by James Grady
Zane pulled Hailey to her feet, offered me a stun gun that had fallen from Cari’s pocket: “Put out her lights!”
“No!” I ripped a holstered gun from her hip. “Hostage!”
“You’re nuts!” said Hailey.
“Yeah, but that’s not it.”
I found handcuffs in Cari’s left jacket pocket, a set of keys in her right. As I cuffed her wrist and bent her other arm behind her, I briefly worried that she might be a cop, but then I found three ID folders and a silencer for her pistol. Zane helped me jerk Cari to her feet.
Those green eyes flicked from him to me. Gave me nothing but hard.
We three marched down the stage stairs.
Baldy lay sprawled on the ground, the pockets of his pants turned inside out. His ribs moved, but Zane reported: “He’s done for now.”
Zane scooped Baldy’s brown leather coat off the ground, a gesture that gaped open the coat Zane wore. I saw Baldy’s weapons vest now on Zane. Zane whirled the brown coat through the air, settled it on Cari’s shoulders to hide her cuffed hands. He buttoned the collar to make it her cape. His pistol slid inside that coat to kiss her spine.
“You choose trouble,” he told her, “you get a wheelchair.”
Death is hard to picture. But a bullet shattering your spine…
Zane marched her out in front of us as a shield.
In, through the kitchen, past the walk-in frig, around the corner, back into the sweat-humid club to where Russell helped Eric to his feet. Revelers pounded Russell on the back. On stage, Terri and the Runawayz cheered. Nurse Death’s Walther PPK bulged Eric’s back pocket. Russell helped Eric fall into our parade to the front door.
On stage, Terri couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Russell: Walking out. Turning for one last vision of her. And to shrug.
Zane whispered in Cari’s ear: “If there’s guns in the street, all you win is mess.”
She kept moving, not yes, not no, not please. So cool.
Woosh and we were outside in the night cold street light glare.
No shotgun blast. No bullhorns. No bright lights blinding our eyes.
Zane’s free hand passed Baldy’s car keys to Eric.
Bweep-boop! Lights flashed on a sedan parked near our stolen BMW.
“Can’t take their car!” I said. “It might have a built-in GPS tracker.”
Russell took Baldy’s knife and jogged to our hunters’ sedan. Pwush wheezed a tire he stabbed. We hurried to our BMW where Zane pushed Cari to me. Zane didn’t waste time working the wheelcover off the kicked-in driver’s side window. He back-kicked the passenger window of our stolen ride. Safety glass cobwebbed. Zane kicked again, and this time the glass flew into the BMW. He reached inside, popped open the electric door lock. Eric dove in, dismantled the other broken window’s cover, fiddled with the steering column and tricked the engine to life. Zane pushed Cari into the back seat. Hailey climbed in beside her, Eric took her other side. Zane slid in beside Hailey as Russell ran to the shotgun seat. I leapt behind the steering wheel, peeled us out in reverse then roared away into the night.
Blaps of darkness and blurred street lights rushed over us.
“Where are we?” I yelled.
Eric yelled, “New Jersey!” Russell yelled, “Crazy!” Zane yelled, “Targeted!” Hailey yelled, “Alive!”
And she stretched across the captive woman to punch Eric in the shoulder. “What’s the matter with you?”
Eric cringed as Hailey leaned over our captive to yell at him.
“Have you gone sane?” screamed Hailey. “I gave you an order and you didn’t do it! Before I drew off Blondie here, I told you to take care of yourself!”
She punched Eric again.
“And what did you go and do? Did you take care of yourself? NO, you disobey and you do it dumb! You charged after them to rescue me, so dumb, don’t you dare get yourself killed white knight nonsense!”
Eric cringed.
But all she did was yell: “Explain yourself!”
“Followed orders.” He recited, proving his own answer.
“Bullshit!”
“I… can’t… trying…”
“No, don’t DO IT, you already did it with that bullshit answer.”
“Order was, you said: ‘Take care of yourself.’ Can’t be me if you’re… if you…”
Zane blurted: “Got it.”
So Hailey could skip that, slump in her car seat, go on—softer—to: “Oh, Eric…”
In the rear view mirror, I watched her eyes go wet, her head shake.
“Fuck this shit!” Russell reared over the shotgun seat to scream at our hostage.
“Do you know what you’ve fucking done?” Veins throbbed in Russell’s head. “I was going to get laid! Everything was perfect! I’m on the Pill and she was special! Then you came along and screwed everything up!”
Zane said: “You weren’t going to get that roll.”
“Was so!”
“Was not!”
“Zane’s just jerking your chain.” I yelled.
Russell whipped around in his seat to face me. “Victor! He can’t fucking do that!”
“Apparently,” said Zane: “Can, too.”
“Can not!” yelled Eric.
“Everybody!” I said. “Four magic words!”
All the maniacs shut the fuck up.
The road whirred under our wheels. Wind roared in on us through two kicked-out front windows. I cranked the heater on but still our ride felt like the North Pole.
Cari spoke her first words: “Guess I found the right car.”
