Артур Порджес - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 121, No. 2. Whole No. 738, February 2003

The SUV rumbled to life behind us, and Lew’s feet got moving again.

We piled into the little Neon. I got the keys down from the visor and jammed them in the ignition and pulled out into the road. As we sped past the Acme place, the big headlights of the SUV swung out behind us and blazed blindingly through the rear window.

“Holy crap,” Lew said.

I jammed the gas pedal to the floor. The SUV stayed right where it was — about a foot from our rear bumper.

“You ever hear of a tailgate party, Lew? Well, they’re putting a whole new spin on the concept.”

“They kiss our rear bumper and we’ll go whipping right off this twisty road into a ravine.”

“Yeah, and then they’ll climb down with tire irons and make sure we never get out again.”

Lew began fumbling with his cell phone. Fat chance that’d do us any good — not unless there was a county mountie around the next bend.

We rounded a sharp curve. The SUV had to fall back. Then it was right back on our bumper. I couldn’t see who was driving — Maude or Rufus. Not that it mattered. Either of them was capable of making mincemeat out of us.

I kept waiting for the kiss of their rear bumper, but it didn’t come. They got a place in mind where they’re going to do it, I thought. A place where we’ll for sure buy the farm.

I thought about the old .38 police special I kept locked in the bottom of a filing cabinet at work and hadn’t even looked at since Michaelmas. As for Lew, he could’ve turned himself into a walking arsenal. He owned a MAC-10 and a Chinese-made AK-47 and a gnarly automatic that took a twenty-round clip. He even had an ankle-holster gun that fired.18-calibre ammunition. The trouble was, none of it was registered, and he was afraid to carry it in case he ran into a cop. So all we had between us was my Swiss Army pocketknife. Well, if they get close enough, I thought, I can always use the fold-out corkscrew on them.

The SUV stayed on our tail. It was almost as if they were playing with us.

Lew cast aside the cell phone.

He said: “That place where we pulled over to dope the hamburger.”

“What about it?”

“It’s right up ahead. When we get to it, jerk the wheel over and slam on the brakes.”

I didn’t ask what he had in mind. I was too busy trying to stay away from the SUV. And here came the lay-by — directly in front of us on the right.

I spun the wheel to the right, spun it back again, jammed on the brakes. The Neon did a tango, a schottische, and a Virginia reel, but somehow came to a stop in a cloud of dust and gravel.

Rufus, Maude, whoever was at the wheel of the SUV tried to follow us. Then he or she realized their mistake and whipped the wheel left and hit the brakes. That was how stupid the Blaneys had become with the need to kill us. That was how panicked they were at the idea we might get away.

One wheel on the gravel, three wheels on the pavement, the brake pedal jammed against the floorboards — it was the perfect scenario for a disaster. The front end danced, then the rear end spun clear around in a circle. I saw one of the front tires creep off its rim under the strain. Then the SUV slammed sideways into the guard rail on the other side of the road and rolled over it and went crash-banging into the ravine below.

We heard all of it. The breaking of glass, the rending of metal, the snapping of tree trunks. Then, after a final, almost comical tinkle, a dead silence — as if nothing had happened at all.

We climbed shakily out of the Neon. We peered down into the ravine. A single headlight gleamed in the darkness below. Then it winked once and went out.

“Acme Trucking,” Lew mused. “Wasn’t the Acme company the outfit that was always selling stuff to Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons? You know, rocket belts and jet-powered roller skates and a lot of other things that didn’t work? Well, it looks like this Acme outfit didn’t work, either.”

He lit a foul-smelling cigar, which was preferable to his other bad habit — chewing Red Man tobacco.

We waited for the cops to arrive. It took them a long time, and all the while I had to stand there and breathe Lew’s secondhand cigar smoke. But that was probably better than what the Blaneys were breathing just then.

Copyright © 2002 by the Estate of Raymond Steiber.