by Frank Lamour
Some moments passed, and Clovis had begun to think that it had indeed been nothing, but then, to the left of the main house, had appeared the featherweight form, dressed in some kind of hippy outfit.
The outfit was filthy, with what looked like drying blood on some parts of it, but other than that the guy didn’t really look like anything to worry about. He was empty handed and there was no printing of a gun. He didn’t even look to have the weight of a cell phone or wallet in his pocket
Now if he could just catch the kid neatly, Clovis had thought, not have to go chasing him all about the place, or having him maybe screaming for help to the neighbours.
Clovis lowered the curtain again and then went to take a place behind the open bedroom door. The small gap at the hinged section of the door did not give much of a view of anything; he would just have to rely on his ears.
Waiting, getting a little bored, phone on silent, Clovis decided to send Lesley a quick text, “At Beppe’s. Have money.”
Then slipping his phone back in his pocket he listened as Don entered, moved through the house, stepping into the bedroom, then back out.
Clovis heard him knocking on the toilet door, heard him calling to Beppe.
Clovis had stepped out quietly from his hiding spot.
He had waited for Don to open the door, sure when he saw the house-sitter he’d be too distracted to notice Clovis approaching from behind. He waited another second, and then strode forward, locking the little guy around the neck. Only be a couple of seconds before it would be lights out for the car thief. This had been Clovis’s last thought before his elbow had exploded with pain
◆◆◆
And now he was sat slumped against the wall. He was dazed, badly, he knew, but he wasn’t out. He at least hadn’t blacked out.
The ulnar nerve pain had seemed to turn his brain to mush for bit. He’d fucked up; he’d been sure the hippy kid had been unarmed. And even so, normally he should’ve been able to choke an untrained opponent out in seconds, never mind letting the fucker launch some kind of counter-offensive. Unless, they were, I don’t know, say high on speed or something. Clovis idly considered the possibility. Nah, it wasn’t even 10am.
Keep moving. His training had taught him tenacity and never to give up, no matter the pain, another blow from the little lead-weighted club and he would definitely be out, maybe not to wake up at all.
He saw his tiny opponent looming above him, making the dumb mistake of waiting to see whether he was knocked out or not. In the cage you learnt that was a bad mistake, if the guy was down, no time for niceties, just jump on him and finish him. It gave Clovis precious seconds.
His right arm was still good and Clovis reached into shorts pocket feeling for the Bobcat. It was awkward from his sitting position, but Clovis managed, after some fumbling, to dig in to the pocket and get a grip on the butt. The holster had a surface that gripped on fabric, so that when Clovis drew the gun, the holster stayed behind.
The room still swam, blurry, his vision red around the edge, but he managed to lock a bead on Don’s centre mass. Unfortunately just as he did his vision blurred again. Trusting he was still on target he squeezed the trigger and fired.
Chapter 42
Don watched his assailant stagger backwards, hit the wall and slide down till his butt hit the floor, legs straight out in front of him, feet splayed
A big, very muscly and very hairy guy. He was down, dazed, but still moving. Don debated whether to hit him again—surely the guy was no longer a threat, bashed in the elbow as well as eye-bone. Don watched and waited as the man, eyes half shut, slowly began rummaging about for something in the right front pocket of his shorts. It looked like he had a wallet in there. Or maybe it was a pack of smokes?
It was too late to go for a follow up blow by the time Don caught glimpse of the butt of the small black revolver—swiftly drawn and levelled at him.
Don dived around the side of Beppe’s ratty couch just as he did he heard the two shots—not as loud as those of last night (or maybe he was going deaf), but nonetheless frightening—in quick succession.
Fairly certain he hadn’t been hit, crouching on the carpet, hearing nothing further and not wanting to get pinned down, have the guy get up and put a round through the back of his head, Don took the chance and barrelled out through the open sliding door.
Rounding the house, this time on the garage side and at great speed, Don reached the front wall in short time and now—somehow—made easy work of vaulting the imposing barrier.
