Part II:  Universal Grammar

I arrived at Rick’s half an hour late. I guess I should’ve panicked, expecting a bullet to smash through the back of my head any second, but I figured that anybody who had the knowledge and the resources to dig up my dirty past – not that I hadn’t stacked enough dead bodies on top of it when I had buried it – I figured, that anyone who could actually pull a stunt like this and threatened to kill me would know that my car is more stubborn and uncooperative than a woman in labor, especially when it comes to getting somewhere in a hurry.  
I looked at my watch. It was about 3am, a rather lazy time for a diner like this. Rush hour had long passed and the next flood of people would only arrive between 5 and 6, when they came here for dinner.
Rick’s looked like a mixture between the prototypical 50s Style American Diner like you see on that famous Edward Hopper painting and a retro style western saloon. It even had one of these gigantic mirrors behind the bar, the kind that people get thrown into all the time in westerns.
A long time ago, Rick’s had also been a fairly popular jazz joint, and on weekends you could still see some students on the small stage in a far corner of the long and elongated diner, performing their own and rather horrible versions of Miles Davis and John Coltrane classics.
But nowadays most people came here to eat, or slump down in one of the cozy vintage vinyl diner booths and enjoy a root beer or a milk shake and a traditional sandwich before heading home.
My eyes ran across the counter until they locked on the pack of Lucky Strike the voice on the phone had told me to look out for. I sat down on one of the floor-mounted red bar stools, then casually flipped over the pack of cigarettes and read the note attached to it. The barman approached me, a testing, hostile look on his face. I couldn’t really blame him for his reaction. After all, I was still wearing my crumpled coat and my nose looked like a recently erupted volcano – as a matter of fact, it pretty much felt like that, too. Although I had changed my shirt, somewhere in the course of getting from shitty place A (my apartment/office), to shitty place B (Rick’s) my nose had started bleeding again, and my white collar was covered with crusted brown spots. I smiled at the bar man in the most friendly way I could manage, which probably still amounted to a shark’s attempt of convincing someone who has been shipwrecked of his vegetarian nature while at the same time gnawing on one of his legs. But to be honest, at the moment I felt much more shipwrecked than like a shark. Thank Christ the bitch hadn’t smashed in my teeth as well, the bar keeper would’ve called the cops the minute he saw my face.
I put a fiver on the counter, ordered a shot and a beer, and the bartender receded back to the dark corner he had came from.
What I liked about Rick’s as a meeting point was that from where I sat, I could see anyone coming through the door, that is, anyone who could be in the business of stabbing a knife into my back. I considered smoking a cigarette, but then decided against it, given that my nose was largely defunct at the moment. Another beer and another shot later and four people coming in and two leaving, I smoked the cigarette anyway.
Just as I was about to order another beer, a man who came through the door grabbed my attention. After having closed the door, he stood there, his eyes wandering across the room. I concentrated on his reflection in the mirror. He was in his mid-forties, wore a casual black suit with a blue turtleneck shirt underneath, and his ruffled brown hair sat on his aristocratic, ivory towerish face like a crown – though he rather looked like he belonged to the intellectual gentry. But even if you regarded overall stiffness as one of his average feats, he looked very stressed and tensed up. I saw his eyes lock on my back and his body seemed to relax a little, though a new curved line appeared on his forehead. He slowly walked towards me, his hands at his sides. I abruptly put my right hand into my coat pocket, and monitored his reaction – but there wasn’t one. So he didn’t come here to kill me, or otherwise he would have jumped to the side the instant he though I was going for my gun. But I only took my pack of cigarettes from my pocket and extracted one. Although there was a pack of Luckies in front of me, I preferred smoking my own brand, firstly because I couldn’t stand their taste, and secondly because they could’ve been poisoned for all I knew. The man sat down beside me, ordered a cup of coffee, and then made a show of looking at the tapestry.
Then he sighed and said, as if talking to himself:
“Dead souls, sad jazz, palm trees on the wall.”
I took another drag from my cigarette, then I said: “Light up a Lucky. It’s light-up time.”
He breathed out in relief, and then turned around to face me.
“Thank God you’re here,” he said, and reached out his hand. “My name is Harry Zelig, Professor of Fictional Philosophy.”
I shook his hand. “Peirce MacNeilage, private investigator.”
Then, to ease him up a little, I asked: “Professor of what?”  
“Fictional Philosophy,” he said, slightly relieved to be able to talk about something he actually knew something about, where he was safe. “You know how modern philosophizing and science are all about finding convergences between distinct lines of inquiries, tearing down the barriers between the two cultures, and creating avenues of interdisciplinary dialogue?”
I grunted affirmatively, though I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.
“Well imagine if philosophers had had the same endeavors in the past, if they had met the right people, been present at the right time with new ideas and new findings to fuel their philosophical imagination. Wouldn’t it be interesting what they would’ve said?”  
I put out my cigarette in the ashtray. “Yeah, totally.” Sadly, he didn’t catch the irony and went on.
