Another car was parked a little way behind the Golf.?
It was sleek and black, the big Mercedes logo on the grill gleaming in the fog like a malevolent smile.? A man leaned against the side of the luxury sedan, idling there, like he had all the time in the world.? He had a toothpick in his mouth.? He was a very big man.? Even in this light, Smoke could see his grin.
His voice was slow and thick like syrup.? "I been waiting for you fellows," he said.? "Thought maybe you were having a little, how should I put it, a little rendezvous back in there.? A little romance."
Smoke's mind raced.
Shit.? It was a setup.? Pamela was dead.?
Run Lola.? RUN!
Smoke would tie them up as long as he could.? He looked at the water.? If he dove in now, it would take them a while to fish him out.? If only he made it that far.?
Then Cruz drew his gun.?
But he wasn't even looking at Smoke.? He was looking right at Moss.? He slipped around the side of the Golf, gun in hand, eyes never wavering.
"Dugan, get in the car."?
Moss barely moved.? "Shit Cruz," he said.? "What are you doing, son?? The game is up for you.? Don't you know that by now?? If you had left town this morning?" Moss made a gesture like maybe yes, maybe no, "you might have lived a while longer.? But you're still here.? That was dumb."
"Dugan!? Get in the fucking car!"
Moss waved grandly.? "That's right, Dugan.? Get in the car.? Jump in the water.? It don't fucking matter.? The show's over anyhow."
"Moss, I told you this morning I'd kill you if I saw you again."
"Yet here I am."
Smoke climbed into the passenger seat of the car.? Cruz climbed into the driver's seat, gun pointed out the door.? He fumbled the key into the ignition and started it, gun still pointed at Moss.? The engine burst into life.?
"Give it up, Cruz.? You're dead, Fred."
Two sets of headlights came on at the far end of the parking lot, blocking the entrance and exit.? Fog swirled in the lights.?
"See?? I don't even need to draw my gun."? The satisfaction on Moss's face was that of a man who hated to tell you he told you so.? "Now, whyn't you turn that car off and let's go?? You boys got a long night ahead of you."
Cruz fired his gun into that satisfaction, two, three, four times.
And missed.
He hit the gas and slammed the door in the same motion, even as windows on the Mercedes shattered and Moss hit the deck.? Smoke was thrown against the window as Cruz zoomed toward the two cars blocking the way.? Then Moss was up and jumping into the Mercedes.
The two other cars came straight at them.?
Cruz was steady, driving with one hand, gaining speed.? He aimed the gun through the windshield at the oncoming disaster.
It was the end game, the final, apocalyptic, juvenile game of chicken.
"Go left!" Smoke screamed.? "Go left!? There!"
Cruz glanced left, toward where Smoke pointed.? He shrugged.? "It's an alley.? We'll never fit."? The headlights ahead were blinding.
"I live here, you dumb shit!? Go left!"
Cruz veered left, damn near a ninety-degree turn, and Smoke was slammed against the window again.? The little car plowed down the tiny airway between the office to the Peaks Island Ferry and a boat freight office that served the islands.? The Golf scraped both sides against the brick walls.? Sparks flew past Smoke's eyes.
On the other end of the alley, there was a small loading dock and then a canal.
"Right turn!? Hard right!"
The car veered right, nearly putting Smoke in Cruz's lap.? They zoomed along the boardwalk toward the street.? This was where the passengers would line up to wait for their boats.? A metal support beam loomed ahead.? Cruz grazed it, shredding the right side of the car.?
"Watch it!" Smoke said.?
There were stairs just ahead, three or four of them, where teenage boys often jumped their skateboards in the warm weather.?
The car leapt the stairs, throwing Dugan and Cruz around the cabin.? They crossed the sidewalk then barreled out onto Commercial Street.?
"Left.? Left turn here," Smoke said.? He glanced back.? Nobody had come the way they did.?
He looked to his right.?
Here came the bad guys, piling out of the parking lot in three cars, coming hard, skidding as they turned left out of the entrance, their headlights piercing the fog.? The first headlights shone blue - the Xenon headlamps of a luxury car, a Mercedes.
"I thought you said Moss had Pamela," Smoke said.
