L.A. Wars (3 page)

“James.”

“James it is, then.” Kahl smiled. “I've watched and read extensively, trying to learn what makes these street gangs tick. I knew their activities resembled those of some other groups I've read about, but it took me a while to put my finger on it.” Kahl poked at his glasses. “Have you ever read some of the early observations on aboriginal behavior in Africa?”

“Do Tarzan movies count?”

“Oddly enough, yes. The aborigines in both history and fiction put great store in tribesmanship. They both love colorful, gaudy costumes, and they take special care in selecting or awarding nicknames. Both take pride in the theatrics they can lend to warfare—gang members call it being ‘cool.' Street gangs like to give their violence a style, a flair. The more unusual the form of violence, the better.

“You see,” he continued, “they are superstitious in that what they don't understand either infuriates them or terrifies them. They function on emotion, not intellect. I think it might be the one chink in their armor, James. They are brutal and fearless because they never have to fight alone. They can't be reasoned with, because they seem to lack any suggestion of morality. They understand only two things: violence and fear.”

“So you're saying the best way to beat them is to scare them?”

Kahl nodded quickly. “If we could just
find
some way to scare them. They laugh at police. And they actually seem to take pride in being arrested—perhaps because so few of them are ever sent to prison.”

“It's not going to be easy, then,” said Hawker, deep in thought, an absent expression on his face. He sat silent for a time, then his face slowly lightened. “But maybe … maybe it won't be quite as hard to scare them as we think.” He stood up quickly. “Do you think we could get your watch group together tomorrow night?”

Kahl made a noncommittal gesture. “I can try. Most of them are ready to give up. Can I call you and let you know in the morning?”

“Jacob Hayes rented a house for me on Manhattan Beach. I don't know the telephone number yet—”

Hawker was interrupted by a handsome, older woman's rushing into the room. She had flaxen hair edged with gray and a plain, librarianlike face. She seemed surprised that her husband had company. Her hands were pressed together nervously, and her eyes showed concern. She looked from Kahl to Hawker, and then back to her husband. “Virgil,” she said anxiously. “I hate to interrupt, but Julie seems to be … missing. She was supposed to be home by three, and I've just finished calling all her friends.…” Mrs. Kahl choked momentarily, near tears.

Kahl tried to make light of it. Julie was his teen-age daughter, he explained. She had gone to her summer-school class, and probably decided to go to a movie, he reasoned. But the worry was evident on his face.

There was a big Seth Thomas grandfather clock in a corner of the living room, ticking the seconds away.

It was six fifteen
P.M
.

Hawker excused himself as they dialed the police.

Virgil Kahl's hand shook as he held the telephone.

Hawker didn't feel like waiting for official help. He drove to Manhattan Beach, found his rental house, showered, changed into jeans, a black T-shirt, and black cap. From one of the crates Jacob Hayes had shipped to the house, Hawker selected a few pieces of weaponry and hid them in the car with two changes of clothes.

At first dark he headed for the slums of the street gangs.

He would search for more than five hours before finding the body of Julie Kahl.…

three

As Hawker disappeared up the fire escape ladder, sirens wailed in the distance.

The sirens mixed with the echoing screams of Cat Man.

Hawker doubted that Cat Man would die. But he would spend a lifetime wishing that he had. And he would never rape again. Ever.

Almost as important, Cat Man would spread the word. His tribesmen would visit him in the hospital, or in jail, and he would whisper the truth to them. He would tell them about the lone red-haired man who killed just as quickly and just as brutally as the most savage street fighter.

Virgil Kahl's theory had struck a chord in Hawker. The street gangs liked violence with a flair, he had said. It was the one thing they would both admire and fear.

Hawker would give them plenty to fear. And he would start building his reputation.

Tonight.

Hawker made his way across the tops of the buildings. Occasionally he had to make a long jump from one rooftop to another. Twice he interrupted teen-agers in feverish copulation.

