The Smith & Wesson had landed a good eight feet from me. Panting, wet with sweat, I started crawling for it as the car backed up. I reached the gun as the Hulk went into drive again. I could just sense the rest of my pals behind me, when I saw another pair of headlights join the first. I couldn’t run behind the trucks: the rest of the gang would pin me like a trapped rat.

My arms were quivering so badly, I could hardly lift the gun. I waited for the cars as long as I dared, shot once at each windshield, stuck the gun back in the holster and ran all out toward the canal. With the last strength I could muster I dove clear of the pylons into the middle of the foul water.

33

Recollections of a Midnight Swim

“You were lucky, Warshawski, fucking lucky. What would you have done if that barge hadn’t happened along?” Conrad Rawlings was shouting loudly enough to keep me awake.

“I wouldn’t have drowned, if that’s what you’re thinking. I had enough left in my shoulders to climb up the side.”

“You were just goddamn lucky,” he repeated. “That side is solid concrete. It isn’t meant for shinnying.”

“Out of curiosity, what were you doing along the canal at three in the morning?” That was Terry Finchley, his tone conversational.

I blinked at him from under the protective shroud of my police-issue blanket. When the Santa Lucia saw me floundering around under the Damen Avenue bridge, they’d fished me out and called the police department’s water patrol. I was blacking out by then and couldn’t see far enough to tell whether my Diamond Head pals were on the far bank dancing up and down in frustration.

The tugboat crew wrapped me in a blanket and gave me hot soup while we waited for the cops. When the river patrol came, the crew took their blanket back and the police issued me a nice blue-and-white job. It looked like the kind the mounted patrol put on their well-tended horses.

The river cops were pleasant, so pleasant that I suddenly realized through the mists of fatigue that they thought I’d been trying to kill myself. They took the Smith & Wesson from me and kept trying to find out who they should call.

“Terry Finchley at Area One,” I muttered, waking with a start every time they asked. “He can tell you about it.”