Chapter 13 Continued

II.

As it had been in Noble's Melrose hotel room less than a week before, as real world gun battles often are, the shooting was quick and dirty and unremarkable, a confused snarl of action and reaction in which the best laid plans quickly degenerated into fevered second-by-second desperation:

First, Noble flinched away from her, in part because she'd thrown something at his face (the little plastic envelopes of crystal meth, too light to act as effective projectiles, didn't even reach their target and instead went fluttering off in various directions), mostly because of the sheer, unexpected force of her scream, and it was at almost the same instant -

- that Iggy flinched as well. For one razor-thin second his gaze flickered over to Noble, and that -

- was the second in which Cruz slapped her coat back with the heel of her right hand, exactly as she'd planned from the start: like a gunslinger in a spaghetti western. She caught the grip of the machine-pistol, thumbed the safety, slipped her finger around the trigger, and -

- though Noble was supposed to be first, there was just enough cop left in her to overrule that order and send her aim searching for the armed subject instead: Cruz pivoted the barrel of the gun towards Iggy. She didn't even attempt to bring it up to aim with the sights because she didn't have the strength -

(It was at this point that Noble, sensing what was about to happen and determined to react better to this shootout than he had to the first, drop-rolled across the floor, heading for the relative safety of one of the ratty armchairs on the other side of the room).

- and so she fired the gun straight from the hip instead. The Tec-9 was an older model designed for the civilian market, semi-automatic, left unmodified by its original owners. Trying to use such a gun on full-auto would have been ludicrous anyway; again, she retained enough of her training to fire the weapon properly, squeezing off three quick, professional shots at Iggy Marchand -

- all three of which missed, even though Iggy was less than fifteen feet away from her, and he -

- was a lot quicker than she might have expected, bringing his heavy Dirty Harry revolver up and firing off a shot with a speed that was surprising -

- however -

- though the report of the magnum was impressive (and deafening in the little room) the shot was no steadier than her own and was borne mostly of reflex: the bullet hit the vase on the little table next to the doorway. The vase detonated like a porcelain grenade, sending pieces of itself flying in all directions -

- one shard roughly the size of a compact disc slicing through the air with the lethal grace of a Japanese throwing star. It hit Cruz in the side of the head, tearing off most of her left ear and saving her life; she was sent staggering sideways just as Iggy, again frighteningly quick, lined up a better shot and sent a second bullet at her -

- which passed through the space she'd occupied a half-second before, much as Bosco's reflexively fired shot had in Noble's hotel room, and blew a fist-sized hole in the wall behind her as she -

- stumbled to the right, her head singing with bright, fresh pain. Her thigh struck the arm of the hideous orange couch and she sort of fetched up against it; it was the couch and the couch alone that kept her from losing her balance and falling -

- and it was then that Iggy hesitated. Possibly because whatever narcotic he had working in his system had dulled his reflexes, possibly because it was hard to line up a good shot in the dimness of the room, possibly because blood was streaming down Cruz's face and neck from her mutilated ear and he thought he'd already hit her. Whatever the reason, it was his last mistake because -

- Cruz squeezed off six more rounds from the Tec-9, not even attempting to aim, sweeping the barrel of the gun across the room in a short arc -

- the first, second and sixth shots missing their target -

- the third, fourth and fifth drilling into Iggy's gut, throwing -

- the biker back against the wall. He folded over with a very French-sounding whoo-oof, then fell heavily to his knees. His magnum went off reflexively and put a third round into the floor, then fell out of his hand as he clutched at his punctured belly. He looked up at her, eyes wide, and for the first time there seemed to be an element of real awareness there. No contempt, no promise of vengeance in the next life - just dull, stupid surprise. Cruz had once watched a rookie patrolman die with that same look on his face. Iggy stared at her, then -

- seemed to remember his gun. He took one hand away from his stomach and made a half-hearted reach for it, blood pouring out of him and pattering on the floor, and that was when -

- Cruz fired again, using the same wild, random, sweeping technique, the Tec-9 spitting out another even half-dozen shots -

- only one of which actually hit Iggy. It went low, but the biker was on his knees now and the shot was lethal. The bullet hit him in his Pussy Inspector T-shirt, obliterated the second S in Pussy and plowed on through his heart, killing him instantly -

- and this time when Iggy struck the wall behind him he slid down, settling into an improbable and morbidly ridiculous pose, his legs splayed out on either side with his torso hanging limply over them, arms spread.

