Street Raised

by Pearce Hansen

  The Econoline dodged around behind them, staying in position a few cars back; maintaining a set, deliberate distance. Speedy continued up I-80 in the slow lane past East Richmond.

  His gaze roved back and forth across the traffic patterns, regularly checking the pursuing van in his rear view mirrors in case Chatter tried to come up next to them again. But the van hung back, sure of them now.

  “I’d let you out Carmel, but you’re safer with me – they’d just grab you to hold over my head, trust to either luring me in with you as bait, or catching up with me later if I didn’t give a fuck about you. At least on the move we have a chance – they can’t creep up on us if we know where they are, right?” Was he actually seeking her approval? No, Speedy was just trying to keep her calm – he didn’t need the added distraction of her wigging out on him.

  “Okay. Of course you’re right, whatever.” Gallingly, Carmel was looking over her shoulder at the Econoline and not really listening to him at all.

  Speedy started to say something that would demand her attention, let her know he was in charge of things. But instead he paused, and his mouth slowly closed again as he thought.

  “I’m sorry, all right?” Speedy suddenly blurted. She was right to pull away, and he marveled at his desperate need for her to believe in him, at just how willing he was to scramble after her here. “I’m sorry Carmel.”

  But she still wasn’t paying attention to him. She didn’t want to talk about this situation at all and Speedy let it go to focus on the task at hand: survival.

  As they passed the Hilltop Mall a motel stood off the freeway to the right, above them off a frontage road on the El Sobrante side; there was a busy chain restaurant next door to it. A couple of cop cars were parked next to the restaurant, and Carmel’s heart leapt at the reassuring sight of law enforcement.

  Speedy took the exit and the van followed them up the off-ramp, still in no hurry to close. As they pulled into the parking lot Carmel looked longingly at an Alameda County Sheriff’s and a California Highway Patrol car parked side-by-side next to the restaurant entrance.

  But Speedy drove right past the cop cars, and stopped at the motel office with the engine running as he pawed a wad of bills out his pocket. “Here’s some cash. Go in and get us a ground floor room away from the highway.”

  Carmel looked at him, then out at the cop cars. She could even see the cops, inside the restaurant sitting together at the same table eating.

  “This is where we take care of business, Carmel,” Speedy promised. “Please trust me on this, okay? This is what I do girl.”

  Carmel took the money and went into the office. A few seconds later she ran out and hopped back in the car.

  “Room 108,” she said, reading the faded number on the big plastic key tag in her hand.

  Speedy backed the Valiant into the parking space in front of their room, nose pointing out as if for something approximating a fast takeoff, and looked for Chatter’s van. It still hung by the lot entrance, Chatter obviously expecting them to make a break for it again, or perhaps not liking the cop cars parked right next door at the restaurant.

  Speedy killed the engine and got out, holding the shotgun along his leg and staring at the van as if in challenge or invitation. As Carmel unlocked the door and led the way into their room, the Econoline sped to the office and stopped. A young skin in a leather jacket climbed out and ran into the office.

  Speedy shut and bolted their motel room door, tweaked open the Venetian blinds a crack with his finger and watched. Carmel stepped up and stood on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder. The van slid toward them like a cruising shark then backed into a parking space a few rooms over toward the street.

  All four men got out and stood in a huddle for a few seconds, staring over at the Valiant and Room 28. There was Chatter and the kid in the leather jacket; a stump of a skin with a face like a fistful of broken knuckles; and the big American Front Oi-Boy in his Guinness patch bomber jacket.

  Chatter unlocked their own door and the skinz all filed into their room. Speedy waited about a minute and then stepped outside, only to dart back inside a few seconds later. Mocking laughter spilled after him through the open doorway, cut short as Speedy slammed the door and locked it.

  “They’re in Room 104,” he said.

  Carmel perched on the edge of the bed watching him and looking around at this rat hole he’d led them to. “What’s the point in holing up in this dump? I mean, what’s the difference? Hell, the cops are right there at the restaurant — why don’t we go get some help?”

