The young man said, ‘Okay, Merton. Let’s get out of here. Head for the Ventura Freeway.’
‘Whatever you say, Ken,’ and started up the motor. Merton pulled the car away from the kerb and U-turned in the street to take a right at Colbert. Then he spun the wheel towards Federal Avenue, took another right at National Boulevard, and drove up the northbound ramp on to the San Diego Freeway.
Both Ken and Merton were silent as they drove through West Los Angeles with the morning sun lighting the interior of the car.
‘I’ve been wanting to meet you people,’ John said.
Neither of them answered.
John looked out of the window of the car for a while, watching salesmen and families and van drivers cruising obliviously past him, all unaware that he was in danger of his life.
‘I suppose you guessed what I was doing as soon as I went round to see Mrs Daneman,’ he said.
Ken glanced at him, but said nothing.
‘Well,’ John continued, ‘I guess it was kind of stupid of me to stick my nose in where it wasn’t wanted. But you people are really acting obvious, aren’t you? It can’t be long before the FBI get on to you.’
Merton, the fat man in the front, said in a breathless voice, ‘Will you shut up?’
‘I’m sorry. I was only trying to make conversation,’ John said.
Ken gave him a tired, humourless smile. ‘This isn’t like the movies, Mr Cullen. The victim doesn’t sit in the car giving out with a bunch of crap which needles the hit men so much that they lose their cool. It just doesn’t happen that way.’
‘You’re not even going to tell me what you’re going to do?’
‘Sure,’ said Ken. ‘We’re going to kill you.’
‘Are you going to tell me why?’
‘You know why,’ panted Merton. ‘You just gave out with why.’
‘You mean I’m right? You’re actually going around knocking people off?’
‘Don’t answer that, Merton,’ Ken said quietly.
‘I wasn’t going to,’ Merton said. ‘I have a date with Bea tonight, and I’m saving my breath up.’
Ken sat back in his seat and looked at Merton with an arch grin. ‘I’d pay a million bucks to see you and Bea making it together. Talk about the collision of the Zeppelins.’
Merton wasn’t offended by this remark at all, and let out a high-pitched, wheezing giggle.
‘You won’t even tell me why you’re killing people? You killed my father, and you won’t even let me know why?’ John said.
Ken turned to him with a handsome, bored expression. ‘Give it a rest, Cullen. It doesn’t make any difference if you know or if you don’t know.’
John stayed silent. He looked at his hands, clasping his knee, and he saw that his knuckles were spotted with white. His muscles were locked up tight like woodworking clamps, and he felt cold all over; he slowly began to understand, in a ghastly revelation, how frightened he actually was. These men, without any emotion, were going to end his life in cold blood. These men who didn’t even know him, or what he was. They were just going to take him out and kill him.
They reached the Ventura Freeway, and turned east into the sun. Merton pulled down his sun-visor, and sneezed a couple of times. John looked across at Ken again, but Ken was watching him with complete impassiveness. They could have been anything, these men. Waiters, salesmen, out-of-work extras. It was their ordinariness that made them so frightening.
Merton switched on the car radio. There was a blather of news and commercials, and then he tuned to a schmaltzy music station. With a terrible wryness, John reflected that it was just his luck to go to his funeral to the sounds of Mantovani.
On their left, the blue-and-ochre San Gabriel Mountains were hazed in late morning mist, although the radio was predicting another hot one. Merton said, in a matter-of-fact way, ‘Do you want to go fishing next week, after you finish up at Palm Springs?’
Ken shrugged. ‘Did you line up a boat yet?’
‘I can if you’re interested. I know Bea wants to go.’
‘You and Bea together in one boat? What are you going to rent? The Queen Mary?’
Merton cackled. He was still laughing as he turned off the Ventura Freeway at the Griffith Park off-ramp, and then took a left by Travel Town, where old Union Pacific and Southern Pacific locomotives and trains were parked out in the open for children to climb on. But they were hardly past the park when, without warning, a Hughes supermarket truck pulled out of the turn-off in front of them, and Merton was forced to jam on the brakes.
He put down his window, and yelled at the truck-driver, ‘You asshole!’
