Fever City (20 page)

Taylor walks back towards the gas pumps, shaking his head at an attendant who comes out, heading over to the telephone booth standing just beyond the john . . . Leaving a million in cash unattended inside the goddamn car. I can even see the sparkle of the keys he's left in the ignition, dangling beside the wheel.

I replay the call in my head. Was this the plan? Didn't they tell the chauffeur to drive up to the telephone, or was that just something I assumed?

This is the problem with ransoms—too many instructions, too many people looking over their backs, too many tails to lose. With all the second-guessing, the whole damn thing becomes so complicated that people get confused.

Honest mistakes are made.

And innocent children are slain.

Or maybe the driver got it right. Maybe Taylor was doing exactly what he was supposed to. Maybe they were planning a simple snatch and run right there, out in the false open—a terrain that was actually cluttered with obstacles, hiding places and getaways. Maybe the attendant was one of them.

Or were the kidnappers watching anxiously right now, as nervous and surprised as me, cursing the driver, urging him to go back and wait inside the car. Protect the cash from a potential thief who could end up driving away with more than he bargained for.

The fleabag hotel I had found for the stakeout was perfect cover and profiled a clear view of the terrain even without the binoculars. So perfect in fact that I took the time to check the rooms in case the kidnappers were set up here as well. But all I found was an exhausted, middle-aged couple sleeping it off and a young, newly-arrived Okie already on his second pint of rye. There had been no suspicious cars out in the parking lot at the back, but I overfilled the oil in all of them anyway. You just never know.

I survey the streets one last time then go back to the gas station. It's all clear on my side. But my side is only part of the picture and as far as I know, what is going on down there is being shot in VistaVision. I check the time. Ten minutes and counting . . .

The driver looks up suddenly, as though someone is pointing a gun at him and then he grabs the door of the phone booth, yanking instead of pushing, the whole booth shaking with the force of his frustration. With his fear.

An auto mechanic comes out of the service garage, wiping his hands on a rag, and calls out, annoyance on his face. Message received. Taylor shoves the door so hard, he staggers in, and I see him grimace as he hits his ribs against the phone shelf. It would be crassly comic if a child's life wasn't at stake.

Taylor answers the phone. Why are they calling early? I sweep the field of play. Nothing.

An oil tank truck slows to turn into the gas station, obscuring the phone box and the car. I watch it belch black fumes into the air. Smoke signals. Communication from the old days. Did the kidnappers know there was going to be a delivery? The whole truck shudders as it waits for the traffic to pass, the first impatient horns already serenading it with LA's highway melody.

Finally the traffic thins but the tanker just sits there, black clouds of exhaust coughing blindness across the road, choruses of angry horns protesting its stubborn immobility. A green Oldsmobile 98 sedan streaks out, overtaking through the oily fumes, the driver's voice loud and foul, then lost in the screech of brakes as oncoming traffic nearly collides with him.

I pull the cabin of the truck into hard, clear focus. The windshield is camouflaged with grime and dust, and a thousand splattered insects. Almost impossible to see out of. And impossible to see into.

Drivers get out of their cars, exchanging outraged comments as they begin to converge on the truck with all the seething determination of a lynch mob marching towards the county jail.

I focus again on the tank truck's windshield. A passing Dodge pickup shafts reflected sunlight into the cabin. Just for a second, but enough to confirm my suspicions. The cabin's empty. The driver has gone.

I burst out of the room, tripping on the trash cans that have been deliberately stacked there. An almighty crash as I skip and tumble across tin. Asphalt meets the flesh of my palms. Asphalt wins. The realization stings up from my hands to my too-slow brain.

Setup.

They knew I was there.

I kick in the Okie's door, my piece in my bleeding hand. My curse fills the empty room.

Even before I reach my car, I know something's wrong. It sits, queasy and lopsided, like a punch-drunk fighter who can't get off his stool for the last round. It's nursing two flat tires. I rush onto the street and start trying cars. The second one's unlocked. A Chevy Nomad. I tear out the ignition plug, and hot-wire it fast. There's a shout behind me as I pull away from the curb and then I'm speeding towards the gas station, a taxi skidding and swerving as I cut so close in front of it I can smell the fare's perfume. I hit the hand brake, swinging me round the front of the tanker and into the garage. One empty telephone booth. One chauffeur on his back, moaning. Beyond Taylor, on the other side of the station, the limo squats guiltily, its doors still hanging open in total surrender. Empty.

