In the Night of the Heat

by Blair Underwood

  “Good call,” Dad said, as I turned his wheelchair around in the grass.

  “You got him to say more than he wanted to,” I said. “You opened him right up.”

  We were a mutual admiration society.

  I wrote down the name Wallace Rubens, then Heat, and underlined the words three times. I had found gold in Ojai.

  Now I just had to mine it.

  NINETEEN

  I PICKED UP TWO TUNA SANDWICHES with bean sprouts at a local health-food deli, and we started the drive back toward home. By the time we left downtown Ojai, it was raining hard.

  As soon as I made it back to Casitas Vista Road, Dad started dozing. Half his sandwich lay uneaten in the plastic box in his lap. I’d hoped to pick his brain on the Sunshine Bowl, especially with his perspective on history, but Dad’s energy faded fast because of his medications. So much for my Crockett and Tubbs fantasy.

  Instead, I picked up my cell phone to track down one hunch while it was fresh.

  “Burnside,” the reporter’s voice answered. He sounded harried. One of us had a bad cell signal, so his voice phased in and out.

  “It’s April’s friend, Tennyson Hardwick. I won’t keep you, but I have a question.”

  “I’m in a meeting, but you’re April’s friend, so I’m listening.”

  For the first time, I wondered exactly how deep Burnside’s fondness for April was. Would he make a move now that she was available? I knew nothing about the man, but my tide of thoughts almost made me forget why I’d called. So this is what it feels like to be jealous. The feeling was brand-new, and I didn’t like it.

  “The thug you think worked for Senator Hankins…the big guy?” I said. “Could his name have been Rubens?”

  “Rubens. Yeah. Walter or Wallace,” Burnside said. “That’s the name.”

  I blinked, surprised by his certainty. “You said it was Roland or Ronald.”

  “I was wrong,” he said. “It was Rubens. I have an uncle named Rubin, and I remember it now. What do you have on him?” I heard the familiar reporter’s hunger in his voice, but I had promised April the story.

  “Nothing yet,” I said. “They played some football together, that’s all.”

  I mentioned football in case Burnside knew anything about the Sunshine Bowl, but he didn’t take the bait. Or, maybe his generosity in the information trade only went as far as mine.

  “If you find anything worth knowing, don’t forget my number,” Burnside said. “I’d love to know if this has any legs before Hankins announces his governor’s run.”

  You and me both, I thought.

  I clicked off the phone. With the rain, cliffs, and mountains to lull me, my mind sorted through the pieces: Wallace Rubens had been part of a Heat brotherhood that tied together Jackson, Hankins, and Dwyer. No one in the 1967 Heat liked to talk about their team, or their association. Why? According to the reporter, Rubens had been arrested twelve years before for trespassing against one of Hankins’s political foes. Two years later, Rubens was possibly implicated in the brake-tampering death of another Hankins opponent.

  Maybe Rubens was his old friend’s hammer.

  “Dad?” I modulated my voice so that I would only wake him if he was dozing lightly.

  My father’s eyes snapped open. He was tired, but on alert. “Hnh?” He took a bite out of his sandwich as if he hadn’t been sleeping for ten minutes.

  “You remember that case involving Donald Hankins? The trespassing thing?”

  Dad shook his head. “Not much. I ’member…a car accident.”

  “Right. But a reporter told me the name Wallace Rubens came up in a trespassing case a couple years before that. Let’s say this same Rubens tampered with brakes and got somebody killed, all in service to his old friend, Hankins. Is Hankins ambitious enough for that?”

  “You…never know,” Dad said. “Folks…said it. Rumors.”

  “How hard did the chief’s office work to keep car accident quiet?”

  “We got…a couple calls,” he said. “One call’s…enough.”

  “So that incident was never fully investigated.”

  Dad sighed. “I never thought so.”

  There was an elegance to the idea. It brimmed with possibilities. I was worried about sounding silly to Dad’s seasoned ear, but I went on. “You know Judge Jackson from the NAACP. What does he think of Hankins?”

  “Never has…much…to say. Damning…with faint praise.”

