6
Ambush
The rest was easy. They made a quick boat trip to Solomons, where Pam was able to buy a few simple things. A beauty shop trimmed her hair. By the end of her second week with Kelly, she’d started to run and had gained weight. Already she could wear a two-piece swimsuit without an overt display of her rib cage. Her leg muscles were toning up: what had been slack was now taut, as it ought to be on a girl her age. She still had her demons. Twice Kelly woke to find her trembling, sweating, and murmuring sounds that never quite turned into words but were easily understood. Both times his touch calmed her. but not him. Soon he was teaching her to run Springer, and whatever the defects in her schooling, she was smart enough. She quickly grasped how to do the things that most boaters never learned. He even took her swimming, surprised somehow that she’d learned the skill in the middle of Texas.
Mainly he loved her, the sight, the sound, the smell, and most of all the feel of Pam Madden. Kelly found himself slightly anxious if he failed to see her every few minutes, as though she might somehow disappear. But she was always there, catching his eye, smiling back playfully. Most of the time. Sometimes he’d catch her with a different expression, allowing herself to look back into the darkness of her past or forward into an alternate future different from that which he had already planned. He found himself wishing that he could reach into her mind and remove the bad parts, knowing that he would have to trust others to do that. At those times, and the others, for the most part, he’d find an excuse to head her way, and let his fingertips glide over her shoulder, just to be sure she knew that he was there.
Ten days after Sam and Sarah had left, they had a little ceremony. He let her take the boat out, tie the bottle of phenobarbital to a large rock, and dump it over the side. The splash it made seemed a fitting and final end to one of her problems. Kelly stood behind her, his strong arms about her waist, watching the other boats traveling the Bay, and he looked into a future bright with promise.
“You were right,” she said, stroking his forearms.
“That happens sometimes,” Kelly replied with a distant smile, only to be stunned by her next statement.
“There are others, John, other women Henry has . . . like Helen, the one he killed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have to go back. I have to help them . . . before Henry—before he kills more of them.”
“There’s danger involved, Pammy,” Kelly said slowly.
“I know . . . but what about them?”
It was a symptom of her recovery, Kelly knew. She had become a nomal person again, and normal people worried about others.
“I can’t hide forever, can I?” Kelly could feel her fear, but her words defied it and he held her a little tighter.
“No, you can’t, not really. That’s the problem. It’s too hard to hide.”
“Are you sure you can trust your friend on the police?” she asked.
“Yes: he knows me. He’s a lieutenant I did a job for a year ago. A gun got tossed, and I helped find it. So he owes me one. Besides, I ended up helping to train their divers, and I made some friends.” Kelly paused. “You don’t have to do it, Pam. If you just want to walk away from it, that’s okay with me. I don’t have to go back to Baltimore ever, except for the doctor stuff.”
“All the things they did to me, they’re doing to the others. If I don’t do something, then it’ll never really be gone, will it?”
Kelly thought about that, and his own demons. You simply could not run away from some things. He knew. He’d tried. Pam’s collection was in its way more horrible than his own, and if their relationship were to go further, those demons had to find their resting place.
“Let me make a phone call.”
“Lieutenant Allen,” the man said into his phone in Western District. The air conditioning wasn’t working well today, and his desk was piled with work as yet undone.
“Frank? John Kelly,” the detective heard, bringing a smile.
“How’s life in the middle of the Bay, fella?” Wouldn’t I like to be there.
“Quiet and lazy. How about you?” the voice asked.
“I wish,” Allen answered, leaning back in his swivel chair. A large man, and like most cops of his generation, a World War II veteran—in his case a Marine artillery-man—Allen had risen from foot patrol on East Monument Street to homicide. For all that, the work was not as demanding as most thought, though it did carry the burden associated with the untimely end of human life. Allen immediately noted the change in Kelly’s voice. “What can I do for you?”
“I, uh, met somebody who might need to talk with you.”
“How so?” the cop asked, fishing around in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and matches.
“It’s business, Frank. Information regarding a killing.”
The cop’s eyes narrowed a bit, while his brain changed gears. “When and where?”
“I don’t know yet, and I don’t like doing this over a phone line.”
“How serious?”
“Just between us for now?”
Allen nodded, staring out the window. “That’s fine, okay.”
“Drug people.”
Allen’s mind went click. Kelly had said his informant was “somebody,” not a “man.” That made the person a female, Allen figured. Kelly was smart, but not all that sophisticated in this line of work. Allen had heard the shadowy reports of a drug ring using women for something or other. Nothing more than that. It wasn’t his case. It was being handled by Emmet Ryan and Tom Douglas downtown, and Allen wasn’t even supposed to know that much.
