Crumbtown

by Joe Connelly

  “Three’s been hit,” the technician said.

  Halo turned to Screen Two, the shot of the Bollinger leaving up the hill, driving toward the command truck. Halo banged on the front wall of the truck. “Driver,” he shouted, “block off the road. We’ll turn them around up here.” He grabbed the headset of one of the technicians, the head still attached, “Camera Two, get in the back of the police car. You can shoot them coming down the hill.”

  He searched the papers on the counter, finding his map of Greater Dodgeport, the thin red line of the road they were on, tracing it with his finger, all the way back to where it met the expressway, the western edge of the city. He’d chase them down there, get some lighting trucks set up, a proper blockade, the fireworks to end the chase. The biggest television story in months and The Brian Halo Show was right in front. Exactly the kind of major event that could catapult a program, get him out of the local access market, land him on one of the nationals. The Real Adventures of Robin and Rita was finished. With the mayor dead, so was the backing. Brian Halo was the mayor now. This was his show.

  He looked over to Screen One, the Bollinger coming up the hill, to stop before the command truck, turning around. He turned to Screen Two, the cameraman in back of the police cruiser, pulling out of the lot, into the road, Eddy’s head at the wheel, eclipsed by the lights coming down. “Go to Two,” Halo said. “We’ll get the shot driving past. Then turn around and start the chase.” The oncoming headlights of the Bollinger merging into one, quickly filling the screen, driving at the lens. Halo picked up the microphone under the counter, the radio for the police cruiser, “Lieutenant Eddy? What are you doing? Get out of the way.” A cry of skidding tires, Eddy swerving at the last moment, the Bollinger passing, lights flying away as if taken by the wind, the sound of a cameraman’s scream, the scraping of dead branches, then nothing. “What happened?”

  “We lost Two,” the technician said.

  Thirteen

  SCENE 81

  Rita lay on the backseat, the moon chasing them through the rear glass, trees eating away the bottom rows of stars. Don rested on top of her, his head curled over her chest, knees bent between. He hadn’t moved or spoken since the shooting started, how long that was she couldn’t remember, with the weight of him, the road pushing up from beneath, like she was floating, and when they stopped, she’d disappear. He raised his head as if to speak, then suddenly pushing off her, looking through the window, “I don’t see anything,” he said. “I think we’re clear.”

  He stared out at the trees falling behind, hills flattening in the dark, like a black curtain sweeping forward. On the curve ahead a lone street lamp came toward them, its light flipping over, the floor to the roof to the backseat, holding to her face. For a moment she was almost too bright, the picture of the first time he’d seen her, then it was gone, a blanket on them together. The race was ending, he could feel it, like he was both still in it and at the same time already finished, a part of him sitting on the hill, watching them drive away. What happened before didn’t matter, all forgotten, the hopes and failures, escapes and jail terms, like the room for his memory had shrunk to a trunk, a few pictures locked up, the key always getting stuck. There was only the finish to think about, the end the only way out, a kiss and lights off, sitting in the dark, alone with their own ever-after.

  When they got to the Gail he’d send off the others. Split the money outside, a bigger cut for the twins if they promised to find another continent. Then he’d light a fire, a bottle of wine from the basement, lying with Rita on a blanket on the floor, the long night of slowing down. They’d learn how to write the words for themselves, no cameras, no scripts, it would be more like the books he used to take out from the library in prison, which he could never finish, with ten pages for breakfast, a whole chapter on toes, too boring to read unless you were in it, the details of living, moment to moment. He reached down through the dark to find her arms, her shoulders to her face, her eyes finding his, telling him they were going to win. “Kiss me,” she said, and he did, his hands to her back, the wheels underneath.

  82

  Tim reached down to the floor of the car where Dyan was sitting, “We lost them,” he said, and grabbed her hand, pulling her to the seat. She looked through the windshield, at the road swelling under the lights, then back to the dark hem of the hill behind, Don and Rita kissing in the back. “Oh why don’t they just give up,” she said.

  Tim held her by the head. “They’re cops, baby, that’s what they do.”

