'How long you will be?' Bruce asked. 'Where will you go after?'
'We'll be five minutes,' I said. 'We're going to the other end of Broadway. How much would that cost?'
The driver gave a long, low whistle as he pulled in to the side street.
'You rich?' he asked.
'Not very,' I said, though Paul and I had hardly spent any of our expense allowance for the week.
'I look after you,' he said. 'I wait here. Not often I have spies on board.'
Paul and I jumped out of the cab and ran across the road to near the Inwood–207th Street subway station. We scuttled in under an awning and waited. Paul set up the camera on the edge of a garbage bin to keep the shot steady and we got down low, out of sight. Cars whooshed by in the wet, headlights blinding us. It was hard to see where Perpetual was. I was thinking that, maybe, it had broken down. But then it appeared on the phone screen. Only one headlight, and it was slower than the other traffic, in the lane closest to us. It looked like a space ship cruising by, no sound, illuminated for a moment by the street lights near the station and then gone again. The van was right behind it. Paul and I crouched way out of sight.
We jumped back into the cab and told Bruce to put pedal to metal. We stayed low as we passed Perpetual, then we jumped out around 192nd Street. We hopped in and out of the cab for the next half hour or so – cruising ahead, diving out, shooting, trying to get a fresh angle or a different shot size each time. There were some deeply sketchy characters on the streets at that time of night. I was glad Paul had come. Not that he could do much, but at least I wouldn't die alone.
Broadway cut through Trinity Cemetery where Bruce said a bunch of Major League baseballers were buried. Then down through Harlem, where he reckoned his favourite restaurant in the city was ... Sylvia's. 'Good grits,' he said.
Perpetual charged through the night, street lights changing right on cue, taxi meter climbing above eighty dollars, but Bruiser insisted he'd take care of us. 'I am a coolhunter now,' he said, flashing those pearly whites.
He pointed out Dr Martin Luther King Jr Boulevarde and a tree-lined section of Broadway where Columbia University was. He reckoned three American Presidents had studied there.
The rain had begun to ease and, just before 1 a.m., Paul's mum called while he was filming out of the cab window. The ring tone wrecked the shot. Paul tried to sound sleepy.
'Hi,' he croaked.
'Paul? Are you awake? I thought I'd leave a message to wish you luck on the flight.' Her voice was so loud it was like she was sitting there in the cab with us. For a second I almost wished she was.
'Yeah, no. I was sleeping.'
'Well, it sounds very noisy. Where are you sleeping? On the street?' she said. 'I can hear a car.'
'We've just got the window open,' he said.
'In a highrise? They don't let you open windows in highrises.'
'Sorry, Mum, you're dropping out.'
'I want to know why you're not in bed at this hour,' she said.
'Hello? Are you there?' Paul asked, then he hit 'end' and switched his phone to 'meeting'.
'It's for her own good,' he said. 'She needs to be protected from the truth at all times.'
Not long after, we hit Times Square, where 7th Avenue collides with Broadway to create one of the busiest intersections in the world. Even after 1 a.m. on a regular Monday night in March, the place was pumping. Paul and I stepped out of the cab, gazing all around. Giant TV screens exploded with new car ads. Restaurants, people, taxis, theatres everywhere. Massive billboards with hot models in their undies, stretching way up into the sky. It was a real brain-bang.
'We've got to be out there,' I said to Paul, pointing to a traffic island in the middle of the manic intersection.
'There's no place to hide,' Paul said.
'I know, but this is the money shot and I want to be in amongst it. We get this shot and we go home, OK?'
'For real?' he said.
'For real.'
'Giddyup.'
We crossed the street to the traffic island and set up the shot. If I'd stretched my arms I could have almost touched the cars whipping by on both sides. Paul was right. There was nothing for us to hide behind, but it looked spectacular: blasts of colour from big-screen TVs and motion blur as traffic tore past the lens.
A few minutes later we saw Perpetual about to come through the intersection. I started recording as cars poured down Broadway. I got a nice wide shot with all the lights of the Square and then I zoomed in for a tighter shot of Perpetual. I could see Gatt through all the lights flickering off the curved fighter jet window in front of him.
