Nobody Move

by Philip Elliott

  “Okay, ready.”

  “On three,” Floyd said. “One … two … three!”

  Eddie darted toward the open rear door of the car as Sawyer unleashed a spray of bullets. But his shooting stopped abruptly.

  “Sawyer’s hit!” Floyd said.

  A cluster of cops emerged from around the corner ahead. A bullet tore through the windshield as Eddie peered out from behind the door.

  “Forget the car,” Floyd said. “Grab the bags.”

  Eddie lunged for the bag he’d left inside the Civic as a bullet punctured the back seat less than half a foot from his head. He heaved the bag out and tossed it behind the car. Sawyer lay flat on his back on the street, the rifle beside him, Floyd dragging him toward the rear of the vehicle.

  Eddie grabbed Floyd’s bag from the ground and dived behind the car as a bullet ripped a hole through the open door.

  Sawyer lay slumped against the license plate. He pulled his shirt and bulletproof vest up, exposing reddened, but unpunctured, skin. “Didn’t go through,” he said, “but it hurts like hell.”

  “We need to push them back,” Floyd said to Eddie. He fired over the car. Eddie leaned out behind the trunk and fired a burst. The cops retreated toward the corner.

  “Can you walk?” Floyd said to Sawyer.

  “Yeah.”

  “Grab a bag,” Floyd said to Eddie while heaving one onto his shoulder.

  Eddie swung the remaining bag over his neck.

  “We can cut through the alley next to the bank,” Floyd said.

  Floyd shot at the cops who had retreated around the corner now, peering out from behind it. He hurried toward the bank. Sawyer ran after him while Eddie emptied another magazine at the cops. More sirens wailed nearby.

  Eddie darted after Sawyer, half-hopping, each step shooting pain up through his leg and into his teeth. The million dollars was heavy on his shoulder. Ahead, Floyd and Sawyer disappeared behind the bank’s entrance columns. Eddie kept running but the pain was intensifying and slowing him down. The chorus of sirens grew louder as his hope began to fade. What had he been thinking? He’d seen enough news reports to know how this ends.

  A bullet broke off a chunk of the column in front of Eddie as Floyd and Sawyer disappeared into the alley beside the bank. He dived behind the column and stayed there in its shade, gasping at the air, the pain impossible to ignore now. He reloaded the rifle with his last magazine and shut his eyes. He couldn’t run any more. This was it—the last stand. What a miserable fucking life he’d lived. But he wouldn’t let them arrest him, throw him on the pavement like a piece of meat and lock him up for twenty years in six feet of nothingness. Fuck that. And now another innocent young woman would die by his hand, and he could never live with that. That left only one option.

  He opened his eyes, the city around him appearing at once more vivid and less tangible. The sirens were close now. A dozen cops would no doubt be creeping their way toward him from the street. He breathed in deeply, bracing himself for what he was about to do.

  Goddamnit, Dakota, I would have loved you. Maybe I already do.

  An engine roared in the alley beside the bank, becoming louder now, sounding like it belonged to something fast, and a bright red sports car shot out onto the street and screeched to a stop twelve yards from Eddie. The rear door flew open and Floyd waved an arm at him from the back seat.

  “Get in.”

  The nigger had left the restaurant with a little spic and they took off in a car. He had a funny look about him, the spic, sort of goofy but unaware of it. Rufus almost followed them out of curiosity, but Saul Benedict had remained inside the restaurant with only the one man Rufus had watched go inside with him early this morning. Maybe it was time to pay Benedict a visit, no more waiting for Eddie and the blond to show. Benedict could tell him where to find them—before he got his tongue torn right out his mouth.

  Rufus gripped the door handle as an S.U.V. pulled up outside the restaurant. Three men got out—no, four—at least two of them ex-cons; he could tell by how they looked all the way around themselves, a sharpness to their eyes. The men entered the restaurant. Rufus released the door handle.

  Things were heating up.

  Rufus relaxed into the seat and turned the music up. Willie Nelson sang about a bloody blade on “Highwayman.” He’d always had a way of capturing the mood just right, Nelson.