“There’s at least three drug organizations up and running now. None of them are very nice folks,” Allen said evenly. “Tell me more.”
“My friend doesn’t want much involvement. Just some information for you, that’s it, Frank. If it goes further, we can reevaluate then. We’re talking some scary people if this story is true.”
Allen considered that. He’d never dwelt upon Kelly’s background, but he knew enough. Kelly was a trained diver, he knew, a bosun’s mate who’d fought in the brown-water Navy in the Mekong Delta, supporting the 9th Infantry; a squid, but a very competent, careful squid whose services had come highly recommended to the force from somebody in the Pentagon and who’d done a nice job retraining the force’s divers, and, by the way, earning a nice check for it, Allen reminded himself. The “person” had to be female. Kelly would never worry about guarding a man that tightly. Men just didn’t think that way about other men. If nothing else, it sure sounded interesting.
“You’re not screwing me around, are you?” he had to ask.
“That’s not my way, man,” Kelly assured him. “My rules: it’s for information purposes only, and it’s a quiet meet. Okay?”
“You know. anybody else, I’d probably say come right in here and that would be it, but I’ll play along with you. You did break the Gooding case open for me. We got him. you know. Life plus thirty. I owe you for that. Okay, I’ll play along for now. Fair enough?”
“Thanks. What’s your schedule like?”
“Working late shift this week.” It was just after four in the afternoon, and Allen had just come on duty. He didn’t know that Kelly had called three times that day already without leaving a message. “I get off around midnight, one o’clock, like that. It depends on the night,” he explained. “Some are busier than others.”
“Tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up at the front door. We can have a little supper together.”
Allen frowned. This was like a James Bond movie, secret agent crap. But he did know Kelly to be a serious man, even if he didn’t know squat about police work.
“See you then, sport.”
“Thanks, Frank. ‘Bye.” The line clicked off and Allen went back to work. making a note on his desk calendar.
“Are you scared?” he asked.
“A little,” she admitted.
He smiled. “That’s normal. But you heard what I said. He doesn’t know anything about you. You can always back out if you want. I’ll be carrying a gun all the time. And it’s just a talk. You can get in and get out. We’ll do it in one day—one night, really. And I’ll be with you all the time.”
“Every minute?”
“Except when you’re in the ladies’ room, honey. There you have to look out for yourself.” She smiled and relaxed.
“I have to fix dinner,” she said, heading off to the kitchen.
Kelly went outside. Something in him called for more weapons practice, but he’d done that already. Instead he walked into the equipment bunker and took the .45 down from the rack. First he depressed the stud and action spring. Next he swiveled the bushing. That allowed the spring to go free. Kelly dismounted the slide assembly, removing the barrel, and now the pistol was field-stripped. He held the barrel up to a light, and, as expected, it was dirty from firing. He cleaned every surface, using rags, Hoppe’s cleaning solvent, and a toothbrush until there was no trace of dirt on any metal surface. Next he lightly oiled the weapon. Not too much oil, for that would attract dirt and grit, which could foul and jam the pistol at an inconvenient moment. Finished cleaning, he reassembled the Colt quickly and expertly—it was something he could and did do with his eyes closed. It had a nice feel in his hand as he jacked the slide back a few times to make sure it was properly assembled. A final visual inspection confirmed it.
Kelly took two loaded magazines from a drawer, along with a single loose round. He inserted one loaded clip into the piece, working the slide to load the first round in the chamber. He carefully lowered the hammer before ejecting the magazine and sliding another round into place. With eight cartridges in the weapon, and a backup clip, he now had a total of fifteen rounds with which to face danger. Not nearly enough for a walk in the jungles of Vietnam, but he figured it was plenty for the dark environs of a city. He could hit a human head with a single aimed shot from ten yards, day or night. He’d never once rattled under fire, and he’d killed men before. Whatever the dangers might be, Kelly was ready for them. Besides, he wasn’t going after the Vietcong. He was going in at night, and the night was his friend. There would be fewer people around for him to worry about, and unless the other side knew he was there—which they wouldn’t—he didn’t have to worry about an ambush. He just had to stay alert. which came easily to him.
Dinner was chicken, something Pam knew how to fix. Kelly almost got out a bottle of wine but thought better of it. Why tempt her with alcohol? Maybe he’d stop drinking himself. It would be no great loss, and the sacrifice would validate his commitment to her. Their conversation avoided serious matters. He’d already shut the dangers from his mind. There was no need to dwell on them. Too much imagination made things worse, not better.
“You really think we need new curtains?” he said.
“They don’t match the furniture very well.”
Kelly grunted. “For a boat?”
