A Catskill Eagle

CHAPTER 37

THE ROAD WAS SMOOTH ENOUGH, IF YOU WERE riding on a springy upholstered car seat. If you were lying on your stomach on the metal roof of a van on top of steel rack ridges, you tended to wish for smoother. The van drove east through the uninterrupted night, following the tunnel of its headlights. We jolted along atop it, holding on to the roof rack, keeping our faces turned away from the rush of air that boiled up over the hood and windshield of the van. There was no other sound. We could hear nothing from the van beneath us.

“Susan wasn’t there we could start shooting down through the roof,” Hawk said. “Ain’t but a thin piece of sheet metal.”

He had his mouth close to my ear.

I answered him the same way. “Don’t want to hit the driver, either,” I said. “Having him roll this thing over would not be in our long-term interests.”

“They got to stop sometime,” Hawk said.

“And there’s six bodyguards, plus Costigan,” I said.

“Good idea,” Hawk said. “Getting up here. We no better off than we was if we tried to take them back there.”

“But it gives me time to think,” I said.

“Oh good,” Hawk said.

Now and then a car would come the other way, heading west in the dark, and its headlights would sweep over us. But if they saw two guys riding on top of a van they were by before they could react. And what was there to do in the way of reaction?

“How fast you think we’re going,” I said to Hawk.

“Hard to tell. Nothing to compare it to.”

“Probably fifty-five,” I said.

“No reason to go faster. No one’s chasing them. No point getting nabbed for speeding and all the aggravation that might ensue,” I said.

“Ensue,” Hawk said. “We riding on top of a fucking speeding truck with six armed guys in it in the fucking dark and you talking about ensue.”

“I’m going to shoot out a tire,” I said.

“They’ll think the gunshot is just the tire blowing.”

“I hope so,” I said. “And I figure the guy’s a good driver or they wouldn’t have him driving Russell.”

“So he won’t panic and roll the van,” Hawk said. The conversation was slow as we took turns talking into each other’s ear.

“And when he slows down we jump off and get out of sight, and when they all get out to change the tire we make our move.”

“Which is what,” Hawk said.

“We’ll see,” I said. “Hang on to me.”

Hawk held the rack bar with one hand. With his other he took hold of my belt. I twisted out over the edge of the moving van and looked down at the black road rippling by below me. With my left hand I clutched the roof rack, with my right I edged my gun out. I arched myself farther out away from the van, halfway off the roof, held by my grip on the rack and Hawk’s grip on my belt. I struggled to be steady, the muscles in my lower back were cramping. The position was nearly impossible. I tightened up my stomach and strained all the muscles in my body to hold steady and aimed and shot out the rear tire on the driver’s side. Almost at once the van began to swerve, the decompressed tire thumped loudly and the van heeled over toward the driver’s side as it lost its level. Brakes squealed. I was concentrating all I had at not dropping my gun. I could feel myself slide a little farther out as the van swerved again and then the brakes caught and it slowed, still swerving, and bumped off the road onto the shoulder. Hawk let go of my belt and I fell headfirst off the van and hit the ground and held on to the gun and rolled twenty feet down the road shoulder, into the ditch that ran beside it. Hawk landed silently and in two steps was beside me. We scuttled along the ditch, on all fours as the van careened to a halt, on the shoulder. There were weeds in the ditch.

We were ten feet down the ditch from them in the dark when the driver’s door opened and the driver got out. He walked back and looked at the blown tire, then he walked back to the door.

“It’s blown, Russell. The jack and the spare are in the back under the luggage.”

Someone in the van said something we couldn’t hear. Then the side door of the van opened and Russell got out. He went back and looked at the tire.

“Only flat on one side,” he said. He walked back to the open door. “Okay,” he said, “everybody out. Got to jack up the truck and change a tire.”

Susan leaned out, took Russell’s hand, and stepped onto the highway.

“Leave the guns in the van,” Russell said. “Don’t want some state cop to come by to help us and see six guys with machine guns.”

The bodyguards piled out of the van and stood along the highway looking at the van.

The driver went back to the rear door and opened it.

“Somebody gonna help me?” he said.

“Curley,” Russell said, “you help him. Rest of us will check out the heavens.”

He stood beside Susan. “Like those stars, baby? Romantic, huh?”

