A Cool Breeze on the Underground nc-1

by Don Winslow

“pullona choke,” allie said dreamily.

  “What?”

  “Pullona choke. Fucking Gordon-Keble won’t start ‘less you pullona fucking choke.” She leaned over his lap and pulled the choke knob out about halfway. The engine roared to life.

  “How did you know that?” he asked, but she was asleep again.

  Colin heard the engine. Too late, Neal bugger, he thought as he tried to turn the knob to the garage door. The fucker was locked from the inside. He raised his leg to kick it in, but the sheer agony that bolted through his right testicle changed his mind. He limped around to the front of the garage, stopping on his way to pick up a convenient two-by-two left over from the construction. He posted himself outside the sliding door. When you come to open this, Neal, arms all nice and raised and all…

  Neal pressed down on what he figured to be the clutch and eased the car into first gear. Keeping a foot on the brake pedal, he raced the engine a couple of times, pleased with the resounding result. This isn’t so bad, he thought. He let off the brake.

  Colin waited patiently for the door to lift. He held the two-by-two up around his shoulders, ready to decapitate Neal. The delicious tingle of impending revenge eased the dull throb from his recent drubbing. C’mon, Neal lad…

  First and third are a long way apart on a baseball diamond. But on a gearbox, they are barely distinguishable, especially to a mechanical moron like Neal Carey. He punched down on the accelerator and let off on the brake. The car flew backward. That’s when Neal remembered that he’d forgotten to open the door.

  Except that Colin had done it for him. The impatience of rage had gotten the better of him, and, suspecting some trick, he had leaned down to open the door and go in and get that bastard when the little sports car plowed straight into him. Colin took a short ride on the hood before rolling off to the right, avoiding the crush of wheels by inches.

  Neal had swerved to avoid him, hit the brakes, and, in doing so, killed the engine. “Fuck!” he yelled, turning the ignition key. He could see Colin in the rearview mirror. Colin was on all fours in the street, shaking his head as if to clear it. The Keble coughed again.

  Allie leaned against the door, lost in a happy dream, just aware enough of her surroundings to mumble, “Choke, you gotta pullona-”

  “Choke, I know, I know,” Neal snapped, a little too busy to reflect on the fact that a girl whose bloodstream contained enough drugs to sedate a small town could drive better than he could. He pulled the fucking choke, the car started, and Neal once again put it into first.

  Colin stumbled to his feet and realized he’d been run over by a car. He saw his assailant in front of him, dead in the water. He picked up his stick and was about to attack when the car started to back up, slowly at first, and then faster-straight at him.

  Neal wasn’t such a terrific driver going forward. Backward, he was a complete disaster. He tried to stop when he saw Colin, he really did. But when you step on the foot feed instead of the brake, you go faster.

  Colin did what any smart, tough cookie would do: He ran. And not in a straight line, either. He zigged, lie zagged, he ran as fast as a man who’s been smashed to the floor, bashed in the balls, and crashed with a car could run. But the little auto kept coming after him as if he had a magnet strapped to his arse.

  Neal was trying to do just the opposite, but that was the problem. Lacking any facility for thinking in reverse, he made the precise opposite happen of what he intended. Each time he tried to steer away from the madly fleeing Colin, he headed right for him. It was all pretty confusing, especially at that speed.

  Colin‘s scream woke up Vanessa, who had been dozing in the phone box. She made a quick assessment of the scene and acted with dispatch.

  “Stop!” she yelled as she chased the car down the street. “Stop! You’re going to kill him! Stop!”

  Neal stopped. His scrambling feet and hands finally found the right combination, and the high-performance vehicle screeched to a sudden halt, slamming Neal and Allie into the dashboard and then flinging them back into their seats as it lunged forward.

  Which surprised vanessa, who never really thought you could get anybody to actually stop just by yelling “Stop.” She was quite pleased with herself until she realized the little auto was now heading toward her, and she was about to turn and run when a shout from the window distracted her.

