Panic

5

E van fumbled at the door handles. But he couldn’t get out of the car; the locks were controlled from the front seat. The mesh and glass trapped him.

The young officer hit the pavement, crouching down as he swung open the door. Bald jumped onto the police car’s hood, then roof, pivoted the shotgun in a blur, felled the policeman with two precise blows on the side of the head with the shotgun’s butt stock. The officer crumpled. Bald jumped down from the hood and leveled the shotgun through the driver’s door at Durless, who bled from a gash on his nose.

‘That’s him!’ Evan yelled. ‘The guy from my house!’ He heard Carrie’s voice calling his name, sounding tinny on the dropped phone.

‘Hands where I can see them,’ Bald ordered in a voice of total calm. ‘Don’t be an asshole.’

Durless raised his hands.

‘Unlock Evan from the back.’

‘Durless, he’s the guy!’

Durless threw himself out his door, and Bald vaulted over the cruiser, skidding across the hood. Durless landed on his back on the grass, freeing his service revolver in a smooth yank, firing. He missed. Bald slammed both feet onto Durless’s chest, a brutally efficient blow that purpled Durless’s face. Bald kicked away the service revolver onto the well-trimmed green of the yard.

Bald leaned down, nailed Durless with two sharp blows in the jaw.

It had taken all of ten seconds.

Evan pivoted onto his back, kicked at the window. It was reinforced; the glass held. ‘No need for that,’ Bald said. Evan scrambled off the seat onto the floor.

Bald leaned in the driver’s side, studied the controls, and popped the back door locks.

Evan leaned forward and pushed the passenger-side door open. But Bald already had the driver’s-side door open, the shotgun nestled against Evan’s back. Evan froze.

‘You’re coming with me,’ Bald said.

‘Please, what do you want?’ Evan yelled.

‘It’s for your own safety. Come on.’

Evan was suddenly full of a determination not to go with this man. Bald had dispatched a much younger cop and Durless with shocking ease. The police might have heard the attack over the radio. Or Carrie, she might be calling 911 in Houston and reporting the attack. Or a busybody on this street might be peeking out his window, dialing for help. The cops might arrive at any second. ‘No. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Goddamn it,’ Bald said. ‘I didn’t kill these cops when I could’ve, you think I’m gonna kill you?’

‘Who are you?’ Evan spoke louder. Carrie might hear this conversation. He had to give her information to help him. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘I want goddamned cooperation. You’re dead in a day unless you come with me. I’ll tell you everything. I promise. But you’ve got to come with me.’

‘No! Tell me what this is about. How do you know my mother?’

‘Later.’ Bald seized Evan by the hair and hauled him from the back of the car. Then Bald closed fingers around Evan’s throat with a practiced hand, squeezing on the rope burn. Black circles widened in the air before Evan’s eyes.

Bald jammed the shotgun’s barrel up under Evan’s jaw. ‘I don’t have time to coddle you.’

The barrel was cold against his throat and Evan nodded.

Bald lowered the shotgun, shoved Evan toward his Ford. ‘You drive. You disobey me, I shoot you in the leg. Cripple you for life.’

A passing car slowed – a Lexus SUV, a mom driving, a teenage boy in the passenger seat, staring at the police car in the yard. Bald raised his hand – the one not holding the shotgun – in a friendly wave. The Lexus zoomed away.

‘She’ll call the cops. We got seconds,’ Bald said.

Evan got in the driver’s seat, his hands shaking. Bald slid in next to him. He rested the shotgun so that it aimed at Evan’s thigh.

Evan glimpsed the unconscious officers in the rearview. ‘They’re hurt.’

‘They’re lucky they’re breathing,’ Bald said.

‘Let me check them, be sure they’re all right. Please.’

‘No way. Go,’ Bald said, jabbing Evan with the shotgun. Evan drove the Ford off the curb, roared down Shoal Creek Boulevard.

‘Turn east onto 2222,’ Bald said.

Evan obeyed. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘Listen carefully to me. I’m a good friend of your mom’s and she asked me for help.’

‘I’ve never seen you before.’

‘You don’t know me, but you also don’t know shit about your parents.’

‘You know so much, tell me who killed my mother.’

‘A man named Jargo. Done on his orders.’

‘Why?’ Evan shouted.

‘I can explain everything, once we’re settled. We’re going to a safe house. Turn right here.’

Evan veered south onto another major thoroughfare, Burnet Road. Safe house. A place where the hit men couldn’t find you. Evan thought he’d stepped into a mobster movie. His guts clenched, his chest ached as if it were being wrung from muscle into string. ‘Did you see their faces, can you identify them?’

‘I saw them. Both of them. I don’t know if one is Jargo or if they just work for him.’ Bald glanced through the back of the window.

‘Why would this Jargo kill my mother? Who is he?’

‘The worst man you can imagine. At least the worst I can imagine, and my imagination is pretty twisted-sick.’

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Gabriel.’ Bald softened his tone. ‘If I wanted you dead, I would have shot you back at your house. I’m on your side, I’m the good guy. But you must do what I say. Exactly. Trust me.’

Evan nodded but thought, I don’t know you and I don’t trust you.

‘Do you know where your father is?’ Gabriel asked.

‘Sydney.’

‘No, where he really is.’

Evan shook his head. ‘He’s not in Sydney?’

‘Jargo may already have grabbed your father. Where are the files?’

‘Files? What the hell are you talking about?’ Evan’s voice broke in fury and frustration. He pounded the steering wheel. ‘I don’t have any goddamned stupid files! What do you mean, grabbed my dad? You mean he’s been kidnapped?’