The truck snorted and shuddered to a halt across the highway. Then the cab door opened, and a beefy redfaced driver in greasy yellow coveralls climbed down from the cab and walked slowly back towards them.
The truck driver leaned on the roof of the Buick and stared at Merton with massive self-control.
‘Did you say something, fat man?’
‘I didn’t say nothing,’ wheezed Merton. ‘I’m a sick man, now get out of my way.’
The truck driver didn’t appear to be in any hurry. He said, ‘I suggest you get out of that car, mister, and repeat yourself. Because if you said what I thought you said, I’m going to turn you into the thinnest fat man that ever was.’
John sat in the back, sweating. He looked at the truck driver, at the back of Merton’s neck, at Ken. Then he looked at his door handle, only inches away from his hand. Ken was probably ruthless to the point of insanity, but would he shoot in front of a witness? Would he shoot the witness as well?
Merton was saying, ‘I’m sorry. It’s a misunderstanding. If you want me to say I’m sorry, then I’m sorry.’
The moment was passing. The truck driver was looking as if he was mollified, and he had lifted his hefty forearm off the roof of the car. John had seconds, no more than seconds, to make up his mind what he was going to do.
It seemed like a slow-motion dream. He lifted his hand across to the door handle, and saw his fingers opening to clutch it. Then he pulled it open, and heaved his weight against the door. It swung open, and the next thing he knew he was rolling across the hot concrete of the road, grazing his hands and his face against it.
He picked himself up, and saw them turning towards him, the truck driver and the two killers. Then he was running as hard and as fast as he could back up the road towards the travel museum, along the wire mesh fence which separated it from the highway, searching for a way in, searching for people amongst whom he could hide himself.
The Buick, with its rear passenger door still hanging open, roared into life and backed up towards him, slewing from one side of the road to the other. John kept running, his body charged with fear, his lungs expanded, his muscles bursting with energy.
He saw the Travel Town parking lot entrance, and ran towards it. Merton wrested the wheel of the Buick around, shifted into drive, and mounted the sidewalk in an effort to run him down.
John dodged into the road again, and then back onto the sidewalk, and he heard the roaring of the car’s engine and the banging of its suspension as Merton came after him. He turned the corner into the parking lot just in time – the Buick’s front bumper, colliding with the parking lot fence, pulled the back of his shoe down.
Hopping, limping, he ran the length of the parking lot to the entrance, stared at by curious tourists and children, and hobbled inside. There were dozens of railroad cars to hide himself in, and he headed straight for a luxury Union Pacific car, and clambered up the wooden steps at the back of it. Over by the park entrance, he heard the squeal of brakes as the Buick pulled up outside.
Sweating, panting, he walked the length of the stuffy railroad car, and then walked through to a sleeping-car, trying the doors of the sleeping compartments to see if he could hide in any of them. They were all locked. He hurried through to the end of the sleeping-car, and through the dusty windows he could see Merton and Ken coming through the entrance, and looking
around.
He went right through to the last car, and waited by the door to see which way Merton and Ken were going to start searching. He closed his eyes for a moment, and tried to get his breath back. His breathing and the pulse of his blood seemed to be the loudest noises in the whole park. Even the chatter of children, and the calling of parents to smile now, Clark, and look like an engineer, that’s right, seemed muffled and diminutive in comparison.
He saw Ken, with one hand inside his plaid shirt, walking past a Grumman Cougar naval aeroplane in the distance. If Ken was over by that side of the park, then it was likely that Merton was close. He stepped quietly to the open door of the railroad car and peeked out.
Merton was right there, fat-faced and puffing for breath. He yelled, ‘Ken! He’s here!’ as John popped his head out.
John jumped down from the railroad car into the dust, and began to sprint the length of the train, with Merton lumbering after him. He heard Ken shout, ‘Okay, Merton, I’m on my way!’
John reached the giant black-painted Union Pacific locomotive, and scrambled up the metal rungs into the engineer’s cab. Merton yelled, ‘I’ve got you now, Cullen! Come down out of there, you don’t have a damned chance!’
