‘Where are you now?’ he asked Saskia.
‘I’m down in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel, on East Hospitality Lane, which is where I’ve been staying. I’m using their house phone so that Wrack doesn’t know I’m calling you. I didn’t want to go back to my room in case there was one of his people waiting for me.’
Martin thought for a moment, and then he said, ‘Me and my family, we’re getting away from the city right now. I can’t tell you exactly where because I don’t know exactly where.’
‘Can I come with you?’
‘How do I know that I can trust you?’
‘I told you about the water at West Valley Detention Center, didn’t I?
‘True. But maybe you just want to find out where I am, so that you can tell Joseph Wrack, and do a deal to get him off your back.’
‘You have a very suspicious mind, Martin Makepeace.’
‘I didn’t stay alive in Afghanistan by believing everything that everybody told me.’
Tyler was frowning at Martin now, wondering who he was talking to. They had reached West 34th Street north of the freeway and Martin spun the steering wheel with the flat of his hand to take a wide left-hand turn. Santos followed inches behind in his Suburban. He was so close that Martin could hear Mina and George both crying.
Saskia said, ‘Please, Martin. I’m really begging you now. If I stay here or if I try to go back to LA, Wrack will get to me. And Halford Smiley won’t do anything to protect me, either.’
‘All right,’ said Martin. ‘So long as you promise me one thing … that one day you’ll come out and tell the world what kind of a man Smiley really is.’
‘Oh, that would be a pleasure, Martin, believe me.’
Martin checked the time. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘do you have transport?’
‘I have a rental, with satnav.’
‘If you can get to Lionel E. Hudson Park by four thirty and wait on North Park Drive by the swing sets, I’ll meet you there. Don’t worry if I’m a few minutes late.’
‘I won’t forget this, Martin, believe me.’
Martin tossed his cellphone on to the seat beside him. He knew that he could be making a serious mistake by inviting Saskia to join them. In the past, however, he had found himself in several life-or-death situations when he had needed to ask for help from people he didn’t particularly like. But if they hadn’t helped him, he probably wouldn’t be here today.
‘Who was that?’ asked Tyler.
‘That was the woman who pretty much saved your life.’
‘Is she going to come with us?’
Martin nodded.
They drove in silence for another few minutes, and then, through the dreamlike rippling of heat, two vehicles came toward them in the opposite direction – a silver Caprice, followed closely by a red Toyota pick-up. Both of them were traveling at no more than twenty-five miles an hour, so that as they came nearer Martin could see that at least seven young hoods were sprawled in the back of the pick-up, hooting and laughing and waving beer cans.
‘Dad, that’s them!’ said Tyler, urgently, laying his hand on Martin’s arm. ‘Those are the guys who shot Mr Alvarez and raped Maria!’
He turned around as the pick-up passed them by, and said, ‘There he is! That’s Big Puppet! And the other one with him, that’s K-Bomb!’
Martin twisted around, too. ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Hundred percent! It’s them, Dad! Those are the same two cars they got away in – that Chevy and that red pick-up truck!’
Martin immediately signaled and pulled into the side of the road. He beckoned to Santos to pull up alongside.
‘What’s wrong?’ Santos shouted. Mina and George were still mewling, and Rita and Susan were arguing about something.
‘Keep going straight ahead until you get to Brookfield Street!’ Martin shouted back at him. ‘I think it’s the third or maybe the fourth turning on your left. There’s a sign there for Lionel E. Hudson Park. Wait for me there, at the park, OK?’
‘Where the hell are you going, Wasicu? These kids are getting real tetchy. You’re not going to be long, are you?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
With that, Martin gunned the Eldorado’s engine and U-turned across the road in a cloud of rubber smoke. He put his foot flat down on the gas pedal and headed back the way they had come.
Tyler was wide-eyed. ‘Dad? You’re not going after them, are you?’
