Hot Wire

by Carson, Gary

  "Freeze!" Baldy shouted. "Don't move!"

  He could've shot us, but he didn't. Then it hit me: we were about to pass the warehouse. He didn't want to draw attention.

  "Martin!" The gun centered on me. "The suitcase!"

  I set it down and Arn dodged to his left. When Baldy turned to cover him, I slid along the wall.

  "Don't move, dumbass!" Baldy turned back to me, checked Arn again, grabbed a crate for support. That's when Brown staggered to his feet and whacked him across the head with a pipe, swinging it with both hands as hard as he could, losing his balance and falling down.

  Baldy stumbled, dropping the gun.

  Arn jumped him from the left, wrapping an arm around his throat and punching him in the face with his other hand. I leaped on Baldy's back, screaming and scratching at his eyes, then Brown got up and tackled him from the front, head down, grabbing him around the waist while the four of us shuffled back and forth on the edge of the door.

  Baldy was laughing.

  He lurched across the boxcar, twisting around and dragging us with him. It was like trying to fight a mechanical bull after a dozen shots of whiskey. Hammers banged on my neck and head, then I caught a knee in the gut and hit the floor on my back, gasping to catch my breath. Baldy ran backwards and smacked Brown against the wall, shaking him loose like an old coat, then he turned on Arn, working on his ribs and face – right, left, right – snapping his head back and knocking him into a corner.

  Two blasts shattered my ears, white-hot blobs lighting up the boxcar.

  Baldy staggered, clutching at his chest.

  Brown shot him again with his own revolver, blowing him out the door.

  #

  The engine whistled up ahead.

  "Jesus Christ!" Arn got to his feet and limped over to the door, doubled over and gripping his stomach, his face a livid bruise. "Goddammit! Motherfucker!"

  "Get back from the door!" Brown yelled, dragging the briefcase and suitcase behind a crate, then ducking into the shadows. "Don't let them see you!"

  "What?" Arn looked outside, then jumped back and flattened against the wall. "Shit!"

  "What's the matter?" I asked.

  "They're all over the place!"

  The engine moaned again and crossing bells started to chime up ahead. Arn crouched down next to the door and peeked outside, the wind splattering rain in his face.

  "We're going by the warehouse," Brown called.

  "What's the deal? Are we stopping?"

  "Take a look." He waved me over. "Just keep back from the door."

  I crawled out of the light, then stood up and reeled over to the door, grabbing struts to keep my balance. Brown followed and we squatted beside Arn, peering around the edge of the door.

  "Look at that," Arn whispered.

  The tracks ran past the warehouse a couple blocks from the main gate leading to the dock. The whole building was on fire, a mass of flames twisting over the rooftops in the rain, completely out of control. Streams of water fell through a cloud of boiling smoke and the spotlights of a fire truck glared in the alley where we had wrecked the Lexus. Then a crossing signal went by – lights flashing, bells clanging – and we got a clear view of the street in front of the warehouse.

  There were cops everywhere. They'd set up barricades and the road was jammed with squad cars, paddy wagons and ambulances, a lake of Mars lights that pulsed and glittered in the rain. More lights flashed around the loading dock and flickered in the yards, and I could hear this confused buzz of radio static and shouting in the distance. The cops were guarding a line of prisoners by the gate – locos and suits standing in a row with their hands clasped on their heads. A couple of fire trucks pulled up, their sirens screaming.

  "Down there," I said. "Look at that guy."

  A fed or a police detective wearing a trench coat stood in the middle of the road about a block away, watching the train go by and yelling into a walkie-talkie. Then a factory with shattered windows blocked our view and the train clattered through a switch, following a long curve into downtown Oakland.

  We got to our feet, shivering in the draft.

  "They heard the shots," I said.

  "No kidding." Arn spit on the floor.

  "What about the bomb? Can the fire set it off?"

  Brown shook his head. "I don't think so."

  "Can they still blow it up with that radio deal?"

  "If they could, they would've done it already." Brown was a wreck, his face bruised and bloody from Baldy's knee. He gave me this weird look, then glanced over at Arn like he was trying to make up his mind about something. "The police will stop the train. They're calling Dispatch right now."

