Outside, cars were starting and there was more shooting and men running and then cars accelerating hard on the gravel drive.
The guy with the mustache took Pike's shotgun and.357 and my Dan Wesson. Eddie held out his hand toward Mimi and said, "Come on, Me. It's okay." Me.
He didn't snarl and he didn't sneer and he didn't treat her like a dumb kid he had used to get his way. He took off his jacket and put it around her. "You okay?"
"It's cold."
He rubbed her arms, cooing to her. He told her that he loved her, and he told her that they were going to be fine as soon as they got to Japan, and he told her everything was going to be just as he had promised. He said those things, and he meant them. Every word. It was not what I had expected, but then, things rarely were.
I said, "You didn't kill Ishida to get the book. You killed him because he wanted the book so bad he was going to hurt the girl to get it." The yakuza hadn't taken Mimi from Asano's. She'd gone with them. Just like she'd gone with Eddie from the hotel.
Mimi said, "Why can't you leave me alone? Why do you have to keep finding me? We're going to Japan. We're going to be happy."
Eddie gave Mimi a little squeeze and tipped his head toward the Hagakure. "Get the book."
She padded over and picked it up and padded back. The jacket fell off and she was naked again, but she didn't seem to notice.
I said, "These people killed Asano, Mimi. Doesn't that tell you something?"
Mimi gave me the out-from-under look, and there was something angry in her face. "He thought he was my father. He thought he could boss me just like my father." Her eyes went red and strained. "I don't have a father."
Eddie said, "Shh," the way you calm a nervous dog. He snapped at the Mustache Man, pissed and wanting to know where everyone had gone, and the Mustache Man snapped back.
I said, "You're right, kid. You don't. He bled to death where you dropped him on Mulholland Drive."
Mimi's left eye ticked.
Eddie said, "Shut the hell up."
There was a heavy thud from the front of the house, and loud voices, then another car roared to life.
I said, "Hey, Eddie, you love her so much, how'd you help? You turn the crank? You say, 'What the hell, off the old bastard?'"
Eddie gave me uncertain eyes and I knew then that it had been Mimi. Just Mimi. Eddie probably hadn't even known. She'd gone off, maybe slipped away from him, just done it, then come back and told him, juiced and a little bit crazy. Blood simple. You could see it in his face. Eddie Tang, yakuza murder freak, even Eddie couldn't imagine killing his own father.
Mimi pulled at him. "Let's go, Eddie. I wanna go now."
I said, "She's sick, Eddie. She needs to go back and work with people who know what they're doing. If she doesn't, she'll never be right."
Mimi said, "No."
I said, "Leave her. I'll see she gets help."
Mimi said, "No."
The guy with the nothing mustache shouted something, wanting to finish it and go, but Eddie ignored him. Eddie knew there was something wrong, but he was fighting it. "She goes back, they'll put her in jail for killing her old man."
I shook my head. "They'll put her in a hospital. They'll work with her."
Outside, men crashed around the side of the house. Eddie barked something else in Japanese to the Mustache Man, then turned back through the French doors and yelled. Just as he did, a fat guy with no hair slammed out of the kitchen, waving a gun and screaming. Mustache Man looked, and when he did, Joe Pike took the High Standard out of his hand and shot the fat guy. I hit Mustache Man in the face with a roundhouse kick, and he went down, and then Eddie Tang was back in the house. It had taken maybe a third of a second.
I said, "That's it, Eddie." I picked up the Dan Wesson, then edged forward and pulled the girl toward me. She tried to jerk away, but she didn't try very hard. Maybe she was tired.
Eddie's face was dark. "Don't touch her, dude."
I pointed the gun at him. "Get out of the way."
Eddie put himself in the center of the door and shook his head. "You want the Hagakure, take it, but Mimi stays with me."
I looked at Pike. His glasses caught the light and showered it around the room.
"Make your brain work and think about this, Eddie. I'm going to see that she gets help. I'm going to see that she's made right."
Eddie Tang shook his head. "No." He took a step toward us. Me with the Dan Wesson, and Pike with the High Standard, and he took a step toward us.
I aimed the Dan Wesson at his forehead. "Eddie. Get real."
Eddie's shirt was wet and sticking to his skin. He yanked off the tie, and most of the shirt came with it. The tattoos writhed and glistened like living things. They crawled up his biceps, over his shoulders, and down across his chest and abdomen. Dragons roared and tigers leaped and samurai warriors locked swords in combat. Red, white, green, yellow, blue. Brilliant primary colors that made him look feral and monstrous and of the earth. He went down low and stared at us.
