Power Slide

by Susan Dunlap

  What could I trade? What did I possess, connect, know? What could they want?

  Did they kill Guthrie, or was it Ryan Hammond? Why go all the way to San Francisco and bludgeon him across the street from his sister’s house? Just to throw suspicion on Gabriella? It didn’t make sense. Didn’t even look right. As aggrieved as any sister might be about Guthrie’s long absence, it wasn’t likely she’d take a mallet to his head—to the back of his head.

  Melissa raced through the hallway. Her hair stuck to her neck. She was panting, but she didn’t break stride. Oddly, since they were so physically different, she reminded me of Gabriella, or Gabriella as she might have been years ago before she turned into a caged animal. Melissa had that same tight-eyed, quivery-mouthed look of a woman about to spin out.

  What was it about Guthrie and these women of his? How could this be the same sweet, tormented guy I’d known? The best truck jockey—

  Wait! That day he hadn’t been the best at all. He’d muffed the gag. Because he’d been late. Because he’d been held up by . . . something. What was his lame excuse, a truck overturned on the freeway? An incident that never made the news? That he’d admitted to fabricating. What had held him up?

  Blink chugged through toward the basement, carting what might have been a boxed painting.

  What did Melissa and Blink need?

  A guy with a truck is involved with thieves selling collectibles. A normally reliable guy is delayed. Hmm. When Melissa rounded the door from the basement, I said, “Guthrie’s truck.”

  “What about it?”

  “Guthrie got delayed on the way to the movie set doing business for you, right?” I didn’t dare be more specific. “That truck of his, aren’t you worried about it?”

  She balanced her load on a chair arm. “Where is it?”

  “The cops probably impounded it. But maybe not. I’ll have to check.”

  “What, you’re going to call the police chief and ask?”

  “I told you my brother’s a detec—”

  She looked so shocked at that being true I almost laughed. Her eyes went blank as if she was trying to remember all I’d threatened in connection with that brother, trying to factor it into her plans for me.

  “I’ll find out about the truck in return for—”

  “I’m not negotiating—”

  “Of course you’ll deal. You’re a fence; that’s what you do, for chrissakes. I just want to find Ryan Hammond. Easy swap. I’ll find the truck; you take me to Hammond.”

  “We don’t have time—”

  “I’m not asking you to drive me to him. Just tell me where he is.”

  “I’m not—”

  “There’s a murder investigation. If the police haven’t impounded the truck by now, they certainly will. If you don’t care what they find in it . . .” I made to shrug, but my trussed hands just shoved my shoulders forward. Melissa wasn’t looking at me anyway. She was thinking; then she was gone.

  In less than a minute it was Blink standing in front of me and Melissa was back to carting boxes. I had to give her a silent thumbs up for realizing she’d lost and snapping into the next move. Blink looked like he’d noted the same thing, though his reaction was less positive. I was betting he’d been dragged along to the next thing more than once with her.

  He slumped heavily on the couch, sending me bouncing.

  “Hey, I’m tied up here.”

  “What if the cops don’t have Guthrie’s truck?” he said.

  She’s the moving force, but you’re the one who knows the ropes. Does she get that? I couldn’t afford to underestimate either of them. If I’d been dealing with anyone less exhausted than I was, I’d have been mincemeat. But Blink looked happy for any excuse to sit. Happy to discuss “what if.” He looked so worn out he couldn’t be bothered being angry about my abandoning him in the desert. I said, “Why are you so concerned about Guthrie’s truck?”

  “Why d’you think?”

  “You used it to move your stuff. Guthrie was late—uncharacteristically late—getting to the set. Was he making a pickup?”

  His face flickered and he caught himself just before he laughed. Okay, no pickup. That made sense. You don’t pick up valuable contraband, then wag your trailer all over the set. So, he was making a delivery.

  “Ah, but when you make a delivery you get a payment, and you’re hoping it’s in the truck, right? And you don’t know what else is there, good or bad.”

