The Rules of Wolfe (8 page)

A woman pushing a shopping cart across the lane freezes at the sight of the Escalade barreling toward her and Eddie veers and misses her but smacks the steel cart flying. It ricochets off a parked car and twirls into the air with its contents strewing and it drops behind the Escalade and hits the red truck's windshield and glances off.

Eddie touches the brakes and exits onto a side street and speeds up again. The truck staying in his rearview, its windshield cobwebbed on the driver's side, the driver hunched down to see out through a small clear segment.

They're on a residential street running parallel to the highway and four or five blocks east of it. As he speeds down the street Eddie leans on the horn to warn away a group of girls playing jump rope and they dart off into a yard. A few blocks ahead is a yield sign where the street merges into a divided four-lane road.

He has a clear view of that road's eastbound traffic coming from his left and tries to gauge its speed as he begins to slow down. There is a muted clatter from behind them and a hard rapping against the back of the Escalade and Miranda cries “Chingados!” and hunches down in her seat. Eddie cuts his eyes to the mirror and sees pale starbursts with dark centers on the back window.

They are almost to the cross avenue now and he can see the merging lane curving off to the right past the yield sign, but he's going too fast to hold in that merging lane without slewing out into traffic. Then he sees a gap in the flow of traffic in the nearest lane and his foot jumps back and forth from the accelerator to the brake as he tries to time his approach.

He makes a sharp skidding turn that carries him past the merging lane and into the gap in front of a green car that brakes hard to keep from hitting him and the green car is rammed by the car behind it—and the car behind that one is smashed broadside by the red pickup skidding past the merging lane.

There ensues a chain reaction of explosive crashings and screeching tires and spinning vehicles. In the rearview Eddie sees a car veer over the median and partly into the westbound lane and strike a station wagon almost head-on and then go whirling back into the eastbound lanes to collide with a minivan. The station wagon slews sideways and is hit by the semitrailer behind it and knocked onto its side and skids to a halt with its front end on the median. The semi is able to stay in its lane as it stops.

Traffic comes to a standstill behind them. Both of the eastbound lanes are completely blocked by the wreckage. The near westbound lane is obstructed, as well, and only the westbound outer lane remains clear, though it has slowed to little better than walking speed.

Miranda sits with one hand tight on the door handle, the other clutching the seat. Breathing through her mouth.

You all right? he says.

She looks at him and nods, eyes vibrant with fright and exhilaration. My God . . . we're still moving, she says.

Yeah we are, he says.

They need to reverse direction to get back to the highway. He turns left onto the wide median to try to get through the near westbound lane, the line of stalled vehicles closed up tight and making intermittent horn-blowing meldings into the slow passage of the outer westbound lane. Directly in Eddie's way is a panel truck and behind it is a taxi, both drivers looking away from him over their shoulders for an opening in the crawling line of traffic.

Eddie hands Miranda the Glock and tells her to keep her finger off the trigger and lower her window. When the panel truck is at last able to slip into the far lane and the taxi starts to close the gap, Eddie gooses the Escalade forward and crushes the cab's front fender. The taxi jerks to a halt and the driver's face whips toward him, scowling, mouth working. Eddie tells her to point the gun at him, and she does, and the driver gapes and raises his palms off the steering wheel. He stays in place as Eddie backs up a bit and then noses the Escalade off the median and ahead of the cab.

Eddie then leans on the horn and the oncoming driver in the outer lane looks over and sees Miranda pointing the gun at him and hits the brakes so sharply his car bobs. Eddie pulls in front of him, and the guy lets the taxi cut in too, perhaps to put a buffer between himself and the crazy people with the gun. The taxi does not crowd the Escalade as they move along in the creeping traffic.

