A Date You Can't Refuse (40 page)

“You—did you talk to Grusha?” I asked.

“No. I didn't talk to anybody.”

I stood and began to back away from her.

Her hands were in her pockets and she came toward me.

I kept backing up, not knowing how an adolescent girl could be so sinister. It was the darkness in her eyes, the blood on her leg, the hands in her pockets.

After three or four steps in reverse, I stopped. The earth seemed to crumble a bit beneath my feet and I saw I had nowhere to go except down the very steep mountainside.

“S
o?” Parashie asked. “Where is the DVD?” “What DVD?”

“You know what. The new Disney movie. Alik called today to his editor friend and said where is it and they said the blond woman with big breasts took it yesterday.”

“Parashie,” I said, trying to control my shaky voice. “There are a hundred thousand blond women with big breasts in Calabasas, let alone the greater Los Angeles area—”

“They said they drove to the gate. The woman lived at the same house as Alik Milos. And Grusha found the envelope in the umbrella box. And Crispin told me he spoke with you. Just before he died, he told me this. So don't think I am stupid. I'm not born in America but I'm not stupid.”

The mention of Crispin intensified my shaking. “God, no one thinks you're stupid,” I said. Mentally unhinged, but that was a far cry from stupid. If anyone knew that, it was me. “Parashie, I know that Alik's exporting DVDs, yes, but that's not a problem for me. I don't care about it. He can break every law in America with my blessing. It's hard to overstate how little it bothers me.” Suddenly, this was absolutely true. The feds were on their own. Let Alik hijack the entire Hollywood box office receipts for the year, only let me off this mountain.

“So where is the DVD?” She was six inches from me now, crossing the line into an invasion of personal space. There was something deeply threatening about her, even though she was short. It was that athleticism. That wiry thing. Why were her hands in her pockets?

“In the car.” Lendall Mains's car, anyway. “Let's go get it. You can have it. I don't want it.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That's what I needed to know.”

One hand came out of her pocket holding something that flashed briefly in the fading light. Something thin and pointed, not a gun. It was in my face and I slapped her hand away and gave her a push as hard as I could.

She went down, but so did I, losing my balance and grabbing onto her for support. And then I was on top of her, which was not where I wanted to be, and then she was on top of me, having managed to flip me over.

She clung like an enraged kitten, clawing, and I felt the stab of something in my arm and then another in my leg, something puncturing me, again and again. After the first yowl of indignation when she hit the ground, she worked in silence. Not me. I was screaming, fighting her off, unable to believe that someone not even full grown could do such damage.

I couldn't shake her. She stuck, leechlike, stabbing me with whatever it was clutched in her hand, skinny like a pencil, like a long, sharp nail. I squirmed, pulling my knees toward my chest, trying to get my legs between us, clutching her forearms to keep her weapon hand away, but I could feel some of the thrusts connect, puncturing me. Unless I could shake her off, one of those punctures would be in my heart or lung or throat, and that would be that.

Something was beneath me in the dirt, something I rolled onto repeatedly, hurting my back. And then that pain reached my brain, distinguishing itself from the other pain: it was Joey's gun under me. It had fallen out of my pocket.

In order to get it, I had to let go of Parashie.

If I let go of Parashie, she would stab me.

I couldn't believe there was no other option, no help coming, no better
idea. There was just the sky above me and the dirt beneath me, neither caring about the outcome.

I gave Parashie the biggest push I had in me, let go, rolled six inches to the left, and Parashie stabbed me hard in the leg as I grabbed Joey's gun.

It went off.

Everything stopped.

The shot from Joey's Glock freaked me out. I hadn't actually decided to pull the trigger, and the fact that it seemed to have a life of its own had me in a panic.

But it got Parashie off me.

She leaped away from my body as if ejected, scrambling backward like a little crab, low to the ground, scanning the terrain until she found a huge boulder, across the trail, twenty or thirty feet away, to hide behind.

Silence.

I hadn't hit her. The hope that I had, that by some magical accident I'd wounded her without killing her, came and went. She'd moved too well. She wasn't even panicking, probably. She was, I guessed, just playing it safe. Thinking about her next move now that the game had changed. The gun changed the game.

