Driscoll gave him a blank look. “Yeah, so?”
“So how would he get that? The card you gave him says I’m a contractor.”
Driscoll shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t look close.”
“He didn’t,” Deal insisted. “Not until we were on the way out. That’s when he noticed what it said. But he’d already called us a couple of private detectives.”
“Maybe he just assumed.” Driscoll had to slow down, guide the heavy car around a deep gouge cut in the road by some storm or mountain runoff. “Fucking boat,” he grumbled.
But Deal wasn’t paying attention. “
That’s
how those two guys found us so easily,” he said abruptly.
“What are you talking about?” Driscoll said. He was busy wrestling the car around a narrow turn. They had reached the foothills of the mountains now and the road had taken a sudden swing upward. The fence veered away beneath them, following the course of a dry streambed that led off in a nearly opposite direction. “Looks like this is the place,” Driscoll was saying.
Deal turned back to him, still distracted. “I gave Paige Nobleman one of the Driscoll & Deal cards,” he said, “and I wrote my home number and address on the back of it.” He turned to point over the seat, back in the direction they had come. “The sonofabitch sent those guys to kill us, Driscoll,” he was saying, and then he broke off, too surprised to register the irony of his words.
The roar that came from behind them drowned out his cry of warning to Driscoll, but Deal doubted it would have done much good. The big black Suburban must have been doing fifty as he watched it come out of the turn behind them, and it was gathering speed—like some four-wheeled shadow of doom, he was thinking—when its massive brush-cutting bumper slammed into them. Deal had one instant of clarity—a flash of steel, the wash of light over the Suburban’s windshield, an unobstructed view through glass, and no real surprise to see the hulking man who sat there, staring at them impassively at the moment of impact.
“What the fuck,” Driscoll managed as his head snapped back with the force of the blow and the wheel spun out of his hands.
Deal made a lunge for the wheel, but even as he clambered at the blurring spokes, he realized it was a wasted effort. They were over the side and airborne now, and Driscoll, who never listened when Deal nagged at him to wear his goddamned seat belt—a cop, for Chrissakes, and he just wouldn’t do it—big, blocky Driscoll seemed to rise in slow motion, like an astronaut in a capsule designed by a car maker, his head crunching into the roof liner at the same moment the nose of the Lincoln finally crashed down for the first time against the side of the cliff. They began to catapult then, end over end, and Deal lost track of what had become of Driscoll. He saw flashes of sky, of rock, of scrub oak and piñon trees, all of it moving faster and faster like an out-of-control film flying off the sprockets, and he was ready for the final launch and free fall that would put them into eternal orbit…
…when there was a bone-jarring crash and a sudden jolt that ended everything. Deal, momentarily blinded by the whirl of dust stirred up inside the car, felt an intense pressure building in his head, and a similar force pressing against his shoulders and hips. He blinked his eyes into focus, sure, despite the fact that he’d buckled himself in, that he’d suffered some awful nerve damage, was experiencing the onset of paralysis…then he stopped as he saw what had happened.
The car had come to a halt upside down, and Deal was dangling like a bat, still held securely by the webbing of the seat belts. His view was straight out one of the side windows—it took him a moment to be sure it was the driver’s window—and it took him another moment to realize that they had not plunged to the bottom of the ravine, nor anywhere near it, for that matter. He was staring into a dizzying drop another fifty feet or so, straight down to the rocky streambed below. Were he to fall out of the snarl of strapping that held him, he’d plunge straight to his death.
In the sudden silence, he heard the ticking of the Lincoln’s stalled engine and the steady drip of liquid. He smelled burned oil, unidentifiable fluids cooking themselves on the engine block, the faint hint of gasoline from somewhere. A rock clattered down the slope from above, crashed against the side of the car, then spun off into space. There was a considerable pause before he heard it thud into the streambed below.
He heard a groan from somewhere below him and turned his head carefully, craning his neck until he made out the form of Driscoll crumpled into the shelf space between the shattered rear window and the backseats. There was a gash on the ex-cop’s forehead and one of his arms was twisted in what seemed an impossible angle behind his body. Driscoll was half conscious, his eyes fluttering open and closed, his feet stirring through the shattered window against the rocky slope where they lay.
