Then the pressure started, huge arms around my chest, pinning me, squeezing me. I fumbled, trying to fight, but my arms were jammed into my sides. I felt my feet coming up off the floor, and with that, little red-and-black sparkles formed in the corners of my eyes and worked their way toward the center of my vision.
How odd to see my feet in the air in front of me, my knees cocked at right angles. I felt like the wimpy guy in a TV wrestling match you know was just thrown into the ring as fodder.
Whoever my attacker was, he was on me like Nately’s whore. He growled loudly, his hot breath on my neck as he fought to force the last breath out of me. He was concentrating on squeezing my chest, and as he did so I felt my legs dropping back down toward the floor. We were jammed close to the wall. My shoes brushed against the plaster as they came down.
Suddenly I contracted my gut as hard as I could, crunching myself into a tight ball. I wedged my feet between the two of us and the wall, planted them on the plaster, and kicked as hard as I could.
He grunted loudly and fell back, losing his balance in the process, and momentarily easing his grip around my chest. As we fell backward I pulled my head in close to my sternum, then snapped up as hard as I could.
The back of my skull connected with his chin. He barked loudly in pain, then fell back against the opposite wall. My arms dropped free. I held my right hand out in front of me, balled it tightly, then ripped down hard to my right, as fast as I could in the meanest arc I could muster. I connected perfectly and felt the whoosh of air jet out of his lungs as my crumpled fist hit the collection of lumps between his legs.
He dropped. Match over.
I fell on top of him as he went down, my back on his chest. In a blur, I had the stun gun out of my field-jacket pouch pocket and jammed it into his thigh behind me. I hit the button and a thin, watery scream escaped from his lips. He jerked so hard he almost threw me off him, but my weight held him down. His whole body gyrated and shook. I let him have about two seconds worth of Great White Light, then rolled over to face him.
My own breathing sounded like an air compressor gone wild. My heart raced like it had never done before; there was a gang fight going on in my temples.
I stared into his face, trying to figure out who the hell he was. Slobber ran from his lips. His eyes were wide-open and wild, his color almost slate gray.
“Who the hell are you?” I screamed, inches from his face.
I heard thumping on the steps behind us. I jerked and turned, ready to fight again. Only it was Mr. Porter, fat and breathless, with his .38 pointed in a two-handed police stance right at us.
“It’s okay,” I gasped. “It’s over.”
Mr. Porter stood two steps down the flight of stairs, his arms bent, covering the guy from behind the corner of the stairwell.
I grabbed the lapels of a dingy work shirt. “Goddamn it, who are you?”
His eyes flicked back and forth like a Parkinson’s disease tremor. For all I knew, after a couple of seconds’ worth of stun gun he might not be able to figure out who the hell he was. But I’d been scared witless myself, and I was in no mood to feel sorry for anyone. I put the stun gun in his face, with my finger on the button.
“You want some more?”
An animal cry of fear jumped out of his throat, and his lips struggled to make the word no.
I got up on my knees, then reached down and ran my hands down his sides, around his pants pockets.
“Where is it?” I yelled.
He looked at me like I was from another planet. “Where’s what?” he croaked.
I recognized the voice. I’d heard it before, on a collection of tapes I’d pulled off my answering machine. The revelation that I had the death-threat guy made me even crazier. “The piece! The knife! The slapjack! Where is it?”
I yanked on his collar, hard enough to make him grimace. “I ain’t got nothing,” he gasped.
I eased up on him, then backed off, leaned against the opposite wall, and squatted back on my heels. “No gun? No knife?”
He pulled himself up on his haunches and leaned against the wall, sweat pouring off of him, color coming back to his face. He self-consciously put his hand in his crotch and rubbed gently.
“I didn’t come up here to kill ya,” he said.
“Then what did you come up here for?”
“I just came up here to whip yer ass, that’s all.”
I looked up at Mr. Porter, who had a quizzical look on his face as he stared down the pistol barrel.
I relaxed a little and lowered my hand holding the stun gun. “You ignorant-assed redneck hillbilly, you came up here to whip my ass and you didn’t even bring a weapon?”
Suddenly I felt insulted. “What kind of wuss do you think I am?”
He looked up at me and gave me this look that was right out of an episode of Gomer Pyle USMC. “I don’t rightly know what kind of wuss you are.”
I couldn’t help it; I broke out laughing, partly from relief, partly from the whole situation being so damned crazy. Mr. Porter looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “You want me to call the police?”
I stood up, trying to control myself. No use humiliating the poor sucker even further. “No, I’d say we got things pretty well under control.”
Mr. Porter lowered the pistol and inserted it gingerly into the small holster on his belt. Just to be sure, though, I kept my hand wrapped around the stun gun. I looked down at the guy as he gingerly massaged his groin. “Just who are you?” I asked, this time more politely.
He cocked his jaw and looked at me as I stood above him. With that I saw his face as I’d seen it once before, from above and a distance, through the viewfinder of a videocamera.
“Holy shit,” I said. “You’re the bricklayer.”
He pulled his legs under him and started to rise. I backed off a step and pointed the stun gun at him. He stared at me like a puppy I’d just kicked the stew out of. “Can I please stand up?”
“If you do it real slow.”
He slid against the wall as he stood. “I’d be a retired bricklayer by now if you hadn’t dogged me all the way to Louisville.”
I scratched the side of my head in the classic display of confusion. “But how the-how did you find me? How did you know it was me? I was never any closer to you than a telephoto lens could get. We never talked, never met.”
“Rick Harvey and Steve White told me,” he said sheepishly.
I thought for a moment. “Who the hell are-”
Then it hit me. “The insurance investigators
he bricklayer grinned. “Them two boys was awful pissed off at you. You made ’em look bad in front of their boss.”
I shook my head, exasperated. “Well, I’ll be dipped in …”
“You need me anymore?” Mr. Porter asked.
I turned to him. “No, thanks, Mr. Porter. I really appreciate you helping me out. I owe you one.”
He turned, his massive belly shaking as he started down the steps. “I just hope you never have to repay the favor,” he said as he disappeared.