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permitted himself to rest on his back on the tarmac for one minute, checking this interval by his wristwatch, and then rolled himself over onto his belly and put his palms flat against the pavement either side of his shoulders. He rested thirty seconds before he raised himself to crawl forward on two hands and one knee, head hanging, taking ragged breaths, hauling his wounded leg toward the protection of the pines.
Propped against a tree trunk, he rested for two minutes. When he opened his eyes the branches overhead seemed to be rushing away into the sky.
He got his cell phone in his hand and punched Juarez on the speed dial.
“Yowsah. Mistah Gambolino.”
“I need a doctor.”
“So get a doctor.”
“I need a friendly doctor. I’m shot, man.”
“Shot?”
“That fucking Jimmy Luntz.”
“What?”
“Jimmy Luntz shot me.”
“What?”
“I need a doctor. And I need a ride. I need him to come and get me. I need a ride.”
“You hurt bad? You can’t drive?”
“The fucker took my car.”
“What?”
“Fuck ‘what.’ He shot me through my leg. My right thigh. Through the bone, I think.”
“Your thigh?”
“I got out to open the trunk, and he—bang, man.”
“Where are you?”
“Oh, man.”
“Gambol, stay with me. Where are you?”
“I’m near Oroville.”
“Where’s Ortonville? You in San Diego County or something?”
“Not Ortonville, man. Oroville. It’s on Route Seventy. Way the hell up here past Sacramento and all that.”
“Which direction from Oroville? Like east, west, what?”
“I think north.”
“North. Near Madrona? I got a friend in Madrona.”
“Get me the fuck out of here.”
“I’m on it. Where did he shoot you?”
“In the thigh . I told you.”
“Luntz?”
“Luntz.”
“Jimmy Luntz? Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. He will die. My promise to you.”
“You bet your ass.”
“My promise and my gift to you. He’s dead.”
Gambol shut his phone and dropped it into his breast pocket. He paused for half a minute before undertaking the effort of tightening the belt around his leg. The leg was numb, and he felt cold.
He laid his head back against the tree trunk and considered the movements to follow and reviewed his consideration carefully before letting himself tip rightward onto his elbow and wrestling himself, by stages, onto his belly. As he stiffened his arms, raised himself, and began crawling forward, the phone fell from his pocket, and he stopped. He went down onto his elbows and took hold of it with his mouth.
Gripping his bloody cell phone in his teeth he dragged himself several yards farther into the pines and scrub and lay on his belly while sirens approached and arrived.
When he heard voices getting near he struggled onto his side and saw the ambulance not far beyond the point where he’d entered the small stand of pines, and three paramedics talking with two uniformed cops, cursing and laughing. The patrolmen had parked their cruiser right over the large stain on the blacktop. Even from this distance Gambol could make out his own blood trail.
He turned onto his back, buttoned his cell phone into his jacket’s lapel pocket, and worked himself into position and dragged his leg farther away from the parking lot and lay in the mouth of a concrete culvert, where he waited, staring straight upward, blinking rapidly to keep himself conscious, while the two crews decided they’d been lured here as some kind of prank.
The crews didn’t stay long. As they passed over the culvert he heard their vehicles thumping on the highway above his head.
He had difficulty unbuttoning the inner pocket of his jacket and further difficulty working the buttons on his phone. He reached Juarez again. “Did you find somebody?”
“I’m close. Stay with me. I think we can get you out of there. I know a vet in Madrona.”
“I’m down in a culvert. I can’t move my legs.”
“Jesus, man, call an ambulance.”
“Luntz called already. They came and went.”
“Call them back!”
“Piss on that