  “You going to speculate till we leave? Or you going to answer me: If the cops don’t have the truck, where the hell is it?”

  “Where we left it.”

  His face lit up a bit. “By the location set.”

  “Not so easy. There was a fire. We had to move it. If you had infinite time you could cover all of the Port of Oakland hunting it down, finding it among all the other nondescript trucks there. You could come every day and try to remember what was where the day before.”

  “Ports have records—”

  I laughed. “You’re going to call the Port and ask for the records on a truck carting illegal goods, owned by the subject of a murder investigation. God, you really are tired.”

  He didn’t even summon up a reply.

  “Or you can give me Hammond.”

  “Done.” He made to stand up.

  “Hey, not so fast. Where is he?”

  He looked down at me and gave an odd laugh, as if he’d just realized something ironic, something he liked a whole lot more than I would. “San Francisco.”

  “San Francisco’s a big city.”

  “Oakland’s a big port.”

  He sprawled back, head draped over the sofa cushion, baseball cap sliding down over his eyes. He was way too pleased with himself and his insight. It was as if he’d been waiting to get even with me for his long drive back in Zahra’s rust bucket, and just discovered how—and then some.

  Of course I didn’t trust him. But I did believe him that Ryan Hammond was in San Francisco. “Okay, Blink, take me to him.”

  26

  IT WAS NOT quite dawn, already hot and clammy. My feet were bound, my hands were tied behind me, and I’d been plunked in the cab of a truck the size of Guthrie’s, between two people eager to have me dead.

  At least I wasn’t in the back of the truck stuffed in next to the Mustang. Now a forest’s worth of packing boxes were crammed around it. Getting it all in had taken hours and hadn’t improved anyone’s mood. I’d hoped they would overlook my rental car, but they didn’t. Between dealing with that, Blink’s truck, and whatever Melissa had been driving, it was five in the morning before the rig pulled away from the house. She was at the wheel, I was in the middle trussed like a basting chicken, and Blink was snoring into the window, which rattled and slipped as if in response.

  I figured I might as well try a little conversation. “What did Ryan do after the Oscar theft?” I said, as if we’d just resumed a pleasant chat and one of us wasn’t tied up.

  “Stayed clear of me.”

  “How’d you get back in business together?”

  She arced left on the two-lane road. Her shoulders were hunched; her nose was nearly to the wheel. But tense as she was, she had enough control not to admit partnership with Hammond. Yet.

  “Ryan?” I went on. “How long has he been in San Francisco?” Long enough to kill Guthrie?

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Just shut up!” She reached over and turned on the radio. Beethoven burst forth. Who’d’ve imagined it? She poked the volume and turned it down.

  We hit the flats and turned right and right again, me bouncing against my bound hands. I caught the end of the rope and climbed my fingers up to the knot. The truck jolted; I hung onto the knot, willing it to loosen. Sun was slicing in through the windshield. It coated Blink’s eyelids but didn’t wake him. Even the window slipping down didn’t get to him. The only rest he’d had in the last twenty-four hours was sitting in the truck at Zahra’s waiting for me a
nd those few moments of shut-eye on the sofa.

  We were still on city streets, but that wouldn’t last long. It never does in L.A. The roadway was wide, and early-morning empty. The traffic light turned yellow. Melissa hit the gas. Clearly, the signals were timed, and although she’d gotten through this one, the next would be close. It was still green. A car waited to cross. The light turned yellow. She accelerated.

  I stamped on her feet. The engine roared. We shot left. A horn blared. She shoved me back into Blink. I kicked up through her arms, hit her chin. The truck was headed into the center divider. Blink pulled me across him. Melissa hugged the wheel. Sweat covered her face; she was panting. But she got control.

  And then there was silence. No sirens, no one running up to check what was going on in here, no one even racing up to scream at us. Nothing. Just a truck rumbling down the street.

  “Do something with her! You—”

  “I’m trying!”

  “I can’t handle this huge thing and—”

  “Okay, okay, let me drive.”

