“Hey, Pop,” he said, “you’re supposed to put that kind of stuff in the trunk.”
“Let me get my flashlight,” said Van Huis. “Maybe they keyed the paint too.” He reached into the open window of his minivan and extracted a flashlight that was a “two stroker” on the scale of the “twelve cell rule.”
Kent County District Courts guarded the twelve cell rule jealously. Unarmed desperados who resisted arrest could be subdued within the twelve cell rule. The amount of force was calculated as follows: two strokes with a six cell, three strokes with a four cell, et cetera. I expected that Van Huis could probably subdue an ox with his six cell and stay within the budget. He flashed it up and down the side of my car.
“What the hell make is this thing, anyway?” he asked. “There’s no emblem.”
“Buick body, Olds engine, Chevy transmission.” I said. “Pick a brand you like and go with that. When they made this one, they all looked alike except for the bumpers and tail lights.”
“Where do you get off ragging on my van and driving a dinosaur like this?”
“It’s got five hundred horsepower.”
“It’s got bullet holes, for God’s sake,” said Van Huis.
“I was a little slow making the jump to light speed.”
“But not in Kentwood?”
“’Course not,” I said.
“I think the windshield job probably totaled it,” said Van Huis. “You still want a report for the insurance company?”
“I want you to catch the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”
Ben laughed.
“Might have been eco-terrorists trying to get this thing off the road,” said Van Huis.
I caught a glint of light off a puddle next to Van Huis’s foot. I pointed. “I think you got a clue, right next to you on the ground.”
He searched out the puddle—really just a dribble—with his light. I stooped over, stuck my fingers in the liquid, and stood back up to inspect my fingers in the light of his torch. They shimmered pale green.
“Antifreeze,” he said. “Probably yours.”
I rubbed the liquid between my thumb and fingertips and held it under my nose. “No,” I said. “Hydraulic fluid.”
“Hydraulic fluid is red,” said Van Huis.
“When it’s green, what does that mean?”
Van Huis guessed. “Foreign car?”
“In this case a Jag, I think.”
6
“DANNY HAD A DOUBLE DATE so he took Mom’s car,” said Ben. We lined up at the stop sign with Detective Van Huis’s fake-woody minivan. He went left and Ben turned right onto Forty-fourth Street.
“It’s a school night,” I said.
“Danny would’ve been in college if he hadn’t broke his leg and been in traction for six weeks.”
“Coulda, shoulda, woulda,” I said. “Take the next …”
I flopped down the visor and focused the vanity mirror out the rear window. We had three sets of headlights behind us.
Ben flipped up the turn signal. “It’s a school play,” he said. He took his foot off the gas and pushed in the clutch.
“Oh yeah? What are they doing?”
“Oklahoma,” he said, and eased into the turn—onto a residential street.
“Sorry I missed it.”
“It’s on again tomorrow and Friday,” said Ben. “What are we doing? Do we know somebody down here?”
“Nope. Checking for a tail.”
“Cool.”
The car directly behind us passed the intersection, but the second one turned in after us. I watched for it to flash under the street light—a small white car with a dark top.
“Maybe your mother and I will go see it on Friday,” I said. “Take the next right.”
“Friday is sold out. We have somebody?”
“Maybe.”
“Cool.”
“Signal a left turn but turn right.” I watched the car in the mirror. Ben flipped down the turn indicator and got on the clutch and brake for the turn. The car behind us signaled a left turn. We made the right.
At this point the casual observer would think we were nuts, but a pro would know he was toasted or that I was cleaning myself. He’d pass the intersection, scoot up to the next parallel street and make his turn. A cop would come ahead around but would close up fast and touch off his rollers. Only an idiot or a shooter would stay behind us. The car behind us made the turn with his headlights off.
“He’s still there,” said Ben. He got his foot into the gas. The torque raised the right front fender.
“Ease off,” I said. “This is a residential area. Just lock the doors and head for the bright lights.” My pistol started to itch, but it’s one of those things you just can’t scratch in polite company—or in front of your impressionable, almost seventeen-year-old son. “If this guy is dumb enough to think he’s still covered, let’s let him follow us down to the Kentwood Police Department.”
The driver of the car following us waited until we were on Forty-fourth and he had a cover car before he pulled on his headlights. It had to be embarrassing for him because the oncoming cars kept flashing their lights. The stiff suspension on the Camaro made it hard to ID the make of our trail car in the vanity mirror.
The parking lot of the Kentwood Police Department was an island of bright light in a sea of vacant land. To the west and the north apartment complexes stood silhouetted in the night-time glow of Grand Rapids. To the west and south fallow farm lands and feral orchards waited for the city to consume them. Kentwood dispatches through the county at night, so the doors were locked. I picked up the red telephone by the door.
“Emergency operator,” said a sweet but mechanical female voice.
“My name is Art Hardin. My vehicle was vandalized in the parking lot at my office, and now I am being followed.”
“Where are you?”
“At the front door of the Kentwood Police Department.”
“Are you alone?”
“My son’s with me,” I said.
“How old is your son?”
