Bed of Nails

by Michael Slade

  But no sign of the pair.

  Nor was there any trace of them uphill to the north. The neon strip that marked the skid road of yesteryear ran up the mountainside to hunt the Lions crouched on the ridge. Squinting hard to spot the fugitives if they were fleeing on foot, Zinc caught the rumble of an engine revving in the next-door parking lot. Before he could sprint to intercept it at the exit across the sidewalk, a convertible with its top up came screeching out in a peel of rubber to fishtail up the street.

  “Damn!” cursed Chandler.

  The lot was full when he’d arrived, so his car was a block away.

  At zero to sixty in 6.2 seconds, the car took off in a flash. The rumble-mobile was a 1970 Oldsmobile 442, Indy pace car model. Beneath the hood scoops, a 455-cubic-inch engine and four-barreled carb made it fly. Rebuilt with loving care so “the numbers matched,” it was a white beauty with black and red racing stripes. The rumble came from straight pipes that left Zinc eating its dust, and as the two-door automatic roared away from him, the last detail that mooned the Mountie was the ass-end California plate.

  Rumble, rumble …

  What an echo, reverberating behind him.

  No, not an echo.

  An independent growl.

  The Mountie looked back to find a chopper angling off Esplanade onto Lower Lonsdale. With a bushy red beard and long rusty locks flapping in the wind behind his horned Viking helmet, the biker could have been the Norse god Thor of Valhalla, who hurls the thunderbolts in Scandinavian myth, out for a putt on his custom-made machine. Built from the ground up for this leather-clad giant—there was so much leather on view tonight that surely cattle would soon be on the endangered species list—the hog was a fat-tire rigid chopper with a 38-degree raked front end. To transfer power to the road, that was the best style of frame. And power there was in the stage-four, 96-cubic-inch S&S stroker engine, the 3-inch open-belt primary drive Primo to thrust oomph from the motor to the transmission, and the one-of-a-kind Teflon-coated driveline. The rake in front made it a bit difficult for high-speed cornering, but with a crotch rocket like that, all ya really gotta do is grab a fistful of throttle, kick her down, and hang on. Baby will always getcha home.

  Perfect, thought Zinc.

  Hiding the Smith behind his back and fishing his regimental badge from his pocket, the Mountie stepped out into the uphill lane of Lonsdale to stop the chopper. The biker danced a toe-tap tango to gear down, then wrenched the front brake handle and hit the rear brake pedal. Only then—once the hog grunted to a halt—did Zinc realize that Red Beard was all brawn. And twice his size.

  “Police,” Chandler barked. “Emergency. I’m commandeering your bike.”

  “Fuck you,” Red Beard snarled.

  “You’re obstructing.”

  “I’ll do more ’n that if ya try t’ steal ma hawg.”

  Zinc flashed the pistol.

  “What? Yer gonna shoot me?”

  The outlaw’s laugh was a blast in a canyon.

  “Then start shootin’, Cop. Ya want ma hawg, ya gotta pry it from ma cold, dead hands.”

  The Mountie’s glare dropped to the hog. The machine was a work of art. It gleamed from several coats of smoked gunmetal-gray metallic paint and tons of chrome with lots of polished billet aluminum. The seat was a Corbin gunfighter that tapered over the fender. No way would the biker surrender his baby without a fight.

  “Okay,” Chandler said. “I’m commandeering you.”

  “Yer gonna ride bitch on a rigid?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Cop, this is a one-man horse that now and then gets a little skank on the back.”

  “Let’s ride.”

  “It’s your ass.”

  Zinc swung on behind Red Beard.

  “Pig on a hawg. Hang on, Cop. Yer really gonna feel it. Ya got just enough padding back there to keep Mama’s clam from sticking to the fender.”

  “Shut up and go.”

  A squeal of rubber up the hill galvanized Red Beard into action. It wasn’t necessary for Zinc to point out their quarry. To avoid the red light at Third, the Olds took the corner at Second in a skid, then disappeared to the east in a haze of dark exhaust.

  The howl as the bike shot forward was what you’d get from a werewolf with its balls crushed in a vise. The Mounties patrol on Harleys—the stereotypical bike gang’s bike—but this machine was born from an evolved gene pool. So unexpected was the rocket thrust that Zinc was caught off guard. Holstering his pistol to call in the chase, he had his portable radio halfway from his belt to his other hand so that he could switch channels from E Com, the Mounties’ central communications network, to North Van detachment’s dedicated frequency to summon backup and direct roadblocks. When the g-force of the chopper launching into hot pursuit almost hurled him from the saddle, Zinc was forced to pincer-grip both arms around the barrel chest of the biker and hang on for dear life.

