Three Shirt Deal (2008) (33 page)

We stopped in front of a chain-link fence, which had been pre
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cut. Diego and Cisneros pried it open and bent it back, then the three of them picked up the chair and handed it roughly through the opening in the fence with me still sitting in the damn thing. Then they lifted the chair over the curb on a concrete drainage sluiceway and set it down again. Church started us rolling and suddenly we were moving way too fast down the sides of the steep drainage ditch.

"Whooooeeee!" Church sang out as the chair picked up speed, rocketing down the forty-five-degree side of the culvert with him, riding the back, holding the handles.

I could hear the heels on his cycle boots scraping on the pavement as he skidded along behind, holding on, trying to keep the chair from tipping over. I almost fell out twice, but Church kept me upright as we finally rolled out and came to a stop on the mossy, weed-choked floor of the decommissioned spillway.

"You know, back when I was a TG I used to think if I hadda die, it should be on this fucking coaster. Ride one of those new California-style PTC fiberglass cars right off the track and ou
t i
nto space. Take a hundred and fifteen foot drop to the ground. What a cool way to cross the border, know what I'm sayin'? All these years later and you're gonna get to live my dream, homes."

Chapter
52.

AS THEY WHEELED ME THROUGH AN UNDERGROUND DRAINAGE

tunnel, Mike's flashlight played along the walls where somebody had painted the names of the various coaster rides in white paint next to metal ladders that led up to the catch drains above. We passed Viper and Superman the Escape, and kept moving along the damp tunnel until we finally stopped under Colossus. Church left us in the tunnel and scrambled up the ladder.

"Okay, it's clear," he called down a moment after he disappeared. "Hand el pito up." I was pulled out of the chair and lifted, still handcuffed. Again, I cried out through the sock in my mouth but my screams were muffled. My head bumped on the narrow drain opening as I was pulled up into a large, four-foot
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high, drainage catch basin. Church had the drain cover off and they pulled me out of the basin, up into the cool night air. I looked around and saw we were underneath Colossus's huge wooden scaffolding. Trains roared by overhead, the screams of the coaster riders creating a deafening wall of noise.

"Get him up there," Church ordered, pointing at a set of wooden stairs. They led to a platform and a large warehouse building.

I felt hands yank me upright. My legs barely worked as they hustled me over pavement littered with trash that had dropped from the coaster above. Then I was carried up three flights of metal stairs, across a concrete stage, through a door, and into a large basketball-court-size building full of broken cars from Colossus. The fiberglass coaches sat on five or six fingers of track, each one with a service order stuck to its front. Some were waiting to be worked on, others were marked to be returned to the ride.

Brian Devine was waiting for us with three gang-bangers in white wife-beaters, none of whom I recognized. The vatos all had ornate VSL tattoos high on the back of their necks identifying them as veteranos.

"Get the sock outta his mouth," Devine said.

Somebody ripped it out and pushed me down onto the floor. The lieutenant grabbed a dirty metal folding chair, planted the legs over my body then straddled the chair, looking down over its back into my upturned face.

"Okay, tough guy, you're about to take the final exam." His manic eyes flashed dangerously. "Don't screw with me here, 'cause I have it in my power to make the end of your life fucking gruesome."

"I know everything, Brian. I know about you guys killing Juan Iglesia to get the bus company, how you dumped Ron Torgason over the beer contest. I got the whole playbook. It's already been turned over to PSB. You can kill me, but it doesn't make this go away,"

"Really." He looked at me, a slight smile flickering on his flat, hard face. "These last two days I've been on you and your wife like a coat of blue paint. I hung a wire in your house, put taps on your phone. When you shit, I hear the dookies splash. I been following you and your dingy wife around for almost two days. You ain't told nobody shit. You're both dead people. All I need from you before I croak you, is your case notes."

"My wife's already gone to Tony. Killing her does nothing for you. You're done, man."

