Hard Stop (26 page)

But I was older now, more mature. I regretted a lot of things I’d done, however satisfying they might have seemed at the time. I understood now I’d been merely acting out of my own sense of offended righteousness, that my anger wasn’t actually directed at the apparent object of antagonism, but rather an expression of my manifold disappointments and thwarted expectations.

While I was congratulating myself for evolving to a higher level of self-awareness, the Mustang driver stood on his brakes and slammed a hard left, gunning the rear wheels into an impressive power spin that had him flying past me in the opposite direction before I half realized what he was doing.

That’s when I thought this might not be an ordinary asshole. And probably not that ineffectual.

“Aw, shit,” I said out loud. I gripped Eddie’s collar and pushed him down into the foot well of the front passenger seat, downshifted into second and stuck the accelerator to the floor. The ten-ton hunk of Detroit iron leaped forward like a cat, the nearly bottomless torque suddenly awake and engaged.

I didn’t know the handling characteristics of the new Mustang, but I guessed they were better than what I had available. The Grand Prix wasn’t what you’d call a European touring car. All it knew how to do was accelerate rapidly in a straight line. I figured it would take a few seconds for the Mustang to pull another 180 to get back in pursuit. So I tightened my grip on the ugly plastic steering wheel and held on hard as I experimented with the limits of the big car’s suspension system.

I’d done what I could with beefy after-market shocks and modern tires, though you can’t do much about the ballistic energy of all that unbalanced weight being flung through hairpin turns.

I was mostly worried about Eddie. I hoped he didn’t think this was a cool new game and jump back on the seat to take it all in. As I held a death grip on the steering wheel I reached through the centrifugal force to stroke his head and ask him to stay where he was like a good boy.

The Mustang was back on my rear bumper in less than five minutes. I could hear the throaty roar of the fuel-injected V8 above the wind noise, and the solid scream of tires over macadam, sticky and secure to the road.

Then I heard a strange little metallic pop, and saw a spider web blossom across my windshield. At first I thought, great, what a time to get hit by a rock. But when the second web opened up I knew what it was.

I hung the next right, hurtling down a primitive sand road toward the Little Peconic Bay. I knew the neighborhood well,
having jogged through there a hundred times in the last few years. The Mustang was still hard on my tail, but he was holding his fire. The headlights bouncing in my rearview told why—the closer we got to the bay the more the road resembled an amusement park ride. I tightened my seat belt, slouched as low as I could into the leather-covered bucket seat and fought to control the steering wheel.

Somehow I started to open up some air between me and the Mustang. Though sprung like a drunken goose, the sheer mass of the old Pontiac held it closer to the earth than the new Mustang. As long as the struts, springs and tie-rod ends could withstand the punishment. To say nothing of the driver.

The curves were getting tighter, and as the gap opened up I could see the chaotic dance of the Mustang’s headlights lighting up the woods. It gave me an idea.

After careening like a psychotic porpoise through a particularly tight turn, I shut off the lights, eased up on the accelerator, jammed the transmission into first and stepped hard on the emergency break. The rear wheels locked up, sending the front end into a barely controllable frenzy, which actually helped to slow and eventually stop the big car. I checked again to make sure Eddie was wedged down in the passenger seat foot well, banged the shifter into reverse and floored it.

The concussion knocked the breath out of me, as if a fist the size of a Volkswagen had hit me in the back. Or more like a new Ford Mustang as it exploded into the vast, heavy-metal trunk of the Grand Prix.

The sound was more startling than the impact—a subterranean thud mixed with the wet spray of glass and the scream of rending sheet metal.

It was a jarring moment for me and Eddie, but a lot worse for the guys in the Mustang.

From the crouched position I took before the crash I reached for Eddie, feeling around for injuries. His ears were back, and when he jumped up on the seat his tail was down, but otherwise he seemed okay. He barked out a single, emphatic bark, which I knew meant, “What the fuck was that about?”

