L.A. Wars Page 7

  Hawker let the Colt Commander fall by his feet.

  “Kick that pretty gun away, mister-man. Kick it away or I’ll drop you where you stand.”

  Hawker shoved the gun with his foot. The man with the ugly sneer picked it up, inspected it, then slapped Hawker with the back of his hand so unexpectedly that Hawker didn’t have time to react.

  “Like I told you, white boy.” He chuckled. “You’re heart’s beatin’, but you’re dead.” He looked at the others. “Might as well have some fun before he die, eh, fellas?”

  Without waiting for a reply, the man drew a cheap case knife from his pocket and locked it open. “Razor be wantin’ your ears for his collection,” he said as he walked toward Hawker. “And I reckon Cat Man would be real pleased if we sent him your balls in a box. Nice little white balls, eh?”

  The other two laughed heartily.

  Hawker waited as the man approached, the knife held loose and ready. The man who had surprised him, Charlie, had closed the door. He was about two arm lengths behind him. The third man had retrieved the shotgun and now held it on Hawker.

  Hawker had one thing going for him: Both men were directly in each other’s line of fire. Anyone that stupid, he knew, could be beaten.

  The man with the knife lunged at him. Instead of jumping back, Hawker knocked the knife aside and locked his left arm over the man’s right elbow. With his fist flattened into a cutting edge Hawker smashed the man’s windpipe closed and swung him into Charlie as, at the same moment, he dived toward the shotgun.

  There was the roar of a gunshot by his ear, followed by a scream. Hawker didn’t have time to see what had happened. He wrestled the shotgun away, dived, rolled, and came up in time to see that the man who had lost the shotgun now held his own Colt Commander.

  Hawker didn’t hesitate. He fired, pumped, and fired again.

  The first shot drove the man across the room. The second shot blew his face away.

  After pumping a fresh round into the chamber, Hawker surveyed the room.

  Charlie lay dead in his own blood. He had been hit by the first shotgun blast intended for Hawker.

  The man with the knife still kicked pathetically on the floor, his eyes bulging. Hawker watched as the man clawed frantically at his ruined throat, then went slack and empty. Dead.

  Hawker didn’t like what he was about to do. But it was something the Panthers would understand.

  More important, it was something that would both frighten them and earn their respect.

  He took the knife from the hand of the dead man—the man who had tried to cut Hawker.

  Kneeling beside the corpse, Hawker sliced and sawed through the tough cartilage of the man’s left ear. It finally pulled away with a rooty tearing sound.

  Hawker carried the ear to the smooth surface of the desk. Using the blood like paint, he drew the head of a hawk.

  And in rough block letters he wrote: FOR YOUR COLLECTION.

  He left the ear on the desk and switched out the lights.

  nine

  Hawker knew he had to hurry.

  The Panthers had gone to declare war on the Satanás. And the Satanás didn’t strike Hawker as the type to back down from anything.

  So there would be a fight. A big fight—probably on neutral ground.

  Hawker wanted to make it to the Satanás’ headquarters, break in, bug it, then get out before they returned.

  It was ten forty-three P.M. by the green glow of his Seiko.

  He drove quickly through the Sunday streets of Hillsboro, headed for the Latin section. He had left his bloodied leather gloves hidden in an alley garbage can. The steering wheel was slick in his hands.

  He slowed and swung east on Ybor Avenue.

  The customized low-rider cars cavorted in the slow lane. Hawker passed them without looking back.

  Teen-agers roamed the streets, carrying their ghetto blasters—huge portable radios. They snapped their fingers as they half-walked, half-danced down their personal corridors of hell.

  Hawker wondered what became of such teenagers—knowing what became of them even as he wondered.

  Raised too often by unwed mothers who really didn’t give a damn about them, they did poorly in school and they fared even worse in the world’s work force. They grew up as vicious as the vicious slum society that produced them.

  Their lives would become a series of easy choices on the road to social slavery: welfare, drugs, crime, and, most probably, the outlaw fellowship of a street gang.

  So far Hawker had done battle only with adult members of the Panthers and Satanás. They were full-grown men; men old enough to know right from wrong. With them it was kill or be killed.

