“Aren’t you getting out?”
“Hell, no,” Chris answered. “I told you you could race my car, but you ain’t racing it by yourself.” He knew the extra weight of his nearly two hundred pounds would almost certainly guarantee a loss, even if they hadn’t been racing someone as good as Jake Vaillancourt, but he had volunteered his car to get close to Nikki Littlefield and he wasn’t backing out now.
The cars lined up next to each other, Jake splitting the air with his noisy Charger, revving the engine ceaselessly, trying to intimidate Nikki, who was letting the Barracuda’s engine burble softly, waiting for the starting signal.
Carrie Johnson, who was rumored to have slept with every single Reservoir Road driver, stood between the two cars, ten feet in front of them, and flashed her arm down with the red bandanna and the race was on—for about ten seconds. After that it was all Nikki Littlefield. She smoked Jake Vaillancourt by three car lengths; roughly the Reservoir Road equivalent of winning the Indy 500 by lapping the rest of the field three times.
Chris was stunned. Nikki drove that car like it was a part of her. The Hurst shifter meshed cleaner than Chris had ever seen it do; Nikki was butter-smooth and babied the car even though she got more out of it than either of the Milton brothers ever had.
After the race, Jake Vaillancourt glowered at Nikki and Chris but punched nobody; he just reversed course in front of the maintenance building and screeched back up Reservoir Road, turning right onto Turkey Ridge Road and slinking back to town.
***
Chris had sprinted out of the bank and dived into the passenger seat; a wide grin plastered on his face as he tossed the heavy duffel into the massive back seat. “Go, go, go!” he had shouted, as Nik had wheeled the car away into the street, headed for freedom. That was when it had all gone to hell.
Chris found out later that one of the tellers had tripped a silent alarm while he had been busy moving everyone into the rear of the bank. The cops were on their way before he had even begun to load up his bag, and in a town the size of Coatesville, they didn’t have all that far to go.
Nikki pulled the car away from the curb, turning onto Broadway and accelerating smoothly, with the intention of making for the Interstate five miles away and disappearing. The cops were right behind them, though, and opened fire. First the right rear tire, then a fraction of a second later the left, and the stolen Fury III was suddenly and irrevocably crippled.
***
After that first street race, Nikki and Chris were together practically every minute of every day. It was a wonder her father didn’t find out, but he was busy with his circuit court judging and all. Nikki raced that Barracuda more than Chris did, driving it like a jockey rides a thoroughbred, coaxing more out of that car than Chris or anyone else could believe. She beat everyone; she was the best driver Compton had ever seen.
So it was a simple thing, then, to convince her to drive the car for Chris when he decided to hit the bank in Coatesville, fifteen miles and a world away from Compton. Coatesville was a thriving little hamlet hard by Lake Winnipesaukee, benefiting from the tourist trade money that came nowhere near Compton, which boasted only dying saw mills and one struggling shoe factory for industry.
For her part, Nikki was in search of adventure—racing at Reservoir Road had opened up a thrill-seeking side to her personality that she had never before known existed. When Chris broached the subject of knocking over Coatesville’s only bank in early July, she was on board immediately; he made it sound so simple and she saw it as a chance to prove her love to Chris and also to drive fast with stakes even higher than those at Reservoir Road.
July 3, 1968, just before the Independence Day holiday, was the date Chris selected to hit the bank. He said it symbolized his and Nikki’s independence from her father and everyone else trying to hold them down, but in reality was he just bored and sick of Compton and looking for some action and an adrenaline fix.
Sitting outside the bank in the stolen Plymouth Fury III, sixty feet down the curbside from the front entrance where Chris had disappeared just a few minutes before, Nikki was not the slightest bit nervous. The day was hot and humid, a real scorcher, and almost nobody was on the street. The few people that were out moved in slow-motion, like they were fighting their way through molasses.
Occasionally a car would drive slowly past, motoring toward some unknown destination, but the road was practically clear. Nikki began to feel drowsy. She wished Chris would hurry up; she was starting to feel a little exposed, even though there were no cops around.