“It’s kinda dull there, you know?”
“Dull,” he observed, clearing the table. “Next thing. you’ll say that men are all alike—” Kelly stopped dead in his tracks. It was the first time he’d slipped up that way. “Sorry . . . ”
She gave him an impish smile. “Well, in some ways you are. And stop being so nervous about talking to me about things, okay?”
Kelly relaxed. “Okay.” He grabbed her and pulled her close. “If that’s the way you feel . . . well . . . ”
“Mmm.” She smiled and accepted his kiss. Kelly’s hands wandered across her back, and there was no feel of a bra under the cotton blouse. She giggled at him. “I wondered how long it would take you to notice.”
“The candles were in the way,” he explained.
“The candles were nice, but smelly.” And she was right. The bunker was not well ventilated. Something else to fix. Kelly looked forward into a very busy future as he moved his hands to a nicer place.
“Have I gained enough weight?”
“Is it my imagination, or . . . ?”
“Well, maybe just a little,” Pam admitted, holding his hands on her.
“We need to get you some new clothes,” he said, watching her face. the new confidence. He had her on the wheel, steering the proper compass course past Sharp’s Island Light, well east of the shipping channel, which was busy today.
“Good idea,” she agreed. “But I don’t know any good places.” She checked the compass like a good helmsman.
“They’re easy to find. You just look at the parking lot.”
“Huh?”
“Lincolns and Caddys, honey. Always means good clothes,” Kelly noted. “Never fails.”
She laughed as intended. Kelly marveled at how much more in control she seemed, though there was still a long ways to go.
“Where will we stay tonight?”
“On board,” Kelly answered. “We’ll be secure here.” Pam merely nodded, but he explained anyway.
“You look different now, and they don’t know me from Adam. They don’t know my car or my boat. Frank Allen doesn’t know your name or even that you’re a girl. That’s operational security. We ought to be safe.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Pam said, turning to smile at him. The confidence in her face warmed his blood and fed his already capacious ego.
“Going to rain tonight,” Kelly noted, pointing at distant clouds. “That’s good, too. Cuts down visibility. We used to do a lot of stuff in the rain. People just aren’t alert when they’re wet.”
“You really know about this stuff, don’t you?”
A manly smile. “I learned in a really tough school, honey.”
They made port three hours later. Kelly made a great show of being alert, checking out the parking lot, noting that his Scout was in its accustomed place. He sent her below while he tied up, then left her there while he drove the car right to the dock. Pam, as instructed, walked straight from the boat to the Scout without looking left or right, and he drove off the property at once. It was still early in the day, and they drove immediately out of the city, finding a suburban shopping center in Timonium, where Pam over a period of two—to Kelly, interminable—hours selected three nice outfits, for which he paid cash. She dressed in the one he liked best, an understated skirt and blouse that went well with his jacket and no tie. For once Kelly was dressing in accordance with his own net worth, which was comfortable.
Dinner was eaten in the same area, an upscale restaurant with a dark corner booth. Kelly didn’t say so, but he’d needed a good meal, and while Pam was okay with chicken, she still had a lot to learn about cooking.
“You look pretty good—relaxed. I mean,” he said, sipping his after-dinner coffee.
“I never thought I’d feel this way. I mean, it’s only been . . . not even three weeks?”
“That’s right.” Kelly set his coffee down. “Tomorrow we’ll see Sarah and her friends. In a couple of months everything will be different, Pam.” He took her left hand, hoping that it would someday bear a gold ring on the third finger.
“I believe that now. I really do.”
“Good.”
“What do we do now?” she asked. Dinner was over and there were hours until the clandestine meeting with Lieutenant Allen.
“Just drive around some?” Kelly left cash on the table and led her out to the car.
It was dark now. The sun was nearly set, and rain was starting to fall. Kelly headed south on York Road towards the city. well fed and relaxed himself. feeling confident and ready for the night’s travail. Entering Towson, he saw the recently abandoned streetcar tracks that announced his proximity to the city and its supposed dangers. His senses perked up at once. Kelly’s eyes darted left and right, scanning the streets and sidewalks, checking his three rearview mirrors every five seconds. On getting in the car, he’d put his .45 Colt automatic in its accustomed place, a holster just under the front seat that he could reach faster than one in his belt—and besides, it was a lot more comfortable that way.
“Pam?” he asked, watching traffic, making sure the doors were locked—a safety provision that seemed outrageously paranoid when he was so alert.
“Yes?”
“How much do you trust me?”
“I do trust you, John.”
“Where did you—work, I mean?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s dark and rainy, and I’d like to see what it’s like down there.” Without looking, he could feel her body tense. “Look, I’ll be careful. If you see anything that worries you, I’ll make tracks like you won’t believe.”