Cruz made a face.? "I lied.? I do that sometimes.? Pamela's back at our hotel room, watching TV."
"Our hotel room?"
Smoke hadn't seen Cruz look sheepish.? Not until this moment.
"It's a long story," Cruz said.?
?
* * *
??
Moss held the wheel lightly, with confidence, even with glee.?
"Hold on Lola!" he shouted, maybe loud enough for her to hear it in the trunk.? "Hold on, girl!"
This was what it was about.? Hell son, who cares if they missed 'em in the parking lot?? That fireworks show alone as the Golf scraped through the alley was worth the price of admission.? Now it was on and he, Moss, was gonna run them down like dogs.
He had the lead car.? Sticks and them had been momentarily befuddled when Cruz took that left.? They had come straight on, their momentum carrying them.? Not Moss.? Moss had already been going the other way.
He poured on the gas, foot not even to the floor.
The tiny VW came to him like it was on a fast moving conveyor belt.? Up their ass in no time!? This was driving.? This was the car for it.?
He checked the rearview.? Sticks and them were coming along, coming just fine.
The Golf made a sharp right onto a narrow, cobblestone street.? That little car could turn.? It had some zip.? Moss made the turn, a little slower, a little squishier in the big sedan.? But still good, still responsive.? All right, a rumble uphill on the cobblestones, drunken geeks leaping for the sidewalks.
"Out of the way, fuckers."
If anything, the Golf sped up.? Moss followed suit.? Lights, parked cars, and faces zipped by.? Moss's eyes narrowed.? His thoughts came in madcap shorthand.
Headlights in the rear.? The boys still with me.?
A right onto a two way street.?
More wandering dinks, eyes gone WIDE, jumping for cover.?
Lots of bars on this strip.?
A woman screamed.?
The Golf zipped around a double-parked car, into the oncoming lane.? A second later, Moss clipped the fucking thing, spun it, drove it onto the sidewalk like a linebacker driving a quarterback to the turf.
Headlights, blaring horns.
Shit.?
The Mercedes was OK.? Still rolling, headlight gone, side all scraped to shit.?
THIS IS NOT A WORK CAR!
Aw fuck.? Fuck it.?
A high-pitched keening sounded in his head, like wind whistling through a mountain pass.? It rose and rose and rose, a long ululating wail, then lowered and resolved itself into something more familiar.? Sirens.? Moss's head swiveled, looking everywhere at once.? Looking for the cherry and blue.?
Nothing yet.? Good.
The Golf screamed left.? Rammed a parked car, bounced off, kept going.?
Moss did the same.? Rammed the same fucking car.
The Mercedes had a pre-crash safety system.? Moss had tripped it.? The driver's seat moved up into crash position.? Automatically.? All by itself.???
"Don't deploy!" he screamed at the air bags.? "Don't you dare fucking deploy!"
Where're my boys?? He checked the mirror.?
Still there.
Beating that fucking car senseless as they came around behind him.? That thing was pulp.? Some dink had parked too close to the corner.?
It was a long, impossibly narrow street.? Low slung, three story buildings.? Charming.? Historic.? Parked cars all along, a
wall of parked cars, a blur of chrome and reflected light.? More eyes, more faces, frozen O's of horror.
Moss floored it.
The Golf was right there.?
Some kind of building looming up ahead at the end of this street.? Official looking, a clock tower rising into the mist.? City Hall, the State House, who the fuck knew?
A sharp turn coming, had to be.?
Time to end it.
Moss pulled his gun.
His left window was gone.? He stuck his hand out there, his left, not his best gun hand.? Intersection coming.??
"Go left assholes."
They did, not even braking at all.? The car leaned to the right and nearly rolled, the turn was so sharp.? Hand it to Cruz - no fear on these turns.? Moss roared into the intersection.? Two wide lanes, the steps to City Hall dead ahead.???
The Golf came across his left side field of vision.???
He fired, bang bang bang bang.
Windows shattered, a tire burst.? The Golf kept going.
Time slowed.? One more shot.? BANG.
The rear windshield shattered.
One bang too many.?
The building filled his windshield.? He swung the wheel, skidded, lost control.? He felt the Mercedes go sideways over the curb, ripping his two right tires off their axles.? The car leapt, hit ground, spun hard and crashed backwards into the stately front stairs of City Hall.?
