despair crowded Margaret’s mind as she stood up slowly. She looked at Phyllis Minter’s face. At least, she wasn’t conscious. Good-bye Margaret said in her mind.
Then, remembering the rest of the world, she looked about. A staff member she recognized as Charlotte was bending over Clete.
“Is he dead?” Charlotte asked Shamir.
“No,” Shamir said, “but he will be. Here, you hold his T-shirt against the wound. I’ve got something to attend to.”
When Shamir rai
sed the red-soaked cloth slightly, the wound spurted. Charlotte straightened up. She hated the sight of blood, but even worse was the shattering effect of seeing the man she’d spent more time with than any other man in her life lying there, his eyes glazed with a prescience of death. He would never fuck her again, her or anybody.
“Come on,” Shamir shouted at her. “He’s one of yours.”
Charlotte took several steps backward, then turned and started to walk toward her quarters, which Clete would never visit again, wondering how quickly she could pack. She had to get out of this place before the Jews turned on her.
Shamir saw Charlotte break into a trot. “Hell,” he thought. “Henry! Come here, hold this. I’ve got some doors to open.”
22
Blaustein was glad to have gotten away from the meshugganer and his Gentile wife. That man puffed himself up with hope like a balloon. Who did he think he was, Moses?
Keeping in touch with reality had kept him alive for six months in this place, Blaustein thought. Henry Brown was a man to keep away from. He was going to get himself killed, by one of Clifford’s people, by the police, by someone.
From a distance Blaustein saw that, despite the heat, which was getting worse by the minute, people were swarming out of the swimming pool. Some of them were heading for the road. The fools would be stopped. Then he saw the small group gather around someone he recognized. Dr. Goodson was not one of Blaustein’s favorite people. He thought Goodson’s so-called experiments nonsense. You didn’t need to be deprived of essentials to know that they were essential.
Squinting, Blaustein could see that they were beating the shit out of Dr. Goodson. You see, he thought, the Jews are going to end up killing each other. Some of those who had grudges against him were in that group. He’d better get to Mr. Clifford fast.
