The Sweetman Curve

by Graham Masterton

  ‘This is like looking for a blade of grass on someone’s lawn,’ complained Val. ‘In the goddamned dark, too.’

  ‘It’s not as bad as it could be. They’re driving a big white ‘58 Lincoln Capri. That’s almost as good as if they sent up flares.’

  Val swooped low down the Box Springs Grade towards the Riverside track, his searchlights briefly lighting up the streams of cars on the highway below. Umberto, tying his white tie, peered conscientiously out of the Bell’s bubble cockpit, trying to spot the long white telltale shape of John Cullen’s Lincoln.

  ‘Do we blow their heads off?’ asked Val.

  Umberto nodded. ‘That’s right. This time, we blow their heads off.’

  Val lifted the helicopter over a huge furniture truck, lit up with red and orange lights. He was almost skimming the roofs of the cars now, and Umberto could see pale faces looking up in surprise as they clattered past.

  For ten minutes, they flew up and down the highway. They paused a couple of times over white cars, but one was a new Cadillac and the other turned out to be a decrepit Chrysler.

  ‘They go tell us to look for one car in the middle of the night? They’re crazy. It could be anywhere,’ Val complained.

  ‘Allen timed it pretty close. He reckoned they should have reached this stretch of road between nine-fifty and ten o’clock. That Lincoln’s a speedy old car, so T.F. says. They were clearing a hundred-ten when he was chasing them down to San Diego.’

  ‘Well, why don’t they show?’ complained Val. ‘If we stick around here much longer, the Highway Patrol’s going to start coming after us.’

  Umberto lifted the Schmeisser on to his knee, and inserted a clip. ‘Just try a couple more passes. It’s only five before ten.’

  Val turned the helicopter around, and made another fast tilted run down highway 60, heading east towards the sprinkle of lights that was Beaumont. It was then, miraculously, that Umberto said, ‘Hold it, hold it! What’s that – just down there ahead of us?’

  The helicopter slowed, and circled around the highway. Below them, speeding at over ninety, was the long white profile of John Cullen’s Lincoln. Its sides were caked with red dust from the desert, and it looked as if someone, a girl, was sleeping in the rear seat.

  Umberto made a circle of his finger and his thumb, and then indicated to Val to take the helicopter lower. One burst from the Schmeisser should finish them off for good. He opened the small port in his perspex door and raised the machine gun to his shoulder.

  *

  Mel saw the helicopter first. He thought it was the police, or the Highway Patrol, but when it wheeled around them, its rotors flashing in the reflected light from their headlamps, he could see the private markings and the pilot in his jeans and T-shirt.

  ‘It’s after us!’ he yelled. ‘John – for Christ’s sake, it’s after us!’

  Perri, waking up in the back seat, said, ‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’

  ‘Helicopter,’ John said tersely. ‘It looks like they want to stop us at any price.’

  He put his foot down, and the Lincoln accelerated up to a hundred-fifteen, its engine burbling with power. Moths and insects pattered on the windshield like a shower of summer rain. He overtook a long line of cars and trucks, and then he was chasing nothing but the tunnel of light that his headlamps made out of the darkness.

  He glanced to his right. The helicopter was keeping – pace, using the white line down the centre of the road to guide it. It was really low now, only twelve or fifteen feet off the road, and a pick-up truck that was coming in the opposite direction flashed its lights and blew its horn in panic.

  ‘We can’t shake it off,’ John told Mel. ‘It’s too damned fast. And it’s going to catch us wherever we go.’

  Mel reached under his windbreaker and took out the .38. He handed it over to John and said, ‘See if you can wing the pilot. That’ll stop ’em.’

  Steering with his left hand, John raised the revolver and aimed it at the perspex bubble of the helicopter’s canopy. He fired once, but nothing seemed to happen. The helicopter kept flying along beside them, its rotors kicking up a deafening clatter, and it was even moving closer.

  ‘Again,’ said Perri, from the back seat.

  John rested his wrist against the windowsill, and fired a second shot. The helicopter instantly veered away from them and climbed into the night. They craned their necks to see where it had gone, but it disappeared over their heads, and somewhere behind them.