  Rufus rolled the window down, the heat in the car stifling. He’d wait a little longer, and if Eddie didn’t show, he’d go inside that restaurant and kill every one of them. He was a highwayman, after all.

  Sawyer gunned the engine and swung the car screeching around a corner, throwing Eddie and Floyd across the back seats. A man in a suit crossing the street dived out of the way barely in time as Sawyer floored it through a red light, a chorus of horns wailing from either side.

  “Where the fuck you find the ride?” Eddie said, gripping the handle above the door tightly.

  “We jacked it from some rich asshole on Los Angeles Street, behind the bank,” Floyd said. “Ain’t you lucky. You was finished back there; what the fuck you thinking?”

  “My leg. I couldn’t keep up.”

  “So you was going to prison if we didn’t save your ass, huh?”

  “No, I was going somewhere else.”

  Floyd frowned. “What you saying?”

  “They might kill me, but they won’t ever lock me up.”

  Floyd clapped a hand on Eddie’s back. “My nigga.”

  Sawyer slammed on the brakes. Eddie was thrown forward, his forehead thumping into the handbrake.

  “I nearly went through the windshield,” he said, holding his face.

  “Cops ahead,” Sawyer shouted back. “Hold on, this is gonna get bumpy.”

  Eddie heard the sirens ahead of them now, and from behind. And, was that—

  “You hear that?” Floyd said to Eddie.

  “Helicopter,” Eddie said, hearing more clearly now the sound of the blade cutting through the air like a train chugging in the distance.

  “What you say?” Sawyer shouted back as he swerved left onto a one-way street.

  “Helicopter,” Floyd said. “It’s San Diego all over again.”

  “Fuck,” Sawyer said, and dodged an oncoming station wagon with a staring family inside, their mouths like Cheerios. He reached into his pocket and took something out, tossed it over his shoulder. It landed on the seat beside Eddie: Sawyer’s cell phone.

  “Connect to Bluetooth, open Spotify and play some Pantera,” Sawyer said.

  Eddie couldn’t believe his ears. “You serious?”

  “He serious,” Floyd said. “Trust me.”

  Eddie shook his head. He knew Sawyer had a thing for playing this shit while driving, but this was something else.

  “Cowboys from Hell,” Sawyer said, skidding around an oncoming cab and weaving right onto the perpendicular street. They were heading in the same direction as the other vehicles now, at least.

  “What?” Eddie said.

  “The song he wants you to put on,” Floyd said, looking unsurprised.

  Eddie connected to Bluetooth and found the song—fuck it, if they were going to die, let the man have his music. Chugging guitars exploded out of the speakers. Sawyer turned it up until it was so loud Eddie couldn’t think, then started banging his head, his blond hair flapping around him.

  “That’s more like it,” he roared. Eddie felt the wheel picking up speed. The helicopter was close now, he could hear it even over the music. Shit, it must be right above them. They raced through a crossroads and Eddie spotted a squad of speeding cop cars level with them on the road parallel. Another had almost reached them from behind, twenty feet away and closing.

  “Cops on the right,” Eddie said.

  “I see ’em,” Sawyer said. “Hold on.”

  He glanced in the rear-view and slammed on the brakes. The police car behind them shot ahead before braking hard and sliding into a parked van. Sawyer threw the gearstick into revers
e and turned around in his seat. The crashed cop car ahead shrank as they zoomed backwards, Sawyer expertly avoiding the oncoming traffic. Eddie felt sick. He trusted Sawyer’s driving skills, but, fuck, they were moving backwards fast, and the blaring music was starting to sound like a demented choir from hell.

  Sawyer faced ahead and jerked the handbrake, spinning the steering wheel like the captain of a ship. The car—Eddie saw by the logo on the wheel that it was a Porsche—did a one eighty, shuddering almost to a stop before Sawyer flung it into drive. White smoke from the burning rubber clouded around them as they screeched forward. A multitude of flashing lights approached ahead. Eddie looked at Sawyer, who had gritted his teeth and slapped both his hands onto the wheel, staring straight ahead. Christ—he was going to meet the cops head-on.

