The Big Lifters

by Dean Ing

  But Kroner had spent thirty years developing visual nuances, and the swarthy youth with the big nose did not act like a hitchhiker. Instead, he stepped squarely into the gravel path so that, if Kroner turned right, he must either stop or run the kid down. The kid, at closer range perhaps not quite a kid at that, held a backpack out like a shield, smiling over it into Kroner’s eyes, for all the world as if the bulging pack were protection against a heavy automobile.

  Kroner saw the sand-colored Camaro then, and realized just how vulnerable he was to anyone who might want to inspect that loaf of bread, and blasted hard on the horn as he twisted the wheel hard left while still fifty feet from the kid. The kid leaped like a gazelle from that horn blast, and then Kroner had the Merc spewing gravel as he accelerated onto macadam. Kroner had time for only one glance in his rearview before the next turn, but it was enough; the youth was alone.

  Being the twelfth precept of Farda: It is fitting that Satan’s weapons be turned against him.

  ITie highway shoulder was soft and the brush-choked ravines were hundreds of feet deep along here, Kroner noted. No point in letting his famed imagination put him over the edge. He sighed and flexed his hands, easing up on the pedal, laughing at himself. Neither lawmen nor cokejackers, he decided, operated as lone youths with backpacks. Maybe the Camaro didn’t even belong to the kid.

  On the other hand, maybe it did. Two minutes later it appeared behind Kroner so quickly, growing larger in his rearview so fast, that he did not even spot it until it swung into the left lane, drawing abreast. Kroner, feeling the sudden invisible fist of terror squeezing at his guts, first thought of tossing the expensive loaf of bread out. Then he was braking hard to avoid the Camaro as it veered sideways, its driver twisting the wheel hard with both hands, its right front fender slamming with an unbelievable thunderpeal of noise just behind the Merc’s left front wheel. Kroner had time to think, Crazy bastard’s trying to bunt me into the ravine, before his Michelins lost traction on the shoulder. Then he could only pray that, however long he spun, his horizon would not begin to tilt.

  After six century-long seconds, Kroner realized that he was not moving, his Merc on firm roadbed near the shoulder and pointing back the way he had come. His foot was frozen on the brake and an oncoming beer truck, swerving to miss a sand-tan Camaro that slid sideways down the centerline, gave a despairing blat of its hom as it tipped in the effort to avoid the black Mercedes. His mouth agape as the truck slid past, Kroner stared into the horrified face of the truck driver, who had always stacked his load two cases higher than the company permitted and had never paid the price yet. He was paying it now.

  It seemed to Kroner as though the world was suddenly soundless, but his eyes were still at work. The Camaro stopped, the beer truck rolled onto its side, and countless silvery cartridges scattered from the truck’s ruptured cargo box, spraying thin gouts of Coors into a fine hot June day. Kroner, on knees of aspic, stepped from the Merc intending to run toward the truck’s cab but nearly fell. He caught himself on the Merc’s open door and saw the youth from the Camaro. The Camaro was two hundred yards away, but with no other cars in sight, the youth had halved that distance, sprinting up the highway toward Kroner while hugging that damned backpack to his breast with both arms and grinning like he was coming in his pants.

  In a burst of intuition, Kroner realized that the youth wanted him dead and might be capable of doing it in several ways.

  Kroner fell back into his convertible and mashed on the accelerator, aiming the Merc’s hood ornament to shave the back of the truck’s cargo container which leaned like an old bam roof in the road. A hole appeared near the center of his windshield but Kroner did not hear the long-barreled .38 revolver, nor see the young man who stood on the centerline, chest heaving as he aimed again after firing each round.

  Being the third precept o/Farda: The death of Allah’s enemy is success, whether or not accompanied by martyrdom. Martyrdom is the ultimate reward, imsh'Allah, if God wills.

  Kroner made it around the truck and had time to feel a tug of guilt that he could not help its driver, before his intelligent self-interest took over. Help would reach the truck driver within moments. Kroner had demanded much from many an actor, but now it occurred to him that he had never seen the real, no-shit, genuine glint of suicidal glee in a man’s face until he saw that kid, pounding toward him with his arms clasped over that goddamned pack so that his hips undulated like a woman’s as he ran. Because the kid had run away from that fast Camaro toward him, Kroner could still outrun this whole problem.

