N
ot even nine-thirty yet and the motel manager’s office
was locked. It was that kind of a place. Nobody needed to spend a night over in this part of Newark unless they were blowing through on a job or looking for a twenty-minute hooker. The manager would be some old man off getting a few beers around the block. He’d be back on deck in a half hour and then he’d go off again when he got too bored. The whores wouldn’t be out in full swing until midnight when they started pulling over tricks on the turnpike or Route 9a. It had once been a residential area and a few dilapidated houses remained. Foundry Street was a dead road in a dead part of a dying city.
Chase popped the door and checked the wall where the room keys were set on hooks. The motel hadn’t upgraded to computerized cards and never would. They’d raze the place first. Seven rooms were currently in use.
He drove slowly through the parking lot peering through the slits between drapes. He spotted some addicts getting wasted, a couple of teenagers watching television getting ready to jump each other, and some drunks with nowhere else to go. Only two rooms had the drapes completely drawn. They were side by side. Chase backed into a spot directly across from them.
He looked for a car that had some real muscle to it but couldn’t spot anything a wheelman would drive. That meant Earl Raymond either parked off site, wasn’t here at the moment, or the crew had already moved on.
“If they’re here, they’ll be in one of those two rooms,” Jonah said.
Angie had one of Lila’s .32s on her now, not quite as small as the Bernadelli but in a tight, closed room you wouldn’t need much more than that. “Or maybe both.”
“That means we have to go into both, at the same time,” Jonah said. “If you hadn’t left the pawnbroker alive we could’ve taken more time and checked things over for as long as we needed to. But this has to end tonight.”
“I want it to end tonight,” Chase told him.
“If you’re still in a talkative mood, get over it now. We go in fast and hard. You ice them or they’ll ice us. They’ve been smarter than you so far because you haven’t wanted to take this all the way. Are you ready to do that now?”
“Yes.”
Angie’s current was riding a little high. Chase could feel her ramped in the backseat. He found her eyes in the rearview and felt a flush of shame for having dragged her into this mess. The old man owed him but she didn’t. He wanted to tell her that she should stay behind, but he knew she’d just give him the whole full-partner spiel again. He didn’t want her baby daughter to grow up without a mother, stuck with a father like Jonah.
Jonah kept watching Chase another few seconds, trying to read the truth. Finally he turned away and said to Angie, “You ready?”
“Yep.”
“Let’s go.”
It was difficult turning the engine off. Chase pocketed the keys and felt the brutal weight of Ellie Raymond’s 9mm against his body. He thought, This isn’t how it should be. I just want the driver. Me and Earl, we should be doing this one on one, with nothing else except our cars. We should rip through the night shredding road, our tires smoking. We should get it up to triple digits and haul ass along empty highways, alone except for the engine and the radio.
Chase tried to hit the cold spot but every time he did he found Lila there, filling it with warmth.
Not much of a plan, really. Jonah took the room to the left, #19, and Chase the one to the right, #18. He got out his tools. He thought they should count to three and do it together, but before he could start he heard Jonah abruptly breaking down the door. So it was like that. No time to slip the lock.
Chase kicked the door in on #18. It wasn’t as easy to break down doors as they made it look in the movies. It hurt and it threw him off a step. Now he was three—four seconds behind, and by the time he got his bearings he saw, with a mixture of relief and revulsion, that he’d found them. Ellie Raymond and two men were inside, scrambling for their weapons.