  “Jackson, a judge, might have thought Hankins was too dirty,” I said. “Maybe even violent. I’m sure they talked about that car accident. Their children were married, so they were stuck in social circles. But bring up their football days, and they all shut down.”

  My theory didn’t explain the look on Dwyer’s face when Dad asked him about Florida. I didn’t have everything yet. But I had enough to fire up our imaginations.

  “Then…” Dad began. “T.D. Jackson…kills…Chantelle Hankins.”

  I had him. Dad’s mind was gnawing it over.

  “And gets acquitted. Maybe that drives Hankins to ask his old friend to fix another problem. Would Wallace Rubens kill the son of a teammate?”

  “Depends on…the reason.”

  “Hankins and Rubens figured T.D.’s acquittal was a hell of a good reason. And maybe Dwyer knows, or at least suspects. That’s why he clammed up so fast about the Heat.”

  Wallace Rubens was beginning to feel like a viable suspect. Maybe Carlyle helped T.D. kill Chantelle, but he’s in the clear for T.D.’s murder.

  That’s exactly what I was thinking when the black SUV roared behind me on a road that had been deserted an instant before. I saw the SUV before I heard it. The brights were on behind me, the massive grill bearing down.

  “Hold o—”

  That was all I had time to say to Dad before the violent jolt and a crash from my rear bumper. The tires skated on the slick road beneath us, but my hands grasped the wheel and held fast, so my car never strayed from my lane. The ridge yawned beyond the barrier, only a lane away; close to a thirty-foot plunge.

  “Shit,” I said. “Who the fuck—” Was it a drunk driver?

  I gunned my accelerator, but my eyes couldn’t leave the twisting road. Dad grabbed his safety bar and checked his side mirror. “Carlyle,” Dad said. “I see ’im.”

  I risked a quick glance at my rearview mirror, and Dad was right: There were two men riding high behind us in the SUV’s berth, but the driver was Carlyle Simms. The passenger might be Lee or Brandon. Had they been in Ojai, or had they followed us?

  “Saw him…in Pomona,” Dad said. “Wasn’t sure.”

  I groaned. “We have got to work on our communication.”

  As I rounded a curve at eighty and gaining speed, the Jeep Cherokee charged after us, its massive tires screaming on the damp roadway. The seclusion was suddenly anything but tranquil. There were occasional farmhouses in view from a distance, but no other cars were visible in either direction. And not a single person in sight. As the SUV rode my bumper and tried to overtake me, there was no one else to tell the tale.

  Carlyle’s Cherokee was twice the size of my Beemer. Another well-placed tap with his thirty-five-hundred-pound monster could send us flying. If we didn’t land in the ravine on one side, we would smash against a rocky cliff on the other. I was boxed in. Between the isolation and the sudden rainfall, Carlyle had chosen his time well.

  “Dad, hold on,” I said. “And I mean tight. This asshole’s trying to kill us.”

  “No shit,” Dad said, craning to look over his shoulder.

  I suddenly wished we hadn’t banished Susie to the trunk.

  The Jeep roared, ramming us from behind again. This time, my hands were so steady on the wheel that I barely swerved, instinctively compensating for the sudden impact. My training in Colorado was about to pay off. Thanks, Alice.

  But I hated the sound of my taillights crunching and trunk crumpling. Totaled already, and I’d just had my car painted two months before. Damn, I loved tha
t car. Maybe that shouldn’t have been going through my mind right then—but let me tell you, it was.

  My heart was in overdrive, but by then I was pissed.

  The ravine looked like a longer drop to a rocky grave every time I glanced at it, and the barrier would only slow us down long enough to realize we were about to die. If we rolled, we were done. The convertible top would give us no more protection than an eggshell. And air bags wouldn’t be much help.

  “We gotta…shake ’im, Ten” Dad said.

  “No shit, Dad.”

  We rounded another curve, the two vehicles’ tires whining in harmony. Clear, empty roadway stretched another forty yards before the next curve ahead. Carlyle gave up trying to hit us from behind. His Cherokee let out a guttural snarl as he steered into the empty traffic lane to pull alongside me. BMW 325i’s aren’t slow, but neither is the Jeep Cherokee SRT-8. For a big vehicle, it was supernaturally fast.

  We were in a race.

