Isaiah ran back down the hall. A right turn to the front door was the quickest way out but there were kids playing in the street. He went left, racing through the kitchen to the back door. He saw Skip, swinging into the living room gun first. For a split second they made eye contact. Skip fired. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP but Isaiah was already through the door, bullets blowing up canned goods in the pantry.
Isaiah streaked across the yard toward the back fence but Skip came out of the kitchen shooting. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP. Isaiah cut sharply, slamming his shoulder into the side garage door and flattening himself against a wall, nothing to hide behind but Alejandro’s cage and the lawn mower. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP. Rounds punched through the roll-down door in the front, shafts of sunlight beaming through the holes. Skip was keeping him from moving around and finding a weapon. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP. Isaiah thought about dying. The only way out was the way he came in and he could hear Skip going over there. His one advantage was the brilliant sunny day. The rest was up to Skip.
Skip approached the side door. “I’m coming for you, Q Fuck,” he said. Wary of an ambush, he shot into either side of the door. SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP. “Got anything to say now, smart-ass?” Skip stepped inside and was momentarily blinded while his vision adjusted from sunlight to dark. He wheeled the gun back and forth, firing randomly SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP—and saw, through the Milky Way of his recovering eyes, Isaiah in the far corner. Skip whipped around and fired. SNAPSNAPSNAPCLICKCLICKCLICK. Isaiah came off the floor like a stingray. No shirt, oil stains on his chest and cheek. He knocked the gun aside with an inside-out forearm and threw a straight right at Skip’s face but Skip turned his head and the punch clipped him on the ear. Isaiah came back with a left that caught Skip flush on the jaw and another right that skimmed through his hair as he fell to the floor. Skip went for the Beretta but Isaiah was already gone.
“Son of a bitch!” Skip said, getting to his feet. That fucker was fast, the blows seeming to come all at once. And then Skip saw it. The bullet-riddled T-shirt fitted over the lawn mower handlebars, the Harvard cap balanced where the head should be. “You’re dead,” Skip said. “You are so fucking dead.”
Isaiah ran, cutting between houses until he was sure he was in the clear. He stopped and took a blow, bent over with his hands on his knees. He was glad he’d counted right. He’d seen the high-capacity magazine extending below the gun’s grip as he was going out the back door. If it held a few more rounds he’d be dead. He’d missed with a couple of punches. Damn. If he’d connected, Skip would have been out cold. And he felt foolish for provoking him in the first place. All that nonsense about shaking his tree hadn’t accomplished anything except almost getting him killed. He thought about calling the police but Skip was wearing a mask and gloves and had no doubt ditched the gun and the van. The police could arrest him on a parole violation. Skip always had a gun in that back holster and there were all those shell casings on the ground at Blue Hill. But Skip was the only link to his employer. With him out of the picture there were no leads at all. It was risky leaving Skip out there waiting to kill Cal but that didn’t seem too likely. All Cal had to do was stay in the house and he’d be perfectly safe.
In the evening, the bald hill turned a blue steel color like the S&W ProMag Skip used to own. The dogs were rolling over the desert like a blitzkrieg in the fading light, scaring up rats, rabbits, birds, and ground squirrels; Skip with his AK shooting anything the dogs hadn’t already killed. He wanted to see blood and suffering and death. He wanted to release some of his anger so he wouldn’t go back to Q Fuck’s house and empty a clip into his smart-ass mouth. Skip was out of ammo when Kurt called.
“Hey, how are ya, 007?” he said. “I’ve got that intel about the rapper. Should I tell you over the phone or put it in a secret code?”
“Just give it to me,” Skip said, wanting to shoot him through the phone. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I can work with that.”
Santa Monica Boulevard was the main thoroughfare through West Hollywood, an area where a lot of gay people lived and worked. Isaiah drove, a little embarrassed. He didn’t know what he was expecting but it didn’t look any different than any other retail street. Shops, stores, restaurants, bars. Maybe the men were a little tidier than most but otherwise that was it.
“Didn’t I tell you Skip would come after you?” Dodson said. “I still can’t believe you said that shit about the puppies.”
“Shot the house to pieces, nearly got me too,” Isaiah said. “It was a setup. Skip got there the same time I did or he’d have shot me coming through the door. I think the inside man was supposed to give him a heads-up after we left Cal’s place but he was tardy making the call.”
“Lucky for you. You know who it is yet?”
“The inside man? No. Not yet.”