The Triggerman Dance

"It's yours."

With Holt's finger-barrel aimed between their eyes, the next two agreed.

Holt saved the leader until last. "Whose turf are you on, homie?"

"This here is my fuckin' turf, pendejo."

Holt hooked the leader in the nose with two fingers. The boy yelped, then struggled upward out of his seat, scrambled across the table through the junk food and the ketchup, spilling drinks with his heavy shoes, walking on air it seemed as Holt forked his head up high and started across the room. Holt looked like a ventriloquist with his dummy. The boy dangled after him, shoes just barely touching the ground. The kid's piece clattered to the floor as he clawed at Holt's upraised hand, to no effect whatsoever. The blood ran down Holt's arm and dripped off his elbow. At the door Holt let him down, blocked the kid's wild roundhouse with one hand, then snapped a kick to the chest that sent the leader reeling backwards faster than his heels could go, finally sprawling him over an unoccupied table. Holt kicked away the gun, walked over, yanked off the kid's bandana and wiped his bloody hand and forearm with it.

"Whose turf are you on?" he asked.

"Yours, man. Your fuckin' turf."

"Remember that. The next time someone with blond hair and blue eyes wants to have lunch in here, you remember that."

He looked around the restaurant one last time before turning to leave. An ocean of bright red seats and yellow tables, a few desultory faces staring back at him, the brightly clad employees behind the aluminum counter dully agog—and all of it outlined in pulsing red.

His heart was beating hard and his breathing was fast and shallow.

They don't understand, he thought.

"Do you?"

John's expression was blank. Maybe he isn't the man we need, thought Holt. Maybe it was too much to expect.

"Do I what, sir?"

"Do you understand?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

CHAPTER 30

Holt guided the chopper across the dark blanket of the night, felt better now that he had seen the place where Pat had d because he had come through the Red Zone and found Clarity.

It was like having an orgasm of fury instead of an orgasm pleasure.

Now the control stick felt like an extension of his body his body felt like an extension of his mind. To him the Hughes seemed a tiny solar system under his control.

My control.

"What were you trying to accomplish?" asked John.

Holt looked over at him, pleased by his direct, if naive, questions. Sometimes, John seemed so ready to be guided. Maybe is what I need.

"Clear my head. I live pissed off twenty-four hours a day. The only time I can get through it to the other side is when I’m right there where it happened. Or when I'm planning justice, getting back on the horse that's thrown me, when I go to where Pat died. The fury boils over into something else."

"Peace?"

"Oh, Christ no. Lucidity. Clarity. Vision. A clean sigh to what I need to do."

John seemed to think about this. Holt watched him star the window, then glance over toward him.

"Are you planning some justice, Mr. Holt?"

"Of course I am. It's my work. I do it every day. You'll see."

"Ever think of vengeance?"

Holt looked at him, pleased again that John was neither as innocent nor obtuse as he could seem.

"Hourly."

Holt could feel the silence forming a question, and he knew what the question was. Once you got John going in a certain direction, he took things all the way. Holt liked that. He liked the way John had tried his best to find the bikers that day in Anza, after they'd torched his home. Follow-through, he thought, one of my favorite qualities in a man.

"No," said Holt. "I did not disappear Ruiz. I never had the chance to. Would have."

"Really?"

"Really. Tried to find him, actually. All of Liberty Ops did. Cops did. Everybody did. No Ruiz. Think he went back to Mexico. I've got some people down there."

"And if you find him?"

"Justice requires his life. So does vengeance. Take your pick."

"What's yours?"

"None needed. Get to the victims of any bad crime, you'll find the same thing. Justice is the law of the state. Vengeance the law of men. Dovetail, sometimes."

"I didn't mean to pry. I just remember the questions you asked me about Jillian."