‘You think I’m going to let them get away, after what they did? If it hadn’t been for them, Charlie Bonaduce would still be alive and you wouldn’t have been accused of felony murder. Those punks turned my life upside down, as well as yours. You just try to stop me from going after them!’
FOURTEEN
After less than two minutes, the red Toyota pick-up came into view around the curve ahead of them, and then the Caprice. Martin stamped his foot down even harder and the Eldorado surged up to ninety miles an hour. He had no particular plan in mind, and he was well aware that he was acting recklessly, even stupidly, but law and order was falling apart all around them, and if he wanted justice to be done he felt that he had to do it himself. Who else would do it? The cops were too busy beating and tear-gassing innocent people because they wanted water.
‘That’s him, Dad,’ said Tyler, as they came closer and closer to the back of the pick-up. ‘The guy in the light gray hoodie, with the dyed ginger hair.’
Big Puppet was sitting right at the back of the pick-up, in the left-hand corner, with both of his arms stretched out along the sides. K-Bomb was sitting right next to him, his long greasy hair flapping like a raven’s wing.
Martin could hear rap music playing, and all of the hoods were nodding their heads in time to the beat. They didn’t notice how quickly his Eldorado was gaining on them until Martin and Tyler were less than fifty feet away. It was only then that Big Puppet turned around and stared at him and gave K-Bomb a shove on the shoulder. Martin saw him mouth, ‘Hey, what the f—?’ or something similar.
The hoods all stared at him. Martin didn’t know if Big Puppet recognized Tyler or not. Apart from being dusty, the Eldorado’s windshield was sharply raked back, and the sun was probably reflecting from it. All the same, Big Puppet flapped his hand at them as if he were telling them to back off and stop tailgating, and some of the other hoods gave them the finger.
In reply, Martin blasted his horn, which made them all jump. Big Puppet gave them the finger with both hands and started to scream obscenities at them. Martin blasted his horn again, which unsettled the pick-up’s driver, because he suddenly swerved from side to side, and the hoods in the back had to grab the sides to stop themselves from losing their balance, or even falling out.
Martin flashed his headlights to tell the driver to pull over, but instead the Toyota began to pick up speed. Big Puppet kept on shouting and gesturing at him, but now he had to sit down and use one hand to hold on tight. Martin flashed his headlights again, and then again.
‘Dad,’ said Tyler, but Martin was too hyped up with adrenalin now to let the hoods get away. He blew his horn and nudged the Toyota with his front bumper, pushing it just hard enough and long enough to make the driver momentarily lose control of his steering. The hoods in the back shouted in chorus as the pick-up veered wildly to the left, crossing over to the opposite side of the road, and then veered back again, so that its nearside tires ran off the blacktop altogether, on to the verge, throwing up a cloud of dust and a machine-gun rattle of rocks.
In front of the Toyota, the gang member who was driving the Caprice clearly couldn’t understand what was happening right behind him, because he gradually slowed down and began to pull over toward the side of the road. With a dull thump of rubber and metal, Martin nudged the Toyota again, and this time the Toyota driver accelerated as hard as he could, swerving to the left and overtaking the Caprice.
Both vehicles were traveling now at more than seventy miles an hour, and the hoods in the back of the Toyota had stopped cursing
and gesticulating and now they were all hunched down like a family of monkeys, desperately gripping the sides of the pick-up and holding on to each other, too. Big Puppet’s face was tight with fury, and Martin could see that he was mouthing something, over and over, and he didn’t have to hear it to guess that it wasn’t a prayer.
The flyover that crossed the freeway was coming up fast. They were touching eighty-five miles an hour because the road was dead straight, but Martin could feel himself calming down now. His djinn moment was fading and he was beginning to think that he couldn’t keep up this pursuit for much longer. What would he do, even if he managed to force these hoods to stop? He had two Colt Commandos in his trunk and plenty of ammunition, but he couldn’t really line them all up by the side of the road like a one-man firing-squad and shoot them, could he? Besides, he had to think of Santos and his family, and his only family too. It was no good allowing his rage to get the better of him, no matter how righteous it was.
