[Jack Harvey Novels 02] Bleeding Hearts

by Ian Rankin

  It was loaded and ready for action. Then I got into the driver’s seat and started the van. The cabbie was wide-eyed as I passed him, one hand on my steering wheel and the other gripping the gun.

  Kline’s car was just arriving. They’d brought Bel down to the curbside. I speeded up and hit the curb, bouncing the van onto the pavement. Kline and his men looked surprised, then scared.

  They dived out of the way as I let rip with a few rounds. Bel didn’t need to be told what to do. She opened the passenger door and clambered in.

  “Hey, Kline!” I roared. “We need to talk.”

  He was crouching behind the car. “Fuck you!”

  I fired another burst to keep them down, then reversed back onto the road, hit first gear again, and roared forward.

  “Get down!” I yelled. I fired a burst up into the air, but they weren’t scared anymore. The initial shock had worn off and they’d found their pistols. I felt rounds thumping into the side and rear of the van. But they missed the tires. We took a hard right into another street, ran a red light, and took a left. I didn’t know where the hell we were, but I knew we were out of range.

  “We don’t seem to be having much luck with our vehicles,” I said. I was thinking: at the very least now they’d know that I was seriously armed and driving a VW van. They might even have got the license number. It was only three letters and three numbers, easily memorized. I kept checking in the rearview, but there was no sign of pursuit. I slowed down a bit until I’d got my bear-ings. Soon we were back on 99 and heading north.

  “Don’t you want to hear what happened?” Bel said. She was shivering. I rolled my window back up, then realized that wasn’t why she was shivering.

  “So what happened?” I was more than angry with her, I was furious. I’d told her not to go, I’d known it was a stupid idea. Yet I hadn’t stopped her. I was furious with myself.

  “They must have been in the reception area, only I didn’t see them. I asked where I could find Sam Clancy, and the woman on the desk pointed me along a corridor. Only, halfway along they grabbed me. They had a good look at me, and then Kline told me to say something.”

  “You tried your American accent?”

  “Yes. The bastard hit me. So I started swearing at him, and all he did was smile. Then he told me he knew who I was and he asked me where you were.”

  “What did he call me?”

  “Weston.”

  “Not West?”

  “No, Weston. Or maybe West. I don’t know. Jesus, I was petrified, Michael.”

  “Did you say anything else?”

  “I told him I knew he killed my father and I was going to kill him for that.”

  “Well then, you’ve told him pretty much all he needs to know. He can’t let either of us live now.”

  She bit her lip. “Thanks for bailing me out.”

  I managed to smile at her.

  I passed the motel without stopping, turned at a fast-food place, and waited for a minute by the roadside. No one was following us.

  “Tomorrow we have to move again. For tonight, we sleep in shifts. The other one keeps watch from the window. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  As it turned out, I didn’t have the heart to wake her. It was all my fault she was here in the first place. What had I been doing taking her to London with me? Of course, if I hadn’t taken her with me, they’d probably have killed her when they killed Max.

  This thought pushed away the guilt. I sat in a chair by the window, and went out to the vending machine occasionally for ice-cold Coke and chocolate bars. I crunched a few caffeine tablets until my heart rate felt too high. I knew every inch of the parking lot, every scrap of trash blowing across it. The sodium glare hurt my eyes. I wanted to close them, to wash them out. Then I closed them for a second too long.

  I slept.

  It was morning when I woke up, and not early morning either.

  Through the window I saw the maid’s cleaning cart. She was looking at me, so I shook my head and she pushed the cart along to the next room, knocked, and then went into it.

  My watch said 10:15. I got up from the chair and stretched, shrugging my shoulders free of their stiffness. I needed a shower.

  “Bel,” I said. “Time to wake up.”

  She rolled over, exhaled, and then lifted her head from the pillow. Like me she was almost fully dressed.

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s past ten. Come on, get up. You can take the first shower.”