They slowly come abreast of the destruction, a tangle of
smashed and steaming vehicles amid shards of glass and black-and-green sheets of oil and radiator fluid. Sirens already sounding in the distance, though barely discernible through the ceaseless blare of car horns. People milling, some limping, some bloody-faced, many with cell phones to their ears. A woman sitting on the ground with her hands to her face. A man's head jutting from the jagged windshield of an old VW microbus looks like it's been scalped. A woman hangs head-down in an awkward twist from the open door of a car, skirt bunched at her hips, hair draping the ground.

Miranda is staring wide-eyed at the carnage, a hand to her mouth. We did this, she says.

You could look at it that way, he says. Since we could've chosen to stay in the parking lot and talk things over with those guys.

She looks at him. They would have killed us.

Yes. And put our heads in a bag.

Yes, she says, yes. They would have . . . done that.

They spot the red pickup that pursued them. It's on the median and partly in the westbound lanes, its windshield folded outward from the frame like a big cobweb gaping on the driver's side, the driver half out and facedown on the crumpled hood. There's no sign of the one who did the shooting.

“Dumbfucks,” Eddie mutters.

Then says in Spanish, They should've shot our tires. Very basic rule.

8

Eddie and Miranda

They reach the highway and turn north onto it and in minutes are clear of the town. Eddie has to assume the guys in the red truck reported the Escalade's location, and with a mashed front fender and a bullet-pocked rear window it is now even easier to identify.

A few miles ahead is the little town of Esperanza, and then a few miles beyond that is a toll station, where the bastards can easily block them in. But the map shows road junctions with the highway at points past the toll station. He tells Miranda they'll switch vehicles in Esperanza and then take a side road to one of those junctions.

Yes, she says. He can see she's still quivering with adrenaline. He feels the tremor of his own.

They're almost to the first exit into Esperanza when he detects a black SUV three cars back in the outer lane. Dodge Durango. He knows it's them without knowing how he knows.

Damn it, he says.

She turns in her seat and looks back through the ruined rear window. She says, The black thing like ours?

Maybe. Keep an eye on it.

He moves over into the exit lane, just ahead of a pink Ford sedan with a woman at the wheel and a young girl beside her.

They're coming, she says. Three cars back.

He exits onto a frontage road and then turns off on a poorly paved two-way street of light traffic. The pink Ford stays behind them, but the next car turns the other way and the Durango closes up behind the Ford.

They are at the south end of town, and two miles farther on are past the town and into farmland irrigated by the Yaqui River. They cross a bridge over a canal and come to a red light at an intersection. To the right the road curves back into Esperanza, to the left it goes past a cluster of roadside businesses and a run-down residential area and then into a mix of farms and scrubland. Across the intersection the road remains wide but is of dirt and runs through an enormous patchwork of sugar fields.

An old Chevy pickup is in front of them. The left-turn signal is blinking on the Ford in back of them. The girl and woman are having an animated argument. The Durango looms behind the Ford, its windshield black as obsidian. If anyone steps out of the Durango, Eddie intends to ram the old pickup into the intersection and then work his way through the smashup or turn right toward Esperanza, whichever might seem easier.

Far behind the Durango, a police car turns onto the frontage road and comes their way, roof lights flashing. Eddie watches it in the rearview, Miranda in the side mirror.

The light turns green and the old truck lumbers across the intersection, black smoke issuing from its exhaust pipe, as traffic begins to cross from the opposite direction. Eddie stays in place, his eyes cutting back and forth from the green light to the rearview mirror. A line of vehicles is forming to the right and left on the crossroad. The woman in the Ford has turned her attention from the girl and is scowling at the Escalade. She gives Eddie a little beep of her horn and he puts on his left-turn blinker and eases the Escalade halfway into the intersection and halts there to wait for the only car still oncoming, though it is yet so far away Eddie could easily make the turn before it reaches the intersection. The car finally goes by but Eddie stays put, and the woman in the Ford gives him a longer honk of the horn. The cop car is coming very fast and Eddie sees now that it's state police, but as its siren closes to audible range it is drowned out by the onset of the Ford horn's steady squall.

