This story is based on the 'Gunsmith Cats' manga by Kenichi Sonoda, with a few elements from the 'Riding Bean' OAV (1989). It is set after the last published manga in English as of March 2005.
Tell me what you thought of it, no matter what you have to say. I'm a big girl. :) I always welcome reader reactions, especially ones that go into detail. Please email me at MmeManga "at" aol dot com (address spelled out because this site strips all email addys and URLS) or leave your comments here.
NOTE: The complete version of this story is housed at my Livejournal, which is linked on my main page on this site. I have removed large sections of chapters Two, Eight and Thirty from the postings here because of the current site rules, although this story existed on the site long before those rules went into effect. I am sorry for any inconvenience to readers; this factor is unfortunately not under my control. The complete version will also be posted at Mediaminer. My former dedicated Gunsmith Cats site no longer exists.
DISCLAIMER: Characters of RALLY VINCENT, BEAN BANDIT, MAY HOPKINS, ROY COLEMAN, KEN TAKI copyright Kenichi Sonoda. All other characters, and story, copyright 2000--2005 by Madame Manga. Contact by email at MmeManga Do not sell or print for sale without the express written permission of the author. Do not archive. Permission is granted to circulate this text in electronic form, free of charge and with this disclaimer and the author's name attached. Do not plagiarize, alter, or appropriate this text in any way. This story is intended for personal entertainment purposes only. No infringement of any copyrights or other rights is intended.
ADULT CONTENT WARNING IN BOLD CAPS!
This story is not for kids or the easily offended. It contains explicit violence and extreme profanity. If you object to reading such things, do not read this story.
Chasing the Dragon
by Madame Manga
Chapter Fourteen
"What the fock d'YE want?" snarled O'Toole, starting forward. "I got 'er first, ye overgrown—"
"Nah," said Bean. "I reckon I got dibs on that lady."
"Blow off! Ye can kiss me hairy white—"
"O'Toole," said one of the Dragons in a diplomatic tone. "The Roadbuster's visiting us because of her, you know? He just called a few minutes ago to find out where to meet with 426, and we told him he was right on time, 'cause the bitch bounty hunter just walked in our damn front door. So stay cool and wait your turn."
"Bollocks I will!" O'Toole shouted. Everyone ignored him.
"That her gun?" asked Bean absently, looking at Rally's holster on the Dragon's shoulder. "Y'know, she sure liked to point that thing at my head. Shot me yesterday, right here on the headband." He beckoned and the man came forward. "Yeah, lemme see that." Bean reached for the CZ75 and drew it out, holding it by the back of the slide. "Loaded, huh?"
"Hey! Why'd ye give that to 'im?"
"What he gonna do with it?" scoffed the man with the holster. "Roadbusta one of us now. Or gonna be, soon he hehp us do bounty hunta."
Chuckles and lewd guffaws all round, and Rally closed her eyes as she lay face up on the concrete, held down by four men. Grey, cold and grey. Possibly this was the worst moment of her life, but then again, it would be over soon. She would have to endure it for the rest of her life. It would be over soon…
"C'mon, pick her up," said Bean in a tone that assumed obedience. "Gimme."
"Aw, shite…" growled O'Toole. "I do all the work an' he gets the payoff?"
"Let me put it this way, shrimp," said the diplomat. "You're a volunteer, and not a real reliable one at that. This guy got recruited, by Red Mountain and Red Gourd, no less. He gets what he wants, and if he wants her, he gets her."
The men roughly hauled Rally to her feet and pulled her towards Bean. He caught her with his left arm and twisted her left hand up behind her just hard enough to keep her immobile, then pressed her to his side. She would not look at his face, didn't want to see it again as long as she lived, but wondered idly what its expression was now.
"I like a man that knows the rules." Bean shifted his grip on the CZ75 and cocked it with one thumb. "What do ya call it, when she gets her own gun back at her? Ironic, like?" Several men laughed and O'Toole loudly objected again.
"Shite! Ye ain't goin' to just shoot her? Before we get to—"
"Oh, this lady'll stay nice 'n' warm for longer than ya'd think," said Bean with a edge of vile humor. Rally thought about seizing her gun, shooting Bean in the face at point blank range, running…where? Eight Uzis and Tek-9s would spray in her direction, instantly. She might take a few of the Dragons with her, not the least Bean, and possibly O'Toole, and that was infinitely the best way to go.
Trying not to tense her muscles in anticipation, Rally looked at Bean to gauge the right moment. He gazed directly into her eyes with a smile, bent down almost caressingly with upstanding hair shadowing his face, pressed the gun to her right temple. "Say goodbye, babe." It was now, or never—
"Long a start as I can give ya," rapidly whispered Bean through motionless lips, releasing her left arm, and the CZ75 dropped into her right hand.
For a moment or two, the Dragons did not seem to grasp what had happened, and for half a moment, neither did Rally. With the familiar sharp trigger touch on her finger she instinctively understood, and swept the CZ75 around and in an arc, firing. KRAK KRAK KRAK KRAK KRAK spoke the gun and five weapons hit the floor, spinning out of the Dragons's bleeding hands with nine-millimeter holes in receivers and clips.
Straight for the motorcycles she ran, remembering the Night Train with the keys in the ignition. Rally leaped aboard the Harley and started the engine with a kick and a roar that reverberated through the entire garage.
BRRAAAAPP! The Dragons began to fire, but as she accelerated out from behind the Expedition she could see that those who still had submachine guns were firing them at Bean. O'Toole, however, ran right at her and headed her off. He lunged and got hold of the right handlebar, throwing his weight on it in an attempt to make her dump the bike.
Rally lashed her right foot out and aimed for his stomach, but hit only his hip. She skidded to a stop at the base of the ramp leading up to the street with the little bodyguard still hanging onto the motorcycle. A heavy louvered door barricaded the top of the ramp. She hadn't heard it rise nor heard Bean drive into the garage; he must have parked outside and walked in as she had, so neither Buff nor another car was at hand. He'd have to stay behind, one way or another…
O'Toole wrestled with her, trying to grab her gun and draw his .45 at the same time. Rally hooked the barrel of the CZ75 into the wire brace on his jaw. And yanked.
"OOOOOAAAAGGHHHH!" howled O'Toole, dropping to his knees with both hands to his face. Behind him as she revved the bike again she saw Bean fighting the Dragons like a pit bull, throwing one into another and warding them off with a bowie knife.
BBRRAAAAPP! BBRRAAAAPP! The jacket he wore had been new, but it too lost chunks of leather and Kevlar with each burst of automatic fire. Only three guns remained in commission, and they quickly ran through their thirty-round clips against his near-impervious armor. One Dragon threw down his empty Uzi and drew an automatic; Bean kicked it out of his hand and punched him so hard he flew into a support column.
A line of men poured from the stairwell and into the garage, all armed and shooting. Rally gunned the Harley up the ramp and the door began to rise. She had to crouch and take a dangerously leaning low-speed turn upslope to avoid hitting the lower edge, but she made it through and out into bright sunlight.
A hard left, aiming for Columbus Avenue a few blocks north. Someone on foot behind her, drawing nearer with a heavy sound of boots on pavement—it must be O'Toole again, the fleet little bastard, and Rally twisted around to aim her CZ75 at the pursuer.
Bean, running as hard as he could. He gave her a lopsided grin, drew alongside before she got up too much speed and motioned her to slide back in the seat. Rally let Bean grab the handlebars in front of her grip. Shifting with her left foot still on the clutch, she scooted far back to give him room and let go.
Bean leaped and landed a little off center in the saddle. Rally seized him around the waist just in time to avoid flinging herself off the tail of the motorcycle. The tires gave out a protesting squeak and the bike skidded sideways at the sudden impact of Bean's weight. Cranking the handgrips as hard as they would turn and straightening his posture, he raced the Harley's engine and took off as if from a standing start with a slight wheelie.
The acceleration yanked Rally backwards as she sought and found the passenger foot pegs. She held tightly to Bean while their speed still increased. Pistols cracked at them but broke off quickly, and the sound of pursuit cars came up behind them.