  I watched her as she slunk into the bathroom and closed the door. I knew our options now had narrowed considerably. We were no longer the hunters but the hunted. Worst of all, I still didn’t know what was going on. I could think of one man who knew: Jeremiah Provost. But Kline would have Provost covered.

  Kline would have everything covered.

  I had enough quarters left to buy us a couple of breakfast Cokes. I had a head full of mud and my body felt like it was dragging weights. The vending machine was next to the ice machine in a little connecting alley between the back of the motel and the front. There was a concrete stairwell up to the rooms on the second floor. I’d sat there last night for a while, listening to traffic.

  Now, as I got the second can from the machine, I heard tires squeal out front. I looked around the corner and saw a car sitting next to the motel office. A man was getting out of the passenger side, buttoning his jacket as he walked to the office. He wore sunglasses and looked around him. I didn’t recognize the man, but he didn’t look like a typical resident. He looked official. I ducked back into the alley and flew to our room.

  “Got to go!” I called. Bel came out of the bathroom dressed and rubbing her hair with a towel. “Got to go,” I said. When she saw me throwing stuff into a bag, she took the hint, threw down the towel, and started packing.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Bad guys at the office. They could be asking about VW vans.” I took hold of the Smith & Wesson. “Here,” I told her,

  “take this.”

  She didn’t say anything. It took her a moment to make up her mind, then she snatched the pistol from me. She checked the clip, slapped it home, and made sure the safety was on. I didn’t have time for a smile.

  They say discretion is the better part of valor, but we were anything but discreet leaving the room. We ran to the van, heaving bags into the back. Bel was toting the pistol, and I had the Colt Commando by its carrying handle. I’d taken off the flash hider.

  When I’d used the Commando last night, the noise without the hider had been impressive. It had made people duck. So the hider stayed off.

  Now we were in the van, I hesitated for a second. What were we supposed to do? Cruise past the car with a nod and a smile?

  Play hide-and-seek around the motel? Or leave the van and take to the streets? I certainly didn’t want to leave the van, not just yet.

  So the only thing to do was drive . . . drive, and see what happened. I knew I could tell Bel to split, to run off on her own, or stay holed up in the room. It was me they wanted. But of course they’d want her too. We were a package now; she knew everything I did. Besides, she wouldn’t stay behind. It wasn’t her style.

  I turned to her.

  “Tell me about yourself.”

  “What?”

  “You said I should ask you sometime when you weren’t expecting it.”

  “You’re crazy, Michael.” But she was grinning. I realized she was probably readier for this than I was. I started the engine.

  “It’s just, it’d be nice to have known you before we die.”

  “We’re not going to die.” She raised the pistol. “I love you, Michael.”

  “I love you, too. I always have.”

  She flipped the safety off the semiautomatic. “Just drive,” she said.

  I drove.

  We took it slow out of our parking bay and around the side of the motel, then sped up. I saw that the car was still parked.

  Worse, it had reversed
back to block the only ramp into and out of the parking lot. I brought the van to a stop. The passenger came out of the office and saw us. He pointed us out to the driver, then took a radio from his pocket. With his other hand, he was reaching into his pocket for something else. And when the driver got out of the car, I saw he was holding a machine gun. I risked a glance over my shoulder, but all I could see were walls.

  “Come on, Michael, let’s do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “What do you think?” She pushed open her door, readying to get out. The driver was taking aim against the roof of the car. I opened my door and steadied the Commando.

  Then I saw it.

  It was a flatbed pickup with a cattle bar on the front and searchlights on top of the cab. I don’t know where it came from, but I could see where it was going. It mounted the pavement and kept on coming. Hearing the engine roar, the car driver half turned, saw what was happening, and pushed himself away from his vehicle, just as the cattle bar hit it from behind. The pickup’s back wheels lifted clean off the ground from the force of the collision, but that was nothing compared to the car. It jumped forward and then spun, looking like a wild horse trying to throw off its rider. Its trunk crumpled and then flew open, its rear window splintering. Both driver and passenger had hit the ground. Now a shotgun appeared from the pickup’s passenger-side window and blasted two rounds over the heads of the men, shattering the office window. Then the pickup reversed back down the short ramp and out onto the road, stopping traffic.