Deal felt a shudder pass through the car then, and there was a sickening movement—an inch maybe, maybe more—as the big Lincoln responded to the pull of gravity at the precipice.
“Driscoll,” Deal said, his voice a fierce hiss. “Driscoll!” he repeated, and the ex-cop’s eyes fluttered open.
“Listen to me,” Deal said. “You’ve got to stay still. We’re hung up on the side of a cliff, okay? But the goddamn car is ready to go on over the side. Do you understand me?”
Driscoll’s eyes blinked a few times. “Fucking boat,” he murmured through his swollen lips. “I told you.”
“Just lie still,” Deal repeated. “Let me get out of here, so I can help.”
“I lie still,” Driscoll said, suppressing a cough that Deal feared could shake them into oblivion. “And you jump down. I got it, Deal. Send me a postcard from the place you end up, okay?”
“Be quiet,” Deal said. He heard another scattering of rocks, smaller ones this time, rattle down upon the undercarriage of the car.
He hooked one hand under the seat above him, found a solid hold, then groped about with the other until he found the catch of the seat belt that was gouging into his hip. He tried to brace himself as he pressed the release button, but one of his feet was waving freely above him and the other slid awkwardly down the inside of the windshield despite anything he could do.
He finished a kind of half somersault with his feet against the roof liner, balled into a fetal-like crouch. He was sure that his movements had doomed them, but he heard only a creaking of metal, and then there was silence again.
Very carefully, he worked his legs straight out the driver’s window, the knowledge that half of him was now waving freely in space sending a brief wave of nausea through him. He fought off the feeling and got himself turned so that he could see Driscoll again. They lay now staring at each other, their noses a couple of feet apart.
“This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Ollie,” Driscoll said, his eyes glassy.
“Be quiet,” Deal said. “Come on,” he said. “Give me your hand.”
“Here,” Driscoll said, reaching out toward Deal. “This is the only one I can feel.”
Deal took it, brought in one foot and braced it against the door frame, then began half guiding, half pushing Driscoll out the opposite window, up the rocky hillside. The ex-cop had nearly cleared the car, had disappeared all the way past his belt-line, when there was a pause.
“I’m stuck,” he said. “I’m too fucking fat.”
“That’s not it,” Deal said, pushing at Driscoll’s rump as hard as he dared. He could see a good inch of clearance between Driscoll’s back and the window frame. It didn’t make any sense, he was thinking…and then he saw it: Driscoll’s twisted arm, numb to all feeling apparently, had gotten hung up on the clothes hook above the rear seat. Deal had to maneuver himself over Driscoll’s legs, pop the button on the ex-cop’s sleeve to get him free.
“Go on,” Deal urged frantically. “Go.”
Deal didn’t have to repeat himself. In seconds Driscoll had vanished, his legs disappearing out the crumpled window frame faster than Deal would have supposed a groggy man his size could move them.
It took Deal a moment to realize what was happening. He hadn’t even noticed the fresh grinding sound—roof on stone—from beneath him. But then it struck him.
Driscoll hadn’t been leaving the car, the car had been leaving him. The thing was sliding on over the edge, taking Deal with it…
So that was it, then. So long, Driscoll. So long, world, he was thinking…and was so frozen with fear and despair that he actually had to tell himself to reach out and grasp the meaty hand that had appeared: Driscoll reaching back inside the compartment to save him. He felt Driscoll’s firm grasp on his own, prayed they weren’t going to be yanked over the side, and then felt himself being pulled free from the sliding car.
He glanced back as his knees dug into the rocky hillside, saw his feet emerge, saw the car grind on another yard, then hang up once again, teetering this time with its crushed nose pointed out into space.
He scrambled to his hands and knees, feeling relief flood into him with a force that made him weak, just in time to hear Driscoll’s weary voice.
“Look at that, would you. Every time you get one thing taken care of, something else comes up.”
Deal glanced up the slope of the cliff toward the roadway, not sure what Driscoll was talking about. He could see the snout of the big Suburban poised there at the shoulder, saw a couple of pines snapped off where the Lincoln had gone over, saw a trail of debris scattered over the rocks down toward them: wheel covers, chrome strips, the Lincoln’s truck deck, even its tiny spare tire.
