Free City of War by Neil Russell

the only one with a passport. I was just wondering what you’d have done if he’d been from Helsinki.”
    “I’d have asked him about the sautéed reindeer at Kappeli—and if Ari still sings the Love Song from Carmen at midnight.” While Kim chewed on that, I let a FedEx truck go by, then turned west on Olympic and accelerated into traffic.
    Princeton Street is in a fashionably run-down Santa Monica neighborhood about two miles from the beach. The aging one-story bungalows sit on postage stamp lawns, and broken-down Dusters and RVs drip oil on driveways hand-poured by the original owners when they came home from Iwo Jima. During Rose Bowl week, when rubberneckers from Iowa and Michigan cruise SoCal streets in their rental cars, the color drains out of their faces when someone mentions that these places go for over a million.
    Chez York was a cute little place with green shutters and a front yard full of cactus. Unlike most of its neighbors, the paint was fresh and the awnings new. I pulled to the curb in front of 429 and told Kim to wait in the car. Picking my way past a couple of dwarf saguaros, I peered through the front window. It was dark inside, but not so dark that I couldn’t see that the place had been trashed.
    I went around back, past more cactus and a blue tile fountain, and found the back door jimmied. I pushed it open. The kitchen was a mess. Not only had the drawers been pulled out and dumped and the cabinets trashed, but whoever hadbeen here had also taken everything out of the refrigerator and thrown it against the wall.
    Further in, they’d shoved the china cabinet over onto the dining room table and hacked at the furniture in the living room with a knife. They’d even cracked the television screen with the fireplace poker.
    The master bed and bath hadn’t fared any better. Drawers were smashed, the bedposts broken off, and every mirror and even the shower door were shattered. The guy with the knife had been busy here too, slashing Kim’s clothes and the drapes. Same with the second bedroom.
    But whatever this was, it was by design. Vandals usually aren’t thorough. They lay waste to a couple of rooms, then get tired. This was pros covering up a sophisticated search, and it confirmed my suspicion about why they’d taken her car. They’d been looking for something. I needed an inventory, so I started back toward the front to get Kim.
    I heard the guy coming behind me, but the hall was too narrow to get completely out of the way. I didn’t know where he’d come from, only that he had a clear shot at my back. At the last second, I flattened myself against the wall, and the shovel he was swinging missed my head by inches. Instead, it hit me on the top of my left shoulder, clipping my ear as it went by and numbing my arm all the way down.
    The force of the blow drove me to the floor, and the guy moved in for the kill. But instead of trying to get away like he expected, I rolled toward him, and his second swing whanged off the hardwood floor.
    I aimed my foot at the front of his left knee and connected. The guy was wearing shorts, and I saw his leg bend too far in the wrong direction. The ligaments popped audibly. He screamed in pain, but instead of collapsing, he turned the shovel on its edge and brought it down savagely, like an axe. Fortunately, he missed, but the floor didn’t fare so well. The shovel hit a seam in the hardwood, splintered it and got wedged in the gash. It was all I needed.
    I kicked upward into his crotch and felt the heel of myshoe mash soft flesh. This time, the guy went down. Taking no chances, I rolled on top of him and hit him in the chin with two short, powerful shots. His eyes glazed, then closed. He was out.
    “Gary! Jesus Christ, what are you doing in here?” I looked up and saw Kim. But Gary wasn’t going to be answering her anytime soon.
    Shakily, I got to my feet and took inventory. There was no telling how big the bruise was going to be where the shovel had hit