“I’m scared of that,” Pam said immediately, but then she stopped herself. She was confident in her man, wasn’t she? He’d done so much for her. He’d saved her. She had to trust him—no. he had to know that she did. She had to show him that she did. And so she asked: “You promise you’ll be careful?”
“Believe it, Pam,” he assured her. “You see one single thing that worries you and we’re gone.”
“Okay, then.”
It was amazing, Kelly thought, fifty minutes later. The things that are there but which you never see. How many times had he driven through this part of town, never stopping, never noticing? And for years his survival had depended on his noting everything, every bent branch, every sudden bird-call, every footprint in the dirt. But he’d driven through this area a hundred times and never noticed what was happening because it was a different sort of jungle filled with very different game. Part of him just shrugged and said, Well, what did you expect? Another part noted that there had always been danger here, and he’d failed to take note of it, but the warning was not as loud and clear as it should have been.
The environment was ideal. Dark, under a cloudy, moonless sky. The only illumination came from sparse streetlights that created lonely globes of light along sidewalks both deserted and active. Showers came and went, some fairly heavy, mostly moderate, enough to keep heads down and limit visibility, enough to reduce a person’s normal curiosity. That suited Kelly fine, since he was circulating around and around the blocks, noting changes from the second to the third pass by a particular spot. He noted that not even all the streetlights were functioning. Was that just the sloth of city workers or creative maintenance on the part of the local “businessmen”? Perhaps a little of both, Kelly thought. The guys who changed the bulbs couldn’t make all that much, and a twenty-dollar bill would probably persuade them to be a little slow, or maybe not screw the bulb in all the way. In any case, it set the mood. The streets were dark, and the dark had always been Kelly’s trusted friend.
The neighborhoods were so . . . sad, he thought. Shabby storefronts of what had been mom-and-pop grocery stores, probably run out of business by supermarkets which had themselves been wrecked in the ‘68 rioting, opening a hole in the economic fabric of the area, but one not yet filled. The cracked cement of the sidewalks was littered with all manner of debris. Were there people who lived here? Who were they? What did they do? What were their dreams? Surely not all could be criminals. Did they hide at night? And if then, what about the daylight? Kelly had learned it in Asia: give the enemy one part of the day and he would secure it for himself, and then expand it, for the day had twenty-four hours, and he would want them all for himself and his activities. No, you couldn’t give the other side anything, not a time, not a place, nothing that they could reliably use. That’s how people lost a war, and there was a war going on here. And the winners were not the forces of good. That realization struck him hard. Kelly had already seen what he knew to be a losing war.
The dealers were a diverse group, Kelly saw as he cruised past their sales area. Their posture told him of their confidence. They owned the streets at this hour. There might be competition from one to the other, a nasty Darwinian process that determined who owned what segment of what sidewalk, who had territorial rights in front of this or that broken window, but as with all such competition, things would soon attain some sort of stability, and business would be conducted, because the purpose of the competition was business, after all.
He turned right onto a new street. The thought evoked a grunt and a thin, ironic smile. New street? No, these streets were old ones, so old that “good” people had left them years ago to move out of the city into greener places, allowing other people, deemed less valuable than themselves, to move in, and then they too had moved away, and the cycle had continued for another few generations until something had gone very badly wrong to create what he saw now in this place. It had taken an hour or so for him to grasp the fact that there were people here, not just trash-laden sidewalks and criminals. He saw a woman leading a child by the hand away from a bus stop. He wondered where they were returning from. A visit with an aunt? The public library? Some place whose attractions were worth the uncomfortable passage between the bus stop and home, past sights and sounds and people whose very existence could damage that little child.
Kelly’s back got straighter and his eyes namower. He’d seen that before. Even in Vietnam, a country at war since before his birth, there were still parents, and children, and, even in war, a desperate quest for something like normality. Children needed to play some of the time, to be held and loved, protected from the harsher aspects of reality for as long as the courage and talents of their parents could make that possible. And it was true here, too. Everywhere there were victims, all innocent to some greater or lesser degree, and the children the most innocent of all. He could see it there, fifty yards away, as the young mother led her child across the street, short of the corner where a dealer stood, making a transaction. Kelly slowed his car to allow her safe passage, hoping that the care and love she showed that night would make a difference to her child. Did the dealers notice her? Were the ordinary citizens worthy of note at all? Were they cover? Potential customers? Nuisances? Prey? And what of the child? Did they care at all? Probably not.
“Shit,” he whispered quietly to himself, too detached to show his anger openly.
“What?” Pam asked. She was sitting quietly, leaning away from the window.