Inside the locomotive cab, John kept down close to the metal floor. He could hear Merton panting and gasping down on the ground, and he knew that he could outrun him any day. But the fat man was probably armed, and even if he tried to jump down from the cab on the opposite side, he would find himself being shot at through the locomotive’s wheels.
John waited, and tried to get his breath back.
He heard Ken come loping up. ‘He’s up there?’ Ken asked.
‘That’s right,’ answered Merton. ‘Asshole just took three years off of my life.’
There was a momentary silence, and then Ken called, ‘Cullen, you’d better come down out of there! I’m giving you three to step out with your hands over your head!’
John waited, and sweated, and knew damned well that if he tried to escape, they’d kill him, and if he gave himself up, they’d kill him. He said to himself, ‘Forgive me for this Vicki,’ under his breath, and began to edge his way to the opposite side of the cab.
‘Okay,’ said Ken, ‘that’s one – two—’
John threw himself ten feet from the cab on to the ground, jarring his shoulder against a railroad tie, and then he was up and away across the Travel Town park. He heard something snap and whine past his head, and he vaguely understood that they were firing at him with silencers. He ran towards the entrance, his foot throbbing and his lungs on fire, praying that Merton had left the keys in the Buick.
He didn’t get a chance to try for the car. A party of small children was crowding the entrance, and he had to wade his way through them, pushing them gently but hastily aside, while Ken came running closer and doser across the park. By the time he was through the children, Ken was only a few feet away, and he had to run back up the length of the parking lot, hoping to God that he could get up in the rough hilly ground beyond the museum and lose his pursuers for good.
John was only a few feet from the parking lot entrance when he heard the Buick’s motor start up, and the shriek of its tyres as Merton turned it around after him. He couldn’t run much further. The sweat was running down him like blood, and his foot was swelling painfully.
He limped out of the parking lot into the roadway. The Buick came screeching after him, in a cloud of dust, and he knew that the grassy hills were too far away, and that Ken and Merton would shoot him down before he had the chance to get out of sight.
But then he heard the blast of a car horn, and a station-wagon appeared around the bend in the road from nowhere at all, a huge green Mercury with a laden roof-rack, and Merton had to spin the wheel to avoid it. The Buick skidded across the road, lurched tail-first into the ditch, and turned over on to its side.
There was a second’s silence, and then the Buick exploded in a fierce orange-and-black billow of flame.
John saw the passenger door kicked open, and Ken struggling out of the car with his face blackened. Ken yelled out: ‘He’s trapped in there! He’s trapped behind the wheel!’ But then there was another roaring spout of flame, and he had to jump down from the overturned car and back up on to the roadway.
There was nothing that anybody could do. Merton was wedged by his own fatness, and the heat was already too intense for anyone to go within ten feet. As the fire grew fiercer, they could hear him shrieking in a terrified, high-pitched voice. Blazing gasoline rolled through the car, smoking up the windows and setting fire to the vinyl seats. Black smoke was already heaping up into the hot morning sky. A crowd of people had come out from Travel Town, but all they could do was stand in a silent semi-circle and watch the Buick blaze.
The shrieking went on and on, but then there was another loud explosion, and it died away. In the distance, on the freeway, they could hear the warbling of a firetruck siren.
John and Ken stood amongst the crowd of awed tourists and frightened children, only ten feet apart, looking at each other with strange hostility and suppressed emotion. John took a step towards Ken, but Ken gave a quick, sharp shake of his head, and stepped back.
Finally, when the first firetruck turned the corner of Intervale Road, its blue lights flashing and its siren whooping, Ken turned away and elbowed into the circle of people, and disappeared.
An old man with a cardboard engineer’s hat on said to John, ‘Did you see what happened here, sir? Did you actually see what happened?’
John was given a ride as far as Hollywood by a talkative novelty shop owner who had been taking his children out for the day. Then he caught a taxi back to Mar Vista, where his borrowed Lincoln Capri was parked. It was nearly three o’clock now, and he was exhausted.
As he unlocked the Lincoln, the black kid who was supposed to have been looking after it came dawdling along the sidewalk on a bicycle. The boy stopped, and said, ‘Hi.’