“Nearly seventeen.”
“What kind of car was following you?”
“Kind of a small white car with a dark top. I’m not certain of the make or model.”
She asked, “How many people were in the vehicle?”
“Don’t know.”
“Did you have some kind of altercation in traffic?”
“Nope,” I said.
“How do you know this car was following you?”
“It followed us through a half-dozen turns and made some of them with the headlights off.”
“Well, if the car isn’t there now, perhaps you were mistaken,” she said.
“I’m a detective, ma’am. There’s no mistake.”
“What department are you with?”
“I’m private.”
“Are you armed?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Do you have a permit?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s your day job?”
“I’m a detective—all day and all night.”
“If there’s no car there now, I can’t send a police officer. Perhaps you could come to the office in the morning and make a report.”
“Sure,” I said. She hung up while I was saying. “Thank you.” I went back to the car, climbed in, and hooked up my seat belt.
“What did they say?” asked Ben.
“Told me to take two aspirin and phone them in the morning. Let’s go home.”
“They didn’t say that,” said Ben. He turned on the radio—head-banger music. I turned it off.
“No way I’m listening to that,” I said.
“I don’t want to listen to them ‘doo-wop’ oldies you always put on. What did they really say?”
“They wanted to know if the guy was here now. How about country?”
“You can listen to that while you’re riding with Daniel. That’s all he has on the buttons. I don’t se
e why you’re always so sarcastic about the police.”
“I’m a child of the sixties,” I said. “But you’re right—that was a reasonable question.”
“I got just the thing,” said Ben. He took a compact disc out of the console and popped it in the player—somebody doing some very hot licks on “Take the A Train.”
“Duke Ellington?”
“Cherry Poppin’ Daddies.”
“That’s my father’s music.”
“It’s baaa-ack.”
On the way back to Forty-fourth, a small white car with a dark top came out of an apartment complex after us.
“Now what?” asked Ben.
“How much gas have we got?”
“Almost full. You want to head for the Mackinaw Bridge? Maybe our friend hasn’t seen the Upper Peninsula lately.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “This beast gets real thirsty on the expressway. If he’s running a four or a six banger, we won’t be able to shake him that way. Just head for the house. If he’s still with us on Cannonsburg Road, turn left on Addison.”
“Plan B?”
“You know that long curve with the buttonhook on the end as you go by Grover’s Orchard?”
Ben smiled and stopped for all the yellow lights. At Addison Road we still had company. Our friend had his bright lights on but wasn’t making any attempt to close it up.
“You want me to do this?” I asked.
“Nope. I got it, Pop,” said Ben.
“We bend this Camaro and we’re going to have to get out of town,” I said.
“I’ll just tell Daniel it was your idea.”
“Thanks,” I said. “After you turn on Addison pull over and we’ll do a Chinese fire drill.”
“I can do it.”
“Your mother will kill me.”
“Let’s don’t tell her,” said Ben.
“It’s going to be hard to cover up when we’re laid out in intensive care under a pile of tubing.”
“I got it!”
“You’ve done this before?”
“No,” he said.
“Then you ain’t doing it now!”
“So, I did it before.”
“What do you mean you did it before? Are you nuts? Where do you get off driving like that—your brother’s car—for God’s sake!”
“Daniel’s good at it, too. He showed me. Now I’m better than him.”
I sighed. “That’s nice to know.”
“It’s kind of the local challenge,” said Ben, as if he were revealing a secret. “You know, that’s why Grover plants corn on the north side of the road.”
I knew all about Grover, Grover’s chopped ‘fifty Mercury, and how, thirty years ago, he’d rolled it through his dad’s peach trees that, in those days, had been planted on the north side of the road. The local joke was that Grover’s dad asked him if he was hurt. When he said, “No,” his dad said, “Good—that way I can hurt you myself.”
Grover recovered, his dad retired, and Grover regularly showed up at the township board meetings to bitch about getting the road closed, or straightened, so that the local “hooligans” would “quit running down his corn.”
Belding stages a Fourth of July parade every year. Sandwiched between the antique tractors and the high school marching band, the local car buffs show off their chariots. Grover—and his now candy-apple red chopped ‘fifty Merc with “Thunder Road” scrawled across the trunk in gold leaf—never misses the parade. I always check to see if he’s dragging any cornstalks.
Ben turned off the music and slowed into the turn. I tightened my seat belt.
“Tired of that CD?” I asked.
“No,” said Ben, “I need to hear the engine wind, I don’t want to take my eyes off the road to look at the tach.”
Our friend had added bright yellow fog lights when he turned north onto Addison behind us. Ben power-shifted through the quarter mile measured by wide white stripes that had been painted across the blacktop by the local teenagers.
A yellow warning sign marked the approaching curve with a fifteen mile per-hour speed limit. Ben mashed the binders and dropped the shifter back to third before he got into the turn. The shoulder belt pressed into my chest, and I planted my hand on the dash. Our friend came on hard.
