for.
I was parked on Hyacinth, across from the First Covenant Church, the nose of my Audi facing Arcade. The position gave me a clear view of the bus stop but nothing up the street, so I didn’t know if a bus was approaching or not. I just sat there and tried to mollify my growing impatience—if you’ve ever waited for a bus, you know exactly what I’m talking about. When it finally did arrive, it caught me by surprise, rumbling past the intersection so fast I might have missed it if I had been looking down to select a CD or change the radio station. It stopped for the girl and a couple of high school students before flashing its turn signal and sliding into the traffic lane, not giving a damn if it cut off the vehicles behind it or not. I had to wait for oncoming traffic to pass before turning onto Arcade, and then I was caught at the light at Maryland. That was okay. I preferred that the bus had a nice head start. I knew where it was going—straight down Arcade. I just wanted to make sure that I was nearby when it let the girl off.
You’d think that following a city bus would be easy, but it isn’t. The problem was that it moved slowly and stopped frequently for unpredictable lengths of time. Eventually you had to pass it or risk looking as conspicuous as the mole on Cindy Crawford’s upper lip. I made my move when the bus let out a couple of senior citizens at American Legion Post 577, Bar Bingo Thursdays at 7:00 P.M. I sped ahead, pulling into the lot at The Work Connection, an employment center on Jenks Avenue. I carefully monitored the bus’s progress until it rumbled past, then got on its tail again. Soon we were passing the Seeger Square strip mall and fast approaching the bridge that spanned the Bruce Vento Regional Trail.
That’s when they hit me.
An SUV sped up on my left. Someone stuck what looked to me like a Ruger MP9 submachine gun outside the passenger window. Light glinted off the black metal muzzle. I caught the reflection out of the corner of my eye.
I slammed on my brakes just as 9 mm rounds began tearing into my hood and smashing the windshield all to hell. Shards of safety glass splattered my face as I cranked the steering wheel hard to the right. All of the red warning lights on my dashboard flared at once and I heard a loud whine emanating from the engine. The Audi jumped the curb and hit a U.S. Highway 61 sign. It rode halfway up the metal post before stopping.
The SUV surged forward. The shooter leaned out of the window. I could see white forearms and white hands gripping the MP9, but not a face. He was right-handed and couldn’t turn far enough in his seat to properly target the Audi once he was in front of me. He kept firing until he exhausted the thirty-two-round magazine just the same. Most of the rounds missed, gouging holes out of the bridge’s concrete deck.
I tried to open the driver’s side door and failed. The collision with the signpost must have bent the Audi’s frame and frozen the door in place. I hammered it with my shoulder one, two, three times before it flew open. It was unnecessary. Instead of stopping to finish the job, the SUV accelerated, ran the light at Minnehaha Avenue, hung a hard right at East Seventh Street, and disappeared from sight.
I took a deep breath and leaned back against my seat. The high-pitched whine of the Audi’s engine had been replaced by a solid clanking sound that reminded me of a hammer rapidly striking metal. I closed my eyes. The thugs who had accosted me in Rickie’s parking lot drove a Buick, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have traded up. I opened my eyes. Steam was rising from the engine in a half dozen places. I reached for the ignition key and turned it off.
* * *
I sat on the rear bumper of an EMS vehicle while a paramedic worked on my face. The cuts made by the flying safety glass weren’t particularly deep, more like shaving nicks. Yet there were so many of them and the face has so many blood vessels
I was parked on Hyacinth, across from the First Covenant Church, the nose of my Audi facing Arcade. The position gave me a clear view of the bus stop but nothing up the street, so I didn’t know if a bus was approaching or not. I just sat there and tried to mollify my growing impatience—if you’ve ever waited for a bus, you know exactly what I’m talking about. When it finally did arrive, it caught me by surprise, rumbling past the intersection so fast I might have missed it if I had been looking down to select a CD or change the radio station. It stopped for the girl and a couple of high school students before flashing its turn signal and sliding into the traffic lane, not giving a damn if it cut off the vehicles behind it or not. I had to wait for oncoming traffic to pass before turning onto Arcade, and then I was caught at the light at Maryland. That was okay. I preferred that the bus had a nice head start. I knew where it was going—straight down Arcade. I just wanted to make sure that I was nearby when it let the girl off.
You’d think that following a city bus would be easy, but it isn’t. The problem was that it moved slowly and stopped frequently for unpredictable lengths of time. Eventually you had to pass it or risk looking as conspicuous as the mole on Cindy Crawford’s upper lip. I made my move when the bus let out a couple of senior citizens at American Legion Post 577, Bar Bingo Thursdays at 7:00 P.M. I sped ahead, pulling into the lot at The Work Connection, an employment center on Jenks Avenue. I carefully monitored the bus’s progress until it rumbled past, then got on its tail again. Soon we were passing the Seeger Square strip mall and fast approaching the bridge that spanned the Bruce Vento Regional Trail.
That’s when they hit me.
An SUV sped up on my left. Someone stuck what looked to me like a Ruger MP9 submachine gun outside the passenger window. Light glinted off the black metal muzzle. I caught the reflection out of the corner of my eye.
I slammed on my brakes just as 9 mm rounds began tearing into my hood and smashing the windshield all to hell. Shards of safety glass splattered my face as I cranked the steering wheel hard to the right. All of the red warning lights on my dashboard flared at once and I heard a loud whine emanating from the engine. The Audi jumped the curb and hit a U.S. Highway 61 sign. It rode halfway up the metal post before stopping.
The SUV surged forward. The shooter leaned out of the window. I could see white forearms and white hands gripping the MP9, but not a face. He was right-handed and couldn’t turn far enough in his seat to properly target the Audi once he was in front of me. He kept firing until he exhausted the thirty-two-round magazine just the same. Most of the rounds missed, gouging holes out of the bridge’s concrete deck.
I tried to open the driver’s side door and failed. The collision with the signpost must have bent the Audi’s frame and frozen the door in place. I hammered it with my shoulder one, two, three times before it flew open. It was unnecessary. Instead of stopping to finish the job, the SUV accelerated, ran the light at Minnehaha Avenue, hung a hard right at East Seventh Street, and disappeared from sight.
I took a deep breath and leaned back against my seat. The high-pitched whine of the Audi’s engine had been replaced by a solid clanking sound that reminded me of a hammer rapidly striking metal. I closed my eyes. The thugs who had accosted me in Rickie’s parking lot drove a Buick, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have traded up. I opened my eyes. Steam was rising from the engine in a half dozen places. I reached for the ignition key and turned it off.
* * *
I sat on the rear bumper of an EMS vehicle while a paramedic worked on my face. The cuts made by the flying safety glass weren’t particularly deep, more like shaving nicks. Yet there were so many of them and the face has so many blood vessels
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