Below him, on the streets, neon signs flashed garishly, red and green. Customized cars prowled, polished like gems. At stoplights drivers revved their engines. The fronts of the cars bounced like rearing horses.

Low riders.

Hawker wondered why California was the birthplace of so many strange fads.

Perhaps it was boredom. Or the acid air. Or something in the water. Somewhere Hawker had read that trout raised in hatcheries had to be gradually introduced to acids and aluminum before being released in polluted lakes. It was the only way they would survive.

Life forms can live in poison—as long as they are poisoned slowly.

Los Angeles seemed the perfect proving ground.

Hawker moved on through the shadows.

It took him nearly an hour to work his way back to his car. He got in and drove slowly through Hillsboro. A police car sat outside Virgil Kahl's home. A cop stood in the doorway. Hawker knew he had been burdened with the duty every cop dreads: breaking the news of a death in the family.

Hawker barely knew the Kahls, but already he mourned for them. They seemed like a nice couple. And now their every waking hour would be shadowed with the horrors of their daughter's last hour on earth.

Three of the animals had already died. A fourth would now be suffering a horror equal to the Kahls'.

It was two thirty-three
A.M
.

Hawker still had a reputation to build. And he had plenty of time before daylight.

Hawker made one circle through the Latin district of Starnsdale.

On two different corners a dozen or more young men stood joking and smoking.

They wore red bandannas tied over their heads, like pirates. On the backs of their leather jackets,
SATANÁS
was sewn in red silk.

Several of them wore chains over their shoulders, like military braid. Others held heavy walking canes in their hands.

In the middle of the block, Hawker noticed, was an abandoned store with bars in the windows. Through the bars Hawker could see more Satanás gang members sitting inside, laughing and drinking.

The men inside looked older. Late twenties, early thirties.

Hawker turned at the end of the block, formulating his plan and, more important, his escape.

Once again he parked near the Hillsboro section. He strapped on a quick-draw shoulder holster over his bare chest, then inserted the .45 Colt Commander he had had customized by the Devel Corporation of Cleveland. They had flared the magazine well, added a Swenson ambidextrous speed safety and an adjustable Bo-Mar rear sight.

Hawker filled three magazines with seven rounds each, fixed one in the Commander, then slid a round in the chamber before adding an eighth round.

He buttoned on a blue, baggy shirt over the weapon.

From the trunk of the car Hawker removed a plastic bottle with a squeeze spout. It contained a thick black liquid.

Hawker stuck a couple more things into his baggy pockets, folded a small grappling hook and forty feet of line through his belt, then locked the car and headed for the Latin section.

He wanted to introduce himself to the Satanás.

An alley connected the backs of buildings on Ybor Avenue. It was used for deliveries and garbage pickups.

Hawker cut down the alley behind the block where the Satanás had collected. It was dank and dark, and it stank of vegetable rot.

Where the alley opened onto a side street, Hawker turned north. The backs of the Satanás gang members were dim shapes in the distance. He could see the glow of their cigarettes.

Hawker pulled his watch cap lower on his head and hugged the shadows. He moved slowly, easily, as if he belonged there. No one saw him. Soon he was close enough to hear the talking.

Hawker stood in the doorway of a tenement building, listening.

They spoke in a fast combination of Spanish and English. Hawker understood enough to know they were talking about a robbery they'd just pulled off. Something funny had happened during the robbery. Their leader, a guy called Magnum, had cut his victim's stomach open, then slipped and fallen in the mess.

It was a perverted version of the old banana peel pratfall, and the Satanás thought it was funny as hell.

As they laughed, Hawker moved behind them. He stopped about forty yards down Ybor Avenue in front of the gang's headquarters. There were groups of gang members at each end of the block, and he could feel them watching him.

Through the dirty windows of the building he could see a half-dozen Hispanic men inside. The floor was covered with trash. One man saw Hawker through the window. Everyone stopped talking.

Hawker smiled at them and winked.