It was impossible to let go her hold in order to shoot, her gun pressed into Bean's stomach along with her clasped hands, so for the moment Rally simply hung on and watched. Three cars, a Mercedes S500 and two BMWs, roared a menacing chorus in the rear and one motorcycle followed farther behind, a purple Kawasaki Ninja. Bean took the left turn onto Columbus, heading northwest, leaning so far over with Rally that their left knees nearly kissed the pavement. The cars followed, a BMW 750iL taking the lead. Bean rolled the Harley upright, Rally matching her center of gravity to his, and accelerated again.
At about a hundred and ten miles an hour, smoothly swerving through thickening traffic, Bean held their speed and glanced over his shoulder. The 750iL was keeping up, the S500 held the rear, and a top-down Z3 roadster moved up, a burly Dragon at the wheel. The Kawasaki took the left and gained on the cars.
"Go for it. Tell ya when I'm gonna kick it," Bean said over the wind.
Rally released her hands from their grip on each other. Keeping her left arm around Bean's waist, she turned to face as far backwards as she could, the side of her face pressed against his jacket and his muscular back beneath. Warmth, maybe sunlight on black leather, or maybe from within...
She took a fix on the right front tire of the 750iL, but the driver noticed and took evasive measures. He fell back and the Z3 took over the lead, roaring up to within ten yards. The driver snarled at her, raising an Uzi.
BRAAAP! He let off a burst that spattered the pavement near the bike and Rally snapped a shot at his right front tire. KRAK! The tire blew into flapping shreds and the roadster skidded broadside, tires streaming white smoke. The driver steered off the road and over the sidewalk, hitting a fire hydrant. FWOOSH! Water shot twenty feet into the air. The S500 and the 750iL slowed to drive through the geyser and continued the chase through North Beach, losing position. The Kawasaki steered around the growing lake.
"Nice," said Bean. "Left turn!" Rally locked her hands around his waist again and held on as he took a curving left onto Bay Street, heading due west into the sun. Past Fort Mason and a sharp right onto Marina Boulevard. On this bright, hot summer Friday afternoon, hundreds of people thronged Marina Green and the parking lots around the yacht clubs. They turned their heads at the speeding Harley and yelled at the two big dark cars chasing it.
A thick stream of pedestrians, crossing the road at a green light—Bean swerved right and over the curb to avoid the crowd, hitting the grass and plowing a furrow. He steered around sunbathers and kite flyers and back over the curb to the road, nearly knocking down a pair of rollerbladers who flipped him off and cursed. The Dragons slowed and took a left off the busy main drag into a less-populated residential street. The Kawasaki raced to catch up.
"They're going to speed up and cut us off in front!" Rally shouted. Bean glanced left and hit the brakes a block and a half farther west. He made a screeching U-turn with one boot as a pivot and raced down a street to the south, lined with parked cars and tidy white row houses and apartments.
"Hang on!" He accelerated so hard Rally felt as if a giant's hand had seized her from behind. From the left the Dragons approached, heading straight towards the intersection they were about to cross. Rally calculated the converging trajectories. Looking around Bean's body to the left, she braced her CZ75 on his right forearm.
The 750iL still led the way, a pair of passengers firing automatics out the windows at the Harley, and she drilled both tires on the right side with two shots. The big BMW skidded right as the tires blew, spinning directly towards them.
Bean jumped the right hand curb to avoid colliding with it and jolted through a rutted vacant lot on the corner, using his foot to guide the turn. The disabled 750iL came to rest against the curb, and the S500 barreled through the intersection and took a hard right to aim at the Harley in the vacant lot. A twelve-gauge poked out the passenger window and fired.
BOOOM! Three men jumped out of the 750iL behind Bean and Rally, firing. They were pinned between the two cars! Buckshot broke the Harley's headlight and hit Bean's legs. Bloodstains spread on his jeans.
THUNK! Rally felt Bean grunt as a .45 slug smacked into his left shoulder right in front of her face. But the Kevlar and chain mail held. Another slug tore her jacket under her raised right arm. SPANNG! A third slug hit the Harley's gas tank, right in front of Bean's thigh. Gasoline spurted, streaming backwards when Bean gunned the bike across the vacant lot. He jumped it off a slight rise of ground and landed square on the hood of the S500.
Metal buckled and crumpled, the Mercedes's windshield shattering, and Rally and Bean sailed over the roof, airborne for a couple of seconds. Gas sprayed all over the S500 and the surrounding road. The Harley hit the ground with a bouncing jolt and took off south and uphill.
"That's a hundred grand of damage on the Dragons so far," said Bean with grim satisfaction. As soon as she could release her hold on him, Rally aimed behind her and fired a low shot calculated to graze the S500's body. It sent up a line of sparks into the gasoline, which flashed into fire.
Dragons ran and yelled, getting out of the S500 and tumbling on the bare dirt of the vacant lot to avoid the flames. The shotgun fired again and again without effect at long range.
"OK, hundred and fifty grand," calculated Bean. Rally ripped a big piece of fabric from her torn jacket and passed it forward into Bean's hand. He stuffed one end of the scrap into the hole in the gas tank and kept jamming folds in with a fingertip until it stayed where it was and stopped the leak. The stink of gas rose all around them, quickly evaporating in the rushing wind.
Behind them still came one pursuer: the Kawasaki, which had not arrived at the scene until the Mercedes had gone up in flames. The rider wore no helmet and Rally glimpsed his rusty hair and furious nicotine-stained grin.
O'Toole raised his .45 and shot again and again, blasting holes in the pavement right beside them as Bean swerved from side to side. She might try to hit O'Toole in the knee, or the shoulder, which would probably force him to brake and stop. KRAK! Square into his right shoulder went the nine-millimeter, but O'Toole didn't even flinch. He kept the gun raised and fired again, barely missing them.
Rally returned the compliment. KRAK! The Harley hit a small ridge in the pavement and jolted enough to deflect her aim to the side—she hit the Kawasaki's gas tank instead of O'Toole's left kneecap. Gas sprayed and streamed over O'Toole and the bike, soaking his clothes. Despite the fire risk, he shot at them again and emptied his magazine. He popped it and lost it, but steered with his knees for a moment to retrieve another from his pants pocket and slam it in, falling behind the Harley. Pulling back the slide, he grinned and aimed again.
Rally grimaced. Both motorcycles were doing well over a hundred miles an hour and none of the riders had helmets. If she shot out O'Toole's front tire, he might very well die in the crash.
'But I'll have me fun, won't I?' The zip of a pair of nylon pants, heavy weights on the backs of her knees. Something clicked into place, or broke asunder, in Rally's mind. From half a block away she aimed directly at O'Toole's left eye, her lips snarling back from her teeth.
In her darkening vision, this was far beyond rules, far beyond human consideration. He deserved no consideration, Rally told herself, and let that conviction show in her face: an expression so unfamiliar it hurt. The little man's yellow eyes widened, grin fading.
"Slow down!" she ordered Bean, and he eased off. O'Toole moved forward relative to them and Rally fired. Alert, he ducked at the last moment and the bullet only parted his hair. Fury choked her and she snapped off two more shots, striking sparks across handlebars and engine.
His pants caught, the gas flaring up, and on his face panic took hold as fast as the flames. A line of fire followed the stream of gas to the hole in the Kawasaki's tank and O'Toole frantically braked, preparing to bail out. One last shot, into his front tire.
BOOOM!
Tire and tank both blew in a spectacular explosion that rocked the Harley's rear wheel off the ground. The Kawasaki tumbled end over end into the air in a bursting fireball; O'Toole hit the road in a blazing heap and rolled over, unconscious or dead.
"Shee-it." Bean looked over his shoulder and wrestled the Harley back into a straight-line course. After a pause: "You got one left, or two?"
"Two." Black smoke followed them uphill.
"Extra mag was in the holster, huh? Sorry; couldn't get ya the whole thing." She had no desire to discuss this, or indeed anything, with him right now, so she didn't reply.
Sirens pursued them. Bean accelerated again and blasted up Divisadero. "I'll aim for the park. Easy to lose 'em there, and they'll stop to see to O'Toole." He seemed to expect an answer, but she didn't give one. "You mean to do that? Blow the tank? Set him on fire?"