I dug a small flashlight out of the glove compartment and pushed open my door, shutting it quickly behind me to keep Eddie in the car. I stayed low and tried to adjust my eyes to the darkness—the Mustang’s headlights having followed the rest of the front end into oblivion. Its windshield was also blown out, so I could clearly see the driver sitting behind the wheel. His head was resting on the top of the deflating airbag, his face hidden behind a mask of blood. Another guy was more out than in, his body flopped across the mangled hood, twisted into a shape that could only be comfortable if you were past feeling it.

Panning around with the flashlight, I saw an automatic nestled in the accordion folds of the Grand Prix’s freshly compressed trunk. I picked up a stick, slipped it in the barrel and plucked it free of the mangled metal. I dropped it into my jacket pocket and went to take a closer look at the driver.

My entire rib cage, front to back, felt worked over, but the adrenaline kept me alert. I opened the door of the Mustang and shot the flashlight in the driver’s face. His eyes blinked open.

While I kept him in the light, I fumbled around my jacket for the cell phone to call 911. I told the dispatcher to call Joe Sullivan, who was probably only halfway to Hampton Bays by then. I could only give a rough description of the location, but when I asked if anyone had reported a loud explosion in the area, she had our exact position.

“Please don’t leave the scene of the accident before the officers arrive,” she said.

“No danger of that.”

I heard a faint sound from the driver. I reached in and gently pulled away the empty airbag. Tiny crystals of glass rained down, pattering against the dashboard and steering wheel. Some remained, glimmering like jeweled studs on the guy’s brown sport coat and black turtleneck.

“Don’t move,” I said to him.

His eyes stretched open so that the whites encircled the pupils, made even more stark by the blood streaming down his face. I moved in closer to look for the gusher, which I found—a deep slice an inch below his receding hairline. I pulled a crumpled paper towel out of my back pocket and stuck it on the wound.

“Who you working for?” I asked conversationally, like I was asking who he bet on to win the Eastern Conference playoffs.

The injured man closed his eyes, then opened them again, and seemed to smile.

“
El Cerberus
,” I heard him say, the words wet with blood.

“Cerberus? You’re kidding.”

“¿Muertos chiste?”
he whispered.

Do dead men joke?

“Why try to kill me? What the hell did I do?” I asked.

He leaned his head back on the seat and smiled again. I smelled the sticky sweet smell of alcohol in the car, though I assumed the man’s tranquility had more to do with shock.

I went back to the Grand Prix and got a roll of duct tape out of the glove compartment. I used it to tape some more paper towel to the guy’s head. Then I walked around the other side of his car for a closer look at his buddy. What I found wasn’t the kind of thing you’d want to study too closely. Likely he was doing the shooting, while leaning out the window, which is why he’d unsnapped his seat belt. Proves there’s
never a good reason to neglect proper safety procedures.

I went back to the driver, who was now staring out of the destroyed windshield and looking a little less comfortable.

“How you doing?” I asked him.

“Just a little headache. I stop drinking coffee last week. Doctor say it’s bad for my heart. It’s bad for my head when I stop, I want to tell him.”

“So, this Cerberus. Who’s he?”

He turned his head toward me.

“Is that how you say in English? You know who he is. I’m declaring the fifth amendment.”

He spent the next few minutes coughing up globs of oily blood.

“Good command of the U.S. Constitution,” I told him.

He nodded.

“The fifth is a good amendment. In Venezuela the only right you plead for is your life. You think the ambulance is coming? I’m not feeling too good.”

“It’s coming. They’ll get here as soon as they can.”

He nodded again.

“Good doctors here, too. Even if they’re all from India. The U.S. likes to hire Indians. And
Indios
from Venezuela, like me. Pretty soon Yankees won’t know how to do anything.”

“Except beat the Red Sox.”

I sat watching his breath slow almost to a stop. I couldn’t move him, even though I knew he was going into shock. The way his arms lay limp against his body said he might be paralyzed. Maybe temporarily, and one false move would make it permanent. On the other hand, he did try to kill me, somewhat attenuating my sympathy.

“Were you supposed to scare me or kill me?” I asked when his eyes opened again and he looked over at me. “And if so, why?”

“Make it look like an accident. It was Marcello who lost his cool and start off with the gun. Dumb
gordo
.”

“Hey, no disrespecting the dead.”

“Marcello dead?” he asked, genuinely surprised, even though the evidence was only a few feet away.