He took the bottle of liquid from his pocket and uncapped it. He held it between his legs and, using his left hand to squeeze the bottle, squirted a wet design on the white stucco wall of the building. He knew it was too dark for them to see the bottle.

“Hey! Hey, motherfucker!” a voice yelled from the street corner. “What you think you doing, man!”

Hawker lifted his head and grinned. All the while he was hurrying to finish the design. “I think I'm pissing on your headquarters—
man.”

The punks had been too shocked to move at first. But now they were trotting toward him. Inside the building the men had drawn handguns.

“Who the fuck you think you are!” another voice yelled.

Hawker jammed the bottle back in his pocket and took out a small AN-MB HC deteriorating smoke grenade. He popped the cardboard canister open and yelled through the screen of copper smoke, “I'll tell you who I am! I … am …
Satanás!”

It was a word they would know well. It was the name they had chosen for their gang.

It was also the Spanish word for Satan.

Hawker ran through the smoke toward the next alleyway. They spotted him just as he rounded the corner.

There was a sudden vacuum
whomp
ing impact over his head, and cement exploded at his feet.

They were firing at him.

Hawker ran halfway down the alley. The buildings were only two stories high here, and there were no fire escapes. He took the line and grappling hook from his belt and got it wedged between a brick chimney and the roof on the third throw.

“There's the son of a bitch! Get him!”

A dozen of the Satanás were running at him from the mouth of the alley. Their handguns spurted fire, and slugs whacked into the brick walls beside him, screaming as they ricocheted.

Hawker drew the Colt Commander, steadying it in two big hands. Squatting slightly, he squeezed off three careful rounds.

The punk at the head of the pack exploded backward as if he had been garroted. His gun went spinning.

A second gang member tumbled to the asphalt as a .45 slug destroyed his right thigh.

A third jolted as if he had been hit in midstride by an NFL linebacker. The Commander had busted his shoulder open.

None of them was dead. Hawker didn't want them dead. Not yet.

The others turned tail and ran—but not before Hawker had exploded another smoke grenade and disappeared, so it seemed, into thin air.

On top of the building now, Hawker folded the grappling line and stuffed it back into his belt.

He watched the remaining Satanás trot across the street toward the safety of their headquarters. They glanced backward over their shoulders, as if they feared being followed.

Hawker could hear them plainly.

“Who the fuck was that guy, cuz?”

“Goddamn if I know, man.”

“Said he was the fuckin' devil! Shit!”

“The way he busted heads and disappeared, I 'bout believe it.”

“Did you see that shit, cuz? Pweff! Bunch of smoke, and the motherfucker was
gone.”

“Bad dude, man, bad dude. We gotta call an ambulance or something.”

“You call the ambulance, cuz. I'm gettin' the hell outta here!”

Hawker took the electronic detonator from his pocket.

The liquid he had squirted on the side of the building was Astrolite. Manufactured by the Explosives Corporation of America, it was still being used experimentally by the United States Army as a replacement for land mines. It could be detected neither visually nor electronically.

Hawker waited until they were thirty yards from their headquarters, then flipped the toggle switch.

He hadn't used much Astrolite, but it achieved the proper effect. The explosion knocked them backward—from fear more than anything.

The wall of their headquarters was engulfed in smoke and fire.

As the smoke dissipated, the design Hawker had created was plain to see.

A couple of the punks knelt in fear, crossing themselves.

“
The motherfucker pisses fire, man!
”

The others scattered, terrified.

On the wall of their headquarters, in searing white flames, was the outline of a hawk.…

four

Hawker awoke just after dawn. He tried to go back to sleep but couldn't.

He got up, made hot tea, and went out to the porch.

The house Jacob Hayes had leased for him was a neat bungalow of redwood and cedar, built on low stilts. Beyond the beach the Pacific Ocean spread away toward the horizon, lifting and rolling in glassy turquoise swells.

The house was in a secluded area of craggy volcanic rock and palms. A hundred yards down the coast a few surfers were out catching the early breakers. Hawker watched them ride the sea, like bright leaves on a green wind.