Bill Pronzini: Deadfall

There was nobody that I could see on the embankment, and all of the dozen or so vehicles slotted in at its edge were dark. I let the car drift off the road to the left, lightless, and coasted to a stop in the shadows cast by an express company warehouse. From there I had a good look at the parked cars. One of them was a white Trans-Am. It was directly across the embankment from the nearest of the access ramps, fifty yards or so from where I was and at an angle to my left.

I shut off the engine, rolled down the window so I could listen to the night sounds. The swishing passage of freeway traffic, a ship’s horn somewhere in China Basin or out on the Bay, a woman’s skittish laughter from one of the anchored boats-all distant and random. Otherwise the creek area, surrounded as it was by industrial outfits and the Southern Pacific yards, all almost entirely deserted on a Sunday night, seemed even more isolated and self-contained than it did during the daylight hours.

I didn’t expect much of a wait and I didn’t have one. Less than two minutes had passed when Dessault came hurrying up the near ramp and through its security gate; the nightlight there made a pale nimbus of his blond hair, letting me identify him.

He moved across the flat of the embankment, startling a couple of the geese that appeared to live there-I could hear their annoyed honking, see one of them flapping its wings-and got into his Trans-Am. I waited until I heard the deep-throated roar of the engine before I started mine again. He backed out my way, pointed west toward Sixth; and that was the direction he went, not driving fast but not driving slow either.

I let him get a hundred yards down Channel Street before I put on my headlights and pulled away from the warehouse. Following him dark would have been foolish business. If he was the kind of driver who checked his rearview mirror periodically, there was enough light in the area to let him see what was behind him; and he would be a lot more apt to pay attention to a car without its lights on than he would to just another set of headlights.

He made the turn onto Sixth and I did the same. It was deserted and much darker down along here-drayage and freight-forwarding companies and part of the SP freight yards on the east side, and on the west, fenced-in lots mounded with creosote-soaked lumber and other materials that the railroad used for repair work. Here and there nightlights cast thin yellow wedges above empty loading docks. The only other illumination came from the beams on Dessault’s car and the beams on mine.

We went about a quarter of a mile. Dessault was nearing the intersection with Sixteenth when he surprised me by making an abrupt left-hand turn; the Trans-Am disappeared between two of the warehouses. When I got to that point I found an unpaved, unmarked access road that served a drayage firm on one side and some kind of truck storage yard on the other: big diesel cabs and unhooked trailers looming up out of the darkness, both inside and outside a high chain-link fence. The Trans-Am was about seventy-five yards along, its lights picking up a low, metal Stop sign anchored where the road widened out past the warehouse and the storage yard.

I slowed, thinking, Some kind of shortcut. He knows this area, he knows a faster way to get where he’s going.

Up ahead, the Trans-Am moved on past the Stop sign and its lights splashed over rough ground that fronted a criss-cross of SP sidings; splashed over a string of oil tankers, another of boxcars, as Dessault veered to the right. I made the turn just before he passed out of sight, and when he was gone I punched the accelerator a little. I didn’t want him to get too far away.

Even though the Trans-Am was no longer visible I could see the glow of its lights against the dark sky, bouncing erratically because of the uneven ground. And then, suddenly, they stopped bouncing and the glow wasn’t there any more… as if he’d braked fast and shut off the beams. And just as suddenly I knew that was what he had done-I knew this wasn’t a shortcut at all, I knew what it was, and the knowledge put the brassy taste of fear in my mouth.

Trap, goddamn trap. And I had blundered into it like a witless amateur.

I spun the wheel hard left, sent the car into a slashing turn that made the tires squeal and spin up gravel and dirt. But it was too late by then-too damn late. The trap car was hidden over that way, in the clotted black alongside the last of the drayage company’s loading docks; it came shooting out at me, dark and formless, like some kind of phantom. Before I could complete the U-turn, it banged into my right front fender… impact, crunch of metal… and the wheel twisted out of my hands and the car slewed around and came to a shuddering stop that stalled the engine. I shoved back off the wheel and reached for the door lock with my left hand, for the flashlight under the dash with my right — the only weapon I had in there.

But it was too late for that, too. They weren’t all in the trap car; one of them had been hidden somewhere else nearby, on foot, and he got to my door before I could lock it and yanked it open and lunged in at me. I fought him, but he was big, bull-strong: I had an impression of youth, of mindless exhilaration at what he was doing. He got one hand on the collar of my suit jacket, the other bunched in my hair, and hauled me out of the car.

The other two were there by then, big and young like the first one-faceless shapes in the darkness, without humanity of any kind, a trio of androids programmed for violence while the one who had activated them stood off somewhere, maybe watching, maybe not, depending on his stomach for this kind of thing. I fought all three of them in a kind of frenzy and for a few seconds I held my own, I did some damage: kicked one of them somewhere in the body, heard him grunt, hit another one in the face and felt his spittle spray my cheek. But I had no real chance against them, none at all. One of them kicked my legs out from under me and once they got me down on the ground I was finished.

I kept trying to fight, trying to get my legs under me again-until one of them hit me or kicked me in the head, full-force, behind the right ear. Then everything went a little crazy. I heard somebody yelling… and it was me because there was blood in my mouth and throat and my voice got caught in it, mired in it, and I felt as if I were strangling. All three of them were using their feet on me now and out of the pain and the craziness a thought swirled up: Cover your head, cover your groin, don’t let them hurt you down there. I managed to roll onto my side, to curl up with one arm over my head, one hand covering my privates. And they kept kicking me, and after awhile I stopped feeling anything and just lay there curled like a fetus with the blood raging in my ears, gagging, fighting desperately not to cry or whimper, I will not cry or whimper, I will not give them the satisfaction of that. Then they weren’t kicking me anymore and one of them was shouting something; but I couldn’t understand him and when he realized that he got down beside me, rolled me onto my back, yelled his message in my ear. Even then the words were filtered through the blood-roar, so that only some of them got through to me.

“Lay off,” he seemed to be saying. “No more investigate. Understand? No more, drop the Purcell, next time kill you, understand?”

I passed out.

I must have passed out because the next thing I was aware of was pain, savage and pulsing in my left side, my head, my left hand. But nobody was hurting me anymore, or looming over me or shouting at me, and I sensed they were gone. I was still lying on my back, choking a little on my own blood. I turned my head, coughed my throat clear.

Quiet now, no more roaring in my ears, just the far-off warning blast from a locomotive. Hear that lonesome whistle blow, ask not for whom it blows it blows for thee, oh God they did a job on me, they beat me good, what if I wet my pants? I was suddenly terrified that I had lost control of my bladder. I felt down there-and I was dry. That calmed me, made me more lucid. I tried to open my eyes; the right one was stuck shut and when I put my hand up to it it felt swollen, sticky. Through the other eye I could see the clouds moving overhead, then a little of the crescent moon, then only the restless clouds again. The locomotive’s air horn sounded another time. Couplings clattered distantly; there was the steel-on-steel rattle of a train moving through the night.