The curve began gently enough and put you off your guard. Ben accelerated into it, staying low but keeping his wheels off of the gravel shoulder. About halfway through, the curve took a steeper bank. Ben got off the gas and pulled the shifter down to second—allowing the engine to slow the car without showing any brake lights and bucking us both forward. The big rat motor roared up to about four grand. Our friend was already in the middle of the blacktop and charging hard.
The last third of the curve had a sharply banked diminishing radius. The rear tires of the Camaro lost traction and started to slide up the banked asphalt. Ben cranked the steering wheel into the skid and allowed the car to drift up the banked pavement. When the nose of the car got pointed into the straightaway at the end of the curve, he nailed the gas. The positraction rear caught and generated a couple of G’s that pushed us back into the seats. Ben banged third gear without losing five hundred RPM, and we bolted onto the straight ribbon of blacktop beyond the curve. I pulled the vanity mirror down again. Our friend’s headlights flashed around twice as he took a flat spin into the cornfield.
“Front wheel drive,” I said. “Must not have been the Jag. Let’s go home.”
Ben was silent.
“Every time you drive like that,” I said, “you risk your life and the life of anyone you might meet in the oncoming lane. Things happen. Small things can make a big difference in your life. A spill on the pavement or a critter crosssing the road could put you in a wheelchair or make you responsible for a tragedy.”
• • •
We live on a lake, a dream that Wendy and I discussed on our honeymoon, but one that had not been possible to realize in the suburban Detroit area. In the late seventies, high-tech defense industries moved to Western Michigan and so did my job with the Defense Intelligence Service.
Pete Ladin and I had been “sheep-dipped”—discharged from the military to work as civilians on the economy, where more latitude was available to make discreet inquiries and run surveillance operations—sorting the wheat from the chaff—before disturbing the rest of the federal alphabet.
The Berlin Wall fell directly onto the DIS, crushing the counterintelligence program into a slide show and a one hour lecture, and squirting guys like Pete and me onto the economy for real. We retired, but kept the PI business. A couple of snotty bureaucrats bitched, but—not wanting to discuss the matter publicly—went away. Wendy and I stayed on to enjoy our dream house, but Marg lost Pete to a stroke.
We crunched up the gravel drive, and motion sensor lights on the garage and corners of the house came on. Rusty, my Frisbee-getter chocolate Lab, was out on his chain and greeted us with a motor tail. Wendy walked up to the window to look out, holding the telephone up to her ear. We have one of those long telephone cords—you never know who might be listening to a cordless phone.
I gave Rusty a brisk two-handed rub on the head and unhooked him. I pulled the chain up to the porch and opened the screen door. Rusty thundered up the stairs to the great room.
The house is one of those bi-levels that was popular back in the decade of shag carpets and leisure suits. As you come in the door it’s a choice—eight steps down to the “walk-out” lower level or eight steps up to the all-in-one kitchen, living room, and dining room, with bedrooms down the hall.
Before I could get up the steps Rusty stood at the head of the stairs with a battered green Frisbee in his mouth. He dropped the toy so that it tumbled down the stairs, then studied me with expectant eyes, his tongue lolling in and out as he danced from paw to paw.
“Dark outside,” I said. His tongue stalled and his tail drooped. I picked up the Frisbee and gave it back to him. He took it and skulked off to climb into the ratty recliner that was “his”
chair, and cast sullen eyes on me.
“We are getting stonewalled,” Wendy said into the telephone. “There’s no way we’re going to send the Dixon Agency a retainer to go and find their own employee.”
She sat parked on a tall stool with her back resting against the island counter that divided the kitchen from the dining room. She gestured with her free hand as if whoever she was talking to stood right in front of her.
Wendy, not quite a year younger than me, had never spread into the sturdy body style of middle age. Her summertime attire was a daily pilgrim’s progress. For the cool of the morning she was in sweats or slacks and long sleeves with her light brown hair on her shoulders. By noon she wore shorts and a tank top with her hair tied on top of her head. This evening was a flannel-shirt-worn-open-over-a-tank-top-and-shorts-with-her-hair-down kind of night.
“Not a chance,” she said into the telephone. “We need to find him ourselves.”
“Come on, Rusty,” said Ben from the foyer behind me. He pushed the screen door open and held it. Rusty erupted from the chair and rattled china with the two bounds it took him to get to the head of the stairs. I had climbed to the top of the steps and had to get out of the way or ride eighty pounds of canine enthusiasm down the stairwell.
I walked out in front of Wendy, spread my arms and did a slow twirl for her to inspect my Western get up. Wendy put her hand over the telephone, arched her eyebrows and said in a horse whisper, “So where’s the milk and bread?” Outside I could hear Ben console Rusty about “Dem mean old guys,” and the gallop of Rusty’s paws on the gravel. I don’t know what was on my face but I could see the steam rise in Wendy’s.
“No,” she said, “Art just walked in. Was he wearing that silly outfit when he talked to you? You do.... I have no idea.... You’ll have to ask him.” She handed me the telephone, snatched Danny’s keys off the counter and stalked down the steps.
With my hand over the telephone I said, “You’re going to miss the end of your show.”
Dying Embers Page 6