Prologue

They came for the money, but Mad Dog went after the girl. That was how the killing started.

It was dawn, a summer dawn. The air was cool and dewy. The last clouds were breaking up on the brightening horizon. On the avenue, all through town, there was hardly a car in motion. Even the freeway traffic was only a windlike whisper several blocks away.

A lone white van-body truck rumbled past the minimall. Joe Linden glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the noise, then turned his attention back to the door of the Bayshore Market. He unlocked the door—a glass door—and stepped through into the dark.

He didn’t turn the lights on. The place wouldn’t be open for half an hour yet. He was here early as always to set up shop: stock the register, uncover the shelves, start the coffee going, and so on. When the door hissed shut, he locked it up again. He left his keys dangling from the keyhole.

Joe had managed the market for five years now; he’d owned it for three. He was thirty-seven. Trim-waisted, broad-shouldered. Had a forthright handsome face, wavy brown hair. He looked like he was meant to be a military man, and, in fact, he’d trained to be a navy flier. But a routine physical uncovered his irregular heartbeat and put an end to his career after only six months. It was the disappointment of a lifetime. That had been thirteen years ago.

Now he had the market and a house about half a mile away. His wife, Susan, was six months pregnant with their second child. Their daughter, Jane, had just turned two. Things were all right.

Joe took a step inside the market. A single step, then he stopped short. There was movement in the gray half-light. Between the cereal shelves and the dairy freezer, between the cleaning products and the snack foods—in every aisle, to the right and left of him. Shapes were detaching from the shadows. They were coming toward him. Hulking figures—a gang of men—zombie-walking toward him out of the darkness.

Joe had only a second to make sense of it. Then suddenly there was someone right beside him. The barrel of a gun was digging hard into the soft flesh beneath his chin.

Joe froze, held his breath. His mind raced. His daughter, he thought. Would they kill him? Why hadn’t the alarm gone off? The pressure of the gun forced his head to the side, made him feel as if he were gagging. His wife, he thought. The new baby. There was no reason for them to kill him if he did what they said.

Automatically, his eyes moved toward the gunman, but the gunman stayed behind him, out of sight. It came to him that it was Friday, the first Friday in August. Was this an inside job? Did they know about the safe?

“Downstairs,” the gunman said.

They knew.

Now one of the slow hulking shadows from the aisles was at his other side and grabbed his arm roughly. Joe stumbled as he was shoved forward, toward the back of the store. Another man—God, he was big. Joe was six foot one, and this monster towered over him, muscle on muscle and a great round shaven head up top. He was waiting back there by the cellar door.

“Open it,” said the gunman.

Joe listened to the voice. A white man, he sounded like. Young. Sharp, quick. A killer. Not wild but merciless, businesslike, the real deal. Joe could hear all that.

And it scared him. His heart was thundering; his belly was cold. He was scared for his life and for his family. But he reached out easy and he spoke low.

“It’s not locked,” he said. He turned the knob. “I have a family. I’m gonna do whatever you want, no problem.”

“Good,” said the gunman. “Then we all go home alive.”

Joe listened to his voice and believed him. He pulled open the door.

The stairs were narrow. The cellar was almost pitch-black. But muscle boy led the way down quickly, surely, heavy boots thundering on the steps. Joe went after, the gunman right behind him. Joe had to keep one hand out to steady himself against the wall.

The cellar was low, cramped. Dim dawn came through the thin windows. Then there was a flashlight beam. Muscle boy held it steady on the door of the safe. The gunman gave Joe a gentle shove between the shoulder blades. Joe knelt down in front of the safe. He worked the dial, the combination. His mind kept racing.

It was Friday, he thought. That was the whole point. Must’ve been. It was the first Friday in August, August third. Yesterday and the day before, customers had come in to pay their bills. Today, they would come in to cash their paychecks. Joe had left the money from the last two days in the safe so he’d have enough on hand to cover the layout. There was close to fifteen thousand dollars in there. The robbers must’ve known.

It was like the Shell station, Joe thought. Like the robbery at the Shell station on Aragon a couple of months ago. Same kind of thing. And the guy there, the Chinese guy, what was his name, Henry—he’d come out of it okay. He’d handed over the money and he’d come out of it fine, alive.

