As Isaiah stood up from the car and Deronda got in he caught a whiff of something that made him freeze in place. He’d read somewhere that chloroform doesn’t have a smell but it does. A little like acetone with a trace of sweetness to it. The sound of the stuttering engine at full throttle drew his eyes to the right. The pickup was speeding away, turning the corner so sharply a rear wheel bumped over the curb, something round and reflective on the back bumper. The girl was gone but her pink cell was on the sidewalk.
“Oh no,” Isaiah said.
Thirty seconds later the Audi slid around that same corner, Michelins squealing and smoking, the tail end drifting. Isaiah straightened the car out and dropped the hammer, three hundred and forty horsepower WAHHing like a hive of mega-wasps, pinning Deronda to the seat, the ice-blue nails gripping the doorsill and digging into the dash. “The hell you doing, Isaiah?”
Boyd drove on autopilot, not really believing he’d pulled it off. Adrenaline was sluicing through his veins, the missing tooth whistling like an out-of-breath bird, his heart thumping so loud he didn’t notice the suspension bottoming out as the truck bounced through a big pothole. The girl was behind him in the extra cab, sprawled on the seat, unconscious, drool pooling on the upholstery. That chloroform really worked. She was too busy yakking on her phone to notice him coming up behind her. He clamped the sponge over her face with one hand, his other arm around her waist. She kicked and swung her little arms but her body went limp by the time he put her in the extra cab. Nobody saw him. Down the block there was a black guy with his head stuck in a car and a girl standing there talking but they didn’t notice him. Gleeful now, Boyd bounced up and down in the seat, banging his fists on the steering wheel and laughing. “I’ve got her,” he shouted. “Jesus Christ, I’ve GOT her!”
The Audi shot down the street, the neighborhood going by in a blur. Isaiah’s jaw was hard-set but he was otherwise expressionless. He knew the man had thought about this, coming to a sketchy neighborhood with his chloroform, looking for the right girl. He got her in the pickup fast too, had his moves figured out in advance, and you don’t do all that just to go somewhere random. The man had plans.
Deronda put her hands in front of her face. “Isaiah!”
Isaiah slammed on the brakes, the Audi screeching to a halt at a stop sign. The man could have gone left, right, or straight ahead.
“Could you please tell me what’s going on?” Deronda said.
Isaiah looked left. Houses on either side, a dozen driveways to duck into. Kids were playing hockey in the street. They wouldn’t have had time to move the nets, let the truck go by, and set them up again.
“I know you after somebody,” Deronda said. “I don’t know who or how you got onto it but-”
“Be quiet,” Isaiah said, so much weight in his voice she immediately shut up, and when he looked right she did too. More houses, more driveways. A group of men were hanging on the corner a block away. Isaiah could ask them if they’d seen the pickup but he’d have to drive down there to find out and the truck’s lead was getting longer by the second. Straight ahead the street continued on but curved away so you couldn’t see all the way to the end. Isaiah’s eyes snap-zoomed on a pothole, a bloom of muddy splash marks around it. He slammed the Audi into gear and took off down the narrow street, whipping by parked cars so close you could reach out and touch them.
“Please, God, please,” Deronda said with her eyes closed.
Isaiah came to a hard stop at Pacific, a big street, traffic swishing by in front of him. He got out and hopped up on the hood of the car. A one-eighty scan took in a KFC, a parking lot, Five Star Auto Parts, a Chevron station, Del Taco, Top Notch Appliances, and Reliable Public Storage. It wasn’t likely the man had stopped to pick up some spark plugs, have a bite to eat, or buy a refrigerator, and his pickup wasn’t at the gas station. But he might have gone into Reliable. Isaiah knew the place. Row after row of identical storage lockers with roll-down doors. The girl could be in one now, just waking up, dizzy from the chloroform, the man a looming silhouette as the door came down and blacked out the sky.
Deronda stuck her head out of the window. “What are you doing, Isaiah?” she said.
Isaiah’s shirt was stuck to his back, his scalp tingling. The man was getting away, the girl having no idea what she was in for. What did you see, Isaiah, what did you see? When Isaiah came out of Beaumont’s he saw the skinny girl walking by, the pickup creeping after her, the man staring hard, his face shiny with sunburn. His cap had a logo embroidered on it. A fish with a lure stuck in its lip, and there was something reflective on the back bumper. A trailer hitch.
The man had a boat.
Isaiah got back in the car and floored it, running the red light, cars honking. If the man was heading to the marina he would have been driving south. Instead, he was headed west toward the LA River. Maybe his intention was to assault the girl in a warehouse or an empty building but a boat was better. Be alone with her out on the ocean, do what he wanted, and throw her body overboard.
“Call 911,” Isaiah said. Deronda dialed her cell, put it on speaker, and held it up to Isaiah’s ear.
“911,” the dispatcher said. “What is your emergency?”
Isaiah had to shout over the roaring V8. “A kidnapping,” he said, “a little girl.”
“When did this happen, sir?”
“A few minutes ago. I’m chasing the guy, he’s getting away. Going west on Dover, just passed Pacific.”
“Did you see the kidnapping?”
“No, I didn’t see it. He chloroformed her, put her in his truck.”
“Sir, you said you didn’t see it.”
“I smelled the chloroform, they’re probably in his boat by now.”
“Chloroform doesn’t have a smell-what boat?”
“Isaiah!” Deronda said, dropping the phone.
The river was coming at them fast, filling up the windshield. Isaiah downshifted, jerked the wheel right and then cranked it hard left, the car sliding sideways onto the bike path, Isaiah stomping on the gas, dust and gravel shooting out from behind the car as it raced off downriver.
“Why didn’t I get out of the car?” Deronda said. “Why?”
The Mercury outboard chugged along, the Hannah M moving at wake speed down the wide green LA River. Upstream the water was too shallow but here near the harbor there was just enough draft. Boyd stood tall on the bridge of his twenty-one-foot cuddy cruiser. The air was a warm wet blanket on his face but it felt good anyway.
Boyd was living in his grandmother’s second bedroom when she died of old age. The house went back to the bank but she’d left him some money in a safe-deposit box. Not a lot but enough to buy a secondhand boat with Bondo patches on the hull, a cracked windshield, and rust flaking off the gunwales. He loved the boat, by far the best thing he’d ever owned. Nick let him park the boat trailer inside the chain link enclosure with the forklift providing he could use the boat whenever he wanted. Backing the trailer into the water took no time at all.
The skinny girl was stashed in the cabin below. Boyd had laid her down on the mildewed mattress and put duct tape around her wrists and ankles and over her mouth. She’d moaned a couple of times, her shirt pulled up over her incredibly small waist. Boyd kneeled next to her, listening to her breathe and feeling the tapeworm in his gut growing and twisting, filling him with rage. He’d almost attacked her right then and there but decided to stick with the plan.
Hannah was veering to starboard. Boyd snapped back to the present and saw a black guy in a gray car driving on the bicycle path. Is that the same guy? No, it can’t be. Boyd steered back to the center of the river and pushed the throttle lever forward, the Merc blatting louder, the boat surging ahead. But the car caught up and stayed even. Who is this guy? Now he had his arm out of the window and he was pointing-no, not pointing, he was wagging his finger like a windshield wiper and saying something over and over again, you could read his lips: Don’t you do it. Don’t you do it. Boyd pushed the throttle to the max, the boat lunging, building speed, the car staying even, bouncing over dips and swerving around the bicyclers and joggers. “Who is this guy?” Boyd said.