I scooted out the side door. The girl was nowhere around. I decided not to wait for Magilla or John Wesley to stumble out on top of me, so I trotted to Shamu. I waited for several minutes, then saw John Wesley emerge from the front entrance, and a second later, Magilla came out the back. Both men looked around before leaving in different directions. I thought about following them, but wasn’t sure which one would be the best. I wanted to save the girl, but she had vanished like some young ghost.
I knew I wasn’t going to find her in the dark and I was sure neither would John Wesley or Magilla. I had a strong feeling that she was staying in the area along the Sunset Strip. That would narrow our search considerably, and give us a place to start tomorrow. I started up Shamu, and while I drove home, I imagined how headlines might read about tonight: STUTTERING PRIVATE EYE SAVED BY COMIC GANG.
CHAPTER 6
The next day I filled Hondo in on what happened.
He said, “So she’s hanging around the Strip.”
“Gives us a place to look,” I said.
“Yeah, and it’s not like we have any other leads to follow.”
I said, “Together or separate?”
“Let’s take two cars,” Hondo said.
An hour later, we reached Sunset, and Hondo went west while I cruised east. There were always people along the Strip, with many more after dark, but we felt there was no time to lose, so we were starting our hunt in daylight.
Two hours later, and three passes up and back, I saw the girl walking on Sunset a couple of blocks from the intersection with Laurel. She was checking everything out but not being obvious about it: The buildings, the sidewalk, alleys, parking lots, billboards, anything within sight.
Her hair was blond now, but I recognized her. She still wore the same cheap sunglasses from the 7-Eleven.
As luck would have it, I was going the wrong way and had to go down and find a place to turn around to get on her side of the street. There were quite a few pedestrians walking in small groups and pairs so I lost sight of her occasionally, but always picked her up again.
She walked slow, studying the doors and buildings as if trying to remember something, and every half block she looked back along the way she had come. Cautious, so cautious.
I knew she didn’t know who I was, but she was so skittish that any little thing could spook her and if she took off running, I had no place to park Shamu and give chase. I thought about passing and waiting on foot for her to reach me, but decided instead to keep her in sight and call Hondo.
My cell phone was on the seat and I hit two on the speed dial for Hondo, then glanced at my watch. That’s something I shouldn’t have done.
She walked by the big picture windows on a storefront as a pickup going the opposite direction squealed to a tire-smoking stop and cut across the lanes of traffic to bounce up on the curb fifty feet in front of her. People scattered, except for the girl.
John Wesley stepped out of the driver’s door and started toward her. He was greyhound lean and dressed like a cowboy: black hat, white long sleeved shirt, a black vest, boots and jeans.
A college age preppie in a Yale tee shirt started to give John Wesley some crap, but the black cowboy hit him three times so fast the kid never got his hands up. The kid dropped to the concrete and John Wesley stepped over him.
Thirty feet from the girl was a small space between two buildings, like a mini-alley.
She looked at it, then at John Wesley, and cocked her head a little to the side.
She wasn’t going to make it.
I cut the wheels, gunned Shamu over the curb onto the sidewalk, and skidded to a stop with my passenger side toward John Wesley. The girl and I were ten feet apart. Her eyes locked with mine and I shouted, “Run!”
The cowboy reached under his vest as if he was hugging himself and snaked out two semiautomatic pistols.
She hesitated half a heartbeat to look at me, and then took off for the alley like a startled deer.
She was beautiful.
John Wesley changed targets in a blink and opened up on me, firing so fast it sounded like one rolling sound.
I dropped to the floorboard as bullets plunked into the side door and shattered the passenger and front windows.
Glass tinkled down on me as I opened the driver’s door and hit the sidewalk in a low running zig-zag, keeping the truck body between me and the shooter.
The shots stopped for maybe two seconds, then both pistols started firing again. He had reloaded two weapons very fast. By the time he emptied his third and fourth clips and slapped in two more, I was fifty yards away, crouched behind a line of parked cars.