He was in the closest lane, which meant that I could get an in-your-face, front-on shot with Perpetual driving directly towards us. When he was about three cars away, I got down low and leaned as close to the traffic as I could without getting cleaned up. I could feel the rush of air from cars whooshing past as Perpetual appeared from behind the red SUV in front. It looked like it was coming directly into the lens. Definitely the shot of the night. But, get this. As Gatt went by, he saw me. He turned his head and looked right at us. Then he stared over his shoulder at us as he zoomed by.
'Did you see that?' Paul asked.
'Yeah,' I said, cold adrenaline racing to my fingers and face. 'But what's he gonna do? Stop? He's stuck in a perpetual motion car. We're done. Let's go upload.'
We watched as Perpetual disappeared into the traffic.
'I wish we could see if he made it all the way,' Paul said.
I pocketed Paul's phone and we waited at the crossing, ready to head back to where Bruce was parked in a side street. That's when a dark blue van pulled up and Heath, Dan and Melody appeared through the sliding side door. Cars behind beeped the van but it didn't move. The three of them began squeezing through the crowd of pedestrians on the packed traffic island, heading towards us.
I could hear the wail of a distant siren as Paul and I started to back up.
'What do we do?' Paul asked, panicked.
'We run,' I said.
30
Run
A bus slammed its brakes and just missed us as Paul and I weaved through traffic to the far side of Times Square, a long, long way from where Bruce was waiting for us in our cab. The traffic was too nuts to get back to him now.
Once we hit the footpath, we bolted down Broadway and ducked into a street on our right. I had no idea where it led, but I figured Heath, Dan and Melody would give up quickly.
I was wrong.
We ran past a bank and a big theatre. We crossed the street as the blue van rounded the corner.
'That's them,' I said to Paul.
'What?'
The van was speeding down the street towards us. Paul and I slipped into the mouth of an alley to our left. I ran into a guy as I rounded the corner. I looked down the alley. It ran for fifty metres before a dead end, so I u-turned back onto the main street. Paul was on my heels. I looked over my shoulder and the van was about forty metres back, stuck behind a street cleaning truck.
'C'mon!' I said, having flashbacks of the skaters at the empty block, the last dodgy sitch I'd got us into. We ran past a bagel shop, a coffee house and I saw a tiny Italian restaurant with red-and-white-checked curtains and an 'open' sign in the window. I pulled the heavy timber door and we slipped inside. There was one customer sitting at a booth with a tablecloth that matched the curtains.
'We've got to stop,' Paul said.
The van pulled up outside and I started moving through the restaurant.
'Mac, stop,' Paul hissed.
'How can I help you?' a tired, old waiter asked. He had a thick grey moustache and he was standing there, folding serviettes.
'Do you have a back door?' I asked.
'We do in the kitchen, but I'm afraid –'
I was gone. Paul followed. We moved quickly past the lone diner as I heard the front door of the restaurant squeal open. We pushed through saloon doors into the kitchen, which was empty. It looked pretty dir
ty back there. I was glad we weren't eating. Then I shoved open the rear door and we fell out into a small, seedy-looking backstreet. There was a dude in a hooded jacket sitting on the footpath, back against the wall, head down. I didn't know which way to run.
'We're so gonna die out here,' Paul said.
I decided to head up the lane, beside the restaurant and back onto the street. Just then Melody emerged from the front door of the Italian place and called out, 'Mac!'. I didn't stop so she jumped into the van and it started tracking us again.
'What are we running from?' Paul screamed at me.
'From them,' I said. 'They'll take the footage.'
'So what!'
Up ahead was a cross-street and the light was red. We took a left and ran past money-changers, a cheap hotel, a group of dodgy dudes hanging on some steps. One of them threw a can at us. It missed, clattering across the path and under a parked car.