He glanced at Tyler and he could see that Tyler was feeling the same way. At least they had managed to frighten his tormentors half to death, which was some kind of retribution for what they had done to him.
Martin pressed his foot down again and the Eldorado rammed the back of the Toyota one more time. Its tires screaming, the Toyota slewed toward the concrete retaining wall at the side of the flyover, but instead of colliding with it and bouncing back, it was traveling so fast that it burst right through the wall and the guard rail on top of it, and flew out over the freeway.
Martin slammed his foot on the brakes. The Eldorado howled around one hundred and eighty degrees before coming to a stop, but at the same time he saw the Toyota pick-up virtually frozen in mid-air as it ran out of momentum, sixty feet above the westbound lanes of the freeway. The hoods were tumbling out of the back and into the air, their arms and legs waving like acrobats. It looked more like a spectacular circus performance than a traffic accident.
He could have sworn that for almost five seconds there was silence, and that the pick-up and the hoods who had been sitting in it were motionless.
Then there was a deafening crash as the Toyota nosedived into the reinforced steel rails of the median strip, and a soft complicated series of thumps as the hoods fell on to the tarmac roadway.
Martin and Tyler climbed out of the Eldorado and hurried across to the guard rail. Two more cars stopped behind them, and two men and a woman came over to join them. In the middle distance, however, Martin saw that the silver Caprice was U-turning and heading back north.
‘Holy Moses,’ said one of the men. The eastbound side of the freeway was still jammed solid, and people were emerging from underneath the flyover and climbing out of their cars. They were hunkering down beside the spreadeagled bodies of the hoods, but it didn’t appear to Martin as if there was much that anybody could do for them. None of them was moving and there was blood sprayed all the way across the road.
The woman crossed herself. ‘May God have mercy on their souls,’ she said.
Considering where those punks are headed, I don’t think God will get the chance, thought Martin. He put his arm around Tyler’s shoulders. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there’s anything more that you and me can do here.’
He shaded his eyes and looked toward the city center. Smoke was piling up in thick black curds now, and at least three helicopters were circling around.
‘Time to go, Tyler. Come on.’
‘We killed them,’ said Tyler, turning back one more time to look at the bodies of the hoods lying on the freeway. He was so shocked that his voice was thin and breathless, almost like a girl’s. ‘I can’t believe it, Dad. We killed them.’
They drove back up West Kendall Avenue in silence. When they reached the park they found that the Murillo family were waiting for them under the trees. Mikey and Nathan were playing on the swing sets but the smaller children were too tired and too hot, although they had at least stopped crying.
Rita was finishing the last of a half bottle of Jack Daniel’s. When it was empty she held it up and squinted at it and shook it hard, as if it would magically refill itself.
‘What happened?’ asked Santos, as Martin and Tyler walked across the grass to join them. He pointed to each of his eyes in turn and then pointed at them, as if to show them that he had special powers of perception. ‘Something bad has happened, hasn’t it? I can tell by your faces.’
Martin said, ‘I don’t know, Santos. Guess it depends on your point of view. Let’s just say that the Great Spirit moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform, and because of that some very unpleasant characters got what they deserved.’
‘Very well,’ said Santos, with a shrug. He didn’t ask any more questions. ‘And now we should leave, yes? We need to be well into the mountains before it gets dark.’
Martin led them the short quarter-mile distance to Peta’s house. As soon as they parked outside, Peta opened the front door and came hurrying out to meet them. She hugged Tyler as if she never wanted to let him go again, ever, and she looked at Martin tearfully over Tyler’s shoulder, shaking her head as if to say, you shouldn’t have done what you did, but thank you.
Santos and Susan and the children all climbed out of the Suburban, although Rita stayed where she was, her head tilted back and her mouth open, snoring. Santos came up to Peta and held out his hand.