  Except that now his Merc was swerving, fiendishly sensitive to any movement of its steering, and soon even at thirty miles an hour he felt as if he were driving hard over railroad ties, and while Kroner had not heard those gunshots he knew that one of his rear tires was as flat as an ingenue’s kiss on the forty-third take. Shedding pieces of rubber, he blub-thump, blub-thumped away from the wreck as fast as three good wheels would carry him.

  They carried him several miles, and Kroner could see a cluster of buildings in the valley, before the tan Camaro rounded a bend behind him. Smoke poured from its right front wheel well, but even with half a tread worn off against buckled metal the Camaro was catching up at a hell of a pace.

  The kid had sideswiped him once, and might do it again, and Hal Kroner was a man who kept himself fit. In the gimpy Mercedes he was helpless; on foot he might outdistance the kid, but only if he stopped right now. Kroner stabbed the brake pedal as he pulled over. Without hesitation, he grabbed the Malt-O-Bran wrapper and flung the loaf into the ravine, hoping no one saw it, wondering if he could ever find it again. He started down the ravine on foot with the Borsalino cocked crazily on his head, cursing his soft Bally moccasins, exulting in the knowledge that the crazy little fucker in the Camaro could not very well follow him down through heavy brush in a car no matter how much power it had, unless he was - crazy.

  He heard a deep squall of brakes, oddly muffled in the ravine, and then saw a prow the color of sand emerge against the sky, and heard the growl of a Chevy 350 urging the Camaro along the shoulder until it was nearly above him. Then, because Hal Kroner was a very good director, he made his intuitive calculations of time and motion and stopped flailing at bushes.

  He was a hundred feet down the ravine, exchanging stares with a wild-eyed nut who couldn’t aim a handgun and drive, too. If the kid left the car, Kroner could flee for miles. Even if the kid was sufficiently out of his gourd to drive the Camaro down the steep side of the ravine, he would not be able to steer it worth a damn. Assuming the kid did send his Camaro over the side, there would be time for Kroner to simply dart sideways, out of its path.

  For the first and only time, Hal Kroner spoke to the youth. “Looks like a wrap, kid,” he called, grinning. He was thinking, I’d never film something this beserk. Who’d believe it, when the youth made his decision.

  The Camaro kicked sideways like a shying stallion and began its slide down the brushy slope toward Kroner, bucking and bellowing as it came, the youth steering for Kroner without effect, seeing that Hal Kroner was too quick on his feet. Kroner backtracked for a few yards and then paused, grinning, estimating that the kid couldn’t steer and couldn’t aim a blunderbuss, much less a handgun, the way the Camaro was pitching and slamming as it neared Kroner’s level.

  Kroner figured the kid had another three hundred feet to descend whether he liked it or not and, instead of flipping off the Camaro driver, he doffed his Borsalino in triumph, holding it by its crown and flourishing it like an Italian. He was still holding the hat out when the kid released the steering wheel, reached into the seat beside him, and brought up that backpack in both hands. Kroner, twenty feet away, was smiling.

  Being the second precept of Farda: Death is the war-horse a martyr rides into paradise. Greet it with loving joy.

  The youth was smiling too, as he slapped the trigger plate that lay just beneath the pack flap.

  Thirty pounds of plastic explosive can do strange thin
gs. It blew some of the Camaro’s chassis three feet down into hard-pan, with the lower half of the driver. It distributed the remainder of the youth in a roughly hemispherical pattern with most of the car’s bodywork, the right-hand door whirling into Kroner like a runaway saw blade, carrying all but his head and upper torso some two hundred feet. And as the shock wave moved outward it carried Kroner’s Borsalino, an unresisting leaf on a hammering wall of wind, another hundred feet where it landed in scrub, intact, atop another piece of discarded garbage. But for the bright band of color on the hat, Los Angeles County deputies would never have seen it, and the Malt-O-Bran loaf beneath it with Kroner’s fingerprints.

  TEN

  On a late June night, Reese Masefield leaned against an open window in Wes Peel’s game room and swirled his snifter of Drambuie, combining work with pleasure. As long as Masefield made his deadlines for the Tribune and kept the Oakland paper in contention for Pulitzers, his hours were his own affair. Solidly built, with densely matted dark hair and deliberate movements, Masefield had an introvert’s smile and his slow measured speech seemed out of place in an investigative journalist. He would have passed as a senior accountant, or an insurance executive. It was only when you noticed the deep-set brown eyes that never seemed to rest, and the hairline scars on his nose and chin, that you remembered Reese Masefield was a man whose enemies had found him more than once.