He looked like a broken doll.

Blood ran out of his mouth and into his lap in a thin stream.

Noble was still on the floor on the other side of the room, hands over his head, waiting for it to be over.

It was over. In less than fifteen seconds, it was all over.

And Maritza Cruz was still standing.

Still standing.

Still standing.

The red curtain began to lift.

In the past this always came smoothly, gradually. When she came back there was always a sense of vertigo, a pleasant, warm tremble in the limbs, even a giddy sense of excitement, but she always came back fully aware of her actions, and very rarely regretted any of them.

Now there was nothing but raw sensory perception.

She caught the smells first. Predominately cordite. Cordite, like the hotel room, and for a quarter of a second she was there again, in her mind she was back in the hotel room -

(!give me the damn gun so I can get back to doing my job!)

- but then she -

(focus)

- caught her mind and she was here again, in the here-and-now. Smelling cordite. Gunsmoke.

And underneath ... blood. Sweat. Piss.

From herself?

From Iggy?

Made no difference. Iggy was dead.

And she was still standing.

Where was the other one? There was another one. Noble. Where was Noble?

Cruz turned slowly to her left. If Noble was here, then he was somewhere to her left; there was nothing to her right but a wall and the orange couch that had saved her from falling.

There was pain; bright, hot, needling through the side of her head. New pain.

Tears again; rolling down her cheeks, sliding easily through little canals already forged through the sweat and rain on her face.

She blinked.

She focused.

Aaron Noble was on the other side of the room. He was just getting to his feet. Once there, he stood in ghostly sillouette right in front of the gap in the boarded-up window, the room's only light-source. She could not see his face, but his posture was that of a clearly frightened man, his head tilted back on his neck, hands raised defensively at chest-height, palms out, a gesture of wary supplication.

Cruz took a shaky step towards him. The Tec-9 was still clasped in her hand, the barrel still hot, fifteen rounds left in the magazine from the original thirty.

The gun had not exploded.

She'd been afraid of that at one point, hadn't she? Afraid of the old, disused, unmaintained gun just blowing up like a grenade, perhaps vaporizing her remaining arm below the elbow. But the Tec-9 had come through for her, it hadn't exploded ... but it hadn't killed Richard Buford, either, which had always been its purpose, its reason for being, the reason she had stolen it from a kid-gangbanger whose name she could no longer even remember. It had missed its purpose and instead killed a man named Rene Marchand, a man everybody called Iggy because he looked like Iggy Pop, a man who'd fancied himself a Pussy Inspector and wore the shirt to prove it.

The blue fire was everywhere now. It seemed to be melting inward, gradually closing off the window of her vision.

She took another step.

"Christ Almighty," Noble breathed. His expression was familiar, the same one he'd worn when she snuck up behind him the previous night. Disbelief. Fear. Something like awe. And a trace of what might even have been laughter.

Another step. Another and another. Her shoelaces were still loose, still dangerously close to tripping her up, but they didn't, and her legs were shaking, but they held her.

She was still standing.

She couldn't fall.

She could never fall.

There was very little left of her mind now. The buzz of the wasps was deafening, it didn't sound like a thousand anymore, or a hundred-thousand, or a million, it sounded like a billion of them in her head now, burrowing, eating, stinging, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. She could feel something wet and slimy brushing against the shelf of her jaw; she suspected it was whatever remained of her left ear.

She was closing the distance on Noble, who still wasn't making any sudden moves.

At six feet she stopped and brought the gun up to cover him.

Noble spoke again. This time he said: "Don't you ever fucking die?"

He spat the words at her, trying to sound defiant, but it was a stupid thing to say and he seemed to know it. It was campy. Theatrical. Hollow, considering the circumstances. And so perfectly Noble.

Cruz didn't reply. She had her gun aimed at what she believed, somewhere in her fog, to be the approximate area of his chest.

Possibly sensing how far gone she was, Noble made as if to step forward, perhaps with the intention of lunging past her for the door.

Cruz made a tiny motion with the gun and croaked one word: "Stay."

It came out: 'tay.

Noble stayed. He raised his hands a little higher and waved them a bit, whoa, whoa, easy now. With distant surprise Cruz saw that he really was laughing. At first it seemed like he might actually have been crying, but she caught a sense of his facial expression and there was no doubt about it - Noble was laughing, as if he was watching all of this happen to somebody else and it was the funniest damned show in the world.

