Internecine (22 page)

The biker-looking dude interrupts his trip to bug-board you, dead bang, with a glare. He has a lazy eye.

“Shhh,” he says, holding a finger to his lips.

You nod, like one bad homie acknowledging another as they pass on a street. You sit as he sits.

The whole drama has sucked up another two minutes, tops.

Just like everyone else in the bullpen, I looked up, too hopeful, at the sound of the door unbolting. Some undifferentiated amount of time must have elapsed, because now I was freezing, and groggy, as though I had captured a swatch of thin sleep somewhere along the line. The grit and odor of the cell seemed embedded in my pores.

It was a new officer, a replacement for the burly fingerprint cop, cut from the same world-weary pattern. “Maddox,” he said.

I just stared at him, from the floor, from my little tent of blanket around my knees.

The officer grimaced as if from a gas pain. “Yeah, you.” He crooked a finger. “Come on.”

My feet were on ice, in another country, and my legs were asleep. When I wobbled upright I was keenly aware of how stupid I looked. I
could not walk, but managed a meandering shuffle toward the door. I tried another nod at the biker-sorta guy, who merely closed his eyes and put his head back down on his folded arms. That would have to play, for gratitude.

Thunk,
and the cell was a universe away. “What happened?” I said. The cop was marching me by a forearm. “Just come on.”

I could see his wristwatch. Just after eleven o’clock, but
A.M.
or
P.M.
? “I don’t understand,” I said. “Am I out, or is this another—?”

The cop did not look at me, but offered another intestinal-stitch grunt. “Don’t you know how this works?”

No, I didn’t.

I found out, however, that it takes a fuck of a long time to get out of jail; just as much time as it does to get in. The downfall of our civilization won’t be starvation or nuclear catastrophe or pollution or a stray asteroid; it’ll be due to
processing.
I fully expected to be hand-delivered into the clutches of some anonymous and threateningly bland
NORCO
operatives. About the time the sheriff handed me my brown, string-clasp envelope and told me to
sign again,
my brain began to toy with the idea that maybe I was not walking my last mile, but had made bail.

Thanks to benefactors unknown.

Envelope in hand, personals accounted for, I was shown a door and the cops forgot all about me. I had to open it and walk through by myself. It was an unmarked exit that pooted you back into the front of the station, near the soft drink machines and another door, farther down a short hallway, labeled men. The thought of an actual, functioning restroom seemed like a gift from the gods. It was so weird—the more I thought about that, the more innovative and special it seemed, as though a restroom was an obvious convenience no one had ever bothered to invent. Phony, cheap hope flooded me. I wanted to spend a long time dunking my head in a basin of hot water, with real soap. Or, possibly, try to scrub my humiliation off my still-stinking hands. I realized I was still pulled into myself, shutters folded. My consciousness was still back in the cell.

“Yo, wrong way,” said a voice behind me.

I turned, joints grinding. In the sickly greenish light of the station fluorescents I saw the gangly figure, dirty-blondish hair,
SMOKING CAT
T-shirt, worn-in athletic shoes . . . but my brain was still on time-delay.

“Zetts,” I said. It felt like test-driving a new mouth. “DMZ.”

“At your service. Can we please get the fuck outta here?”
Getthefuckouttahere
was all one word. “I fuckin
hate
police stations, dude.”

I was lamely searching for some flip rejoinder when I caught the expression in his eyes,
We go like your life depends on it. Now.

The deputy on desk duty was already looking at a screen, then at me, then back at the screen.

When he looked up again to triple-check, Zetts had already hustled me out the nearest door. “Go, go, go, don’t stop, don’t look back, keep going, before they—

I figured it out. Red flag.

Zetts’s midnight-blue GTO waited in the visitor lot in all its jacked-up, muscle-car splendor. Something seemed strange about it, but Zetts was in a hurry. “Get in—we gotta fly.”

Fly where? Why? My mouth still wasn’t working right.