The ransom is gone.

The abandoned tank truck sits in the afternoon sun, like a time bomb about to explode; angry horns still protesting. An attendant climbs into the cabin, then falls back in shock, landing on his heels and turning. ‘There's a man in there . . . ' he shouts, pushing past me. ‘Tied up!'

I look at my watch. Five minutes before the designated pickup. Has this been a hijack or a diversion? Decision time. See what I can get out of the driver or try to give chase. But to what . . . ? I scan the surrounding landscape. Nothing but cars. Cars everywhere. Speeding, crawling, slowing; overtaking. Snarling. A typical street scene in LA. Inhuman. Mechanized. Brutalized by vehicles.

I don't need Schiller or anyone else to tell me the awful truth: I have fucked up.

Again.

And then I spot it: a beat-up Mercury Eight, puffing smoke like Casey Jones as it burns off the excess oil. It's making a clean break, heading towards the coast. Tires squeal as I pull out into the traffic, someone shouting an insult as I cut in front of him, and accelerate, driving against the flow of cars. Wails of terror. Crisscrossed messages. Hateful klaxons trying to hammer me into unconsciousness.

There is a skid, then the sorrowful double thump of collision. Not me. Hubcaps soar past like flying saucers.

I peel off down a driveway, straight through a wire fence. The car shivers and shudders, crumpling mesh and metal, and then I'm bumping my way across a paddock, towards the road the Mercury has taken. The paddock goes green with lettuce, the wheels sluicing up salad behind them. There is a close detonation, and the side mirror explodes in comets of crystal. Through the rearview mirror I see the old man waving his fist at me, the shotgun in his other hand, angry dogs giving chase. I accelerate, slapping down another wire fence, concrete protesting against the undercarriage with a metallic rasp.

I hump off the curb, the wheel resisting like a tiller against a king tide as I yank and heave it into me, spinning the vehicle onto the street. Although I can no longer actually see the Mercury, I can still follow the chug of its chimney exhaust, leaving a trail of smoke above the crown of trees.

I lurch up onto a curb, sparks turning the muffler into a Roman candle, taking a shortcut back behind a schoolyard, then shuddering back onto the silent hush of bitumen, kids pointing and running after me. I hear their taunt. Bank robber. Bank robber.

I turn at the next corner, slowing right down, scanning the branches beyond for any sign of my lead. I can't have lost the car. It would be unforgiveable. What about the kid? What about the money? And what about Old Man Bannister? I wouldn't last very long.

I check the cross streets.

Empty. Then I see it, abandoned in the driveway of a boarded-up warehouse. I pull up in the shade of a sycamore a block away and watch. Nothing moves on the street except for a wasp tapping a forlorn Morse code on the pane as it tries to B&E the car. Once, when I was still courting Cate, we got invited to a big house out at Rancho Los Feliz—friends of her folks; although you wouldn't have known it. She said it was because their family was from Calabria and hers were from Piedmont: reverse prejudice, made possible courtesy of the American Dream. They had cleaned up in New Jersey thanks to a chain of Buick dealerships and had moved to California for the sunshine and the movie stars. It was a barbecue—one of those affairs where husband and wife keep bickering about the marinade and who had burnt the spare ribs and forgot the ice—and if that wasn't bad enough, all the way through we were plagued by wasps. Tommy showed up late—he'd been on patrol—and saw us all slapping at the bugs. He shook his head, went into the kitchen and came back with two beer growlers half-filled with Coca-Cola. ‘What, you're on the wagon now?'

‘Are you kidding? This is for the goddamn wasps . . . ' He set them down on a step nearby. Within thirty seconds the wasps were gone.

