I never had to explain things like that to Flood. She knew-she was raised in the same places I was.
There was too much prison in this case-too much past.
I tried another cassette-Robert Johnson's "Hellhound on My Trail" came through the speakers. Chasing me down the road.
45
BY THE next morning, the magnum was back in my office and all but five thousand of the money was stashed with Max. I told him most of what happened the night before-enough so he could find the redhead if things didn't work out. I couldn't take Max with me on this trip-he was the wrong color.
I took Atlantic Avenue east through Brooklyn, but this time I rolled right on past the Inter-Boro entrance, past the neighborhood called City Line and into South Ozone Park. In this part of Queens, everybody's got territory marked off-the gangsters have their social clubs, the Haitians have their restaurants, and the illegal aliens have their basements. When you get near J.F.K. Airport, you move into the free-fire zone-the airport is too rich a prize for anyone to hold it all.
I pulled into the open front of a double-width garage. A faded sign over the door said "Ajax Speed Shop." A fat guy sat on a cut-down oil drum just inside the door, a magazine on his lap. His hair was motorcycle-club-length; he had a red bandanna tied around his forehead. He was wearing a denim jacket with the arms cut off, jeans, and heavy work boots. His arms bulged, not all from fat. He'd been a body-builder once; now he was slightly gone to seed.
A candy-apple-red Camaro stood over to my right, its monster rear tires filling the rear tubs under the fenders. The garage specialized in outlaw street racers-guys who made a living drag racing away from the legal strips. The back of the joint was dark.
I didn't wait for the fat guy. "Bobby around?" I asked.
"What do you need, man?" he wanted to know, his voice still neutral.
"I want to try a nitrous bottle. Bobby told me he could fix me up.
"For this?" he wanted to know, looking at the Plymouth 's faded four doors. Street racers use nitrous oxide-laughing gas-for short power-bursts. You need a pressurized tank, a switch to kick it in, and enough cojones to pull the trigger. They're not illegal, but you want to fix things up so your opponent won't know you're carrying extra horses. The Plymouth didn't look like his idea of a good candidate-or maybe it was the driver.
I pulled the lever under the dash and the hood was released-it popped forward, pivoting at the front end. The fat guy went around to the passenger side as I got out, and we lifted the entire front end forward together. The whole front-end assembly was Fiberglas-you could move it with two fingers.
The fat guy looked into the engine bay, nodding his head.
"Three eighty-three?" he wanted to know.
"Four forty," I told him, "with another sixty over."
He nodded sagely. It was making sense to him now. One four barrel?" he asked-meaning, Why just one carburetor for so many cubic inches?
"It's built for torque-got to idle nice and quiet."
"Yeah," he said, still nodding. The Plymouth wasn't for show-just the opposite. He walked around the car, peering underneath, noting that the dual exhausts never reached the bumper. The rear undercarriage puzzled him for a minute. "It looks like an I.R.S. Jag?"
"Home-built," I told him. Independent rear suspension was better for handling, but it wouldn't stand up to tire-burning starts-drag racers never used it.
And that was his next question. "Whatta you run with this…thirty-tromp?"
You can race from a standing start or side-by-side at a steady speed and then take off on the signal. Thirty-tromp is when each driver carries a passenger-you reach thirty miles an hour, make sure the front ends are lined up, and the passenger in the left-hand car screams "Go!" out the window and both cars stomp the gas. First car to the spot you marked off is the winner.
"Twenty's okay," I told him. "It hooks up okay once you're rolling."
"You want the nitrous bottle in the trunk?"
"Where else?" I asked him. I opened the trunk to let him look inside.
"Motherfucker! Is that a fuel cell?"
"Fifty-gallon, dual electric pumps," I told him. The kid who built it would have been proud.
The fat guy's suspicions were gone-he was in heaven. "Man, you couldn't run this more than one time-it's a fake-out supreme! Where do you race?"
"Wherever," I said, "as long as they have the money."
"What do you duel for?"
"A grand-minimum," I said.
The fat guy scratched his head. He was used to guys spending thousands and thousands to build a car and then racing for fifty-dollar bills. Guys who put a good piece of their money into the outside of their cars-like the Camaro sitting there. He'd heard about guys who treated the whole thing like a business-no ego, all for the bucks-but he'd never seen one before. "I'll get Bobby for you," he said, "wait here."
I lit a smoke, leaning against the side of the Plymouth. I let my eyes wander around the garage but kept my feet where they were. I knew what was in the back.
46
I HEARD a door slam somewhere and Bobby came out of the darkness, hands in the pockets of his coveralls. A big, husky kid-with his long hair and mustache, he looked like an ex-college football player. He came on slowly, not hesitating, just careful. The fat guy was saying something about the Plymouth, but Bobby wasn't listening.
He got close enough to see. "Burke! That you?" he yelled.
"It's me," I said in a quiet voice, knowing what was coming.
The kid crushed me in a bear hug, almost lifting me off my feet. "Brother!" he yelled. "My brother from hell!" I hate that stuff, but I hugged him back, mumbling some words to make it okay.
Bobby turned to the fat guy. "This is my man. Burke, say hello to Cannonball."
"We met," I told him.
"Yeah…right. What's happening, man?"
"He wants some nitrous…" the fat guy said.
"My brother don't want no nitrous…do you, Burke?" Bobby said in a superior tone.
"No," I said, watching the fat guy. Bobby's eyes dropped to my right hand. It was balled into a fist, the thumb extended, rubbing a tiny circle on the Plymouth 's fender. The jailhouse sign to get lost.
"Take a walk, Cannonball," Bobby told him.
"You oughta get the nitrous, man," Cannonball said by way of goodbye. He went off into the darkness in the back.
Bobby reached into my coat, patting around like he was doing a search. I didn't move. He pulled out my pack of cigarettes, lit one for himself. A prison-yard move-okay if you were tight, a spit in your face if you weren't.
"You want to move cars?" Bobby asked. The back of his garage was a chop shop. He took stolen cars and turned them into parts in a couple of hours. A good business, but it takes a lot of people to make it work.
"I'm looking for a couple of your brothers, Bobby," I told him.
The garage got quiet. "You got a beef?" he asked.
"No beef. I'm looking for somebody they might have done some work for. That's all."
"They're not in it?"
"They're not in it," I assured him.
"What is in it?" he wanted to know.
"Money," I told him.
"Same old Burke," the kid said, smiling.
I didn't say anything, waited. "You got names?" the kid asked.
"All I got is this, Bobby. One of them had the lightning bolt on his hand. Big guy. And they did some work for a woman. Older woman. Delivering money.
"With her?"