  “I mean these two right here, it’s disgusting,” she pointed to the bench seat below, Rita now on top of Don, all their hearing gone.

  “Me and Loretta used to be like that. My ex, when we first met we had to kiss everywhere we went. For about a year and a half. I think that’s why she hates me so much.”

  “You should never show it,” Dyan said, “if you really love someone, because once other people see, then it’s not yours anymore. It’s just like everything else.” Her blond hair turned red as she finished, red spreading to the rest of the car, a police siren behind, knocking at the windows, calling their names, tim-tom, tim-tom, the Hurricane again. “Like this stupid car chase,” she said, “that’s never going to end.”

  “Here they come,” said Tim. “Faster.”

  Tom sat alone with the wheel. They were going the wrong way, back to Dodgeport. He wanted to tell them. He didn’t know what to do. “I’ve never been in love,” he cried, his eyes so wet he could barely stay on the road, swerving left as the Hurricane passed on the right, its lights disappearing ahead.

  83

  “What are you doing?” said King. “You just passed them. Now they’re behind.”

  Eddy squinted at the Hurricane’s windshield, “Where are my lights?”

  “They’re on,” said King. “Tell me the truth, you ever drive a car before.”

  Eddy should have let someone else take the wheel, once they’d pushed the car from the ditch. He didn’t like driving at night, especially without his glasses, but it was important to set a good example, that he was a strong leader, a man to rely on in a crisis. Sure there were times when he became a little anxious, when he needed some help to get through, the world so hard sometimes he had to squeeze his heart faster just to know it was still there. Yes, Little Eddy really badly needed some cocaine right now, but Lieutenant Eddy was focused. This lieutenant could act. He just needed more light.

  “I said behind us, man.” King grabbed Eddy’s head and pointed it at the rearview mirror, the blinking white eyes of the Bollinger. “Slow down and let them pass you, the roadblock’s all set up, maybe three miles.”

  “I can’t see,” Eddy waved his hand at the dash. He reached down and turned off the lights.

  “Oh no,” said Arnold.

  Brian Halo’s voice burst out of the speaker near Eddy’s knee. “Turn on your lights Lieutenant Eddy. Do you read me? Turn on your lights immediately and pull over and let them pass you and then proceed to chase. Do you copy?”

  Eddy picked up the microphone and said, “Ten-4. We’ll shoot them as they go by.”

  “That’s a negative, Lieutenant. You are to follow the perpetrators to the roadblock. You are not to pass them on the way. You are not to shoot them on the way. At the roadblock you will be assisting the police unit on the scene, Detective Hammamann, in making the arrest. Due to the nature of the hostage situation, you will not fire unless fired upon. Is that understood?”

  “Ten-4,” Eddy shook his head at the ceiling, “I can’t chase ’em. And I can’t shoot ’em. Okay so tell me what I’m doing here.” He dropped the microphone and pulled out his gun. “This is not why I became a cop.” He hit the brakes with two feet.

  84

  A pair of taillights broke red in the empty darkness fifty feet away. Tom stuck the brake to the floor and cut the wheel all the way left, the car suddenly lighter, the brakes still locked, sliding straight ahead, twenty feet, ten. He let go of the pedal, the front tires catc
hing, everything jumping left, just clearing the Hurricane’s back bumper, then right, just missing the front, then round in a circle, five hundred and forty degrees.

  Tim quit trying to hold Dyan, who’d been screaming since the skid began. He looked out the windshield, the headlights behind them. “I turn away for two seconds,” he said, “and you start driving backwards.”

  Tom hit the brakes again, spinning the wheel, the car going forward now, his foot on the gas, two miles downhill to the edge of Dodgeport, with the ramps to the expressway blocked off, cross streets locked with cops, and nowhere for Tom to go but under and left along the water, up over a short ridge, three police cars wedged between the pillars on the other side, lighting trucks cutting off any chance of turning around, the road lit up like a stock car race. “Hold on,” he said.