  I glanced at the passenger side in time to see the Jeep take a clumsy swerve toward us as Carlyle tested himself. A practice swerve, working up his nerve. He wanted to hit me, but he didn’t want to roll over in the process. I could almost hear him thinking.

  “Shit, shit, shit…” I whispered through gritted teeth.

  I couldn’t look over at Carlyle. If I blinked, we might crash.

  While Carlyle seemed to hesitate, slowing slightly, I pressed harder on the accelerator, hugging the rock face on my side as close as I could. Pebbles churned beneath my tires. Through my side window, blades of grass growing on the cliff were close enough to touch, just inches away. A large jutting branch squealed against my car’s body on the driver’s side, and I let out a frustrated yell. Anything I did to evade Carlyle might only kill us faster. On the other hand, if I could tempt him into a pursuit at velocities beyond his command…physics might do my job for me.

  Carlyle crept neck and neck with me as if it was effortless. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the large black blur of his Jeep inching closer to Dad’s side, making another run at us. Dad saw it too: He folded himself into a defensive position, his arms cradling his head. He’s an old man, you cold-ass motherfucker, I thought, trying to bargain with Carlyle telepathically.

  Some moments are life’s last snapshot, and that one looked like ours.

  I couldn’t pull ahead. Instead, I jammed on my brakes and said a prayer.

  The tires held their traction on the road. One prayer answered. I slipped back from Carlyle, but not quite fast enough. He clipped my hood, and my car shook as my entire driver’s side scraped against the rocks, so hard I was sure the body would puncture and my window would break. Stones pinged against the windshield.

  Please don’t let me lose one of the tires. I clung to the steering wheel like the lifeline it was, my foot still planted on the brakes. I held it rock-steady, fighting against what felt like the full weight of Carlyle’s vehicle. My teeth were gritted so hard that my molars hurt. When a few inches finally opened up between us, I jerked my steering wheel toward the Jeep to give Carlyle something to think about.

  As I’d hoped, a hard thunk was enough to jar Carlyle’s concentration. He veered back into his lane, toward the barrier. I hoped he had a nice view of the ravine. Carlyle’s brakes screamed as he skidded on the road. For an instant, I was sure he was going to tumble over the ravine himself—prayed for it, really—but he regained control and aimed his nose back at me. While he recovered, he’d fallen fifteen yards behind.

  We turned a corner around a curve, with another curve and an empty road waiting ahead. I calculated the distance and my speed, ready for an experiment in physics.

  “Dad…I have to do something crazy.” What I meant was, Dad, I’m gonna get our asses killed. No time to clarify. “Just trust me.”

  “Do it…fast.”

  Adrenaline turned my thoughts into a blizzard, but I gunned the accelerator. My car jolted forward like a bronco, snapping our necks back.

  “Come on, come on, come on…” I whispered to my car.

  We sped. The speedometer passed ninety-five.

  I glanced in my rearview mirror. We’d pulled so far ahead that the curve in the road had taken Carlyle out of sight, but it would have been a fool’s prayer to believe we had lost him. Carlyle was coming.

  Now or never, I told myself.

  I turned the steering wheel, hit the brakes, and wanted to close my eyes.

  My brakes cried out as if they were heralding our deaths. The damp road sent my tires into a spin, but I controlled it. Just barely. This time, I couldn’t shout or curse. No time. The world narrowed to my windshield: I saw us pulling clear of the rocks as we spun, but we were sliding toward the barrier and its long drop. I pumped the brakes gently and fought the instinct to oversteer; instead, I nudged my wheel. Come on, come on, come on…

  My rear bumper crashed into the barrier, and the rear tires bumped off of the road. Another foot back, and we would be airborne.

  Instead, we rocked to a stop. We were facing the opposite direction, just in time to see Carlyle rounding the corner straight toward us.

  I hit the gas, and my back tires spat mud before they climbed back to the road. I sped straight toward Carlyle’s headlights.

  “You wanna play, asshole?” I said. “Let’s play.”

  Dad folded himself up again, bracing for impact. “Shit,” he said.

  Carlyle Simms had probably believed since junior high school that he was the baddest motherfucker he knew, but his face through the windshield told a different story. Carlyle was slack-jawed and shocked. He hadn’t expected me to come back for him.

