Final Stroke (47 page)

Several blocks farther on, at a stop sign, the truck turned south, back on a wide street with streetlights and other traffic, back the way Steve had come earlier. If the truck continued this way they’d cross over the Stevenson Expressway. But if the truck got on the expressway …

No! He couldn’t afford to prolong this. Jan was in danger and the man with the flat and bloody nose knew something.

In a dimly lit section where traffic eased up, Steve floored the Lin
coln and managed to get up on the right side of the truck. His plan was to try to push the truck into parked cars on the other side of the street. He would push it with the Lincoln’s left side because he needed the right-hand door to get out into his wheelchair.

The Lincoln tore into the truck just behind its front wheel. The cowling beneath the Lincoln’s front bumper ripped back into its tire and the left front fender of the Lincoln pressed against the truck’s tire, making buzz saw sounds. The Lincoln’s left headlight blew.

Despite the noise and vibration, Steve continued steering into the truck. The guy with the flat nose knew something. If he died trying to stop this guy, well then, he’d just die. At least he’d die knowing he’d done what he could to find Jan. The possibility of Jan being dead made him turn the wheel even more to the left.

Parked cars coming up fast ahead. Collision soon. But the pave
ment was too wet and the truck too heavy for the Lincoln. Steering wheel turned full left, but the Lincoln continued straight ahead, then to the right, across the road. Parked cars there, too. No choice but to straighten the Lincoln’s wheels and slam on the brakes at the last second.

The Lincoln’s left front shuddered when he continued the chase. He could see by the unevenness where the hood was supposed to meet the top of the fender that he’d done a job on the Lincoln’s left side. Fine, a guy crippled on the right side driving a car crippled on the left side. As he drove he realized he was sitting toward the center of the front seat, having apparently moved over while the Lincoln was doing its best to force the truck into parked cars.

Most of the businesses and stores they passed were dimmed for the night, some with security gates pulled closed. But when they passed a brightly lit drugstore, Steve had a sudden flash of memory that threat
ened to sidetrack him.

A drugstore in Cleveland. Arriving there after the shooting. Sue shot and not a damn thing he could do about it. Suddenly it was there before him. A night long ago paralleling this night.

Expressway coming up. No way to catch the truck if it gets on. No way for the Lincoln to keep up with its front end so badly dam
aged. And cops. Someone will see the two of them speeding down the expressway and call the cops, and instead of finding Jan, there’ll be nothing but questions without answers.

He had to do something. And so, when the truck slowed to make its turn at the corner onto the expressway ramp, Steve maintained the Lincoln’s speed, jumped the curb up onto the sidewalk, just missing a light pole, put the Lincoln into a slide that took out a trash can, and slid the tail end of the Lincoln onto the entrance ramp and into the side of the truck.

This time the Lincoln made its mark, changing the direction of the truck and forcing it off the ramp, over the narrow shoulder and down an embankment into the tall chain-link fence that kept pedes
trians from wandering down the slope of the hill and onto the express
way. The Lincoln also started down the embankment backward, but Steve straightened the wheel and floored the Lincoln, barely managing to keep it up on the road.

Although traffic moved below on the expressway, the ramp was quiet and dark and no one else had turned onto it. He stopped the Lincoln on the edge of the ramp facing down at the cars speeding along the expressway just in time to see the flat-nosed man jump out of the truck’s passenger door and begin running along the fence back up toward the lights on the overpass.

Despite pain in his right side that felt like the lick of flames, he had no choice. He didn’t know it for certain, but there was a good chance this man could help him find Jan. It was time to do another
of those automatic things he’d been able to do after his stroke. He gave the Lincoln a burst of speed in reverse, slammed on the brakes. He lowered the window all the way, reached into his side pocket, took out his forty-five, and cradled it in his impaired right hand while he released the safety with his left thumb. He carefully repositioned the barrel and held it tightly in his left hand. The flat-nosed man was on a steep part of the embankment near the fence, his figure silhouetted against the lights beneath the overpass as he climbed frantically, reach ing forward to grab at the wet weeds.