  The radio went flying.

  The hog took the corner at Second as the Olds careened off that street onto St. Georges a block ahead to zoom north again. Second was wide, so the bike could really open up, and the Cheers bar and the fast-food joints whizzed by in a blur. Then they too were on St. Georges and heading up to Third when the rumble-mobile took a hard right into a long, thin alley. A man taking the garbage out was almost clipped as the fugitives put pedal to metal to shake off the pursuers. Three-story apartment blocks and cars parked, noses in, flashed past the hog as it narrowed the gap. Bursting out the far end to meet a No Exit sign, the Olds—unable to continue straight—almost flipped as it cornered left onto St. Andrews. Red Beard gripped the clutch on one handle and worked the toe shifter to gear down. From the corner of his right eye as they exited from the alley, Zinc caught a glimpse of the B.C. Rail tracks along the harbor and a burned-out boat moored ashore. Then his vision swung north in a dizzying whirl as the biker popped the clutch and cranked the throttle.

  It was launch time.

  Holy shit!

  If Red Beard was trying to impress him, Zinc was astounded. This man rode his hog as if it were an extension of his body. If Red Beard was trying to scare him, Zinc had his heart in his throat. This was like riding a roller coaster with half the tracks missing. St. Andrews Avenue climbed the mountain until there was nowhere to go but into alpine bush. At this speed, every cross street became a ramp that launched motor vehicles into space. Ahead, the undercarriage of the Olds was putting on a light show, throwing off sparks as metal scraped concrete each time it leapfrogged a level. Arms straight, the biker leaned back like a bat out of hell—reminding Zinc of a rock album he had once seen—but no matter how heavy the metal of the chopper was, it wasn’t heavy enough to keep them on the ground.

  Can pigs fly?

  The hog was airborne.

  Through Third, through Fourth, through Fifth, through Sixth, the all-out chase continued. A car along any crossroad and they’d be creamed. Headlights would flash a warning, but there would not be enough time to brake. Fancy houses streaked by on both flanks. Bow windows. Peaked roofs. Dormer gables. Tudor boarding. Front porches. Shallow lawns. Some dated from pioneer times, while others were retro constructions. All were going up and down in queasy undulations as the airborne, earthbound, airborne, earthbound hog ascended the mountain.

  “Yer gonna ride bitch on a rigid? It’s your ass,” the biker had said. Only now did Zinc fully understand the content of Red Beard’s warning. The tapered seat was wedged in the crack of his butt like a thong bikini. The rigid meant that the bike’s frame had no rear suspension. In other words, no shock absorber to blunt the slam of each hard landing. The bitch—in this case, him—was forced to press her tits hard against the outlaw’s back while the rigid shuddered between her spread legs like the world’s most powerful vibrator. Zinc felt as if he were being gang-raped in a prison yard.

  Things were about to get even hairier.

  Keith Road loomed ahead.

  West to east across the slope of the mountainside, there were f
ive major roads, and one of them was Keith. Here, just east of Victoria Park, where it intersected St. Andrews, Keith was a divided thoroughfare with a grassy swath down the center. The Olds shot through the stop sign on the curb, causing brakes to screech a moment before one eastbound car rear-ended another. Momentum carried the fugitives across that lane and the median, where, with a peel of rubber and a belch of smoke, the ragtop veered east in the westbound lane.

  Now traffic was swerving and jumping both curbs to avoid head-on collisions.

  The dominant brake on a chopper is the front-end one. Hit the rear brake too hard in a turn and you might skid out. Unlike a bicycle, which has little weight, a hog is heavy enough to keep hugging the ground. So Red Beard rode the front brake as they hit the intersection, leaning hard to the right to take the sharp corner, then he gunned the hog full-throttle in the eastbound lane so they could parallel the Olds on this side of the median.

  Gaining …

  Gaining …

  Then out came the gun.

  A block ahead, at St. Davids Avenue, the grassy median vanished and the lanes converged. Closing on the point where the parallel lanes joined, the Olds and its pursuers were on a collision course, when down slid the window on the passenger’s side of the car so the hooker riding shotgun could blast at them. The gun in her grip was the piece the pimp had used to shoot up the bar.

