butt of the Smith & Wesson .38, the one registered gun in my two-piece arsenal, made a solid knot against my right kidney; if there was one thing you learned in the work, it was to deck yourself in iron whenever they told you to come in unarmed. There, untouched by the lamps of the cars passing a block away, their beams smoky in the fog, I waited. The air lay like metal against my skin.
Somewhere on the Canadian side of the river, a tower clock struck eleven, the gongs carrying in the damp air with a resigned loneliness, like a single plane hanging in an empty sky. The last stroke had trailed off when Shooter’s rattletrap pickup rolled with its lights off between two warehouses at a blind angle to where my car was parked and stopped with a creak of brakes. I stayed where I was. I was close enough to smell the heated metal of his radiator.
When after two minutes nothing happened, I started to come out of the shadows. Then I stopped. Behind the pickup, also with its lights off, a late-model sedan coasted between the warehouses and crunched to a halt with its front bumper almost touching the vehicle ahead. All its doors opened—no domelight came on—and four men came out in dark clothes with knitted watchcaps on their heads, cradling something in their arms. Their faces reflected no light and when they passed me, twenty feet away and four feet down, I saw that their faces were artificially blackened. I also caught a sharp whiff of gun oil.
Sprinting silently on rubber soles, they fanned out, two on each side of the Chevy, stopped, raised their weapons, paused, and began firing all at once. The guns rattled, spouting smoke and fire and brass cartridges that twinkled as they arced and fell, while bullets raked the car from one end to the other and back again, but concentrating on the front seat. Glass burst, metal clanged, a tire blew with a report louder than the weapons and the car sagged toward one corner. Steam whooshed out of the radiator and drifted in a great cloud toward Jefferson.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the firing stopped. A piece of glass fell with a tiny clank. By then the four were running back toward the sedan. Most of the doors were still open when the lights and engine came on with a roar and the car swung backward in a tight half-circle and then took off the way it had come, its tires spraying gravel.
I was moving too. I had drawn the Smith & Wesson without realizing it, and now I leaped from the loading dock onto a pile of discarded rails, caught my balance, clambered over it, and stepped onto another platform, this one made of crumbling concrete. Now I was directly over Shooter’s pickup. As it started forward I lowered myself into the bed of the truck.
If Shooter felt the extra weight on the springs, he didn’t show it. He turned on the headlamps, aimed the hood into the path where the rails had been pulled up, and accelerated with a lurch that almost took me off my feet, toward one of the side streets that led to Jefferson. Sirens hiccoughed in the distance.
The pickup’s engine was as much of a surprise as its sound system. We must have been doing eighty when he hit the avenue and turned east, knocking a piece off the curb and throwing me into a sitting position, this time with my back against the tailgate. I held on to the gun and crawled forward along the bed, where he couldn’t see me in the rearview mirror. The truck peeled rubber and swayed on its springs on the curves, but the tires never left the road. It was a bucket of rust on a brand-new frame with a mill that was built in heaven, or Indianapolis at the very least.
He didn’t slow down until we had left the river far behind and were in the neighborhoods, the sirens falling off behind us. Then we glided down into a legal speed and observed stop signs and lights. I waited until we stopped at one, then threw a leg over the side of the box and reached down and grasped the handle on the passenger’s door. It was
Somewhere on the Canadian side of the river, a tower clock struck eleven, the gongs carrying in the damp air with a resigned loneliness, like a single plane hanging in an empty sky. The last stroke had trailed off when Shooter’s rattletrap pickup rolled with its lights off between two warehouses at a blind angle to where my car was parked and stopped with a creak of brakes. I stayed where I was. I was close enough to smell the heated metal of his radiator.
When after two minutes nothing happened, I started to come out of the shadows. Then I stopped. Behind the pickup, also with its lights off, a late-model sedan coasted between the warehouses and crunched to a halt with its front bumper almost touching the vehicle ahead. All its doors opened—no domelight came on—and four men came out in dark clothes with knitted watchcaps on their heads, cradling something in their arms. Their faces reflected no light and when they passed me, twenty feet away and four feet down, I saw that their faces were artificially blackened. I also caught a sharp whiff of gun oil.
Sprinting silently on rubber soles, they fanned out, two on each side of the Chevy, stopped, raised their weapons, paused, and began firing all at once. The guns rattled, spouting smoke and fire and brass cartridges that twinkled as they arced and fell, while bullets raked the car from one end to the other and back again, but concentrating on the front seat. Glass burst, metal clanged, a tire blew with a report louder than the weapons and the car sagged toward one corner. Steam whooshed out of the radiator and drifted in a great cloud toward Jefferson.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the firing stopped. A piece of glass fell with a tiny clank. By then the four were running back toward the sedan. Most of the doors were still open when the lights and engine came on with a roar and the car swung backward in a tight half-circle and then took off the way it had come, its tires spraying gravel.
I was moving too. I had drawn the Smith & Wesson without realizing it, and now I leaped from the loading dock onto a pile of discarded rails, caught my balance, clambered over it, and stepped onto another platform, this one made of crumbling concrete. Now I was directly over Shooter’s pickup. As it started forward I lowered myself into the bed of the truck.
If Shooter felt the extra weight on the springs, he didn’t show it. He turned on the headlamps, aimed the hood into the path where the rails had been pulled up, and accelerated with a lurch that almost took me off my feet, toward one of the side streets that led to Jefferson. Sirens hiccoughed in the distance.
The pickup’s engine was as much of a surprise as its sound system. We must have been doing eighty when he hit the avenue and turned east, knocking a piece off the curb and throwing me into a sitting position, this time with my back against the tailgate. I held on to the gun and crawled forward along the bed, where he couldn’t see me in the rearview mirror. The truck peeled rubber and swayed on its springs on the curves, but the tires never left the road. It was a bucket of rust on a brand-new frame with a mill that was built in heaven, or Indianapolis at the very least.
He didn’t slow down until we had left the river far behind and were in the neighborhoods, the sirens falling off behind us. Then we glided down into a legal speed and observed stop signs and lights. I waited until we stopped at one, then threw a leg over the side of the box and reached down and grasped the handle on the passenger’s door. It was
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