And goddammit, his grandfather had been right. Chase still
was
in a talkative mood. He had things to say. The world sped up around him and he was fast enough to meet it, but he couldn’t get out all that was inside him. He heard gunfire next door and wondered if the other guys on the string had come back from Atlantic City early or if Jonah had walked into a drug deal or some shit like that. Ellie Raymond was bending forward, and Chase finally got a good look at her without the disguise. Lovely, firm, vicious, cool and cold, radiant with her lips flattened but her eyes alive with joy. She was an adrenaline junkie, she wanted it rough and wild. She recognized him and let out a heartwarming giggle. The sound of it knifed through his chest. His gaze slid sideways and he saw one of the men moving, digging for a gun under the bed. These people, they all had pistols clipped to the bed frames, they all wanted to cap whoever might fuck them. The guy looked a little scared, worried. His face was flat and ugly, and he had a terrible scar on his forehead. Slip Jenson. Chase checked the other guy and knew, right then, there, that’s him, that’s Earl, the mad-dog shooter, the driver. The guy was smiling, sure. He was all flash. He was handsome as hell, a hard-stepper like his sister, taking it as rough as he could because he liked it that way. Chase wanted to talk but had no idea what to say. Maybe he wanted to ask them their story, what made them this way. They all had their hands on their pistols now. If he couldn’t talk to Earl then they should at least meet each other’s eyes, make that connection, where they both understood that this is the moment to settle all accounts. But Earl was looking at Chase’s chest, bringing up a Glock. The Jonah in Chase’s head said, Fucking shoot them already. The Lila in his head told him, Sweetness, it’s time, it’s time. Of course it was. Chase started firing and so did they.
I
t happened fast.
The room was small but large enough for two double beds, with a nightstand between them. Earl was behind the bed farthest away, Ellie between the two, Slip Jenson closest to Chase, so he was the one Chase popped first, even though he didn’t have anything against the guy. Jenson’s flat, ugly face got even flatter and much uglier, exploding in a cloud of gristle and bone chips. Chase went down for cover, but Ellie Raymond had her gun hand propped up on the mattress and she shot at Chase as he was moving. The bullet took him high in the right side, spun him around, and took a chunk of meat out from just under his ribs. She’d clipped the lung. He didn’t feel it yet but knew he would soon. Already his breathing changed and he had to suck wind. Chase fell on top of Slip Jenson’s corpse and the dead man spit blood across Chase’s throat.
Ellie Raymond was taking the fight to him. She dove on top of the bed, firing twice, three times, the bullets tearing up the carpet around him. He thought, How could she miss me? Then he realized this was her weakness. She wanted the juice to last so she stretched the action out.
The next one caught him in the lower leg and this time he felt it immediately and he couldn’t help but cry out. It made her toss off another giggle. Still grinning, Earl spoke one word. “Don’t.”
So maybe he wasn’t quite as crazy as his sister, or maybe he just didn’t want her to go it alone like this.
Chase stuck his arm under the bed and fired twice up through the mattress and heard Ellie scream.
He rolled and went for a different angle, trying for Earl across the room now. Earl dogged it into the bathroom, slammed the door, and Chase heard glass shattering.
All of this, and the fucker runs for it and leaves his own sister behind. Ellie showed such loyalty for this? Chase wondered if she’d understand her brother had left her to die.
He tried to stand but his wounded leg wouldn’t support him and he went down again. Son of a bitch. He made the effort again and managed to keep on his feet. He checked Ellie Raymond, laid out across the bed on her back. She was gut-shot and panting, her face slathered in sweat.
“That’s my gun,” she said, holding her bubbling stomach, her face tight with pain.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice strange because there wasn’t enough wind in it.
“I thought you didn’t like guns.”
“I don’t,” he gasped, and shot her twice in the heart.
Weird feeling, having
only one lung inflate. Not enough air getting through. Felt like he was slowly drowning. Chase stepped out the door and checked Room #19. There was a businessman with no pants on cowering on the bed with an enormous naked black hooker sitting next to him.
Jonah was sitting in a pool of blood at the foot of the bed. He’d been shot in the back twice but his face didn’t register much pain.
Angie was lying just inside the room, dead. Most of her face had been torn off and flung onto the wall behind her. Chase could see what had happened. She’d made a move on the old man, trying to get out from under him. She’d put two into him and still hadn’t been able to put him down, and Jonah had killed her.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Chase hissed.
And in Jonah’s face, even now, after clipping the woman who had been like his wife, the mother of his kid, the old man showed nothing. He said, “Give me a hand.”
“In a minute. It’s not over yet.”
Chase moved away, took three steps out the door, and fell on his face.
Lila was there.
She came to him and gripped the sides of his face and raised his head. She said, “I didn’t want any of this for you, but we’re in it now. You’ve got to get up, love, he’s coming.”
A shriek of
tires erupted from around the corner of the far end of the parking lot. Chase opened his eyes and tried to rouse himself. Earl must’ve parked his muscle in one of the driveways of the decrepit houses around them. A gutsy move being that far away from your wheels. Chase saw a flash of headlights reflected in the windows of the manager’s office a moment before Earl’s car appeared.