Steve shouted, “Stop, motherfucker!”

When the man did not stop, but kept climbing closer to the over
pass sidewalk and escape, Steve held the gun in his left hand, steadying his arm on the doorsill. Then, knowing full well he’d been a right-hand shooter, he aimed and squeezed the trigger with his left hand.

Above the sounds of traffic on the expressway, the man’s scream, as he stumbled forward then slid back down the wet embankment, sounded like the chirp of a bird. He fell like a bird, scrambling on the ground, his arms flopping around like he was trying to fly off the face of a cliff. He did not fly. Instead, his arms and legs found the ground and he began crawling, regaining the ground he’d lost. As he climbed, the man looked behind as if the bullet had come from down the em
bankment instead of from the side. Although he crawled awkwardly because of the bullet in his foot, the man seemed oblivious to Steve, even when Steve shouted he would shoot again. The wound did not seem fatal, but the man was like an animal crawling into a corner to die. To the flat-nosed man, the only thing that seemed to matter was getting to the top of the embankment.

Steve opened the driver’s door to make sure it was not damaged in either of the collisions with the truck. The door was okay and he slammed it and put the Lincoln in reverse and backed all the way up
the ramp. Then he shut off the Lincoln’s lights and pulled onto the overpass in reverse, backing slowly along the curb, then up onto the sidewalk to the place where the fence on the embankment joined the fence that kept kids from throwing things down onto the expressway from the overpass.

By backing the Lincoln onto the sidewalk he blocked the path of the flat-nosed man. A car going onto the overpass slowed, a man and woman inside staring at the idiot who had not only pulled onto the sidewalk, but was facing the wrong way. But the couple in the car continued on their way and he was thankful that, until now, he hadn’t seen one squad car except for the one in the parking lot a couple miles back at Hell in the Woods.

When the flat-nosed man appeared at the top of the embankment he was still looking behind him. Although Steve could not hear him because of the din of traffic on the expressway below, he could see, by his rhythmic movements, that the man was panting from exhaustion and in a state of panic. If he pointed his gun at the man and told him to stop, he’d probably turn to go back down the embankment, or fall backward down the embankment.

He needed to talk to this man. And so he positioned the Lincoln, inching forward a bit to put the driver’s door even with the man. Then he shoved the transmission into Park, and, just as the man reached the edge of the sidewalk and turned to see where he’d go from there, Steve pushed the heavy door open as hard as he could and caught the flat-nosed man full in the chest.

The weeds beyond the edge of the sidewalk were wet. He could feel the wetness on both hands, but mostly on his left hand. He had thrown the forty-five on the passenger seat before diving out onto the ground with the flat-nosed man. The courtesy light on the Lincoln’s door shown in the flat-nosed man’s eyes as he lay on his side staring at
Steve. They lay side-by-side in the weeds like kids playing hide-and-seek for just a moment before the flat-nosed man began scrambling away.

When Steve reached out and grabbed a handful of jacket, the man fought him, screaming, “You shot my fuckin’ foot!”

The man was wriggling away, Steve’s left hand barely hanging on as the man pulled him along. Right hand seeming to flop around uncontrollably. But then Steve managed to get his right arm around the guy’s waist, and when he did this he let go with his left hand and reached for the guy’s neck. But the flat-nosed man was too fast for him, and he slid down the guy’s flank. It was like trying to catch a reptile. And soon the reptile would slither away.

He needed to know what this man knew! He needed to do some
thing! He’d had a goddamn stroke and there wasn’t much he could do. He needed an edge. So he reached around the man, and with his left hand, grabbed a handful of the guy’s crotch and squeezed.