  Bwam! She fired as the Olds cut in front of the hog.

  The biker leaned into a corner that didn’t exist, angling across the rear of the Olds into the oncoming lane so they could put the car between them and the muzzle flash. That zig made the bullet miss its mark, then a quick zag realigned them with the backside of their quarry.

  Ridgeway …

  Then Moody Avenue whizzed by.

  Ahead, Grand Boulevard met Keith on the left. Keith marked the southern toe of that wide green avenue up the mountainside. Queensbury—a much narrower road—took over on the right to descend the downhill slope. Responding perhaps to a shots-fired call from the bar, the flashing red-and-blue wigwags of a patrol car raced toward them on Keith. With squealing tires, the Olds took evasive action in another fishtail turn and detoured south on Queensbury.

  The suicide run.

  “Pull back!” Chandler shouted.

  But Red Beard didn’t hear.

  The roar of the hog and the muffling of the Viking helmet squelched the cop’s words.

  Down this shallow canyon of single-story shops and single-family dwellings plunged the pursuing chopper like a bat into hell. Revved up to this speed at high rpms, his foot shifting up four gears to kick out all the stops, Red Beard was amazed that his baby didn’t let him down, for she had a false neutral between her third and fourth gears. The wind whipped his long locks across the Mountie’s face. Through Sixth, through Fifth, through Fourth, they plummeted at warp speed.

  “Pull back!

  “Pull back!

  “Pull back!” Zinc hollered, but to no avail. His shouting retreated in their jet stream.

  Unfortunately for the fugitives, Queensbury ended at Third. Beyond that T-intersection was Moodyville Park, commemorating the settlement of Moodyville, from whence sailed the barque Ellen Lewis on November 24, 1864, carrying the first cargo of lumber from Burrard Inlet.

  In a blur, the car was across Third and heading into the park. Passing a fire hydrant that signaled the start of an access lane, it barreled along the bumpy tract that L’d to the right, where—unable to take a curve at such a high speed—the Olds shot into space as the ground dropped away beneath it.

  It wasn’t the Grand Canyon, but it was drop-off enough. In a soar reminiscent of the climax in Thelma and Louise, the convertible was airborne in a graceful descending arc, until it slammed the hard reality of this less-than-sheer cliff. The nosedive had carried it fifty yards down the tree-studded slope, where it bounced and took off again, picking up momentum like a snowball rolling downhill. The gas tank blew in midair, and the Olds plunged toward the Low Level Road as a blazing fireball.

  Unlike the Californians, Red Beard did know the lay of the land. On many a warm summer night, he’d gone for a putt with a bitch on the rigid, and he knew all the haunts—like Moodyville Park—where he could pull in, tear off her pants, lay her down, and fuck her under the stars. So there was no need for Zinc to shout “Pull back!” as they roared across Third. The biker knew the chase was over, and he geared down.

  The hog braked to a halt where the Olds had left terra firma.

  Tanker trucks cannot use Third Street because of the runaway grade on the west-to-east hill. To skirt the harbor, they must use the Low Level Road between the cliff that plunges from Moodyville Park and the grain elevator by the railroad tracks near Neptune Terminal. The trucker of one of those oil rigs had parked his tanker on the inside shoulder of the road at the foot of the cliff to check a shredded tire, and he stood there examining it as the Olds came flying in over him to hit the concrete and bounce like a fiery basketball toward the railroad tracks and a grain hopper being loaded with wheat from the silo.

  The man was no fool. He ran like hell.

  It seems laughable that something as wholesome as bread contains a deadly explosive. A grain-dust explosion unites four factors. The first is fuel, which is the grain dust itself. A solid fuel burns only at its surface, where there is air. A cloud of dust particles, however, has an immense surface area. As the size of the particles decreases, the chance of explosion increases, and where there’s a concentration of between forty and four thousand grams of dust per cubic meter, as there was in the hopper tonight, watch out!

  The second factor is oxygen, which was present too. Combustion results when oxygen and fuel are ignited.

  An ignition source is the third factor. If a cigarette or welding spark is enough, imagine the combustion potential of a flaming car like the Olds crashing into a grain hopper.

