The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

I can tell this guy isn’t going to take my word for anything, including that I’m a biped from planet Earth. I put my hands up like the nice man said. The pain in my chest heats up again when I get my hands over my head.

“Turn around and walk backward toward us.”

“Come on, guys. We’re wasting time. Let me just show you my ID.”

“If you do not comply we are authorized to use deadly force.”

I should have seen that coming. Martial-­law bullshit. Shoot looters on sight and harass stragglers while you’re at it.

I walk backward to the men in blue. It’s not as easy as it sounds in ankle-­deep water with your hands over your head throwing off your balance. But I make it out of Dixie and into the promised land of the cops’ headlights.

“The ID is in my back pocket if you want to get it out yourselves.”

I hear someone splash up behind me.

“Don’t even breathe,” he says.

He sounds like the nervous type, so I keep my hands up and my mouth shut while he spelunks in my jeans.

“What’s this?” he says, pulling the Colt from behind my back.

“That’s my gun. Like I’ve been saying, I’m with the Golden Vigil.”

He reaches into my back pocket and comes out with something. It’s quiet behind me for a while. Maybe reading wasn’t his strongest area back at the academy. I’m sure he has other redeeming qualities.

“Stark,” he says. “James Stark.”

“That’s me.”

“The Golden goddamn Vigil.”

“Can I put my hands down now?”

“Hey, boys,” he says, calling to the other cops. “Want to meet a real live Vigil agent?”

The sound of splashing coming up behind me. No one gives me permission, but I lower my hands and turn around anyway.

Four of LAPD’s finest are going over my credentials under a flashlight. One by one they look at the ID and up at me like they’ve never seen a photo before and are wondering how I got that tiny doppelgänger onto the card.

A different cop says, “You’re James Stark.”

“I thought we’d kind of established that.”

“Just double-­checking,” he says.

A second later I’m on the ground. I’ve never been Tasered before and I can’t say I enjoy my first taste of it. Still, just to make sure I get the full effect, another cop lights me up. I want to get up and clock someone, but my body would rather stay down and twitch in the gutter, so that’s what it does.

When they let up on the juice, one of the cops rolls me onto my back and shines a light in my eyes. I think he wants to make sure I’m still breathing because when he sees that I’m basically intact, he kicks me a good one in the ribs. Then his friends join in. I’m beginning to think this isn’t a by-­the-­book group. They might even be the vigilantes who helped burn Allegra’s clinic.

I try to fight back, but seeing as how I already have a ­couple of bullets in my chest, I’m less Bruce Lee and more Donald Duck. The body armor takes a lot of the punishment, but these are experienced boys and they know how to make it hurt.

Eventually they get bored or tired or hungry and the kicking stops. One of them, I think it’s the one who first took my ID, pulls me upright.

“Audsley Ishii says hello.”

All of a sudden this makes more sense.

The cop rolls me over and wrenches my arm around to my back. I hear the rattle of cuffs and know that if the bastard ever gets them on me I’m dead.