Charlie Huston - Caught Stealing

Something explodes behind me and a mini shock wave hums past my right hip. A hole appears in the Celica’s left fender. Izig hard to the right, trying to clear Russ’s firing line as he brings the machine gun back to shoulder level. He pulls the trigger again. He’s ready this time and bullets rip up the tarmac just behind me. He fires a short burst and re-aims. I’m accelerating. Six yards covered.

I’m approaching the car from the driver’s side and Russ is blocking the door. Russ fires again and I can’t keep from looking back. Roman and Bolo are frozen, facedown on the road. A patch of chewed-up tarmac appears a few feet from them and stretches toward them and stops just short of their heads as the gun’s clip goes empty. Russ drops the machine pistol and takes aim with the.22.Ten yards.

I try to stop, and instead I skid on the gravel scattered over the road. I plow into Russ just as he squeezes off all five rounds left in the.22. He’s thrown sideways by my impact and the bullets fly into some bushes by the side of the road. There’s no time to circle the car. I start shoving him in through the driver’s-side door, pushing him all the way over to the passenger’s seat. I’m piling in behind him, trying to get Bud’s bag into his lap as I settle into the driver’s seat, reach to turn the key, and grab a handful of loose wires.

– FUCK, RUSS!

– What?

– THE CAR, HOW DO I START THE FUCKING CAR?

Out on the road, Roman and Bolo are peeking out from behind their hands, which are covering their faces. Russ reaches over to the steering column, grabs the two wires he exposed before and starts scraping them together. Roman and Bolo get to their feet. The Celica is making sounds like it wants to start, but it won’t turn over.

Roman looks around at his feet, bends over and picks up his gun from where he dropped it when Russ started shooting. Bolo walks slowly toward us, his left thumb in his mouth and a 9 mm dangling casually from his right hand. Behind him Roman is trying to aim at us, but Bolo is in his way.

The Celica goes WAH-WAH-WAH!

Bolo walks up to the front of the car and starts to raise his pistol. Roman is moving a few steps to his right, looking for a clean shot. The engine catches, but the clutch is out.

The Celica leaps forward in little hops and slams Bolo in the knees, folding him over the hood. I stomp on the floor, trying to find the clutch. Russ holds Bud, pressed tightly against his neck. Roman gets off a shot, but our motion spoils it and he takes out the side window behind me. I get my foot on the clutch pedal. The engine coughs andrecatches. Bolo is on the hood.

I let the clutch out and hammer down on the gas. Gravel spits out behind us and the rear end fishtails and Bolo slides off the hood. The tires catch traction and we jet forward. I cram it into second and aim for Roman, ten yards away. He doesn’t bother with another shot but dives out of the way as I crash through the bushes and around his car. I jump us back onto the access road and put it in third as we race down the road toward the pier and the FDR on-ramp.

I spare a glance to check Russ. He’s sideways in the seat and getting himself straightened out, all the while holding Bud close. I look back at the road.

– Russ.

– Yeah?

– Put on your seat belt.

– Sure.

In the rearview, I see Roman getting his car turned around to come after us.

Driving, itseems, is like riding a bike: you never forget. The wheel feels good in my hands, my feet find the pedals with ease and I flip the shift knob from gear to gear until it’s in fourth. I cannot deny my true nature. I am a Californian. And just like every true Californian, I like to drive. Christ, I love to drive.

The Celica is a beige hatchback about fifteen or twenty years old. It has some problems. The wheel has an inch of play in either direction, the alignment pulls slightly to the right, it has no power or acceleration, the tires are bald and the brakes are mushy. Still, it should be much quicker in the corners than Roman’s big-block cop sedan. That would help if there were any corners here. The access road is just one long straightaway back to the gate and Roman is already right behind me, trying to stick his car’s nose up my ass and nudge me off the road.

The kids on the diamond are lining up at the chain link to watch as we blow past. Most of the pedestrians are along the water side of the park, but a few are scattered on the road. I shift my right hand toward the center of thewheel, jam my thumb down on the horn. My high beams are on and ahead of me it looks like clear sailing. The car lurches as Roman slams into the rear bumper.

The wheel jumps a bit in my hand and we swerve to the left. We glance off a park bench and bounce back to the center of the road. I get control and slam the gas pedal back to the floor. Roman drops back for a second to see what will happen,then he’s right back on us. Next to me, Russ has his legs jacked out straight in from of him like he’s trying to hit an imaginary brake pedal. His right hand is frozen around the “Oh, my God!” strap and he’s holding Bud with his left.

– Hank?

I keep my eyes on the road.

– Yeah?

– I don’t want to be a backseat driver, butya know this thing does, like, have a fifth gear.

Shit!

I hit fifth and we pull away smoothly. It won’t last. Just ahead the Williamsburg Bridge cuts the sky above us. Below it, running parallel to the big bridge, the DelanceyStreet footbridge crosses the FDR and drops its ramp smack into the middle of the access road. There’s space to go around on either side, but it looks a lot smaller going out at seventy than it did coming in at fifteen.

Roman taps us again and I veer slightly left. He guns it and pushes up alongside us on the right. I edge farther to the left, trying to line up with the thin space between the foot ramp and the row of lampposts along the road there. I’d like to spare a look for Roman, but the play in the wheel is giving me fits. Never fear. He reminds me of his presence by giving us another shove before peeling off right to line up with the gap on that side of the ramp. The shove takes us over too far and the driver’s-side rearview snaps off against a lamppost. It ricochets into my window. The window shatters instantly, and hundreds of little pebbles of glass collapse into my lap while the rearview flies past my left ear and into the backseat.

I flinch and blink. When I open my eyes, we’re at the gap. I have to jerk the wheel to get us back on line. We swerve through the narrow space and I think I feel the bumper clip something as the rear end gives a slight tug. We’re through but come out veering to the right. I try to put us straight on the road. It’s too late. We broadside Roman’s car as he comes through on the other side of the ramp. His car is much bigger than ours and we rebound back to the center of the road. He loses the wheel for a moment and scrapes the side of his car down the iron fence on that side of the road. A fountain of sparksroostertails into the sky and we pull away again.

The road takes a nice easy arc to the right, passing Corlears Hook Park on our left. Just ahead it narrows down to one car’s width as it passes the pier’s storage yard. Roman is just about on us as I gear down andbrace myself.

– Russ, hold on to Bud.

I catch his rapid nodding out of the corner of my eye as we hit the eighteen-inch speed bumps at just over forty miles per hour. The front end springs up and, as it starts to drop, the rear hits the bump and pops up, driving the front down at an even steeper angle. I pump the brakes and try to keep the wheels pointed straight ahead. We bounce and skitter to the next one and hit it hard. We come down skidding to the left. I try to steer into the skid and goose the gas. We get traction and I straighten us out for the last bump and ease over it at twenty. Just behind us, Roman hits the first bump at top speed.