CHAPTER ELEVEN

There were four of them, all over six feet, all built on a fairly grand scale – somewhere between eleven and twelve hundred pounds of tattooed muscle and lard ambling up towards him. And judging by the lethal assortment of hardware they’d brought along to play with, it wasn’t to ask the time.

The four stopped, forming a semi-circle cutting Ben off from his Jeep. Nobody spoke. The only sound was the rhythmic meaty thwack as one of them slapped the thick of his aluminium baseball bat against his palm. One of his companions was casually swinging a bolo knife. Maybe fourteen inches of black leaf-shaped blade, just this side of a machete, and Ben guessed every one of those inches was shaving sharp. With a rattling chink-chink, another of the men unravelled a length of heavy steel chain from his fist.

The biggest of the men, standing around six-five in denim and biker boots, seemed to be the leader. In the hierarchy of moronic bruisers, size was always the dominant factor. The survival knife stuck crossways in his belt was some cheap mail-order job with a sawback blade and knuckleduster hilt. His head was shaved and gleaming under the moonlight. A line of tattooed teardrops ran down his cheek from his right eye, disappearing into the thick black beard that hung halfway down his chest, fashioned into twin spikes, rigid with hairspray. Going for the demonic look, Ben guessed.

‘You guys look like you’re auditioning for a part,’ he said. ‘Or did you escape from a freak show somewhere?’

The black beard opened in a grin, showing a glint of a gold tooth. ‘We’re the reception committee, motherfucker,’ he said in a voice that was about half an octave lower than was human.

‘I get it,’ Ben said. ‘You’re what they call the frighteners.’ He smiled. ‘Here to intimidate me.’

‘Smart guy.’

‘I catch on fast. So when does the frightening part begin? I have to be somewhere.’

The baseball bat kept on slap-slapping. The bearded guy fingered the hilt of his survival knife. ‘How do you feel about wiping someone else’s ass, little man?’

‘Excuse me?’ Ben said, genuinely intrigued.

‘See, most folks would find the idea of wiping someone else’s ass is pretty fuckin’ repellent, no?’

The guy waited for Ben to comment. When he realised Ben wasn’t going to, he went on in his bass rumble. ‘Say you had to wipe asses for a livin’, like if you was carin’ for old folks or somethin’. Sure, to start with, every time you had to wipe an ass you’d feel like pukin’ afterwards. Or maybe even while you was doin’ it. But after a while, you’d get used to that shit. Then wipin’ some old fucker’s ass wouldn’t seem like nuthin’. You could wipe a hundred asses before breakfast. Now, see the point I’m makin’ …’

Ben had been waiting for the point.

‘The point I’m makin’ is that in my line of work, it ain’t wipin’ asses. It’s spillin’ blood. You get me? And I’ve been doin’ this shit so long I can’t even remember a time when spatterin’ some fucker’s blood all over the sidewalk made me feel one way or the other. This is what I do. You hear what I’m sayin’, motherfucker? Talking about you. You’re gonna get fucked up permanent, right here, right now.’

Ben’s hand went slowly to his jeans pocket. He took out his cigarettes and lighter. Clanged open his Zippo and lit up. Through a cloud of smoke he said, ‘Well, Beard, that was a pretty good speech. You certainly have a gift for metaphor. Out of curiosity, did you have to look up the word “repellent”?’

Beard’s cocky grin twisted into a scowl and he slipped his fingers inside the knuckleduster hilt of his knife. The slap-slapping behind him stopped.

‘Listen to this asshole,’ muttered the one with the chain.

‘I don’t get to hear speeches like that very often,’ Ben said. ‘In my line of work we don’t generally have time for them.’

‘Your line of work,’ Beard repeated, just a little uncertainly. The grin returned, but there was a touch of nervousness to it now.

‘I appreciate you guys have to make a living too,’ Ben said. ‘But this is one occupational hazard you don’t want to have to deal with. So I think you ought to turn around and head back to the bar you just came from, call your boss and tell him he shouldn’t send you on jobs where you’re so badly out of your depth.’

Two seconds of silence. Then the survival knife was out of Beard’s belt and swinging through the air.