  “He broke my nose, Vanessa!” Crisp bellowed as he hung out the window. “He broke my fucking nose!”

  There were two things about Vanessa that became important at this crucial point. The first was that, of all the players in the game, she was the freshest. That is to say; she wasn’t stoned into the Enchanted Forest and she hadn’t been wrestling with a demonic triumph of automotive engineering. Nor had she smashed her head on the floor, had rough sex with a mop handle, or had her face smashed by a pan full of ice. The second factor was that Vanessa was relatively unattractive. She had never had a horde of suitors fighting over her, and she was bound and determined to hold on to the one she had, a man who found her witty, sexy, and desirable. A man who now stood in the window, bleeding and disfigured, crying for justice.

  So as the car bore down on her, Vanessa stood her ground. Neal saw her standing in the middle of the street, Katie-Bar-the-Door. He was on the verge of gaining a semblance of control over this vehicular virago and even managed to slow down as he steered around her. Mistake.

  You’ve heard all those stories about mothers lifting Mack trucks off their children. Something about a chemical combination of maternal instincts and adrenaline? Vanessa had plenty of both going for her as she grabbed the driver’s door handle and jumped onto the narrow running board. “You hurt my baby!” she screamed as she landed a nifty right hand through the open window onto Neal’s jaw. He hit the brake, forgetting that damn thing about the clutch, and the car shuddered to a stop. As Neal struggled to find the ignition key, Vanessa smacked him again in the side of the head.

  “You hurt my baby!”

  Neal tried to push her off with his left hand, but she had a death grip on the inside of the window. Neal glanced at the rearview mirror and saw Colin hobbling toward him, a stick in his hand and blood in his eye.

  Crisp felt ashamed as he looked out the window. Here was the love of his life and his best friend doing desperate battle in the street. And here he was, two stories above the fray, snug and safe. “I’ll save you, Vanessa!” he yelled, and went looking for a way to make that good.

  “Nessa, offa car,” Allie said sweelly but thinly from her less than commanding position in Neal’s lap. “Jes’ goin’ for a ride.”

  Vanessa was trying her best to pull the driver’s door open and vent her full fury on her love’s attacker, but Neal was at the same time holding the door shut and trying to start the car and was doing a pretty remarkable job of it, considering the bashing he was taking. But it wasn’t working. So Neal let go of the gearshift to get leverage, leaned back, and popped Vanessa square in the chops with an overhand right. This girl can really take a punch, he thought. He had to give her that.

  Colin reached for the passenger door to get his hands on that bitch Alice before he beat her new boyfriend into bread pudding. He had the door half open…

  “Okay, nessa, have it your way,” Allie said, her patience exhausted. She wanted to go for a ride. Squeezing herself onto Neal’s lap, she shoved her left foot down on the clutch, yanked the shift into first gear, and stepped down hard on the accelerator. This Keble did just what Daddy’s Keble always did. It took off like a rabbit on Dexedrine.

  Neal was surprised when Vanessa suddenly dropped from sight as glass shattered all over the roof of the car. He didn’t have time to think about it, though. He just had time to grab the wheel as the Keble suddenly surged forward.

  Which action presented colin with a clear choice: let go, or lose his arm. He took the former course, and only rolled fifteen or sixteen times before coming to rest in the street.

  “Sorry, vanessa!” shouted Crisp, whose aim
with the gin bottle had been off by that much. He threw another one at the fleeing car.

  The keble zoomed off into the night with its two fugitives. Neal gripped the wheel and played with the gearshift. Allie slept soundly against the door.

  Then the damnedest thing happened. It started to rain.

  The sky had been saving up all summer for this one and now it really let go. It didn’t take Neal more than four or five minutes of frantic fumbling to figure out the windshield wipers and another minute or so to roll up the windows, by which time he was soaked down to his shoulders. He pulled the car over to the side of Camden High Street to check the map. The route had seemed simple when he’d memorized it earlier, but everything looked different on the ground, especially when you had a split lip, a blossoming shiner, and couldn’t see a thing through sheets of rain in the dark.