  "So what do we do?" Arn asked.

  "Jump," I said, turning to Brown. "Where's the money?"

  "I'm keeping the money." He backed away and pulled out the revolver. The suitcase and briefcase were lying on the floor behind him.

  "What're you doing?" I yelled.

  "Don't move!" Brown looked around frantically, twitching up a storm. "I don't want to hurt you!"

  "Son of a bitch." Arn edged over to Brown's left, then froze when he waved the gun at him. "You got to be kidding."

  "Don't move!" Brown came off scared, uncertain, his eyes jumping from me to Arn, then back to me again. "The fire must've damaged the trigger or they would've set it off already. They've got to cover themselves now – don't you get it? Their operation failed. They don't care about a couple of low-life car thieves, but they know I'm a reporter. I need the money to get out of the country. The files are my insurance."

  "No way," I said, moving a couple steps to my right. "After all that big talk, you're just going to screw us over?"

  "Stay there!" He was in a total panic. "Don't make me shoot you!"

  "You said they'd back off if you broke the story."

  "After what happened tonight? They'll kill me if I try to run it. They'll kill me anyway."

  "You telling me the papers won't print this stuff?"

  "They'll spike it," he said. "The media's complicit."

  "I should've known you were full of it."

  He never fired a shot when Arn jumped him, but he put up a lame struggle, thrashing around until I hit him with a pipe I grabbed off the floor. The gun clattered across the boxcar, but I was too busy to see where it landed. Arn pounded on Brown's head and face while I bashed on his legs with the pipe, then Arn twisted his arm behind his back and slammed him against the wall. It was like mugging a baby after the death match with Baldy. We wailed on him for a couple minutes and lost it completely, breaking his nose, blacking his eyes, knocking him down and kicking him back and forth while he rolled around, trying to cover his head. The stupid little weasel. He was one of those whistleblowers who always got screwed and took everybody down in the end – if he didn't panic and turn on them first. We worked hard on him, gasping and panting, then dragged him to the other side of the boxcar and tossed him out the door.

  "Good riddance," Arn said, dusting off his hands.

  "Goddamn traitor. I can't believe I trusted him."

  "Yeah." Arn gave me this weird grin. "I know just what you mean."

  And he pushed me off the train.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I never had time to scream.

  The train did a cartwheel and the lights of the city whirled through the rain, spinning around me like glow-worms inside a washing machine. Then I hit the ballast, tumbled down a slope of wet, thrashing weeds and landed face-first in a ditch full of runoff, my mouth wide open to shriek.

  All that came out was bubbles.

  Gasping and floundering around in the muck, I dragged myself to my knees just in time to see Arn waving from the boxcar door as the train rolled by on top of the embankment. I spit out some scum and a pissed-off spider, then I tried to stand up, but my shoes were stuck in the mud and I fell down again, a cloud of mosquitoes swarming around my head.

  Jesus Christ.

  I scrabbled up to the tracks, my body thr
obbing like a giant bruise. My shoulder hurt like crazy, but I didn't think anything was busted. When I made the tracks, a string of gondolas and tank cars was going by and I got whipped by the rain blowing along the line. Mars lights flashed in the distance, a road-block, maybe. I couldn't tell. The cops must've radioed the dispatcher like Brown had said because the train was starting to slow down – air-brakes wheezing, metal squealing, couplers banging and clattering along the string of freight cars.

  The boxcar couldn't be that far away.

  I took off running towards the head of the train, stumbling over the ties and ballast, pain flashing in my chest and thighs like somebody was poking me with a knife. Catch up with the money – that's all I could think about. The train was going so slow by now that it should've been easy to keep up, but I started getting these cramps and dizzy rushes that almost knocked me off my feet. I felt like somebody had been working on me with a blowtorch and a ball-peen hammer, and I could feel the last couple of days in every nerve and muscle: falling out of Steffy's window, the shootout at Vincent's, the fight in the warehouse, wrecking the Lexus, all the stuff on the train. Staggering past a couple of tank cars, I saw the Mars lights up ahead, a cluster of cherries flashing at an intersection about a mile away. The cops were waiting to search the train.