  ‘Maybe that’s scared them off,’ said Mel.

  John shook his head. ‘Don’t you believe it. They just want to get out of range. If they took off like that, I couldn’t have hit them. Maybe I made a hole in the cockpit, but I doubt if they’re hurt worse than that.’

  They could still hear the helicopter, even though they couldn’t see it. Perri put down her window and looked out, then she said, ‘They’re in back of us, maybe fifty feet up. I don’t think they’re going to let us go.’

  The highway was deserted now, behind them and in front of them. If the helicopter was going to attack them, now was the time. John slewed from one side of the road to the other, trying to make the Lincoln a difficult target for anyone with a gun.

  They heard a noise like a flock of birds whistling. Then, abruptly, three or four holes were punched in the hood of the car, and the rear window cracked.

  ‘It’s a machine gun!’ shouted Mel.

  There was more whistling. Splinters of blacktop and concrete sprayed against the windshield. Then there was a heavy banging sound in the trunk, and John heard an explosion of rubber and air as the spare tyre burst.

  His mind worked with strange coolness. A half-mile further along the highway, on the right, he could see a small off-ramp. He didn’t know where it went, but anything had to be better than sitting on the highway while Carl Chapman’s killers shot them to pieces. He pressed the gas pedal down to the floor, until the Lincoln was slamming through the night at a hundred-twenty.

  The half-mile flashed past. As the off ramp rushed up to meet him, he could see that it was a steep downhill grade, but by now it was too late. He swerved on to it without touching the brakes, and the huge car almost flew into the night, its suspension jarring, and he thought for two terrible seconds that he had completely lost control.

  But then he heard the tyres howling and shuddering, and the sliding sound of grit under the wheels, and the Lincoln held a long, fast, sideways slide. They went down the grade to the side road, losing speed all the way, but still over seventy. All Mel said was, ‘Mother of Christ.’

  At the foot of the ramp, John stamped on the gas again, and the Lincoln took off up a winding, roughly metalled road, in a cloud of white dust and burning rubber. The car bounced and bucked as they drove over uncambered curves and potholes, and negotiated concrete bridges that spanned one dry culvert after another.

  Perri saw the shafts of light from the helicopter, following behind them like the bright legs of a monster on stilts. She said, ‘They’re still after us! They’re catching up! Do you think we ought to get out and make a run for it?’

  ‘We need the car, insisted John. ‘And apart from that, they won’t find it hard to hunt us if we’re on foot.’

  As they bounced over another bridge, they heard the whistling of machine gun bullets. Three or four bullets suddenly banged through the roof of the car, and sent up a spray of upholstery, leather and horsehair.

  They didn’t stand a chance now. On the rough road, they couldn’t make more than thirty or forty miles an hour, and the helicopter hovered directly over them, holding them helpless in the bluish-white glare of its lights. Another burst of bullets kicked up dust and chips of rock all around them, and one of the car’s side windows shattered into blindness.

  John headed for the next culvert as fast as he could make it. Instead of driving over the bridge, though, he steered the Lincoln down the slope into the culvert bed. They were jolted and shaken about as they came down the bank, and the
bottom of the culvert was strewn with rocks, but John managed to wrestle the long white car around to the right and under the bridge.

  They heard the helicopter clattering around the culvert, and another spray of bullets ricocheted under the bridge. But they were safe here. John killed the engine and they sat in darkness, waiting to see what their pursuers Would try next.

  ‘We can’t stay here for ever,’ Perri said. ‘Even if they can’t get us now, they’re bound to send someone after us.’

  John was reloading the .38. ‘It’s better to stay here than try our chances out there. There just aren’t any chances out there.’

  Again, they heard the helicopter pass overhead. Then, they saw its lights illuminate the culvert, and heard the sound of it circling. Gradually, it sank into view, its spotlights deliberately pointing their way so that they were dazzled. It settled on the dry culvert bed, and they could just make out the doors opening. The motor was cut out, and the rotors sang their way to a stop.