  “I know the Trib would be interested in your maglev unit, Wes. And if they aren’t, I am.” Masefield lifted his chin against a cooling breeze from nearby hills and turned away from the window. “It isn’t every day I get to watch a locomotive fly. I’m still browned because you didn’t tip me off before you sent that damn’ dirigible of yours across the bay last month.”

  Wes slid his magnifying goggles up until they perched on his forehead and placed a tiny replica of a cargo container on the green baize of his pool table before answering. “Sorry, Reese; I got outvoted.”

  “I never knew any other votes counted,” Masefield replied. “Something new?”

  “We were getting some bad press on our local haulers at the time - all lies, but it hurt sales and we’re still feeling it. My top staff were getting paranoid about the press, and I let ’em have their way. ” Wes stood up and arched his back against cramping muscles. “Matter of fact, they weren’t too happy when I said I was inviting you out to the Mojave in July.” “So when have I ever been unfair to you in print? Discounting the Baja Run back in ’eighty-one, of course.” They had first met while contending for the same cheap scotch in a Mexican cantina after a younger, less cautious Wes managed to flip his off-road racer. Masefield’s interview, widely copied in the states, had left room for doubt that John Wesley Peel had all his marbles sacked. On their second meeting years later, Wes quoted the most damning passage verbatim, then congratulated Masefield on his expose of highway maintenance kickbacks. Both men favored scotch, both knew change was essential to improvements; and neither would yield an inch in the search for those improvements. After Wes’s move to the Bay area, their friendship became inevitable.

  “I’ve got no complaints, Reese; got you a ringside seat for the maglev runs, haven’t I?”

  “Not if it still depends on a vote,” Masefield said with that disarming shy smile. “I know who’s worried: Kaplan and Schultheis. Those two won’t give me the time of day. You’d think I was . . .’’he paused and added in mock distaste, “a journalist or something. I get more about your doings from Miz Mahler than I get from them.” Masefield knew Alma Schultheis from the days when she was closer to Wes, and knew how old Wolf Schultheis had named his children: the daughter for Alma Mahler, the son for Thomas Mann.

  “Aw, hell. Well, call direct to me then,” Wes suggested. “And Vangie Broussard may deflect my calls.”

  Wes, chuckling: ‘ ‘Maybe I’m better protected than I thought. ’ ’ “Or maybe just more isolated.”

  Wes studied his friend’s face for a moment, then dismissed

  an unspoken thought with a shrug. “Well, what haven’t you been able to find out?”

  “Nothing big. A few things I really didn’t want to ask you personally. Like, was there any substance to those rumors on your local rigs? And why the secrecy on your maglev trials next month?”

  Wes nodded and reached for the scotch, then reconsidered and poured himself an inch of Drambuie. He still thought Vangie’s complaint overdone, but lately he was tapering off as a matter of principle. “Public safety records can tell you there’s absolutely no basis for a recall of any Peel rigs. The National Trucking Coalition’s drumbeaters will try to tell you different. A few bills making the rounds on Capitol Hill would restrict us unfairly, but nobody expects ’em to pass. The plain fact is, the NTC is running scared so they’re trying to nick us.”

  “Make sure they don’t nick your carotid artery. Those people used to play very hard ball,” Masefield said, “even after the Hoffa days. They’re a lot bigger than Peel Transit, Wes. I know what you’re up to, of course.” He nodded toward the “YOU LOSE” sampler hung on the wall. “If the NTC knows too, you’d better watch your back.”

  “I do. Now, about the secrecy with our maglev unit. When you’re pushing any performance envelope, there’s a chance of a major malfunction. With these rumors about our equipment safety I couldn’t afford coverage of a major malf on network TV. I can give you one thing for the record: If Allington’s computer simulations are right, our maglev may be a little faster than anybody thinks.