  I grinned at him and floored it.

  Sometimes a moment gets hewed down to such essentials that fear and worry vanish into a whirlpool of pure intention. I wasn’t feeling, only thinking: If he swerved right, I would swerve left. If he swerved left, I would swerve right. My imagination painted my pathways in bright gold.

  As I roared toward Carlyle’s Jeep, I felt like I was charging an elephant. In a battle between an SUV and a convertible, the odds in size are depressing.

  But I had the advantage, and Carlyle knew it. His only sane option was to hit his brakes and trust me to evade him. If he didn’t, the slightest mistake would flip him over, or he might flip over whether or not he made a mistake. That’s the thing: SUVs flip over.

  Just like all those studies have warned.

  Carlyle waited until I was within fifteen yards before he braked, and by then he’d waited so long that he couldn’t help trying to steer clear of me. I’d panicked him so much that he steered too hard, too fast.

  A nightmare scenario unfolded in my windshield like a horror movie: Carlyle’s frenzied steering had sent him out of control—his Jeep skittered, then skidded, fishtailing toward us.

  Right, steer left. Left, steer right.

  I was close enough to see the dealership’s logo glittering from the side of Carlyle’s rear flank by the time I decided to steer left, toward the drop-off. My brakes squealed from a love tap, and I felt my back tires trying to break free of my control.

  The rest was what Dad would call giving it up to God. You do everything you know how to do, but eventually death catches up to you. I thought of Chela, and felt sad for her. Dad reached out instinctively, his arm planted across my chest, trying to hold me in my seat the way he had when I was a child.

  The roar of Carlyle’s brakes sounded like an approaching hurricane.

  One…two…three… We were still on the road. As my life’s purpose narrowed to controlling my car, images came to me in flashes, obstacles to avoid: The guardrail alarmingly close on the driver’s side. A cloud of smoke from Carlyle’s brakes. The underbelly of Carlyle’s Jeep as he capsized on the road, spinning toward the rocks.

  In my rearview mirror, I saw Carlyle’s overturned Jeep spinning, but I had to look back at the road. A crash behind us told me how hard the impact was. The Jeep seemed to bounce, and more skidding told me that Carlyle’s ride wasn’t o
ver. This time, he was headed toward the cliff.

  As I tried to fight myself out of a skid, an oncoming Winnebago appeared suddenly from around the corner, in my path. The appearance of another car had always been inevitable, but that might have been the worst time, and the worst kind. I forgot Carlyle’s troubles while I tried to resolve my own.

  The Winnebago’s driver gave it up to God, too. He braked, bringing a much-more-unwieldy vehicle to a controlled stop. She must have figured it was my job to evade her, or we were both fucked. The strategy paid off: I steered well clear of the Winnebago and stopped as close to the rocks as I could, pulled halfway out of the traffic lane.

  If Dad hadn’t been with me, I might have parked across the lanes to stop the traffic flow—but my first priority was to make sure that he wasn’t having a heart attack. Dad was breathing in slightly hitching gasps. I don’t know how long he had been breathing like that, but it was the first time I could afford to notice.

  “Dad?” I said.

  He waved me away. “I’m…all right.” He breathed again, wincing.

  “No chest pain?”

  “No. Just…startled.”

  I wasn’t sure I could believe him, but I didn’t have a choice. I glanced around the bend, and I saw Carlyle’s SUV rocking on the cliff behind us. The barrier had already been torn, but either Carlyle’s willpower or pure fortune had kept him from plummeting down.

  But gravity was doing its best.

  Shit. The Jeep was going to fall. I had just started running toward the Jeep when I heard something metallic groan, and the Jeep tumbled down with a horrific bounce.

  No way they’ll survive that, I thought. No way.

  Carlyle had whiplashed my emotions again: A moment before, I’d been wishing him dead; now I was praying for his survival.

  The height was dizzying when I reached the edge of the cliff—I have a touch of vertigo, which kicks in at inconvenient times. I came close to swaying. I saw the Jeep right away, to my left: It had landed on a wide ledge twenty feet down rather than plummeting down another thirty.