"Okay, I get it, I get it - you are one seriously hard chica!" he cried. His voice was high, squeaky, hysterically cheerful. "A tough nut! A walking tank! The NYPD brass don't know what they fucking threw away with you, do they?" He spread his arms. "The Unstoppable Force, Two-Bags Cruz!"

Cruz stared at him.

Noble stared back. There was a definite sense of reflection, of positions having been reversed almost perfectly from what they'd been only a moment ago. Cruz retained enough of herself to appreciate this. She appreciated it and she savored it. She savored the look on his face, what she could see of it.

"Oh, you silly bitch!" he blurted suddenly. "What did you really think was gonna happen? Huh? You really think I was gonna go on the run and shack up with you, play Bonnie and fucking Clyde with you for the next God-knew how many months? Change your fucking diapers and shoot you up with morphine and pour cough medicine down your fucking gullet?"

Cruz heard almost none of this.

Something else had caught her eye.

She glanced down and motioned with the barrel of the gun. "Kneel."

"Fuck yourself."

He wasn't laughing anymore. Clearly terrified now, he had just reached the stage where he wasn't quite sure if he should risk charging her or not. She could see it. She'd seen it on the job.

The tears would come next. The tears and the begging. Cruz knew this because, again, she had seen it before. She had watched Alvarez beg, cry, call for his mother. It would be just like that, just like Michael Alvarez, one of two men she had murdered.

"Cedargrove," Noble said shakily. "I'll put in a good word for you. Iggy ... Iggy shot first. I saw it. Self-defense. He attacked both of us. Right? They'll send you to Cedargrove."

Cruz motioned for him to kneel again but said nothing.

"Fine then, go for it, Two-Bags," he spat, spreading his arms bravely, exactly as she had less than five minutes ago. "Come on. Go for it. Shoot."

"Kneel and I won't."

'Nee 'n I 'on't.

Noble's head inclined slightly. He wanted to live. Of course he did - the bluster was just bluster, the bluster was shit. He wanted to live, and he'd take any chance he could, believe any promise she made.

Again, there was enough Cruz left to appreciate this.

He knelt, carefully, keeping his hands raised in warding-off position. The gesture was vaguely superstitious.

Cruz made another slight motion with the Tec-9. "Meth," she said simply.

Noble suddenly understood. He looked down.

The little ziplocked envelopes of the drug were scattered everywhere. A couple were right in front of him, illuminated by the sheet of pale light from the window.

"Pick it up," she whispered.

'Ick it uh.

Noble only stared at her, his throat working. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

"Pick it up, Noble."

"Why?" he said softly. A twinge of hope in his voice now. It was clear what he was thinking: do what she wants, and she just might let him go. Cruz's expression revealed nothing. She just stood there and looked down at him. Down through her blue fire.

Presently her nose began to bleed; it burst forth in a sudden gush, the way it had in his car, pouring down over her lips and chin.

It didn't bother her. She used it instead, spitting through it, showering the top of Noble's head with a little rainfall of bloody saliva.

"Why?" he repeated, but she could see the way his eyes were moving now, darting hungrily between her and the stuff on the floor. Even now he wanted it. Even with a gun to his head he wanted it.

Dimly she saw Lettie running across the street, running away from the Anti-Crime squad car, running for the house and her fix.

"You're going out, Noble," she rasped. "Might as well go out high."

Ten words. In her current state it was nothing short of a speech, but she got it out and Noble understood it.

He understood it, and he understood what it meant for him, and that was when he charged her.

He screamed as he did it, consciously or unconsciously trying to use her own tactic against her, but she'd sensed it coming, she'd sensed it because a little glimmer of the Anti-Crime Sergeant still existed in her. The Anti-Crime Sergeant had seen it all before. She'd watched cornered, desperate suspects weigh their options and make that last vain attempt at an attack before being shot down. She'd watched that very thing happen during the bust Noble had helped them make on Willie G., roughly two thousand years ago, in another life altogether.

The attack was borne of desperation and was poorly executed. Noble came in almost flailing, as if trying to start a schoolyard slap-fight, but he hit her full-on and the momentum sent both of them stumbling back across the room. Debris crunched underfoot, including pieces of the vase that Iggy's bullet had shattered. They staggered across the room in a kind of shuffling, grunting embrace, looking like two drunken invalids trying to dance.

