Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [146]
The wink is like returning to a childhood playground, and finding a swing still rocking as if you had only just this moment climbed down. It’s enough.
The first shot goes straight through his left eye, blatting a baseball of shit out of the back of his skull. He’s still trying to back away as the next bullet tears through his groin, and as another splashes through most of his throat. But then he’s on the ground, legs spastically twitching, as we step forward to stand over him.
The dog watches it all, from its patch by the wall, but it’s got problems of its own and Ray’s going to die anyway.
She doesn’t stop firing until the gun is empty. The body is still by then, and has nothing worth speaking of above the neck. The cigarette alone is almost intact, clamped between lips which look like something out of an autopsy wastebasket. She decides to leave it that way.
I put my hand in her pocket, and pull out another clip. Her hands are trembling a great deal by then, and I think she already knows she has failed. While she’s still fumbling to reload, she finally notices the sound of a car hurtling towards her. Her head jerks up.
I know immediately that it’s not the cops, and that I’ve seen the car somewhere before. Laura doesn’t. She doesn’t know what to think. He mind is too empty and fractured to make a decision, and her body makes it for her.
We back away, stumbling over our feet and dropping the gun. Then we turn and run, tears flying out either side of her face, expecting to die and wondering only why it has taken so long.
We glance back for an instant, and see the car has pulled to a halt in the middle of the crossroads. The doors are open, and two figures are standing over Ray’s remains. The men are of identical heights, wear matching light grey suits, and have eyes that don’t look right.
One picks up the gun; the other shouts “Shit! Shit shit shit!” in a voice so deep and loud that I wonder how the buildings around us remain standing. He turns slowly towards us, a streetlamp directly behind his head.
We turn the corner before he sees us, and run until we fade into black.
part one
REMtemp
I was in a bar in Ensenada, drinking a warm beer quickly and trying to remind myself that I hadn’t murdered anyone, when my alarm clock caught up with me. Little bastard.
Housson’s was full to the rafters and noisy as hell, and not just because everyone was talking loudly. Two local alfalfa barons had come into the bar to celebrate some deal, perhaps even a merging of their cash crop-related dynasties, and an eight-piece mariachi band had joyfully latched onto them and settled in for the night. The rest of the bar was a Jackson Pollock of local color: seedy photographers trying to charge tourists for pictures, leather-faced ex-pats peering around the place like affronted owls, and Mexicans setting about getting drunk with commendable seriousness. The bar looks like it was last redecorated about forty years ago, by someone who had the more functional end of the Wild West in mind: dusty floorboards, walls painted with second-hand cigarette smoke, chairs stolen from some church hall. The only nod in the direction of decor is the fading sketches of ex-barmen, renowned alcoholics and similarly distinguished local characters which adorn the walls. One of these had already come crashing to the ground, the casualty of a bottle hurled by a disgruntled drunkard, and all in all the atmosphere was just one step short of chaos.
I was tired and my head hurt, and I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I should have been out on the streets, or checking different bars, or even heading back to LA. Anywhere but here. She was nowhere to be seen, and as I hadn’t had the time to go to a co-incidence dealer before I left LA, I didn’t expect her to just wander in. I was still pretty confident