In a moment he was crashing down on the other side and thankfully landing (mostly) on his feet.
Don pushed up and ran over to the car.
It was empty.
What the hell? He tried the passenger door then jogged around to the driver’s side. Both locked. He looked and saw the Street Sweeper down in the footwell behind the passenger seat.
Don was about ninety percent or so sure that the muscly guy was still in no condition to make a heated pursuit, but he didn’t fancy risking a ten percent chance of getting shot—no matter how damn pocket-size the pistol. He just wanted to get the hell out of there. The bowl-cut kid was just going to have to be left to his own devices.
Don now saw Ricky emerge from behind a tree down the road.
“Hang on!” Ricky said, rushing over, tying the drawstring on his pants.
“Where the keys?”
Ricky started checking his pockets, clearly finding them empty. Don looked in again through the Aston window and lit upon a winged logo half squashed into the fold at the back of the passenger seat.
Ricky now joined Don in staring stupidly in through the window at the set of keys. Don tried both back doors but with no luck.
“What happened?” Ricky asked.
“Let’s just get moving,” Don said and spent the next few moments trying to pull down the side windows with the flats of his hands. “We need a coat hanger or something,” he said, managing to get a little space at the top of the driver’s side window
Don turned to see Ricky offering up a half brick he had picked off the road somewhere.
Don was about to make a ‘I’m not even going to think about it’ face, when he heard the sound of the garage door motor.
He took the proffered chunk of rubble and lobbed it through the driver’s window. Breakaway glass shattered into many little cubes.
Don unlocked and yanked open the door. He grabbed the key, roughly ushered Ricky in through the driver’s side and then scrabbled in himself. He fumbled with the keys, got the correct one in the ignition and turned. The engine, of course, rolled over but did not take.
Don now heard three or so firecracker pops accompanied by a couple of metallic thunks—somewhere at the back of the vehicle. He turned and saw the muscly guy squatted, under the low—but still rising—garage door, little pistol raised.
Turning the ignition key again, pumping the accelerator, the Aston finally fired to life. Keeping head his ducked low (he saw Ricky was already ducked down and grasping through to the backseat for the Street Sweeper) Don floored the gas.
The car lurched a few times but, thankfully, after fishtailing with a squeal, took off without stalling.
Halfway down the block Don cast a brief glance back and saw the muscly guy speedily staggering down the road towards them.
Don sped on, taking a hard left at the T-junction at the end of the road. A little way down this block Don now became aware of a thump, thump, coming from the rear left of the car.
The noise grew louder. The time between thumps growing shorter as he sped up.
“I think we’ve got a flat,” Ricky offered.
At the end of the block Don took another left. He wanted to get back to the main road, to get out of the suburb so as not to get stuck down some dead end.
The back of the vehicle was now slaloming slightly, and Don prayed he could keep control of it at speed. He could hear the rapid thump, thump of the loose rubber. Don slowed just a bit. He checked the review and now saw turni
ng into the street about two blocks back a vaguely familiar, bright green, Subaru.
Next to Don Ricky had retrieved the Street Sweeper and seemed to be trying to figure how it worked. “We won’t outrun him on a flat,” Ricky was saying but Don thought he was going to do his best to try.
Busier road up ahead, Don took a right, not bothering properly check for approaching cars and narrowly avoided a collision with a bakkie. The driver raging, gesticulating at him furiously.
Don ignored the hand gestures and pushed the Jag on. He needed to come up with a plan—but what? Drive to a police station? He couldn’t even think where the nearest one was. Where the hell did the muscly guy fit into all of this? Don should have still had time left.
An S-bend up ahead. Taking him round the lake. He thought he could hear the roar of the green hatch gaining on him. The Jag took the first bend okay, but the next, deceptively sharper, Don misjudged and ended up scraping some of the battleship grey off on the steel barrier.
Damn.
