BLOOD ON THE MOON
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bearing exceptional children. Daughters. They would have to be daughters, made to be nurtured by the love in his Irish Protestant credo . . . Lloyd took his Janice-daughter fantasies to ends of fulfillment both good and bad, then shifted his mind to women in general—women pure, wanton, vulnerable, needy, strong; all the ambivalences of his mother, now silent in her strength, rendered dumb by years of giving shelter to her lunatic male brood, from which only he emerged sane and capable of providing solace himself. Lloyd heard a burst of gunshots in the near distance. Automatic weapon fire. At first he thought it was the radio or TV, but it was too real, too right, and it was coming from the direction of the African Church. He picked up his M-14 and ran to the corner. As he rounded it he heard screams, and turned to look in the shattered storefront window. When he saw the devastation inside, he screamed himself. Sister Sylvia and three male parishioners lay on the linoleum floor in a mass of tangled flesh, melded together in a river of blood. From somewhere within the twisted mound of bodies a severed artery shot up a red geyser. Lloyd, transfixed, watched it die and felt his scream metamorphose into the single word, “What! What! What!”
He screeched it until he was able to will his eyes from the bodies to the rest of the cordite-reeking church. The tops of dark heads peered above pews. Dimly, Lloyd perceived that the people were terrified of him. Tears streaming down his face, he dropped his rifle to the pavement and screamed, “What? What? What?” only to be answered by a score of voices hurling, “Killer, killer, murderer!” in horror and outrage. It was then that he heard it, faintly but plainly, back off to his left, clicking in so succinctly that he knew it was real, not electronic: “Auf weider- sehen, niggers. Auf weidersehen, jungle bunnies. See ya in hell.”
It was Beller.
Lloyd knew what he had to do. He tossed the Negroes huddled behind their pews his sternest resolve and went after him, leaving his rifle behind on the pavement, crouching his long frame low behind parked cars as he made his way toward the destroyer of innocence.
Beller was running slowly north, unaware that he was being followed. Lloyd could see him framed plainly in the glow of those streetlights not destroyed, turning every few moments to look back and savor his triumph. He checked the second hand on his watch and calculated. It was obvious: Beller’s unconscious was telling him to turn around and scan his blind side every twenty seconds.
Lloyd sprinted full out, counting to himself, and hit the pavement prone 28
L.A. NOIR
just as Beller would turn and peer backward. He was within fifty yards of the killer when Beller ducked into an alleyway and started screaming,
“Freeze, nigger, freeze!” A burst of shots followed, fully automatic. Lloyd knew it was the elephant clip .45.
He reached the alley and halted, catching his breath. There was a dark shape near the end of the cul-de-sac. Lloyd squinted and discerned that it was clad in fatigue green. He heard Beller’s voice a moment later, spitting out garbled epithets.
Lloyd entered the alley, inching his way along a brick wall. He pulled one of his .45s from his waistband and flipped off the safety. He was almost within firing distance when his foot hit a tin can, the sound reverberating like hollow thunder.
He fired just as Beller did, and the flash from their gun barrels lit up the alley blindingly, illuminating Beller, crouched over a dead Negro man, the man headless, blown apart at the shoulders, his neck a massive cavity of bloody, charred tissue. Lloyd screamed as the recoil from his .45 lifted him into the air and slammed him back to the ground. A dozen shots tore into the wall above him, and he rolled frantically on the glass-strewn pavement as Beller fired another burst at the ground, causing glass and blacktop shrapnel to explode before his eyes. Lloyd started to sob. He flung his arm over his eyes and prayed for courage and the chance to be a good husband to Janice. His prayers were interrupted by the sound of footsteps running away from him. His mind clicked in: Beller was out of ammo and was running for his life. Lloyd willed himself to stand upright. His legs wobbled, but his mind was steadfast. He was right: Beller’s empty M-14 lay across the torso of the dead man, and the
.45, spent and burning to the touch, lay a few feet away. Lloyd deep breathed, reloaded and listened for sounds of flight. He caught them; off to his left he heard the scuffle of feet and strained breathing. He followed the sounds by the shortest possible route, scaling the cement alleyway wall and coming down into a weed-strewn backyard, where the breath-noise mixed with the sound of a radio playing jazz. Lloyd blundered through the yard, mumbling prayers to engulf the music. He found a walkway leading to the street, and the light from the adjoining house let him pick out a trail of freshly spilled blood. He saw that the blood led into a huge vacant lot, pitch dark and eerily silent. Lloyd listened, willing himself to assume the ears of a highly attuned animal. Just as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness and let him pick out