“Nothing. Sorry.” Kelly shook his head and continued his observation. He was actually beginning to enjoy himself. It was like a reconnaissance mission. Reconnaissance was learning, and learning had always been a passion for Kelly. Here was something completely new. Sure, it was evil, destructive, ugly, but it was also different, which made it exciting. His hands tingled on the wheel.
The customers were diverse, too. Some were obviously local, you could tell from their color and shabby clothing. Some were more addicted than others, and Kelly wondered what that meant. Were the apparently functional ones the newly enslaved? Were the shambling ones the veterans of self-destruction, heading irrevocably towards their own deaths? How could a normal person look at them and not be frightened that it was possible to destroy yourself one dose at a time? What drove people to do this? Kelly nearly stopped the car with that thought. That was something beyond his experience.
Then there were the others, the ones with medium-expensive cars so clean that they had to come from the suburbs, where standards had to be observed. He pulled past one and gave the driver a quick look. Even wears a tie! Loose in the collar to allow for his nervousness in a neighborhood such as this one, using one hand to roll down the window while the other perched at the top of the wheel, his right foot doubtless resting lightly on the gas pedal, ready to jolt the car forward if danger should threaten. The driver’s nerves must be on edge, Kelly thought, watching him in the mirror. He could not be comfortable here, but he had come anyway. Yes, there it was. Money was passed out the window, and something received for it, and the car moved off as quickly as the traffic-laden street would allow. On a whim, Kelly followed the Buick for a few blocks, turning right, then left onto a main artery, where the car got into the left lane and stayed there, driving as rapidly as was prudent to get the hell out of this dreary part of the city, but without drawing the unwanted attention of a police officer with a citation book.
Yeah, the police, Kelly thought as he gave up the pursuit. Where the hell are they? The law was being violated with all the apparent drama of a block party, but they were nowhere to be seen. He shook his head as he turned back into the trading area. The disconnect from his own neighborhood in Indianapolis, merely ten years before, was vast. How had things changed so rapidly? How had he missed it? His time in the Navy, his life on the island, had insulated him from everything. He was a rube, an innocent, a tourist in his own country.
He looked over at Pam. She seemed all right, though a little tense. Those people were dangerous, but not to the two of them. He’d been careful to remain invisible, to drive like everyone else, meandering around the few blocks of the “business” area in an irregular pattern. He was not blind to the dangers, Kelly told himself. In searching for patterns of activity, he hadn’t made any of his own. If anyone had eyeballed him and his vehicle especially hard, he would have noticed. And besides, he still had his Colt .45 between his legs. However formidable these thugs might appear, they were nothing compared to the North Vietnamese and Vietcong he’d faced. They’d been good. He’d been better. There was danger on these streets, but far less than he had survived already.
Fifty yards away was a dealer dressed in a silk shirt that might have been brown or maroon. It was hard to tell the color in the poor illumination, but it had to be silk from the way it reflected light. Probably real silk, Kelly was willing to bet. There was a flashiness to these vermin. It wasn’t enough for them merely to violate the law, was it? Oh, no, they had to let people know how bold and daring they were.
Dumb, Kelly thought. Very dumb to draw attention to yourself that way. When you do dangerous things, you conceal your identity, conceal your very presence, and always leave yourself with at least one route of escape.
“It’s amazing they can get away with this,” Kelly whispered to himself.
“Huh?” Pam’s head turned.
“They’re so stupid.” Kelly waved at the dealer near the corner. “Even if the cops don’t do anything, what if somebody decides to—I mean, he’s holding a lot of money, right?”
“Probably a thousand, maybe two thousand,” Pam replied.
“So what if somebody tries to rob him?”
“It happens, but he’s carrying a gun, too, and if anyone tries—”
“Oh—the guy in the doorway?”
“He’s the real dealer, Kelly. Didn’t you know that? The guy in the shirt is his lieutenant. He’s the guy who does the actual—what do you call it?”
“Transaction,” Kelly replied dryly, reminding himself that he’d failed to spot something, knowing that he’d allowed his pride to overcome his caution. Not a good habit, he told himself.
Pam nodded. “That’s right. Watch—watch him now.”
Sure enough, Kelly saw what he now realized was the full transaction. Someone in a car—another visitor from the suburbs, Kelly thought—handed over his money (an assumption, since Kelly couldn’t really see, but surely it wasn’t a Bank Americard). The lieutenant reached inside the shirt and handed something back. As the car pulled off, the one in the flamboyant shirt moved across the sidewalk, and in shadows that Kelly’s eyes could not quite penetrate there was another exchange.
