Thirty minutes later we were a half-block away from Baker’s house in a 1991 Dodge Caravan with rust holes in the paint, giving it a speckled look. The left front tire was flat. The seats had springs poking through.
The van was courtesy of the metal-recycling firm next door. When we showed ID and told them we needed something looking like an abandoned vehicle for surveillance they were happy to oblige, dragging the Caravan to the watch point with a tow truck. It looked at home on the grubby, barren street.
Harry had offered money for the rental.
“You after that guy in that house next door?” Tony, the manager of the scrap yard, nodded toward Baker’s property. “The muscle-bound asshole?”
Harry nodded, pulling a couple twenties from his wallet. “Yep.”
“We keep security dogs here at night. Or did until someone shot ’em dead. Started just after that guy moved in a few months back.” Tony pushed Harry’s money away. “Shit, man, you get rid of that bastard I’ll give you cars all day long.”
We hunched down in the seats and waited. Night started to fall, a few stars pressing against the blue, the moon at the far corner of the sky. The air was still and hot and smelled of the slack-tide on the Intercoastal Waterway four hundred feet distant. A barge tow pushed up the broad canal, the throb of its diesels rattling the loose metal on the Caravan. Two windows were out on the van and we swatted mosquitoes from our faces.
After a few minutes Harry nudged me with his elbow, pointed down the street. I peeped above the dash and saw a blue truck roll by, a loaf of bread painted on the side.
“So?”
“It’s the third time that bread truck’s gone by. Think there’s much need for bread this time of night?”
We watched the truck continue down the street, turn into a stand of trees beside a condemned house half enveloped in kudzu.
“Whoops, lights behind,” Harry said, ducking.
I followed suit, dropping toward the floor. A vehicle rumbled beside us and a flashlight lit the interior of the van.
“Anything?” a voice said.
“Hunh-uh. Dead metal.” A low laugh. “Prob’ly ought to be hauled to the yard over there and ground up.”
“How much longer?” the first voice said.
“Ten minutes, give or take.”
“Let’s book.”
The vehicle rolled away. Harry and I simultaneously let out our breath.
“You recognize the second voice?” I asked Harry.
“Sure enough,” he said. “It’s my old buddy, Sheriff Briscoe.”
We sat up enough to see the taillights of a dark, nondescript sedan of American vintage glide past the house where the bread truck was parked. The brake lights brightened on the car for a few seconds, then it moved on.
“The car stopped for a three-count,” Harry said. “Conversation?”
“Makes sense,” I said. “What you think’s happening?”
“Seems like we’ll know in ten minutes or so.”
It was twelve minutes. We felt the presence before we saw them, ten fat Harley hogs thundering from the main road a half-mile away. We sucked in our breath and slunk low in the van. Their bouncing headlamps shivered through the Caravan and their engines rattled my sternum.
“Sounds like Meltzer’s security detail,” I said. “Wonder if he’s along for the ride?”
Harry peered between the wheel and the dash. “Meltzer like to travel in a white step van? Ladder up the back?”
“What?”
I chuckled. “I mean, ten-four.” Something felt good inside me; I felt light, happy. It started after we’d spoken with Matthias.
Harry said, “Our band of gypsies rolled up to Baker’s. Someone’s out of the step van, walking into the headlights – Baker. He’s unlocking the gate so the party from hell can drive through. I just had a thought, Cars…”
“Probably the same as mine. Noelle could be there. If it’s Meltzer who sponsored the grab, maybe he’s moving her out of his place and to Baker’s.”
“There’s Meltzer,” Harry said. “He’s barking orders at the bikers, heading toward the house. He’s carrying something, a big-ass satchel. It’s kid-sized.”
“Stay cool,” I said. “What’s happening?”
“Baker’s doing a wide-foot stance like some goddamn cartoon Nazi. He’s wearing a Sam Browne belt, a pair of sidearms. Meltzer’s heading around back, a couple of the bikers flanking him. I think…uh oh.”
“What?”
“The bread truck. It’s backing out, lights off. The contingent at Baker’s can’t see it.”
I sat up, looked down the street. The bread truck was coming at Baker’s house backwards. We heard tires screech from behind us as the sedan from a few minutes back roared past, two others in its wake. Within four seconds there were three cars bouncing into Baker’s front yard. And a bread truck.
We heard yelling. Orders barked. Saw lights from every direction, pouring from the cars, from the truck. Everything turned still for a half-heartbeat. Then the gunfire started.
“It’s a raid,” Harry yelled. “Someone’s attacking Meltzer and the bikers.”
He started to jump from the car. I grabbed his arm, held tight. It was like restraining a buffalo. “Stay down!” I yelled as a stray bullet whanged off the Caravan.
“Noelle’s in all that,” he yelled.
“Let’s go around the side,” I said, jumping out and staying low, Harry following. The melee was in the front and to the side of the house; it looked like the bikers had taken cover inside the house and on the porch. The other side was returning fire as fast as the bikers could pump it out. I heard words yelled through a bullhorn, couldn’t make them out.
