Hummingbird Salamander(76)
The figure in the conifers fell over, got up, returned fire. Couldn’t tell if they’d really been hit. Or just been caught off-balance.
I took that as my cue to get to my feet, grab my cane, and run back to the Dollar Store. No matter the agony of that. Slammed up against the corner, I dared a peek back out.
The gun battle continued. Percussive insanity. The figure in the conifers in retreat. I heard a car’s engine, the vehicle hidden by the trees. The figure running. The triad content to just feed the little forest bullets, but not pursuing. Framed in a strange light that lit the trunks of the trees golden green and cowled the canopy in shadow. As small ink silhouettes labored murderous below.
By the time the shooter had escaped and the triad had stopped shooting, I was in my car and driving away. Who the fuck started firing instead of hightailing it for the shed?
Only then did I feel the nick. Lucky. A bullet had grazed my left calf. Maybe in another time, another world, that would’ve felt traumatic.
But now it was just a distraction from all the rest.
I didn’t have to worry about Nora’s husband anymore, and neither did she. The last thing I’d seen was Nora’s husband’s head bursting open.
The parting shot. The last retort.
That would bring down attention. Of all kinds.
* * *
That was my lasting memory of my birthday. I’d almost forgotten. There was no cake. There was no celebration. No one cared, not even me.
I guess my only present was not dying.
[79]
Silvina had no advice in her journal for the aftermath of gun battles. But I couldn’t find it in me to be shocked or surprised or anything other than numb.
I drove around aimless, just trying to put some distance between me and the dealership as I heard the wail of sirens. What should my next move be? I entered a maze of older neighborhoods, drove slow, kept moving. Doors locked. Windows up.
Nora had set a trap for me. Someone had paid her to set me up. And her husband clearly hadn’t been in on it. So maybe she already knew her husband was cheating on her and figured this might solve that, too, permanently? Or maybe this moment Nora was wailing like the sirens.
A whiff of something sharp and bitter from outside. The pangolin’s scales against my arm, the bristly skin between the plates, as we all burned. I put the air on recycle to get rid of it. A kind of magic. But it would remain there, in my head.
I had seen Hillman. It was all I had. The shooter had to be Hillman or one of his men. Or connected to him. I could drive back to the houseboat, gather my stuff, and get out. Like I planned to do anyway. The shooter didn’t know where my home base was or they’d have ambushed me there.
Manic, hyped up, awake again. Didn’t suit to run. That’d be setting up the same situation again. Next time, it’d be my head exploding in a parking lot somewhere.
No, not interested in running. Not yet. Not again.
* * *
I headed for the strip of town on the outskirts, with its row of shitty motels and gas stations. I remembered Hillman’s car. If I didn’t see it, I’d return to the houseboat.
Dusk, with the low sun fuzzed with mist and the gas station lights muffled. The whole coast felt too gloomy. It’d be easy to miss the car. What if Hillman parked around back? What if Hillman had left town?
Nothing at Snow White’s Motel, whatever that was, and nothing at the Marquis or the El Dorado or Mickey’s Irish Inn.
I had the heat on, and gloves on, too, as the temperature had plummeted like a duck shot out of the sky. Sleet, and the wipers on. But, then, out of all that nothing, I found it.
Hillman’s car. In a spot under a good, bright streetlamp. Sitting there innocuous in front of Room 112 of the Black Bear Motel.
I parked three spots over. Thought better of it, hesitated, then pulled out my gun, safety off, and got out, leaving my car door ajar to avoid making more noise. The ice machine in front of 114 growled and complained, which helped. As did the logging trucks rumbling past.
The garish pink of the motel doors made them seem to pulse against the mist like they were breathing. I stood there in front of 112, deciding whether to knock or not. Not even passkey technology. I could see where the frame was rotting and how the space between door and frame was too wide, the lock silhouetted within not quite fitting.
This would have to be quick.
One bad shoulder. Bleeding in a new place from that mosquito-bite bullet. Leg suspect.
Well, use the one good shoulder.
I smashed the door down on my first try. I wasn’t even breathing hard.
A person sat inside the freezing room. Hillman, leg still in a brace from the damage I’d dealt him. Slouched, haphazard, in a crappy chair beside the even crappier coffee table. Older, wearier-looking.
A bullet hole through the back of his skull.
[80]
I had decided, on the frantic trip down the coast, in agony, in a kind of despair, that I would not be taken alive. I can’t say why the thought came to me. I won’t be taken alive. This idea that I would be trapped, captured. That I would need to make that choice.
So I did have a small arsenal, including two thousand rounds of ammunition. Police-issue Glocks. AK-15s. Some of it from a gun show with lax standards and some from individuals I wouldn’t categorize as chatty. Among other things. If I could’ve found someone in the back country who had a rocket launcher for sale, I would’ve been tempted. I didn’t like guns, because Shot had taught me how to shoot. But I knew them. Didn’t fetishize them, but I didn’t mind using them.