  Then I saw the boxcar. At least, I thought it was the same one. I ran up beside it, grabbed the side-rail, tripped and dragged my feet for a second, then I pulled myself inside and flopped across the floor, panting and wheezing.

  "Fucking bitch!" Arn yelled. "You back again?"

  He was standing on the other side of the car with the suitcase and briefcase at his feet, waiting for a good spot to jump off, I guess. He looked like he'd been drowned and hit by lightning, his eyes like split grapes, his clothes smeared with mud and tar and gunk. I rolled over and smacked my head against a crate. Grabbed a pipe off the floor. Blundered to my feet.

  "You just drove away." He stumbled towards me, grabbing wall ribs and crates to keep his balance. "I should've known."

  "What was I supposed to do?"

  "You just took off."

  "You told them where I lived."

  "Go fuck yourself."

  I lunged at him, swinging the pipe as hard as I could and whacking him across the shoulder, but it didn't seem to phase him and he snatched the pipe out of my hand, tossing it across the boxcar and shoving me back against a crate. Scratching at his face, I tried to kick him in the balls while he slapped at my hands and finally grabbed me by the wrists, but I twisted around and managed to get one of my hands loose and started punching at his mouth and throat. He stumbled backwards, dragging me across the floor by the hand, then he bent over, picked me up and threw me into a corner.

  I rolled over on my side and tried to stand up, but this wave of vertigo made me fall down again and I had to fight to catch my breath. Arn staggered around in front of the door, kicking stuff out of the way, then he picked up another pipe and headed back to finish me off. I crawled across the floor, squeezed between some crates and came out by the door on the other side, coughing and spitting up blood in this cloud of freezing rain. Arn was wobbling like a drunk, cursing and knocking over crates behind me. The train was still moving. The storm splattered through the door.

  "We can split it up!" I screamed.

  "What do you mean we?"

  Pipes and bolts clattered around me and I started throwing stuff at him, scooping up washers and faucets and junk and pitching them at his face. Then I got to my feet, hanging on to a wall rib, and stumbled away from the door just as he came out behind me, ranting and swinging the pipe. The boxcar lurched and I fell down again, scrambling across the floor. Clang. His pipe hit the wall beside me. Then he slipped. Fell down. Jumped to his feet again. Panting, I squirmed around the crate – and saw Baldy's gun lying in the corner.

  "You want to split it up?" Arn was standing over me now, a dripping shadow framed by the rain in the door. "I can split you up! How about that?"

  He raised the pipe over his head, gripping it with both hands.

  I grabbed the gun and fired. Over and over again.

  The first slug hit him in the chest and the second caught him under the chin. Falling backwards through a halo of blood, he landed on his side, rolled across the floor and lay there twitching in this puddle of scum, his eyes staring up at the ceiling.

  #

  It was easy to get off again.

  I sat on the edge of the door with the briefcase and suitcase, watching the lights of an Oakland ghetto pass in the fog, then I stepped off before the train came to a full stop and ran down a street in the rain.

  I wasn't sure where I was – somewhere in East Oakland. I could see traffic passing on 880 and the towers in the city center glared through the haze. I'd bailed just in time. A blob of cherries flashed at a crossing a couple blocks to the north and I could hear the cops moving along the embankment, talking back and forth on their radios.

  I hurried down the street, passing a row of stucco houses with soggy porch lights and spider palms in their yards. A billboard for Cristal champagne glowed on the roof of a liquor store with barred windows and a security gate over the door. Posters for rap concerts and church socials flapped on a telephone pole and the fences were covered with graffiti – gang signs splattered across the planks with a spray can. Then I turned a corner and headed down a street lined with beaters and pimpmobiles, watching the houses, checking my back. A million sirens howled in the bottoms.

  I walked down the street, trying the doors on the beaters, but they were all locked and I couldn't risk breaking a window. A dog yapped a couple blocks away. Traffic drummed on the highway. I avoided the new cars – the Beamers and Mercs and crack-dealer Caddies – staying in the middle of the street and giving them plenty of room. If I set off a proximity alarm, I was dead. The bangers would cut my throat and eat me for breakfast.