  85

  It was like ten years ago, Rita thought, like she was still in high school, always kissing in the smallest places, with the most people around, kissing without a beginning or an end, just that ache in the middle she once imagined sex would be like. And here almost thirty years old and kissing like a virgin again, a virgin who’d found out exactly what that ache was, and how fast the end could come, and now all she wanted was to touch him, only to get on top while she tasted his smell, of his neck and chest and under his arms, behind his ear, her lips closed tight over the words coming up, that she didn’t want to let out, but there they were, and all she did was breathe, “I love you.”

  She jerked her head back, hitting the ceiling, hands reaching out to cover his face, as if to stop what she’d just said from going in. “Do not say,” she said. “It is not love. Passions, yes. But we have just met. Do not say it back. Kiss.”

  Her eyes closed, her breath on his lips. She’d said that she loved him, I love you she said. The first time ever that someone said that to him, or the first time he listened. The car made a sharp turn, Don’s feet against the door, legs riding up, the headlights above. He was going to tell her. Shh, she said, a white fire in her hair, lights bursting into day, brighter than a stadium, the walls of a prison break. “I love you,” he said, the words taken by a scream, a woman in the front seat, gunshots outside, bullets on the car. “What’s going on?” He pushed her to the side, sitting up to see.

  86

  Detective Hammamann thought it was the best roadblock he’d ever seen, a textbook roadblock, with the added help of the expressway pillars standing between each car, the light trucks preventing any sudden U-turns. The only weakness he could find was in the personnel on the scene: professional actors, mostly, a few extras. Of course he could have the best cops in the world there and it would still be a weakness. Because no matter how well you may think you know a person, and trust a person, you can never be sure how they’re going to act when the fire flies. Simple human nature, the most complicated thing in the world.

  “What do I do if they don’t stop, Detective?” said the cop standing behind the car next door.

  “They’re going to stop, Shawn,” Hammamann said. “They have no choice, okay. You just hold your position like I told you.” Shawn was the only actor on the scene who’d never played a cop, one of the reasons Hammamann was keeping him close by.

  “Okay, Shawn, here they come.” The headlights of the Bollinger lowered atop the hill, what looked like Tom at the wheel, Tim in the passenger seat. “Ready everyone. Steady, Shawn,” as the car jumped down.

  Harry had been out on the pistol range most of the day, missing out on the robbery, the chase from Ingrid’s bar, his recent loss of accuracy concerning him more, his own difficulties under fire, in proving his love for Loretta. He’d won her on paper, love letters and poetry, but paper wasn’t going to keep Loretta. I love you, he kept saying before hitting the targets. He never missed. I love you Loretta. Why wasn’t that enough?

  “I’m scared, Harry,” Shawn said.

  “It’s going to be okay, kid.”

  “I can’t stay,” said Shawn, “this is not why I became an actor.”

  “It’s okay,” Harry said. What else was there to say? He needed to concentrate on the target. The kid was gone anyway. Harry knew that all along. “Just don’t take the car, Shawn.” But of course he was taking the car, evacuating the lineup at the worst moment, with no time to try to close it. The Bollinger never slowed, through the gap, Harry shooting at Tim first, then the tires as they passed. Wildly off the mark.

  He turned to see the Hurricane cresting the hill, Eddy driving for the break in the blockade. Harry saw Eddy’s face behind the wheel. It was only a moment, but that was enough. Harry began to run. Call it police instinct, or just luck, because without warning or reason, Eddy suddenly swerved left, away from the opening, directly into the passenger door of the detective’s brand-new Palais Royale.

  87

  The Hurricane deployed all its air bags in the crash, mushrooming them in a circle around the interior. Little Eddy’s air bag pinned him to the back of his seat, then refused to deflate, leaving nothing to be seen of his face.

  Detective Hammamann stood with Arnold and King at the driver’s-side door. He bent in and checked Eddy’s pulse, and put his ear to the white vinyl balloon. “He’s talking,” Hammamann said, “but I can’t understand what he’s saying.”