  “He’s waiting for us!” Bel yelled. She was back in the van now, and slammed shut her door. I drove out past the wrecked car, keeping the Commando aimed out of my window in case the two men decided to get up. The pickup was already moving, so we followed it, stalled cars complaining all around.

  “Who is it?” Bel was shouting. “Who’s in the truck?”

  I had a grin all over my face. “Who do you think it is? It’s Spike, of course.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  The pickup seemed to know where it was going.

  We followed it east onto I-5 and then south through the city till we connected with I-90 east out of town.

  We were headed for the interior.

  “Why doesn’t he stop?” Bel said.

  “I don’t know.” I’d flashed my lights a couple of times, but all I’d received in return was a wave from the window. We crossed over Mercer Island, retracing the route we’d taken into Seattle when we’d arrived. Soon we were on a wide road with wilderness on either side. This really was frontier country. Few tourists or vacationers ventured into the interior. It was hot and dry, and if you didn’t like hills and trees there wasn’t much in the way of scenery. That this was logging country was reinforced by crudely made roadside signs denouncing government policy, foreign timber imports, owls, and environmentalists. Not always in that order.

  We came off the interstate at Snoqualmie. I was wrong about the tourists. A lot of cars had come to see the Snoqualmie Falls.

  The pickup signaled into the lot and we followed. The only space left was a dozen cars away from the pickup. I could hardly turn the ignition off quick enough.

  I sprinted back to the pickup. There was no one in the cab.

  Then I saw Spike. He was crouched in front of the vehicle, examining the damage to his cattle bar. He stood up and grinned at me, showing gorgeous white teeth.

  “You look like hell,” I said.

  “I’ve been driving all night, what’s your excuse?”

  We met and hugged, and this time it was me who lifted him off the ground.

  “Damn it, Spike, I don’t know where you came from, but you’re an angel straight from heaven.”

  “Man, you know where I come from: Lubbock, Texas. And the only angel I ever was was a Hell’s Angel. Oo-ee!” He touched the bruise on my face. Then Bel came running up, and there was a hug and a kiss for her.

  “Why didn’t you stop before now?” she asked.

  “I wanted to be sure those chimpanzees weren’t on our tails.”

  “Are you kidding? Did you see what you did to their car?”

  “Oh, but they’ve got friends. And you folks, looks like you’ve got enemies.”

  “And not many friends,” I conceded.

  “But we only needed one.” And Bel pecked Spike’s cheek again and squeezed his arm. He blushed, but covered it up by wiping his face with a red bandanna. He had dark eyes and greasy hair and three days of beard growth.

  “Man,” he said, “I been living in these clothes.”

  “Yeah, we can tell.”

  He punched me in the chest. It was a playful punch, but it hit a raw spot. I winced and doubled over.

  “Jesus, Wild West, I’m sorry.”

  Bel helped me upright and explained, “Michael got into a fight with one of the bad guys.”

  “I see you’ve got a story to tell me.”

  “We have,” I said, now recovered. “And we’ve a few questions for you.”

  Spike shrugged. “Let’s find a bar in town, somewhere to take the weight off.” He thought of something. “You didn’t swap my Trans Am for that Nazi shit, did you? The thing’s full of bullet holes!”

  I thought of an answer. “Let’s get a beer first.”

  “Follow me.”

  It turned out that Spike knew the Snoqualmie and North Bend area pretty well.

  He’d hunted out here, he had old friends here, and he’d once crashed a car here, which put him on crutches for a month.

  “Good people,” he said in the bar, “but some of them can be a bit strange. I don’t know, inbreeding or something. You know they filmed Twin Peaks here?”

