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.”“You’re starting to talk like a fortune cookie, Chawlie.”“Alvin Toffler does not write fortune cookies,” said Chawlie, looking pained.“You are a good friend, John Caine.I can trust you with what I know.But I do not know everything yet.You must learn for yourself, if you can.Then come and talk to Chawlie again.And be careful of Ricky Lee.”“If Ricky Lee were to have an accident, would that upset your plans?”Chawlie grinned.“I am counting on his having an accident.” He reached behind his seat and took a cloth-wrapped object and pushed it across the table toward me.“You lost this,” he said.I took the package and found my Colt.45.It had been recently cleaned and loaded.It had the sweet smell of Hoppes No.9 and glistened with gun oil.“Thank you,” I said, “for everything.”“Just in case you run across a mad dog.Mad dogs must be shot down where you find them.”“Just in case a mad dog doesn’t have an accident.”“The mad dog you speak of will never die an old man.Or in bed.He threatens everybody.The justice system took him to jail and then let him out.It makes no sense.”“They let me out, too.”“That made no sense, either.But in your case I was grateful.” He put the potted tree aside.“Be aware that things are not what they seem,” he said.“And be aware of those who walk behind you.”“As in San Francisco.”He nodded.I sat in the front seat of my old Jeep and watched the parking lot of the old worker’s bar in Waialua.The night was warm enough, even with the onshore breezes skipping across the dirt surface of the lot, and I was comfortable in my dark sweatshirt and black sweatpants, recent acquisitions from the K-Mart in Iwilei, around the corner from Chinatown.It was late, nearly three.The crowd was breaking up and heading for whatever passed as home.Nobody saw me sitting across the parking lot, my primer gray Jeep just another worker’s truck.I didn’t see my man, and I didn’t expect that I would until well after the bar closed.This was when Silversword did business.This was when Ricky Lee would inform his associates of his plan to kill the haole PI and the young boy who had once been their constituent.Ricky’s car was there, the red Corvette snugged up tight against the building, surrounded by plastic trash cans.I wondered if he brought the cans with him, or made them a requirement of his presence.The lot emptied, the crowd dwindling to only three or four pick-up trucks and an Isuzu Trooper that had seen better days.When the lot was deserted, I slipped out of the driver’s seat and padded quickly across it, not running, just a hurrying trot, my body still fragile.But even when you’re injured there are things that must be done.Taking the new Buck Strider I had purchased earlier, I went to work on the front tires, carving into the sidewalls, careful to leave the thinnest margin of rubber and steel, so that they would hold the pressurized air until he hit a bump at speed.Then one or both tires would blow, leaving him running along on his expensive rims.The roads near the bar were not in the best repair.Cane roads, surrounded on both sides by vegetation, they were largely deserted at this time of night.Lee would not get far once he left the lot and then I would have him.I did not want to confront him while I was carving his Corvette, so I finished my chore and scuttled back to my Jeep and waited.Three o’clock in the morning, the constellations ranged across the sky.I was tired and would have felt sleepy but for the urgency of my self-assigned mission.I drank no coffee.I took no painkillers either, the discomfort from my injuries all that I required to stay alert.I glanced at my watch at regular intervals.Time was running out.If Ricky Lee did not come out of the tavern soon I would have to resort to other means.While I waited, I eased the blade of the Buck Strider back and forth, wearing in the new metal.Buck’s new folder was bigger than my old Folding Hunter, and I liked it as soon as I saw it.The Strider had a different mechanism to open the blade, and I would have to spend hours practicing with it to master the technique, but the blade was thicker and longer than my old Hunter, and had a sharp tanto point.But it was stiff, as all new knives are stiff, and I spent the waiting time moving the blade back and forth, letting the parts and pieces of the knife get to know one another.I sat for over an hour, working the blade, watching the bar empty, waiting for Ricky Lee to leave.I was about to try something else when a dark-colored SUV entered the parking lot and parked directly in front of the bar.The doors opened and four men got out, quickly climbed the stairs, and hurried inside.Each man held something long and wicked in his right hand, holding it down by his leg as he filed through the door.Almost immediately a staccato sound like firecrackers rolled across the parking lot and disappeared into the night.The four men were inside for less than a minute before they sauntered empty-handed from the building, casually climbed back into the SUV, did a slow circle of the dirt lot, and disappeared down the lonely cane road [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]