“Yeah. Sorry, man. Went out the window.”

He rocked his head back and forth where it lay against the headrest.

“That’s, like, not what I want to hear.”

“You might be dead yourself. Why don’t you help out your soul and tell me what this was all about?”

“What’re you, a priest?” he asked.

“No, an engineer. We only take confessions based on solid data.”

“Whatever. You one crazy fucking engineer,” he said, which turned out to be his last words. I felt a little bad about that, since he probably would have preferred to thank his mother, bless his children and plea for mercy from the Holy Mother, but that’s timing for you.

Ten minutes later the ambulance roared on to the scene, but all they got to do was certify that the two guys in the Mustang were dead, then wait around for the cops, detectives and forensics people to show up.

Joe Sullivan got there first.

“I’m sure there’s an explanation,” he said, dropping out of his Ford Bronco and adjusting his sport jacket over the unofficial cannon he kept in a shoulder harness underneath.

“Is this an accident or an act of self-defense?” I asked him.

“Oh, Christ.”

“I’ve got the gun, holes in the glass and, with luck, a slug in the dashboard. I’d really rather stick to the truth this time, as strange as that sounds.”

“What’s the motive?”

“If we knew that we’d be done here.”

“What do they say?” he asked, looking over at the Mustang.

“I don’t know. They’re dead.”

“Terrific. Ross’ll be up your ass a mile.”

“Good. A little more interest by local law enforcement would be a nice change. Present company excluded.”

Sullivan shot his flashlight in my face.

“Are you hurt or anything?”

“I’m fine, but I need to get Eddie checked out.”

As if to punctuate the thought, a bark came from inside the crumpled Grand Prix.

“Ross’ll want me to bring you in.”

“Me and Jackie’ll be there tomorrow. Have him warm up the ashtray.”

I flipped open my cell phone and called Amanda. I didn’t give her a lot of details, though the word “accident” was enough to get her out of the bathtub. While I waited for her to come get me, I called a vet I knew in the Village. He said he’d meet me at his clinic.

“Oh my God, are you hurt?” Amanda demanded as she burst out of her station wagon, her eyes fixed in horror at the unnatural mating of a souped-up Mustang and the ass-end of the Grand Prix.

“I’m fine. A lot better than my car.”

“Where’s Eddie?” she said, near hysteria.

“He’s fine, too. But I want to take him over to Eng’s for a look over. He said he’d meet us there,” I said.

“What about you? Don’t you need a look over?”

“You can do that. Later.”

I got her out of there before she could see all the human carnage, though I gave her the straight story on the way to Dr. Eng’s. Amanda was an adult. No point in hiding anything.

“Don’t think I’m foolish for being concerned,” she said.

I squeezed her thigh, then left it at that.

As promised, James Eng was at his clinic when we arrived. He opened the door to let Eddie run in, as he always did. The only dog in the known universe who liked going to the vet.

“This is why I agreed to do this,” said Eng, as Eddie jumped up and got his ears scratched. “Just to soak in the adulation.”

I described the night’s activities as well as I could as we wound though the hall to one of the examination rooms. Eng felt around Eddie’s body, checked his eyes, ears, nose and throat and let him lick his face.

“I don’t even let my own dog do that.”

After about ten minutes of this, Eng shrugged.

“I could do some x-rays, or hold him here for observation, but I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said. “The only condition he’s presenting is one of an exceptionally healthy animal.”

“It’s all the rotten crap he eats off the beach,” I said. “Builds up the immunities.”

“You’re not far wrong,” said Eng. “Eddie lived on his own for the first years of his life. You joke, but when I see a healthy stray, I see highly successful genes. What doesn’t kill you, makes you strong. Literally.”

“If that’s true, I’m going to live forever,” I said, and then tried to pay him, or at least thank him for the extra trouble, which he’d have none of.

“Go on, get out of here. And take your mutt. I’m always open for the good ones. Just don’t tell anybody, it’ll ruin my practice.”

After Eng lifted him off the table, Eddie did a little spin and wagged his tail, like this was the most wonderful moment of his life. I couldn’t stand much more of that, so I took Eng at his word and got the hell out of there.