"Yes."
"Shee-it." He shook his head slightly.
"You JUDGING me, Bean Bandit?" said Rally in a deadly tone.
"Hey, lady, you got the right to do anything you want to that little shit. He had it coming. Just…never saw you do somethin' like that before."
"Get used to it, Bean!" she hissed. He was silent.
The sirens never came closer, but Bean cranked the gas and whipped through several busy intersections, dodging traffic and pedestrians. Rally felt like a dark angel of death, riding shotgun with a horseman of the apocalypse: a machine for killing.
This was wrong. What she had just done was wrong, not in the sense that O'Toole hadn't deserved it, but in the sense that no human being could pass such judgment on another. The little psychopath had done things like that to other human beings all his life, but it still wasn't right for her deliberately to do it to him. Bean hadn't made quite that point; he didn't judge her, but he had nevertheless hit the mark—Rally had never done anything like that before, no matter how excellent the provocation, and this was an injury she had done to herself.
Again she felt a wave of fierce resentment against him for stating the truth. Around his body, her arms clenched and her fingers tightened on her CZ75. Enforced closeness and Bean's familiar scent intruded on her senses, bringing up vivid associated memories, and Rally's anger grew poisonous. How dare he imply she was going around the bend! He'd called her a whore, he'd called her a murderer! He'd said he ought to kill her…and he had tried to do it! He had meant to cut her face! He had held a knife to May's pregnant stomach! He had wrecked the Cobra! All for a damnable suitcase full of cash!
"Right turn," he said at Fell Street, and took them through it and parallel to the grassy Panhandle, passing the Department of Motor Vehicles building on their left. "This thing's kinda low on gas." Rally shook with fury and said nothing. Sirens came up behind them and Bean entered the park and passed the conservatory at high speed. "Got about five minutes of juice left, but no prob."
He glanced to left and right and went up over a curb between parked cars and onto an asphalt path that followed the road. A small dirt road cut through the tall shrubbery and he swerved to take it. Down an embankment shaded with big eucalyptuses, slipping on the fallen leaves and bark strips; they landed on another asphalt path perpendicular to the road and turned to follow it. The sirens passed on the road above and Bean rode slowly along the narrow path to a dark grove of trees.
He went off the pavement again and maneuvered the Harley to a stop at a spot concealed from the path. Rally immediately let go of him. Bean planted both feet on the ground, his knees slightly bent, and let out a breath, easing his jacket zipper down.
"OK, lost 'em for now. I can siphon some gas out've a car and get us tanked up in a couple minutes. You want to go anywhere in particular? I gotta get my 'Vette sometime, but no big—"
Instead of replying, Rally slid off the motorcycle. She had no holster to hold the CZ75, so she shrugged down her shredded jacket with the idea of rolling it around the gun and started to walk away with no intention of looking back.
While she was in mid-motion with arms still in the jacket, the Harley's engine puttering, Bean reached for her. He pulled her halfway across the saddle in front of him, her face turned upwards, and bent down. What was he doing?
Flabbergasted, eyes wide open, Rally felt Bean's mouth crush against hers, his tongue pushing between her lips. He was kissing her! She shoved back and broke free, lurching out of his arms and nearly falling. When he grabbed her shoulders and tried to draw her to him again, she slapped him across the face so hard his head snapped to the side. Before she had to look into Bean's eyes, Rally turned and ran.
"Hey! Sorry! Ya looked—" She kept running. "Vincent! Stop! Dammit, woman, you're coming with ME!"
"Says you!" she flung over her shoulder, jamming her gun into the waistband of her skirt. "Get away from me, you BASTARD!"
"Vincent!" The Harley roared again and Bean followed her all the way through the small grove and into an unpaved service road piled with tree branches and dumpsters. She almost evaded him among the dumpsters as he struggled to roll over logs and cardboard boxes. The motor started to cough, but the road opened out and the motorcycle overtook her. Bean wheeled across her path and turned broadside in a skid-turn to block her. "C'mon, all I want to do is—"
Rally drew, her CZ75 aimed directly between his eyes. "Cut an X on my face, huh? Get away from me, Bean! I WILL shoot you if you keep following me, or if you get any closer! You understand me, you knife-wielding THUG!"
Bean looked at her very strangely: brows down and almost scowling, nose wrinkled up, but his mouth open in a tense downward curve that had a sense of pain to it. His chest heaved in a rhythm more rapid than out-of-breath hyperventilation. "I ain't gonna hurt you, Vincent. I didn't come back here to do that. I just did what I came back here to do, OK? I'll beat it if you say, but lemme talk to you, huh?"
Bean put the kickstand down and dismounted from the Harley, throwing one long leg over the seat and standing up facing her with his hands raised to shoulder level. Blood mottled his jeans where the Dragon's buckshot had hit.
"No! I don't want to hear anything you've got to say! You have NO right to TOUCH me! Get AWAY from me!"
"I know you didn't steal that money! I found out you didn't. I was wrong, Vincent—Rally." His teeth came together in a grimace. "For crying out loud, will you listen to me?"
"Tell me something I don't know, huh? Of course I didn't steal that money, you son of a bitch! Realized it a little late, didn't you?"
"Too late?" Bean looked incredulous. "What do you mean? Seems to me like I got there just in—"
"What do I MEAN! What did YOU mean by IMMEDIATELY assuming I was worse than BROWN? Huh? I thought you TRUSTED me! I even thought you might be in—" Rally took a deep sobbing breath— "That you LIKED me or something! I asked you to have sex with me and no matter how many jollies you got out of it, all you could really believe was that I had planned to rob you and play you for a stooge!" Her voice roughened; she fought tears and wiped the back of her hand over her nose. "You piece of shit. I thought you were a FRIEND OF MINE!"
"I was wrong! I figured out someone looked in the trunk and saw—"
"Oh, you had some kind of brilliant epiphany and decided to do the 'knight on a white charger' shtick!" Rally kicked the black Harley. "You thought that would make it ALL RIGHT AGAIN!"
"The Dragons think you took a whole mil from Brown! I thought you'd need some—"
"What was it you said? About a couple of bitchy remarks of mine? 'If you don't know I'm not that kind of scumbag by now, the hell with you'? WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU KNOW THAT ABOUT ME, BEAN!"
"I…I…" Bean looked at the ground, face working.
A long pause, broken only by their ragged breaths. Rally's head pounded, her tightened throat burning. The look on Bean's face combined consciousness of guilt with a frustrated sense of entitlement; did he even grasp the real meaning of his crime? Apparently he expected an instant reward for coming to her rescue! Rally flushed, palpitating with anger. She turned away from him, a hand over her still-tingling lips.
"Vincent…" She shot him a fierce glare over her shoulder. "I…I'm sorry, OK?" Bean turned out his palms. "I bugged out on my partner and it's my fault the Dragons got you cornered."
"Oh, no SHIT?"
"But I came back, b-baby. I came back to…to…" He couldn't force it out, whatever it was; his lips contorted around unpronounceable words. Heated, possessive emotion flared in his eyes, but mixed with deep unease.
"To claim your just compensation? Saving my ass gets you a piece of it in return?"
Bean flinched; she'd hit some sort of mark. He swallowed hard. Then his big jaw set and the frustration took dominance. He swiped at the buckshot wounds on one thigh and displayed his bloody hand. "You gonna tell me this don't count for anything?"
Finally having gained a little control, Rally spoke in a low and cutting voice. "OK, 'Black Knight'. I get the point. You just helped me escape from getting raped and beaten to death. Fine. That's good. But what if you hadn't had this amazing realization? What would you be DOING right now? Getting up off my battered body and saying, 'Thanks for your patience, gentlemen. Plenty left to go around?'"
Bean went white and wide-eyed, teeth coming together again. "No. No! Even if I hadn't known—"
"OK, maybe not. If you didn't hurt me over that cash then and there, maybe not." She put a hand over her face and briefly closed her eyes. "You did save my life, and I will say thank you. Thank you for saving my life, Bean." Rally lowered her hand and gave Bean a hard stare. "But if you think that's going to make me just up and forgive you for what you've done in the last sixty hours, you have another think coming. A very, very long one, because for the rest of my life, I am going to remember what you said to me five minutes after you'd gotten your filthy rocks off in my virgin body. You are a scumbag, mister, and don't you ever forget it."