‘Think, Evan. Calm down. Your mother had a set of electronic files that are very important. I need them.’ Gabriel’s voice softened. ‘We need them, you and I. To stop Jargo. To get your dad back safe and sound.’

‘I don’t know anything.’ Tears burned in his eyes. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Here’s where you start trusting me. We need new wheels. That soccer mom’s calling the cops, no doubt. Turn here.’

Evan drove into a shopping plaza that had been caught in the last economic downturn, half the storefronts empty, the others held by an Episcopal thrift shop, a used-book store, a taqueria, and a mom-and-pop office supplies store. A center on its last legs until the inevitable midtown gentrification.

But full of people, Evan thought. He could get away. Yell for help. The parking lot wasn’t too crowded, but if Gabriel let him park close to a store, he could run into the shops.

‘Show me you’re smart.’ Gabriel gave Evan a cool stare. ‘No running, no yelling for help. Because if you force my hand, someone gets hurt. I don’t want it to be you.’

‘You said you’re the good guy.’

‘Good is a relative concept in my line of work. Be still, shut up, and you’ll be fine.’

Evan surveyed the parking lane. Two women, laughing, getting into a station wagon, carrying grease-spotted bags from the taqueria. An elderly woman with a cane hobbled toward the office supplies shop. Two black-togged twenty-year-olds window-shopped at the resale store.

‘Don’t test me, Evan,’ Gabriel said. ‘None of these good folks need trouble today, do they?’

Evan shook his head.

‘Park next to this beauty.’

Evan stopped the Ford next to an old gray Chevrolet Malibu. A sticker on the back window announced that a child was an honor student at a local high school.

‘I didn’t plan on your mother getting killed and rescuing your ass from the police in a car that could be identified. Pop the hood, like we’re jumping the battery.’ Gabriel stepped out of the Ford, fiddled at the Malibu’s lock with a slim finger of metal, opened it, dove under the steering column for a fast hot-wiring.

Open the door. Get out and run. He’s bluffing.

Evan opened the door and Gabriel was back in the car, gun at Evan’s ribs. ‘What part of don’t do you not get? I told you not to force my hand. Shut the door.’

Evan closed the door.

Gabriel ducked back into the Malibu and put his head back under the wheel.

Leave a sign, Evan thought. He stared down at the wheel. His fingers. He pressed his fingertips against the steering wheel. Then forefinger and middle finger against the ashtray and the face of the radio. He didn’t know what else to do; it was the only trace of himself he could think to leave.

Gabriel gestured him over with the gun. Evan got into the car, behind the steering wheel. The car smelled of a sun-spoiled milk shake and the backseat held a stack of yellowing Southern Living magazines.

Gabriel returned to the Ford and quickly wiped it down. Evan’s heart sank. He watched Gabriel smear a cloth along the steering wheel, the doorknobs, the windows. He was fast and efficient.

But not the radio.

Gabriel left the Ford’s keys in the ignition.

Gabriel slid into the Malibu’s passenger seat next to Evan, tossed out the leftover milk shake. Evan headed out of the lot, slow and casual, and merged into a steady stream of Burnet Road traffic.

Gabriel fished a baseball cap from where it rested on the backseat. He shoved it down hard on Evan’s head. He stuck a pair of woman’s sunglasses that had rested on the middle seat onto Evan’s nose. ‘Your face will be all over the news tonight.’ Gabriel’s lips were a thin, pale line; Evan saw, for the first time, he’d left a rising bruise on Gabriel’s jaw when he’d punched Gabriel at the house. ‘I’d prefer no one be able to recognize you.’

‘Please listen to me. Really listen to me. My mom doesn’t have your files, whatever it is you or this Jargo guy wants. This is a huge mistake.’

‘Evan, in your life, nothing is as it seems,’ Gabriel said softly.

The statement made no sense, but then it did. His mother, packing up bags for an extended secret trip. Her demand he return home immediately without explanation. His father not where he was supposed to be. Carrie, gone this morning, quitting her job, calling him and warning him back to Houston. You’re in danger. Serious danger. Carrie. How would she know his life had crumbled into dust since last night?

‘Get onto the highway here. Head south to 71 West.’

Evan eased onto MoPac, the major north-south highway on Austin’s west side, pushed the speed up to sixty. After fifteen minutes MoPac ended, merging onto Highway 71, which fed into the rolling Hill Country west of Austin. ‘You said you’d explain the situation to me.’

Gabriel watched the traffic.

‘You promised me.’ Evan pushed the accelerator up to seventy. He was sick of being pushed around; a sudden awful rage burned into his skin.

‘When we get settled.’

‘No. Now. Or I crash this car.’ He knew he would do it. At least take the car off the road, let Gabriel’s side be torn up by the wire fencing marking property lines, render the Malibu undrivable.

Gabriel frowned, as though deciding whether to play along. ‘Well, you might.’

‘I will.’

‘Your mother has certain files that would be devastating to certain people. Powerful people. Your mom wanted my help in getting out of the country in exchange for those files.’

‘Who? What people?’

‘It’s best you not know specifics.’

‘I don’t have these files.’ Evan rocketed past a pickup truck. Every day they handed out tickets in Austin, here he was speeding like a maniac, and he couldn’t get a police officer’s attention. Traffic was light and the few cars he raced behind politely moved over to the right lane.

‘I think you do,’ Gabriel said, ‘but you don’t know it. Slow it down and drive steady if you want to know more.’ Gabriel nudged the shotgun into Evan’s kidney.

‘Tell me everything you know about my mom. Now.’ Evan floored the accelerator. ‘Tell me, asshole, or we’re both dead.’

The last thing Evan saw was the speedometer inching past ninety as Gabriel slammed his fist into Evan’s head, sending it smashing into the driver’s window, and the world went black.