“To give you an example: Friedrich Nietzsche had a great interest in matters scientific. But unfortunately he never had any professional education on the subject. Now imagine what would’ve happened if Nietzsche had actually read Darwin’s work and really understood the scientific implications behind it… maybe he would’ve even corresponded with him, like Ernst Haeckel did… Or imagine what would have happened if Nietzsche hadn’t gone mad, and if his lifelong interest in physics had actually brought him to a pursue a career in physics. Nietzsche could’ve been involved in the quantum revolution in the first three decades of  the twentieth century, and met and talked with people like Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, inspiring them to even more refined theories about the philosophical implication of quantum mechanics, himself creating his own theory of… existentialist quantum nihilism! Wouldn’t that be great?”
He was just about to give me another example as he looked toward the door and said: “Oh, there’s Josh”.
What a relief.
He waved at a man in his late thirties with longish, light brown hair, a red checkered lumberjack shirt and brown khakis. The man waved back, sat on the bar stool to my left and we shook hands.
“Pierce MacNeilage, PI.”
“Joshua Carrell, Professor of Darwinian Literary Studies.”
This time I didn’t ask.
“Well then, what do you want to talk to me for?” I asked them.
“Well…” Zelig began when I saw something in the corner of my eyes.
“Shut up.” I hissed.
A black van without license plates had parked in front of the diner, its back facing the door. I tightly gripped the gun in my shoulder holster without taking it out.
This didn’t look good.
The door to the kitchen was on the other side of the diner, as was the fire exit. They’d first cover the escape routes, fire some rounds at the ceiling, scream a lot, curse a lot, then go for the kill. I knew the universal grammar of violence. Sure there were variations, but the blood, fear, the anger, the pain, the feeling of powerlessness,  these were the unwavering principles of aggression.
“Get down” I whispered.
“What are you talking about?” Zelig demanded to know.
Stupid intellectuals. Always talking instead of acting.
The van’s doors swung open and out came five black-clothed men wearing ski masks and carrying Uzis and automatic rifles. They kicked open the diner’s doors. One of them smashed the butt of his gun into the face of a waitress. As she went down, wailing, he kicked her face in. The man who had come in behind him was shooting rounds into the ceiling. “Get down! Get down! Nobody fuckin’ moves!” A middle-aged man jumped from his chair in fright. One of the black-clothed men grabbed him by the neck and smashed him into the next diner table. People were screaming, throwing themselves to the floor. Two of the men went to cover the exits, turning over tables and kicking chairs. Glasses and plates were shattering on the floor.  A woman was crawling toward the door on all fours, cutting her hands on the shards and leaving smears of blood behind her. Suddenly one of the men kicked her in the ribs and she fell on her back and cried, her bloody hands covering her face. I was about to pull my gun when I saw one of them aiming his rifle at Carrell. Just as he pulled the trigger I pushed Carell off his stool and he fell to the floor with a loud thump. I sent two shots in their general direction, then threw myself to the floor as well, which knocked the wind out of me. A staccato of bullets smashed into the big mirror and glass shattered everywhere. I grabbed Carrell by the arm, fired another shot at the black-clothed attackers, and ran towards one of the diner tables just before another machine-gun volley ripped the bar to pieces. Splinters of wood and pieces of broken bottles flew through the air and singed my ears and neck as I tipped the table over for Carrell and me to cower behind it. Another round of bullets smashed into the solid metal table.
Suddenly there was a single gun shot, then another staccato of wailing rifles and a lot of screaming. Damn. One of the customers must have pulled a gun of his own while they were busy trying to kill my ass.
Zelig hadn’t followed us. Damn.
I looked over the table and saw Zelig lying on the floor, holding his leg, his face a pained grimace. There was a lot of blood where he was lying. Two of the black-clothed men were approaching, one had a knife in his hand. I jumped up and shot him in the chest. He groaned and fell down. I ducked down again just in time before another round of bullets smashed into the table and the wall behind it. One of the bullets went through the table and brushed past Carrell’s head.
Zelig screamed: “Let go… let go of me!”.
I glanced over the table and threw one of fallen chairs in the face of the man who had just grabbed Zelig.
“Down!” I shouted at Carrell and we both flattened our noses against the ground as the next round of bullets tore the dining table to shreds.
More gunshots were fired at the ceiling; glass shattered. As I looked again, they were dragging Zelig into the van. I jumped up and ran towards the door, fired at the men who were just closing the doors and even hit one of them in the shoulder, but the van drove away with squealing tires before I got there. I emptied the rest of my magazine at the van’s tires. I must’ve hit something because suddenly the van started skidding, but regained its balance.
Fucking hell.
I turned back and ran to Carrell, who just stood there, shaking.
“Come on!” I shouted at him.
“Wha-What?”
“Come on, you treacherous son of a bitch, or I’ll smash your face in!” I screamed and dragged him by his arm.
“But I… I didn’t…”
The diner was a mess. There were several people lying on the floor, bleeding and screaming, everything was covered with dust and debris that had fallen off the ceiling, shards of glass were everywhere. One of the black-clothed men lay unmoving on the floor, beneath him was a man in his early twenties riddled by bullets.
I looked away, and went out of the diner and to my car, dragging Carrell behind me all the way.
I shoved him into the driver’s department, sat on the passenger seat, gave Carrell my keys and screamed at him: “Follow them!”   
It took him a few seconds to calm down, then he said, “O-okay, follow them…,” his voice shaking. Then he started up and we raced down the street