  A gunshot ended everything abruptly, Eddy’s air bag deflating, his gun smoking in his hand, words echoing under the expressway. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  88

  “Fantastic,” said Brian Halo. “Play that again.” He stood in front of Screen Four with Rob and the technician, the three of them watching the crash repeated.

  “Okay,” Halo said, “let’s run Three one more time and then Four once more and then go to the headlights driving away and that’s a wrap. I’m starving.”

  “But they’re getting away,” said Rob. “And they’ve got the money. They’ve got Dyan.”

  “Where can they go, Rob?” Halo pointed to Screen Four, the retreating taillights of the Bollinger, crossing the low bridge down to Lemmings Avenue, the crumblights at the bottom of the city.

  89

  Don sat at the edge of the backseat, eyes out the window, the streets he grew up in, betting parlors and dollar stores and churches for rent, Crumbtown again. “How did we get back here?”

  “We were heading north,” said Tim, “then we got turned around.”

  “They blocked off the highway,” Tom said. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

  Dyan sat between them, fixing her shirt, hair sprawled over her face, “Just drop me at my hotel,” she said, “anywhere, right here would be fine.”

  Don was still waiting for the words to explain—if this had been anyone else’s story he wouldn’t believe, after all that had happened, that nothing had happened. The same old broken houses with their sinking basements, secondhand curtains, borrowed lights, voices standing at the kitchen table, I am trapped here don’t you understand. He punched the door, the back of the seat.

  Tim changed his hat back into a mask, covering the eye-holes with his hands. “Don’t hit me, Don.”

  “There’s a store,” Dyan pointed. “I’ll get off here, there’s a phone.”

  Tom parked the car under the awning’s damp light, a yellow glaze creeping over the hood: Lottery Tickets, Cigarettes, Cold Beer. He opened the door. “Don’t worry, Don, nobody followed us over the bridge. I’ll get some sandwiches, we can crash at Louie’s again.”

  Dyan reached for the handle, crawling over Tim, the phone outside the store. “Look at that,” she said, “it’s the same store they were holding me hostage in.” The same store that had been surrounded by cops and cameras that afternoon, where Don had bought condoms and a six-pack the night before. “I didn’t know it was a real store.”

  Tim reached the sidewalk, “I’ll come with you,” standing next to Dyan at the pay phone, pointing at the store owner in the window. “This is the guy who was holding you hostage?”

  She dropped a quarter into the phone, waiting for it to r
ing, her hand over the receiver, “This has been a really important day for me, for what it’s saying to me. That I have to go to LA, which is like what everyone’s been saying: Dyan, you have to go to LA. Hello,” she said to the phone, “Red Army Taxi?”

  “I’m going with you,” Tim said, “right after I talk to this guy.” He held the door for his brother.

  90

  Rita sat on the other end, the seat stretched between. She tried to move closer, the space getting longer. “It is okay. We can go to my apartment. This time I do not leave.”

  He spread his hands on the window, metal doors across the street, “You see that, Rita, you see where we are,” he did not look over. “Nothing’s changed.”

  She thought of the moments they’d been together, dancing in the bar, driving in the car, when it seemed as if they’d known each other for years. And then moments like now, when he was more like a photograph she’d found with a name on the back, or a face drawn on a slip of money. “Okay,” she said. “Nothing is changed.”

  She wanted her bed, a shower, and clean clothes. His hand touched her arm, “Rita I didn’t mean that,” like he’d been sitting next to her the whole time. “With you I’m alive.” He turned her cheek, her mouth into his, falling again as the shooting began. Two gunshots in the store, then two more, reports banging on the car door.

  Don stood on his knees, the bag with the money and the gun. “Stay right here,” opening the door. “Don’t get out of the car.” Then he was gone.

  91

  Tom sat on a rack of broken lollipops and spilled gum, elbows bent forward over his stomach, his bloody blue shirt. Tim crouched in the aisle in the back, pointing with his rusted gun, clicking away uselessly to where the store owner was standing, the same man who’d sold Don condoms the night before, now shooting at Tim like he was handing out the change, a .22 automatic no bigger than a pack of cigarettes.