  Good plan, except it was a fantasy. It took me less than ten minutes to exasperate him as much as I had her.

  “If you can’t keep her still, Melissa, stick her next to the window. Smack her around as much as you want.”

  She wanted to a lot. She smashed my shoulder into the door and my head against the roof and managed to bang my knees twice before giving up any effort to belt me in. Every bump we hit smacked me into the windshield. I was going to have a duck’s egg on my forehead. The window jiggled and slipped; wind smacked my face. The knot binding my wrists was infinitesimally looser, but it was going to take more than mere bounce to free me. The truck was nowhere near new and the door handle a four-inch metal arm parallel to the floor, the kind you grab and rotate down. If I could just create a little give in the knot, maybe, just maybe, I could hook it over the handle. But catch the knot wrong and it would pull so tight my hands would go numb. Still, I had time to be careful; I had the whole five-hour drive to Oakland.

  Unless they got rid of me before that. Well before. Where could they take me? To some secluded garage? A storage unit? Or—oh, shit—there was national forest just to the north. A whole big empty forest where bodies get eaten long before bones are found.

  No matter what, I was not leaving this truck without a solid lead to exactly where in San Francisco Ryan Hammond might be! Ostensibly, we’d had a deal. But we all knew better. They were in the driver’s seat, literally and figuratively, and I was fooling myself to believe I would provoke answers to my questions. There were a dozen reasons for them to stonewall me. After that one smug pronouncement of his, Blink had steered clear of even a mention of San Francisco. They weren’t likely to spend hours satisfying my curiosity even when we turned onto Route 5 and there was nothing to do on the hot, boring freeway north.

  The truck chugged up over Tejon Pass and then down, away from the national forest. I was just about to allow myself a small sigh of relief when I spotted the sign for the fork to Route 99.

  “Hey,” I said, “this is the lane for 99! 5’s that way!”

  “99’s safer.”

  “Safe from who? Who’s looking for us?”

  He grunted and Melissa took the opportunity to give me another hard jab in the ribs. I jolted up against the roof. The movement seemed to have loosened the binding on my wrists a tad, but at this rate I’d have a concussion before I got loose. I needed to think while I still could. There was no reason why a panel truck with a man and two women in the cab should draw the attention of anyone, even with me bouncing around. Therefore, there was no reason to avoid taking Route 5, the fast road, in favor of 99, the old four-lane that skirted every town in the San Joaquin Valley. No reason except dumping me in some storage unit outside Hanford or Fresno.

  “You’re not giving me Ryan’s address, not because you’re bargaining. You don’t want me to find him. You should never have said San Francisco, right?”

  I looked across Melissa at Blink. He was making a show of focusing on the road, too great a show. “You blew it, Blink. You know I’ve got the resources to run him down a lot faster than you can find that truck.”

  He hit the gas, a virtual admission I was right. That was his only response, and I had to assume he was concluding it’d be easier to hunt the truck on his own than deal with me.

  “Look, if you—”

  “Shut her up, will you?”

  Melissa obliged with a hit. And I had to admit to myself that all I was going to get from these two now was bruises. What I needed was to figure a way out of here, and relay word of Hammond’s whereabouts.

  The window had slipped a quarter of the way down. At this rate I’d be in Oakland before it was open enough for me to slide out. I shifted, giving Melissa a kick for good measure. She smacked back. I managed a bounce and came down facing the window. I could see the handle and how to land the next time to work the knot against it. I was braced to spring up again, when I spotted something that changed everything.

  The door’d been left unlocked.

  For the first time in this miserable ride, something was going my way. Still, exiting a truck going 60 miles per hour, with my hands and feet bound? Even for a stunt double that’d lead straight to the morgue.

  I peered at the gas gauge. Almost full. Damn. I was already creating all the distraction and havoc I could and changing nothing. How could I—

  Then, suddenly, I thought of Leo. Be aware! Leo was always telling me. He meant be part of the whole gestalt of things, alert to them all. I leaned back against the door and watched as Melissa edged away from me, nervously checking both side mirrors, glancing at me, and back to the road. Blink was resting an arm on the window, his eyes at half mast.