The traffic light turns red and still he remains midway in the intersection, blocking the cars to his left, whose drivers now join the Ford in blowing their horns at him. The driver of the lead car to his right, a green Buick, motions angrily for him to get on across the intersection. Eddie looks at him but does not move. The man makes a gesture of exasperation and starts to cross in front of him—and Eddie stomps on the gas and the Escalade lunges across the intersection and the Buick brakes sharply to keep from hitting it.

Eddie sees the Durango pulling around the Ford, but its passage is now impeded by the cross traffic. And now the police car is there with its commanding lights and cutting ahead of the Durango, the other traffic haphazardly trying to get out of the way so the cops can pass by.

And now here they both come, the cop car and the Durango behind it.

Looking through the rear window, Miranda says, I think the police are with them.

What a surprise, Eddie says.

He has a large lead on them as he speeds down the wide road through the sugar fields. He passes the old Chevy truck at almost seventy miles an hour, engulfing it in dust. He can't see it from here but he knows the highway is a few miles to their right and runs parallel to the road they're on. Miranda checks the map and reckons they're almost past the point where the highway toll station stands.

The canebrake to either side of the road is crosshatched with alleyways for farm vehicles, and Eddie's sure some of them connect to a highway junction road. The cops are neither gaining on them nor losing ground.

Eddie spies an alley entrance coming up on the right, then taps the brakes a few times and makes a hard turn onto it, skidding partly into the cane and mowing down a portion of the outermost rows, the stalks whacking against the Escalade, the tires losing purchase in the soft irrigated earth before regaining traction, and then he's on the alley and resuming speed, the dense cane like green walls a few feet to either side of them. The shadowed alley is well graded and much less dusty than the outer road and runs straight as a ruler toward a green vanishing point.

In the mirror, he sees the tan dust cloud of their pursuers advancing toward the lane's entrance, and then the police car comes into view as it makes a sliding turn. Then the Durango.

Get over here, Eddie says. He raises his ass and the Escalade weaves a little as she slides over the console and squeezes under him and takes the wheel and he scrambles back into the middle row of seats. He takes up the M-16 and chambers a round and tells her to reduce speed a little, let the cops get closer. The rifle has an automatic-fire option but the full magazine is all the ammunition he has, and thirty rounds can get eaten up very fast on automatic fire. He sets the selector on three-round burst.

The cop car is gaining on them, the Durango behind it as though it's being towed. When I say Now, he says, take your foot off the gas and leave it off till I say Go, then stomp it.

She nods, and he says,
You hear me?
and she says, Yes,
yes
.

He lowers the left-side window, admitting a loud rush of air.

The cops are within a dozen yards of them when one of them leans out of the passenger-side window with a pistol in his hand and starts shooting, the reports sounding like small balloon pops, the rounds thunking against the Escalade's rear glass.

Now!
Eddie yells.

The Escalade decelerates and the cops close up faster and Eddie juts himself out the window and fires two three-rounders, all six bullets punching through the car's windshield on the driver's side. The car abruptly slows and the Durango fishtails as it brakes to keep from running into it and the cop car swerves into the cane and out of sight.

Go!
Eddie shouts, ducking back inside, and the Escalade surges forward. He'd known the cops' glass wasn't bulletproof but doesn't know about the Durango's and can't afford to waste ammunition finding out.

Without the cop car in its way, the Durango starts to gain on them. Supercharged bastard, Eddie thinks.

Oh God, Miranda says, cutting glances at the rearview.

Just hold your speed, Eddie tells her. He intends to let them get a little closer and then shoot out their tires.

But they beat him to it. A man with a small machine gun leans out and fires a burst and the left rear side of the Escalade abruptly sags. Miranda curses and fights the steering wheel.

Into the cane! Eddie yells. Get in the cane!

She veers into the canebrake and it's like plunging into a shadowy green sea. The Escalade bores through the stalks in a great clattering, bouncing and swaying over the furrowed ground as Eddie yells to go left, go right, directing her in a zigzag course to stay out of the Durango's view.