‘Peta – this is Santos Murillo,’ said Martin. ‘Santos knows a place where we can hold out until the drought’s over.’
‘What kind of a place? Where is it?’
Santos said, ‘I won’t lie to you, dear lady. It is a place in the mountains where we will have to survive in the way that my Yuhaviatam ancestors used to survive. But we will always have water, and food, and we will be safe. There are caves there, and we can build shelters, but if you have any tents, so much the better.’
Peta obviously didn’t know what to say. She turned to Martin and then she looked at the Murillo children with their grubby T-shirts and worn-out sneakers with no laces in them. Mikey had his finger up his nose.
‘The water’s not going to come back on, sweetheart,’ Martin told her. ‘There is no water – not unless you’re one of Governor Smiley’s chosen few.’
Peta said, ‘This is the USA, Martin, not Ethiopia. This is the twenty-first century. The federal government is not going to let thousands of people die of thirst.’
‘You think? It makes no difference what country we’re in, sweetheart, or what century it is. No government has the power to produce water out of thin air. Only God can do that.’
Peta looked along Fullerton Drive, with its neat brown-shingled houses and its well-trimmed hedges and all of the shiny cars and SUVs parked in its driveways. Martin could tell by her expression what she was thinking. This is my home, this is my security, this is where my friends live. This is daytime TV and chicken dinners and church on Sundays. How can you expect me to give this all up and go to live in the mountains like some primitive pioneer?
‘These poor children look like they could all use a drink,’ she said. ‘I still have one bottle of that water left that you brought me from work.’ She beckoned to the children and said, ‘Why don’t you come on inside, kids? You can have a drink and some rocky road ice-cream. Tyler, can you sort that out for them?’
‘Sure, mom,’ said Tyler, and led the children into the house. Susan followed, giving Tyler the shyest of smiles.
‘Thank you,’ said Santos. ‘I have been very worried for them.’
Peta said, ‘Do you really think the situation is so bad we have to leave?’
‘People are rioting downtown,’ said Martin. He nearly put his arm around her, but then made out that he was simply stretching. ‘The cops are using tear gas on them. They may even be shooting them for all I know. That woman Saskia Vane I was telling you about, she thinks things have gotten so critical that she’s going to be coming with us.’
He didn’t tell her that Saskia was much more afraid of Joseph Wrack hunting her d
own than she was of having no water. He didn’t want to complicate matters.
‘As a matter of fact, I already have everything packed,’ said Peta, and she nodded toward her Hilux, parked outside the garage doors.
‘You do?’
‘Clothes, food, and those two tents we took to Yosemite.’
‘Really?’
She smiled at him wryly and laid her hand on his arm. ‘Martin, for all the arguments we had, for all of those times I hated you, I still trust your judgment when it comes to something as serious as this.’
‘Is Ella any better? Will she be OK?’
‘She’s still feeling very tired and she doesn’t have her appetite back, but her temperature’s back to normal, and otherwise she’s fine. I wouldn’t think of taking her if I didn’t think she was up to it.’
‘OK. Great. Thank you.’ He leaned forward to kiss her, but as he did so he saw Rita climbing awkwardly down from the back seat of Santos’ Suburban. Rita’s scraggly bleach-blonde hair was sticking up even more wildly than usual and her purple cotton dress was creased and stained down the front. She stood blinking at her surroundings, keeping one hand on the Suburban’s door to steady herself, and then she turned around and frowned at Martin and Peta as if she had just arrived on the surface of Mars and they were two aliens.
‘This is Rita, the kids’ mother,’ said Martin. ‘Rita is what you might call a non-recovering alcoholic.’
‘And she’s coming with us?’
‘I didn’t have a choice. She wouldn’t have let us take the kids, otherwise.’
Rita came up the driveway, walking stiff-legged. She patted Martin on the shoulder and said, ‘My hero. He’s simply the best. Better than all the rest.’
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