She'd hurt him; she could tell. His eyes went unfocused, his mouth curved downwards again and he took a few gasping breaths. "Rally…"
"Don't call me that. You haven't got the right. You are not a friend of mine." She turned and walked away. Bean didn't follow. When Rally turned for one quick glance before she rounded the curve of the road, she saw him leaning on the motorcycle, hunched over and staring at the ground, face frozen in something she didn't care to analyze. But she saw his shoulders give one great heave.
"'Nother bedroom?" said Tiffany Brown as Manichetti carried her up the back steps of a hotel in Burlingame, her little arms around his thick neck.
"Yep," he replied, putting her down just inside the door of a suite as her mother opened it and stepped aside to let them pass. "'Nother bedroom."
"I wanna stay in one place, Manny," said Tiffany, examining the room with a disdainful eye. "Why do we got to move again? Why did we have to leave all my toys except Baby Bear?" She held up her stuffed teddy and showed it the room. "Baby Bear doesn't like this place."
"'Cause the bad men are chasing us, Miss Tiffany. Your mama told you."
"Oh. Is it like hide-and-seek?"
"Yeah, hide-and-seek." Manichetti smiled as the child ran off to look into the next room. "You want to go potty? It's in there." Tiffany went into the bathroom, closing the door. "Ma'am, you OK? I'll fetch something to eat soon as I check the security. She still shouldn't go out've the room."
"I'm all right, considering," replied Sarah Brown. She sat down in an upholstered chair. "No luggage, no jewels. I don't even have a change of panties..."
"Uh…" Manichetti turned red and coughed awkwardly.
"Sorry, Manny," she said absently. "Tiffy doesn't mind wearing the same dress day after day. She thinks it's an adventure. I should try to reach that state of consciousness…"
"Yeah, whatever works. Um, there's just one bedroom, so you and the kid sleep in there. I'll sack out on the couch."
"Mmm." Sarah looked up at him with a smile. "Or she could sleep on the couch, which would be more comfortable for her anyway than hearing Mama snore, and you and I could share the bedroom."
"God, Sarah…" muttered Manichetti. "You know it ain't a good idea, with her and us in one little place. It wasn't really safe even in that big house when that husband of yours was out've the country. We can't be doing this now."
"She will have to know sooner or later. I know, I'd prefer later. I still haven't figured out how to tell her that Sly's dead. But, Manny…" She stood up and moved into his embrace, resting her shining blonde head on his chest. "I need you. You and she are all I have now."
Manichetti's arms went around her and he rocked her slightly back and forth, stroking her hair. "Sweetheart. Baby. I love you, and you are so damn beautiful you make my teeth hurt. Don't you think I've been wantin' to stay in your bed, sweetheart? I know Tom's gone and good riddance, so there's no prob that way. But if that kid starts to think…"
"She's only four, Manny. And that's another thing she is going to have to know one of these days."
"How am I going to tell her that? She loved that husband of yours."
"I don't know." Sarah nuzzled Manichetti's chest through his shirt and raised her face. Their lips met. Tiffany left the bathroom and ran over to the couple, grabbing Manichetti by the leg.
"Are you getting a hug, Mama? I want a hug too!"
"I got enough hugs for everybody," said Manichetti.
"Agent Smith in?" asked Rally at the FBI reception desk in the Federal Building. "I've got a lot to tell him…" She had walked blocks from Golden Gate Park to her hotel, slowly cooling down and breathing out her adrenaline with imagined conversations and arguments, most of them with Bean, but some of them with Agent Wesson.
Finding May out, she had showered and changed before taking a cab. Rally felt almost calm in spite of having escaped the Dragons by the skin of her teeth; still a bit shaky, but with a deep weariness of mind and body that gave her surroundings a dreamy quality. "I couldn't get hold of him on the phone and this is pretty important."
"I'm not sure if he and his team are back from the hospital yet," replied the receptionist.
"Hospital?" Had they all gone en masse to talk to Larry Sam? "Why did they go to the hospital?"
"Because that's where they have all those doctors and nurses," said Smith, limping out of the lobby elevator. The rest of the agents involved in the Brown case followed him, slowly. "All those people who can give you Band-Aids and aspirin—ow—and casts."
"What the hell happened to you guys?" said Rally, staring at Smith, Wesson, Gonzales and Bui. "You get run over by a truck?" Smith wore a sling on one arm and had a large blue lump on his forehead. Wesson had a stitched slash across one cheek and a black eye that resembled a patch, which made him look comically piratical. Gonzales was limping on one crutch, Bui on two, and their faces were swollen and bruised. "Geez." Roy Coleman, last out of the elevator, looked shaken, but seemed unhurt. "Roy? Anyone going to tell me?"
"Bean," said Wesson in a whisper. "It was Bean." He sat down heavily in a lobby chair and grimaced, rubbing his hindquarters. "Ow."
"Bean? I was going to tell you—he came back."
"We noticed," said Gonzales, easing himself into a seat. "We all met him about an hour ago. He introduced himself, we tried to arrest him, and then he kicked our butts. With extreme prejudice."
"What? But I saw him about an hour ago! He busted in when O'Toole and the Dragons had me pinned. He got me my gun and saved my life—Roy?" Rally put a hand on his arm. "You look terrible. Are you hurt?"
"No," said Roy, turning away with a heartrending expression.
"He told him," said Smith, unhelpfully. "Boy, did he tell him."
"Who told who what? You are not making sense."
"I can't," said Roy almost inaudibly. "You tell her; I can't."
"Bean," said Bui. "Man, he is a powerhouse. I'm lucky it's only sprained." He rubbed one knee, then the other. "Four armed FBI agents…and a Chicago cop…and he buttered our bread like it was nothing." Everyone who had sat down got up again, moaning and hobbled down the corridor to Smith's office, Rally trailing them.
"Bean told somebody something? Can we fill in the blanks here?"
"Miss Rally," said Smith, pulling out his desk chair, "Bean told Detective Coleman that he had had consensual sex with you. In—some detail. We knew that already, but Coleman didn't. Per your request, we hadn't told him. He doesn't feel too good about it, because he had accused Bean of raping you—the way we thought at first that he might have attacked you, over the money. Coleman was about to shoot him for it—"
"No, I wasn't," muttered Roy. He sat down and put his head on his knees. "I think I'm going to be sick…"
"Good God, Roy. You thought Bean raped me and you wanted to shoot him?"
"I didn't shoot anyone!"
"My God—you've been thinking that all this time? Oh! Did May say something—?"
"Yes." Roy looked at the floor. "The two of us worked up a nice little scenario. Convinced ourselves without a hell of a lot of trouble. So we've been beating ourselves over the head with it since yesterday." He took a deep breath. "In a way, it's a relief. No, of course it's a relief—I'm so goddamn glad that didn't happen to you!"
"When we drove up, Bean had Coleman hoisted up in the air and was threatening to throw him over a cliff and into the ocean," put in Wesson.
"What? When did this happen?" Rally turned around and around, trying to take in everyone's contributions. "I thought you all were trailing Roy in my car!"
"It happened on the decoy, yeah. The Dragons didn't follow your car, but Bean did," said Smith. "Coleman had the radio open—-we heard both sides of the conversation before we arrived at the scene. Bean wanted to know where you were…so he could go help you." He fumbled for a cigarette and lighter. "Guess he meant what he said."
"But Roy didn't know where I was, not exactly."
"Nope," said Smith musingly, letting out a stream of smoke. "Obviously Bean found out some other way."
"I know how," said Rally. "He called the Dragons and asked."
"They TOLD him?"
"Sure. He must have agreed to join the Triad. He walked straight into their HQ without being challenged and started ordering them around while they had me captured and disarmed. It sounded like he'd called in and they'd invited him to come play. I guess they figured participating in the gang-rape and murder of his former partner would be a nice initiation ritual."