Noble groped at her. Clawed at her. He was trying to hit the tender spots, raking at her mutilated ear, grabbing at her shoulder. Cruz felt her balance going, felt herself being pushed down by the man's superior weight and strength. All the thought she'd wasted on which way a physical confrontation would swing, and now here they were at last, and she was going over backwards, he was bearing down on her.

He caught hold of the side of her head and, almost growling, he yanked on something and she felt the tearing -

(the arm the arm he ripped my arm off)

- felt the pain slice through her head again as he pulled off an already-mangled scrap of her ear.

Her right foot went out behind her and braced her. She spat blood in his face. Noble grunted in surprise or disgust or both. He was groping for her shoulder now.

Cruz's hand was still on the Tec-9. The Tec-9, which had been mashed between them.

She pulled the trigger, not knowing or caring if the bullet would hit him or her, knowing a half-second later that it had hit him, because he screamed and suddenly his hands were gone, his weight against her was gone.

Noble took two loping steps backwards and dropped back to his knees again, clutching at his leg, blood pouring through his fingers; the bullet had torn a long, ragged channel through the meat of his right thigh.

Cruz took a step towards him. Noble was on his knees. Time folded back on itself again. Doubled. Tripled. She saw Noble -

(Alvarez/Gaines)

- kneeling in front of her, head bowed, groaning and cursing and holding his wounded leg, and she did now what she'd done then: she stepped forward and raised the Tec-9 almost like a club, brought the barrel down and struck the top of Noble's head with the muzzle, splitting his scalp, and squeezed the trigger again.

And again.

And again.

Noble was down, lying on his back, blood pooling around his head now in a halo. Cruz fired five more times into the body, mind and hand working mostly on autopilot. Only two of the five shots hit home.

It didn't matter anyway. He was dead.

Aaron Noble was dead.

Cruz stood over him a moment longer, swaying, swaying, wasps buzzing in her mind, blue fire everywhere, a low, gurgling, moaning sound coming from somewhere deep in her chest, tears streaming down her face. The Tec-9 slipped out of her hand, fell to the end of its strap, and thunked against her hip. She swayed.

Her balance -

(still standing)

- faltered.

But she was still on her feet.

She swayed.

Her balance went again. She staggered to the left and came up hard against the wall next to the doorway. She took the brunt on her shoulder and she felt something break again. Sutures, maybe. Or perhaps something deeper, one of those enigmatic surgical pins Noble had suggested. Fresh, moist warmth began to spread there. Jagged pain cut through what was left of her mind but she was beyond it now. A half-coherent -

(oh Lettie Lettie still standing still - )

(- still - )

( - standing -)

- thought skipped across her mind and then her legs folded up under her and she collapsed.

Sense was gone. Time was gone.

She sat in a semi-slump against the wall and she dreamed. Most were uneasy; more than a few were monstrous.

Once she thought someone was with her. Holding her. Stroking her face. She deliberately imagined it was Lettie and this pleased her. Lettie had been the one who always wanted Maritza to hold her - now Maritza was being held. Perhaps if she opened her eyes she would see her, her face round and healthy, untouched by addiction. The full cheeks, full lips, the pretty, dark, almond-shaped eyes.

Lettie, brushing her cheek, the shelf of her jaw. Wiping the blood away.

She could feel it. It was real.

It was cartilage. It was her left ear, which wasn't much more than a few chewed-up strings of gristle that brushed the side of her face as she breathed.

Minutes passed. Hours, maybe. She had no idea how long and no interest in knowing. Consciousness came and went, the blue fire and the wasps surging with it, receding with it, like the tide.

She was dying.

And yet she could hear sounds. Mundane sounds. Shuffling, a door opening, footsteps on wood, crunching through debris, a muffled exclamation, a muffled curse that sounded choked and fearful.

Eventually she realized: there was someone in the room with her. Someone besides the corpses of Aaron Noble and Iggy Marchand.

Cruz kept her eyes closed, but the feeling persisted, so she opened them again.

There was someone in the room with her. She saw a figure. She saw it was a man, a man in a hip-length leather jacket and jeans, wet from the rain. He was examining Iggy's body. She could see just a hint of his profile and that was all she needed to know who it was, the solid features and the close-cropped hair and his stance at once familiar to her, and she couldn't believe it, and yet it was true.

It was Maurice Boscorelli.