“I know. That’s why I stopped twenty years ago.”
The phone in Lucas’s hand rang, and the woman said, “I’m coming out the back, right now, my hands are over my head.”
Lucas asked, “What about the guy with you?”
“I don’t think he’s coming,” she said.
? ? ?
AT THAT MOMENT, a man walked out the front door of the blue house with a rifle, with the attitude of a man who deeply, seriously didn’t give a shit, even about himself. He raised the rifle and began shooting at the window where they were standing, and Lucas and Laurent lurched back into the room and went to the floor as bullets winged off the windowsill and buried themselves in the ceiling.
? ? ?
THE SHOOTING STOPPED for just a moment, and Laurent low-crawled to the window, peeked as Lucas shouted, “No, no!” and Laurent said, “Fuck him,” and stood up and shot the man, who had just jammed another magazine in his rifle. The man fell down in the street, and Lucas came over and looked down and said, “Nice shot, I guess.”
In the silence after the shooting, they could hear Frisell shouting at the woman: “Hands all the way up. All the way up,” and they saw the woman walking with raised hands through the weeds toward the creek.
There were two more recently dialed numbers on the phone, and Lucas punched the first of the two. No answer, and no ring. He tried the third number, and a man answered. “You in the hardware store?”
“Yeah. This a cop?”
“Yes. Pilate ran away, Bell is dead, Laine is shot, but might make it if we can get her to a hospital, and Chet’s shot in the street. You should be able to see him. We don’t know if he’s dead or not. As long as you’re in the hardware store, we can’t help him. If you quit now, we might be able to save his life,” Lucas said.
Behind him, Laurent said, “I don’t think so.”
Lucas held up his finger to quiet him—honesty was not always the best policy—and the man said, “Hold on.” Lucas waited, then a woman came on and asked, “How do we know that Pilate really ran away?”
“Well, you could call him.”
“He said not to call him unless it was an emergency,” the woman said.
Lucas rolled his eyes at Laurent, and then said, “Chet might be bleeding to death in the street. We’re about to shoot that hardware store so full of holes that it’ll look like a fuckin’ colander. Excuse the language. We’ve got fifty cops out here with machine guns. You want to call Pilate first, that’s fine, because I’d say, all things considered, that you have an emergency.”
After a few seconds, she said, “Okay.”
Lucas could hear a man talking in the background, and then she said, “We’re coming out the front, don’t let anybody shoot us.”
“Wait three minutes, then come out. We’ve got to calm some people down, after you shot those cops up in Brownsville.”
“Brownsville. We didn’t go through Brownsville. We were up at the beach.”
“Okay, but give us three minutes. How many of you are there?”
“Two. Two of us. Just me and Richie. We’ll come out when you say so. Don’t shoot us.”
? ? ?
LAURENT CALLED THE COPS at the compass points, told them to hold off firing at the disciples when they showed themselves in the street. Lucas called the bartender, and the people holed up in the gas station, and told them not to shoot. Then Lucas and Laurent went down to the ground floor and stood by a window where they could see the front of the hardware store.
Peters and the deputies had rolled the wounded woman in the quilt, and Lucas told them to wait to see what happened: if the people in the hardware store surrendered, they wouldn’t have to try to wrestle her through a window.
When everybody was set, Lucas called the woman back, and when she answered, said, “Come on out.”
Ten seconds later, the front door of the hardware store opened and a tall natural-blond woman poked her head out. They knew she was a real blonde because she was naked. She stepped out into the street followed by a man, who was a natural brunette and just as naked. They stepped out to the edge of the street with their hands raised.
“What the hell is that all about?” Laurent asked.
Lucas stepped outside, his .45 leveled at the two naked disciples, and said, “It’s an L.A. thing. If you surrender naked, it makes it harder for the cops to say they thought you were going for your gun.”
“Well, I guess that’s true,” Laurent said. “Although the guy appears to be in possession of a .22.”
? ? ?
LUCAS AND LAURENT kept their guns on the disciples and two of the deputies nervously approached them, handcuffs dangling from their hands. Peters and the other three deputies came out the front door, carrying the wounded woman in the quilt.
Laurent moved to his left so he wouldn’t be shooting at the deputies if the naked people produced guns, from the legendary back-cheek holsters. As the deputies got close, Lucas saw movement in the hardware store window and screamed, “Watch it, watch it,” and the deputies flinched and then a spray of shots blew through the hardware store window and the deputies went down.
Lucas didn’t know if the deputies had dropped to make smaller targets, or had been hit, but Laurent had gone to full-auto on his rifle and was blowing up the front of the store and Lucas ran across the street toward the side of the hardware store, scared to death, peeked in a side window and saw a man squatting next to a pile of firewood that had been stacked in the middle of the floor, the man’s hands covering his head as glass and splinters rained down on him from Laurent’s return fire. The man had a black rifle in one hand. He saw Lucas at the last minute and Lucas emptied his .45 at the man, who stood up and did a little death dance and then fell back.