Dead Bang (7 page)

“Art didn't have to come back,” said Karen. “Manny wouldn't have hurt me.”

“You don't seem to mind hurting him,” I said.

Wendy looked from Karen to me and said, “What?”

“I poured the teakettle out the window on Manny,” she said.

“You should have just thrown out the money like you told him,” I said as I pulled my suit coat on over the rifle.

“You told him you'd hand the money out?” asked Wendy.

“Well, yeah,” said Karen, wringing her hands.

“Why?” asked Wendy, throwing up her hands, her right hand still grasping her pistol.

“I threw some bundles out,” said Karen, scuffing a foot while she looked at the ground.

“So they would quit shooting?” asked Wendy.

Karen rolled her eyes up to Wendy. Chin down and face evil, she said, “So they would come up to the window.”

“Jesus Kay-rhyst,” I said, surprised that Karen's head didn't spin around and spew green vomit.

“They wrecked my stuff,” said Karen, her voice squeaking tight in her throat. Her face pinched, and tears welled up in her eyes. “It's all I had from my mom.” Her knees started to shake.

Wendy threw her arms around Karen and patted with the pistol-free hand. Karen sobbed and then squeaked out, “I didn't care if they killed me.”

“We care,” said Wendy. Looking at me over Karen's shoulder with an accusing face, she added, “You should give Karen your coat—she's freezing.”

I adjusted the sling so that I had enough slack to swing the weapon up
to my shoulder. “I have to keep this thing covered,” I said. “I don't want to start a panic.”

“The barrel hangs down to your knees, and the magazine makes a big lump in the back,” said Wendy.

“It's dark,” I said. I looked down the street. Nobody was coming out after us. On Division Avenue, a marked City of Wyoming police car screamed by with the rollers on.

“I think the panic has already started,” said Wendy.

“We should keep moving,” I said. “We need to find a safe place while the police sort out Manny and his pals.”

Wendy rubbed Karen's back. “C'mon,” she said. “Let's go before the people who live here get involved in this mess.”

As we walked west, the houses gave way to an acre of blacktopped parking lot for a church on Division Avenue. Light glowed from the windows in a one-story wing that stretched back from the main church building. Sirens screamed louder and closer. Cars pulled onto the lot. Folks who had already parked stood around their cars and wondered aloud what was going on.

Another marked police car roared down the street. I stretched my right hand down to cover as much of the rifle as I could. Wendy dropped her pistol into her handbag. The sign on the door announced the Lady's Altar Club quilt sale.

A minivan, definitely dark green under the street light, nosed into the lot and stopped just past the apron. The man with the white shirt and the unibrow sat at the wheel, gripping his right shoulder. Manny sat in the passenger seat holding the side of his face with both hands.

“W
HY DID YOU BRING
that weapon to our church?” a man asked from behind me, his voice calm and resonant. I didn't turn around. I kept my eyes on the van driver, whose glower remained fixed on me and seemed to gather heat as he rubbed his right shoulder with his left hand.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Reverend Douglas Rhinehardt,” he said. “I'm the pastor.”

“How did the police miss them?” asked Wendy.

“They should have taken the money and split,” I said. “Take Karen into the building.”

“I'm calling the police,” said Rhinehardt, his voice calm.

“Please,” I said. “And tell them the people they're looking for are in that green van right there.”

Rhinehardt said, “Maybe they're looking for you.”

“Either way, call the police.” I said.

I felt a firm hand on my right forearm. “Give me the gun.”

“Just make you a target, Father Rhinehardt,” I said. The van driver's lips curled to reveal a line of clenched teeth. Rhinehardt let go of my arm. “And standing next to me is not an idea with a long or happy future.”

“I think you should leave,” he said.

“If I stand relatively still, Reverend,” I said, “we all have time to think. If I make a significant move, the thinking will stop, and the doing will start.”

“Doing what?”

“They shot up a house over on Montebello. We ran. The neighbors must have called the police.”

“You have the rifle,” said Rhinehardt.

“One of their guys dropped it. I took it so they couldn't use it.”

