High Country Nocturne - [25]

But that was later.

Now, I stewed for maybe thirty seconds and stood up.

Outside, it was full dark, moonless, and most of the neighbors had their lights off. But I could see Lindsey, thanks to her white blouse. She was on the sidewalk almost a block away.

She had already crossed Third Avenue and was past the judge’s house. He and his wife sang in a band.

The night held no band noises, barely any sounds at all. A bell from a light-rail train clanged two blocks east on Central, the direction Lindsey was heading. If you listened very carefully you could hear the continual grotesque moan of the Papago Freeway to the south.

The street held no FBI watchers, no reporters. Not one car was parked at the curb in our block.

I wanted to run after her but stopped myself. It would only reignite the argument. I started walking east slowly. Maybe I would catch up, maybe I would walk off my own brew of anger, confusion, and neediness. I needed her to understand why I took that file, took that oath.

This would be a good time for one of those business cards from Peralta to turn up and tell me what the hell to do.

I watched as Lindsey reached the gate and wall that closed off Cypress from cars at the end of the block. Pedestrians could walk through openings that lined up with the sidewalk. The wall ran nearly the length of the mile-long historic district. It was one of the horrid changes forced by the neighborhood association-I called it the Willo Soviet-to gain its support for light rail.

The result made the neighborhood, where streets had always run straight through to Central, and when this part of town was much more crowded and busy, into a “gated community.” At least on one end.

The gate across the street supposedly allowed emergency vehicles to come through if need be. But one day a fire truck had stopped and the firefighters had asked Lindsey if she knew the “code” to open the barrier. There was no code. It was a damned locked gate.

The goddamned walls and gates made me angry every time I saw them. If I wanted gates and walls, I’d move to the suburbs.

Lindsey didn’t like walking through the Wall of Willo, either. “I always wonder if somebody is waiting to mug me on the other side.” She had said this more than once.

At least an ornamental light had been placed beside the sidewalk entrance on Cypress. It illuminated Lindsey clearly as she stepped through and disappeared on the other side, where First Avenue ran north and south. A block beyond that stood the open arms of the mid-century Phoenix Towers on Central Avenue.

Steps on the grass made me turn.

And there she was.

“Fight with the wifey?” she drawled. “But you want to make it all better.”

The woman Lindsey had nicknamed Strawberry Death was two feet away, that semi-automatic pistol of a make I had never seen before pointed at my chest. This time, no DPS uniform-she wore a black turtleneck, black jeans, and black running shoes. I wondered how long she had been watching.

I opened my mouth and closed it. I was not thinking of clever comebacks.

She drawled, “She’s pretty. A little of the Goth girl left in her. If I had time, I’d suicide you both. Suicided is better, cleaner. But I don’t have time. Where are my stones?”

“What?”

“Are you hard of hearing? Where are my diamonds?”

So that’s what this was about.

“I don’t have them.”

“Then I’m going to have to keep the promise I made.”

“To who?”

“Whom,” she corrected. “You should know better, Doctor Mapstone, being an educated man. Whom.”

My feet felt very heavy as I spoke. “To whom?”

“Peralta.”

Gun in your face. Buy time.

“You told him this?”

“I didn’t have time,” she said. “But a girl’s got to keep her promises. Now, where are my stones?”

She smiled, showing a perfect set of white teeth, and made the mistake of taking two steps toward me as she answered.

I quickly stepped in close, as if we were about to dance. By the time she realized what was happening, it was too late. I planted my right foot and calf behind her left leg and used this as a lever to push her backwards.

At the same moment, I grabbed her gun hand with my left hand while notching my right hand under her elbow. It incapacitated the arm, pushed the gun aside, and helped propel her off balance and down hard.

Thanks to this straight-arm-bar, the gun came loose before she could pull the trigger and I fell on top of her.

This should have knocked the air out of her, but it didn’t. She wrestled, punched, and made grunting and growling sounds.

She also wore Chanel Number Five.

My face was instantly on fire. It took a couple of seconds to realize this was a result of her raking fingernails across me. She tried a kick in the groin, but I blocked that by turning to the side. Then she bit me on the wrist.

That let her struggle toward the pistol on the grass while I grasped the waist of her black jeans to hold her back. Her hair had come loose and I pulled on it hard. She screamed and cursed me. My reach was longer and with my other hand I tossed the gun into a hedge. Something black and sudden came into my vision, followed by pain and starbursts. She kicked me in the face with her running shoe.