  As he drove, Hawker wondered about the kids in the gangs—for he had seen kids in both groups, teen-age boys hardly old enough to shave.

  If they came at him with murder in their eyes, would he be able to squeeze the trigger?

  Hawker wondered. He also wondered if there wasn’t some way he could prevent it.

  He drove past the Satanás’ headquarters twice. Lights were on inside, but no one was there. The outline of a hawk’s head, he noticed, was still seared into the wall.

  They wouldn’t soon forget.

  Hawker decided he had to make use of what little time he had. Instead of parking on the Hillsboro edge of the slums, Hawker pulled into a side street and got out.

  He pulled the black watch-cap low over his head and patted the Colt Commander to make sure it was safely holstered beneath his shirt. He slung the canvas pack over his shoulder and moved off through the shadows.

  It was eleven ten P.M.

  Hawker wondered how long the two gangs would battle.

  The door of the Satanás’ headquarters swung open easily. It surprised him—and made him even more cautious.

  The main room was brightly lighted. The walls were covered with bold, bright placas—street graffiti, in elaborate script. There were seedy lounge chairs against the walls, a main table, a television, and a telephone.

  It looked as if they had left in a hurry. An ashtray still smoldered. Half-full bottles of beer rested on the table and on the cement floor.

  Hawker could picture the Panthers idling by in their “war wagons,” calling out a challenge, and then the Satanás racing off in pursuit.

  If that was the scenario, they had probably been at it for nearly half an hour.

  Hawker would have to hurry. If the whole gang came back at once, he would be trapped. And to be trapped by the Satanás meant death.

  Quickly he unscrewed the mouthpiece of the telephone and connected a yellow disc-shaped three-wire listening device. He wiped his prints from the phone and placed it as he had found it.

  From the canvas pack he took three more blue bugs and stripped off the adhesive covers. He stuck one under the desk, another under the middle lounge chair, and the third in the grimy, closet-size toilet.

  There was a wooden door at the back of the main room. It was padlocked on a rusted hinge. Hawker drew the Commander, then kicked open the door.

  The room was dark and musty. Hawker felt along the wall and finally found the light switch.

  It was a storeroom. Like the Panthers, the Satanás had their own warehouse of stolen goods. Televisions and stereos were packed almost to the ceiling. There was enough stuff for Hawker to know that the street gang ranged a lot farther than Hillsboro to do their stealing. It looked as though they had been hitting every suburb in L.A.

  Hawker made his way through the rows of merchandise. In the far corner of the room was an old steel file cabinet. Hawker jerked the drawers open, one by one.

  Nothing.

  That’s when he noticed the safe: an old khaki floor safe, as squat and heavy as a miniature bulldozer.

  Hawker took a half-handful of the claylike thermate composition. He squeezed it into the seams of the safe, then added the pyrotechnic fuse. He ignited it and turned away.

  The thermate burned with white-hot intensity—2,150 degrees Centigrade�
��for almost a minute.

  The armor-plated door jolted beneath its own unsupported weight, then crashed to the floor.

  Hawker knelt by the safe and looked inside. The bottom was covered with a small stack of folders. Hawker jammed them into his sack and then began going through the wooden drawers of the safe.

  He expected to find money. He didn’t. Instead, he found five one-pound-sized bags of white powder. He sniffed it but didn’t taste it. Only amateurs and TV cops are stupid enough to taste an unidentified substance.

  Hawker guessed it to be heroin.

  He finished going through the rest of the drawers, then carried the bags of white powder to the toilet. He dumped them in and flushed twice.

  He was about to shut off the light when he heard footsteps.

  “Hey—who’s in there? That you, Hammer? Hey—Jesús?” It was a squawky, adolescent voice thick with a Spanish accent.

  Hawker listened as the footsteps came closer. He hugged the wall, waiting.

  When he saw the shadow cover the doorway, he reached out and rammed the intruder against the wall, the Colt Commander jammed against his left ear.

  “Shit, mister, don’t kill me; please don’t kill me.”