“Why did they come here?” he asked.

“May have wanted to hide in the crowd,” I said. “I don't think they knew this was a church. From the look on the driver's face, I don't think they expected to find us here either.”

Rhinehardt stepped around me and said, “Richard, Carla,” beckoning to an elderly couple. Rhinehardt stood about five feet, ten inches tall—all black suit and silver hair from behind. “Hurry inside,” he said, his voice now cheerful. “Ralph. Yes, you too. I need some help.”

A light mist filtered from a mostly cloudless sky—Michigan weather. The cold ground would turn the mist into a coat of ice.

I waited for the padre to work his way to my left so I had a clear background behind the van. The van driver spoke slowly, his single eyebrow bent into a chevron. I pulled my coat aside to reveal a clear view of the rifle.

Manny took his hands from his face to make frantic gestures while he spoke rapidly to the driver. The right side of Manny's face radiated bright red from the hairline to the neck.

The driver wagged a single digit at me and jerked the shift lever down, and the van lurched into reverse. Backing up earned him some polite horn toots from entering traffic. A fifteen-foot church van, white with black letters—“St. Michael's”—stopped cold behind Manny and his crew. If they decided to start a war, I wouldn't be able to return fire without hosing the church van.

I sidestepped to my right, trying for a workable angle of fire. The green van cut a hard U-turn, driving over the curb to get to the street. I hustled through a gap in the parking lot fence and ran along the side of the church toward Division Avenue. The van roared by before I got to the street.

At the corner of Forty-fourth and Division, the signal blinked red. No fewer than three dark-colored minivans idled in the gaggle of traffic at the light. I focused on the minivan in the left turn lane because the expressway on-ramp veered off Forty-fourth Street in less than a quarter mile. Mist collecting on my glasses turned the van's taillights into big, red, four-pointed stars. I couldn't read the license plate.

The green arrow blinked on, and the minivan rocketed left around the corner. I dodged through the stopped traffic in the northbound lanes and
dashed into the vacant—and now slick—southbound side of the highway. When the main signal went green, the bumpers of the cars stopped at the light rose in unison like an offensive line coming out of a crouch after the snap.

A white Oldsmobile sedan cranked a tire-spinning right into the southbound lane before I could get to the curb, nailed the brakes, and came at me sideways. The driver, a blond lady with her hair in large rollers, screamed, “Holy shit!” loud enough for me to hear it through the closed window. I pegged a hand onto the left front fender above the headlight and, with a small hop, leapt onto the curb as the Olds slid into a one-eighty.

The on-ramp traffic moved at a crawl. I ran diagonally across the Walgreen's parking lot. Manny's van crept along, third from the end. Just at my back an auto horn honked—loud and close enough that I could feel the sound on my back. I ran to the edge of the aisle to let traffic pass. Whipping off my glasses, I was able to squint out the first three numbers on the license plate, but I couldn't make out whether the first of three letters was a “C” or a “G.” The horn sounded again. A car nudged me from behind and I stumbled. From the ground I pondered the ravenous grill of the white Oldsmobile.

The driver clanked the shifter into park, and the Olds raised its silver lip, the whirring fan threatening from behind grillwork teeth. I heard the driver's door open and hauled myself to my feet using the bumper. A woman stood in the open door and glared at me over the muzzle of a large black pistol. She didn't shoot, so I put my glasses on. The woman wore a pink sweatshirt. The hair on the left side of her head was wound onto a montage of large pink, blue, and mint-green rollers. On the right, her hair hung disheveled down to her shoulder. The face belonged to my favorite federal femme fatale, Special Agent Matty Svenson.

Matty said, “FBI! You're under arrest!”

Heaving for air again, I went with, “The guys,” and pointed to the northbound entrance ramp to 131. “The van!”

“Art?” said Matty. “Jesus Christ! Get in the back.”

Matty had the Olds moving by the time I got the door open. I dove for the seat. The door closed itself.