‘How are you doing?’ asked John. ‘Too bad you didn’t call the cops for me.’
‘I would’ve,’ replied the kid, ‘but my pa says never to trust white folks, and never to trust the cops.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘I agree with my pa.’
John climbed in behind the wheel of the Lincoln. ‘How old are you, kid?’ he asked him.
‘Ten.’
‘Well, allow me to congratulate you. You’re the youngest racial bigot I’ve ever come across.’
The black kid said, ‘Ain’t you going to give me that dollar?’
Twenty-Five
By the time John got home, Mel was there, sitting on the verandah with a beer. He stood up and came down the steps as John swung the long white Lincoln around in the driveway, and killed the motor. It was a warm afternoon, and the air was fragrant with the scent of trees and the smell of Vicki’s cooking.
‘Is that a car or is that a car?’ Mel said, walking around the glittering chrome-plated front end, a grin of admiration on his face.
‘That’s a car all right,’ said John. ‘Fifty-eight Lincoln Capri Landau, seven-litre V8 developing 375 brake horse.’
‘Are you buying it or borrowing it?’
‘Right now I’m using it to get the hell out of trouble.’ Mel looked at him. ‘You’ve been shot at again?’
‘Nearly. I was down seeing a woman in Mar Vista about her son who got killed on the freeway. A couple of weirdos jumped me and tried to kidnap me. Come on inside and I’ll tell you about it.’
They went into the house. Vicki was in the kitchen, cooking a casserole for the evening. She was wearing her tight denim shorts with raggedy bottoms, and a V-necked red T-shirt. Deep in her cleavage nestled a gold Egyptian ankh that John had given her for Thanksgiving.
He kissed her, and then peered over the cooker at the casserole pot. ‘That looks good,’ he said. ‘What are you going to call it when it’s finished?’
She shrugged. ‘Beef surprise. The surprise is that it’s not bee
f at all, it’s lamb.’
Then she said, ‘What took you so long? You look kind of funny.’
‘Funny?’
‘Well, pale. What happened this morning?’
He went to the icebox and took out a beer. ‘It wasn’t anything much. But I’ve decided to take your advice.’
‘John,’ she said, setting down her ladle. ‘Something happened, didn’t it?’
He popped open the can, and took a mouthful of beer. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and nodded. ‘I was telling Mel on the way in. Two of them tried to kidnap me. I don’t have any idea why. They took me out to Griffith Park and said they were going to kill me.’
‘They kidnapped you? Oh, my God! Oh, John.’ Her eyes filled with tears, and she suddenly began to shake uncontrollably. ‘Oh, my God, I can’t take-any more of this.’
He held her in his arms. ‘Vicki, it’s okay. I got out of it. They got snarled up in a traffic argument and I ran away. I’m okay.’
She clutched him tight, kissing him. Her tears ran down his face, and it was all he could do not to cry himself. ‘I’m going to call the FBI,’ he promised, ‘and Detective Morello, and I’m going to stay out of this. I promise you. Whatever’s going down here, it’s something really big and really heavy, and I don’t want to be part of it.’
‘They’ll come back for you.’ She said, ‘I know it. They’re crazy.’
‘One of them might. But the other one’s dead. They tried to chase me in their car and they had an accident. It was a fat guy called Merton, that’s all I know.’
‘Isn’t that worse?’ she said. ‘I mean, won’t they want to revenge him?’
‘I don’t know,’ John said. ‘I’m going to call the cops anyway. The whole thing goes much wider and deeper than I even guessed.’
‘You mean you’re really convinced it’s a conspiracy?’ asked Mel. He had come into the kitchen, and had overheard most of what John had said.
‘It’s much more than that,’ John said. ‘It’s as if somebody’s trying to wipe out a whole type of human being, all across America. Nice, liberal-minded, ordinary people, the more popular with their friends the better. Jesus, Mel, it’s like genocide. I have more than a hundred unexplained shootings in newspaper cuttings on my desk and that’s for last month alone. How many don’t get reported? How many get logged as suicide, or traffic accidents?’
The Sweetman Curve Page 18