  Hawker realized that the voice came from a slightly built teen-ager. The kid was tall but thin—probably sixteen years old at the most. He had a bright, olive-colored face, and he wore the red bandanna of the Satanás.

  The kid seemed to focus on him for the first time. His eyes widened, as if he were seeing his first big league ballplayer. “Hey, you’re him. You’re the gringo … the red-haired one who—” His eyes changed from wonder to terror. “You’re the gringo who pisses fire!”

  Hawker released his grip. “I should kill you,” he whispered.

  “No, no—please don’t kill me.”

  “Then talk. And talk fast.”

  “Anything, mister. I’ll tell you anything.”

  “Tell me about your gang. Tell me about your leaders. Who are they, what are they like? Where do you fence the stuff you steal? And how many more kids your age are in the gang?”

  Hawker didn’t have to prod him again. The kid told him all he wanted to know and more, in a rapid, rattling English.

  When he had finished, Hawker backed a step away. The kid seemed to sag with relief. Hawker couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him.

  “What’s your name?”

  “My nickname is Caña—it means ‘cane,’ ’cause I’m so thin. My real name is Julio Castanada Balserio.”

  “You seem like a nice kid, Julio, so tell me: Why in the hell did you join the Satanás?”

  He shrugged. “You fight them. Or you join them.” He shrugged again. “I am not stupid.”

  Hawker nodded. “I’m not going to kill you, Julio. But tell your friends that I am looking for them. And tell your leaders that I’ll kill them if they don’t kill me first.”

  Hawker went to the front door and glanced both ways. The road was clear. Hawker went out the door.

  “Hey—gringo,” the voice of Julio Castanada Balserio called after him. “They say you are the devil. Is it true?”

  Hawker turned down the street at an easy trot. His voice echoed behind him.

  “It’s true.…”

  ten

  When Hawker got back to his cottage on Manhattan Beach, he hid his weaponry, then steamed himself clean in the shower.

  It was twelve thirty-five A.M.

  He set the teakettle on to boil. A chilly summer wind blew off the Pacific, rustling the curtains. The sound of the sea breaking over the reef was like a waterfall.

  Hawker dressed himself in fresh socks and a favorite pair of sweat pants. It was cool enough for a sweater, and Hawker pulled a worn cotton crew-neck over his head.

  When the kettle whistled, he steeped a bag of Emperor’s Choice herb tea in a stoneware mug. He added honey, then carried the mug to the porch, where he had placed the Eavesdrop receiver.

  Hawker keyed the rewind toggle, then hit the forward switch. The circuit-one tape had recorded every sound in the Panthers’ headquarters, beginning with his starting the car as he drove to the slums, and then the muffled explosion of Hawker’s breaking in.

  Hawker let the tape play completely through. He heard the gunshots and the hoarse death cries of the men he had killed. There was a momentary silence on the tape, and then the noise of the other Panthers returning as the machine began to record again.

  He listened to that segment carefully, making notes in his mind.

  The Eavesdrop had begun recording in midconversation—presumably, as the street gang leaders came through the door.

  “… done broke into our fucking headquarters—”

  “We been hit, man!”

  “Some brothers dead in here, Razor! Fuckin’ corpses everywhere, man!”

  There was the static garble then of many voices calling at once. Then the cold, calm voice of Razor, their leader, took control.

  “Shut up! You hear me? Now, shut that damn door. You want someone to see in here, fool? Amin, you go outside and tell the other bloods go on home. Don’t say nothin’ ’bout this shit.”

  “Razor—look at this, man. They done cut off his fucking ear!”

  “Son of a—”

  “Here it is. Aw, shit. It’s that Hawk business—”

  “The fucking ear is on the desk, man. Got a message in fucking blood. Says you’re supposed to add this ear to your collection, Razor. Written in blood—”

  “Get out of my way, fool!”