  My face remained blank, but Bel looked interested.

  “So what made you follow us?” I asked.

  Spike took a mouthful of Rainier. “Figure it out. I knew you were in trouble, Wild West. Jazz told me some of what Bel had told her. I got the kid to tap back into her computer and print me the same stuff she printed for you. I knew then why you were headed for Seattle, and I knew it could get serious. These cults are bad news. I had a friend got mixed up in one. He’s still in therapy. And don’t forget, I have a Trans Am riding on this. So I thought maybe I’d tail along.

  “I got to tell you, though, it was coincidence I was there this morning, not inspiration or anything. I hit town first thing this morning, and I was cruising up and down Aurora looking for a motel I liked the look of. I have to tell you, I passed yours twice and never even considered it. What’s wrong, man, your credit no good in this town or what?” He sniffed and leaned back in his seat. He’d crossed a foot over one leg, showing off scuffed silver-toed shit-kicker boots. Very clearly, he was enjoying telling the story. “Anyway, as I was going up and down I was seeing these cars with suits in them. They didn’t look like Aurora types at all.

  They looked like the worst kind of normal. They were checking all the motels, not looking for rooms, that was obvious. They were asking for someone. I followed one of them into an office and got to hear the description he gave to the clerk: man and woman, English, in a Vee-Dub. Well, apart from the car, that seemed to fit. So I stopped looking for a room and started following. When I saw your Volkswagen, man, I knew I’d done something right.”

  “You can say that again,” said Bel.

  “The Trans Am got shot up,” I said. “That’s why we’re in the van.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “A man called Kline had his men spray it with bullets. A journalist who’d been helping us was driving at the time.”

  “Is he . . . ?”

  “He’s okay, we think. He’s in the hospital.”

  “So those sonsabitches shot up my car, huh?” Spike had a determined look on his face. It was the sort of look he got every time he picked up an assault rifle. “We’ve got to total them, man.”

  “Not so fast,” I said. “You haven’t heard our story yet. Maybe when you have, you won’t be so enthusiastic.”

  “Then let’s get som
e more beers in and tell me all about it.”

  We got in more beers.

  “This guy called Kline,” said Spike, “I’ve got to waste him, man.

  I’ve never met him, he doesn’t know me from shit, and yet I just know I’ve got to waste him. I won’t rest easy till I do.”

  It wasn’t just the beer talking; it was all the drugs he’d been taking on the road, drugs to keep him awake, drugs to push the accelerator harder, and drugs to hold it all together. I could see that in anywhere between five minutes and a couple of hours he was going to come crashing down.

  “I need some sleep,” I said. “My brain’s stopped working. I was awake all night. Why don’t we head out into the country, find a quiet spot, and recharge a little?”

  “Hey,” said Spike, “I know just the place.”

  He led us out of Snoqualmie on the North Bend road, but then turned off and up a forest track. He was kicking up so much dust I thought our engine would die on us, but the VW just kept on going. The track got narrower, then narrower still.

  At first it had been a logging track, wide enough for a transporter, but now the trees were scraping both sides of the van, and there was grass growing through the gravel. I counted eight miles of this before we emerged into a clearing. So far since coming off the main road we hadn’t seen a single signpost, and no signs of habitation: no power lines or phone lines or mail-boxes or anything.

  But here was a big log house, fairly new and with a lawn surrounding it, beyond which lay impenetrable forest. Spike sounded his horn a few times, but no one came out of the house.

  We went up to the front door together. There was a note taped there, which Spike read out.

  “ ‘Dear Friend, If you’ve traveled this far, then you probably know us, so you also probably won’t be surprised that we’re not here. We’re in Portland for a few days and will be back Thursday or Friday. You’re welcome to camp. There’s a stream if you know where to find it. Love and peace, Marnie and Paul.’ ”

  “Friends of mine,” Spike said. There were potted plants all around the outside of the house, and he tapped a few playfully with his toe. “We go back a long way.”