Chapter 12

It was still dank and drizzly when I left the hospital—when we left, Susan was right there with me in my head—and I headed toward the car quickly, pulling my keys out of my pocket as I went. Vaguely I wished I had something newer than this old clunker. Newer cars had these remote access doohickeys, you just mashed a button from anywhere around and they obligingly unlocked so you could just get in. Not for me, I'd have to stand there and manually key the door open. As I was doing so I was thinking it really was time to bite the bullet and splurge on a new model, at least newer than this.

"Larry!" Susan's shriek cut off that train of thought in an instant. Out of long habit I dropped instantly into a crouch, turning as I did. When you get bullied as a kid you develop defense mechanisms, and this was mine; it had always disconcerted hell out of the jokers who were trying to sneak up behind me and grab me or punch me or something. And if I spun around I was better positioned to fight back, as I'd finally learned to do.

I wasn't even all the way down when I felt something brush hard through my hair on its way past. It hit my car instead of me with a heavy thud, and there were two legs right in front of me.

That too was a familiar sight from my school days, and it had often been followed by a hard kick to my ribs. But I remembered what I'd learned to do and shot out my left hand to grab the nearest ankle. As soon as I'd latched on I punched out with the heel of my right as hard as I could, aiming squarely at the knee a foot or so above.

The last time I'd done that move, in about the tenth grade, I'd crippled the kid. He'd been a football player, one of the school jocks trying to show off for his buddies by shoving the wimp around, and I'd caught him by surprise and pretty much shattered the joint. He was out of football for good after that, the knee was shot. His parents had made a lot of noises about suing, but when his pals admitted that he'd been doing his best to push me down hard they'd had to back off.

This time it wasn't quite that devastating. Unfortunately. The leg I was slamming was an adult leg with adult muscles, and it wasn't completely straightened out. But I knew I'd done some damage, when the leg was wrenched out of my grasp I could see the guy who'd been behind me stumble away, limping badly.

My instinct was to follow up; I had him hurt, now finish it. But Susan's voice was still yelling in my ear.

"No! Get in the car, in the car, Larry! Now, fast! Move!" I'd already unlocked the door before the guy's attack, so I did. As I scrambled in I noticed a nasty-looking shiv half buried in the sheet metal. Jesus, a split second later and it would have been in my back instead.

"Now drive!" Susan was screaming. "Go!" I'd backed into the parking slot, so that was easy; the engine cranked immediately and I lurched forward. Just as I spun the wheel to head toward the street exit I heard a sharp crack and my windshield was suddenly starred. Jesus, the sonofabitch had a gun out and was shooting at me! I put on some speed and cornered toward the exit as fast as I dared.

No stopping, I told myself. The exit lane had one of those barriers across it so you'd stop and hand your ticket over to the person in the adjacent booth and pony up your couple of bucks. The saying used to be that there's no such thing as a free lunch; these days it could equally be said that there's no such thing as free parking. Even hospitals made you pay.