She checked the rear view of the stolen Plymouth they were using as a getaway car and saw Chris burst out the front entrance of the bank at a dead run. The heavy door smashed back into the wall and shattered, glass glittering a thousand different colors in the sun behind him as he sprinted to the car, the heavy canvas duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
He tossed the bag into the rear and dived headlong into the passenger seat next to Nikki, shouting, “Go, go, go!” She accelerated smoothly onto Broadway, the Fury feeling sluggish and boxy under her command compared to the ‘Cuda, but she had it performing magnificently anyway.
***
The murder charge resulted from someone being hit by one of the bullets the police unleashed on Nikki and Chris in their aborted escape attempt. The way the cops had been spraying their weapons all over the place, Chris was frankly surprised only one person had been hit. Thank God the streets had been almost deserted.
In addition to the murder rap, Nikki’s father made sure Chris went down for kidnapping, too. That was total bullshit, Nikki had been driving the getaway car for chrissakes, but her dad was a circuit court judge, one of the highest rollers in town, and Chris’s dad was a drunken bum, one of the lowest scumbags in the same town, so it was going to be whatever her father said it was, and he said it was a kidnapping.
That day had been Chris’s last as a free man. July 3, 1968. The day before Independence Day.
Chris spoke just a few words in front of the parole board. He assured the members of the board that he had no intention of causing anyone any trouble, ever again. “I was young and stupid back then, and I’ve regretted my actions of that day ever since. All I want to do is be with my girl again, and if I get that, I’ll have everything I’ve ever needed.”
The board approved Chris’s parole, and a few weeks later, forty years to the day after the disastrous robbery attempt, he walked out Concord’s front gate a free man. July 3, 2008. Chris Milton’s Independence Day.
Chris was scheduled to start his new job as automotive technician at Caulfield’s Garage after the Fourth of July holiday, but that was the furthest thing from his mind as he contemplated life on the outside after forty long years. He had been telling the truth when he told the parole board all he wanted was to be with his girl, and that was what he was going to do. Tonight.
The Barracuda still ran like a top, even though it was now nearly half a century old. Chris had left the car in the care of his brother, who was nearly as good a mechanic as he had been. He had known it would run like a Swiss watch and it did.
He sat in the driver’s seat, hands on the molded plastic steering wheel, and listened to the steady burbling of the big V8. He couldn’t wait to be with Nikki again after so many years, and was glad the reunion was going to take place at Reservoir Road. That mile-long stretch of blacktop was the scene of his happiest memories in a childhood that hadn’t had many.
Chris passed the time by driving over to Coatesville and moving slowly through town, marveling at the fast-food joints, the mammoth houses people lived in now, and the banks; all the banks! When he had been a kid, there was just the one he had tried to rob, the Coatesville Trust. Now it seemed a bank was on practically every corner. Was there really that much more money in the world now than there had been forty years ago?
When he turned back toward Compton, making the familiar left on to Reservoir Road, Chris felt all the memories rushing back—the thrill of illegal street-rac
ing, the excitement he had felt the night Nikki blew the doors off Jake Vaillancourt and his tricked-out Charger. She had earned the grudging respect that night of all the old-time racers in the area, who felt that a girl, especially a sixteen year-old girl with the ink barely dry on her license, had no place in street racing.
Chris knew he was early for his reunion with Nikki, but he had nowhere else to go and was so excited to finally see her again that he would have gone stir-crazy just sitting around his hot, tiny apartment above Caulfield’s Garage anyway, so what was the harm?
The cicadas chirped languidly in the muggy July night as the sun disappeared behind the trees, sliding slowly toward the horizon. Reservoir Road was deserted, which was unusual, but Chris supposed everyone was down by the lake waiting for the fireworks to start. Chris didn’t care about fireworks; he had seen enough of them when the police were shooting at him and Nikki, forty years earlier.
It was time. Nikki would be waiting for him at the end of Reservoir Road, where the high chain-link fence separated the road from the brick reservoir maintenance building. He gunned the engine, listening to the throaty roar he loved so much. Joe had done a great job keeping the car drivable.
