Miguel was on his hands and knees. He spit blood and shiny white bits of teeth onto the black macadam.
Frye went to him.
“Trying to get up, friend?”
Laughing softly, Frye stepped on his fingers. He ground his heel on the man’s hand, then stepped back.
Miguel squealed, fell on his side.
Frye kicked him in the thigh.
Miguel did not lose consciousness, but he closed his eyes, hoping Frye would just go away.
Frye felt as if electricity was coursing through him, a million-billion volts, bursting from synapse to synapse, hot and crackling and sparking within him, not a painful feeling, but a wild and exciting experience, as if he had just been touched by the Lord God Almighty and filled up with the most beautiful and bright and holy light.
Miguel opened his swollen dark eyes.
“All the fight gone out of you?” Frye asked.
“Please,” Miguel said around broken teeth and split lips.
Exhilarated, Frye put a foot against Miguel’s throat and forced him to roll onto his back.
“Please.”
Frye took his foot off the man’s throat.
“Please.”
High with a sense of his own power, floating, flying, soaring, Frye kicked Miguel in the ribs.
Miguel choked on his own scream.
Laughing exuberantly, Frye kicked him repeatedly, until a couple of ribs gave way with an audible crunch.
Miguel began to do something he had struggled manfully not to do for the past few minutes. He began to cry.
Frye returned to the van.
Pablo was on the ground by the rear wheels, flat on his back, unconscious.
Saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” over and over again, Frye circled Pablo, kicking him in the calves and knees and thighs and hips and ribs.
A car started to pull into the lot from the street, but the driver saw what was happening and wanted no part of it. He put the car in reverse, backed out of there, and sped off with a screech of tires.
Frye dragged Pablo over to Miguel, lined them up side by side, out of the way of the van. He didn’t want to run over anyone. He didn’t want to kill either of them, for too many people in the bar had gotten a good look at him. The authorities wouldn’t have much desire to pursue the winner of an ordinary street fight, especially when the losers had intended to gang up on a lone man. But the police would look for a killer, so Frye made sure that both Miguel and Pablo were safe.
Whistling happily, he drove back toward Marina Del Rey and stopped at the first open service station on the right-hand side of the street. While the attendant filled the tank, checked the oil, and washed the windshield, Frye went to the men’s room. He took a shaving kit with him and spent ten minutes freshening up.
When he traveled, he slept in the van, and it was not as convenient as a camper; it did not have running water. On the other hand, it was more maneuverable, less visible, and far more anonymous than a camper. To take full advantage of the many luxuries of a completely equipped motor home, he would have to stop over at a campground every night, hooking up to sewer and water and electric lines, leaving his name and address wherever he went. That was too risky. In a motor home, he would leave a trail that even a noseless bloodhound could follow, and the same would be true if he stayed at motels where, if the police asked about him later, desk clerks would surely remember the tall and extravagantly muscled man with the penetrating blue eyes.
In the men’s room at the service station, he stripped out of his gloves and yellow sweater, washed his torso and underarms with wet paper towels and liquid soap, sprayed himself with deodorant, and dressed again. He was always concerned about cleanliness; he liked to be clean and neat at all times.
When he felt dirty, he was not only uncomfortable but deeply depressed as well–and somewhat fearful. It was as if being dirty stirred up vague recollections of some intolerable experience long forgotten, brought back hideous memories to the edge of his awareness, where he could sense but not see them, perceive but not understand them. Those few nights when he had fallen into bed without bothering to wash up, his repeating nightmare had been far worse than usual, expelling him from sleep in a screaming flailing terror. And although he had awakened on those occasions, as always, with no clear memory of what the dreams had been about, he had felt as if he’d just clawed his way out of a sickeningly filthy place, a dark and close and foul hole in the ground.