His gaze darted down when I sank into the passenger bucket. “Seat belt,” he said. When he fired the engine the whole car shook, grumbling, a bomber revving up to takeoff speed. The “seat belts” were the type of harness that crossed over
both
shoulders. Competition grade; I should have guessed.

He did not have to tell me to hang on.

The GTO nosed harshly down as Zetts spun the leather-wrapped steering wheel and we backed furiously out . . . and continued, in reverse, down the canted drive marked
ENTRANCE
. We piled ass-first into the street and I heard civilian brakes whine as collision was averted. Deputies were already boiling out of the exit door we’d just used, shouting stuff, unholstering sidearms.

Zetts worked the five-speed shift and mashed me with acceleration, slip-sliding around the nearest corner and cutting off a line of right-turn-only mall fodder at San Vicente.

“Zetts!” Useless, to object.

“Silence
please!
” He jammed a protruding cassette into its slot and the cabin detonated into the harsh four-four time of (a song I later discovered was) a Pinch oldie called “Brainfuck.” We weaved around
commuters doing the legal limit and crammed about a light-year of real estate between us and the sheriff’s station. The world went past us, too fast. I was scared to look out the windshield.

The hammering music wasn’t doing my headache any good, either. It was too loud and I was now, officially, too old. Before I could make an exaggerated, pantomime face to assert my adult disapproval of this, Zetts directed my attention to the glove compartment.

I opened it on the second try as the car gobbled distance. I pulled out a gun, some kind of semiauto pistol heavy enough to be loaded. Zetts shook his head
no
and indicated something else. It was a unit similar to a handheld volt-ohm-meter—little swing needle, LEDs, buttons. I tried to hand it to him but he shook his head vigorously; he was driving, dammit. Using a sporadic sign language of gestures and expressions, I managed to successfully click the thing on. The needle bobbed into the halfway zone. Three of the row of five LEDs glowed vaguely orange. Zetts pointed at the buttons and I began poking them until the needle ebbed and the lights winked green all across. Zetts gave a thumbs-up, and only then did he crank down the volume on the Kickers booming from the rear deck.

“They tied a can to us,” he shouted.

“The cops? Back there?”

“No, no! They’re just nuisance value. But fifteen more seconds and we wouldn’t have made it out the door.” He jerked a thumb past his shoulder. “Our
NORCO
friends are on us.”

“What do you mean—a tail?”

“Yeah!” Our speed was climbing again.

“Where?”

“Behind us about two blocks—the SUV and the Mercury Marauder.”

“How do you know?”

“Both black, both new, no front plates, dealer plates in back, no trim, wraparound tint, driving in tandem!” His eyes checked the mirrors. He had installed one of those panoramic rearviews that could reveal a Cinemascope version of whatever was behind us.

Yelling was easier than talking, against the stereo and the bullroar of the engine. “Are you kidding?”

“Yeah, sure!”

“How can you tell?”

“A thousand things. Neither of ’em has any shit hanging from the mirror. No stickers. Identical sunglasses. You can just tell. Mostly from their tracking pattern. They know we know, but they
don’t
know we’ve already made them. Newbies, definitely. Who can’t hear us, now.” He pointed, indicating I should replace the box (and the gun, too) in its compartment.

“Homers? That liquefies their little transistorized minds.”

He notched the music up. “Fuck CDs, man, I hate ’em!” He punched the light at La Brea and hooted in triumph. “Hah! Beat that fuckin camera, dude!”

I looked behind and saw the double-strobe of the traffic camera as it photographed both of our pursuers, lagging through the red.

“Don’t
look,
man, fuck! Eyes front, keep low, okay?”

“Where’re we going?”

“Speed zone, baby!” He let loose a war whoop and laid on the gas. “As soon as we can smoke these chumps . . .”