***
Suddenly three cruisers screeched around the corner behind the Coatesville Trust at nearly full speed, sirens blaring and red lights flashing. They were gaining steadily, but as Nikki performed her automobile magic, turning sharply onto Main Street, they began to fall back. She knew she could outrun them, even in the piece of shit Plymouth.
Chris began to laugh raucously and Nikki joined in. “Independence Day!” he shouted at the top of his lungs as the cops opened fire thirty feet behind them.
Nikki risked a quick glance across the front seat at Chris, her eyes shining with excitement. The Plymouth was approaching eighty miles per, rocketing out of Coatesville. “I love you!” she screamed. The roar of the wind buffeting them through the open windows was deafening.
Chris opened his mouth to answer her; to tell her that he loved her too, that he would always love her, and as he did a bullet smashed through the rear window and Nikki’s head exploded in a stew of bright red blood and grey brain matter, splattering all over the windshield and he screamed and the now driverless car careened out of control, crossing Main Street, slowing but still moving at a high rate of speed. The Plymouth mowed down a row of rhododendrons and then came to a gentle stop in front of a dentist’s office.
Chris continued to scream as the cops surrounded the stalled Fury III with their guns drawn. There was blood everywhere; so much blood; and Nikki was gone, her lifeless body thrown up against the dashboard, wedged between the steering wheel and the driver’s side door. The relentless July heat poured through the open windows and Chris raised his hands in surrender.
***
He slammed the transmission into first gear and laid rubber in all four, screaming down Reservoir Road like he had done it every night for the past forty years, instead of just dreaming about it. Nikki had been a much better driver, no doubt about that, she had been the best, which was why he had enlisted her to drive for him on that long-ago day, but he was no slouch either.
A hundred yards from the chain-link, exactly the spot where it was time to begin braking. He could wait another twenty and screech to a stop with the nose of the car kissing the fence if he chose; he knew he could, he had done exactly that many times.
The engine whined, the trees whipped past in a blur, the hot July wind ruffled Chris’s hair as it sang a song of redemption to him through the open windows. He hit the chain-link fence doing one-forty, metal screeching on metal for the barest fraction of a second, then he was through. The car bucked and rocked on its frame but barely slowed. “Detroit steel, baby,” he thought, as the Barracuda slammed into the faded red brick maintenance building still doing one-thirty-five.
The car exploded in a ball of flame, blowing a ten-foot hole in the old building. Chris had never meant for Nikki to be killed by the damned cops as she drove the car away from that bank; he had wished himself into her place every single day since. She was just a kid when she died, sixteen years old and newly licensed, but she could drive like no other, and she loved Chris, so he had had no problem whatsoever convincing her to be his wheelman that day.
The cops said she never knew what hit her when the bullet had come in through the rear window and splattered her brains all over Chris, but he had wondered about that for forty years. How did they know? Who knew what it felt like to die?
Now he would find out. He would be with Nikki forever, just like he told the parole board geezers he wanted to be. Stillness descended over the crash scene as thick black smoke billowed up out of the ruined building, rising over the ancient pine trees surrounding Reservoir Road, reaching for the sky and freedom. It was July 3. Independence Day.
The Waiting
A cool new print magazine launched in the spring of 2010, a snub-nosed Saturday Night Special of a mag called Needle: A Magazine of Noir. This creation featured nothing but noir short fiction. No book or movie reviews, no opinion pieces, nothing to take your focus away from hard-hitting, sometimes brutal noir fiction. The minute I saw Issue #1 I knew I had to get a story into Needle. I would move heaven and earth if necessary; that’s how impressed I was with the quality of the thing. Fortunately for me, being scrawny as a string bean, I didn’t have to move heaven OR earth. I just had to submit “The Waiting.” This story first appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of Needle; A Magazine of Noir.