  “Help?” Speedy scowled distractedly at her. “From the cops? ‘Scuse me, osiffers – these bad men are following me.’ Get real – even if the Man believes us and arrests Chatter, all they’ll have against him is weapons charges – Chatter will make bail easy, or even get O.R.ed if the jail is crowded. So then Chatter’s on the loose again, we have no idea where he is, and him and his crew can come up from behind and waste us whenever they want. No thanks.”

  “My way I know where they are,” he continued. “This cocksucker thinks he can fuck me? Nobody gets away with that, nobody owns me. Right now I have the initiative and I’m keeping it. I’m gonna take care of this, okay?”

  Carmel’s eyes searched Speedy’s face, listened to the calm, matter-of-fact tone in his voice. He wasn’t trying to blow smoke up her ass, he wasn’t merely thinking out loud, and he wasn’t talking just to hear the sound of his own voice. He was sharing his process with her, letting her know that he was steps ahead of the schmucks in Room 104, and that he was managing this horrid situation.

  “Okay,” Carmel said, visibly calming as she realized he needed her to feel reassured so he could focus on what needed doing.

  Even if he was ‘managing’ her as well, she needed not to distract Speedy from whatever it was he had it mind – it was her best chance to get through this alive, a dark selfish part of her brain understood.

  The wary trust in her voice caught Speedy’s attention and he looked at her as if for the first time, wondering at how often this girl was able to surprise him. He’d expected more flak from her than this, and her acceptance of his capabilities brought it home that he’d gotten her into this; it was fully on his shoulders to get Carmel out of this shit storm.

  But he had to ask himself: Would she still be right there next to him after this was all over? Was this one the deal breaker?

  For right now Chatter hovered over their lives like an evil moon, making such thoughts more than a waste of time. Speedy wrenched his gaze away from her and stared out the window through the blinds.

  Night had fallen. The skin in the leather jacket was guarding the van, leaning against the front bumper of the Econoline and smoking a cigarette. He appeared bored to Speedy, the newbie prospect pissed off at getting stuck with guard duty – he wasn’t even bothering to glance over at Speedy and Carmel’s room more than once or twice a minute.

  Sloppy, Speedy thought, figuring all the angles and liking the possibilities more and more.

  The room had cable, and even a remote. Carmel turned on the TV for comfort and started surfing through the channels. As it was primetime, ‘Dallas’ was on – but she’d never really followed the story-line, so the soap opera unfolding on the screen offered her no emotional involvement.

  Carmel was getting ready to change channels when the commercial break came on, and her thumb froze over the remote’s button as she watched enthralled: some Olympic track star looking girl in running shoes, shorts and tank top was running through a tunnel lined by flickering telescreens. A bunch of guys, in black riot-police uniforms with visored helmets and night sticks, were chasing her.

  The track star girl ran toward this huge TV screen filled with the image of a Big Brother looking dude, who ranted on and on about this and that even as the girl approached close enough to the screen to hurl a big sledge hammer through it. The screen was destroyed just as Big Brother shouted “We shall prevail!"

  Then the screen filled with a
big stylized apple symbol. The narrator rambled on about ‘apple,’ and ‘macintosh,’ prompting Carmel to wonder what they were doing using a TV commercial to sell fruit.

  She switched to MTV: the VJ was playing the Eurythmics ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These), but even the sight of Annie Lennox singing in drag was of no help. When Carmel decided there was nothing on capable of distracting her from the angst’s silent hum, she turned the TV off to see what Speedy had in mind.

  “We have a little bit of time before they come for us,” Speedy explained with an ingratiating smile, continuing to keep his scheming on open display for Carmel so she wouldn’t regret her apparent confidence in him. “Chatter knows me well enough to be careful taking me out. He’ll know I’ll at least have the shotgun. He doesn’t know Fat Bob’s dead so he’s waiting to see if Bob’s coming. He might even call for backup himself – but I wouldn’t if I were him, why draw attention with more people than he needs for the job?”