Roy let out a dreadful sobbing sound, then choked it off. "No…"
"Roy, I'm OK." Rally knelt down and tried to look him in the face, putting her arm over his hunched back. "I'm fine. I have nothing but skinned knees and a bruised cheekbone. You can thank Bean for that, no matter what his motives were for coming back. He saved my life. I'm here, and I'm not hurt." Roy's arms went around her and he cried for a moment on her shoulder, then sat up and wiped his nose, his eyes red.
"Sorry. Sorry…"
"You do not have to apologize for that." Rally felt grateful tears starting in her own eyes. "Roy, you are a great guy. You've got a heart as big as Lake Superior, and I don't mind you worrying about me at all. Your wife is going to be so proud of you. I know it, friend. We are going to get those scumbags, and we're going to do it together."
Roy embraced her again, pounding her back, and let out a teary whoop. "Damn! What a trooper!"
Smith nodded, smiling. "Thattagirl, Miss Rally. Never let 'em see you sweat. Now, where's that Bu-car?" Rally gave him a complete rundown on her afternoon, leaving nothing out, except the fact that Bean had kissed her the first moment he could. "Search warrant on the double," said Smith, grinning. "108 Redwood? Should have been obvious, with that address! We'll settle their hash." He picked up his phone. "Get me the judge on duty."
"Tell them to check the basement vault first. Probably that's where all the explosives are!"
"Yeah—guess I'm not going to get to do this in person." Smith looked at his sling. "Sprained elbow, because Bean disarmed me with one hand. And he clouted me over the head with my own goddamn carbine! I feel like a goddamn rookie. I want to go home and eat a Lean Cusine with Advil on the side and go to bed."
Rally felt a laugh emerging and tamped it down, glancing around at all the damaged FBI agents. "Bean seems to have not wanted to injure you too badly."
"What?" said Wesson "He could have killed us, Ms. Vincent! Are you sure he saved your life? That could have been a smokescreen. As a matter of fact, I think it's likely he's trying to influence your opinion of his actions—"
Rally rolled her eyes. "I was there, Agent Wesson. You were not. Of course he's trying to influence my opinion of him—he discovered I hadn't tried to cheat him, he came back when he heard I was in danger, and he risked his life to help me." She paused. "I think I'm defending him again, and I don't know why, because when I left him, I had said the worst things that I could think of to him. Yes, he could have killed all of you, because I saw him waste at least a couple of the Dragons in that parking garage, and there were eight of them with full-autos who weren't interested in taking him alive. If he left you guys relatively intact, I suppose it must have been because he thought I wouldn't approve of his chopping you all into corned beef hash."
"This is going to leave a mark," complained Wesson, gesturing indignantly at his facial slash. "He used excessive force!"
"One versus five, knife versus guns. Uh-huh." said Rally with a touch of sarcasm. "Don't worry about the slash, Agent. The girls will swoon if you tell 'em it's a duelling scar." Wesson stood up, looking as if he were about to retort, but suddenly left Smith's office.
"Bob?" said Smith, watching him go. "Huh. What's up his ass? Well, I think we all ought to call it a day…I'll file all the temporary disability forms, guys, so take a cab and go on home." Bui and Gonzales nodded and filed out, limping on their crutches.
"No kidding. I want to go home too. Oh, but I have some other things to tell you. About Brown, and about..." She looked significantly at Roy, who seemed confused. "Though I think Brown is most important right now. You haven't seen the ballistics report yet, have you, Pete?"
"Nope, no report yet. What about Brown?" sighed Smith, putting down his phone.
"I think he's alive. In fact, I'm almost positive of it." Smith and Roy looked at each other in shock.
"Huh?" said Roy. "But you told us—"
"Yes, I know. But there is no body. Right?"
"So far," said Smith, paying attention.
"And Bean and I saw O'Toole on the secondary pier, right before Brown started calling out. He escaped from the warehouse somehow, and I KNOW he wouldn't have left Brown where the fire could get to him. May thinks that O'Toole could have blown an escape hatch in the floor."
Smith's phone rang, and he stood up and got it. "Smith. Yeah, she's here." He passed the phone to Rally.
"Hi, Ral! Guess where I am!"
"Don't know, May. Riding on the back of O'Toole's Harley with Bean driving?"
"Huh?"
"Never mind. I found the Dragon HQ, and they kind of noticed, and O'Toole brought all his best buddies to sing along at my funeral, and then Bean showed up out of nowhere and we kind of made a big mess in North Beach, the Marina and Cow Hollow, this time, and he kind of saved my life, and he thought that kind of made up for everything bad he'd ever done to me and my best friends, and was disappointed to find out I kind of didn't think so. So where are you?"
"Oh, girl! You're joking, right?"
"Not even exaggerating."
"What?"
"You tell me your news first."
"Uh…OK. Well, since you were going to be gone doing, uh, boring stuff all afternoon, I took a cab over to the Dragon pier and introduced myself to the forensic team there. They let me look around, and I suggested checking under the pier because of this neat-o theory my partner and I came up with. So they got a guy in a kayak to see if I was nuts or not. The pilings are so close together that you can only get a smallish boat in among them—maybe a fair-size motorboat, but not a big cabin cruiser. The guy said he spotted something with the halogen lantern out in the middle of the end section. Like a man-sized hole, but there were big beams running right under it and it wasn't easy to tell without getting right up there. They calculated the location and dug the debris away inside, and lo and behold, a man-sized hole right through the concrete! They aren't sure if it was there before the fire or not, but they're testing for explosives residue."
"Perfect!" Rally repeated May's findings to Smith and Roy. "Thank you, honey. You are such a boost to my credibility! I'm taking you out to dinner to celebrate!"
"We have to go out to dinner anyway. We're on vacation."
"Uhh…so it's a special routine dinner out! Pick the joint and I'll drive."
"I'll go pick May up from the pier and bring her to the Federal Building to meet you," said Roy. "I…think I have something to tell her. To get a weight off her mind. Your Cobra's in the garage here." He sighed and left.
"You like my theory, Pete?" Rally put her wrapped CZ75 under her arm again. "I'll go hang out in the break room until May gets here."
"Damn. I have to admit, it makes a lot of sense."
"So if Brown's alive, where is he?"
Smith looked thoughtful. "There are a lot of places he could have holed up, just in California. It's been days—he could be anywhere in the world by now. This ruse of his didn't have to last forever—only long enough for him to get away, and I guess we'd have taken at least a couple of weeks to get as far as you and your partner just did."
"Sounds like it's time to start making inquiries."
"Yeah. He's had a start on us, but he can't just vanish." Smith sat down again with a tired sigh. "I'll start calling."
"Sorry to inflict work on you when you've just met Bean Bandit for the first time!"
"Miss Rally, he surely does care what happens to you," said Smith, dialing. "If I didn't know better, I'd say he…well." He gave her a smile, steel-blue eyes crinkling. "I don't think he's going to leave the area again while you're here and going up against the Eight Dragon Triad. If I ever wanted to know what Bean Bandit was doing, I believe all I'd really have to do is check if Miss Rally Vincent's in trouble. Now that's a man you're lucky to have on your side of the table."
"Uh, well…maybe…"
"I'd not be so quick to condemn his motives, Miss Rally. Not that you are going to have to make any effort to keep him where he is. He's staying, and I believe it's for good this time."
Rally paused at the door, not sure she had heard correctly. "What? You don't mean you think—"
"I'd like to have a more leisurely conversation with that guy some day," said Smith. "Ask him a few tough questions, man to man. No bullshit. Like, 'When in the name of hell are you going to tell her?'" He chuckled and waved her out the door.
"May—would you like to go for a drive for a while before we eat? I think there's something I need to tell you…" Rally pulled her Cobra out of the Federal Building's garage and turned right.
"Rally…Roy said something…about Bean. And you." May's eyes were huge and worried. "I didn't really understand what he meant, and he left right away for the hotel, to call his wife, and wouldn't talk about it. Bean saved your life? He came back to San Francisco to do that?"
"Yes. Weird, huh?" She stopped at a red light.
"Um…and he said something else happened. That Bean didn't rape you, but he…um, had sex with you. On the night of the fire." May looked deeply distressed. "Was that right, sweetie? Did I hear that right?"