  “Put your seatbelt on,” Eddie said to Floyd as he scrambled to put on his own.

  Floyd snatched at the belt.

  Sawyer dodged a cab, the driver brandishing his middle finger at them, and accelerated toward the police cars rushing at them. The Porsche was moving fast now, impossibly fast, the buildings on either side little more than blurs.

  Eddie looked at Floyd, who looked back at him, wide-eyed.

  The four police cars were thirty feet away now, spread across the street like the points of a star.

  “Hold onto your hats,” Sawyer shouted back at them, grinning madly in the rear-view, and turned up a screaming guitar solo until it was so loud it hurt.

  Eddie squeezed his fists and shut his eyes.

  16 | The L.A. River

  Alison returned from Indio in time to collect Charlie from school. She parked across the street and listened to the radio. A news reporter described an ongoing high-speed pursuit downtown following the armed robbery of Union Bank. Five people had lost their lives so far, the criminals giving no indication of surrender.

  “Never a dull moment,” she muttered. She switched off the radio and waited until it was time to line up with the other parents in anticipation of the screaming horde of children that would soon rush the gates.

  Five minutes later she stood behind the crowd of parents, hoping to go unnoticed by the few she recognized. The school was a giant gray brick. She almost smiled at the thought of all the children sprinting out toward their parents, ecstatic at being free for the day, until she wondered how many of those kids would grow up to become addicts and rapists and murderers, and hated herself for thinking it.

  “Alison, nice to see you. It’s been a while.”

  A parent of one of Charlie’s classmates approached her, a pleasant-looking man in a short-sleeve shirt. He was a single parent, she remembered that, but what was his name?

  “Oh, hey there,” she said. “Sure has.”

  Short-sleeves reached her and smiled broadly. “How have you been? We’ve missed you around here.” He waved an arm at the crowd of parents, not one of them looking their way.

  “Yeah, been busy with work, you know. Murderers never rest, unfortunately.”

  His smile faltered. “No, I imagine they don’t …” He seemed to recollect his thoughts. “How’s Charlie doing? Peter’s always talking about him—Charlie this, Charlie that. He keeps pestering me for a sleepover.”

  Peter Walsh was his kid. That would make him—

  “Tom!”

  He tilted his head. “Yes?”

  Shit, she’d said it aloud. “It’s … good to see you. A sleepover for the boys would be nice. How about this weekend?”

  He nodded. “Sure. Your place or mine?”

  She thought about it. There was no guarantee she’d be there to supervise.

  “Yours would be better, in case I get called away.”

  “Those pesky murderers, hey?”

  She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right until he grinned.

  She grinned back at him. It felt wrong on her face. “Pesky. Exactly.”

  He chuckled. “Here they come.”

  For a moment she thought he was referring to the murderers, until she heard the screams. Children poured out of the front doors in a sea of tiny faces and brightly colored backpacks. She peered over the parents, looking for Charlie. Half the kids had left the schoolyard before she spotted him coming out of the doors with Peter. He looked so tiny from this distance. Her heart softened in her chest.

  “Always the last to leave,” Tom said and rolled his eyes. “I always tell Peter if he likes it so much in there he’s welcome to stay. Never goes down well.”

  Charlie was in deep conversation with Peter, looking altogether more mature than every other kid. Alison stepped out in front of the remaining parents to give him a better view of her. Some moments later, he looked up toward her. She waved, smiling to herself. Even from this distance she saw his eyes widen. He hopped with excitement and waved backed and sprinted toward her, his backpack thrashing side to side.

  “I wish Peter was that excited to see me,” Tom said behind her.

  Alison squatted on her heels and opened her arms wide. Charlie ran into her, almost knocking her over. She closed her arms around him and squeezed his little body. His hair smelled of chalk and Play-Doh.

  He broke the hug and looked at her. “You’re here, Mommy.”

  “Sure am.”

  Charlie’s expression grew concerned. “Are you going to work now?”

  “No, sweetie, I’m bringing you home and then we’re going to a movie.”

  Charlie’s mouth fell open. “A movie?”

  “Yep. I promised we’d see a movie after school, remember?”