  “No, these four are probably all I’ll need to deal with. They’ll wait until things get quieter around here and force us out somehow, gasoline bomb through the window, I don’t know. Four guns against one, and the sawed-off is only good for close quarters? We’re dead then even if I take a couple with us. But for now we still have a little while, girl.”

  Speedy turned off all the lights, and then said, “You need to call Chatter and buy me some time, distract them for me. I’m gonna take care of their van.”

  Carmel held the phone against her ear, watching Speedy as best she could in the dimness of the unlit room. He stood next to the unlocked door, peeking out through the blinds with his pocketknife open in one hand. Enough light came through the blinds to stripe his face, so Carmel saw him nod despite the darkness.

  She dialed the motel office.

  “Could you connect me with Room 104 please?” Carmel asked, surprised at how steady her voice sounded.

  The connection was made, and then the phone was ringing.

  She saw Speedy tense at the window, then open the door just enough to dart out into the night bent over at the waist. He closed the door behind him but didn’t latch it.

  As she watched him disappear, Carmel belatedly wondered: Should she be reassured that this was old news to Speedy? Or should she be appalled that this kind of scene was business as usual for him?

  The phone was picked up in Room 104, but no one on the other end uttered a word. It was as if she were listening to a void. Her heart was pounding and she felt as if they could look right through the phone line into her heart, see her fear as she sat there alone and Speedy-less in the dark. Someone was whispering in the background on the other end.

  “Hello?” Carmel said softly like she didn’t want anyone on her end to overhear. “Is this Chatter?”

  More silence, then a voice, Chatter’s she figured. “You’re the bitch with Speedy. What you want?”

  With a shock of relief, it suddenly occurred to Carmel that Chatter was just another guy on the phone and she relaxed, in control of the situation now – she could work him as hard as she wanted, improvise just like with any of her Psychic Unicorn customers.

  “That’s me, the bitch. I just want to see if there’s a way out of this for me. I mean, this is between you and Speedy, right? Fuck him anyway,” she said, putting a note of betrayed bitterness into her voice; it didn’t take all that much acting ability to put it there.

  Carmel could almost hear the wheels turning as Chatter tried to think. Just how dim was this guy’s bulb?

  “Yeah,” Chatter finally said. “Yeah, cool. Where is he now?”

  “In the shower. That’s how I was able to call you.”

  “Yeah, cool, cool. That bastard owes me but I got no beef with you, we’re cool. If – you do one little thing for me. You let us in the room, then you just walk away. Deal?” Chatter’s voice oozed sincerity – Carmel felt greasy just talking to him.

  But he had a point, even if not in the way he seemed to presume: She could just head out the door and keep walking without looking back.

  She opened her mouth to answer. The door opened and Speedy rushed in from the parking lot, still bent over.

  Without straightening, without letting go of the door knob, he whispered, “Let’s go – now.”

  Carmel dropped the phone. She could hear Chatter’s voice still buzzing tinnily from the phone handset as they hurried out the door to the waiting Valiant.

  Miraculously the old bomb started right up, and Speedy gunned it as they pulled out of their parking space and headed toward the street.

  The skin in the leather jacket had stared open mouthed when they first came out, finally snapping out of his sulky boredom. He pounded on the door to Room 104 and the whole crew boiled forth; they were climbing into their van by the time the Valiant exited the parking lot.

  Speedy floored the gas but headed away from the freeway onto a two-lane snake of a road that wound its way up through the foothills into the darkness between towns.

  Carmel was facing backwards again, kneeling in her seat and breathing deeply to calm herself. As she watched, the Econoline roared out of the parking lot and immediately began closing the gap between them; coming in for the kill.

  Carmel spun in her seat to face forward and pressed both palms against her cheeks. “Oh God. I thought you took care of it. Oh God. What’ll we do now?”

