Bad Guys

5

THE DRIVER OF THE ANNIHILATOR must not have suspected anyone was following him, because he wasn’t booting it up Garvin Avenue. Lawrence Jones hung several car lengths back as we traveled along behind the big, hulking vehicle. The SUV’s brake lights came on and it slowed, turning right onto Belvenia.

“He didn’t signal,” I said. “Can’t you get him for that? Then we don’t even have to worry about Brentwood’s.”

Lawrence ignored me. He swung the wheel hard to the right as we turned the corner. The SUV drove up Belvenia, then took a left, again without signaling.

“He’s going on to Wilson,” Lawrence said. “I’m hoping maybe he’s decided to call it a night, will head home, we can get some idea where he’s come from, who he is. You got your notepad there?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you make out that plate at all?”

I squinted. It was impossible. “No.”

The Annihilator hung another right, then a left two blocks on. “Oh dear oh dear oh dear,” Lawrence said softly. There was an almost cheerful lilt to his voice, but I had a feeling it was masking some concern.

“What?”

“I think he’s onto us. He’s just driving around randomly, watching to see whether we go where he goes. What we need is another car, two guys with phones, trade off following him so he doesn’t get so suspicious. Fuck.”

“Maybe he hasn’t made us. Maybe he’s just killing time, waiting to go back to Brentwood’s.”

As the Annihilator passed under some bright streetlights, Lawrence peered intently at the vehicle. “Trying to see past that tinting, get some idea how many people might be in there.”

“Those windows are pretty dark,” I said. “You can’t see- Hold on, he’s pulling over to the curb.”

The Annihilator slowed and eased over to the right.

“I’m just gonna have to drive on by,” Lawrence said. “Don’t look over or do anything suspicious.”

“What if I mooned them?”

Lawrence guided the old Buick past the black SUV, which was now fully up against the curb, lights extinguished. It would have been nice to slow down and see how many people got out, but it was clear Lawrence didn’t want us drawing attention to ourselves that way.

Once we were a couple of car lengths past it, I glanced back. No doors were opening, no one was getting out. The Annihilator’s lights came back on, and the truck slipped back into the lane behind us.

I was still turned in my seat, taking in our new situation, when Lawrence barked at me, “Eyes front! Don’t look!”

I shifted back, tried to get a glimpse of the SUV in the mirror on the passenger door.

“This is not a good thing,” Lawrence said. “Not a good thing at all. I hate it when I get made. Absolutely fucking sloppy. You want to know what they’re doing right now?”

“What?”

“They’re taking down my license plate, that’s what they’re doing right now.”

“That’s bad, right?”

“Normally, it would be, but I’ve got bogus plates on this car, so it’s not that big a problem.”

“Uh, isn’t that illegal, Lawrence?”

He had only a moment to glance at me and grin. “Which Hardy Boy are you? Frank or Joe?”

I decided not to respond to that, but go on the attack myself. “So what’s your plan now, Sherlock?”

“We just drive along, like we don’t know who he is and don’t care, and maybe he starts thinking that maybe he was wrong, that we weren’t following him.”

As the Annihilator gained on us, its raised headlights shone through the back windows of the Buick, reflecting off the rearview mirror and nearly blinding Lawrence. “Fucking SUVs,” he muttered. He was on edge, and it had to be taking every bit of resolve he had not to tromp on the accelerator and leave that lumbering vehicle in our dust.

“We’ll just keep going straight up Wilson,” he said quietly. And so we did, driving at the speed limit, a couple of guys out for a cruise around the town. The Annihilator kept pace behind us, barely a car length, those annoying lights illuminating everything inside the Buick.

“Okay, moment-of-truth time,” Lawrence said, put on his blinker, and turned right down a side street, nice and proper, like he was delivering, instead of me, his grandmother back to the nursing home.

The SUV stayed with us, rounding the corner without slowing down. I didn’t want to admit this to Lawrence, but I was starting to feel just a tad apprehensive. And by apprehensive, I mean scared.

There was a deep throaty roar behind us, and the lights from the Annihilator grew more massive. The vehicle was only inches behind our bumper. Then there was the sound of a horn, a deep, resonating blast like a ship pulling into the harbor, that I could feel in my bones.

“The guy’s out of his fucking mind,” Lawrence said. He hit the gas and we pulled away from the truck. We heard another roar as our pursuer gunned his engine.

“I think he wants to drive right over us,” I said.

“If he gets a chance, he will,” Lawrence said. “Hang on.”

He yanked the wheel hard to the right, sending us down a side street. The car lurched wildly and all four tires skidded across the pavement, but we made the turn and barreled our way up the street. The SUV, with its high center of gravity, couldn’t navigate the turn at such a high speed, but this didn’t seem to trouble the driver all that much, who steered the beast over someone’s lawn, plowing through a row of hedges and a small fence, and flattening a bicycle that had been left out on a driveway.

“If you had a chance to pull over anywhere,” I said, “you could just let me out.”

And then I heard a popping noise. Pop-pop-pop.

Lawrence said nothing, just kept both hands gripped on the wheel, swinging hard to the right, then to the left, glancing for split seconds at his rearview mirror.

