“And took out a mailbox.” The Firebird raced without stopping through the same intersection and scattered sparks bottoming out over a speed bump.
Coleman’s eyes got big. “A station wagon’s pulling out!”
Serge slammed on the brakes with both feet, throwing Coleman into the dashboard.
“Hey, I got a beverage here.”
“Shut up! This other asshole’s driving too slow and she’s getting away . . .”
“Can’t you get around him?”
“The street’s too narrow and some other bozo who lives around here is having a party: Look at all these parallel-parked cars . . . Damn, and now I’ve lost sight of her. I need you to spot me through the gauntlet.”
Coleman hung his head out the passenger window and looked down as they passed parked vehicles. “Three inches clearance . . . Still three inches . . . Alllllllmossst . . . Now!”
Serge worked the pedals with heel-toe precision, whipping around the station wagon and getting back over the line before rear-ending the next parked car.
“You did it,” said Coleman.
“I haven’t done anything until we catch up with her, and I don’t see her taillights,” said Serge. “She’s going to get herself killed for sure, all because of me.”
They started through another intersection. “There she is!” yelled Coleman. “I just saw her taillights when we were crossing that last street. She made a left turn.”
Serge screeched in reverse and spun out across the intersection, leaving their car pointed in the desired direction. He floored it again, barreling down on the tiny Ford Focus four blocks ahead. Then three blocks, two, one . . . Now only car lengths, closing fast.
The Firebird was finally right up on her bumper.
“We did it!” yelled Coleman. “She’s not going to die.”
“All that’s left now is a tactical traffic stop, which I’ve done a million times in my sleep.” Serge stared down over the dash at Brook’s taillights a few yards ahead. “Nothing can possibly go wrong now . . . Coleman, what are you drinking?”
“What?”
“That drink.”
“Just a little Jack Daniel’s.”
“And?”
“And Coke.”
“And?”
“That’s it, just Jack and Coke.”
“What’s floating in it?” said Serge.
Coleman stared into the glass. “Huh?”
“Where’d you get those ice cubes—”
Blooooooooossssshhhhhhh!
Foam sprayed everywhere. On the windshield, in their eyes . . .
“Coleman, get that shit out of here!”
“I can’t see!”
The Trans Am slalomed wildly back and forth across the road, threatening to go up on two wheels. Serge steered into the skid. “Coleman! It’s still spraying!”
Coleman covered his face. “It stings!”
The Firebird whipped across the road a last time before jumping the curb, taking out a hedge and crashing head-on into a coconut palm.
Steam spraying from the radiator, but the foam had stopped.
Coleman looked over at the driver’s seat. “Serge, didn’t you see that tree?”
“You idiot.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
MIAMI
An hour after dark, an oil-dripping Ford Focus cruised down a residential street a mile east of the turnpike.
Brook Campanella glanced in her rearview mirror again. She had grown suspicious of a Firebird that she could have sworn was following her, but now there was nothing back there. She’d heard the sound of a wreck and checked a side mirror to see the car a half block back, crashed into a tree.
Tough luck. Bigger things on her mind.
She headed south on I-95 and took an exit ramp six miles later. There was a hitchhiker heading to Key West, a homeless guy waving a cardboard sign and a broken-down Beemer with the hood up and someone bent over the engine.
Brook drove by. The man slammed the hood, jumped in the Beemer and hit the gas.
She found her way through a modest middle-class neighborhood outside Miramar. Brook cut the headlights and drove the last hundred yards in the dark before easing up to the curb. She unzipped a leather tactical bag in her lap and removed the sawed-off, pistol-grip shotgun. Then she grabbed the door handle. Headlights hit her car from behind. She took her hand off the handle and watched in the mirror.
At the end of the block, a Beemer rolled to a stop five homes back and cut its lights. The driver didn’t get out of the car. Maybe he was waiting for someone to emerge from the house. Maybe he was getting a hummer. Who cared? The important thing was his lights were off her. She grabbed the door handle again.
Lights hit her again. This time a Camaro. Then a Datsun. “How busy is this street?”
Brook suddenly jumped as she heard gunfire. But it was just a loud TV across the street where the windows were open to save on A/C. The street may have been dark, but it was a noise fest on a Friday night. Multiple stereos, people laughing and yelling at a backyard pool party; other televisions were tuned to more networks that decided they needed even more weapon fire.
Every sound made Brook flinch. She reached in the glove compartment for an airline miniature of banana-flavored rum, her first drink of the day. She made a wicked face and began coughing as it went down like any non–call brand of well liquor.
She waited for the effect. Headlights appeared again at the end of the block, this time facing Brook and making her lie flat across the front seat. The lights passed, and she straightened up to reach for the door handle. And withdrew her hand again. She grabbed another miniature from the glove compartment and made another face.
Brook lowered her head with self-anger. “I just can’t do it.”
The car remained still while she flipped through photos in her wallet. Mostly of her parents. Emotion spiked in two directions, sorrow and rage. She nodded at a new idea. “But I can at least scare the shit out of him, just like he did to my father.” She ejected the twelve-gauge’s shells and opened the driver’s door. “If he has a heart attack, it’s fucking karma.”
She reached the front steps with the shotgun slung under a light jacket. But now what? Did she ring the doorbell? Or find a darkened side door and bust out some jalousie glass. This clearly wasn’t thought through.
For reasons known only to the rum company, something told Brook to try the knob. Unlocked. She gave the door a gentle push and poked her head inside. Lights blazed throughout the residence. Somewhere inside, a TV’s volume was way up. That’s where he must be. Brook silently slipped the door closed behind her, raised the shotgun from under her coat and followed the sound of a cop show where someone was being interrogated. She found herself in a hallway and concluded that the TV and fake Rick Maddox must be in the den.
Brook crept forward, chest pounding, sweat starting to trickle into her eyes, every inch forward an undertaking. She reached the edge of the den’s door, and her legs began to buckle. She got mad at herself again, thought of her father and forced her muscles to steel themselves.
Brook told herself she was thinking too much: Just do it. She closed her eyes and counted to three, then jumped from around the corner into the den’s open doorway with shotgun aimed high.
Sure enough, there he was, stretched out in a La-Z-Boy, watching TV with his back toward her. Just the top of his head showing. For some reason, she had pictured him with hair.
She took a forceful step forward. “Get up, motherfucker!”
The plan was for him to spring up from the chair in a freak-out. But he just continued lounging there smugly watching his cop show. What an asshole.
Brook began circling him in a wide arc, the aim of the twelve-gauge never leaving its target. She got halfway around to his profile and realized he wasn’t ignoring her; he was asleep.