So they were going to get to race after all.
Chase stumbled out to the Chevelle and saw that Earl Raymond was driving a gorgeous 1970 Plymouth Superbird with the funky extended front end but without the high back spoiler. It was tuned up right. The 440 V8 damn near howled.
Earl slowed and came to a stop in the distance, checking the scene, trying to squeeze a little more action from it.
Settling behind the wheel of the Chevelle and splashing blood over the seat, Chase twisted the key and felt the power of the engine rise into him.
The Chevelle was ready. Its dark energy merged with his own.
He thought, This is how it’s supposed to be. Both of us in machines, ready to go running around the city. Or just sit back and play chicken, do this short and sweet.
Seventy yards separated them. No chance to build up any real speed, but still, there’d be enough.
They could play tag through Jersey, ripping up these roads, wheeling through residential neighborhoods, and breaking for the highway. They might shake and bump each other for hours, crushing car frames and bouncing loose the suspension, the exhaust systems, mile after mile. Earl occasionally hanging his left arm out and firing mad-dog style.
Where would they end up? The Pine Barrens? Atlantic City? Philly? Mississippi? Would either of them want it to end or would it just be too much fun letting the hammer down and running like that for the remainder of their lives?
Chase thought, This is what he’s thinking too. I can feel it.
Earl revved his engine. Such an old-school thing to do, but he probably couldn’t help himself. His stereo was turned all the way up, a nice speaker system pounding out an incredible bass track that pummeled the night. He was having a ball. Chase wasn’t. He was leaking out across the floor mat.
He waited. The Chevelle’s power burned through him. It worked into his bones, into the back of his skull, rattling away some of the pain but none of the rage.
Earl Raymond had killed Lila and Chase still wanted to talk to him, pull photos from his wallet, stick them in Earl’s face and get some kind of human reaction from him. At least hear his voice, the nuances, the inflections. Watch his eyes. Earl stood on the brake and the gas pedal together, the tires screeching insanely, smoking like a brush fire had been set underneath the Superbird. He dropped off the brake and tore at Chase, eating the space between them.
Chase moved into the cold spot. It frosted his burning mind. He saw what he had to do.
He opened the door and climbed out.
He walked away from the Chevelle.
A driver without any muscle but with plenty of drive. Chase doubled over and let out Walcroft’s noise. Then he straightened himself as his blood hit the asphalt.
He stood his ground as the Plymouth ripped toward him, edging past 30 mph, 40, 50. Earl hung his left arm out the window and blasted away.
A bullet took Chase in the collarbone and his right arm went dead. But he didn’t drop the gun.
He reached for it with his left and had to pry the numb fingers of his right hand from around the pistol.
There was still time, he could do this. He was fast. Even now, sounding like a busted bellows, his chest heaving. He closed his fist around the 9mm and lifted his left arm and started firing.
The Plymouth was so damn close now, the blazing headlights illuminating Chase with an icy intensity that met with his own inner cool. He fired blindly five times.
He missed. The grille was less than thirty feet away, the car hauling in at about sixty. Time maybe for one last pull of the trigger, or maybe not. The world was nothing but light. He snapped a final shot off.
Now the front end was no more than ten feet away, and Chase was going to die beneath three thousand pounds of Detroit muscle. It actually made him grin.
Earl cared for the car but wasn’t overzealous about it. If he had been, he would’ve restored it fully and put the funky back spoiler on even if it did make the Superbird stand out. He didn’t quite love the car enough.
There was a slight pull to the right and the Plymouth angled just enough to miss Chase as it roared past.
He got a good look. The last bullet had smashed Earl’s head apart and a nice red cascade had covered the dashboard and the inside of the windshield.
The Superbird’s side mirror caught Chase’s left hand and he felt three of his fingers break. It spun him around and he polished the driver’s door with the seat of his pants. He went down again and watched the car make a wild turn and plow into the front of Room #18, roaring over and crushing the bodies of the crew. The idle was stuck high and the engine kept screaming. Chase wanted to join it, but the Jonah in his head said, Get the fuck up.
His grandfather was
there telling him, “Get the fuck up.”