Joe turned the dial of the safe. The last tumbler clicked. He pushed down the handle and pulled the safe door open. The flashlight beam played over the stacks of money inside.

Muscle boy gave a dull laugh. Heh heh heh.

The gunman said, “All right!”

But upstairs, everything went wrong.

A Camaro pulled into the minimall parking lot. Hot red with black racing stripes, engine sputtering. Two teenagers—a girl and a boy—tumbled out into the dawn. Another boy stayed behind the wheel.

The girl was small, a dirty blonde with a dull, spotty face. She was fifteen, still had her baby fat, not much shape, but she wore jeans cut off ragged high on the thigh and a belly-baring crop top. Showed a lot of tanned skin, looked more like a woman than she was.

The boy was older, eighteen. Also blond, also pimply. Lanky, flat-bellied, muscular. He wore khaki cargo shorts down to his knobbly knees and a T-shirt that read SURF FREE OR DIE.

They were twelve hours into a nonstop road trip, Portland to L.A. They were dopey with lack of sleep, giddy with the whole adventure. They’d pulled off the freeway to find some gas, hit the bathroom, stock up on Pop-Tarts and Mountain Dew. The 76 station across the street wasn’t open yet, but they saw Joe Linden’s pickup in front of the Bay Market and they figured, what the hell? So what if the lights were off, the sign said CLOSED? The market would open for them because, well, they were them.

So the boy tried the market door. Sure enough, it was locked up. He pressed his nose to the glass. Too dark to make out much. He slapped his palm against it.

“Anybody in there? We need to go to the bathroom,” he called.

“We really, really need to go!” added the girl, bouncing on her toes, pressing her legs together.

The boy slapped the glass of the door again. “Come on, man! I can see you in there.”

Then, startled, he jerked back from the glass. A rough-looking hombre in a cutoff denim jacket loomed on the other side without warning. The boy gaped at him uncertainly. The man in denim turned the keys dangling in the door. He pushed the door open, held it open. The boy hesitated. This rough-looking dude—there was something wrong with him. But the girl said, “Hey, thanks a lot, man,” and she went right in. The boy followed after.

The man in denim closed the door behind them and locked it up again.

 

There were two other men waiting inside. Shorty was tall, heavyset, his head shaved. He was the one all in leather with the Remington shotgun. Mad Dog was enormous, three hundred pounds. He had straggly brown hair to his shoulders. A straggly brown beard. A couple of teeth missing. Nutso eyes. He had a gun, too, a great big Dirty Harry .44 wedged between his death’s head belt buckle and the BAD TO THE BONE T-shirt stretched over his ballooning gut. He snorted like a hog when he saw the teenagers. Eyed the girl with those weirdly shining baby browns.

The girl swallowed. She stared from face to face. The boy raised his hands high in the air. “We don’t want any trouble,” he said.

Mad Dog chuckled.

The rough-looking hombre in denim was just plain Steve. Big, trim, muscular. Choppy black hair, a pitted, ruddy face. Shrewd, foggy eyes. He had a ball-peen hammer clipped to the belt loop of his jeans and a Glock 9 mm semiautomatic stuck beneath the waistband in the small of his back. He drew the pistol now, peered out the storefront window at the Camaro.

“There’s another one out there,” he said. “In the car.”

Shorty glanced at him wildly, fingering the stock of the Remington. He didn’t know what the fuck to do. All he could think of to say was “Shit, man.”

Steve went on looking out the window. He saw the same white truck that had passed by before. It came rumbling back in the other direction, and this time it pulled into the parking lot. It settled, idling, in the space closest to the avenue.

“There’s the truck,” Steve said. “We’ll just wait.”

They waited. The boy held his hands high. The teenaged girl stared from face to face. But now when she reached Mad Dog’s face she stopped on it. That crazy light in his eyes held her. Mad Dog grinned at her, showing the black gaps where his teeth used to be.

The girl grimaced in scorn and looked away.

Mad Dog stopped grinning. The girl had hurt his feelings.

“Hey, bitch,” he said.

He moved fast. His mountainous belly wobbled as he strode to her. The girl put her hands in front of her to ward him off, but she never cried out; she never had the chance.

