The Night Detectives - страница 13

The loud, angry voice coming from the apartment wasn’t surprising, either. O.B. was an eclectic place, where CPAs lived alongside bikers. Once I had been kept up all night when one of the latter had engaged in an all-night screaming fight with his old lady. Now I would put a stop to it, but I was different then.

The voice was deep and menacing, the dispute involving a woman, money, and perhaps more. The dialogue was generally, “I want Scarlett, motherfucker, and your white ass is out of excuses. Where is she? I need her ass back out making money,” on and on. “You think you can hide from me? Nobody gets away from me. I own her sweet little booty. Now where the fuck is she? Tell me now or I stomp your white ass to death and find her my own self.”

My mind momentarily thought of search warrants and probable cause, but, as Peralta said, we weren’t the law anymore. When I heard a fist connect with flesh, cartilage snap, and a man squeal, I opened the door.

“What the fuck?”

The voice belonged to a very large man with caramel-colored skin, mustard-yellow driving cap, delicately manicured beard, eyes way too small for his face. A Bluetooth device was attached to the left side of his head. He was my height and about a third wider. He wore a black T-shirt proclaiming RUN-D.M.C. Below his shorts were heavy stomp-your-white-ass boots.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Life insurance.” I smiled.

He raised his shirt so I could see the butt of a semiautomatic pistol in his waistband. Then he advanced toward me, one step, two…

I thrust my hand forward suddenly, open and straight-fingered into the middle of his windpipe. The small eyes burst wide, the cap and Bluetooth flew off, and he was gasping. Both his hands clutched his throat in what we had been taught in first-aid classes was the “universal choking symbol.” Done properly, this was a useful move for incapacitating someone. Done wrong, it would kill him, which was why it had been discontinued by police agencies.

My next move, one second later, was to remove the Python from its shoulder holster and level it at his face.

“See, you never know when you might need life insurance.”

He staggered back. From his open mouth came the sound of an ailing carburetor. His eyes showed the most primal emotions: surprise, pain, and the sense that he was suffocating. It was a testimony to his size and strength that he was still standing. That made me uneasy.

“Move back, asshole.”

He did. When I was all the way inside, I kicked the door closed but made sure I was still facing him.

“Who are you?” This from a skinny, pale kid with bushy red hair, sitting on a sofa. He was probably the only person in O.B. without a tan. He was in pain, clutching his face. Seeing his hands occupied, I ignored him.

“Can you talk now?” I said this to the black man.

“Iiiihhhhhhhhhh.”

I asked him whether he was right- or left-handed. He opened his mouth and showed a gold incisor. He finally managed, “Left.”

“So use your left hand and pull out that gun very slowly and hand it to me.” I knew he was lying about which hand he favored, or at least I took that chance. After I had possession of the Glock, I shoved him back onto the sofa next to the white kid. Gravity did most of the work. Large human objects are easier to push around when they can barely breathe.

“Should’a known you was a motherfucking cop.” His voice was a shadow of its former booming self.

“I’m not a cop.” I kept the.357 magnum leveled at his chest. The barrel was only four inches of thick ribbed steel, but the business end might as well have been the size of eternity.

“Now wait a motherfucking minute.” He held out two big hands, palms facing me and tried to make himself smaller on the sofa, no easy task. His expression changed. He wasn’t worrying about his throat any longer. “Motherfuck! I’ve heard about you. Big guy with a big motherfucking gun…”

I held up my hand. He stopped talking.

“Did you ever consider that repeating the same profanity over and over deprives it of any ability to shock? You might consider trying out a word such as ‘mountebank’ or ‘scoundrel.’”