"Yes, May. I had sex with him." Rally dropped her head to the steering wheel. "We did it in the car after I took him out of the hotel garage. Your sense of smell is vindicated."
"You...had SEX with him?" May's voice was a shrieking whisper. "With BEAN BANDIT? You lost your virginity with HIM!"
"I had to do it with SOMEONE, didn't I?" The light turned green and she moved.
"Yeah, but—oh God, he didn't rape you? Please, if he—"
"No, nothing like that. I asked him to have sex with me and he didn't really want to at first. Heck, I might have raped HIM..."
"Wow! That musta took some doing! What, did you hold a gun to his head?"
"Hell, no! I...I begged him to help me. I was...I was in a horrible state, imagining Brown dying in that fire..."
"Oh, honey!"
"I felt like my skin was scorching right off me and I had to feel something else or die. I was crying and grabbing him, and finally he let me do it. It took him a while but then he got warmed up and he ended up screwing my brains out in the front seat."
"God." May's mouth hung open; she looked wide-eyed at the Cobra's seats. "He really got into doing it with you, huh? Not like that's totally unbelievable, gorgeous, but…wow. I never got the idea Bean was all that interested in sex, or in women as women. He's mostly devoted to his cars, I thought, but I don't know."
"I don't know either. I think...he got pretty carried away. He said he'd been thinking about it too much—he meant thinking about doing it with me, because... um…we had almost had sex earlier, the first night we were together, in Buttonkettle. I… teased him, for some reason, and he took me up on it." Rally was starting to shake, so she pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.
"Teased him? Bean?"
"I took some clothes off when he was watching. I was trying to bug him, or something. He…he reacted kind of strongly, and then I got caught up in it…"
"Oh, Rally…" May's expression filled with incredulous reproof. "You should NEVER have left me behind in L.A.!"
"We got nearly all the way. He didn't stop until I told him I was a virgin, and then he couldn't get out of there fast enough. But he changed his mind in the car a couple of nights later—boy, did he ever change his mind! After it was over he was kissing me and asking me to sleep with him all night. That scared the crap out of me. I started backing off, he started trying harder, and right then, right THEN he found that money!"
"Girl, I would not have been in your shoes for all the gold in California." May shook her head with deliberation. "Not if HE was getting that sentimental, and got a tremendous kick in the cojones just afterwards!"
"No kidding." Rally's face twitched. "So I found out just how cold he really is. One moment he was talking as if he wanted to propose marriage, and the next moment he called me a whore and said he ought to kill me. He's a reptile. He's got no emotions but lust, greed and anger."
"Oh, but—are you sure about that, Rally? He came back to save you! He must feel—"
"He finally realized he was wrong. Couldn't let the Dragons kill me—but that's just his way of paying the debt! It's got nothing to do with his feelings." She raked a hand through her hair and let her head drop.
"But you said he got carried away! Trying hard to keep you with him, huh? I can imagine how he must have felt when he found the suitcase, if he'd just made love to you! He must have been feeling…really happy. Like…his all-time best wet dream coming true, and then—"
"If he did..." Rally leaned her forehead against the driver's window, remembering how cold and distant she had been with Bean right after he had finished, and how warm and affectionate he had been, nevertheless. 'C'mon, gimme a kiss,' he had said, smiling, his face still flushed. 'Just can't keep my hands off you, beautiful lady...' "If he did, it was just afterglow. And the sight of that suitcase knocked it dead in a fraction of a second. No, he hated me then."
"Do you hate him?"
"I...I don't know. How could he just assume I'd set out to trick him from the beginning? I thought he trusted me, but when he saw that cash he wouldn't listen to a word I said. How could he threaten to kill me not five minutes after he...?"
"You think he felt betrayed?"
"Oh, God, he said something like, 'Did you think you could fool me so bad I'd never ask another question?' He just instantly assumed that I'd had sex with him to put him off his guard. He was so angry...he'd never been angry like that with me before."
May listened with pursed lips. "I think he does care about you."
"What, telling a woman he ought to snap her neck is proof he's got a heart? Maybe it's just ego—he probably thinks he's irresistible, and the idea that a woman might screw him and not be instantly at his feet was too much to take! God, May, he held a knife on Junior!"
"And put me down as soon as he remembered the baby. Rally, can I..." May gnawed on a fingernail. "Look, I know Bean too."
"Huh?"
"He does have a heart, OK? Remember how he saved me from Gray?"
"You look like a kid to him. He likes to protect kids. Makes him feel like a big honcho!"
"I know, a man like him seems all macho and stoic," said May carefully. "It's part of his profession. I don't think he's ever had a woman involved in his life, his real life. You're probably the first one he ever met who could match him at his own game."
"He does respect my work." Rally rubbed her lips with her fingertips. "I really don't think he ever went any deeper than that."
"Heh heh heh...interesting choice of words!"
"Aaack!"
"Which brings me to...what was it like, anyway?" May stuck her tongue slightly out of her mouth and waggled her eyebrows.
"Oh, God, May! I don't want to think about it!"
"That bad, huh? I'm sorry, sweetie." May reached over and gently touched Rally's bruised face, taking her hand. "I shouldn't joke. Maybe he didn't force you, but a huge, rough guy like that...and you being a virgin..."
"That part did hurt."
"I hope he hasn't put you off sex forever! Well, OK, I know he didn't do that." May kissed Rally's chin. "But don't put all men in his category just because he was your first. Not every guy's so clumsy that he inflicts bruises and rams it in without any preparation."
"Ohh, geez, it wasn't THAT bad!" Her body and her uncomfortably clear memory were contradicting everything May said. "I...well, I guess I kind of enjoyed it."
"Kind of?"
"Uh...OK, he wasn't as rough as you might think. He, uh, he's got good hands..."
"Did he go down on you? That's what I call the 'clitmus' test!"
Rally blushed fiercely. "Y-yeah, he did."
"Ooo-hoooh! Has he got technique?" May's face lit up and became avid and inquiring.
"May! I wouldn't know!"
"Oh, yes, you do! Did he make you come?"
"Yes..."
"Good! How did you like screwing him?"
Rally flushed again, her thighs clamping tightly together over her throbbing groin and her body moving in a slow writhe. Right here in the Cobra, right where she sat…
"Wow." May smiled at her with raised brows. "Not that BAD, huh?"
"I...I suppose he's actually pretty good at it..." said Rally in a high faint voice. "Fine, OK, so he's fantastic, at least where I'm concerned, and I refuse to think about the implications of that."
"Oookaaay…I think I have the picture now…"
"What?" May only chortled. "What? You think I'm stuck on him? No WAY!"
"Why'd you ask him to have sex with you, then? And why give him a tease in the motel room? I thought HE'D be the one who'd be trying to get something going—but it's been YOU all along!"
"Oh, heck...well, I was all wound up, and curious about him, and then I was all wound up and feeling like hell...and he was there. He always seems to be there. Something inevitable about the way he shows up." Rally sighed. "Thank God he showed up today…"
"I love this!" May clasped her hands together and pressed them to her cheek, beaming and kissing the air. "Mmmwaah! How ROMANTIC! He always comes back to you! What will you do when Bean comes to beg your forgiveness? When he tells you he's crazy about you, proposes on one knee, sweeps you off your feet and drives off into the sunset—"
"Ugh!" wailed Rally. "Barf!"
"Well, of course on the West Coast driving into the sunset takes you straight into the ocean..."
"No kidding. May, you are all wet!"
"Sounds like YOU were the wet one, baby!" May cackled. "So he fucks like a champion and fights like a demon? The PERFECT man for you!"
"WHAT? You've been riding too many rollercoasters! Your head's going up and down! Three minutes ago you were sure he'd mauled me, at the very least! Now you think it's PERFECTLY ROMANTIC!"
"Believe it! If you enjoyed having sex with Bean that much, your first time, HE probably felt the EARTH move, Rally! Gosh, if he wasn't much interested in sex before, I bet he's wild for it now! What did he say to you?"
"Uhh...that he thought I was…good in bed."
"Oh, sure."