Oh, I get it. The lieutenant holds the drugs and makes the exchange, but he gives the money to his boss. The boss holds the earnings, but he also has a gun to make sure nothing goes wrong. They’re not as dumb as I thought they were.”
“They’re smart enough.”
Kelly nodded and made a mental note, chastising himself for having made at least two wrong assumptions. But that’s why you did reconnaissance, after all.
Let’s not get too comfortable, Kelly, he told himself. Now you know that there’s two bad guys up there, one armed and well concealed in that doorway. He settled in his seat and locked his eyes on the potential threat, watching for patterns of activity. The one in the doorway would be the real target. The misnamed “lieutenant” was just a hireling, maybe an apprentice, undoubtedly expendable, living on crumbs or commission. The one he could just barely see was the real enemy. And that fit the time-honored pattern, didn’t it? He smiled, remembering a regional political officer for the NVA. That job had even carried a code name. ERMINE COAT. Four days they’d stalked that bastard, after they’d positively identified him, just to make sure he was the one, then to learn his habits, and determine the best possible way to punch his ticket. Kelly would never forget the look on the man’s face when the bullet entered his chest. Then their three-mile run to the LZ, while the NVA’s reaction team headed in the wrong direction because of the misleading pyro-charge he’d set up.
What if that man in the shadows was his target? How would he do it? It was an interesting mental game. The feeling was surprisingly godlike. He felt like an eagle, watching, cataloging, but above it all, a predator at the top of the food chain, not hungry now, riding the thermals over them.
He smiled, ignoring the warnings that the combat-experienced part of his brain was beginning to generate.
Hmm. He hadn’t seen that car before. It was a muscle car, a Plymouth Roadrunner. red as a candy apple, half a block away. There was something odd about the way it—
“Kelly . . . ” Pam suddenly tensed in her seat.
“What is it?” His hand found the .45 and loosened it in the holster just a millimeter or so, taking comfort from the worn wooden grips. But the fact that he’d reached for it, and the fact that he’d felt a sudden need for that comfort, were a message that his mind could not ignore. The cautious part of his brain began to assert itself, his combat instincts began to speak more loudly. Even that brought a surge of reflective pride. It’s so nice, he reflected in the blink of an eye, that I still have it when I need it.
“I know that car—it‘s—”
Kelly’s voice was calm. “Okay, I’ll get us out of here. You’re right, it’s time to leave.” He increased speed, maneuvering left to get past the Roadrunner. He thought to tell Pam to get down, but that really wasn’t necessary. In less than a minute he’d be gone, and—damn!
It was one of the gentry customers, someone in a black Karmann-Ghia convertible who’d just made his transaction, and, eager to have this area behind him, shot left from beyond the Roadrunner only to stop suddenly for yet another car doing much the same thing. Kelly stood on his brakes to avoid a collision, didn’t want that to happen right now, did he? But the timing worked out badly, and he stopped almost right next to the Roadrunner, whose driver picked that moment to get out. Instead of going forward, he opted to walk around the back of the car, and in the course of turning, his eyes ended up not three feet from Pam’s cringing face. Kelly was looking that way also, knowing that the man was a potential danger, and he saw the look in the man’s eyes. He recognized Pam.
“Okay, I see it,” his voice announced with an eerie calm, his combat voice. He turned the wheel farther to the left and stepped on the gas, bypassing the little sports car and its invisible driver. Kelly reached the corner a few seconds later, and after the briefest pause to check traffic, executed a hard left turn to evacuate the area.
“He saw me!” Her voice hovered on the edge of a scream.
“It’s okay, Pam,” Kelly replied, watching the road and his mirror. “We are leaving the area. You’re with me and you’re safe.”
Idiot, his instincts swore at the rest of his consciousness. You’d better hope they don’t follow. That car has triple your horsepower and—
“Okay.” Bright, low-slung headlights made the same turn Kelly’d executed twenty seconds earlier. He saw them wiggle left and right. The car was accelerating hard and fishtailing on the wet asphalt. Double headlights. It wasn’t the Karmann-Ghia.
You are now in danger, his instincts told him calmly. We don’t know how much yet, but it’s time to wake up.
Roger that.
Kelly put both hands on the wheel. The gun could wait. He started evaluating the situation, and not much of it was good. His Scout was not made for this sort of thing. It wasn’t a sports car, wasn’t a muscle car. He had four puny cylinders under the hood. The Plymouth Roadrunner had eight, each one of them bigger than what Kelly was now calling on. Even worse, the Roadrunner was made for low-end acceleration and cornering, while the Scout had been designed for plodding across unpaved ground at a hot fifteen miles per hour. This was not good.