Pike's mouth twitched.
I said, "Joe. Not you, too?"
Joe Pike raised the High Standard level with Eddie's heart. "Your call."
Some days. I pushed Mimi to the side and put down the Dan Wesson and Pike dropped the High Standard and Eddie Tang launched two spin kicks so quickly that they were impossible to see. Mimi screamed. Pike rolled under the first kick and I pushed myself sideways and hit Eddie's back. Pike came up and snapped a roundhouse kick to the side of Eddie's head and punched him in the back of the neck and the kidneys. Eddie's body tightened like a single flexed muscle and he shook it off. I'd seen Pike crack boards with that kick.
Mimi screamed again and ran forward, scratching and hitting, and Pike pushed her down hard. She stayed there, holding the crumbling Hagakure to her breasts and watching with wide eyes.
We kept Eddie between us, moving on our toes and staying out of reach. Eddie was big and strong and knew the moves from a thousand tournaments, but tournaments weren't real. Real is different. If it wasn't, maybe we'd be dead.
Outside, there were no more shots and no more cars racing away. Voices came through the house and then faded and there was nothing. Maybe everyone was gone and we were all that was left, men alone in a dark wood, fighting.
We moved so that Eddie could never long face either of us. If he turned toward one, the other had his back. Pike would strike, and then me, and both of us worked to stay away from his hands and feet. He was faster than a big man was supposed to be, but having to work against two of us took away his timing. He couldn't get off the way you can get off one-on-one, and after a while he began to slow. We hit the big muscles in his back and his thighs and his shoulders, and he slowed still more. The certainty that had been in his eyes began to fade. It made me think of King Kong, fighting the little men for the woman he loved.
Far away, maybe on the other side of the lake, there were sirens. Something flickered on Eddie's face when he heard them, and he glanced at the girl. When the cops got here, she would go back, and he would go back, but they wouldn't go back together. He made a deep grunt and he tried to end it. He turned his back to Joe Pike and came at me. I backpedaled and Pike came in fast. Eddie ran me back against the doorjamb. He snapped a fist out and the fist hit the jamb and shattered wood and plaster. I rammed the heel of my hand up into the base of his nose and something cracked and blood spurted out and he grabbed me. Pike wrapped his hands around Eddie's face and dug his fingers into his eyes and pulled. Eddie let go and jerked an elbow back and you could hear Pike's ribs snap. I hit Eddie with two quick punches to the ear and followed them with another roundhouse kick that again snapped his head to the side. He staggered, but stayed up, and I said, "Shit."
The sirens howled closer and closer until the sound seemed to come from every direction, and then they were at the front of the house. Eddie was in the middle of the room, sucking air, with Pike and me on either side. Back where we started. Only now there was sweat and blood and cops at the door. Eddie looked from me to Pike to the girl, then lowered his hands and stood up out of his crouch as if someone had called time out. The girl said, "Eddie?"
He shook his head. There were tears coming down his face, working into the blood. He had given it his best, but it hadn't been enough.
I said, "It's over, Eddie."
Eddie looked at me. "Not yet." When he said it, he looked old.
Eddie Tang stepped over the fat guy and pulled Joe's shotgun from beneath the Mustache Man. He looked at it and then he looked at Joe Pike. There were more voices outside and somebody yelled for somebody else to watch himself. Mimi said, "Shoot them, Eddie. Shoot them now."
Eddie said, "I love her, man." Then he tossed the gun to Joe, bared his teeth like something crazed and primal, and charged straight ahead with a series of power kicks that could knock down a wall. Joe Pike fired four rounds so quickly they might have been one. The 12-gauge blasts in the small room made my ears ring and the buckshot load carried Eddie Tang backward through the French doors and out into the night. The four spent shells bounced off the ceiling and hit the floor and spun like little tops, and outside a cop voice shouted, "Holy shit!"
When the shell casings stopped spinning there was silence.
For the longest time, Mimi Warren did not move, then she looked at me and said, "I don't feel anything."
I said, "Kid, you've had so much done to you that the part that feels went dead a long time ago." Maybe Carol Hillegas could fix it.
Mimi cocked her head the way a bird will, as if I'd said something curious, and smiled. "Is that what you think?"
I didn't move.
She said, "I'm such a liar. I make up stuff all the time."
I went to her, then, and put my arms around her, and she started to scream, flailing and thrashing and trying to get to Eddie, or maybe just trying to get away from me. I held on tight, and said, "It's all right. It's going to be all right."
I said it softly, and many times, but I don't think she heard me.