"I'm not going to repeat his LANGUAGE! He wanted to take me to a hotel or something and keep going all night. From a guy like him, I guess that's a high compliment!"
"Men express themselves physically. Especially a guy like him! Having sex with someone can be his way of showing, um, love."
"That's hard to distinguish from simple lust! He never said a word about anything else."
"I'd be surprised if he had." May grew a little more serious, looking up at Rally. "I doubt Bean's ever going to be articulate about emotions as long as he lives. He's not made that way, and nothing in his way of life would encourage him to find a remedy. Judge him by what he does, not what he says or doesn't say. Remember, even though he might do a really good imitation of one, he is not a machine. No one is."
"I like machines." Rally reached for her CZ75 and started the car again. "They do what I tell them to do."
This ain't no thinkin' thing, right brain, left brain
It goes a little deeper than that
It's a chemical, physical, emotional devotion
Passion that we can't hold back
There's nothing that we need to analyze
There ain't no rhyme or reason why
'Cause this ain't, this ain't, no thinkin' thing…
"I hate country music," muttered Rally, fighting the radio dial past 93.3 FM as she sat in traffic crawling northbound on Nineteenth Avenue past Stern Grove. The cars around her were obscured by fog and light drizzling rain, the wet weather only exacerbating the Saturday morning traffic conditions. "It's too…topical."
Obviously this hadn't been the right route to take even before noon; she felt cornered in the open air. Every Mercedes and BMW she saw out of the corner of her eye gave her a jolt, and the few motorcycles abroad in this weather affected her similarly, though the emotion was uncomfortable in a different way.
"Rats. I'll take one of these side streets and hope for the best…" She inched over to the left and discovered that half the streets were one-way. One and a half blocks and nearly ten minutes later, Rally turned left and coasted down a wide boulevard towards the ocean. Might as well go all the way…so she continued down to the Great Highway paralleling Ocean Beach and turned north again to take the scenic route. Of course, the scenery was indiscernible in the fog; even the surf a few yards below the road was more audible than visible.
Tracing the perimeter of both city and peninsula, Rally passed the windmills at the base of Golden Gate Park, took the high curve past the Cliff House, dodging enormous tour buses, and turned east on Geary. When she reached Legion of Honor Drive, she got into the left lane and waited to turn.
Rally heard a tap on her driver's window and glanced to the side. A hand in a fingerless driving glove, the arm clad in a heavy black leather jacket. Rally turned and shot a glare at Bean, sitting on the Night Train and idling the engine next to her.
Oh, he was inevitable, all right. He had probably followed her all the way from her hotel and just now gotten up the effrontery to approach her car. She gritted her teeth and looked straight ahead again. Why it had taken him even this long? Then again, she had had no real reason to drive a leisurely route around the city after picking up her new shoulder holster from a gun shop. Had she been hoping that he would approach her?
"C'mon, Vincent, roll down the window," she heard Bean say indistinctly through the glass. "Just a goddamn inch. It ain't rainin' that hard!" She flipped him off and squealed her tires away when the light changed, going up the hill to the museum, through its parking lot and down again, winding past multi-million dollar mansions on small steep lots. Bean stuck right at her side, matching every lane change and speed change as if the Harley were a sidecar newly welded to the Cobra's battered driver's door.
Finally she cracked the window down and shouted at him. "GO AWAY! I WON'T TALK TO YOU IN A THOUSAND—"
"I know that, Vincent! That's why I'm stayin' right here until you DO!"
"Fuck you!" she yelled before thinking, and blushed hotly.
Bean shook his head with a rueful smirk. "Now yer talkin'. Just pull over, huh? Like there. Five minutes: that's all, I promise." He pointed to dark trees lining the edge of the sea cliff.
"Bite me—!" She clapped a hand over her mouth.
"What do they call that? Freudian? Get it out of yer system, woman. Talk to me."
"NO! YOU CAN KISS MY ASS! Oh, man…" Rally hit herself on the forehead.
Bean rolled his eyes. When the descending street changed to Lincoln Boulevard and the Presidio, he moved to her right and began to nudge her over to the left.
She stopped short in the road and reversed. Bean also reversed, sliding the Harley behind her, and Rally braked. He pointed over to the left with an insistent forefinger.
"Aaaggh! He is NOT going to leave me alone!"
Briefly she considered picking up her police radio and calling in his location, but believing it would accomplish nothing other than mayhem, she resisted the impulse. Bean crowded her to the left again when she moved forward, and she gave up and took the left-hand fork with Bean right beside her.
He forced a sharp left turn, and as the road trended down towards a parking lot that partially emerged from the mist, Rally realized where they were. Baker's Beach, the same lot that she had gone into when taking Bean out of the hotel garage. The night of the fire. The night she'd lost her virginity with him, parked on this exact stretch of asphalt.
"Ooohh…you SON OF A BITCH!" she seethed. "Speaking of FREUDIAN…!" Rally slowed as she approached the end of the lot, and Bean stopped there, dismounting from the bike.
When he turned to her, Rally cranked her window down and showed him the CZ75 in her hand. "Stay right there!" She reversed and stopped twenty yards away; again the beach lot was empty, and cars on the main road above passed by almost lost in the thick fog except for dimly glowing headlights. They were alone.
"Look, all I want—" Bean began, hands up.
"I know what the hell you want, you scumbag!" she shouted, their voices not carrying well in the grey cocoon of mist.
"No, you—"
"Yes, I do! You are incredibly sorry you lost any chance of ever screwing me again and you would like to know how you could resume where you left off, you drooling, crotch-groping troglodyte! Well, that is so TOTALLY out of the question that—"
"Listen to me, woman!" Bean yelled in sudden anger. "You got to LISTEN to me! Just for FIVE friggin' minutes! You don't owe me nothing, sure! But give me some RESPECT! I ain't a pile of DOGSHIT you can scrape off—" He shut his mouth and looked down, grimacing.
"OK, goddammit, Bean! You want to talk to me that bad, talk to me! But I am not getting out of this car, and I am not taking this gun off you. Don't make any sudden moves!"
"I told you I am not going to hurt you, Vincent." Bean kept his hands spread out, but lowered them to chest level. "Can I come a little closer, huh? Do I gotta yell?"
"No. Stay where you are!"
"What do you want me to do, Vincent? Slit my belly open? I hear that's what the Japs do to say sorry, and it turns out I'm half Jap, if you can believe it. That make you feel better, if I spilled my guts all over the dirt and tripped in 'em? I swear, it'd be easier to do that than get you to TALK to me!"
Rally closed her eyes and put one hand over them. "OK, fine. Come closer. Don't try to touch me, understand?"
"Not a chance." She could hear his steps approaching, and his voice grew more distinct. "OK. You can hear me fine now."
Rally opened her eyes and saw Bean standing about four yards away, hands in jacket pockets. For some time, they both remained silent. Rally put her gun down on the seat. No menace came from him; not even anger emanated between them any more. Bean's quiet proximity made a measurable difference to her own feelings; that, more than anything else, told her what the bond between them was truly like, and that it wasn't something either of them could do anything about.
He meandered closer as if impelled, eventually approaching her side of the car when she made no objection, and hunkered down beside the driver's door facing her, his head a little below hers.
Rally sighed and looked away, then back at him. "So why here? Right where it happened? You want to get all symbolic or something?" It occurred to her that since she had taken Bean out of the garage on the night of the fire they had circumnavigated the city in stages, in various directions and in various states of mind, and here they were at the last point on the circumference, closing the circle…
"It was kind've an accident parking here. But I saw where we were and I thought it made sense. Not like you're going to let me in your hotel room no more." Bean pulled in his lips with a tight smile, not looking her in the eyes. "'Sides, I only want to apologize, so all I'm gonna do here is apologize."
"Oh, good for you," said Rally without much heat.
"Yeah, uh, I fuc—I messed up pretty bad when I found that money in your car. I was kind of drunk still, but that's no excuse. Should never have said all that to you."
"Said what?" She wasn't going to let him skim over any part of this.
"That you were a murderer, 'cause I knew you weren't, and that...that you were selling it, 'cause...hell, I still don't know why you picked me to give it to." Bean waited a moment. Rally looked out at the invisible ocean, but her gaze soon fell to her own lap.
