The Last Good Kiss (41 page)

Hyland and Torres. They were too tough to hurry but

they got there anyway. "If they lift a finger," I said to

Stacy, "start pulling that trigger and don't stop until it's

empty." She nodded and moved to my left to cover the

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two men while I patted them down. Hyland was clean,

but Torres had been reaching for a .357 magnum Colt

Python with a six-inch barrel. "It'd take you a month to

get this sucker out," I said as I unloaded it, but he

didn't answer. He just leaned against the wall, watching

the blood from his hand creep down the· piaster. "Now,

you boys just stay right there," I said as I stepped away

and tossed the Colt under the couch. "We're going to

have a little conversation. "

"What do you want?" Hyland asked calmly.

"The girl," I said, "and a little satisfaction . "

"Take her," he shrugged, "enjoy her t o your heart's

content, buddy, because you're a dead man."

Just to see if he was as tough as he acted, I skimmed

him across the buttocks with another round of rat shot.

"Jesus Christ," he wailed, and broke into a slick

sweat.

Torres glanced at Hyland with contempt, then at the

.22 with interest. I fired the last round of shot into the

row of bottles standing on a dry bar against the far wall.

"That's the last round of rat shot," I said, "and I

don't know how far you'd get with a hollow point

between the eyes, but you can try it if you want to. "

He relaxed and leaned harder against the wall, but

before I could start the conversation, Trahearne

lurched into the room, shouting, "Where is she !" as he

jacked a round into the chamber of the riot gun, then

let it off into the ceiling. The large mirror exploded like

shrapnel, a bank of lights flared, then went black.

Hyland rolled over the arm of the couch to hide behind

it, and Torres shoved off the wall, heading like a mad

bull toward Stacy and the automatic. He didn't even

glance at me and didn't hesitate. He didn't think the

little girl would have the nerve to pull the trigger, and it

was very nearly the last mistake he ever made.

Stacy fired five rounds as quickly as she could pull the

trigger, holding low. But the automatic jerked a little

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higher with each shot. The first splintered the floor

between his feet, the next two went between his legs,

and Torres could see what was coming. He hit the floor in a headfirst slide. When he finally halted his skid, Stacy had stopped firing, and he glanced up. She held

the pistol steadily pointed at his head. How she had

missed him at that range with five rounds, I'll never

understand . Torres couldn't either.

"Enough," he whispered, then crawled back to the

couch. "You mind if I lie down for a minute?" he

asked.

"Be my guest," I said.

He climbed up on to the couch and rested his head on

the arm that Stacy had blown to stuffing and splinters.

"How the fuck did I miss?" she asked herself.

"Where's my wife?" Trahearne said. The gunfire had

brought him to a dead halt too.

"I thought I told you to stay outside," I said, but he

didn't even look at me. "She's over there." I pointed to

the pile of people who had hidden behind the bed.

Trahearne handed me the shotgun and went to get

Melinda. "Get her out of here," I said as he helped her

up, clucking like a mother hen.

As they walked past me, Melinda slipped the wig off

and dropped it on the floor. Traheame tried to kick it

but he missed and would have fallen down if Melinda

hadn't grabbed him. Even with her cropped hair and

smeared make-up, she still looked worth a man's

blood, maybe even his life. A line of red from a small

cut ran down her smooth cheek, and as she glanced at

me, I could see she was crying as they made their way

across the littered room.

The film crew had moved off the floor back onto the

bed, and they were examining their wounds from the

flying glass. From where I stood, nothing looked too

serious, just small cuts. The male star had the worst

one, a shard of mirror about four inches long sticking

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through the laos� muscle below his left shoulder blade.

When he started whining about it, though, the black

girl jerked it out and told him to shut up.

"Mr. Hyland," I said as I walked over to the end of

the couch, "you can come out now." He didn't,

though. When I looked over the arm, he was crouched

in a puddle of blood. One of Stacy's rounds had blown

the side of his head all over the wall. It was an incredible effort, the hardest of the whole lousy night, but I turned to Stacy and said, "Mr. Tough Guy's over here

in a dead faint. Why don't you herd those other folks

down the hall to the bathroom so they can clean up."

She nodded, then jerked the automatic at the people

on the bed. The black girl had to slap the male star to

get him going, and the head girl and one of the

cameramen had to carry the director, but they got it

together, finally, and trooped out the doorway.

"Is he dead?" Torres asked as soon as the room

cleared.

"He's all over the wall, man," I said as I walked over

to the dry bar and picked up a bottle of Scotch out of

the broken glass. "Let's go to the kitchen and have a

drink."

"That's the first good idea you've had tonight," he

said, then rolled off the couch and stood up. "Maybe

the first good one in your whole life."

I stuck the .22 under my belt and propped the

shotgun across my arm. Torres shut up. As we left the

room, I cut off the light and closed the door.

"Doesn't taste like Chivas, does it?" Torres asked as

we lifted our glasses.

"Right now it tastes like shit but it tastes great," I

said. On the way to the kitchen, I had locked the crew

in the bathroom and sent Stacy outside to cover the

front of the house. Just in case the gunfire had attracted

anybody's attention, I told her.

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"Hyland," Torres went on. "He buys four-ninetyeight Scotch and pours it into a Chivas bottle, then the dumb son of a bitch expects nobody to notice it."

"Nice eulogy," I said.

"More than he deserves," Torres suggested. "What

happens now?"

"Depends on how you want to play it."

He took a long swallow of his drink, then stared at

me. "Okay, let me lay it out for you," he said, then

held up his hand wrapped in a bloody dishtowel. "I

think my working days are over, man, and I'm used to

living good . . . "

"All your days were nearly over," I interrupted.

"No shit," he sighed. "I still don't know how that

chick missed me. "

"I wish she had missed Hyland," I said.

"If you don't tell her, man, she won't know," Torres

said, "and in a way she did both of us a favor."

"How's that?"

"He's the sort of dumb bastard who would have

taken this personally," Torres said. "He didn't know

when to cut his losses."

"And you do?"

"Right," he answered. "Look at it like this, man,

Hyland was an idiot-! mean how dumb can you get,

making flicks in your own place-and the uncle who got

him into the busines� is no longer in business, if you

know what I mean, so there are a few people who won't

cry when they find out Hyland is out of it, you see."

"And you're one of them?"

"I know more about his business than he did," Torres

said, "and with him out of the way, I can step in and

run it right."

"So I just walk away with the girl? Clean?"

"Absolutely," he said. "Except for one thing. "

"The forty thousand?"

"You got it," he said.

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"That was a long time ago."

"Right. But everybody concerned knows about it,"

he said.

"I think you're jerking me around," I said, "trying to