Pop. Pop.

“Lawrence,” I said, somewhat hesitantly, as the Annihilator, half a dozen car lengths back, caught the back half of a parked motorcycle and sent it flying across a sidewalk.

“Yeah?”

“I hate to ask, but what are those popping noises I keep hearing?”

Rather than answer my question directly, Lawrence told me to open the glove compartment. “There’s something in there we need. You’ll know it when you see it.”

I took out a customized auto-club map detailing the route to Florida. “Triptik?”

“Keep looking.”

Behind several maps, tissue packets, a roll of masking tape, and ownership papers, I came across a small handgun.

“Actually,” said Lawrence, “given that I’m driving, it might be better if you used it.”

This was not a good idea. The last time I’d had a gun in my hand, I’d fatally shot a desk. “This really isn’t my area of expertise, Lawrence,” I said. “I’m not particularly adept where guns are concerned. Plus, there’s the nature of my role here. I’m really more of an observer, not a participant, so-”

And then the back window of the Buick blew out.

“Jesus!” Lawrence said, turning so hard this time the g-forces jammed me against my door. “Hand me the fucking gun!”

I handed it over. He was still steering with both hands, but there was little more than the thumb of his right hand around the wheel, his fingers gripped around the gun.

“You ever hear about how to get away from a crocodile?” he asked. He was shouting now. With the back window gone, it was a lot noisier in the car, especially with the Annihilator bearing down on us.

“No,” I said.

“Well, they’re bigger and stronger and faster than people, but they can’t corner worth shit. So if you’ve got one coming after you, you keep running in circles. They can’t navigate the turns. Right now, we’re being followed by a crocodile, and we’re coming up on the perfect place to lead him in circles.”

Up ahead, a sign for the Midtown Center. The largest mall in this part of the city. As the mall’s west-end anchor store, a Sears, came into view, so did the massive, entirely empty, parking lot.

Our Buick screeched around the entrance into the lot. Again, the black Annihilator missed the turn, but rode right up over the curbs, its fat wheels rolling over them like they were Kit Kat bars. “Here comes the fun part,” Lawrence said, using the wide-open spaces of the mall lot to do huge circles. “What I’m gonna do,” he shouted, “is come up around behind him, and then we’ll give him a taste of his own medicine.”

“What do you mean, own medicine?”

“He took a few shots at us, now we’ll return the favor.”

“How are you going to shoot and drive at the same time?”

“If you can’t handle a gun, surely you can handle a fucking steering wheel.”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“Does steering compromise your journalistic integrity, too?”

So I leaned over in the seat, ready to grip the wheel whenever Lawrence wanted me to.

The Annihilator was trying hard to keep up with us, but the SUV was leaning precariously. I wondered if maybe this was Lawrence’s real plan, to trick our pursuer into flipping his own vehicle over. If it was, I approved.

But the driver seemed to know what he was doing. He wasn’t pushing the truck to extremes. I glanced back and saw a leather-jacketed arm hanging out the window. The hand was clutching a weapon that looked a lot bigger than the gun I’d handed to Lawrence.

The Buick lurched and its tires squealed. A hubcap went flying off, spinning across the pavement toward the Sears. But Lawrence seemed to know what he was doing, too. We were now actually coming up around behind the Annihilator.

“Okay,” he said. “Hold the wheel.”

I gripped it like I was holding on for dear life, allowing Lawrence to switch the gun to his left hand, get his arm and shoulder out the window, and start firing.

He got off two shots, but the Annihilator was bearing to the right, so he wrested the wheel back from me and changed course.

“Again!” he said, and I grabbed the wheel as he leaned out the window, firing the gun twice more. “Shit!” he shouted, wind blowing into his face.

“Did you hit him?” I asked as he took control of the steering wheel again.

“I don’t think so. And even if I did, the thing’s a fucking elephant.”

Ahead, the Annihilator abruptly turned, but where it was headed didn’t make any sense. The SUV was speeding to the far end of the lot where the ground sloped steeply upward to a road that was actually a ramp that led from a city street that circled the mall, and on to the highway.

“What’s he doing?” I said. “He’s got nowhere to go.”

The Annihilator’s brake lights came on only briefly, as if the driver had lightly tapped the pedal, and then the truck drove off the end of the parking lot and up the embankment, all four tires kicking up sod and dirt, its headlight beams dancing in the night sky like a searchlight. The vehicle bucked and jerked as it climbed, the embankment clearly a challenge even for an Annihilator.

“He’s going for the highway,” Lawrence said. “He’s creating his own shortcut, the son of a bitch.”

The Annihilator crested the embankment and hung a right onto the ramp, then, with another roar of its massive engine, sped off in the direction of the highway. There was no way Lawrence’s old, two-wheel-drive Buick could even begin to scale the hill. And by the time we’d wound our way out of the mall lot, onto the street, and found that ramp, our friends in the Annihilator would be home, tucked into their beds.

Lawrence brought the car to a stop, and neither of us spoke for a moment as we listened to the motor idle and tick, as though trying to catch its breath.

“Fuck me,” said Lawrence.

“I take it that’s not an actual invitation,” I said.