Halfway down the block, the van was still moving steadily down the street behind us. They weren't giving in. My throat was dry, my eyes were hot and I was starting to freak. Maybe I do need to stop, I thought. But I was still embarrassed by what I'd done to Melody, I was scared of what they might do to us and, truth was, I wanted to keep my job.
I heard Paul yelp and I turned just in time to see him collapse on to the wet path and roll. I swear I actually heard skin grating off his hands. He'd kneecapped himself on a fire hydrant. I stopped and ran back.
'You OK?' I said, reaching for him. He grabbed my hand and I dragged him off the path. I flicked a look towards the van, which was only about four car-lengths away. We were so gone.
But, if I knew one thing, I knew I was a survivor. I could think fast and turn things around. I'd done it plenty of times in life or death situations with our inventions. As we staggered along the path, Paul leaning on my shoulder for support, van closing in, my mind sprinted ahead of us, finding a way.
I took the next left and I could see the lights of Times Square up ahead again. We'd almost run a full block. I figured if we made it back to the Square we could get lost in the crowd. The street we were on was busier, brighter, too, which felt good.
Paul was slowing, grabbing his hip, limping badly.
'You've got to stand up, man.'
'Stitch,' he said.
I wanted to scream at him but I sucked it in. I looked around and saw the van take the corner. I grabbed Paul by the shirt and dragged him into a souvenir shop – bright white fluoro lights, 'I ♥ NY' stuff everywhere. An old, white-haired woman was at the counter with a pair of NY love-hearts on springs sticking out like feelers from a red headband.
'Good evening. Or good morning. Late night, boys?' she asked.
Paul and I didn't respond. I ducked in behind a postcard stand. Paul flopped onto the floor behind some low shelves filled with plush polar bears holding 'NY' hearts. I peered out through the front window just in time to see the van appear. The driver – the older guy with the beard – had his window down. He was scanning around, hunting for us. At one stage he seemed to look right at me and the van stopped.
'It's all over,' I whispered to Paul
But then he turned away, the van kept moving and a second later it was gone.
I covered my face with a hand.
'What you hidin' from?' the lady asked.
I thought about it for a moment. 'I don't know,' I said.
I slumped onto the shop floor beside Paul. I could barely get a lungful of air. Paul had his chin on his chest. His cheeks were flaming red. He'd never run so far or fast in his life. He usually avoided exercise at all costs. He peeled up his jeans and checked out his knee.
'You boys like some water?' the woman said, heart ears bouncing around on top of her head.
I nodded. 'Please.'
A minute later she returned and we sat there, guzzling skanky New York tap water, surrounded by thousands of nasty NY souvenirs – bears, keyrings, coasters, snow globes and giant pencils – under way too bright fluorescent lights.
Is this it? I wondered. Was this the end of the line for us? Was this seriously how New York was going to finish?
'Coolhunting sucks,' Paul groaned.
He was so right.
*
We thanked the woman for our sewer water.
'How much for a pair of the springy NY feelers?' I asked her. I figured we owed her something, and they were the ugliest thing in there. Which was saying something.
'Four ninety-five,' she said.
I threw a five onto the counter, grabbed my ears and we headed outside.
I half-expected the van to pull up and dudes to bundle us inside, tape our mouths, never to be seen again.
But that didn't happen. My legs were jelly. We walked back along puddled streets towards Times Square, feeling very ordinary. When we made it back to the Square we headed to where we'd left Bruce the taxi driver, knowing that he wouldn't be there.
But he was! Just sitting in the driver's seat, reading a newspaper and picking his nose. I couldn't believe he'd waited. I pulled open the passenger door.
'You two boys OK?' he asked.
'Why didn't you leave?' I said.
'You owe me too much money,' he said with a smile. 'And I knew you would come back. You are good boys. Where did you go?'
Paul jumped into the back seat, shut the door, closed his eyes. I jumped into the front.
'Just around the block,' I said.
'And where to now?' he asked.
'Home. Lower East Side. The Ludlow,' I said.
As Bruiser pulled out into the traffic I took out the phone and played back some of what we'd filmed. It was 1:52 a.m. We had an hour to edit and upload Perpetual to the site.