  He decided to take the Seven Sisters Road to the A406 and the A406 to the M-11, the major thoroughfare north.

  He didn’t even notice that he didn’t have any trouble slipping into first gear and easing out onto the street.

  Colin hissed with pain as he straddled his motorbike. Rain? he thought. Bloody rain? It hasn’t rained in three months and now it has to come down in great awful buckets? There is a God, he thought, and he’s a ball-stomper. Well, there was nothing to do but head off after them and see whether his luck was changing. He turned up the throttle.

  The kid at the gas station was thrilled to death to see Neal pull up.

  “I need gas. Fill it up,” Neal said.

  The kid spit a mouthful of water out and answered, “if it’s gas you want, go to the States. We have petrol here.”

  “Whatever it is that makes this car run.”

  “Cars are on a train, mate. Over here we call it an auto.”

  “You want to stand there getting soaked or you want to hold a comparative linguistics seminar?”

  “Money first. Then the petrol for your auto.”

  Neal handed him a ten-pound note.

  “How do I get on the A406?” he asked when the attendant had finished pumping.

  “Roundabout straight on. Second right.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  The kid was even more thrilled when some moron on a motorbike roared in.

  “Little sports car pass by?” the biker shouted above the din of the rain.

  “Didn’t pass by. Stopped for petrol.”

  “Where was he going?”

  “I don’t know where he was going, but he was using the A406 to get there.”

  “How-”

  “Roundabout straight on. Second right.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Neal took it nice and slow in the rain. Allie was peacefully sleeping and he was in no particular hurry-until he saw a single headlight in the rearview mirror, coming on fast.

  Neal slowed down. If it was Colin, he might as well find out now instead of letting him follow them and blow another safe house.

  He was going about forty when Colin pulled up along the driver’s side.

  “Pull over!” Colin shouted.

  Neal tapped the gas pedal and the Keble shot ahead.

  Colin kept up with them.

  “Pull over!” he shouted. He was soaked, flushed, and furious. His white suit clung to him.

  Neal tapped the accelerator again, forcing Colin to speed up. Neal knew the bike was no match for the Keble.

  Trouble was, he was afraid to go too fast, in this rain. Colin could probably win a game of chicken. Oh well, he thought, what the hell.

  He stepped on the pedal again, getting a good head of steam and bringing Colin speeding up beside him. Then he hit the brakes.

  The back wheels skidded and turned out and the car sped sideways for a good hundred feet. Colin sped right past it, twisted the brake handle, and flipped the little bike over the top of himself.

  Neal remembered that old driving-school bit about turning in the direction of the skid, but didn’t remember what it meant, so he just kept spinning the steering wheel back and forth until the car pointed ahead again and came to a stop. He looked in the mirror and saw

  Colin disentangling himself from the bike-very slowly. He fought off an insincere urge to go back and see whether he was all right. Then he put his foot on the gas and took the Keble for a ride as fast as he dared.

  All this action actually woke Allie up for a second.

  “We there yet?” she asked.

  “Just looking for a place to park.”

  Colin watched the taillights of the little car disappear over the hill. It had been a very bad night. He had lost the book, the money, the dope, Alice, Neal, his bike, and about a pint of blood. He was well and truly fucked.

  Neal eased off on the pedal until the Keble slowed to something less than the speed of sound. Now that he didn’t have to shift, he felt okay driving the thing, his heart was settling back into his chest, and he was headed for a place he could actually hear it beat.

  Part Three

  A Place You Can Hear Your Heartbeat

  25

  Simon’s cottage was made of stone.

  Neal felt stupid when he thought about the third little pig who was safe when the big bad wolf came huffing and puffing, but figured he was glad to be thinking at all, tired as he was. Allie was asleep as he pulled the car slowly up the dirt trail that led through the moor and up to the cottage. Far below and behind, the chimneys of the small village peeked above the last line of trees. They had driven north out of the rain, and the ground beneath the wheels was hard and firm, so he had no trouble pulling up to the cottage.