  Finally, I found an old Plymouth Sundance with unlocked doors. It looked like it could fall apart any minute, but it would have to do. I checked the street again, then sucked in my breath, opened the front door on the driver's side and got in behind the wheel, braced to run if an alarm went off or somebody came out of one of the houses. Nothing happened, but my nerves were completely fried. Jacking cars had landed me in this mess to begin with and stealing them was starting to scare me.

  I squeezed under the dash, hot-wired the ignition and got the engine started, making a lot of noise in the process. Sparks stung my face. Backfire banged like a gunshot. When I was ready, I squirmed out of the footwell, sat down behind the wheel again, then put the car in gear and drove off through the rain.

  Heading for the freeway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It took forever to get out of the city.

  I pushed the needle as far as I could, but the Plymouth was a piece of junk and I could hardly see through all that fog and rain. Headlights streamed by in the dark, brake lights flashing up ahead, the wipers clattering, gusts sweeping clouds of mist across the highway. I was taking a big chance on the open road, but I had to keep moving. Had to get out of there. The whole city could blow up any second for all I knew.

  The next hour passed in this blur of lights and interchanges and giant freeway signs. Weaving in and out of the traffic, I took 880 to Ashland, turned east on 580, blew through Pleasanton and Livermore, then headed south on I-5 with the pedal to the metal. The Plymouth started to rattle at eighty, the valve rockers banging, then the oil light came on and I had to slow down again. I was like fifty miles from Oakland now, the Bay Area glittering in the rearview.

  The traffic on the interstate was pretty heavy for that time of night, four lanes of red and white lights flowing through the San Joaquin Valley, the glare of Modesto off to my left, San Jose glowing to the west. I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do when I got there. If I could get anywhere at all. I knew I had to switch cars before I threw a rod or something, but I was in this blind panic and just kept going and going.
/>   A sign passed in the rain: Los Angeles 400 miles. Too far away. Sacramento was only a hundred miles to the northeast, but the Plymouth would never make it. By the time I reached Patterson – 80 miles from Oakland – I started to calm down a little. Maybe the bomb wasn't going to go off after all. The trigger must've been damaged like Brown had said, but I had other things to worry about now.

  Everybody was going to be after me in a day or two. After they realized I was still alive. I had to get out of the state – the sooner the better – but the highways weren't safe in any direction. Too exposed. Too many CHP patrols. I finally decided to circle around and try for Sacramento. If I could get there, I could hole up for a while, switch cars, try to change some of my money. Then I could make a run for Nevada.

  I stepped on the gas, praying the car would hold together.

  #

  Things started to get weird a couple miles outside Patterson. I was nursing the Plymouth along in the slow lane when a bunch of flashing lights appeared behind me, coming up fast in the rearview. Feds, maybe. Highway Patrol. I sat up, buzzing with adrenaline, watching them approach in the side mirror, but there wasn't anything I could do if they pulled me over. The truth was that I hardly cared anymore. I was still in shock, I guess, so burned out and numb that I didn't see how I could keep going.

  But they weren't cops or feds. The lights got closer, then a procession of military-type vehicles blew by in the cruise lane – a couple of jeeps followed by five or six troop trucks with some kind of armored job bringing up the rear. I slowed down as they went by, their tires slopping spray across my windshield. They must've been doing eighty or ninety and their tail lights gradually vanished into the distance, blending in with the lights of the regular traffic. It was still dark out, but a violet stain was creeping across the sky to the east and the rain was dropping off a little.

  Ten minutes later, I saw another caravan go by in the northbound lanes, a long line of jeeps and trucks and armored personnel carriers heading towards San Francisco. Something was going on, but it was probably just the National Guard doing maneuvers or something. I wasn't sure what I was – somewhere in the Valley with the Los Angeles Range and the Pacific off to the west. The middle of no place at all. The Plymouth was in bad shape and I had to do something before I ended up stranded on the side of the road. If the car would just hold together for a couple more hours, I might be able to cut over to 99 and find some new wheels in Turlock or Merced.