“You’re driving toward them?”
“Yes.”
“Have they texted you yet?”
“No.”
“What’s your plan exactly?”
“I don’t have time to get into it. I just need you to keep feeding me their location until I get a visual.”
“Okay, hold on.”
I pressed the pedal to the floor. The Cherokee’s outdated transmission chugged momentarily before responding and allowing the vehicle to pick up speed.
“They’re just about on the bridge now,” said Melvin. “Jed, there’s a lot of them.”
“How many?”
“Five. Two in the van, three on bikes. They were riding in formation when they left — two bikes behind the van and one out in front.”
“What about Dennings?”
“That big bastard was leading the pack.”
I reached the bridge and slingshotted between the two concrete sculptures of magnificent lions that guard its entrance. The bridge was empty as I drove across it, standing almost as still as the pitch-black water of the first narrows of the Burrard Inlet underneath. I squinted my eyes and looked in the distance but didn’t see any motorcycles coming the other way.
“Hey, Melvin?”
“What?”
“Thank you. For everything.”
“Just don’t forget to tell Frank about sending me referrals.”
“I won’t.”
“And Jed?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever you’re doing — good luck.”
I touched the Bluetooth earpiece and clicked it off.
A moment later Lance Dennings appeared on the concrete horizon, leading a motorcade consisting of a van and two motorcycles, just as Melvin had described. I glanced over at the passenger seat floor at the canvas bag of weapons, and then looked back at the roadway in front of me. The motorcade was only a few hundred feet away now. The collective roar of the Harley-Davidson motorcycles grew louder as the distance between us shrank. I gripped the steering wheel and backed off the gas. Dennings was looking straight ahead, paying no attention to oncoming traffic. I checked my rear-view mirror and confirmed there were no cars behind me. Then I cranked the wheel, swerved into the other lane, and crashed the Jeep Cherokee into Lance Dennings and his motorcycle.
FORTY-ONE
Time seemed to slow down in the split second it took for the vehicles to crash into each other. The screeching of metal on metal went on forever. I heard a hissing sound as my airbag deployed, and the safety device cushioned me as the violent collision caused my entire body to thrust forward with more force than a dozen body-slams combined. The Jeep had hit the motorcycle on an angle before plowing into the van behind it. All three vehicles slid toward the edge of the bridge together, and the guardrailing bent as it took the brunt of the sudden impact and kept us all from going over. My head was tingling and I felt dizzy. My thigh throbbed from having slammed into the underside of the steering wheel, but the adrenaline was pumping and helping to numb the pain. I grabbed the canvas bag off the floor and unsheathed the hunting knife and used it to pop the airbag. As it deflated I looked through the cracked windshield and rear window to see the carnage.
The Jeep Cherokee’s entire front end had collapsed inwards, hemorrhaging steam and twisted steel. It was also entwined with the motorcycle, which had been so completely wrecked by the crash it was hard to tell where the Cherokee ended and the Harley-Davidson Fat Boy began. There was no sign of Dennings. I had seen sheer panic materialize on his face in the instant after I had swerved, however, the next thing I remembered was my vision being enveloped by the deploying airbag. Since I didn’t see a hulking, lacerated body coiled around the Cherokee’s crumpled engine parts I assumed he must have been thrown clear by the impact.
One of the bikers from behind the van had managed to avoid the collision altogether and appeared to have gone into a controlled slide, which placed him about twenty feet behind the scene of the crash. I couldn’t make out which Steel God it was through the windows. I tucked the .44 Magnum revolver in my belt and grabbed the Mossberg 500 shotgun. I kicked open the passenger side door and slid out, flicking off the safety and racking a round in the chamber of the 12 gauge. I planted the stock of the shotgun into my shoulder and limped toward the biker who had wiped out behind the site of the crash. As I got closer I recognized him — it was the baby-faced guy with slicked blonde hair I had nicknamed Ponyboy. He was grunting as he struggled to free his left leg, which was pinned underneath his motorcycle.
A car whizzed by on the other side of the bridge, using one of the lanes that was not blocked by the wreckage. Another vehicle followed and slowed, until the driver saw me holding a shotgun. I glanced around for any sign of Lance Dennings but before I could locate him Ponyboy sprung his leg free and jumped to his feet. His eyes widened and brimmed with rage upon seeing me. He pulled a high-calibre handgun from a hip holster despite looking down the barrel of my shotgun.
Ka-boom! The pellets ripped Ponyboy’s torso to shreds and he collapsed backwards onto his bike. The sound of the ear-splitting blast thundered over the bridge and carried on, echoing across the inlet. A moment later the bridge was silent, and the only movement came from a red cloud of bloody mist that floated in the night air underneath the glow of a street lamp.
I spun on my heel, racked the Mossberg, then hurried back toward the scene of the accident, and cautiously approached the van. Hunched over in the driver’s seat was the greasy-haired wheelman Sankey had shown me pictures of at Foo’s Ho Ho. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t have an airbag that activated upon impact. The greasy biker’s head hung limply over the steering wheel, bone protruding from his neck. Two down. Three if you counted Dennings, whom I now assumed had been thrown over the side of the bridge. That left Kendricks, my old man, and Big Z, the Zeppelin boy who had executed Remo Willis on the SkyTrain platform.
