"Lie down, mon," the startled attendants ordered. Duffy got off the rolling stretcher and moved to the back of the ambulance, but the door was locked. Duffy tried to open it but couldn't.
"Get back on that stretcher," the young Bahamian paramedic commanded.
"Go fuck yourself," Duffy shot back.
They were now almost to the hospital. Beano could see that Duffy wasn't going to be able to get out unless they did something drastic. "Gotta stop the ambulance," Victoria said, picking up his exact thought. She gunned the van, shot around the ambulance, hit the brakes, and threw the van into a four-wheel drift right beside the ambulance. Once she was sideways in the lane next to the ambulance, she floored it; the tires caught hold, smoking and squealing on the pavement. She was now perpendicular to the ambulance, and as the Bahamian driver hit the brakes in panic, she T-boned the yellow and white ambulance, pinning it against the curb. The ambulance and van both smoked to a stop. Roger was thrown off the seat to the floor with a yelp. Beano jumped out and yanked open the back door of the ambulance. Duffy leaped out and ran for the van. Beano wasn't far behind. An ambulance attendant had jumped out and was running after them, but Victoria now had the van in reverse. She backed up and skidded the van around and cut the attendant off. The van engine was smoking, the radiator leaking water. Beano and Duffy jumped in the open door on the opposite side as the ambulance attendant banged on Victoria's locked door, trying to pull it open.
"Come back here, that's our patient," the attendant screamed as Victoria floored it and squealed away, heading in the opposite direction.
Beano looked over at her, surprised, as Roger-the-Dodger jumped back up on the seat between them.
"You okay?" Victoria asked Duffy, who nodded.
"Not my best fit but certainly in the top ten," Fit-Throwing Duffy grinned, as they roared away.
They could hear sirens coming toward them. Beano knew that Buzini was heading toward them with the police. "Turn right, across the field!" he yelled.
Victoria turned the blue van right and crashed through a fence and drove across the soft ground. She could barely control her progress in the soft dirt but managed to keep the van slip-sliding on course, heading southwest. The van fishtailed and threw up a plume of brown dirt that was visible from the road in the lightening sky. Through the back window, Beano could see the cop cars pull up and park next to the ambulance. Several of the police, plus a fuming Buzini, got out and looked at them across the field. They had gained distance, but now the police cars backed up and gave chase, roaring out through the broken fence, across the field after them.
They arrived at the Deep Water Airfield at five past six; the morning sun was just over the rim of the hill.
"If my cousin Lee isn't on time, we're all going to jail," Beano said as Victoria pulled the van onto the runway tarmac and came to a screeching stop. Parked at the end of the runway was a red and gray King Air twin-engine plane.
"There," Duffy said, pointing.
Victoria floored it. By now the police cars were in view, coming along the airport frontage road, their sirens braying. Victoria drove the van full-speed to the plane. Beano jumped out before Victoria had even brought it to a complete stop. He ran to the pilot leaning against the wing. "Lee, get this thing up right now!"
Leland X. Bates looked off at the approaching squad cars and shook his head in dismay.
"Usually you're a little smoother than this," Lee said, moving quickly into the plane. The squad cars were now on the runway and racing toward them.
Duffy, Victoria, and Roger-the-Dodger, toting the blue canvas bag, were already out of the van and running to the King Air.
Inside the plane, Leland was looking at the approaching police cars as he set the throttles and began to start the starboard engine. "It'll be tight but let's give it a go," he said as he revved the starboard engine, then immediately started the port. "If you don't mind, I'm gonna scrap the preflight," he said, as the second engine coughed to life. He throttled up. The squad cars were only three hundred yards away as Leland shouted, "Hold on…"
The King Air roared down the runway directly at the police cars, which had come to a stop across the center of the tarmac to block him. But they had left too much runway and, just before the plane hit the nearest car, Leland pulled back the yoke and the plane lifted off… They heard one of the tires leave a patch of rubber on the roof of the nearest police car as they skimmed over.
"Holy shit," Victoria said, her heart slamming in her chest as she clutched Roger-the-Dodger in her arms. Then she looked over at Beano, who was grinning.
"Even more exciting than my first night in jail," he said.
Duffy smiled. He was still out of breath and his chest hurt; he was pooped. Throwing a convincing epileptic fit was damn hard work.
Then the little plane turned west and headed out over the inland cut toward Miami.
Chapter Twenty.
EVERYBODY WAS TRYING TO FIND TOMMY RINA. THE Host in the High-roller casino described Dakota to the Desk Clerk, who remembered her vividly, and at eight A.M. they got a second key to her room. They opened her door to the overpowering smell of vomit. They found Tommy sprawled on the bed, facedown and naked, except for his laced-up wing-tip shoes and socks. He looked like a partied-out conventioneer. When they woke him up, he groaned and rolled to a sitting position, squinting at Arnold Buzini and two Security cops. Then Tommy looked down at his crotch and his exposed howitzer.
"Get the fuck out of here," he growled at them.
"We been hit," Buzini said by way of explanation.
"Get the fuck out of here! I gotta put on some clothes," Tommy said, pulling the bedspread up onto his lap. They backed out of the room and Tommy tried to get to his feet.
"Goddamn…" he said. His head felt like it was being opened from the side with a can opener. He stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Then he got in and stood there, still in his shoes, and let it pour over him. He felt worse than afterbirth. He thought he was going to die right there, in the shower, with his wing-tips on.
Then it all came back to him… the Goddess, the trip to the High-roller casino… the fuck on the bed, which he barely remembered. "Man, that bitch can hold her liquor," he said to his water-soaked shoes. Then he remembered what Buzini had said, and he opened the shower door and called out.
"Hey, Buz… whatta you mean we got hit?"
Twenty minutes later they were seated in Buzini's tiny office, and Tommy was on the phone with his little brother, Joe, in New Jersey. The doctored dice and the wheelchair were being examined in the next room. They had found where the dice had been drilled, and they knew they'd been hit by tat players. Joe was mad but his voice, as always, was cool.
"Tommy, you're nothing but a wandering hard-on… All you think about is pussy," his little brother said to him in cold anger. "Women and clipping guys, that's your whole routine."
"Come on, Joe, it wasn't like that."
"First, the jewelry store gets hit for a hundred grand. Okay, that's small stuff; it's stupid, but I can live with it. But now this… this is over a million dollars, Tommy. You're down there and the Shift Manager can't even find you. You got that redheaded flute player stashed in my villa and you're up on eight with another hooker, while our place gets hummed for a million bucks… Nobody can find you."
"Joe… look…"
"What good are you to me if you do all your thinking with your dick? I got problems everywhere. All you do is make 'em worse."
"I don't make things worse. In Jersey last month, wasn't for me, you'd be upstate, Joe."
"Hey, Tommy, this is an open phone line," Joe exploded. "I got people listening… taps everywhere. Use your fucking head for once, will ya?"