Surrounded

strength in Tucker's voice. He made a circle on the concrete with the point of his right shoe, looking pretty much like a sullen child. "Keski was a runner in the New York City rackets about twenty-five years ago," he said, still staring at the floor, unable to face Tucker. "Then he came West and set up something for himself. Started with a bar out here in Santa Monica. There was gambling in the back room. Then he moved into prostitution, set up a stable of girls. From there he went to dope-peddling-grass, hash, pills, even heroin. He wasn't above bank jobs, a payroll hijacking now and then, protection rackets…"
        "How'd you get to know him?"
        "We were friends in New York. When he started setting up bank jobs out here, he asked me to come in with him. We did four jobs together over the years."
        "And the last time you worked with him was two and a half years ago," Tucker said.
        Meyers frowned. "How'd you know that?"
        "Felton told me."
        "He had no business-"
        "I had my doubts about you," Tucker said. "I wanted a lot of answers from Clitus. If he hadn't given me a few of them, I never would have thrown in with you."
        Wiping his sweat-glazed face with a dirty handkerchief, Meyers said, "The last time Keski used me, it wasn't a robbery. It was murder."
        Tucker waited. He knew that the big man was going to tell all of it now, but at his own speed. There was no way to hurry him along.
        "For most of the last twenty-five years," Meyers said, "Keski had a partner, a man named Teevers. They split everything down the middle, and they took equal risks. They weren't close, but they didn't hate each other either. About four years ago Keski decided that it was time to put their money into straight, legal businesses. He wanted to drop the more dangerous stuff like drug-dealing, gambling, and the protection rackets. Teever was old-fashioned. He couldn't see it at all. He was dumb enough to think there was more money in crime than in legit business."
        "And Keski figured the best way to handle the disagreement was to have Teevers killed."
        "Yeah," Meyers said. "Keski called me. Just the two of us were involved. We planned it, set it up. It looked like an accident, even to the police and insurance people. It was perfect."
        "Keski and you were the only ones who knew the truth," Tucker said. "Beautiful."
        "Yeah."
        "You really didn't see what was coming next?" Tucker asked, incredulous.
        Meyers looked up sheepishly. "I honestly didn't."
        "Keski tried to kill you."
        "Almost succeeded." Meyers tried a lopsided grin. It didn't work.
        "But how?" Tucker asked. "You're so much bigger than he was."
        "He paid me half in advance," Meyers said, "and was supposed to give me the rest after the job was done. He met me in my hotel room here in L.A. to give me the rest of the money… Look, I'd worked with him before. He'd always been square with me. I turned my back on him, never thinking he might… He came in behind me like a cat… Reached around and slit my throat…" Meyers's whispery voice grew shallower, haunted. "When someone cuts you like that, you're too busy trying to hold the edges of the tear together to protect yourself from anything else. When I fell, he stomped once on my neck. Nearly crushed my windpipe. Then he walked out and left me for dead."
        "That was a mistake."
        "You know it. He hadn't hit my jugular. He'd done badly enough otherwise. But he missed the jugular." He grinned, an expression that worked this time.
        "Still, you must have bled. You must have-"
        "I was saved by my weakness," Meyers said.
        "Weakness?"
        "I had a woman with me," Meyers said. "I stashed her in the bathroom when Keski knocked on the door. I didn't want her to be a witness to the payoff. The moment Keski left, she came out and saw what he'd done to me, and she called down to the desk for an ambulance. I still might have died. But it turned out that three floors below an ambulance team was picking up an old man who'd had a fatal stroke in another room. They rushed upstairs for me. The old man died, but I pulled through."
        "And ever since you've wanted Keski."
        "You know it," Meyers said, petting his Skorpion with one hand as if it were alive. "A year after it happened, I came back out here and rented an apartment. Then I started hunting Keski. I