Another car sped by in one of the bridge’s unblocked lanes but it barely slowed. Holding the shotgun tight, I came around to the back of the van at a wide angle, in case one of the Steel Gods tried to surprise me by jumping out of the back of the van.
Big mistake. Apparently Ponyboy wasn’t the only one who was able to put his bike into a controlled slide, as Big Z sat crouched behind his motorcycle with a hand cannon drawn and at the ready. Before I could even turn the Mossberg in his direction he fired. The shot hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest and knocked me clean off my feet. I dropped the shotgun. Searing pain slashed across my ribs. I tried to move. It was no use. Had the Kevlar vest even worked? I had broken ribs in the past while wrestling but the pain had never been so immobilizing.
As I lay on my back struggling to breathe my mind suddenly filled with random images: the photograph of Johnny and Ginger ringside, Rya with her hair down wearing a robe and sipping coffee, Declan hooked up to a ventilator clinging to life, my old man beaten and bound to a metal-art statue. Then I saw Max, his muscular body lying broken and paralyzed at my feet, looking up at me with a terror so pure that it had forever marked my soul.
No. I refused to go out like this. My father needed me. Johnny deserved justice. And I still had to atone. I summoned a force of will I didn’t know I had and reached for the .44 Magnum revolver in my belt. Big Z pounced on me and stomped on my hand, pinning both it and the revolver to the asphalt. He crouched over me and jammed the barrel of his gun against my forehead.
“Rot in hell, motherfuck — ”
His parting words were cut short when I snatched the .22 from my ankle holster with my other hand, shoved the pistol into his stomach, and pulled the trigger twice. He stumbled sideways, still clutching his gun. Before he could raise it again I sat up and put a third bullet in his head.
My ribs screamed in pain as I picked up the shotgun and stepped over Big Z’s corpse. I stumbled over toward the back of the va
n, which had started rocking back and forth. I yanked open the door and the first thing I saw was the face of Damian Kendricks, which was swollen and beet red. My father was behind him, using the chain in between his cuffed hands to choke out one of the most elusive and dangerous criminals in the city.
“Son!” he exclaimed upon seeing me.
My old man swung his wrists to the side, smashing Kendricks’ head into the metal hinges on which one of the van’s rear doors hung. Kendricks crumpled to the ground, gasping for air.
“The rest of them?” my old man asked.
“Dead.”
“Where’s Declan?”
“Hospital. He’s okay.”
My father glanced at the wreckage from the crash and noted the dead bodies of his former captors. “You did this all by yourself?” I nodded.
My father pulled me into a fierce hug, which was cut short by sirens wailing in the distance. He nodded at the mangled remains of the Jeep Cherokee.
“Stolen?”
“Yeah.”
“Guns clean?”
“Yes, sir.”
He took the shotgun out of my gloved hands. “Hand them over. You were never here.”
“How are you going to explain — ”
“Go, son.”
I handed over the .22 but left the Magnum in my belt. “I didn’t fire this one,” I said, patting the revolver. “There’s a bag in the front seat of the Cherokee. Inside is some ammo and the knife that killed Johnny Mamba.”
“Take that knife and get the hell out of here,” said my father.
“What about him,” I asked, motioning to Kendricks. My father used his foot to roll him over onto his back.
“Fuckers!” Kendricks spat venomously, in between laboured breaths. In one fluid motion, my old man grabbed the .44 Magnum out of my waistband, pulled back the hammer, and shot Damian Kendricks centre mass in the chest.
“Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed, completely startled. “What the hell, Pop?” My old man glared at the lifeless body of Damian Kendricks.
“Needed to be done.”
“He was unarmed.”
“It was either him or us. This piece of shit was the kind of man who would have kept coming after us until we were all dead. And he was resourceful enough to do it whether he was behind bars or not.”
“But — ”
“Enough! Leave now, while you still can!”
The sirens were getting louder. In the distance flashing red and white lights from a fire truck lit up the night as the vehicle barrelled toward the bridge. I grabbed Johnny’s murder weapon out of the Jeep and ran over to Ponyboy’s Harley-Davidson, which was still idling despite its deceased owner being flopped over on the vehicle. I pulled off the corpse, mounted the bike, and took off down the bridge, silently thanking my former, rebellious, teenage self for insisting upon buying a motorcycle rather than a car after I turned sixteen.
Fifty feet later I squeezed the front brake lever hard and skidded the bike to a stop. Strewn across the middle of the asphalt was Lance Dennings, his fractured and massive leather-clad frame looking as if an eighteen-wheeler big rig had flattened it. I was about to crank the throttle grip and take off, when I noticed something. He was still breathing.