We scrambled along the fence line toward the waterway. I heard an explosion, like a grenade. More gunfire, volleys.
“There,” Harry yelled. I spun my head, saw Meltzer and Baker crouched low and moving through the back yard toward the boat, one of the bikers close behind, a shotgun in his hand. Baker had the satchel slung over a thick shoulder.
The fence ended at the waterline. The tide was slack and dropping, giving us a few feet of rip-rap to walk on. We stumbled over the rocks, staying in the shadows of scrub brush at the rear of the fence line, trying to move fast while not stumbling into the canal.
The pier was sixty feet long, eight wide, paralleling the waterway. We clambered on to one end as the trio was coming through the gate. I saw another biker in the distance, near the house, booking toward the boat.
“Freeze,” Harry yelled, a bull elephant on full trumpet.
The biker whipped the shotgun up, but doubletaps from Harry and I hit him at the same time, punching four holes across his chest. The shotgun hit the water a half-second after his body did.
Baker turned and fired and we hit the pier. We rolled off on the side with the rip-rap, sheltered by the dock. I saw Baker jump aboard the boat, the satchel bouncing over his shoulder. I laid out three shots and leapt back on to the dock. Meltzer was frozen in front of us, eyes wide in terror. Up front, on the street, it sounded like the Fourth of July.
I saw Harry pick up the diminutive Meltzer and hurl him into the side of the boat like a rag doll. A biker in the back yard fired at us, the shots thudding into the boat behind me. Harry ducked beside the pier pilings and began returning fire.
I belly-crawled beside the boat, heard a hatch pop open, Baker suddenly above me. I launched up and into him before he could level the pistol. We fell to the dock, tangled together and rolling side to side. He was fiercely strong, pummeling while I tried to keep him clinched. Harry was thirty feet away, pinned behind a piling, firing into the yard, unable to move from his cover. I was fighting from a defensive position, lacking the strength of Baker. He slammed short jabs into my side, jack-hammers against my ribs. I felt my strength fading as his hands found my throat.
My only chance was the water. I bucked, Baker atop me, thumbs trying to crush my windpipe. I wrenched again, found my head and shoulders over the water. I bucked a final time, sucking as much air as my lungs could capture.
We plunged into the murky, deep-dredged channel. Instead of trying to break free of Baker, I hugged him as tight as a lover, kicking for the bottom.
Hold on.
He pushed, pummeled, wrenched. Hands and legs flailed and grabbed. Blows rained into my sides, thankfully slowed by water. My ears filled with the sound of my heart and lungs screaming for air. Hold on. Baker gave up fighting me to fight for the surface. I felt his terror. Hold on. I heard his scream turn to bubbles. I felt his chest expand as his lungs sucked in water. Baker drew another breath of water. I felt him shudder and the weight in my hands went slack.
I slid upwards over the body and broke the surface, gasping; the oily, fuel-laden air was as sweet as honey. I looked around. Harry was a dozen feet away on the prow of the boat. He let out a long breath. There were no sounds of gunfire.
“Baker?” Harry asked.
“I’m standing on him.”
I dog-paddled to the boat, moss or seaweed on my face. I pushed it away. It kept sticking. No, not seaweed, I noted in the light from the pier lamps. Hundred-dollar bills.
Harry pulled me from the water. Meltzer lay crumpled against a piling, regaining consciousness. I saw the satchel, upside-down, beside it dozens of blocks of banded money, some of which had broken open and tumbled into the water. I also saw several kilo-sized bricks of plastic-encased white powder.
My heart fell. “It wasn’t Noelle.”
Harry shook his head. Meltzer was fully conscious now, cowering on the pier.
“D-d-don’t hurt m-me,” the pink lips said. “Puh-puh-please.”
Harry made a big deal of slamming a new clip in his weapon, racking the slide. He knelt beside Meltzer and pointed the muzzle at his temple.
“Where’s the kid, Arnold? I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me.”
“I d-d-don’t know. I suh-swear. Puh-please don’t k-k-k-k-k- –”
“TELL ME!”
Meltzer pissed himself and began to weep. Hunched shapes moved through the shadowed back yard. A bullhorn voice broke the silence.
“Drop your weapons and lock your fingers behind your necks.”
“We’re cops!” I yelled back. “Detectives Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus, Mobile Police. All is secure.”
The shapes moved closer. One of them was wearing a cowboy hat.
“Holy mother of God,” Sheriff Briscoe said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I believe that’s our question,” Harry said.
Briscoe scowled at the cowering Arnold Meltzer, then saw the stash Harry’d dumped from the satchel.
“Got the dope and money,” Briscoe yelled over his shoulder as a tall black man in a suit walked up. The suit had sand along one side, like he’d been firing from the ground.
The black man knelt, pulled a pen from his pocket, poked a hole in one of the bags of white powder. He wet a forefinger, tapped it to the hole, brought it to his lips.
He grinned like tasting the mother lode of Beluga caviar.