Mad Dog clutched her neck with one meaty hand. His fingers wrapped nearly all the way around it. The girl’s feet left the ground as he swung her to the left. He slammed her full-length into the end of the pastry shelf. The shelf shuddered. Two boxed coffee cakes toppled off it, rattled to the floor. For a long, long moment while everyone else just stared, Mad Dog crushed the girl against the shelf, gripping her throat. She hung there silently, her feet twitching in the air, urine streaming down her bare legs.

Then, “Bitch!” he screamed. He flung her limp body down onto the ice cream freezer. She landed hard on the slanted freezer door.

“Leave her alone!” the boy cried out, his voice breaking. He went so far as to lower his raised hands to the level of his ears. His hands trembled because he wanted so much to help the girl, but he was too afraid to move.

Mad Dog lowered over the girl’s body like a thunderhead. He grabbed the front of her sopping shorts. He struggled to strip them off her with his thick, fumbling fingers. He made growling noises in his throat, breathing hard. Foam flew from his lips and nostrils.

“Shit,” drawled Steve from the window, glancing over at him. “You can’t fuck her now, dude, she’s dead.”

Mad Dog’s noises stopped altogether. He went stone still. He raised himself off the girl to get a better look at her. Sure enough, her head had fallen to the side. Her neck was bruised and rag limp. Her mouth hung open. Her green eyes stared. Damned if Steve wasn’t right.

“Ah shit!” cried Mad Dog. Disgusted, he swept the girl’s body to the floor.

Then the others came up from the cellar and the shooting started.

 

Muscle boy came up first with the bag of cash. Joe Linden was next. Then there was the gunman, who was called Cobra.

Joe was almost hopeful as he crested the stairs. He was beginning to think he was going to make it through this. The bad guys had their money. If they were going to shoot him, they’d have shot him down below, out of sight of the street. It even crossed his mind that he’d have quite a tale to tell his wife tonight when he got home. He hadn’t exactly been heroic, maybe, but if he told the story right he’d come off brave enough.

Then he stepped out from behind the soda freezer and saw the girl’s body on the floor. His racing mind realized that that was it. They’d have to murder the rest of them now. But it took a second for him to give up hope, another second to decide to make a desperate move.

That was too much time. Cobra saw the girl, too. He saw the boy with his hands half raised. He looked at Steve, and Steve said, “There’s another one outside in a car.”

Cobra gave a rueful laugh. “Christ.” He sighed. “All right, kill ’em all.”

Suddenly, there was a bayonet in his hand. He drove it once into Joe Linden’s kidney. Linden’s knees buckled. Cobra grabbed his hair, yanked the blade out, and ripped it across Linden’s throat.

 

The blonde at the wheel of the white truck heard a vicious blast of gunfire from inside the market. She stiffened in the driver’s seat, her pulse speeding. That was Mad Dog’s .44, she knew. And before the sound faded, Steve was out through the door with his Glock drawn.

The blonde watched, frozen, as Steve pumped bullets rapid fire through the windshield of the Camaro, bang bang bang bang bang. The blonde saw the glass shattering inward in a shower of crystal shards. They glittered in the first light of morning as they sprayed over the jerking figure in the driver’s seat.

That got the blonde moving. She acted fast. She threw the truck into reverse. Jammed down the gas. The van-body juddered backward out of the parking space. She slapped it into drive and spun the wheel. The whole vehicle leaned over as it came spinning around.

All five men were out of the market now, all of them were running toward the van-body, toward the blonde. Cobra and Charlie—that was the muscle boy—Shorty and Mad Dog and Steve. They all had guns in their hands, and they were all charging headlong.

The blonde leaned harder on the wheel. The truck kept leaning, tilting over. It kept spinning till its side was to the store. Then she drove her boot heel down on the brake.

Now Cobra was at the cab, yanking the passenger door open. The blonde could hear the van’s side door sliding back. Cobra swung up into the seat beside her.

“What the fuck?” she said.

“Just drive. Let’s go.”

She hit the gas again. Snuck a look in her right sideview mirror. She saw Shorty jump in the open side as the truck started moving. That was the last of them. They were all in.

The side door slid shut as the truck bounced out of the lot onto the avenue. And they were away.

