Dying Embers (21 page)

Out the rear window I could see Fidel/Andy stumbling to his feet and clutching his chest, but the real attention grabber was the white news truck bearing down on the back of the Dodge. The push bar in front of the truck's grill rose as the driver nailed the gas in place of the brakes. I unassed the Dodge.

Due to a certain lack of grace brought on by haste, I ended up sitting on the street next to the open driver's door. The news truck hit the Dodge—he never did find the brakes—and the doorjamb caught my left shoulder. One of the cops said I spun like a top but I only remember going around once. The door of the Dodge came at me in a blur, but only fanned me, as the Suburban drove the Dodge into the asphalt truck. I finished the three-sixty in time to see Fidel/Andy hobbling to the curb.

I turned my head again and found that I was sitting next to the driver's door of the news truck. I pulled myself to my feet by the mirror bracket—had a difficult time getting my left hand over my head—and stepped onto the running board to peer into Suburban and see if the news idiots were all right.

The driver, wearing his seatbelt, sat with his chest against the steering wheel. The cameraman sat strapped into the front passenger seat with his arms folded around his head.

The nose of the Dodge had been driven under the asphalt truck. The impact accordioned the rear of the Dodge and it stuck up in the air like a cat in heat—rear wheels off the ground. The dump truck dragged the Dodge off the front of the news truck as it continued into the intersection.

The Suburban driver sat back in his seat, looked at the retreating Dodge, and then at me. It was Deliveryman/Andy, of the “I-have-a-package-for-Art-Hardin” charade in my office. He squinted his eyes, twisted his head, and yelled, “Frank! The bloke's on the running board!”

The cameraman unwrapped his arms from his head and looked over at me. Deliveryman/Andy pulled the shift lever into reverse. I tried the door but it was jammed or locked.

The cameraman bent over to retrieve something from the floor. Deliveryman/Andy lay down sideways in the seat. The camera man came up with a cannon—a twelve-gauge shotgun, business end looking as big as a garbage can. The tires squealed. The truck lurched in reverse. I slipped off the running board. The driver's window erupted in a shower of glass.

The push bar of the Suburban had been bent in the middle and driven back into the grill. The radiator trailed steam as the news truck backed up. The air brakes on the asphalt truck gushed, the dump truck stopped. The rear wheels of the Suburban screamed and smoked, tearing in my direction again.

I ran for the Dodge and, with a hand on the bashed back end, scrambled onto the scrap of the roof that still protruded from the back of the dump truck. Steam poured over the front of the Suburban, obscuring the windshield. I took a double-tap on the spot where the cameraman and his shotgun should have been.

The Suburban veered to my right. I got one more shot into the windshield on the driver's side, a passing shot. The passenger window started down and the barrel of the shotgun came out. I popped two into the door as the truck passed.

My right foot felt an ice water jolt that turned scalding hot as asphalt oozed out the tailgate of the dump truck and engulfed my right deck shoe. I jumped to the ground—my shoe stayed—and peeled the sock off as a Grand Rapids Police car roared past in pursuit of the white Suburban.

I retched a mouthful of blood onto the street and stood studying the glob, with my hands on my knees, while I inventoried my teeth with my tongue and found the split in my upper lip.

The driver of the dump truck charged up to me trailing profanity. His overalls were orange, his face red and shaded by a grease-stained ball cap. He had the stub of a fat unlit cigar screwed into the side of his face. He said, “What the fuck is going on?”

I straightened up and looked at my blood smeared fingers. Moving my eyes from my fingers to the driver. All the f-words would have hurt too much, so I said, “Shit!”

The asphalt-truck driver looked at my hand and then at my gun. He wheeled and showed me the soles of his work boots as he ran for the cab of his truck. Which was just as well—I couldn't get any air through my nose and my face felt inflated—I wasn't up to explaining much.

The diesel engine of the dump truck ejected two coal black jets of exhaust as the driver tried to pull off the Dodge. The trickle of asphalt gave way to an avalanche. The dump truck dragged the Dodge slowly down the street under a spreading, steaming black mass. No more red could be seen.