  “Who the fuck is this Hawk dude, Razor? Couldn’t be with the Satanás. Hell, we was heads-up with the Satanás when this dude was in here—”

  “Maybe Cat Man’s right, Razor. Maybe it’s this white dude with the red hair. He’s a fucking killer, man—”

  “I’m startin’ to get a little nervous, Razor, no shit, man. This dude is bad news. Like a lunatic or somethin’—”

  “… his throat’s been crushed, man. Look the way his eyes be bugging out—”

  “Quiet! Y’all just shut up, hear? Man can’t hear himself think. How’d this dude know where to hit us? That’s what I want to know. Anybody got an answer to that? And how’d this dude know we was gonna be out? And how in the fuck did he know about my ear collection, unless—”

  “Shit, Razor, you don’t think one of our bloods has gone over to whitey, do you? Like an informer—”

  “Somebody been talking, damn it! That’s the one thing that’s clear here, man. This white dude been getting information from somebody. And I’ll tell you this: If I find out who it is, they’re dead. I’ll kill them myself, and they ain’t gonna die easy—”

  “This shit’s starting to get spooky, Razor. Maybe we ought to cool it for a few weeks. Close down—”

  “Close down, my ass! We gonna find this informer, and we gonna kill him. Then we gonna find this Hawk dude, and we gonna kill him, too.”

  “How in the hell—”

  “No more talk, man! We got work to do. We got to get these TVs and shit out of here. Got to hide everything someplace else. And then we got to call the cops.”

  “Gonna call the cops?”

  “And what the fuck would you do, man? Try and hide three bodies in downtown L.A.? You nuts? They’ll pin all this shit on us, if we do. Gotta get the cops in. Cat Man told ’em the story about this Hawk dude, and they didn’t believe him. Maybe they’ll believe him now.…”

  Hawker switched off the machine and sipped his tea. He had heard at least six different voices on the tape. To him it meant that, no matter what Razor commanded, the word would, indeed, get out to the rest of the Panthers.

  Their reaction, he hoped, would be even more emotional than that of their leaders.

  All the elements Hawker wanted were there: fear, panic, and loss of confidence.

  The Panthers were heading for a fall. A very hard fall. Now Hawker was concerned about the few—the very few—who didn’t deserve to fall.

  Hawker remembered what th
e young Sataná, Julio Balserio, had told him: “You fight them. Or you join them.”

  Hawker wanted to give kids like Balserio a chance to get out. It wouldn’t be easy to arrange. But it was important that he try.

  Hawker backed the second tape and switched the Eavesdrop unit to circuit two. He used fast forward to skip the noise he had made, then listened as the Satanás returned.

  The exclamations of surprise were in a profane mixture of English and Spanish—shock similar to that which he had heard in the Panthers’ headquarters.

  Then the recorder picked up the adolescent voice of Julio Balserio—Caña, to the other Satanás. Julio spoke in English.

  “… saw him, cuz. He put a gun to my head. Said he’d kill me—”

  “Who the hell was it, Caña? And you’d better have a damn good reason for letting this cabrón—”

  “The gringo; the gringo who hit us the other night, Hammer! He’s the one that broke in here and tore the place apart. He’s the devil, Hammer. I swear to God he’s evil—”

  There was the sound of someone being slapped, and then Julio began to cry.

  “Don’t hit me no more, Hammer. I couldn’t do nothing. He’d already torn the place up by the time I found him.”

  “Shit! Hammer, he blew open the fucking safe! He took the junk, man!”

  The voices on the tape became muffled then. Hawker realized how stupid he’d been not to bug the storeroom. He could understand brief snatches of distant yelling, but nothing more. Soon, though, they returned to the meeting room. Julio was no longer crying, but the fear was still evident in his voice. He was reenacting what had happened.

  “… door was open, so I came in. I kept calling for you, Hammer. And for Jesús. I didn’t know you was out gang-banging with the Panthers. Got here by the toilet, and he just appeared. Like out of nowhere, he was just there. Like a ghost or something.”

  “You fuckin’ nuts, Caña. Ain’t no such things as—”

  “Let our little cuz talk, man! I seen that son of a bitch piss fire. You saw it, too. We got some scary shit on our hands here, Hammer.”

  “Just a trick, man. That was just some sort of gringo trick—”

  “Keep talking, Caña. What happened next?”