 

There was a playground by the overpass. Empty at this hour. Just red slides, blue swings, and yellow climbing frames in pale acacia shade. The blonde parked the truck at the corner by the playground gate. The dead leaves in the gutter crunched beneath the tires as the truck rolled to a stop.

Cobra was already jumping out of the cab. The blonde could hear the truck’s rear panel rattling up. She switched off the engine. She had to breathe in deep, blow out hard to steady herself. Her heart was still going like crazy. Things felt way, way out of control.

“Okay,” she finally told herself.

She opened the glove compartment with one hand. She took out a small black plastic box: a remote control garage door opener. With her other hand, she jerked up the door handle.

When she stepped out onto the sidewalk, she was surprised by the quiet of the morning. She could hear birds singing beneath the guttural whisk of the cars on the freeway above.

By the time she joined the others at the back of the truck, they’d laid down the ramp and were rolling their Harleys out of the van. The sight of them sent a funny little thrill through the blonde’s system. The chopped chrome and the paint like fire. Everything seemed heightened to her now, electric. She watched the bikes flash as the sun rose, as the sun’s rays reached out to them over the water.

Now Mad Dog was astride his Low Rider, gripping the ape-hanger handlebars, hazy-faced with pleasure as he primed the throttle. Shorty and Steve brought down their Fat Boys and mounted. Charlie was swinging one rippling denimed leg over the seat of his Super Glide.

Cobra was last down. The blonde bit her lip, waiting for him. He had a Heritage Softtail body chopped to the bone. Pure chrome nearly. Silver everywhere except the black seat and the tires. It looked to her like the living skeleton of a machine. The others were clapping half-shells on top of their heads, but Cobra drew down the visor of a full-faced helmet the same silver as the bike. He handed her a black one. As he kicked onto the saddle, she tucked her hair up into the helmet and pulled it down over a face like heavenly song.

Cobra turned over the engine, throttled it to a roar. Then they were all roaring, all five cycles, roaring then sinking to a stuttering bluster that wiped out the birdsong and the freeway noise and everything. To the blonde they sounded like beasts in a jungle, a pride of beasts celebrating a kill. She felt the wild thrill of the sound in her chest and there were crazy flashbacks in her mind: the body jerking behind the wheel of the Camaro, the truck turning under her hands, the memory of gunfire. Breathless, she slipped onto the bitch pad behind Cobra and felt the throb of the machine between her legs.

Cobra revved the Softail to a bellow. The other bikes bellowed back. Shorty’s Fat Boy reared like a stallion. Mad Dog wrestled the ape-hangers as the Low Rider wobbled wildly on its long front forks then settled down. They started rolling, down the street in a wedge, Cobra the spearhead, two bikes trailing on either side.

They hit the corner as one and burst apart, fanning away from each other, accelerating to high speeds in an instant, disappearing in an instant from each other’s sight. That was the point of the location. There were freeways in all directions here. Minutes later, Steve and Shorty would be heading north on the 101. Mad Dog would be bound south on the 82. Charlie would be on the 84 westward. All of them in the wind and gone.

Cobra headed straight for the bridge to the East Bay. Holding to his waist, looking back over her shoulder, the blonde kept the truck in sight the whole distance. She could still see it when they reached the on ramp. That’s when she let go of Cobra with one hand. She stretched her arm out behind her, pointed the garage opener back at the playground. She pressed the button.

She let her breath go in a rush as the white truck blew. Even at this distance and over the roaring engine, she could hear the explosion. The dynamite torched the gas tank, and the van and the cab were ripped apart simultaneously in one great billowing ball of garish orange flame.

Cobra laughed. She could feel it under her hand. She faced forward, held him tight again, rested her head against the back of his leather jacket.

The bridge lay just before them, a long causeway stretched low across the surface of the bay. As they sped toward it, the road rose, slanting up and out of sight as if it were soaring right off the dazzling water into the sky. All along its side ran an endless rank of gracefully curving lampposts. When the blonde raised her eyes to them, she saw their heads bending sweetly down like the heads of flowers. For a moment, she had the thought that they were watching over her.

Cobra and the blonde and the Harley rolled on together. They climbed higher and higher into the face of the rising sun.