  “We have to match the passenger maglev’s max of two hundred and fifty miles an hour. But ten years from now, people will want to commute along major corridors at three hundred, maybe faster. Perishable cargo, too. Bay Area to San Diego; the Bos-Wash corridor; the dogleg routes from Chicago to KayCee and Dallas-Houston-Austin. Air corridors can’t absorb the volume of traffic, but maglevs can do it with clean electricity and no bottlenecks at terminals.” His eyes shone with an inner vision.

  “And Peel Transit will be ready,” Masefield said for him, miming a toast. “Won’t that put your big deltas out of business?”

  Wes sniffed at his glass thoughtfully. “Off the record?” “Absolutely. For deep background, as they say.”

  “I want ’em out of business, eventually. The big lifters are a transfer mode between railroads and local rigs. They erase the last advantage of long-haul trucking, and they’ll be a stopgap for fast western freight until somebody has the guts to put fifty billion dollars into a maglev route through the Sierra and Rockies. Of course, it’ll take a lot of deltas. But Boeing built a lot of 747’s,” he grinned.

  Masefield glanced out toward the twinkle of distant lights, and the horizon glow of cities along the bay. He imagined a phalanx of the huge craft hovering like modular clouds on the outskirts of Hayward, and vented a long, low whistle. Then, “If it all works, you will be bigger than the NTC. My God, Wes, Hayward will be the new Detroit!”

  “Yeah; if. But without a fast link between railheads, we’re still stuck with eighteen-wheel kings of the road. Look, I don’t expect to make all the big rigs obsolete. They’ll always have a few advantages in special cases. If Delta One can’t haul lettuce over the mountains to Denver or El Paso better than a long-hauler, she won’t complete the links the railroads need. More deep background: I’m staying conspicuously at the plant, but my hotshots are spread from the Mojave to Arizona this week, setting up tests or performing them.”

  Masefield absorbed this with a nod and a pause. Then, “Isn’t it pretty chancy to crowd so many different kinds of tests into a few months?”

  “Lord God, tell me about it!” Wes rolled his eyes and grimaced. “That was a mistake, but we’re committed now.

  While Schultheis and Kaplan are training a maglev crew up near the Nevada border, Glenn Rogan will be skipping Delta One over pe
  Now
Masefield was laughing. “You have a way of understating it. I’ve flown a puddle jumper through the Rockies, and every cloud has a rock and a cyclone in it.”

  “It’s worse for a dirigible,” Wes replied. “Ever read about the Shenandoah on her way through Arizona? Winds in Dos Cabezas Pass got-damn’ near tied a seven-hundred-foot dirigible in a knot.”

  “Folklore, to me,” said Masefield. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Seventy years; but God assembles the same winds today,” Wes answered. “We’ve got some tricks to change Delta One’s pressure height and aerodynamic lift to get over the rocks, but ’til now it’s just been theory.” He swirled the liqueur; inhaled. “I’ll give you details when it’s all over, but ’til then, I haven’t told you a thing. Maybe that’s what my boffins were afraid you’d uncover, and they don’t trust you like I do.”

  “Could be.” Masefield strolled to the pool table, gazed at Wes’s handiwork, then flopped into a couch which hissed faintly as its air cooling unit sensed his warm body on a sticky summer night. “I sure haven’t done much uncovering lately. That Berkeley jocks-at-stud thing turned out to be somebody’s imagination. And I wasted a lot of time down south trying to make sense out of the Kroner mess. ’ ’ Headshake: “We’ll never know, I guess.”

  Wes hauled the squat Drambuie bottle to the couch, set it at Masefield’s feet as a silent offer, and leaned back to favor his hip. “The movie director? Guess I read about it; got problems of my own. Blew himself up in a ravine, didn’t he?” “Got blown up, anyway. He was involved in a truck accident, and drove away, and a few miles off they found his Mercedes with a shredded tire and a bullet hole through the windshield. Okay, so somebody was after him; caught him, probably. Whoever it was, drove a heavy metal Chevy coupe off the road into the ravine. Halfway down, the Chevy made a report to the nation. Blew the driver into the kind of pieces that don’t give you an ID. Hal Kroner was cut in two, but you could recognize him. Cops figured the guy forced Kroner into the Chevy at gunpoint. Kroner tries to jump him, the car goes into the ravine, one of them has a shitload of explosives, and bouncing down the ravine sets it off. By some freak of shock waves, the upper part of Kroner is left ten yards away and the rest of him goes for an over-the-fence homer.