I climbed off the bike and approached him. As I got closer I saw that he was bleeding badly, and that the asphalt behind him was streaked with bloody skid marks. His femurs and tibias had been shattered, and his long legs were flopped on the ground in opposite directions like wet noodles. His leather jacket bulged in different places from the broken and dislodged ribs underneath. One arm appeared to be undamaged, but the other was twisted under his body at a sickening angle. But the worst injury by far had happened to his face, as half of Lance Dennings’ jaw had been completely crushed. Blood dripped from what was left of his mandible, the bottom corner of his face reduced to a squishy blob of tissue, tongue, and teeth. His eyelids fluttered when he noticed my movement, and after a moment Dennings opened his eyes. They were glazed over but slowly began to focus and make their way upward toward me. There was a spark of recognition when our eyes met, and his shredded tongue flopped like a fish out of water as he tried to speak. All that came out was a gurgling sound.
I took my phone out of my pocket. I brought up the picture I had taken of Johnny’s prized photograph, the one of him beaming while standing ringside with Ginger draped over his shoulders. I held the screen in front of Dennings and waited until his eyes slowly registered what was being shown to him. I walked back to the motorcycle. I slid into the deep softail seat, gunned the engine, and sped past the approaching fire truck and into the night.
FORTY-TWO
“Interesting piece of fiction in the paper,” I said, before sliding a copy of The Vancouver Sun across the table.
“The important thing is that they bought it,” replied my old man, before slipping on his reading glasses and examining the story. The headline “IRON COP CRUSHES STEEL GODS: Hero Survives Bridge Shootout With Biker Gang” was splashed across the broadsheet newspaper’s front page. Underneath the print was a crime scene photograph of the wreckage I had caused on the Lions Gate Bridge a couple of days earlier. Next to the picture of the mangled vehicles was a several-years-old portrait of my father in his full-dress police uniform.
“I forgot how nicely you clean up,” I said. “You should really post that pic on an online dating site. You’d be replacement hip-deep in postmenopausal GILFs.”
“What in the blue hell is a GILF?” snapped my father.
“Ask Declan sometime.”
“Fine. Now quit it with the Rodney Dangerfield routine and listen up.”
“Rodney Dangerfield?”
“The stand-up comic.”
“Yeah, I know who he is, Pop. You do realize we’re not living in the seventies?”
“Enough jokes, wiseass.”
He tapped a thick finger on the newspaper. “I’ll get to this in a minute. First, tell me how you’re holding up.”
“I’m fine.”
“Your nose looks better.”
“Yeah,” I said, gently touching the bandage. “And I got that knife wound on my chest stitched up when I went back to the hospital to see Declan.”
“How’s he doing? I feel terrible I haven’t been by yet.”
“I filled him in on what went down. He knows you have your hands full. And he’s doing great.”
“Define great.”
“Well, there’s a good chance he may be facing some sexual harassment charges for repeatedly groping an Asian nurse. And he got in a fistfight with a security guard after he was caught drinking the beer he made me smuggle into the hospital for him.”
“That son-of-a-bitch,” said my father, chuckling.
“I have a feeling they might be releasing him earlier than expected.”
“All right, then,” he said, cracking open the newspaper. “Pipe down for a bit and let me read.”
I smirked and stirred my banana milkshake. We were back at the retro, red-bubble roofed Dairy Queen on Main Street, and the quaint environment seemed to be helping to soothe my father’s nerves. The old man had definitely been on edge since the showdown on the bridge. He’d also been keeping me at a distance while he dealt with the fallout from the armed assault I led that saved his life but left five people dead.
“Did you get to the part about Dennings?” I asked after a while.
“Not yet. Why?”
“He died last night in the hospital.”
“Good,” said my pop gruffly, before folding the newspaper in half and scooping up a spoonful of Oreo Blizzard.
“Since when do you eat Blizzards?”
“I figured it was about time I tried something new.”
We enjoyed our frozen treats in silence. After a while, I asked th
e question that had been gnawing at me since the moment I had left my father behind on that bridge.
“Are you sure this was the right call? You taking the heat like this?”
“Yes. And there isn’t much of it.”
“I still don’t see why we had to lie. Kendricks and the Steel Gods were scum. They murdered Johnny and would have killed you too. I did the VPD a favour.”
“You’re damn right you did,” said my father proudly.
“Not to mention the fact that all the killings that night were in self-defense. Well, almost all of them.”
“Come on, son. You know why I had to do what I did.”
“I know, Pop. But it doesn’t change the fact that it was kind of … ”
“Kind of what?”
“Cold-blooded.”
“Watch your mouth, boy.”
“I just didn’t realize you were capable of something like that.”
“Damn it, John. Quit being so goddamn naïve. This isn’t about morality. It’s about mathematics. It was Kendricks or us. It’s that simple.” I stirred my shake some more and considered my father’s words. “It’s the same reason why I put all this shit on me,” he continued. “You haven’t thought about the logistics of what would happen if we told the truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re just a civilian. I’m a highly-decorated former cop and a licenced PI. Your actions would be viewed as calculated and premeditated. Mine are seen as justified self-defense against violent criminals. You withheld information and evidence from the police. I’m an innocent victim who got caught in the crossfire. And let’s not forget that you took down this biker gang with a stockpile of illicit arms. I simply used their own weapons against them.”
“Okay, Pop. I see your point.”
“What do you think Cornish would do? Even if you were cleared in the shootings he’d come after you for obstruction and illegal firearms possession.” I nodded slowly.
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