Kelly’s eyes divided their time equally between the windshield and the rearview mirror. There wasn’t much of a gap, and the Roadrunner was closing it rapidly.
Assets, his brain started cataloging. The car isn’t completely useless, she’s a rugged little bitch. You have big, mean bumpers, and that high ground-clearance means you can ram effectively. So what about the coachwork? That Plymouth might be a status symbol for jerks, but this little baby can be—is—a weapon, and you know how to use weapons. The cobwebs fell completely from his mind.
“Pam,” Kelly said as quietly as he could manage, “you want to get down on the floor, honey?”
“Are they—” She started to turn, the fear still manifest in her voice, but Kelly’s right hand pushed her down towards the floor.
“Looks like they’re following us, yes. Now, you let me handle this, okay?” The last unengaged part of his consciousness was proud of Kelly’s calm and confidence. Yes, there was danger, but Kelly knew about danger, knew a hell of a lot more than the people in the Roadrunner. If they wanted a lesson in what danger really was, they’d come to the right fucking place.
Kelly’s hands tingled on the wheel as he eased left, then braked and turned hard right. He couldn’t corner as well as the Roadrunner, but these streets were wide—and being in front gave him the choice of path and timing. Losing them would be hard, but he knew where the police station was. It was just a matter of leading them there. They’d break contact at that point.
They might shoot, might find a way to disable the car, but if that happened, he had the .45, and a spare clip, and a box of ammo in the glove compartment. They might be armed, but they sure as hell weren’t trained. He’d let them get close . . . how many? Two? Maybe three? He ought to have checked, Kelly told himself, remembering that there hadn’t been time.
Kelly looked in the mirror. A moment later he was rewarded. The headlights of another, uninvolved car a block away shone straight through the Roadrunner. Three of them. He wondered what they might be armed with. Worst-case was a shotgun. The real worst-case was a rapid-fire rifle, but street hoods weren’t soldiers, and that was unlikely.
Probably not, but let’s not make any assumptions, his brain replied.
His .45 Colt, at close range, was as lethal as a rifle. He quietly blessed his weekly practice as he turned left. If it comes to that, let them get close and go for a quick ambush. Kelly knew all there was to know about ambushes. Suck ’em in and blow ’em away.
The Roadrunner was ten yards behind now, and its driver was wondering what to do next.
That’s the hard part, isn’t it? Kelly thought for his pursuer. You can get close as you want, but the other guy is still surrounded by a ton of metal. What are you going to do now? Ram me, maybe?
No, the other driver wasn’t a total fool. Sitting on the rear bumper was the trailer hitch, and ramming would have driven it right through the Roadrunner’s radiator. Too bad.
The Roadrunner made a move to the right. Kelly saw its headlights rock backwards as the driver floored his big V-8, but being in front helped. Kelly snapped the wheel to the right to block. He immediately learned that the other driver didn’t have the stomach to hurt his car. He heard tires squeal as the Roadrunner braked down to avoid a collision. Don’t want to scratch that red paint, do we? Good news for a change! Then the Roadrunner snapped left, but Kelly covered that move also. It was like sailboats in a tacking duel, he realized.
“Kelly, what’s happening?” Pam asked, her voice cracking on every word.
His reply was in the same calm voice he’d used for the past few minutes. “What’s happening is that they’re not very smart.”
“That’s Billy’s car—he loves to race.”
“Billy, eh? Well. Billy likes his car a little too much. If you want to hurt somebody, you ought to be willing to—” Just to surprise them, Kelly stomped on his brakes. The Scout nose-dived, giving Billy a really good look at the chromed trailer hitch. Then Kelly accelerated again, watching the Roadrunner’s reaction. Yeah, he wants to follow close, but I can intimidate him real easy, and he won’t like that. He’s probably a proud little fuck.
There, that’s how I do it.
Kelly decided to go for a soft kill. No sense getting things complicated. Still, he knew that he had to play this one very carefully and very smart. His brain started measuring angles and distances.
Kelly hit his accelerator too hard taking a corner. It almost made him spin out, but he’d planned for that and only botched the recovery enough to make his driving look sloppy to Billy, who was doubtless impressed with his own abilities. The Roadrunner used its cornering and wide tires to close the distance and hold formation on Kelly’s starboard-quarter. A deliberate collision now could throw the Scout completely out of control. The Roadrunner held the better hand now, or so its driver thought.
Okay . . .
Kelly couldn’t turn right now. Billy had blocked that. So he turned hard left, taking a street through a wide strip of vacant lots. Some highway would be built here. The houses had been cleared off, and the basements filled in with dirt, and the night’s rain had turned that to mud.