I can remember when the back seat of an Oldsmobile offered more room to wrestle. I couldn't sit up because of the rifle slung over my shoulder. The sleeve of my suit coat, wet from the spill in the parking lot, clung to my skin and didn't want to slide off my arm. I don't know how Matty crossed Forty-fourth—I was pulling my suit coat over my head like a T-shirt—but the jolt bounced me onto the floor.

“What van?” Matty yelled.

“Dark green Ford Windstar,” I said.

“Plate?”

“Eight, three, five is all I've got. The first letter is a “C” or a “G.” I heard a chorus of horn honks. The Olds Rocket Eight growled, and inertia rolled me against the seat.

“Is that all you got?”

I got my head back in the light and pulled the suit coat off my arms. We charged up the shoulder of the entrance ramp, passing cars on the right. “I got interrupted.”

I climbed onto the seat and dropped the AKR onto the floor.

“Get up here,” said Matty. “Get the blue-flasher out of the glove box.”

Matty's gun, badge, and belt littered the front seat along with a rainbow of plastic hair rollers. I brushed them toward the middle and stepped over the seat back. The blue-flasher had suction cups to hold it onto the dash and a cigarette lighter plug. I plugged it in, and blue light strobed across the white expanse of the Oldsmobile front deck.

Matty careened off the shoulder and gunned the Olds into the left lane behind a county salt truck. Rock salt peppered the undercarriage and pecked at the windshield. The salt truck moved half into the center lane, and Matty rolled down her window and waved “go ahead” to the driver. The county truck eased back into the left lane and picked up the pace.

“Damn minivans all look alike,” said Matty.

“I haven't seen it yet,” I said.

“How many guys in this van?” asked Matty.

“At least four. Two guys in blue coveralls and beards, one guy in a long-sleeved white shirt with one eyebrow that goes all the way across his forehead, and Manny. Tan shorts, aloha shirt, and a burn on the right side of his face.”

“Burn?”

“Teakettle,” I said.

“How are they armed?”

“Kalashnikovs like the one in the back seat. At least one more, maybe two.”

“Unplug the light,” said Matty. She took her foot off the gas. “How'd you get the rifle?”

“Wendy whacked one of them in the face with a folding chair, and I took it. We ain't looking for these guys?”

“I don't want to start a rifle match on the expressway,” said Matty. “If we can follow them to where they hole up, we can call for backup.”

We spotted several dark-colored minivans, but not Manny's. Wealthy
Avenue exits the 131 expressway from the left. Matty took the exit and turned right toward Division Avenue. “I think they got off,” she said. “Where's Wendy and the woman you picked up at the airport?”

“St. Michael's,” I said. “Across the street from where you ran me down.”

Matty turned right onto Division, and we headed south, checking parking lots as we eased along the slick pavement. Matty stayed silent until we got to Burton Avenue. Finally, she said, “I didn't run you down.”

“I have ‘Oldsmobile' branded on my ass,” I said.

“You stopped,” said Matty.

“I was getting the plate number.”

Matty said nothing.

I said, “My suit needs to be dry-cleaned.”

We looped through the parking lot south of Burton. No joy. Matty said, “I thought all Pi's wore shiny suits.”

“Yeah, but I have to get the Oldsmobile logo pressed out of the seat of my pants.”

Matty laughed.

“Am I still under arrest?”

“Any more derriere jokes, and I read you your rights,” said Matty.

“Okay, no more butt cracks.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” said Matty. She pulled the rollers out of her hair, one at a time, and added them to the pile on the seat between us. The traffic light at Twenty-eighth flipped red. We stopped. Matty fluffed her hair in the rearview mirror, inspected her teeth, and then burnished them with her finger. As she adjusted the mirror, she said, “You're lucky it was me and not the locals that caught you running around the neighborhood with a rifle under your coat.”

“You didn't know it was me, did you?”

“I saw a man with a rifle stalking the street. Didn't matter who it was,” she said.

“I had it under my coat.”

“Don't try to shoplift one that way,” said Matty. “Besides, I didn't expect to find you running around the streets. I told you to leave the money and get out of the house. Wyoming requested assistance from all available Kentwood and Grand Rapids patrol cars. Something about a pitched gun battle. I take it that was you.”