David Putnam - The Replacements

Bold as a biker prospect, she came up and took hold of my arm. I shrugged her away and stumbled to the front driver’s door, opened it, and dragged out Roy Boy. He plopped onto the driveway. I dragged him farther into the yard, out of the path I’d need to extricate the truck from the yard.

The muu-muu woman screamed, “What are you doing? Get him out of my yard. You can’t leave some dead biker in my yard. I’m calling the police.” She put a cordless phone to her ear.

Drago hadn’t killed Roy Boy, like Roy Boy had thought. His chest rose and fell uninhibited. He was far better off than my friend Mack.

The smart move would be to walk away. Muu-muu would have the cops and paramedics here in no time. “In no time” could take too long. I couldn’t risk it. Mack meant too much to me. I had to see this through. By the time the police arrived and then they called paramedics, I could already have him in the hospital being treated.

I got back into the truck, shoved the gearshift into reverse, and gunned the accelerator. The back wheels dug in, spinning up sod and azaleas. Muu-muu woman screamed into the phone. “Now he’s leaving. It’s a hit and run. Hurry. No, wait, okay, I got it. The license plate is-”

I shoved the truck into drive and bounced over the curb into the street. “Drago, are you still with me?”

“I’m here, but I got nothing left, partner. I think I broke my leg.”

“Which way to the closest hospital?”

His voice faded. “I’m not sure exactly where we are-”

“Drago, what’s the name of the hospital?”

“St. Bernadine’s.” His voice was barely a whisper. “Man…you can’t take me to a hospital. They’ll call the police, they’ll violate my parole. I’ll go back in on…on a violation. I gotta get that gold, I gotta get-”

He went silent.

He’d slipped into shock from the multiple gunshot wounds, the beating, all the blood loss, and now the crash where he broke his leg. Even men like Drago had a vulnerability threshold.

I headed south and typed in the hospital’s name on the dashboard GPS. The route popped up and the woman with a calm voice told me what turns to make, told me we had a seven-minute ETA. I planned to cut that in half.

I’d pull into the hospital’s emergency entrance, get a nurse or orderly to come out, and I’d be gone. I’d take off right then. I wanted to stay with Mack, but hospitals attracted cops, and I needed to find Marie. There was too little time.

I fought with the speed. My foot pushed harder on the accelerator, my hand tapped on the steering wheel. I had to continually correct by slowly easing off my foot. Slim Jim groaned and struggled to climb out of the foot well. I stopped for a red signal. I wanted to move. I impatiently tapped faster on the steering wheel.

Slim Jim managed to almost crawl back up in the seat. I leaned over and slugged him right in his broken jaw. He wilted back to whence he had come. The light changed. I hit the gas.

I turned into St. Bernadine’s and followed the signs around to the emergency entrance and stopped.

A black-and-white San Bernardino police patrol unit sat in the slot next to an ambulance. Another unoccupied police unit was parked farther down. No time to consider possible consequences; everyone in the truck needed emergency medical care. I pulled around and backed into the only slot open, ‘Ambulance Only.’ I got out and came around the back. Two cops stood at the back door talking. I said, “Please help me. I have an officer down.” Words that never failed to send chills through any cop who heard it. They ran over. One said, “What happened, who is it?” while the other climbed in.

I took a step back, a little farther away from the truck. “Please hurry,” I said. “The guy on the left is Detective John Mack with Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The guy in the front seat is one of the Sons of Satan who beat him.”

“This detective is in a bad way-get some help!” the officer inside said.

I took another tentative step backward.

The cop outside reached up to his lapel mic. “Two-Paul-Three, we have an 1199 at the back of St. Bee’s, officer down. We are code four.” He ran into the hospital to get a doctor.

Distant sirens came from all over the city. When an “officer down” went out, everyone dropped what they were doing, no matter what it was, and responded. Nurses and doctors rushed out with gurneys. More cops.

I backed up more and kept going. I’d almost made it to the front end of the truck where I intended to turn and casually walk away, when one of the cops who’d been inside came out said, “Hey, it’s Leon Johnson.”

He was one of the cops who’d stopped me outside the Quick Stop store my first night here. I turned and ran.

The two cops behind me took chase. Their feet slapped pavement. One yelled into his radio, “Four-Paul-Five, foot pursuit behind St. Bee’s, a 187 suspect.”

I ran with everything I had left. My body ached all over from the beating and didn’t want to cooperate. I pushed hard and couldn’t kick it into gear. The air felt too thick to run in.

Dispatch said, “Any officer to assist in Four-Paul-Five’s foot pursuit behind St. Bee.”

The radio behind me came back jammed with cops responding. They had to believe I was the suspect in the officer-down call. The asshole responsible. I had awakened the brotherhood of cops. Every cop in a twenty-five mile radius would be coming: adjoining cities, California Highway Patrol, University Police, and the Sheriff’s Department. They would coordinate and seal off the entire area. I didn’t have one chance in hell.

I rounded the first corner to a long driveway leading down the side of the hospital that dumped out into the street. Halfway down the block was a park. If I could make it to the park, I’d have a chance to get lost in all the trees and bushes. I put on a burst of speed. The two cops behind came around the corner with their cop noise, running boots, creaking leather, jangling equipment.

Up ahead a cop car bounced into the driveway from the street, red lights and siren blaring, cutting off my escape route. In a last-ditch effort, I turned, hit the eight foot chain-link fence, and started up, fingers clawing for purchase.

A hand grabbed my ankle. “Got you, asshole.”

They pulled me down and jumped on top. The cop car stopped with the bumper right at my head. They kicked and slugged and hit me with batons. They cuffed me and shoved me into the back of the car.

Tears of frustration filled my eyes. No way would I get out of this. Mack would not be there this time to rescue me. I didn’t care about me. Now Marie didn’t have a chance. Who would look for her?

The driver headed onto the San Bernardino Freeway. They’d transport me to the jail to book me in on the murder charge. A tick-tock pounded in my head. Time was against me. An evil, unstoppable enemy who sped along unabated.

Outside, eucalyptus trees whipped by in an endless procession. If only I could somehow escape and get into those trees. I put my face up close to the cold black screen that separated me from the cops and tried to see the MDT, the Mobile Dispatch Terminal, searching for any information that might help me get out of the car. There wasn’t much time. Once inside the jail, all would be lost. Tick-tock. Yards sped by and turned into miles.

We exited at Etiwanda Avenue. A quarter mile later, we turned into the driveway of The West Valley Detention Center. The tall sally port opened to let us pass into the jail yard. I pivoted in the seat to watch out the back window as the gate rolled behind us and clanged shut with a finality I would never forget.

The two uniforms got out and stowed their weapons in the trunk of the unit before they both came around, opened the door, and pulled me out. Each held firmly to an arm even though I could go nowhere but through the solid steel door into the jail. I was their prize catch. A murder suspect, a shooter of cops, and they were the captors.