The gas tank on the Dodge let go.
Ca-rumph.
And I'm sitting again, in the middle of a hail of flaming asphalt pellets peppering the street. The Dodge came loose from the back of the truck. I buried my head in my arms but had to come out to bat hot particles off my arms and legs. My sweatshirt was on fire. I pulled it off. I could smell scorching hair. I slapped my head. Flames danced on what was left of the load of asphalt in the truck's rear dump-trailer.

The white Suburban blew the light at Pearl, spinning a minivan that had entered the intersection. At Monroe it turned left into the curb lane, on the oncoming side of the street, and threw out the anchor. I wondered if Deliveryman/Andy knew that he was right across the street from police headquarters.

As the police cruiser made the corner the Suburban sprang into reverse and T-boned it sideways into the middle of the intersection, then fled south down Monroe in the oncoming lane. Traffic peeled open like a banana.

The passenger door of the cruiser opened, and the officer cranked off
two rounds from his shotgun before traffic closed back around the Suburban. Police officers flooded from the doors of the hall of justice—some in uniform, others not—with their weapons at the ready but could not fire because of the traffic.

The dump truck, engulfed in black smoke, stopped and the driver leapt from the cab with his cap crammed to his face. He pulled the pin on the flaming trailer and ran back to climb into the cab. He gunned the engine and pulled out, leaving the trailer to drop down on the dolly. The brake hoses stretched and snapped like rubber bands, and the flaming trailer started to creep, unguided, down the hill until the air had bled off and the brakes locked up.

“You only get six with that midget,” said Fidel/Andy from behind me.

The voice sounded close. I took two quick steps forward before I turned. His shirt was sliced, exposing the metal plate in the front of a Kevlar vest and a long transverse gouge bisecting a powder burn. He lunged toward me with his arm swinging the knife in an arc at the level of my neck. I pumped my last round into the plate in his vest.

A witness on the street told the police that I shot him “casually.” I don't know if that's true. I do admit to a certain amount of amusement with the
ka-tank
the 200-grain hollow-point made as it flattened itself into a nickel sized lump and delivered up three hundred-thirty foot-pounds of muzzle energy.

“Bad guess, asshole,” I told him as he made a backward plunge to the street the way kids flop into a snow bank to make an angel. I noticed he had a serious road rash on his left arm and leg. “You're under arrest.”

I asked, “Who do you work for?”

His lips moved, but he didn't make any sound. A good thing. In Michigan that kind of language in public can net you a tall fine or a short stay in the crowbar Hilton—not that it measured much against the fact that the local police had just penciled him and his crew onto their short list of things to do immediately.

He rolled up on his knees and struggled to his feet. “Now, he said, “You're
screwed!
” The “screwed” part came off a little breathless, but he had a joyous face.

I smiled too—at least I think I smiled, it hurt my face—and punched out the empty magazine. It clattered onto the street. The witness said that I grumbled something at Fidel—thank God he was sure about the “You're under arrest” part.

I took a spare magazine out of my pocket and shook it at Fidel/Andy. His face dialed up, “Oh-shit” and he started to turn back up the hill. I slammed the magazine into the pistol. By the time I thumbed the slide stop and the slide slammed into battery, he was making long strides up the hill toward the auto wash. I took a double-tap on his broad flat back. Vests generally don't have a plate in the back but the Kevlar strands will usually take the spin out of a hollow point and not allow it to penetrate. Fidel/Andy made a forward somersault onto his fanny.

I bent over and spit another glob of blood onto the street. My left shoulder hurt, my eyes were swelling shut, and the sole of my right foot was burning. Fidel/Andy struggled to his feet. I took a series of quick steps—the pavement was hot from the sun—and stopped, holding my right leg bent at the knee.

“Stop,” I told him. “You're under arrest. If you take off again, I'll take your knees out.” I wiped the sweat that stung my eyes—another mistake. My nose let go in a gush of blood. When I straightened up Andy had staggered farther up the hill.

A weaving walk was the best pursuit I could manage. Andy had gotten enough distance to make a tight shot undependable. He stopped and bent over, clutching his chest. A red burn had blossomed on his neck, probably from the seat belt. He retched some blood. It looked like a good idea, so I did it, too. When I raised my pistol, he was off again. I lurched after him. Something big and blue crashed me onto the street.