I breathed heavily and tried to recover my wits along with my breath. My whole body seemed to be pulsing, my heart was beating so hard. I set down the gun, scared it would go off again. But I kept it close, knowing Parashie could cover that distance fast.

Now what? If I took off down the path, she could catch me. But would she? I wouldn't chase someone with a gun, but that's just me.

And if she knew what a novice I was—but maybe she didn't know. Maybe she thought I was a crackerjack shot. At home with a gun, even at a dead run. Maybe I could bluff, maybe—

I turned to pick up the Glock again and that's when I saw blood. Everywhere. So much blood on my eggshell shantung pants, you could no longer guess at their color from the knees up. It looked like someone had dumped a bucket of V-8 juice in my lap. Could it really be all mine? If it was, wouldn't it hurt more?

It was mine. It was still coming out of me.

My leg, up near my groin, was pulsating with it, churning it out at a steady rate.

Forget the gun. I put both hands there, as hard as I could, applying pressure. When the geyser stopped, I averted my eyes, knowing that the visuals of my own wound could send me over the edge.

In fact, I was too close to the edge. I maneuvered myself away from it, pushing with one hand and my working leg, getting myself closer to the trail. Then I reached back to grab the Glock, to bring it closer.

Okay, no running. Very little mobility at all. No cell phone. No one within shouting distance, except a girl across the trail who wasn't going to be a lot of help, because she wanted me dead.

I had to change her mind. I had to get Parashie to help me and relatively quickly or I wasn't getting off this mountain outside of a body bag.

“Parashie?” I called. “Listen. You don't have to hurt me. I'm on your side. Your father trusts me, he told me everything, I know about the training school he's running—”

“I don't care!” she yelled. “My father doesn't know about this.”

“What do you mean, ‘this’?” I called. No answer. “The DVDs? He doesn't know that Alik is trafficking in stolen DVDs?”

“He will kill Alik if he finds out.”

She could have been any teenage girl talking about her brother flunking chemistry and being in danger of death-by-parent.

“Parashie, I won't tell him,” I said.

“You would. He said you are moral. He said you are that type.”

“Who said?”

“Alik. He said you would not cooperate if you knew. He said Chai would cooperate, she had no morals. But I didn't trust her.”

“Okay understandable. I wouldn't've trusted her either. But you can trust me.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Parashie, think!” I yelled. It wasn't a great yell, because my voice was wavering. “You—whatever you did to Chai. Poison. Car crash. Fine. And then I guess you killed Crispin. But I guarantee if you kill me too you'll get caught. It's too big a risk. People notice these things. Three bodies in Calabasas in the space of—”

“No. The only risk is to leave someone behind to tell the story.”

“It's just DVDs! Home entertainment! Alik will have to pay a fine if he's caught, but it's a minor crime, a venial sin, not a mortal sin—” My arguments were getting weaker. I couldn't even convince myself.

“You don't know anything,” Parashie yelled. “My father, what will he do? He will send Alik away. He will cut him off. It will be a big scandal. How is Alik to take his place in the new government, after the revolution, if there is a scandal? In Belarus, they will say he is a pawn of the West. Yuri will exile him. We will not be a family.”

My left hand was cramped, and I switched to my right to stanch the flow of blood. I couldn't keep this up forever, let alone discuss politics or family dynamics while I did it. Underneath me, blood was turning the dirt to mud.

“Parashie, I'll cover for Alik,” I said. “He can run for president, for all I care—”

“You care that I have killed Chai. And Crispin.”

I was about to answer that I didn't care if she'd killed Jimmy Hoffa when I saw, coming up the trail, an animal. Loping wearily, tongue hanging out.

Olive Oyl.

I made a clucking sound, and she stopped, then saw me, and bounded over with renewed energy. She set about licking the blood from my face.

“Olive Oyl,” I mumbled. “Tell them I'm here. Go tell someone to come find me.”

Olive Oyl, instead of answering, turned her head and snapped at the air. Some annoying bug.

Bug.

I switched hands once more on my blood-soaked leg, to feel the skintight back pocket of my shantung pants. There it was.

The last bug.