The GTO’s fat road-grabbers hashed a tight turn onto a residential side street . . . then Zetts went even faster, miniaturizing the chase cars in the rearview. His only distraction from his expert wheelmanship was the indulgence of extending a stiff middle finger out his window. “DMZ pops the clutch and tells the dicks to
eat his shit!!
”

As soon as our pursuit was foxed, Zetts stood on the brake and did a two-point backward scoot that was breathtaking to behold. I hadn’t even seen the driveway on which he had zeroed-in, with his prescient pilot skills, the mosh-pit version of Zen that contradicted his entire character. He was the first driver I had seen become one with his machine, though I’d heard that expression thousands of times. Hell, I’d even used it, in campaigns to make hapless consumers feel more like bold individualists by purchasing a car. The numbnuts factor I had witnessed at the Sisters’ was completely gone, and Zetts was totally in control.

We backed into a clapboard garage at the end of a downscale block. I had no idea where we were. Zetts cut the motor and leapt out to drop the hinged door. Then he resumed his seat and handed me a cold can of beer the way a magician hands a bouquet to the most attractive lady
in the front row. I was still trying to fathom the elaborate buckle on the shoulder harness. It was a hooked deal similar to the clasps on a fireman’s jacket.

Zetts raked his hair back and depth-charged most of his beer in a series of long, greedy swallows. “Ahhh. Take five.”

I was still getting used to gravity. “That was . . . interesting. Don’t the cops ever chase you? I mean, isn’t this high-speed chase thing sort of illegal?”

He shot me a dour look. “Yeah, if you’re a fuckin moron. I never open Trigger up unless I’ve got their patrol grid, boss.” He snapped open brewski number twoski.

“I don’t think I understand anything you just said.”

He sighed. We had switched ranks—now he was the grown-up, telling the kid why crossing against traffic was bad. “You gotta know where they are, when they are. What their pursuit jurisdictions are. How far they’ll chase you and where they’ll call in interception or backup. What the cleanest escape route is.
In advance.
Or else you got an ass-full of helicopters and your big, smiling bazoo on the news.”

“But there were no cop cars at all.”

“Sure there were. They were on us five blocks from the station. But they were busy chasing the chasers. Probably still are.”

My mouth stalled and I’m afraid a drip-drool of beer escaped. “I didn’t hear sirens.”

Zetts leaned over to clink cans, with a satanic grin. “It’s a rush, ain’t it? All your senses change.”

I never even saw flashbars, not even when I looked back. In the mirrors. Nowhere. But the beer was absolutely refreshing and delicious. I’d only read about danger and freedom attenuating the senses, and dismissed it as melodramatic ballyhoo. It really was true . . .

. . .
unless the whole chase was a custom setup, designed to make me trust Zetts, whom Dandine had named as a potential traitor.

A bubble clogged, halfway down my parched throat.

“Okay,” said Zetts. “Flashback: That doodad in the glove compartment? That was to cook the leash they stuck on Trigger back at the sheriff’s station, when I was inside. No way to avoid that, so, you know—compensate.”

“You call your car
Trigger?
”

“Do
not
mock my wheels.” He spent a moment narrowing his gaze, daring me to badmouth my escape chariot.

“By
them
I assume more
NORCO
guys?”

“Yeah, most likely. Assholes.”

“So, who sent you to get me?”

“You know who. Mr. D.”

“Is he still at Collier’s?”

“Negatory.” Zetts shook his head as if this was stale news. “He’s gone from that place. Whereabouts currently anybody’s guess. We’re supposed to wait for, y’know, an update from parts unknown.”

I tried to build the scenario in reverse. It wasn’t practical for Dandine to have tailed me to the movie theatre. I screwed that up all on my own. Next likelihood was that Katy Burgess had gotten my SOS (“from stir,” as we hard-boiled jailbirds say) and executed my foggy instructions gorgeously. I regretted roping her in, but it had been my only way out. Collier had told Dandine. Dandine had figured out what had befallen me, and sent Zetts. All that had required nearly twelve hours, from the time of my arrest.

“We talked about leaving you inside for eight more hours,” said Zetts. “So the getaway would be at night. Better odds. But he didn’t like the idea of leaving you there with no backstop and no protection. Plus, like you saw, they were five seconds from grabbing you when I showed up. Besides, I fuckin
hate
leaving people in the can; that’s like
no
fuckin place to be.”