"I should've been goddamn grateful I ever got the chance. OK, I am." He put one hand on the door of the Cobra; she noticed unhealed scabby gashes on his knuckles half concealed by his driving gloves. "I'm never gonna forget what you... I keep thinkin' about how sweet it was. I went and ruined it like the dumb asshole I am."
This wasn't exactly what she had expected, and she wasn't entirely sure how to react. "Yeah," she said faintly, watching her fingers twist together.
"They don't come much stupider than the way I acted. I don't care how mad I was or how...um, let down I felt." He grimaced at his hands and pressed his fists together. "That was stinkin' awful, calling you a whore when you let me do you your first time, and I'm damn sorry for saying it. I'm asking your forgiveness." Bean shifted his crouch and one knee dropped to the ground. "Not that I deserve it or nothing."
Bean Bandit on one knee and begging her pardon. She'd imagined this a number of times, mostly when she'd been furious with him, picturing her own glee and triumph, but to actually see it appalled her. His black head bowed, his huge shoulders hunched. Grey-outlined trees stirred in the wind, dropping stray bits of rain and rustling leaves.
"All right, all right, I forgive you! Get up, will you?" She made an impatient gesture.
For a moment, his eyes showed raw hurt. He pivoted away and stood up. "OK, if that's the way you feel about it. I ain't gonna insist."
"Look, I don't care what kind of names you called me. That's not what bothers me!"
Bean stopped a few paces away. "Yeah?"
"You threatened to kill me, Bean. You made a damn convincing attempt to do so. You said you ought to snap my neck. You ran me and May off the road and came after us with a knife."
"Well, yeah. I meant that."
"What?"
"If you'd lied to me and stolen that cash, that's what I should've done. Killed you."
Her breath chilled in her lungs. "So why didn't you?"
"Aw, hell, woman, you know why not!" He twisted to look at her.
"Because I'd just had sex with you and you didn't want it to look like I'd been raped before I was murdered?" she spat.
"Shit!" He kicked a waist-high solid concrete parking bollard and knocked it askew from its mounting.
"Spell it out, Bean. I'm not turning my back on you until I know the score here!"
Bean jammed his hands in his pockets and glared at her. "I am not going to touch a hair on your head, Vincent. You got nothing to fear from me from here on in. You got my word on that. Never again so long's I live are you gonna see me threaten you, not for anything that could happen. I'd let you shoot me first."
Rally was silent, knowing he meant exactly what he said.
"I know I said I'd kill you. But I ain't going to ask your pardon for that, because anybody who'd shake my hand and then take what's mine would've had it coming. You are not a kid. You know what the rules are. You ought to be grateful I broke 'em in your favor."
Bean walked over to the Harley and got on, snapping the kickstand up and starting the engine. Rally got out of her Cobra and stalked over to the motorcycle, jamming her CZ75 back into the holster. She stood in front of him and put her hands on the motorcycle's crossbar.
"Oh, no, you don't, Bean! TALK! You may think you've said all that needs to be said, but you have NOT! After chasing me all the way here, you are going to give me the whole damn story! No masculine legalist cop-outs, you son of a bitch. I don't want to hear about your fucking RULES! I want answers!"
He looked as trapped as he had on the Highway 92 flyover, thinking that she would call the dogs on him: no escape in any direction. "Vincent, I…"
"Go on, Bean. Maybe you can explain just why you immediately assumed that I had stolen that cash and meant to leave you without a cent. We'd been friends. We'd just been lovers. Why, in God's name, would you think that of me so easily?" On the last words, her voice began to break.
"I…damn, Vincent, I ain't so good at rehashing this kind've stuff." His face worked slightly, flushing.
"Get better, fast. Why?"
"Well…it ain't easy to say." Bean cast around, looking from side to side, and made a grasping gesture with one hand. "You…you'd been damn hard to figure, y'know? Ya put some moves on me, but ya didn't really want it, I thought. Reckoned you were just experimentin'."
"That's pretty close to the truth. Go on."
"Well, I wasn't experimentin'. I've had enough women to know what I want and what I don't want. I knew I wanted you."
"Ah…let's keep this to the point, Bean." A deep twinge thrummed in her, but she didn't want to listen to it. Bean cut the Harley's engine and hung his head.
"That is the point, lady. I wanted you, and I didn't think ya wanted me. Not serious-like, anyway. I got the picture in Buttonkettle, I thought. Ya blew hot an' cold so many times, an' you didn't have no history with guys… I figured it was nothin' but trouble." He scuffed a boot along the ground. "Kept comin' up again all the time, still a problem, but I thought it was settlin' down to a distraction. Ya jumped at me in that car, and I figured it was worse trouble and I'd better vamoose."
He paused, seeming to work his words out with some pain. "I couldn't. Just couldn't, 'cause you were so sick about it all, and 'cause I…it wasn't the right time, or the right place, but I didn't think I'd ever get a chance like that again." His face tried to change, to show her what she really wanted to know, but he won the battle with his expression.
"No…you probably wouldn't have."
"Yeah. I knew you didn't really want it, not from me, an' then it was so damn good I lost my fool head." Bean stared at his boot toe. "Ya got away from me so fast when it was over. I was tryin' real hard not to let you get away. I really thought there for a second that you'd stay with me, 'least for a while. Then I saw the damn suitcase, and I thought I knew it all."
"Knew it all?"
A long, unhappy sigh. "Like, you wanted to use me up an' toss me out when you'd got what you wanted. Like, you'd got the money, and that was what you wanted out've this deal, an' I was somethin' you wouldn't wipe yer feet on any other day've the year." He paused for a minute, his gaze still cast at the ground. "It wasn't so much the dough, I guess. It was knowin', like I thought I knew, that you didn't want me."
"Oh…"
Bean let go of the handlebars and folded his arms, his face finally washing over with sadness. "I know you don't want me. Not the way I thought then, but I know it. I got my chance, lady, and I blew it so bad they'd've heard it bust apart in freakin' Red China." Slowly he shook his head, over and over, his voice faintly uneven. "I ain't askin' for another chance. I just want to know if you would've slept in my bed that night, if that god-blasted money hadn't been there." He looked at her, his eyes so sad she had to turn hers away. "Just that night?"
"I don't know, Bean." Rally put a finger over her mouth and took it away, not knowing what to do with her hands. "I don't think so."
He didn't answer for a long time. She heard his shoulders sag inside his jacket, the lining hissing faintly against his T-shirt. A hand wrapped his lower face for a moment, then both hands jammed into his pockets once more.
"Bean?"
"It's OK, woman," he said quietly. "Not like you got to want a guy that wants you. There ain't no law says you ought. But if you screw him anyway, you gotta expect he might think you do."
"I…I'm sorry, Bean." She really was. She'd treated him like crap, all along. Like a machine she could turn on and load and aim in a particular direction, then turn off and leave in park, holstered away until she needed it again. When he'd behaved like an independent being with a mind and feelings, she'd done her best to rip out his heart and stomp on it. Even when she had offered him her body to soothe and embrace and take, so ardently, she had pushed away the idea that he might construe such an act as a declaration.
He did have a reason for what he'd believed and the way he'd behaved, though not enough reason to justify what he'd done, and a sense of release began to flood through her. She'd been far more ready to truly forgive him than she had thought. All she had needed to know was that he actually was a human being with a sentient soul, not the machine he preferred to be. It was like the moment she'd realized she couldn't shoot him just to prevent his taking a suitcase of cash; the moment she had let him pass unchallenged on the road to the bridge. She couldn't torment him any longer for his sins, though the scales were far from balanced yet. A little emotional abuse wasn't the same thing as a knife in the face…
She let the thought go. The only path to making this right was through pure mercy, not by evening out a debt.
"Bean…I forgive you."
The words seemed to break a little sun through the fog, and Rally walked to her car. When she slid behind the wheel, she glanced over at Bean for a moment as he still sat on the Harley. At the sight of his face, head tilted back to the unseen sky and his eyes gently closed as if against a light too intense, she knew, as if by some surety of grace, that she had done the right thing.