  Two men were walking towards them, one armed with a gun. They stopped a little distance away from the bridge, and one called, ‘Cullen? Is that you, Cullen?’

  ‘Don’t answer,’ Mel hissed.

  ‘If that’s Cullen,’ said one of the men, ‘we want you to get out of the car with your hands up. No tricks, no nothing. Just get out of the car and walk towards us with your hands up.’

  ‘If you don’t,’ added the other man, ‘we’ll blow your heads off.’

  John said to Mel, ‘I’ve got an idea. I’m gonna do what he says.’

  ‘What? He’s going to kill us anyway.’

  ‘Just do what he says. You and Perri get out, and walk towards them with your hands up.’

  Perri said, ‘John—’

  He turned and gave her hand a quick squeeze. ‘Please, Perri. Just do it.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mel, in a resigned voice.

  From the entrance to the bridge, the man called, ‘Hurry! We don’t have all night!’

  Mel opened the door of the car and stepped out into the glaring light from the helicopter. Perri opened the back door, and followed him.

  There was a moment’s pause, while Mel and Perri stood facing the two gunmen in the dusty brightness. Then John started up the Lincoln’s engine, threw it into reverse, and backed up along the culvert with his foot hard on the floor.

  A burst of machine gun fire rattled and pinged against the Lincoln’s radiator. But John twisted the steering-wheel, and the car whinnied its way backward up the side of the culvert, its tyres sliding on the loose dirt, its side doors still swinging open. With a last surge of power, he reached the top, and for a few seconds he was safely out of the killers’ view.

  He shifted the car into drive, and headed for the bridge as fast as he could. He could see the light from the helicopter rising from beyond the bridge, and as he came nearer he glimpsed Mel and Perri, below him, and saw the two killers running back towards the Bell along the rocky, dried-up culvert bed.

  John wondered for a terrible moment if he had miscalculated, and ‘if all he was going to do was kill himself. But by then it was too late. The Lincoln was almost at the bridge, roaring diagonally across it at fifty miles an hour, and he punched open his door handle and rolled out into the bursting gritty darkness.

  The massive white car sailed off the edge of the bridge and landed on top of the helicopter just as Umberto and Val had reached it. There was a screeching, splintering sound, and then a deep, ground-shaking explosion, as the helicopter’s ruptured fuel tanks exploded. An orange fireball enveloped the helicopter, and then rolled upward into the night sky, leaving twisted skeletons of metal to blaze fiercely on the ground.

  John, bruised and grazed, shakily climbed to his feet. Limping, he crossed to the edge of the slope, and found Mel and Perri coming up towards him, equally shocked, but safe.

  He held Perri very close, and realised for the first time how much he was beginning to feel for her. Neither of them spoke.

  Mel cleared his throat, and said, ‘My watch just stopped at ten-ten. How long do you think it’s going to take us to get to Palm Springs now?’

  John found his lips were dry, and that he was trembling. Beside the bridge, the helicopter wreck was still burning.

  ‘Maybe there’s a house or something along here someplace. All we can do is try to borrow some transport,’ John said.

  ‘Those men… I know what they were trying to do, but…’ Perri stammered.

  John put his arm around her shoulders. The fire was dying down now, and the darkness of the countryside was swarming back.

  ‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘But right now, it’s Anthony Seiden who counts.’

  Twenty-Four

  T.F. stiffened. Down below, in the courtyard in front of the hacienda-style house, a black limousine had drawn up, and two thick-set men had emerged. There was a smattering of applause from some of the guests who were slowly making their way into the house, and several of them turned around and clapped with their hands held high.

  Out of the car, in a navy-blue tuxedo, came Anthony Seiden, T.F.’s target. Seiden turned, and offered his hand to his wife Dana, who stepped out of the car in a stunning peach-coloured evening dress, cut very low, and a small mink wrap around her shoulders. It could have been T.F.’s imagination, but he could have sworn he saw Dana glance over to the window on the other side of the house – the window where the telephone was.