  “Calm down Carmel. I cut their brake line with my pocket knife. Best case scenario, they either go over the edge on one of these curves, or crash hard enough I can run back and empty the sawed off into them before they get it together. Worst case? They just stop chasing us and we’re whereabouts unknown. We’ll have left town before they can catch up to us again.”

  Carmel’s head whirled to stare back at the oncoming Econoline in morbid fascination. The Valiant was into the first curve with a steep drop to their left, and Speedy’s face was grim as he took it without braking.

  They straightened and barreled into the next curve. Carmel watched the van as it overtook them, maybe five car lengths behind now but getting ever closer. Its headlights stabbed through the Valiant’s rear window and she squinted against the glare.

  Now the Econoline was close enough she could have spit out her window onto it, and Speedy was taking them into a tight hairpin at full speed, the Valiant’s tires shrieking across the asphalt as the car drifted almost to the sheer drop-off at the shoulder. Behind them the van roared into the hairpin just as fast.

  Suddenly the front of the Econoline started to swerve away from the drop as Chatter realized he had no brakes – but the van was going too fast and he lost control. The van rolled once, bounced into the air and tumbled into space and down out of sight, the headlights slicing wild arcs through the empty night like a Chinese acrobat doing an aerial barrel roll in a darkened room with a flashlight in each hand. Carmel thought she could hear screaming but that was probably only her imagination.

  The Valiant was coming out of the curve but their skidding drift still had them creeping sideways toward the drop-off; Speedy had to stomp on the brakes to keep them from going over the edge of the road themselves. The Valiant lost traction on its worn tires and started a spin.

  Speedy’s hands blurred on the wheel like a cat beating up a mouse, his wrists never crossing as he fought to maintain control of the car and keep either end of the rotating auto from sliding over the edge of the drop. Carmel watched Speedy’s stony profile; the hillside sliding past behind him as if the car were stationary and the world were circling them instead.

  One second they were still spinning and skidding crazily toward the edge – they were that close to gone – then the tires regained traction and they rocketed away from the drop to slam into the hillside. Speedy toppled over at the impact and Carmel heard his head crack against the door, felt and heard Speedy go ‘whoof’ as she flew out of her own bucket seat and thudded into the human cushion his body provided for her.

  She disentangled herself from him, unharmed. Speedy’s eyes were cl
osed and he was unmoving. But when she frantically hissed his name, he groaned and squirmed. His eyes opened a bit and Carmel remembered to breathe.

  She exited the car and studied the Valiant’s front end, jammed into the dirt of the hillside. The body was crumpled, but when she wrestled open the slightly warped hood it didn’t appear either the block or the radiator had been cracked. She saw no fluid leaks nor could she hear the hissing of any of the engine systems losing pressure – she could drive them away from here, then.

  Carmel sensed movement out the corner of her eye; about twenty-five yards back where the van had gone over the edge of the drop. With a superstitious twinge, she turned for a better look and saw someone or something pulling themselves up over the edge.

  Carmel gasped and reached inside the car to fumble Speedy’s shotgun from his field jacket pocket. Speedy called her name semi-coherently and managed to sit up. But she ignored him, he was obviously still out of it; she was in charge.

  When she stood again and turned back with the sawed-off heavy in her hand, she could see the man clearly in the bright light of the full moon.

  It was the driver; the one Speedy had called Chatter.

  Chatter swayed drunkenly as he stared at Carmel and the car. Then he started toward her, hopping along on one leg, wincing every time he applied weight to the shattered one dangling under him. A long-barreled revolver was in his hand, looking just like the one she remembered Dirty Harry carrying in the movies. The gun was big as a cannon.

  “Please stop,” Carmel begged in full sincerity.

  Chatter ignored her, limping steadily closer. She stole a glance at Speedy: his eyes were still open but he was gazing through the windshield at the embankment. He was unaware of current events and she wasn’t going to waste time trying to shake him the rest of the way into consciousness.

  When Carmel looked back at Chatter he was close enough she could make out more detail – his shirt front was drenched in blood.