Then he saw what Driscoll was talking about. The big guy who’d been behind the wheel of the Suburban had seen them emerge from the wreckage. He had jumped down off the roadway and was dodging through the screen of trees toward them, the now-familiar shape of an automatic pistol upraised in his right hand.
“Why did it have to be my shooting hand,” Driscoll was saying, clawing awkwardly at his ankle holster with his left.
Deal stared about for cover, but other than the shattered car, teetering at the edge, there was nothing bigger than a wild-flower. Then he spotted something. He reached down into a pile of debris dumped by the Lincoln, picked up the jack handle in reflex, held it stupidly aloft as the big man swung passed the last of the stunted pines above and came down with the pistol braced in firing position.
Jack handle and a left-handed .38 against an M-10, at twenty paces, Deal was thinking, noting too that Driscoll, still groggy from the crash, hadn’t even straightened up yet.
He saw the look on the big man’s face above them, saw the satisfaction that comes when a man knows he has everything he wants from a situation…then saw the look replaced by surprise when his feet went out from under him just as he was beginning to fire.
There was a whine as some of the shots tore into the Lincoln’s carcass, the explosions continuing as the man slid on down the slope toward them, his finger still locked in reflex on the trigger. He was moving feetfirst, rocks flying up as he vainly tried to dig his heels in, picking up speed as he came.
He’d stopped firing, was nearly upon them now, trying desperately to lever up off the slope like a skier attempting to right himself in midfall. Driscoll staggered backward across the slope like an awkward crab, still trying to clear his pistol from his ankle holster.
Then, like something rising from a bad dream, the big man was up, his feet still skidding, but spread beneath him now. He brought the automatic back in front of him, trained it on Driscoll, was ready to fire again, when Deal stepped forward and swung.
He was just trying for the gun, but the big man saw the blow coming and threw up his arm. The barrel of the gun cracked across Deal’s wrist with a pain that went from white-hot to numbness in an instant and sent the jack handle flying. That was it, Deal thought, so much for heroism. In the next moment the big man would stitch him and Driscoll into shreds, all this would be over…
…and then he heard the strangled cry, caught a glimpse of the stunned look on the big man’s face and realized what had happened. Deal had been holding the knurled end of the tire iron, leading his swing with the big screwdriverlike point. When he’d lost his grip, the thing had turned into a kind of spear. Some law of physics was involved, Deal thought: physical bulk, angle of incline, speed of slide, not to mention the force of his own desperation. Whatever was to account for it, it seemed a kind of miracle.
***
It wasn’t pain that Gabriel felt, not at first. It was simply something cold and suffocating at his throat, as if he’d swallowed a huge shard of ice. But he knew better. He’d felt the force of the heavy metal bar striking him, felt a moment’s stabbing pain, then the sudden impact as whatever it was the man had thrown plunged into him as far as it could go. His fingers were suddenly numb, and he felt his weapon slip from his hands. Although he sensed his feet were still beneath him, he couldn’t be sure.
He staggered backward down the rocky slope now, his hands clawing at a strange curved rod that seemed to have wedged itself against his throat. He tried to pull it away, was thinking that if he did, he might be able to breathe, might be able to speak…
…for a strange calm and clarity had suddenly descended upon him. He wished that he might tell the man whose stunned face swept past him—or was it the other way around—all these things that had occurred to him in an instant: That all was unfolding as it should, that truly Gabriel could wish him no ill will, that what was happening at this very instant was in accordance with some irrevocable web of circumstance…
no good, no evil, simply the things that happen
, he thought.
But how to account for the ease, the repose that had come to envelop him
…
The vision of the man’s face had disappeared. He had a glimpse of sky, a cloud, a swipe of pine bough across it all…and felt himself collide with something hard. The point of the bar that had driven through him struck other iron and slung his head sideways.
He saw flashing bursts of light—rockets, pinwheels, the fireworks of some miraculous Bangkok street parade—and there, in the midst of it all, was the image of his grandfather, a young man once more, bandanna at his brow and cutlass in his teeth. He was grinning his pirate’s grin, and reaching out to take Gabriel’s hand, and finally there was peace.