Blood Money

by Doug Richardson

  For nearly an hour, both the semi and Volvo wagon drove in interlocked tandem, always due east and within the speed limit.

  Gonzo felt it was a risk. That with every mile she put between herself and Granada Hills there would come an eventual disappointment. That ahead of her, squarely between the Volvo’s dim headlights, was just another reefer rig on its way to an early morning delivery. There was relief in the thought. Following a blind lead, though frustrating, would nearly always result in zero danger. Her mind even wandered to the eventual aftermath of her three days with Lucky. Aside from all the red tape and reports and explaining her way out of all the broken protocols, she was still concerned about Lucky. Emotions were suddenly in play. Plenty of conflict interrupted by a surprise moment of intimacy. All that and the poor wrecked Kern County deputy hadn’t yet had a day to bury his baby brother.

  Lucky rolled down his window and let the air buffet him. Gonzo equalized the Volvo’s cabin, cracking her window and glancing over at her would-be partner. His face was stony. A flaw, she thought. Her guess was that, as a generality, Lucky was unreadable to a fault. Probably impossible in a relationship built on a traditional courtship, let alone convenience.

  Relationship? Jesus. What am I thinking?

  “We’re at an eighth of a tank,” said Gonzo.

  “Maybe that’s his plan,” said Lucky. “Run us ’til we hit fumes.”

  “If he has a plan,” said Gonzo. “Assuming he’s our guy or even knows we’re tailing him.”

  Lucky didn’t answer. He was all in with the pursuit of the dirty Freightliner and its phantom driver. The duo had already discussed the options. Neither had a working phone to call and request backup. Without an official vehicle, there was no siren or flashing lights to safely alert the truck driver to pull over. And while on the freeway, any attempt to flag down or overtake the rig would have been both dangerous and irresponsible as hell.

  It was like playing chicken with fuel. Whose reservoir would be first to run dry? Lucky was putting his money on the Freightliner despite its twin hundred-gallon gas tanks.

  Shit for odds.

  Mile after mile, the tandem dance continued past what appeared to be endless real estate consisting of little more than freeway-convenient car dealerships, fast food restaurants, big box stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, and finally a massive Miller beer brewing and bottling factory. Steam spewed from the stacks and, for a two-minute stretch, filled the car with the sweet smell of cooked hops and barley.

  “So I kinda noticed something,” said Lucky, briefly stepping out from behind the monotony.

  “Noticed?” asked Gonzo.

  “Next to your bed. Binders and shit. Flight manuals.”

  “Oh that.” Gonzo cleared her throat. It was dry and she could’ve used a liter of water. Her skin felt brittle. “I’m training to fly helos.”

  “Air Support?”

  “Yup.”

  “Always wanted to do a ride-along with those boys,” said Lucky. “What’s it like up there?”

  It wasn’t the first time a fellow officer had asked her the question. Her standard retort was to glibly quip about giving her a better view of the questioner’s bald spot or spying on his or her naked rooftop liaisons with confidential informants. It was harmless, classic cop trash talk.

  “Peaceful…” answered Gonzo. “Dreamy…”

  “Must feel like you’re above it all,” said Lucky. “The blood, the concrete. All the shit.”

  Gonzo merely nodded her agreement.

  “I can see the attraction—” said Lucky, cutting his own thought off at the precise moment Gonzo eased off the accelerator.

  The brake lights on the semi rig were flaring and the blinking indicators signaled that the truck was preparing to exit the freeway at Azusa Boulevard.

  “You familiar with the area?” asked Lucky.

  “Everything from A to Z in the USA,” said Gonzo.

  “What?” Lucky’s voice sharpened.

  “Just somethin’ I heard once. Azusa. Everything from A to Z in the—”

  “I heard it the first time.”

  “All I know about this place. Been a long time since I’ve been this far east—”

  “Signal.”

  The stoplight at the bottom of the off-ramp was quickly turning from yellow to red. The big rig was already steaming to the left. Gonzo stomped on the gas and surged into the intersection just barely ahead of the cross traffic. The Volvo’s wheels chirped loudly against the asphalt and its top-heavy frame made it feel as if it were inches from a rollover.

  Lucky said nothing.