The footage looked hot. Speed and the Coolhunters subscribers would flip over it. It was a world-first, it had an enviro edge, it was shot on location in NYC. It had it all. We might as well have booked our tickets to Shanghai that night.
By first light we'd be heroes. I'd have 'made it' in NYC.
So why did I feel so bad?
31
Face-off
Gatt slammed my face against the back of Perpetual, warm skin on cold metal. Heath grabbed Paul by the back of the neck and ground his head into the silver chassis next to mine. I was starting to think our trip downtown to straighten things out wasn't such a hot idea.
We'd made it back to the hotel fifty-three minutes before our 3 a.m. deadline. All we had to do was cut the footage and upload it. But I couldn't do it. Not till I'd sorted things with Melody and Gatt. I'd told Bruiser to turn around, to go back to Broadway, to find them. I'd figured things couldn't get much worse.
Again, I'd figured wrong.
We found the 'perpetual motion' machine broken down on the side of the street, a block from where my dad had stalled the car on our first night in town. We'd pulled up on the north side of Canal, a cross-street, just in time to see Gatt get out of the vehicle and give the side of Perpetual an almighty kick. I'd asked Bruce to wait for us in the cab. I said things might get a little gnarly.
'What do I do with you?' Gatt asked. He was leaning over my shoulder, centimetres from my face. I thought about answering with something smart but I figured now probably wasn't the time. I could feel his hot breath on me. It was rank. I was maybe seconds away from getting whacked and all I could think about was his fish breath. Maybe he'd stopped in for sushi someplace along the way?
The side of my head was pressed against Perpetual, forcing me to look at Melody. She looked back, no expression. She wasn't about to save me.
'You can have the footage,' I said to Gatt. 'We'll give it to you. That was the plan. We wanted to sh–'
'Shut up,' he said. 'Tell me how you knew about tonight.'
I looked at Melody. Her eyes widened, threatening.
'I overheard,' I said. 'That day we were around. Sunday.'
'You heard the time and the place?' he asked.
'Yeah,' I croaked.
'And my girl, Melody, had nothing to do with it?'
Melody and I locked eyes. Cars swished by. This was my chance if I wanted to take her down to Chinatown. Things did not look good for me and Paul. Pinning it on her might make it possible for us to get out of this alive. I had to make a decision. I looked right inside her and I knew what I had to do.
'No,' I said. 'It was just me. I overheard someone. I don't remember who.'
Melody's shoulders dropped and she looked away.
'Give me what you shot,' he said.
I squeezed my hand into my jeans pocket, popped the memory stick out of Paul's phone and handed it to Gatt, who threw it on the wet road. I immediately regretted giving it to him. I thought he was about to grind it into oblivion when Melody spoke.
'I showed them,' she said.
Gatt stopped. 'Excuse me?'
'I showed them the machine,' she said, eyes glistening.
'No she didn't,' I said, my jaw numb from the cold. A stiff wind blew up Broadway. The huddled group drew their jackets around themselves. Dan and the Japanese chick from The Hive were there, too, looking on.
'Yes, I did,' she said. 'We were going to show you the footage, let you decide. They promised not to do anything with it unless you said so. And they haven't done anything with it. It means something, Joe, what you've done. I know you don't create things for anybody else, but –'
'Damn straight,' he said.
'But this is bigger than you,' she said. 'Stop being stubborn and just take a look at the video.'
'The machine doesn't work,' he said.
'Yes it does,' Melody said. 'It's just –'
'Am I driving it right now?' he asked, almost daring her to answer him. She didn't, for a few seconds.
'No,' she said eventually.
'That's because it doesn't work,' he said, slamming his hand down on Perpetual right next to my face, leaving a dent. 'So let me decide if it's important that people know about it or not.'
There was silence.
A car tore by and a guy yelled out the window at us and laughed.
'I said that it was on your head if these guys screwed up, didn't I?' Gatt asked.
'Yes,' she said.
Mac Slater Coolhunter 2 Page 11