Chapter 28

As we'd planned, they formed up behind me and I walked toward Straight. My books knocked on the cracked blacktop, and I heard feet shuffling behind me. I got about 20 feet away and stopped. I could barely see Straight, and realized I had to get closer. I walked forward again, under the overhang, till I could make out his form and the lighter color of his face.

"Somebody busted out that light over there," he said. "Saved me some trouble."

"Yeah," I said, "mighty convenient."

In the dark it was hard to tell, but I thought that he gave me a sharp look. "You don't sound so mellow, Darvin."

"I'm not." I could tell just how tense I was by the fact that I was speaking grammatical English now. "I've been following a white minivan up from the South Valley. I've followed it to you."

"And?"

I was glad of the smell of marijuana that was faintly drifting around us. It might have mellowed Straight out enough to make it a little bit easier – though he existed in a constant marijuana high, a low-level high that probably didn't bother him any more than my standard caffeine stimulation bothered me. "And the people who drove it, under your orders, killed a man under my window, a man I'd just been talking to."

I could barely see his shrug. "I never told 'em to do it there. I didn't even know that was your office." I believed him, strange as it seems. We'd never met in my office, but in his – which meant on the streets, usually in the dark.

"Well, it was. He'd just been to see me. He wanted me to investigate a murder, but I don't do murders."

"No, you're kind of squeamish."

"So why did you put paper out on him?"

"What's it to you?"

I felt anger boiling up in me. "If you have to ask that, son, you don't know me nearly as well as you think you do."

"Son?" It was the first time in all the years I'd known him that something I'd said had shocked him. "Anyway, I put the contract out because he knew stuff."

"Stuff?"

"What was he there for?"

I knew, then, what Straight meant – the man who hadn't become my client had known something about a murder Straight was involved in. But I had other things to take care of. "Whatever," I said, and I flipped a hand – my right hand, the one furthest from my gun. "If you think you can ace someone under my window, someone I've been talking to, someone who'd just said goodbye to my wife, and not have me come after you, you're living in a dream world."

"Hello, Cecelia," he said, out of the blue.

"Your business is with my husband," Cecelia said, and I'd never heard her voice so cold. "Speak with him. I have nothing to do with you – unless you wish to resort to stronger means than words."

Cecelia's fury surprised me ... no, not the fury, but the implied willingness to shoot that the fury had provoked her to. "She's right," I said. "You're dealing with me. My wife's here because of your actions, not because she's your best friend."

"She's never been my friend."

"No, she hasn't – and now I see just how right she's been all these years."

"Mind if I smoke?"

I judged the distance between us. If he threw a lit cigarette lighter, it would blow out; if he threw a burning cigarette, it would never make it. "Yeah, go ahead."

He took a little time, pulling out a cigarette, digging out a lighter, getting things going. A stronger smell of marijuana drifted over us. "So what do you want?" he asked finally.

I took a deep breath. "Get out of town. Leave by the time the sun goes down again, and don't ever come back."

"And if I don't?"

"I go to the cops. I can call Rudy Delgado, who would love to put you in jail. I know a guy in Homicide who'd be interested in what I know. Either you get out of town, or you go to jail. It's your choice, son."

Straight chuckled. "You sound like Mike Hammer or somebody."

"Get out of town." He was right – my words did sound like I'd lifted them from a hard-boiled novel. But they were what was coming out naturally.

"You know, Darvin, I could shoot you and stop my troubles right here."

"If you think you can get to your gun – which is under your clothes somewhere, I can see that well – before all four of us can get to ours, go for it." I'd been standing up to Straight for years, at first because I didn't know just what he was, and later because I realized that if I didn't he'd walk over the top of me. And I knew that if I ever had to stand up to him, it was right then. "But I'll give you a guarantee – at least one of us will shoot you so full of holes you'll look like Swiss cheese."

The glowing tip of the joint rose, burned brighter, and fell. I waited while he held the smoke. When he spoke it was with the strangled voice of someone who's talking without breathing. "I don't believe you. You'd never shoot me."

"You don't want to test that theory."

I heard him blowing the smoke out then, in one long gust of air. "No, I guess I don't." His voice was bitter. "I thought we were friends."

"We were. And it's not my fault that we aren't anymore."

He swore. "Can't you let this slide?"

"Straight, I've been letting things slide for years now. I've let things slide because you've been my friend. Well, my wife was right all along. I had no business letting them slide. And it ends here. Nothing slides now. You can get out of town or you can go to jail. Make up your mind which you prefer."

He didn't say anything more, just turned and walked away, along the side of the building, past the other loading docks, until he turned the corner. I turned and walked back to the Blazer, the others following me. I knew that Kim and Beth would keep an eye out behind, in case he came back in a violent mood. I watched out ahead of us, and to the sides, and I knew that Cecelia, amateur though she was, would be doing the same thing.