To my left I heard a big Chevy motor winding up, followed by a hell of a bang. A swarm of lead whooshed, passing above me. I turned my head to the left. I was on my back with something heavy on top of me.

The white Suburban careened past and up to the curb on the wrong side of the street. Fidel/Andy hobbled up to it and climbed in the back door on the driver's side.

An arm in a blue sleeve extended a fat nine past the front of my face. The air came alive with sirens. The fat nine barked to life. Up the hill tires screeched. Cars with sirens passed in a rush. The steady “tack-tack-tack” of an M60 machine gun opened up in short bursts—somebody was getting hosed by an expert gardener. A helicopter passed overhead. The noise faded over the hill.

I turned my face back up. My eyes had swelled down to slits. All I could make out was a bushy guardsman's moustache twitching around the words, “You're under arrest.”

N
EVER NEED YOUR NOSE SET
.
I don't want to talk about it. When we were finished they gave me a face-mask ice pack, handcuffed me to a gurney, and wheeled me into a cubicle of green curtains. Staff sadists stopped by one by one. Like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve, I could not escape my visitors.

The first was the ghost of “sweet Jesus deliver me.” He dressed my burned foot. As preparation he scrubbed it in a basin of hot soapy water with a good stiff brush—thanks a lot—and used a hoof pick to pry loose the big pieces.

Next came a demon with an angelic face—a wraith in white. She told me I had a stress fracture of the left clavicle and installed a kind of backwards brassier brace that kept me sitting straight, even though I was lying down.

Tiny Tim showed up clad in green scrubs and leaning on a noisy cart instead of a crutch. Wearing latex gloves and a surgical mask he “just popped” a couple of stitches in my lip. “No need for additional anaesthetic.” God bless us, every one—no goose for him.

After a few moments of peace I heard someone stroll into the cubicle and
stand around making groaning noises. I retaliated with rude silence. They pulled up a chair. I lifted the mask to see who it was. Jacob Marley, done up as Detective Bart Shephart, wearing yesterday's shave and a battered coat over a knit shirt with a raveled collar. By way of a sympathetic greeting he said, “Hardin, you look like shit.”

I eased the ice pack down on my face. “That's not a point I'm qualified to argue with you, Shep,” I said.

“They have to shave off your moustache to sew up your lip?”

Anyone else, I would have said, “Sure,” and let it go at that. But Shephart's a detective and should have noticed.

“I shaved it off before I talked to you at my office.”

“Didn't notice,” he said, deadpan.

I said, “There's a lot of that going around.” It's hard to be catty with an idiot.

“So you think I'm an idiot?”

Mind readers are worse than idiots. They catch you lying. “I don't think you're an idiot,” I told him. “I think you drink too much.”

“I never drink on the job.”

“Yes, you do.”

“A beer with lunch doesn't count.”

My guess is that Detective Shephart needed a slug of gin to slow his hands to the point that he could light that first cigarette while he sat on the edge of his bed. “A beer for lunch is drinking on the job,” I said.

“I can handle it.”

“You're an alcoholic.”

“I can quit any time I want.”

“Drinking causes problems in your personal and professional life.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“Maybe you're a problem drinker. Quit.”

“I didn't come here for a lecture,” he said.

“Too bad. The novocain's wearing off. Lecturing helps me share the pain.”

“Your pal, Scott Lambert?” said Shephart. “He's the doer. He's in custody, and he's taking you with him.”

“Lambert was a client. Maybe he did it. I didn't help him.”

“Hank Dunphy? You know who he is?”

“Works for Scott Lambert,” I said.

“Says you set up the meet between Lambert and Anne Frampton.”

“He's lying,” I said. I didn't look up, but I heard Shephart moving in his chair. “If you're going to arrest me, read me my rights.”

“You're already in custody.”

“Discharging a firearm in the city limits.”

“Prosecutor is talking conspiracy to commit murder.”

“Prosecutor has his dick in his hand,” I said.