  I’d been handling this situation exactly wrong. In order to be alert, I needed to appear asleep. I let my eyelids close, or almost. I had had a bit of sleep; they had had none. The day was already hot, the sun bright. The radio was loud, but on that classical station it wasn’t likely to jolt anyone awake.

  His eyes closed and snapped open twice before he was sleepy enough to forget the gas pedal. The truck slowed. I shot a glance out the window at the shoulder and reached for the handle.

  “Blink! Dammit, wake up!”

  “Huh?”

  “You were asleep!” Melissa insisted.

  “No, I wasn’t.” But he straightened up. In seconds the truck was moving faster again.

  I released the handle.

  Traffic was getting heavier.

  A car cut in front. He jammed on the brakes.

  I shoved the handle down, flung my weight against the door, feet out onto the step. Melissa grabbed my shoulders. Horns blew. The truck was moving again. I braced my feet against the side. Then I shoved off hard.

  And landed hard on my back. It was all I could do to protect my head. My shoulder screamed. I pushed and rolled onto the soft shoulder. Brakes squealed. I pulled my hands loose. My head throbbed.

  I wanted to curl up in a ball, but I had to move. Up ahead the truck was pulling over. I had to get out of here, had to avoid “help.” No ER, and definitely no police. Used as I was to bouncing up after a bad landing, I didn’t bounce now. I slid back into the weeds and just about sheared the skin off my ankle getting a foot free.

  Melissa was jumping down from the truck, Blink coming at a run. No one else had stopped. Dammit, not one other vehicle!

  I shoved up, and wobbly as I was, I ran. The shoulder was short weeds—no cover. I made for the access road. Holding out a hand, I cut in front of a car, skidded to avoid one in the other lane. Brakes squealed; horns blared. I could hear drivers yelling at me.

  Ahead was a gas station. I ran all out and flung myself into the mini-mart. “Phone! Emergency!”

  The guy behind the counter hesitated, then handed me a big black cordless.

  Moving in front of the window, I held it to my ear and pretended to talk. I couldn’t spot either of my assailants, but if they were still after me, I wa
nted them to see me making a call.

  It wasn’t till the clerk said, “You done?” that I did the last thing I wanted, called the last person I wanted to speak to.

  “Higgins.”

  “This is Darcy Lott. I’ll make you a deal.”

  “We don’t—”

  “There’re two suspects in Guthrie’s murder driving north on 99 near Bakersfield. In a big white truck. No markings. California plates. They’ve got a van load of stolen goods, including a vintage Mustang. They say they know where Ryan Hammond is—in San Francisco.” Before she could reply, I hung up.

  At that moment all I wanted was just to sit down and melt into the ground. My head throbbed, my shoulders ached, my eyes were puffy and so dry it hurt to blink. I’d assumed this trip would show me the man I loved between the times I’d loved him. But all I knew for sure was that I didn’t know anything for sure. Everything I’d discovered about Guthrie was something I didn’t want to know.

  If I was counting on Higgins, I was really grasping at straws.

  I needed to find Hammond myself.

  Maybe my sister Janice had come up with something on the Internet about him.

  If I was reduced to counting on Janice, I was beyond grasping at straws.

  Wan stalks of dead weeds poked up hopelessly from the hardened ground I’d just crossed. I was somewhere around Bakersfield, and for the first time it struck me how aptly named that town was in August. It had to be over 80 degrees and it wasn’t even time for breakfast. Between the dust and the heat, it was a struggle even to breathe. Or maybe I needed to check my ribs for cracks.

  Getting a cab was one possibility. I could have him drive me to the airport, but Bakersfield is a two-flight-a-day town. I was tired, sweaty, bruised, and sinking into immaturity. Without a second thought, I did what I’d done in adolescent crises. I called Janice.