Susan didn’t say anything. She stood quietly beside him. The four bodyguards stood near them at the front of the van, while Curley and the driver unloaded the luggage.

I touched Hawk’s arm and pointed toward the two unloaders. He nodded and moved back down the ditch soundlessly. I edged in the other direction so that I was ahead of the van. When they finished with the luggage, the driver deployed the jack and the spare, while Curley squatted with the lug wrench and loosened the flat. The driver jacked up the van and then squatted beside Curley while both of them removed the bad tire. As they were in the midst of this Hawk came silently out of the ditch. He hit Curley across the base of the skull with the barrel of his gun and kicked the driver in the face. Curley’s shout of pain turned everyone toward him and I scrambled out of the ditch behind the others and put my forearm under Russell’s chin and my gun hard into his ear. From the back of the van Hawk, in a half crouch, aimed his gun at the remaining guards.

“Susan,” I said, “step away from the group.”

“My God,” Susan said.

I said it harder. “Step away.” She did.

“You four,” I said. “Facedown, on the ground, hands locked behind your head.”

The four bodyguards looked at me without moving, Hawk shot the one closest to Russell. The bullet hit him and spun him half around and he bumped into the van and slid to the ground leaving a smear of blood on the side of the van.

“On the goddamned ground,” I said and the three guards still standing dropped to the ground, facedown, and put their hands behind their heads.

“Spenser,” Russell said. It wasn’t a question.

“You finish the tire,” I said to the driver.

“I’m hurt,” he said. He was sitting on the ground with his face in his hands.

“Change it,” Hawk said softly and the driver squirmed around and got to his knees and started on the tire. Curley was on his face with his hands pressed over his ears as if he had a headache that any sound would pierce. He rocked slightly as he lay there.

No one spoke while the driver changed the tire. I could feel Russell’s breathing, steady as we pressed together. And the pulse in his neck was fast against my forearm.

The driver finished.

I said to Hawk, “Check the lugs.”

Holding the lug wrench in one hand, and keeping the gun leveled with the other, Hawk squatted on his haunches and tested each of the lugs.

“They tight,” he said.

“Okay,” I said to Russell, “down, hands behind the head. Like the guards.”

“No,” he said. “I won’t lie down for you.”

He was wearing a gun tucked back of his right hipbone. I could feel it as I pressed against him. I moved my left arm from under his chin and reached around and unsnapped the holster and took the gun. It was a .32 Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special. With my gun still screwed in his ear, I pitched the .32 backhand into the darkness behind me.

“Susan, get in the van.”

She didn’t move.

“Suze,” I said.

She went to the van. And got in.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to drive, and Hawk’s going to lean out the side door and stare at you with one of the Uzis and if you move while we’re in sight he’ll kill you.”

I stepped away from Russell. And got into the driver’s seat of the van. Russell stared at me and I looked back and our eyes locked. And held. It was a look of hatred and knowledge and it held unwavering while Hawk got in the backseat and picked up an Uzi. He held it level out the door while I put the van in drive by feel, still with my eyes locked on Russell, and took the emergency brake off and the van began to roll. And then I tromped on the accelerator and the van surged back up onto the pavement and we were gone.

The silence as we drove east on Route 44 was as strange as I can remember. Hawk and Susan were in back and I drove. Hawk seemed to be resting, his head back, his eyes closed, his arms folded over his chest. Susan sat erect, her hands in her lap, looking straight ahead.

At Avon I turned north on Route 202 toward Springfield and at the intersection of Route 309 in a town called Simsbury I pulled over to the side. It was three fifteen in the morning. Routes 202 and 309 are the kind that are marked with very thin lines on the road map. Simsbury was rural Connecticut, close enough to Hartford for commuters, but far enough out for horses if you wished.

I glanced back at Susan. She was leaning forward with her face in her hands. She rocked very slightly. I looked back at the road and then adjusted the rearview mirror so I could see her. In the mirror I saw Hawk lean forward and put his hands on each of Susan’s shoulders and pull her up and over toward him.

“You all right,” he said. “You be all right in a while.”

She put her face, still pressed into her hands, against Hawk’s chest and didn’t move. Hawk put his left arm around her and patted her shoulder with his left hand.

“Be all right,” he said. “Be all right.”

My hands on the wheel were wet with sweat.