There’s am old Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song in which Tom claims, “The waiting is the hardest part.” The first time I heard those lyrics I wondered whether maybe Tom had worked on a few scores before hitting it big in the music business, because he hit the nail right on the head with that one. The waiting really is the hardest part in any criminal enterprise.
This time was no different, except maybe it was worse than usual. We were holed up inside one of those cheap no-tell motels, where cheap wood paneling covers the walls and everything is literally bolted to the room—television, clock, remote, everything—and we were passing the time uneasily by trying to cheat each other at cards. On the TV, which had to be twenty years old if it was a day, a baseball game was playing, one group of millionaires kicking the crap out of another group of millionaires. Nobody paid any attention to it but nobody turned it off, either.
We had added a chick to the crew to replace Stupid Tommy Mitchell when he got tossed back into the can on a parole violation, and everything just felt awkward. Different or something. Stupid Tommy probably couldn’t spell the word “irony,” he really was pretty dumb, but he could’ve had his picture in the dictionary next to the word after getting busted for drunk driving while celebrating our latest score.
Our wheelman going down on a DUI beef. See what I mean? Irony.
Anyway, the leader of our little band of criminal misfits and malcontents was a guy named Gary Newton—“G,” we called him—and no sooner had the cops shoved Tommy into a cell than this hot young babe came out of nowhere to take Tommy’s place. It was almost like it had been planned out or something, that’s how fast G found her, and it should have been the first clue to anyone paying attention that something was wrong. But of course no one was; attention to detail is not any of these guys’ strong suit.
Bobby Sturgis and I pissed and moaned to G as soon as we found out he had taken on a girl, but Bobby’s objections vanished the second he got a good look at her, just as I had known they would. The girl was average height, but that was the only average thing about her. Glossy jet-black hair hung to just below her shoulders, Hollywood starlet hair, and it framed a face that would inspire jealously in an angel.
Her body was perfect, and yes, I know what you’re thinking: There’s no such thing as a perfect body, but take it from me, this chick was perfect. And she knew how to dress to accentuate that perfection, too. Tight jeans, tight shirts, short tight skirts and dresses. You get the picture?
Bobby sure di
d. The minute he laid eyes on her he morphed into some stupid horny kid, losing what few brain cells he had, and just like that I became the only one who had a problem with our new addition. Not that it would have mattered. G was the guy who made all the decisions for this crew, but at least with Bobby on my side it would have been two against one; or, I suppose, two against two if you included Gina’s vote.
With me as the only holdout my objections became a moot point, as I had known they would. Gina became an official member of the crew and it was only a matter of time before she took on the moniker “G2.” It was like Gary suddenly had his very own Mini-Me. He loved the nickname but it pissed off Bobby to no end.
The first time the guys saw her drive she eliminated whatever lingering doubts anyone might have had about adding her to the team. She was better than Stupid Tommy from the get-go, and Tommy was no slouch as a driver. It was pretty much the only thing he was good at, but I always figured, hell, if you’re fortunate enough to be outstanding at even one thing in this world, you’re better off than most people. Driving was Stupid Tommy’s thing.
Driving drunk he sucked at, though, which explained why he was now cooling his heels inside a jail cell. I had known if I bought him enough Jameson he’d eventually get busted and he came through like a champ, thereby opening up a spot on the crew for Gina.
But G2 was a better driver than Stupid Tommy on the best day he ever had, everyone could see that the minute she goosed that old GTO on the Southeast Expressway. It was Tommy’s car I suppose, technically, but with him in the can, what the hell was he going to do with it? So we appropriated his ride. It was what Tommy would have wanted if anyone had bothered to ask him, not that anyone did.
Gina raced that Goat like nobody’s business, blowing the doors off the few vehicles out on the highway at 3:00 a.m. like they weren’t even there. During the day, that section of pavement becomes one long, skinny parking lot, known to locals as the “Southeast Distressway,” thanks to the near-constant jam-up of cars and trucks. It’s been called that for as long as I can remember, but at this time of the night the interstate was so empty you could practically see tumbleweeds blowing down the middle, which was why we picked it for the test run.
Postcards from the Apocalypse Page 6