  From the bed, Mark asked, in a blurry voice, ‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’

  T.F. said, ‘Shut up,’ without looking round. He checked the red figures on his digital watch and they read 10:37. Three minutes later, at 10:40, a private Piper Cherokee landed at Palm Springs airport and taxied around to the terminal. Out of the door stepped Hilary Nestor Hunter, in her new blue culottes and high Russian boots, with her hair brushed severely back from her face. The night flickered with photographers’ flashlights as a limousine came across the tarmac to collect her. As she stepped into the car, a woman reporter held a tape recorder microphone close to her face, and asked, ‘Ms. Hunter – what’s a right-wing militant lady like you doing at a left-wing movie director’s party?’

  Hilary smiled. ‘It’s always good to see ourselves as other people see us. It helps us understand them.’

  ‘Understand them, or learn how to get the better of them?’ asked the reporter.

  Hilary smiled, but didn’t answer, and in a moment the limousine was gone.

  *

  The motorcycle bellowed through the night at an ear-splitting ninety miles an hour. The highway was almost deserted on this last stretch into Palm Springs, and John had kept the bike’s throttle open the whole way. It was ten minutes to eleven, and they still had seven or eight miles to cover.

  They roared around a long curve, leaning their weight against the camber of the road, overtaking a slow-moving truck and an estate wagon. John kept his eyes screwed up against the slipstream and the flying insects, and ahead of him, he could see the lights of Palm Springs.

  The motorcycle’s engine missed a couple of times, and backfired. He prayed it had enough gas. They had found it in the yard of a small house out on the trail near Eden Hot Springs, with the ignition keys still in it, and while Mel had elected to walk back to the highway and try for a lift, John and Perri had silently wheeled the bike away from the house, started it up, and ridden off into the night. John just hoped the owner would forgive him.

  ‘What’s the time?’ John yelled, as they came towards the outskirts of Palm Springs.

  ‘Five minutes before eleven,’ Perri told him, at the top of her voice. ‘Do you know where Adele Corliss’s house is?’

  ‘I don’t have a due. We’ll just have to ask.’

  He throttled the bike back as they entered the town. It was 10:58.

  *

  Out on the pool deck, Anthony Seiden was standing with Dana, enjoying his first drink and the congratulations of his friends. The band was playing a slow samba, the tables were heaped with s
ilver plates of fresh salmon and cold beef and lobster, and already the conversation was growing louder and the laughter less restrained.

  Anthony looked around for Adele Corliss. She had met him briefly at the door when he arrived, but he had been struck by her quietness and her unwillingness to talk. He saw her standing by the pool talking to her butler Holman; he excused himself from Dana and his friends, and went across.

  She looked as much like the ice queen as ever in a white silk ’40s-style evening dress with padded shoulders and a deep décolletage decorated with silver sequins. But when he said, ‘Hi, Adele,’ she turned to him with an awkward, unsettled smile, and he saw none of her usual amused aloofness.

  ‘Adele,’ he said gently. ‘Is anything wrong?’

  She wouldn’t look at him. She kept glancing around the guests, as if she expected something unusual to happen.

  ‘Wrong?’ she said. ‘Why should there be?’

  ‘Adele – you’re very twitchy. I’ve never seen you like this. You look as if you’re expecting the IRS to call any moment.’

  She couldn’t even manage a smile. She looked down at her glass, saw that it was empty, and said, ‘Anthony, darling, will you get me another drink please?’

  ‘Adele—’

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘that’s Carl Chapman over there. By the pool seat. Why don’t you go say hello?’

  Anthony held her arm. He was surprised how cold she felt. He said, ‘Adele, something’s really wrong. And you feel freezing.’

  Adele turned away. ‘Ice queens always do,’ she said, in a tight voice.

  *

  It was eleven o’clock. The long-case clock in the hallway struck each hour with a brassy, sonorous chime. At his window on the second floor, T.F. released the safety-catch on his M-14, and leaned forward against the window-sill, snuggling the butt-plate against his shoulder. Through the sights, he saw the leaded window, the table, the telephone. His unfinished cigarette smouldered in its ashtray beside him. There’d be plenty of time to finish it when the job was over.