Here we go, Ben thought. The downward slash. Hallmark of the truly amateurish knife fighter, the guy who’s learned all he knows from third-rate movies, has got lucky once or twice while dealing with people even more clueless than him, and is confirmed in his vision of himself as a formidable urban warrior. It would have been much too easy to twist the knife out of Beard’s hand, break three of his fingers in the loop of the hilt and then embed the thick blade right in the top of his skull.

Ben didn’t do that. Instead he twisted it out of Beard’s hand, broke three fingers in the loop of the hilt, used Beard’s ears as handles to drive his face down into his rising knee and then sent the blade whirling with a meaty thunk deep into the right thigh of the guy who was coming up flailing the chain.

With a scream that drowned out Beard’s, the man let go of the chain and clapped his hands in a gibbering panic to where the knuckleduster hilt was protruding from his leg. The chain’s momentum carried it hissing though the air a couple of feet, until it connected with the face of his associate with the bolo knife.

Hard. Ben heard the crack of bone over the thwack of the impact. The bolo dropped to the ground as its owner keeled over like a felled tree, clutching at his shattered nose and cheekbone, either too shocked to make a sound or choked by the broken bits of teeth in his throat.

The fight had lasted about three seconds so far. Ben stepped over the writhing, groaning Beard towards the last of the attackers who was still standing. The guy swung his baseball bat a couple of times, but his heart wasn’t in it. ‘Fuck,’ he muttered in a hollow voice, then turned and ran like hell, still clutching the bat. Ben watched him go. He was a much better sprinter than he was a fighter.

Taking a draw on his cigarette, Ben walked over to Bolo and stamped on his face, twice. A few feet away, his friend Mr Chain was making a high-pitched agonised keening as he tried to yank the knife blade out of his thigh. It had missed the femoral artery by an inch or two but there was still a lot of blood spilling across the concrete. Ben decided he’d had enough of the guy’s noise, and shut him up with a kick to the head that sent him slumping over sideways and bounced his skull off the ground.

Beard was trying groggily to get up, raising his body off the concrete with his left hand, the broken fingers of his right tucked tight between his legs. Ben’s boot swiped his left arm out from under him and rolled him over on his back. Beard stared up at him in terror. His nose was split open and bleeding almost as profusely as Chain’s leg.

Ben crouched down next to him and flicked cigarette ash on the guy’s face. ‘Just you and me now, Beard,’ he said. ‘I reckon as you’re the leader of the gang, that qualifies you as its spokesman too. So speak. Who sent you?’

‘I … I don’t …’ Beard gasped.

‘You’re not really going to give me the “I don’t know” routine, are you?’

‘Listen, mister … I swear …’

‘Fine,’ Ben said. He dug the Zippo back out of his jeans pocket. Flipped open the lid and thumbed the wheel. The spark ignited the fuel inside to produce the warm flickering orange flame and that smell Ben loved.

The flame from Beard’s beard as its rigid spikes went up like a magnesium flare was considerably brighter, and the stink of burning hair and skin far less pleasant.

Beard shrieked in terror. None too gently, Ben used the man’s denim jacket to beat the fire out.

‘Didn’t your mother warn you about using too much hairspray?’ Ben said. ‘That stuff’s flammable.’

‘You crazy sonofabitch!’ Beard screamed.

‘I think I asked you a question,’ Ben said. ‘Not going to ask you a second time.’

Beard’s eyes bulged in his scorched, blackened face. ‘I don’t fucking know! This guy offered us ten grand cash. Gave us your picture. It’s in my pocket.’ He pointed wildly with his good hand.

Ben yanked the photo out. It had been taken from inside a car, and showed him walking towards it. His Jeep was in the background, parked on the side of the stretch of road alongside Seven Mile Beach. Easy enough to figure out who his photographer had been: one of the two men in the black Chevy Blazer.

‘Some guy hired you? That’s all you know? A guy in a bar?’

Beard nodded desperately.

Ben showed him the lighter again. ‘Sure? You still have a bit left on that side. How about I even you up?’

‘No! Yes! I swear!’

Ben nodded. He supposed that a man with a burning beard would always tell the truth. It sounded a little like a Chinese proverb.

‘Get yourself another job, mate,’ he said, and walked to the Jeep.