The guy’s fists seemed relentless, so much so that Steve thought he might go unconscious. But he stayed with it, squeezing as hard and he could, and eventually the screaming and cursing and flailing subsided, the guy realizing that the squeezing was reduced only when he stopped swinging his fists. During this tirade, Steve got hit a couple good ones in the neck and jaw. As it had many times since the stroke during bouts of intense pain, his brain put on an illusory show, making him visualize his nerve endings as tentacled creatures separate from him
self. Then he screamed into the face of the flat-nosed man.

“Fuck you, pain! Little worm bastards inside me tougher than you! Little bastards’ll get out and eat you! Eat me from inside out, then eat you, motherfuck! Burn me up, worm fuckers! I give a fuck! Burn me up, nerve fuckers!”

The pinkish-bluish glare from the overhead expressway lights gave the flat-nosed man’s face an eerie radiance and Steve could tell by the
look on the guy’s face that his own face also looked eerie, perhaps even more so because he probably had on his stroke grin. And now that he’d said what he’d said about his nerve endings, the guy’s eyes had opened wide.

When he said, “No time for mess,” the guy gave him a puzzled look, but his eyes were still open wide and he began shaking like any tough guy who’s forced to cross a certain threshold.

“What, man? What?!”

“Talk!”

“Talk to who? About what? You shot my fuckin’ foot and …”

He gave the guy’s balls a good squeeze to let him know this wasn’t the way he wanted the conversation to go.

He pushed his face closer, their noses touching. “Desperate! Got to know what at Hell in Woods! I’ll fucking take you apart down there! If … if you don’t tell …”

“Tell what?!”

“Why?”

“Why what? Jesus Christ!”

“Why Jesus Christ truck left fast?”

“I left fast ‘cause I wanted the hell out of there! I’m tellin’ the truth, man. Quit squeezin’! Jesus Christ!”

“What happened?”

“What happened where? Holy shit! Okay! Okay!”

“Talk!”

“I was goin’ there to meet someone.”

“Who?”

“Oh shit!”

“Who?!”

“I was goin’ there to meet Tyrone!”

“What happened?”

“How the fuck? Oh, Ma! Geez!”

“Who and what? Exactly! Now!”

“Okay! I was goin’ there to meet Tyrone. He meets me at the loading dock for deliveries. Only this time instead of him meeting me, I see spaghetti heads carrying him out the back door and he’s screamin’ for help! Hey! Easy! Goddamn! Okay! So I try to help, but this heavyweight spaghetti head comes over and lays a pile driver on me. Then I get the fuck out!”

“What about woman?”

“Woman?”

“With Tyrone!”

“Was no woman, just spaghetti heads.”

“Where’s Tyrone?”

“You mean right now?”

“No. Back there!”

“Those guys took him.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere out in the parking lot. I saw a bunch of ‘em by a van. They stuck Tyrone’s ass in the van and got back in their cars. That’s when I got the fuck out!”

When Steve let go his grip and began crawling as fast as he could toward the open door of the Lincoln, the flat-nosed man held himself with both hands and curled up in the weeds like a baby. The last thing Steve heard him say was, “Oh shit, what kinda night is this?”

Back inside the Lincoln Steve got the engine started but couldn’t get his left foot to the pedals because his right leg was in the way. He reached down with his left hand, pulled at the leg and realized the leg brace had slipped, allowing the leg to go crooked and helpless. He reached down with both hands, trying to force the right hand to help, and after several tugs was able to pull the leg brace back into place,
allowing him to lift his right leg back where it belonged. For all he knew it could be broken, but he didn’t have time for that now.

After he put the Lincoln into drive and bounced it down the curb and across to the right side of the road, the seatbelt warning sounded and the pain in his right side threatened to take over the way it had when the flat-nosed man was pummeling him. Only this pain was even worse. More pain then he could ever remember. But he was a damn half-brainer, and half-brainers weren’t supposed to be able to remember everything. So why not forget pain? He’d probably had greater pain than this. Right side muscles not on fire from pain but from exertion. Concentrate. Concentrate! Fuck the pain!