  The fourth and final factor is confined space, for explosions result from the instantaneous buildup and release of pressure caused by rapid burning. Here, amid the clanking and ratcheting from the heavy machinery, each bin, silo, conveyor housing, bucket elevator, and hopper car offered itself as a pipe bomb.

  The hopper blew apart when the Olds rammed into it. That blast set off a cascade effect as the pressure wave from the primary explosion billowed layered dust into clouds in other areas a microsecond ahead of the flame front.

  BOOOOM!

  The series of secondary explosions rocked the street as each blast set up and then set off the next. The ground shook like an earthquake at five points on the Richter scale. A ball of fire rolled out to wrap the fugitives in the Olds in a blanket of flames. As powerful as dynamite or natural gas, the combined force of the multiple grain-dust explosions hurled the car back across the Low Level Road, where what was left of the Olds pierced the parked oil tanker as blazing shrapnel, blowing it sky-high like a hellish geyser.

  Heat from that eruption singed Red Beard’s beard.

  The shock wave almost knocked the biker and the Mountie off the hog.

  All that remained of the fugitives rained down as ash.

  “When you Mounties get your man, you really get him,” the biker said.

  DEAD END

  Vancouver

  November 5 (Two days later)

  The newspapers were spread across one of the three antique library tables that had been joined in a U to make up C/Supt. Robert DeClercq’s desk at Special X. The papers were calling it a “miracle” that no innocent bystanders were killed in the high-speed chase. Denny the Barkeep had earned his fifteen minutes of fame through a series of inside-scoop interviews in which he recounted how he had “fingered both killers for the Mounted Police” because it was his “bartender’s duty to protect the producers, directors, and casting agents of the industry that I hope will soon employ me.” As for those who’d been at work in the grain elevator that night, never had they been so thankful for labor strife. The threat of a wildcat strike fomented by two malcontents had pulled the
staff away from their posts shortly before the Olds came in for a landing. Lucky too was the trucker who’d run from the rig. He had—to quote one reporter—“experienced an epiphany, the effect of which was to veer him toward a new career. He will either try out for the Olympic team as a sprinter or switch to transporting Brussels sprouts instead of flammables.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “What, Chief?”

  “Your new relationship?”

  DeClercq tapped the photograph of Chandler on the front page of The Province. Snapped as Zinc and Red Beard arrived on the customized chopper at the scene of the explosion on the Low Level Road the night before last, it caught the inspector hugging the outlaw’s back like a gang girl. The cutline for the candid shot read, “Strange bedfellows.”

  “I’m his bitch on a rigid.”

  “I don’t want to hear,” said DeClercq, wincing. “Your sex life is none of my business, Inspector. As long as whatever you do on his rigid you continue to do out of uniform.”

  “You’re a card,” punned Zinc as he pinned a tarot card to the Strategy Wall in DeClercq’s office, located on the second floor of the Tudor building at Thirty-third and Heather. Here, at the West Coast headquarters of the RCMP—a string of structures that stretched four blocks south to Thirty-seventh—the floor-to-ceiling corkboard that sheathed both windowless walls of this airy, high-vaulted corner loft was the operational heart of Special X. Fiftyish, lean and wiry, his dark hair now graying at the temples and flanking even darker, brooding eyes, DeClercq was, above all other skills, a military strategist, so when he worked a case, he worked it visually. The Strategy Wall was his equivalent of the campaign maps on which generals have moved toy soldiers around for centuries.

  “He’s a card too,” Chandler said, pinning a photo of the vic found suspended upside down at the Lions Gate beside the tarot card depicting the Hanged Man.

  “Déjà vu.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “It reminds me of the Ripper.”

  The chief finished perusing the report from Internal that lay on his desk—searching for signs that witch hunters were out to crucify Zinc, DeClercq’s second-in-command—then he pushed back his chair to join Chandler at the Wall. The chair was an antique from the early days of the Force, high-backed with a barley-sugar frame and the bison-head crest of the Mounties carved as a crown. A portrait titled Last Great Council of the West hung behind the desk. Guarded by the Mounted Police, their hands on their swords, the pith-helmeted governor general, the Marquess of Lorne, sat in regal splendor beneath an awning at Blackfoot Crossing in 1881, a tribe of feathered Indians squatting at his feet. In recent years, the Force had changed to embrace both founding myths. Now there were whole detachments of Native officers, and DeClercq’s third-in-command was a full-blooded Plains Cree.