Kelly turned to look at the Roadrunner. Uh-oh. The right-side passenger window was coming down. That meant a gun, sure as hell. Cutting this a little close, Kelly . . . But that, he realized instantly, could be made to help. He let them see his face, staring at the Roadrunner, mouth open now, fear clearly visible. He stood on the brakes and turned hard right. The Scout bounded over the half-destroyed curb, obviously a maneuver of panic. Pam screamed with the sudden jolt.
The Roadrunner had better power, its driver knew, better tires, and better brakes, and the driver had excellent reflexes, all of which Kelly had noted and was now counting on. His braking maneuver was covered and nearly matched by the Roadrunner, which then mimicked his turn, also bouncing over the crumbling cement of an eradicated neighborhood, following the Scout across what had recently been a block of homes, falling right into the trap Kelly had sprung. The Roadrunner made it about seventy feet.
Kelly had already downshifted. The mud was a good eight inches deep, and there was the off-chance that the Scout might get stuck momentarily, but the odds were heavily against that. He felt his car slow, felt the tires sink a few inches into the gooey surface, but then the big, coarsely treaded tires bit and started pulling again. Yeah. Only then did he turn around.
The headlights told the story. The Roadrunner, already low-slung for cornering paved city streets, yawed wildly to the left as its tires spun on the gelatinous surface, and when the vehicle slowed, their spinning merely dug wet holes. The headlights sank rapidly as the car’s powerful engine merely excavated its own grave. Steam rose instantly when the hot engine block boiled off some standing water.
The race was over.
Three men got out of the car and just stood there, uncomfortable to have mud on their shiny punk shoes, looking at the way their once-clean car sat in the mud like a weary sow hog. Whatever nasty plans they’d had, had been done in by a little rain and dirt. Nice to know I haven’t lost it yet, Kelly thought.
Then they looked up to where he was, thirty yards away.
“You dummies!” he called through the light rain. “See ya ‘round, assholes!” He started moving again, careful, of course, to keep his eyes on them. That’s what had won him the race, Kelly told himself. Caution, brains, experience. Guts, too, but Kelly dismissed that thought after allowing himself just the tiniest peek at it. Just a little one. He nursed the Scout back onto a strip of pavement, upshifted, and drove off, listening to the little clods of mud thrown by his tires into the wheel wells.
“You can get up now, Pam. We won’t be seeing them for a while.”
Pam did that, looking back to see Billy and his Roadrunner. The sight of him so close made her face go pale again. “What did you do?”
“I just let them chase me into a place that I selected,” Kelly explained. “That’s a nice car for running the street, but not so good for dirt.”
Pam smiled for him, showing bravery she didn’t feel at the moment, but completing the story just as Kelly would have told it to a friend. He checked his watch. Another hour or so until shift change at the police station. Billy and his friends would be stuck there for a long time. The smart move was to find a quiet place to wait. Besides, Pam looked like she needed a little calming down. He drove for a little while, then, finding an area with no major street activity, he parked.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“That was scary,” she replied, looking down and shaking badly.
“Look, we can go right back to the boat and—”
“No! Billy raped me . . . and killed Helen. If I don’t stop him, he’ll just keep doing it to people I know.” The words were as much to persuade herself as him, Kelly knew. He’d seen it before. It was courage, and it went part and parcel with fear. It was the thing that drove people to accomplish missions, and also the thing that selected those missions for them. She’d seen the darkness, and finding the light, she had to extend its glow to others.
“Okay, but after we tell Frank about it, we get you the hell out of Dodge City.”
“I’m okay,” Pam said, lying, knowing he saw the lie, and ashamed of it because she didn’t grasp his intimate understanding for her feelings of the moment.
You really are, he wanted to tell her, but she hadn’t learned about those things yet. And so he asked a question: “How many other girls?”
“Doris, Xantha, Paula, Maria, and Roberta . . . they’re all like me, John. And Helen . . . when they killed her, they made us watch.”
“Well, with a little luck you can do something about that, honey.” He put his arm around her, and after a time the shaking stopped.
“I’m thirsty,” she said.
“There’s a cooler on the backseat.”
Pam smiled. “That’s right.” She turned in the seat to reach for a Coke—and her body suddenly went rigid. She gasped, and Kelly’s skin got that all-too-familiar unwelcome feeling, like an electric charge running along its surface. The danger feeling.
“Kelly!” Pam screamed. She was looking towards the car’s left rear. Kelly was already reaching for his gun, turning his body as he did so, but it was too late. and part of him already knew it. The outraged thought went through his mind that he’d erred badly, fatally, but he didn’t know how, and there was no time to figure it out because before he could reach his gun, there was a flash of light and an impact on his head, followed by darkness.