  Leaving Allie in the Keble, he got out, stretched his sore legs and back, and looked around him. He’d never been anyplace like this. The view commanded miles of the barren moor. The cottage sat on a plateau beneath a sharp, rocky slope. The moor ran fairly level to both his left and right, and in front of him, the hill ran down to a small stream and a copse of frees, and a mile or so beyond that, the village. Faint purple heather, scrub grass, and rock covered the ground. It was windy up here, and the cool breeze that dried the stale sweat on his face felt wonderful. His eyes ached from fatigue, and as he took a deep breath of the fresh air, he knew he wanted sleep… needed sleep.

  He looked back to make sure Allie was still asleep, and then walked up to the cottage. It was a two-story affair, gray stone built around thick wooden beams. He found the old skeleton key under a rock, right where Simon had said it would be, and let himself in. The first floor was low-ceilinged, and he stooped even though he really didn’t have to. A large fireplace dominated the front room, which had a stone floor, an old wooden table, and two old overstuffed chairs. A small bedroom ran off to the left. It was filled with books, no surprise there, and a small bed covered with old quilts and a thick army blanket. A kitchen of sorts ran off to the back. It had creaky wooden counters and a few shelves and cupboards, and a wood-burning stove. There was a basin but no tap. A narrow wooden door opened onto the slope of the hill and a stone retaining wall. Someone had made a weak attempt at gardening out back, and a sad rose trellis marked the effort. A narrow staircase led from the kitchen up to the second floor, which contained three bedrooms. Each was furnished with quilted beds and cane chairs.

  The whole place had that comfortable discomfort of the beloved getaway. Old framed photos of Simon and family and friends decorated the walls and bedside tables. Cheap paperbacks and slightly moldy hardcovers lay scattered about. Neal went back downstairs and out front. He found the generator shack, read the carefully printed directions thumbtacked to the wall, and started it up. He might as well, he thought, have such comforts as electricity. An outhouse stood near the generator shack, and a cottage. He solved the mystery of water when he noticed the well about thirty yards in front of the cottage. He cranked the handle and, sure enough, a bucket of water came up, just like in the old movies when the city slicker goes to the country and learns real values. He took
a sip of the water: It was clean and cold and tasted great. He hoped he wouldn’t die from it. A true New Yorker, he believed that water should come out of faucets.

  Hmm, well water, outhouses, a bathtub set in the open air. He could get used to this, he thought. And the quiet. He noticed it just then. The complete and utter absence of mechanical or human sound. He listened. Way off in the distance, perhaps over the hill, he could hear the faint sounds of what might have been sheep. He could hear the soft gurgling of the brook below him. That was all. That was it. He could hear his heartbeat. This was all new stuff to Neal Carey, who thought he had seen it all.

  Remembering why he was up here, he walked back to the car and opened the passenger door. Allie was curled up, her head resting on the top of the seat. She was sticky with dried sweat and her face was puffy and pale. The next few hours would be bad, Neal thought. But he had to get it started. No more candy for baby Allie.

  “Hey, wake up,” he said, shaking her. She mumbled a few dark threats and cuddled up into a ball.

  “Alice, c’mon, up.”

  “Donwanna.”

  “I don’t give a shit what you wanna,” said Neal, who was damned if he was going to carry her anymore. He still hurt from last night.

  He pulled her out of the seat and let go. She tumbled out onto the ground.

  “Hey!” she said, with more indignation than wit. She sat on the ground looking up at him, and then looking around. It took her only a minute to realize they weren’t in downtown London.

  “Where the fuck are we?”

  Which reminded Neal of an old joke about pygmies that he didn’t bother relating.

  “We’re ’on the lam,’” he said. He watched her search her memory. He watched real carefully. How much did Allie remember?

  “Where’s Colin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She got up from the ground and brushed herself off. “I want to go back to London.”

  “No.”

  “Right now.”

  “Forget it.”