40 

DAX SWITCHED OFF the garage lights, got into the Bentley Mulsanne, and opened the door. He drove down the driveway to the street and stopped, looking both ways. Nothing. He accelerated carefully, avoiding the racetrack roar that the V-12 engine made when punched, and turned onto the main road.

He was surprised at how much traffic there was. He kept seeing cars in his rearview mirror that might have lights on top. He drove for half an hour, then pulled into a driveway and called the Russian.

“Yes?” the Russian said.

“This is going to take some time, there’s a lot of traffic, and I’ve got to be careful.”

“Bear and I want to fuck her,” the Russian said.

“All right, but leave her in good enough shape for me, and above all, don’t finish them until I’m there.” He hung up.

•   •   •

TEDDY HAD LISTENED to the Russian’s end of the conversation while he used the knife to cut the tape on his ankles and hands. It was hard to do without wounding himself.

“Dax is delayed,” he heard the Russian say. “He says we can fuck her, but not to tear her up. He wants to be here to finish her.”

Teddy finished with the tape, then he took off his other shoe and retracted another knife. He heard the Russian and the one called Bear taking their clothes off, then a light was switched on over the Ping-Pong table. Good, he thought. That would blind them to him in the shadows. He got to his feet and waited.

The Russian and the Bear, both naked now, approached the table.

“Me, first,” the Bear said. “I’m ready.”

Teddy had never seen anything like the man’s penis. He had to be quick now. The Russian stood with his back to Teddy, watching the table. Sally was moaning, trying to talk—the first sounds she had made. Teddy walked up behind the Russian in his bare feet, noiselessly, and tapped him on the shoulder. The Russian spun around, and before he could react further, Teddy threw an arm over his shoulder, to keep him from backing up, then inserted the knife into the man’s belly, just above the pubic hair.

The Russian struggled, but Teddy held him close as he drew the knife quickly up his belly, all the way to the sternum. Then he let the man go.

The Russian staggered back a step or two, making a squealing noise and hugging himself, trying to hold his intestines in. The Bear stood transfixed for a moment, then grabbed the Russian and lowered him to the floor. It was not until he stood up again that Teddy had his full attention.

“I’m going to cut that thing off,” Teddy said.

The Bear made a move toward him, and Teddy punched him twice in the solar plexus with his left hand, which held the other knife. The Bear looked at him, astonished. Blood gushed from the two wounds, spilling onto the Russian, mingling with the other man’s blood. He collapsed.

Then Teddy did what he had said he was going to do.

•   •   •

DAX FINALLY CONVINCED himself that he was unpursued, then headed for the Hollywood Hills.

•   •   •

TEDDY CUT SALLY FREE, held her for a moment, then helped her find her clothes. While she was dressing, he went to a sink in the corner and cleaned himself up, then he found his shoes and reinserted the two knives into the loafers.

He wiped down anything they had touched.

Sally was calm and still a little groggy. “You’ve got blood on your shirt and pants,” she said. The whole time she had not looked at the two butchered men.

Teddy took a cell phone from the TV table, then found a raincoat on a peg next to the garage door and put it on. “Let’s go,” he said. She came to him, he pressed the garage door button to open it, she walked outside, then he pressed it again and ducked under it before it could close.

They walked to the end of the driveway and looked around. The neighborhood was deserted.

“Where are we going to go?” she asked.

“Downhill,” he replied. “All roads lead to Sunset Boulevard. We’ll find a cab.” He took her hand, and they started downhill.

•   •   •

DAX APPROACHED THE HOUSE from the uphill side, and as he turned into the driveway, his headlights flashed on two people half a block down the hill, as they turned a corner. “Pedestrians!” he said aloud to himself. “They could get arrested for that around here.”

He got out of the car, tapped a code into a keypad next to the garage, and one of the two doors opened. He walked inside and, for a moment, couldn’t understand what he was seeing. The Ping-Pong table was flooded in light, and next to it, in a heap, were two bodies. There was blood everywhere.

“Where are you?” he screamed. “I told you not to kill them before I got here. Then he looked again and saw that both bodies were naked men, one of them missing something important.

Dax ran to the back wall and threw up into the utility sink there. Twice. Finally, he stopped vomiting, splashed some water on his face, and washed off the soles of his shoes. He went to the other side of the garage, skirting the pond of blood, went outside, and closed the garage door. He was shaking uncontrollably. He got into the car and sat, taking deep breaths until he got ahold of himself. Had the two men killed each other?

Then, as his mind cleared, he realized that Billy Barnett had killed them both, and horribly. For the first time he began to grasp what kind of man this was, one he had tried to murder twice.

He drove back to his house carefully, not speeding, stopping for every light.

•   •   •

TEDDY AND SALLY retrieved their car from the restaurant parking lot and drove home. Inside the house, he put his clothes into the washing machine and turned it on, then he got into a robe and went back to the living room. “Would you like a drink?” he asked Sally.

“Yes, please.”

He handed it to her then sat down beside her. “Are you all right?”

“Astonishingly, yes,” she said. “My head has cleared. Did they drug me?”

“Yes, and me, too. I was careless.”

“All the way back here I thought about it, and I realize that you had to do what you did. There was really no other way. They would have just kept coming, wouldn’t they?”

“They were very confident,” Teddy replied. “Too confident, really.”

The sun was rising now, and light was pouring into the room. “I’ll make us some breakfast,” he said. “We have to go to work in a couple of hours. Everything has to be normal.”

“I understand,” she said.

Teddy went into the kitchen and put on the coffee. Then he took the cell phone he had found in the garage and dialed the last number that had called.

•   •   •

DAX BAXTER SAT, collapsed in a chair in his study, numb, with a large drink. He had to get his brain working again. He was lifted off his chair by the buzz of the cell phone in his shirt pocket. He took it out and looked at it as if it were a cobra. Finally he pressed the button, but said nothing.

“The smart move,” Billy Barnett said, “would be to kill yourself now. Eat a gun, run a hot bath and cut your wrists—remember, lengthwise, not across. Go any way you like, because when I find you—and I will, when you least expect it—you won’t like the way things end.”

He hung up, leaving Dax Baxter staring into the dawning sky.