I
turned the switch to “on” and stuck it onto my skin, just below my collarbone. “I'm bleeding quite a lot. I'm no doctor, but I have to get down the trail fast or it's not good news. From the Milos house I'm straight up the trail, a ten-minute walk. I'm lying near a bench that's on a promontory that overlooks the ocean. I think that's the right word, ‘promontory’”

“Olive Oyl! Come!”

I looked over to see Parashie's head emerge from behind the rock calling the dog. Olive Oyl abandoned me in a second and ran to the girl. Parashie hugged the dog around the waist and held her and then moved toward me in a crouch.

Olive Oyl struggled against the awkwardness of this, but Parashie held fast. I watched them make their painstaking way toward me for a full minute before I understood. The girl was using the dog as a canine shield.

I'd been holding my leg with both hands, trying to maintain pressure, but now I picked up the Glock once more. “Don't come any closer,” I called.

“Don't make me laugh,” Parashie said. “You won't shoot a dog.”

“How do you know?”

“Americans can't shoot a dog.”

“I will,” I said.

“Go ahead,” she said.

But I couldn't. I wasn't sure I could shoot her either, only I had to look like I could. I raised the gun.

She said nothing. Olive Oyl's big yellow body advanced toward me, walking sideways, protecting the girl. I was lying down on the uneven ground, my upper body propped up against a boulder. I had little stability. Parashie was going to come and roll me down the mountain. I knew it. I'd be found like Crispin had been found, if I was found at all.

She was close now. She stopped twelve feet away, forcing Olive Oyl up on her hind legs so that the dog's stomach was exposed. Olive Oyl whimpered, not liking the dance in the least. I held the Glock up, trying to get the girl's head in my sights. The problem was, I needed both hands to do it the way Yuri had taught me, but I was too scared to let go of my leg. My life seemed to be draining away with my blood, and my hands were both slippery. I had no confidence I could pull it off. There was one chance in a million that I'd hit the girl and not the dog. If I hit anything. The odds improved if I hit the dog first and then got a second shot off at Parashie. Or shot through the dog to the girl. Except I couldn't shoot the dog.

I felt blood flow out of me. I had to make a decision. If I waited too long, my arms wouldn't hold the gun up any longer. It would be death by indecision.

“Parashie, stop,” a voice said. “Wollie? You put down the gun.”

I looked over to see Grusha on the trail, in her yellow housedress in the fading light. She held an MP5, aimed at me.

“Let go of the dog, Parashie,” Grusha said.

“No,” Parashie said, her voice petulant. “She has to put down her gun first.”

“You,” Grusha said to me. “Put down your gun.”

It was a funny kind of moment. If I put down the gun first, then Grusha would shoot me. Or Parashie would push me over the edge into the canyon. I wouldn't survive the fall. I knew this.

I knew something else now too. If Parashie let go of Olive Oyl, then
I would shoot her. If she rushed me, if she came at me, I would do it. I no longer had any compunction about it. If she stood still, I wasn't sure I could do it, but if she came at me, I could. Maybe I was in some primal, wounded-animal mode, close enough to death that I was willing to take someone else along.

It was a strange thing to discover about myself, that I could kill someone.

“Put down your gun,” Grusha said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Trust me.”

Trust her? The witch in the housedress? Who'd never said a kind word to me in all the time she'd known me? Who was pointing a submachine gun at me? The notion was so unlikely that I smiled. The smart thing to do, of course, would be to shoot Grusha first, then try for Parashie, dog or no dog. But that's not what I did. I took a different sort of chance.

I put down the gun.

Parashie let go of the dog.

Olive Oyl ran to Grusha.

Parashie came toward me, reaching for the Glock.

Grusha shot her in the heart.

I
opened my eyes and saw a cottage cheese ceiling like they have in cheap apartments—the kind I generally live in—and in hospitals.

“She's waking up,” someone said.

My ears worked, along with my eyes. That was good news. I turned my head and found there was something in my mouth. A tube. I looked down at it, my eyes crossing.

Joey was at my side suddenly. “There's an IV in your arm,” she said. “So be cool.”

“What's up?” I croaked out. It came out as “Mmfqueek?” but Joey and Fredreeq nodded, like they spoke the language.