All around him, the airbags exploded.?
Smoke everywhere.? Was there a fire? ?No, it was airbag dust.? Talcum powder.? Corn starch.? Whatever they used nowadays.? Moss hadn't been in a serious car crash in five years, and they still had this same shitty dust?? He breathed the dust, hearing the sirens close now.? He shook his head to clear the cobwebs.? He glanced out the window.
Sticks and the boys roared around the corner in their two cars, leaning hard, holding it, making it.? Not too fast, but the Golf was down at least one tire.? Maybe he had hit somebody in there, maybe not.? No time to wonder.?
Gotta go.
He pushed the door open.? At first it wouldn't go, but he forced it.? He popped the trunk and limped around to the back of the car.?
Jesus, that crash kind of hurt.?
"Hey baby, you alive in there?"
She was.? Her head was cut, bleeding.? She had been knocked unconscious, but she was breathing.? He lifted her dead weight out of the trunk, groaning just a bit, then hoisted her onto his shoulder.? He limped out into the middle of the street.?
Headlights coming.
He stood right in their way, waving frantically with his free arm, hardly noticing he was waving a gun in the air.? The car screeched to a halt.? Terrified EYES looked out at him.? King Kong with the hot babe hanging off him.? The car was a little silver Ford Focus.? Not too much in the zip department, but she'll do.? He gimped over to the driver's side.? Four people in there, kids really.? The dink at the wheel had a goatee.?
Come on.
He gave them the maw end of the gun.?
Nothing but EYES looking down a big black cave.? Hell, he'd been there himself a few times.? Couldn't blame them.?
"Folks, get the fuck out," he said.?
?
* * *
?
Cruz drove down the pedestrian mall, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.? Smoke glanced over at him - no time to think about the sudden turn of events, no sense in pondering the new alliances.? It was he and Cruz now, Cruz and Smoke.
People scattered ahead of them.? The car veered in and out of park benches and garbage cans.? Smoke looked back.? There were two cars still back there, doing the same sort of weird, slow-motion slalom.?
Pamela's car shuddered and made a terrible noise, one that didn't bode well.
Fa-LUMP, fa-LUMP, fa-LUMP.
It sounded like a man running along with the rubber sole of his sneaker coming off, slapping the pavement every time he took a step.? It felt a lot worse than that.? It felt like the wheel was about to come off.
"Make a right down here at the bottom."
Cruz did so, going much slower than before, but the Golf barely held the turn.
Headlights.? Cruz veered, then went around.
"Jesus!"
"I forgot to mention - it's one way against us here."
On the straightaway, the Golf did a little better.? But the other two cars took the turn clean.? They were right behind.? There were sirens everywhere now.? Smoke caught a glimpse of the street parallel and a little below them.? Blue lights - just blue for Maine cops, Smoke knew, no red - going mad over there.? Closing the net.
"We can't get arrested," Cruz said.? "They get us inside, we're dead.? All they gotta do is wait."
"I know," Smoke said.?
Cruz reached inside his pocket.? He pulled out his gun.? "Take this."
Smoke took it.? "What am I going to do with this?"
Cruz nodded backwards.? "Get rid of those guys."
Smoke glanced back at the pursuers.? "You know, when it comes right down to it, I really don't shoot people."?
"I know," Cruz said.? "You just blow them up."
Smoke shrugged.?
They zoomed through an intersection.? The two cars were right behind them.? Smoke caught the lights in the corner of his eyes as they passed through.? A second later, police lights appeared back there.? A whole series of cop cars made the turn onto the street behind them.? The sirens filled his ears.?
Cruz scanned the empty streets ahead.? "Where are we going?"
"For the bridge," Smoke said.? "Isn't that what you said?"
"Cape Elizabeth," Cruz agreed.?
They made a left, then a right, staying on side streets.? It looked like they had their own parade behind them.? High Street was up ahead, a major thoroughfare, three lanes of traffic coming one way off the bridge.? Even at this time of night, it was bound to be crowded.? Worse, it'd be crowded, but moving fast.??