It was just before sunset when Cate glanced over at the step and screamed. We all got up to see. Even Tommy couldn't believe his eyes. Inside the two jugs were thousands of dead wasps. So many that the coke was lapping out of the lips of the bottles. It was as if there was just a faint smear of liquid on top of two bottles full of drowned and drowning insects, stinging each other as they crawled downwards, further and further away from the only route of escape. Tommy stared at it for a long moment, and then broke into a savage, satisfied laugh. ‘Look at those greedy little suckers!' Cate slapped him. Later she said she didn't know why. She started to cry. I had to take her home. I heard Tommy making some crack to the others about how Cate was always like that when she drank. Only she hadn't touched a drop all day. That was the last time she ever saw Tommy alive. I knew she never liked Tommy. But at the funeral she wept. She told me it was because of the wasps.

I lean over and flick the glass on the other side of the wasp and the bug takes off. I glance around at the street's windows, looking for prying eyes. Shifting curtains. For the glint of a gun barrel aimed my way.

Then I catch it, red and white and moving too fast, a Ford '58 Fairlane Skyliner pulling out behind the warehouse, turning onto Hudson. It's already three blocks ahead of me. I hold back, on the cusp of nearly losing it. The car looks too flashy to be theirs but it's the only thing that's moving, and if I was one of the kidnappers, that's what I'd be doing.

I follow gently, just catching them as they take a right onto a back lane. I continue straight on. It's them all right, doing the circuit, making sure they're not being tailed. I pull over and reach into the glove compartment for the street map before remembering: it's a stolen car. And I'm officially a thief. I take my chances and figure I can grid them. North by northwest, that's the only way they can go for now.

I cruise slowly, sticking to the main roads, and when I'm convinced that they've lost me, I nearly hit them as they're coming onto Main. I brake so hard, I hammer my knees against the dash, the steering wheel cracking across my sternum. I swear, making eye contact with the driver. He stares after me with dark, hollow eyes, then flips me the bird. I gaze after the car. He turns to the man in the passenger seat, telling him what he's just done. There is a flash of a smile on the passenger's face. Then they're lost to the blur of distance. I give them four cars between us before I follow.

The face. I knew it. Memories of lowlife hideouts drift sadly by, a down-and-out litany of post-hope environments, like Tommy's growlers, teeming with cruelty, their doomed inhabitants stinging each other to death as they swarm and surge and push ever further down into the drowning darkness. No wonder Cate wept.

I force myself to continue the search as I follow the Skyliner. It was the eyes I remembered. Eyes I should never risk forgetting. The eyes of a killer. The way they stared into me before the driver softened their hatred with a juvenile gesture, seeing me for who he thought I was: just another dumb moving target.

Then it hits me. He was in a uniform when I saw him. I am positive. But which uniform? I nearly have it when they take a left, onto Hawthorn Parade. Now I know I'm in trouble. The traffic would peter out at the Southern Pacific railroad junction and they'd spot a tail. But for the second time I get lucky. The Ford pulls into a driveway, number 669. I cruise past, watching them in the rearview mirror as they walk towards the front door, two men struggling with suitcases, looking nervously around . . .

I pull over, trying to figure it out.

We weren't fifteen miles from the Bannister Estate. Could they have been holding the Bannister kid all this time right under the City's nose?

I get out and look around. A curtain across the road falls back into place. Nosy neighbours? Or accomplices to kidnapping? No time to check now, I have to follow the two men.

I make it across the lawn of 669 without being seen, and duck under some bushes. They are in bloom, the perfume odd and pungent; sweet yet strangely disturbing—almost putrid. There's a window just above my head and people are on the other side, talking. I can't make out the words through the glass, but I can hear the tone. One million bucks has just entered the equation. This morning they were just a couple of petty criminals, and now they're tycoons. No one's going to take that sea change away from them. Not the police, not the mark, not the snatch . . . And certainly not their partner in crime.

This is always the last dance. When the money's on the table, the knives come out. Friends are no longer trusted. Cohorts become traitors. And blood brothers turn out to be shameless strangers. Petty quarrels give way to avarice; anger to murder. Spoils are contested; lives ended quickly. Fast, close and dirty. Point-blank; until there's only one man left standing, with a suitcase in either hand.

I risk a quick look and catch sight of the driver walking into another room. I try the window. It opens like a breeze.