  “What are we going to see?”

  “Anything you want. You can choose a movie when we get there.”

  “Okay!” He hopped on his toes and Alison stifled a giggle.

  “Let’s go.” She stood up. “I’ll see you soon, Tom.”

  Tom stepped toward her. “I don’t believe I have your details. Should we exchange numbers?”

  The surprise must have showed on her face because Tom scratched his stubble and said, “For the sleepover this weekend, I mean.”

  Heat spread across her cheeks. “Right, yes, of course. I’ll put it into your cell.”

  Tom pulled out his cell phone, unlocked it, and handed it to her. She inputted her number, called it, and pressed “Cancel.”

  “It’s the last dialed number. Speak to you soon.”

  “Yes, definitely. Enjoy your movie, you two.” He winked at Charlie, becoming suddenly quite handsome.

  Alison smiled and glanced away quickly. She gripped Charlie’s hand and together they made for her car, Alison cursing her lack of charisma. She could say what she wanted about the dead, but they never made her feel self-conscious. Then again, they never made her feel anything at all.

  He’d never felt so alive. How could he have forgotten this feeling? It was better than anything—sex, drugs, maybe even love. That last one stopped him for a second.

  Sawyer had managed to dodge the wave of oncoming police a couple minutes previous, causing most of the cops to smash into one another and the rest to smash into something else. Now he’d brought the Porsche onto I-10 and drove at the speed of light. The hot sun glared through the windscreen, blinding Eddie for a moment. He remembered a line from one of the Matrix movies: The freeway means suicide. Something like that.

  “We need to lose that heli before more cars arrive,” Sawyer shouted over the heavy metal.

  “We gotta switch the car,” Eddie said. “Where’s the parking garage?”

  “No garage. We got something better,” Floyd said. “You gonna like this.”

  They zoomed along the freeway, the helicopter hovering above them like a spirit. They were moving so fast Eddie thought the Porsche might take off into the cerulean sky, its engine roaring over the music. Every slight movement of Sawyer’s hands on the wheel was like pulling the reigns on a horse.

  Sawyer slowed as they crossed the Los Angeles River—and it was actually there, the river, thick and flowing from all the strange rain this summer, instead of sum
mer’s usual river of concrete.

  Sawyer took an exit onto two-lane I-5 and turned down the music. “This is the spot, Floyd.”

  Floyd nodded and twisted in the seat to look up at the sky. “I don’t see the heli. Must be right above us.”

  “Perfect,” Sawyer said, and slowed further as they approached a wide overpass that blotted out the sun.

  “The spot for what?” Eddie said.

  “Switching the car,” Floyd said. “We planned for this case it turned out to be San Diego all over again. Good thing we did, huh?”

  “I don’t see the car …” Eddie said, but then he understood.

  Sawyer stopped the Porsche in the shade of the overpass. The traffic had been light on the freeway but thirty seconds of this would be enough to cause mayhem.

  Floyd exited the car and Eddie got out after him, wincing when his foot hit the pavement, as Floyd raised his rifle at the vehicle behind: a beat-up and rusted old Ford pickup, the cargo bed covered with blue tarp and an old man in dungarees and a flat cap behind the wheel.

  Floyd stepped toward the pickup, gun raised. The old man pounded on the horn in response.

  “Get out the way ’fore I run you over,” the old man yelled out of the window in a hick accent.

  A second vehicle approached behind the pickup. Floyd fired a shot into the tarmac. The vehicle behind the pickup screeched into acceleration, pulling out from behind the pickup and racing past Floyd. Eddie almost had to dive out of the way to avoid it.

  The old man got out of the pickup with his hands raised. “All right, you win, you no-good sons of bitches.”

  The helicopter’s whirring moved beyond them and to the right as it attempted to circle around. A third vehicle drove by them, the parents and two kids inside staring open-mouthed at Eddie and Floyd as it passed.

  “Move, old man,” Floyd said, shouldering him. The old man stumbled and fell onto his ass.

  “Damn sons of bitches,” he said. “In my day I woulda took those rifles outta your hands and beat you with ’em.”