  “Well,” began Gonzo. “If he didn’t know we were behind him he probably does now.”

  “No sense keeping a passive distance. Keep us tight.”

  The heavy Volvo, picking up speed, closed the gap to the rumbling reefer rig to thirty yards. Despite the hour and nearly nonexistent traffic, the truck driver appeared careful to keep his speed under the posted thirty-five miles per hour.

  “Where do we think he’s going?” asked Gonzo.

  “Someplace isolated,” said Lucky, barely above a whisper. “Someplace where he can kill us.”

  * * * *

  The GPS app on Beemer’s phone showed that after two miles of suburban sprawl Azusa Boulevard slowly snaked its way into the heart of the San Gabriel mountains, leading to a pair of public reservoirs. It was a safe call that after 2:00 A.M. traffic would be next to negligible.

  All the while, the stalking station wagon and its two occupants remained in Beemer’s mirrors. Who they were didn’t so much matter as what was soon going to happen to them. One thing for certain, the pair were neither cops nor feds. In the miles they’d rolled off since Granada Hills, there’d been one chance after the next to bring in the squad cars and helicopters. No. Most likely they were thieves, reasoned Beemer, or private military contractors who must have been trailing him.

  The highway rode a low valley as the high desert mountains lifted on both sides. Beemer checked his speed. Twenty-eight miles an hour. A glacial pace. But sufficient enough to move his slowly evolving plot to an eventual resolution. He only needed to keep control of his patience. It was just another detour. After which he could continue crawling toward Stateline. And once there, some overdue damn slumber.

  The Freightliner’s headlights ignited a sign reading “Bridge—200 yards.” Precisely the kind of landmark Beemer was hoping for. With the reservoir stretching out to the north, he checked his side-view mirror once more then downshifted. He let the gears slow the heavy load, finally braking the big rig to a stop once his rear wheels had crossed the hundred-twenty-foot span.

  Neutral. The old Freightliner’s diesel engine coughed, spit some smoke, then found a breathable mix of fuel and air. To Beemer’s ears, it sounded like a giant alley cat with sleep apnea. A deep purr, smooth silence, hacking, an inhalation. Then the cycle would start again with another deep purr.

  Not once though did Beemer take his eyes off his mirrors. He watched the Volvo roll to a stall with its rusty front end just inches from the bridge. As if a strange mechanical instinct prevented the vehicle from crossing. The driver, Beemer concluded, was a tall female with a spray of unkempt hair. African American or Hispanic. Confident posture. In the passenger seat, a hairless male, either bald or shaven. A common feature of civilians, PDs and the military.

  Matters to hell, Beems. They’re both as good as dead.

  Beemer had half a mind to swing out of the tractor rig’s cab and empty his first clip on the station wagon just to see how the unknown duo would react. Whatever their response, it would be informative. But not necessarily the most efficient at neutralizing the threat. Better to lie in wait. Force the faceless foe to make a move.

  Shouldn’t be long. Victory is the reward of the man with the greatest patience.

  The semi-auto shotgun was on the seat next to Beemer. On his lap, the 40mm pistol. He slipped two spare eighteen round magazines in the left cargo pocket of his shorts.
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  “Okay, sports fans,” said Beemer to nobody in particular. “Waiting on y’all.”

  * * * *

  A chill crept over Gonzo. It meandered up her spine to the top of her skull then repeated in such a way that she had to shake it off.

  “Christ, what’s he waiting for?”

  “For us to make a move,” reckoned Lucky.

  Gonzo checked the dashboard clock. 2:17 A.M. By her count they’d been parked at the bridge for almost five minutes. And nothing whatsoever had changed. The dirty white Freightliner, rear safety flashers still blinking at a rate close to sixty heartbeats per minute, stayed immobile in the Volvo’s high beams.

  Outside both windows, rising above the idling engines, she could hear the sound of water churning over rocks as the reservoir released its nightly irrigation quota. The air above it cooled, reaching like wet tentacles into the car.

  “Okay,” began Lucky. “We go right and left. Start at the back and hug the trailer ’til we make the cab.”

  “What happens then?”

  “He won’t wait that long. He’ll pick a side and try to take one of us out with his first clip. Incumbent on the other of us to charge hard, flank from the other side and take him down.”