"Okay, here's where it gets interesting," Smoke said.? "This left coming up, it's the way to the bridge.? But everything's coming at you."
Cruz made the left without slowing down.? Again, the car leaned, skidded across the lanes, but he held it.? Headlights came, a line of headlights, horns blaring.? Cruz plunged straight at it, jaw set.?
They plowed through the traffic, oncoming cars scattering like leaves, demolishing parked cars, jumping the sidewalk on either side.
Behind them, the bad guys did the same.?
"Follow it around to the right," Smoke said.? "Good."
It was a long straightaway to the bridge, cars coming down off it in droves.? Cruz plowed through like a boat cutting the waves.? Smoke began to get that confident feeling - that humming, buzzing, we're gonna do this thing feeling he used to get right before a job.? But then beneath all the noise - the horns blaring, the tires screaming, the Golf fa-LUMPING, and the sirens sirens sirens howling, he began to hear another sound.? It was familiar, a sound he associated with something unpleasant.
Over and over it repeated, endless, insistent.
Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang.?
It sounded like the bell they rang at a train crossing to tell you that the road was about to close.? They always sounded that bell just before the safety arms came down.
They passed the approach to the bridge.? Now they were about to go up and over.?
Clang, clang, clang, clang.?
Shit.? It was the bridge.? They were raising the drawbridge.
"Wait.? Don't go up there."
Cruz glanced at him.
"Cruz!"?
Too late, they were going up.
"They're closing the bridge."
Cruz peered ahead.? In the fog, the red lights on the safety arms blinked frantically.? They started coming down.? The bell sounded.? Clang, clang, clang?
"We can make it," Cruz said.?
The Golf's engine roared as Cruz floored the gas.? The car sped up.? Smoke felt the g-forces pushing him against the seat.? Underneath them, the damn thing
fa-LUMPED like demons were inside, pounding to escape.???
"We will," Cruz said.? "We'll make it."?
It sounded like Cruz was trying to convince himself.
The arms were already down.? Behind the arms, the bridge was going up very fast, growing, growing, becoming impossibly huge, a giant gray monster.?
"Duck!"
They burst through the safety arm, the windshield imploding onto them, tiny nuggets of safety glass spraying everywhere, the wrenching squeal of twisting metal in their ears.? The safety arm bent and ripped the roof off the car.
The bridge was everything, a gigantic wall in front of them.
They skidded as Cruz must have slammed on the brakes.?
Here came that wall.?
They crashed, air bags deploying, the car bouncing backward.
Smoke sat stunned, air bag dust all around him.
"Are you all right?" he heard Cruz say.
He turned to look at Cruz.?
"Have you lost your fucking mind?"?
?
* * *???
?
"Look," Cruz said to the old man.? "If you're all right, if you can still move, then we gotta go."? Cruz himself felt okay.? The drive had been exhilarating.? He had enjoyed his brief glimpse of Moss going across that sidewalk.
But now they were out of time.?
"Dugan."
"Yeah, yeah.? I'm okay.? But where are we going?"
"I don't know yet."
Cruz got out, then ran around to the passenger side and helped Dugan out.? The car was wrecked.? Beyond wrecked.? The windshield was gone.? The roof was shredded open.? Steam poured out of the demolished front end.? Cruz supported Dugan as they walked over toward the edge of the bridge.? Behind them, the gangsters pulled up in the two tail cars.? Far back, the cops were coming in their cruisers.? It was a nice move, jamming through the oncoming traffic.? The cops had to fall away rather than endanger the citizenry.?
"I can't go over there," Dugan said now.
"Over where?"
"Over to the edge."
"Why?"
"The height.? It makes me dizzy."
Despite himself, despite everything that was happening, Cruz suppressed a smile.? "What's the matter, Smoke?? You afraid of heights?"
The old man's answer was simple enough.? "Yeah."
Cruz looked out at all that night and fog.? Six stories below, it had to be that far, a massive oil tanker was coming along from further up the harbor.? He could see its lights, its absolute monstrous size, approaching in the gloom.? He felt a momentary twinge.? They hadn't raised the bridge to stop him - there really was a ship coming through.?
"We live and die out here," he told Dugan.? "And the world doesn't care.? It just goes on about its business."