"Your wife's so fucked up, nobody's gonna believe anything she tells 'em. But just to be safe, after I'm done with you, I always planned to swing by and pay her a visit. She's some damn fine hot
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lookin' trim. Maybe she gets some sublime Devine before I dump her. I can make it easy or tough. But you stonewall me and I'll take both of you down in pieces."

"The department knows. There's no place you can hide where they won't find you."

"Tell that to Bin Laden," Devine growled. "Who else besides your wife?"

"Captain Calloway."

He studied me for a long time before he said, "Bullshit." Then he smiled. "You're bluffin'. I like to clean up loose ends, but you know what, it doesn't really matter. After tonight, I'm gone. Gonna ditch my nagging wife, kill yours, and split this fucked-up country for good."

Devine stood up out of the chair and looked at Mike Church. "I'm done here. He's all yours, muchacho. Make it hurt." Then he turned and walked out of the shed without looking back.

Church pulled the metal chair off of me, yanking me to my feet. My body screamed in pain. They muscled me toward one of the repaired coaster cars with a "Return to ride" tag wired to the safety bar. The car sat on a wooden track, which ran through a canvas curtain on the east wall of the shed. Cisneros and Jose Diego were already working to remove the bolts from the safety bar that secured passengers into the seat. After they freed the bar arm, they placed it back into the housing without tightening the bolts.

I could see the plan. Put me on the coaster and let me take a twelve-story drop with no safety bar. I was about to be Magic Mountain's next unfortunate accident victim. Devine would tr
y a
nd kill Alexa before she got our file to Tony. The fact that Captain Calloway knew probably wouldn't matter because by the time the LAPD could mobilize, Lt. Devine would be long gone, cruising the coast of Mexico in his brand-new, million-dollar sport fisher. Alexa, Scout, and I had solved the mystery, but were half a beat too slow.

"Get him in the car," Church ordered.

Two of the VSL veteranos picked me up and set me into the coach. They covered my bound hands with a jacket and shoved a ball cap on my head, then pushed the car out of the repair building through the curtain. I looked down and saw that the track I was on was about twenty feet off the ground. I was weak, but decided that once I was a few hundred yards from the repair shed, I would find a way to lunge out of the car and drop down the two flights to the ground below. If I didn't land on my head, the worst I would get is some broken bones. However, my plan was instantly rendered useless as Mike Church ran along the landing beside the track, grabbed the rail of the cart and jumped over the side, easing his huge frame down, filling the space beside me.

"Ready to go coastering, homes?" he grinned.

Diego and Cisneros continued to push the car along the track that led to the staging area. The giant scaffolding loomed above me. As we neared the boarding platform the crowd noise grew, merging with the occasional roar from the streaking Goliath coaster a few yards off to our left. We were buffeted by the slipstream as it passed.

Suddenly, I started to convulse. I couldn't control my lower body. My legs cramped and I spasmed violently.

"Cono! Que te pasa?" Church blurted. "Do that again, I'm gonna slit you right here." He flipped open a four-inch serrated blade and stuck it in a spot between my ribs on the left side right next to my heart. I could feel the sharp point poking my skin.

Our car was pushed in front of a line of empty carts. Diego and Cisneros hooked us to the next empty train, which would soon be filled with waiting passengers. We were in the first car. Church yanked a knit watch cap from his pocket and pulled it low above his eyes. Then he donned a pair of dark glasses and settled back in the seat, the knife still poking between my ribs. I felt the hooks under the roller-coaster suddenly engage the car and we began to click forward toward the loading ramp.

When the car reached the white boarding line, the train stopped. One of the ride captains came up and frowned down at us. "How'd you get in there, man? You gotta board through the load line."

"We work the refit shed, dude. Makin' a test run. Gotta make sure this car don't still have no brake drag." Church showed the man his old, plastic maintenance badge. The loader barely glanced at it before he turned to check the other passengers who were now climbing into the cars.