  “Dontcha think he knows that?”

  “I don’t know what he knows.”

  “You knew he was leading us here. You knew he’d make us wait to make a move.”

  Lucky cracked his door, but waited for her to follow his lead. Gonzo swallowed. The dryness in her throat stung. She tried to hock up some spit for some vocal lubrication. Next, she rechecked her pistol to make certain there was a cartridge in the chamber, then began her move from the wagon.

  They stepped into the Volvo’s headlights, casting long shadows all the way to the hillside beyond.

  He sees us now, said Gonzo to herself. He knows this is the moment. This man whose name we don’t even know.

  With a simple hand gesture, Lucky signaled for Gonzo to widen the gap between them. So she eased to her left and into the empty oncoming traffic lane. Lucky hugged the bridge railing, his forward momentum deliberate and unrushed. His .45 in a combat grip, muzzle twenty degrees shy of level.

  And Gonzo was with him. Step for step. It felt like an academy moment. An exercise in how to approach a suspect. Right out of the field combat textbook. But all the while, Gonzo was aware of a simple fact. In her career, she could count on one hand the number of times she’d unholstered her weapon in the line of duty. The last time was when she’d stuck it in Lucky’s face to protect that skinny Blood he’d wanted to beat the tar out of.

  Would you have really shot him, Lyd?

  She wanted to kick herself for letting her focus wander if even for a microsecond. As Gonzo continued to advance from the left, the white Freightliner began to loom like a dirty, gargantuan icebox that had been tipped on to its side. The angle of the dormant truck blocked the cast of the Volvo’s headlights from illuminating the cab. The windows appeared black and impenetrable. What Gonzo would’ve paid for air support and that one-point-six kilowatt Nightsun spotlight. The thirty million candlepowers produced enough juice to ignite a bathroom through a keyhole. Even the most dangerous of subjects felt their testicles shrink when struck by the helo’s beam.

  In her periphery, Gonzo saw Lucky nearly disappear from sight as he slipped to the right side of the trailer assembly. Through the undercarriage she could still see his shadow inching closer to the cab. Twice as close as her. So with her gun sights fixed on the driver’s door of the truck, she trotted and cut the distance in half, fully prepared to unleash every round in her magazine.

  “OUT OF THE TRUCK WITH YOUR FACE ON THE GROUND!” shouted Lucky from the other side.

  “YOU GOT HIM?” yelled Gonzo.

  “DOOR OPEN, SHOW YOUR HANDS!” barked Lucky.

  Gonzo first squatted, peering underneath the truck to see if she could glimpse a man climbing down on the opposite side. Instead, she saw nothing. Nary a shadow or a shift in light.

  “TELL ME WHAT YOU GOT, LUCK.”

  Gonzo rotated left, crossing right foot over left in a sidestep that she hadn’t performed since her days at the academy. She kept dipping into quick crouches, seeking to locate Lucky or the perp beyond the silhouettes of axles and tires. She was no longer fixed on the blackened windows of the big rig, let alone the darkened trap between the cab and the refrigerator unit. She missed the first move from a shape atop the trailer. The outline of a man lifting to a one-kneed stance, barely formed against the moonless sky. The image was so amorphous and unexpected that Gonzo’s brain receptors couldn’t trigger her defenses fast enough to save her life.

  That’s when she saw the muzzle flash.

  * * * *

  The bridge had seemed as good a place as any. As Beemer had led the unknown duo in the Volvo wagon into the desert mountains of Azusa, he had observed that the somewhat level stretch alongside the reservoir gave him the best vantage point to see any cars that might come along. He set the parking brake on the far side of the bridge, took a minute or so to measure the threat in the station wagon, then climbed through the sleeper cab to the window hidden between the cab and the trailer. The hinge that louvered the rectangular pane of safety glass was easily dislodged with a couple of heavy kicks. It swung inward far enough for Beemer to squeeze himself out of the cab without so much as opening a door.

  Despite the cargo trailer being empty, the faulty compressor continued to run and vibrate, the exhaust resulting in a cooling mist, making for a wet climb up to the roof of the trailer. Once there, Beemer edged around the failed cooling unit. Then on his stomach, he wormed his way to the end.