Behind in the mirror, the pursuit vehicle was coming into view. The road now straightened, and Don weighed heavier on the gas pushing through a red robot without stopping. Barp of an angry horn. Then a sharp left, off the main road, back onto a quieter street, now heading toward Melville. At least he was now a little more familiar with these back streets.
“He’s coming up.” Ricky said. “I’ll just show him the gun maybe that’ll back him off!”
“Okay. Okay. Then I’ve got an idea,” Don said. “We get down to Main, jump out and run into one of the restaurants. Or the bank?”
Ricky didn’t comment About half a block later, Don’s eyes were fixed on the road ahead, trying to avoid both potholes and pedestrians, when a deafening boom sounded about an inch from his left ear.
The cabin filled with sulphurous smoke. Don’s eyes watered, his ear ringing a single tone. The back window was still intact and Don turned briefly to see the white leather of the back seat pumped full of holes. “What the fuck?”
Ricky simply looked confusedly down at the Street Sweeper, one finger in right ear, wiggling it about and not seeming to have heard Don.
Turning forward again, Don ploughed on through stop streets hoping for the best. The road dipped and then started to rise, rising steeply, heading up to the steep ridge on the other side of which, down the hill was the busy Main road and hopefully some kind of protection amongst many potential witnesses.
“I don’t think he saw the gat.” Ricky said.
Don was just engaged in calculating how this was all going to add up. Buckshot in the backseat. A broken side window. A scratch down the side. A new tyre. A new rim? How many organs was this going to take to pay off?
“Your ear’s bleeding,” Ricky said.
Don wiped at his ear with his shoulder. Right earlobe off now left eardrum burst. Great!
The green hot hatch drew closer in the side mirror and Don began worrying that the muscly guy was going to try for a ‘pit manoeuvre’—knocking his tail out to get him to spin.
Heading for the top of the ridge, Don put more foot. He’d need some distance between him and his pursuer if he was to be able to park and give him and Ricky enough time to try and run for sanctuary. To his left, Don saw Ricky was now trying to lever his upper body out of the side window while holding the heavy shotgun.
Cresting the rise, heading into an unexpected bend, Don slammed on brakes a little too hard and the back tires locked.
The Aston suddenly felt like it was on ice and Don struggled to control the wheel. What was it? Turn into the skid, or away from it? And what the hell did that even mean? Despite his best attempts the Jag spun out, rear left hitting the steel crash barrier—or at least Don thought that was what happened first; the order of events now, even as they were happening, seemed a little jumbled. He did remember though checking to see that he had his seatbelt on, and seeing it was, feeling pleased that with all going on he’d still had the presence of mind to buckle up. He turned to his left and got a shock to see Ricky’s seat empty.
After hitting the barrier the Aston Martin drifted out the other way—Don still struggling pointlessly with the steering. The car spun he wasn’t sure how many times, maybe only once, Don just remembered it spinning, seeing houses pass in front of windscreen, then maybe a brief second when the vehicle came to rest.
Thinking it was all over but then another massive, bone-jarring thud, and Don’s head bopped to the side, he saw a blur of green and glimpse of a hairy face, fear and panic etched into it. The Aston Martin spun once more and came to rest facing downhill.
It was from this spot Don watched, out through the front windscreen, the green Subaru Impreza, now also out of control, begin to roll.
Momentum increased by gravity, the muscly man’s racer clattered down the steep decline. Don lost count of how many times it rolled, maybe five, maybe more, before finally coming to a crunching halt, on its roof, near the bottom of the hill.
Chapter 43
As the sun rose higher the day started growing hot.
Joel and Sunnyboy had both sat silently passing time. Joel fiddling with a “match three” game on his phone from time to time, it was a habit he had to get out of. Sunnyboy seeming to spend most of the time polishing the shotgun he’d selected from his bag of tricks. A pistol-gripped, 12-gauge Mossberg on to which he’d fixed a suppressor.