I suddenly realized that his might actually work. Then, before I could come up with any kind of new escape plan, a loud bell rang and the cars were again engaged from below and clicked up the wooden scaffold, pulled up by a chain toward the first drop on the ride.

As we ascended the wall of white scaffolding Church used the serrated pocketknife to cut off the plastic ties binding my wrists, then put the knife back between my ribs. I reached out with white knuckles and gripped the useless safety bar that rattled uselessly in front of me. There was nothing I could do now--nowhere I could go. I was too high to jump. If I yelled out, I knew he would shove that knife into my side, piercing my heart. As the cars inched up the near vertical incline, the park fell away below us. Masses of people swarmed like ants at the base of the ride. Then we were at the summit of the first drop.

"Man, I love this fucking coaster!" Church said, his face an ugly mask of perverse delight.

Another loud bell rang.

Then the car launched forward and locked into place at the top of the ride. I was suddenly looking over the edge, straight down the track, at the pavement over ninety feet below.

Chapter
53.

THE BRAKES RELEASED AND THE GROUND RUSHED UP AT US. I

could barely keep from flying out of the coach and desperately gripped the safety bar clattering in its metal housing. Church sat beside me grinning as the train plummeted straight down toward the ground. I tried to use my knees to wedge myself tighter into the car, but could get very little purchase. We hit the bottom of the first dip and the car lurched dangerously into a right turn going over sixty miles per hour. The jolt almost threw me out of the coach. We were pulling at least two G's as we whipped through the first turn.

Mike Church craned around theatrically and shouted at the people in the car behind us. "Hey! This safety bar is loose!"

The guy riding behind us yelled, "Huh?"

The car began to bank left, gathering speed heading into a looping turn along the wooden track approaching the double bumps.

"This bar is out! It's out!" Church screamed. Then, to prove it, he picked it out of its housing and it flew from his hands, falling to the ground below us.

I looked frantically around the inside the coach for something to hold on to and spotted a place where the metal frame had separated from the fuselage. Just then, the coaster whipped around another curve going at least sixty, rocketing toward the double bumps ahead. I was vibrating so hard in the seat, I was barely able to focus on the track. That's when the airbrakes whooshed loudly and the train suddenly slowed.

"Adios, motherfucker," Church said and hit me with a powerful right hand to the ribcage.

I doubled over, gasping for air. The coaster continued to slow as he leapt out of the car and hit the little guardrail on the side of the track. He held on as the car rumbled past, then released and dropped about twelve feet to the pavement below.

I fought to catch my breath as the coaster traveled over the double bumps and began the steep ascent to the top of the next huge scaffolding heading for the final, gut-churning drop.

We were almost forty feet up before I got my head out from between my knees. I'd been so busy gasping for air, I'd missed my chance to bail. I pulled off my belt and managed to loop it through the separation I'd spotted between the fuselage and the metal frame. But by then, Colossus had reached the peak of the scaffold and was cresting toward the big drop. It lurched and stopped at the very top and I was looking down twelve stories.

"Oh, shit," I muttered as I wrapped my belt around my right wrist and gripped it tight.

The airbrakes whooshed off and we catapulted straight down the vertical track toward the ground. My body became weightless and for a few seconds I was floating freely around inside the car tethered only by my belt. We hit the bottom of the drop and banked violently to the right. I was sucked suddenly over the side of the car and was hanging on outside, being pulled at breakneck speed, perilously close to death.

"The fuck?" the guy in the car behind me gasped as he watched me dangling outside the car.

I held on to my belt in a death grip as the train lurched into
a t
ight left-hand turn. Centrifugal force pinned me hard against the outside of the car's fuselage. My feet banged into the face of the guy behind as I struggled desperately to hang on. Then I saw a metal superstructure coming up at seventy miles an hour. In seconds, I was going to be cut in two by the support beam. I lunged for the car, pulling with all my strength, and tumbled inside as the scaffolding flashed by an instant later.