34
“How did you find us?” Russell yelled to our captive as we sped away on a tree-lined, divided-lanes county road.
Cari stared at the night flashing towards her through the windshield.
“Our car!” said Russell. “Vic, there’s a theft location transmitter in this car!”
“No,” said Zane, using Baldy’s penlight to read a paper from the weapons vest. “This is a list of nightclubs and bars south of New York. Stone Pony’s number nine, and four are pen-checked, have a manager’s name and phone number jotted down by hand.”
“Standard practice,” I said. “The FBI, CIA, we track a fugitive or a target by what he’s done in the past, by what he likes. Magazine subscriptions, who he used to call and probably nowadays, who he’s e-mailed or where he’s logged on to, who he used to hang out with, places where he might get the kind of job he used to have.”
“Somebody tracked your dreams,” Zane told Russell.
Zane threw Cari’s phone battery out of Russell’s window, her phone out mine.
“Littering’s bad,” said Eric. “Against the law.”
“Oh-oh, now we got big trouble,” said Zane. “Vic: headlights in our mirror?”
“Not yet.”
Russell glared at Cari trapped in the back seat. “What’s your team’s search plan? How many crews—”
Cari said: “If we all stay calm, let me help you—”
Our laughter drowned the rest of her pitch.
“Vic?” said Zane. “How good of a frisk?”
“Ahh… Take-down and secure only. I’ll pull over so I can—”
“Keep us moving.”
My rear view mirror showed Hailey muttering to people who weren’t there. Zane maneuvered so that she slumped against the rear door and he sat beside Cari.
“I can do this easy,” he told our prisoner, “or I can do this rough.”
“How about not at all?”
Zane worked the brown coat off her, passed it to the front seat where Russell checked the pockets, squeezed its creaky leather and tossed it out his window.
The coat flew into the night from our speeding car like a whirling bat.
“Didn’t fee
l a transmitter locator,” said Russell.
Eric said: “If she’s trace wired… Best place in her shoes.”
One black shoe flew out Russell’s window, its mate flew out mine.
The road fought the rear view mirror for my eyes. White lines raced towards the windshield as Zane’s hands massaged Cari’s right foot, circled her ankle, slid up…
Yellow road stripe for a curve and I yelled: “Let Hailey do it!”
“Gotta be worth it. Gotta…”
“She’s busy,” said Zane. His hands circled Cari’s thigh, slid up…
Yellow eye headlights across the center line whipped past us.
In my mirror, Cari stiffened as Zane’s hand cupped her groin, fingers probed, his left hand circling behind to cup the curve of her—
“Whoa!” His left hand slid inside the back waistband of her pants.
Rip! The sound of tape pulling away from flesh.
Zane held a dagger for Russell and I to see in the glow of dashboard lights. “Plastic, cloth sheath. Double-edged, needle point, no metal detector would catch it, and if her hands are tied behind her…”
“Missed it,” I said. “Sorry.”
My eyes hunted Cari’s in the mirror, found only shadows.
Headlights burned past us going the other way.
Zane found no shoulder holsters. His hands explored her belly.
“Hailey!” I cried as ahead of us, truck taillights blinked for a right turn.
“She’s still gone.” Zane’s hand was on Cari’s back as he said: “Is this—?”
Cari said: “Bra. Snaps.”
“Eric?” said Zane.
We blew past the exit the truck had taken into nowhere.
“Possible,” said Eric. “Underwires.”
“No,” said Cari.
“If I don’t go all the way,” Zane told her. “You won’t respect me.”
“Sure I will.”
Zane held her plastic dagger in front of her eyes. “This is sure.”
Dagger in his hand that he slid up under her fucia blouse.
Dark highway. White strips racing towards me.
Sounds of sawing cloth cut through the night in our stolen car.
A slashed-off black bra flew out Russell’s window.
Under her blouse, Zane’s hands brushed Cari’s bare breasts.
“It’s OK to cry,” he told her.
“Like you know. Like you care.”
Dark highway rushed towards us. Bitter wind howled through busted windows.
35
“Think about it,” argued Cari as our car hummed through a dark suburban neighborhood. “I’m your perfect chance! You were so lucky to find me!”
“Is that how it worked?” said Zane. We slowed at an intersection. A pink neon light glowed off to our left. “Not that way.”
He could have been answering her or advising me. I drove into a neighborhood built by the WWII G.I. Bill that gave America its now shrinking middle class.
“We gotta find a new car to steal,” said Russell.
Cari argued: “No! I’m your way to stay alive. That’s why I’m here, right? We’ll call the Panic Line, set up our rescue. No SWATs or wet teams. We can use your people from Maine. You can explain everything.”
“Hey guys,” said Zane: “Does anybody ever buy your explanation?”
“Eight days a week,” quoted Hailey, now back from her mumblings.
“So forget explanation,” snapped our captive. “Think survival. Before your gig at the Stone Pony, you were down for two quirky deaths, believed to have one gun.
“Want to know my team’s sanction?” Lying maybe, maybe not, she said: “Locate, neutralize, recover. No fuss, no muss was what the Bosses wanted, but what they cared about most was getting everybody safe.”
