“I am,” Sebastian wailed. “I told you, I told you last week, when I gave it to Uncle Jerry the pages were already gone. Someone else was in here ahead of me. It had to be her.”
Sebastian wrenched himself free of the thug holding him and fled toward the exit. Big Goon turned and shot. I leapt over and smashed my gun stock into Small Goon’s jaw.
He roared in pain, loosed his grip on Bernie.
“Go, go, go!” I screamed.
She almost made it, bending her slight frame low, to slide under Small Goon’s arms, but she was too tired, too shell-shocked for the speed she needed. Big Goon grabbed her. Small Goon slugged me. I kicked his shins, hard, and he jumped back. Small Goon fired at me, missed.
I felt the heat as the bullet zinged past. I ducked down, scooted under a pipe, shot back, high, over Bernie’s head. The sound was unbearable, echoing, reechoing. Smoke filled the air, the stink of sulfur. Big Goon fired again.
“Don’t fucking kill her until we know where the goddam pages are!” the smaller creep yelled.
“We’ll get little missy here to tell us where she lives and search her place. I’m tired of fucking bitches thinking they own the universe.” Big Goon shot again.
Eyes watering, coughing, ears ringing, find a target that wasn’t Bernie. Edge forward. A sharp shock, and I was plummeting over a cliff, bouncing down rocks into the tar pits.
WILD PITCH
Tar was in my nose, my lungs. It sucked me under, I couldn’t move my arms. Someone had been sick in front of me and the smell mixed with the tar was so terrible it made me vomit. I wanted my mother but Stella Guzzo and my aunt Marie appeared.
The tar poured over me and I blacked out. I woke in the modern epoch, into darkness so awful that I thought for a moment I actually was buried in tar. I flung my arms wildly trying to swim to the surface. Hit my hand on metal, heard it clang. Not tar. Tunnel. The smell of sewage and vomit. I’d been sick.
I struggled to sit up. My head knocked into a pipe and the jolt made me throw up again, a trickle of bile that left me panting for water.
Test for concussion: Can you remember the day, the president, the geological epoch? What’s your name? V. I. Warshawski. What’s your occupation? Idiot.
Bernadine Fouchard, she’d been with me. And then—masked men. Sebastian Mesaline. We’d fought, I could still smell the acrid gun smoke through the stench in my nose. Don’t think about what you’ve inhaled, sit up, move, slowly, but move! Phone in pocket, still working, turn on the light.
I’d been in the dark too long, I’d become a mole, couldn’t handle the stabbing shapes, colors. My head ached, my left eye was tearing, but I forced myself to keep blinking, looking, hoping for Bernie.
I was alone except for the rats. They’d gathered where I’d been lying, insolent, unconcerned, eating my vomit. Good thing I’d been sick, they’d have gone for my nose and cheeks first without it. The hard hat I’d borrowed had rolled off. My gun, nearby, I wanted to shoot the rats, but I only had one magazine and I’d already fired twice.
I bent slowly, not wanting to challenge my head, picked up the Smith & Wesson and the hard hat. I must have fallen heavily: the hat had a dent in it. I started to put it on, then looked at the dent. I’d been shot. The hat saved my life. The impact had knocked me out, but the men must have thought I was dead.
Move, V.I. Don’t be feeble, get out of here. I moved up the tunnel, got to the entrance. Locked in, no time for finesse. I shot out the lock, put my shoulder to the door. Damned mops were holding it shut. I backed up, shot at a hinge. The bullet ricocheted, but before I could find a cleverer strategy I heard shouting from the other side.
“What the hell are you doing in there?” Noises, mops scraping back, the door opened. I stood in the shadows, put away my gun when I saw who was on the other side. Five in the morning, game day. The grounds crew was there, getting the field ready for play.
I left through the doors in the outfield wall while the grounds crew were waiting for the cops to pick me up. The crew hadn’t been able to follow my story, or at least they didn’t believe my story—how could someone have been living inside the ballpark without the security detail noticing? They didn’t want to go into the tunnel to see the squalid nest Sebastian had built behind the steel panel, they didn’t have time for this kind of BS. No, the best thing was to have me picked up for trespassing and shooting a weapon inside the park.