  He didn’t dare peek over the edge, exposing himself to the Volvo’s high beams. He flipped over and lay flat on his back and utterly motionless, letting his ears gather the necessary information for his immediate survival.

  But who were they? Cops in an unmarked car? But where was the backup? The helicopter in the sky? The same went for the federales. Again Beemer concluded that the duo couldn’t be law enforcement. Which brought up the question of private contractors. But hired by whom, then? The government? Or what about that poorly secured blood bank in Reno? Hardly.

  And how about the pool man?

  More than likely dead. Yet Rey had relatives. A convenient sibling who owned the Long Beach shipping enterprise. Could Rey Palomino’s brother be a guy connected to the mob? Or even one of the international drug cartels? Such was the scenario Beemer settled on. Though it wouldn’t change his tack. Whether the duo in the Volvo was a mob hit team or merely a pair of hijackers, the sum of their actions was about to result in them getting themselves very dead.

  Beyond the vibrations from the compressor and the white noise from the river, Beemer listened for the station wagon’s doors to swing open. Both doors were audible, but the driver’s door made a distinct squeak at its tensile. Next came the footfalls, relatively noiseless but for the occasional crunch against gravel. In stereo. The heavier steps were to Beemer’s left. He made the easy assumption that those shoes belonged to the male. The lighter crunches were to his right and further away.

  Ah. The female of the pair.

  The slighter of the two, thought Beemer. Women were generally smaller in scale. Sometimes slower yet more difficult target to strike with a bullet. Beemer had chosen his first target. He only needed his ears to guide him, tracking her ever-fainter steps as he gingerly rolled to his stomach and shimmied. Inches at a time. Angling closer to the aluminum stripe riveted to the edge of the trailer’s roof.

  Then came the shouts:

  “OUT OF THE TRUCK WITH YOUR FACE ON THE GROUND!”

  “YOU GOT HIM?”

  “DOOR OPEN, SHOW YOUR HANDS!”

  Mystery solved. Only cops or feds would bark those kind of orders. But without the usual backup? There should’ve been a cavalcade of black-and-whites descending. Beemer could’ve taken the moment to double-check his six. Re-sweep the landscape for bogies. The sky for an
incoming chopper. Only he sensed a slight measure of advantage. While the advancing tag team traded shouts, potentially distracting each other, Beemer listened to his primal drive. He rolled right, rose to one knee and used the compressor unit as partial cover. What followed was as practiced as table manners. Rise, set the muzzle on the target, adjust for downward elevation. And three quick squeezes.

  The muzzle flash was blinding.

  Against the black night, only the first shot felt true. The recoil and resets and subsequent microsecond trigger pulls seemed slightly out of rhythm. The usual solution was to take a breath and send another trifecta of hot shit into the target.

  But then he felt the sting of sheet metal splinters. Sparks. He was enveloped in a cacophony of gunshots. Large handgun caliber, guessed Beemer. The bullets that didn’t send sizzles into the compressor scored through the atmosphere leaving high-pitched whistles in their wake.

  Beemer lurched hard to his left, slapping the top of the trailer with a thud. Another miscalculation. He’d left himself no room to decelerate. And within the blink of an eye he experienced nothing but air underneath him, the heavy pull of gravity, followed by the inevitable bone-crunching collision with the road.

  Then came the blackout. As if the master breaker box had thrown a switch. His eyes would eventually open. And when they did, Beemer would find himself staring at a moonless sky, clueless as to how long he’d lost the tick, tick, tick of his internal clock.

  Oh. And Beems? Where the hell’s your gun?

  * * * *

  The slide of Lucky’s .45 snapped open, signaling that he’d clipped out of ammunition. He thumbed the release button, ejecting his empty magazine downward. He was already running and felt the spent magazine drop on the asphalt, kick off his shoe and sail under the truck. Lucky hadn’t aimed at the assailant. When he’d heard the reports of shots fired in Gonzo’s direction, he’d backpedaled and held his pistol high over his head, unleashing his entire clip across roof of the trailer. The angle was all wrong though. From his position so close to the rig he had no visual on the shooter. The most he could hope to accomplish was to retard the sudden barrage and race to his fallen partner.