Joel took off his jacket, but then worried about burning, put it back on. He tried to get under the shade of the wall, but his position wouldn’t allow it. He looked over and saw that Sunnyboy’s spot had put him under the shade of a huge oak. And he looked cool, and unaffected by the heat.
They were sat on two of the small leather things that he had just learned were called ‘pouffes,’ when Nutmeg had two brought down for them.
He supposed it could be worse. He thought of Friedberger out on the street in the Jeep. Wondering how much the kid was cooking in the car.
He had told Friedberger to lie down on the passenger seat of the Jeep, try not stick his head up and look out at every vehicle he heard passing (luckily though it was a dead-end street and there should be minimal cars), just listen for the gate.
The last thing he wanted to do was spook off whoever was arriving. If he felt it was a trap he might just drive on by and then they’d be in the shit. Joel wondered now if having the Jeep out in the street was a good idea. There were some other cars parked further up and down the street, but not many.
In his experience, as many variables as one predicted for, the unexpected still very often still happened and situations often were just a case of damage control, how well one performed was how well one could take care of arising problems. For example, if the kid showed up in an taxi—I mean they’d said he’d arrived here before on a bicycle. Joel wasn’t sure what Pinchas had in mind for the guy, but he had a feeling that it wasn’t good, and if he was to disappear off the face of the earth, in the near future, the less witnesses that had seen his last port of call, the better.
Joel looked over at Sunnyboy still wiping at invisible spots on the Mossberg.
Initially not too sure about the shotgun, Joel was now thinking maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. The shock intimidation factor of a weapon was always helpful. Maybe just assist in getting this kid and whoever he might be with to surrender nice and easily. Come along compliantly and peacefully.
SB had also impressed Joel when he’d pulled out the silencer can, as well as informing Joel that he was loading subsonic slugs. But after further thought this both comforted and worried Joel. He was comforted by the fact that Sunnyboy had considered the noise factor but also worried that this might signal more of an intention and desire to use the weapon.
Joel had noted that Sunnyboy was also armed with Glock 17 in a hip holster, a large knife in his boot, as well as hidden-blade, belt buckle (which, although concealed, Joel recognised from having seen it on display in a gun shop). Whether he had more concealed weapons, Joel couldn’t be sure, but thought it not i
mprobable.
All Joel had was his Wilson Combat inside his waistband tuckable holster, an extra mag, which gave him a total of thirty plus one, and his Silencerco suppressor. It was a fair amount of ammo he thought, and weapon was virtually jam-proof, but, looking over at Sunnyboy he did feel a little under-equipped.
Feeling the burn on his neck Joel wondered idly if he shouldn’t have put on some sunscreen.
Turning back to Sunnyboy who was still polishing the heck out of his shotgun, Joel asked, “Doesn’t that thing kill your wrists?” nodding at the weapon.
“Here,” Sunnyboy said. He reached into a one of the many pockets of his cargo pants and removed a blue object that he tossed over to Joel.
Joel caught it, examined the object. It was a sort of ball within a ball, plastic, fitting roughly into the palm of his hand.
“Strengthens your wrists,” Sunnyboy said.
Joel fiddled with the device.
“You got to get it going.”
After messing with the object a bit, Joel eventually got the idea, but, worried a bit about the noise, chucked it back to Sunnyboy who returned it to its pocket.
Joel had heard one car pass by, but otherwise, so far, quiet.
He picked up his phone again.
Chapter 44
Don stared down at the wrecked vehicle for some time in silence. His heart was hammering miles a minute and it felt like he couldn’t catch breath. Was this what going into shock felt like?
He just about jumped out of his skin when Ricky stuck a hand in to unlock the passenger door.
Ricky opened the door collapsed down on to the seat, the Sweeper still in one hand—although looking a bit scratched up—and the left side of his face covered with blood.
“Uh, are you okay?” Don asked
“Huh?”
Don indicated the blood.
Ricky prodded his face and scalp. “I think I got a cut here,” He said. “It’s okay. Scalp bleeds a lot.”