“Which way?” I asked at the next corner. “Nothing but houses.”
Cari said: “Now you’re escapees on the run, murderers known to be violent, desperate, paranoid. Armed with my crew’s five guns and ammo to spare, grenades—”
“Hell of a no fuss, no muss gig you were planning for us,” said Russell.
“The grenades are flash-bangs,” she said. “Nothing compared to what’s coming. The tranquilizer pistol and darts in our weapons vest? The next team won’t bother to pack those. You dropped two agents. Snatched me. The bosses will write me off as damaged or dead. And now they’re hunting you down like mad dogs.”
We drove through darkness where America slept.
“Oh well,” said Russell. “Isn’t like we were the pick of the litter.”
“Sure you were,” she said.
Lights winked out in a house we drove past.
“That’s what makes this all so hard,” said Cari. “For all of us. And that’s why if you don’t let me bring you in, they’ve got to come after you full out hard.”
“My favorite way,” whispered Zane.
Does Cari know the harsh irony of Zane’s joke? I wondered. Know hard is his dream and nightmare? Know the rape fear she’d felt from his frisking hands is a phantom because of his craziness? Know that my insanity did not stop me from—
“Left face!” I hit the brake, risked the flash of red lights. “Russell: that old house with the huge garage, the picket fence. Newspaper on the front porch. Mail box stuffed.”
“Got it!”
“We’ll circle left. Deep Recon: go!”
Eric loosened the BMW’s dome light. Russell eased out the BMW’s front door and closed it with a click like a switchblade. He stayed out of our headlights, melted into the night, gone from my rear view mirror before I turned left at the corner.
On our seventh lap, Russell materialized from the hedges by our target house, waved me to park the BMW across the street, jogged to my window when my lights died.
“Wild!” he whispered. “You gotta see this!”
“Hailey,” I said, killing the noisy engine. “Take the wheel. Eric, check her cuffs.”
Russell and I sneaked between the old house’s attached garage and the neighbor’s picket fence. No dog barked. The back storm door creaked as we eased it open, slid past the inner door and crept into the linoleum kitchen.
“Was unlocked,” he whispered.
“This is suburbia,” I whispered back, “but still…”
“I cleared the upstairs,” he whispered, edging around the refrigerator. “Three empty bedrooms, bathroom. Down here is a junked-up dining room, a living room, a study with an old roll top desk, this kitchen. I thought I was alone.”
The pistol holstered on my belt suddenly weighed a ton.
He eased open a door in the kitchen hall. A shaft of light knifed into the dark kitchen. Garage smells flooded over me: gasoline, tires, oil, cement floor, dust, metal tools, last summer’s grass stuck to a mower blade.
Maybe some other odor.
“Already checked,” he said. “No windows.”
“What—”
“Go in.”
Calling that place a garage fails to do it justice. Call it a cavern lit by overhead tubes. This was a mechanics’ dream room with floor space for four vehicles. Two walls of workbenches. Giant red metal tool chests. A hydraulic car lift. Drop lights. Oil pans. License plates from every state in the Union nailed to one wall.
A white 1959 Cadillac centered the garage like a king on a throne. Four doors. Swooping tail fins. A gaping hood made that glistening car roar like a giant beast.
The dead man slumped on his knees. His forehead rested on stacked oil cases. He had wispy white hair. Wore a gray cardigan sweater over a denim shirt, blue jeans.
“Heart attack,” said Russell. “Betchya.”
Soft warm air blew over us from an air heater in the far corner.
“I checked,” said Russell, “and he’s cold.”
> I looked at Russell.
He looked at me.
Said: “It’ll work.”
And I gave him the nod.
Russell ran through the kitchen to the night. Wall switches snapped off the lights. Darkness swallowed me and that garage. Smells swam in that black void. Smells of gasoline and cold metal, of oil and concrete, of warm blowing air stirring hairs near my leather jacket collar. I heard only my own breaths, the punching inside my ribs. The sounds of that kneeled-over dead man’s heart. Dead ahead of me loomed that white beast of a car, maw gaping to swallow me even as this darkness had swallowed us both. The beast was a shape sensed but not seen. I knew it was there. Knew it knew I stood on its concrete. Knew what it wanted. Knew I couldn’t say no.
And that’s when I realized that even our bootleg meds were flaming out.
If I’m starting to lose it, what about the others?
Four-plus days on the road. Even without our bootleg meds, I’d thought we had two more days until. Now…
Knocking: on the metal garage door. The code sequence we used on the padded cell’s door back at the Castle to let Malcolm know we were his visitors.
I flipped a switch.
An electric motor cranked up the garage door. The BMW idled in the driveway—headlights out. Soon as the BMW crept into the garage, I switched the garage door down with a clunk. Hailey keyed our stolen car off.
On came the garage lights.
All of us stood looking down at the slumped white-haired corpse.
Zane said: “That could be me.”
“Yeah,” answered Russell. “But it ain’t. Looks like Mister Death made the old guy kneel and took him execution style.”
“It’s always execution style,” said Hailey.