Patrick Quinlan - Smoked

Unbelievable!

“Did you see that?” Darren said.

“I saw it.”

“What do you want to do? Call the cops?”

Hal’s wheels were turning like mad. “I don’t know. And say what? This girl we were trying to put into porno just got abducted by two other guys? First off, I don’t like to let two guys just walk off with my girl. Second off, I don’t want to just hand this over to the cops. Could be something big here. Could be money involved. Could be Lola needs to be rescued, and we’re the ones who need to do it. What do you say? You want to follow these guys? I mean, if we let them go, what else are we doing tonight? Aren’t you the least bit curious about what’s going on?”

Darren heaved a heavy sigh. “Did you see the size of that guy?”

“I saw him. Don’t worry, partner. I saw him, and we’ll steer clear of him until we’re good and ready.”

“Do I have any other choice?” Darren said.

Hal smiled. “Nope. It’s either this or crawl back to Auburn with your tail between your legs.”

He waited until the Taurus had turned left at the next corner onto Congress Street. Up at this end of town, the top of Munjoy Hill, Congress dead-ended into a quiet street of walk-up apartment buildings and storefronts. Down at the bottom of the hill, it became the main artery for downtown Portland.

Hal pulled out onto the street and cruised to the corner of Congress. The car was up ahead, driving down Munjoy Hill into the lights of downtown.

“We should’ve used handcuffs the other night,” Darren said. “On Lola, I mean. Keep her pacified.”

“Maybe we will,” Hal said. “Maybe we’ll make handcuffs a regular part of the act.”

Hal made a left, and he and Darren followed the Taurus downhill. The naked bulb shone bright white, while the rest of the taillights shone red and yellow. Darren had done a good job. Hal was going to be able to read that thing from a hundred yards back.

Hal knew how to tail.

For a long time, Hal had drifted from place to place and job to job. For a while he worked as a security guard, and that job led to undercover store security, and finally to a gig working with a private detective agency. He spent five years as a detective, then started his own firm and went belly-up in a matter of months. But he was good at surveillance, he knew that much.

In truth, Hal figured that he excelled at almost everything he did. Amazing really, since he had just about graduated high school, after all. Now, he had spent more than twenty years finding out how good he could be at things.

Tailing with one car, though, this was going to be work.

“You’re letting ‘em get too far ahead,” Darren said.

“I got ‘em,” Hal said.

“Yeah, but…”

“Brother, you got to keep it shut and let me do this, okay?” He said it forcefully, in a way that would pre-empt any more conversation. He needed all the concentration he could muster, and he couldn’t afford a smoked up Darren butting in every couple of minutes. Darren was not the brains of this operation.

The Taurus was three blocks in front already. Ahead and far below was the skyline of the city, lit up at night. Hal let them put on a nice lead, and kept his eye on that broken taillight. It disappeared for a second behind another car, then came back. He didn’t worry. It took an instinct, and he had it. You had to know where that car was going to be. Here was his guess: they would turn right on Washington Avenue and head for the highway – 295 North – or they would head straight downtown.

“No problem, no problem,” he said to the Taurus. “Do what you need to do.”

When Hal did detective work, on important jobs, two tail cars was the minimum. Three cars were better, if the client would pay for that sort of thing. The more cars the better. One car would be on the tail awhile, then drop back and another one would pick it up. The extra cars would be on the radio, following along on parallel streets. On the highway, they’d drop waaaaay back, or they’d speed up and get out ahead. Whatever. Keep dropping in and out of the tail, give them different looks, that way the target wouldn’t catch on. Leapfrogging, they used to call it.

But one car. That was an art. You had to play it real cool.

You had to lose touch sometimes. You couldn't give them any reason to suspect you. If they did, if they made you, then they’d bolt. They’d blow red lights. They’d drive the wrong way on one way streets. They’d make U-turns at police speed traps on the highway. They made a move like that, then you were lost. You blew it. You couldn’t follow.

Hal had a hunch here. It buzzed in his head like electricity. These guys weren’t going to blow any red lights. They weren’t going to try to shake a tail. There was something happening, and they couldn’t risk getting busted by a traffic cop – not with a couple of prisoners in the trunk.

In the trunk! He couldn’t fucking believe it. Man, this beat everything. This was like the movies. This was better. This was real. Totally awesome. Goddamn! They had walked right into some kind of full-blown hostage drama.

Hostages. Sure. These bastards had taken the girls hostage.

In some sense, hadn’t he and Darren done the same from time to time?

“Make a right,” Cruz said. “Right here, take this right.”

Moss took a long looping right past a fried chicken take out and onto a main drag, Washington Avenue. It was long, nearly deserted, a big old warehouse or factory passing by on their right. The highway entrance was at the end of this strip.

Cruz found himself sulking as they drove along. It hadn’t gone as he intended. Nothing on this whole trip had gone as he intended. That fucking taillight. He didn’t like that at all. Trouble was, he wasn’t sure that it hadn’t been broken in the first place. Fingers would know, but Fingers was dead.

Why would Fingers steal a car with a broken taillight?

He wouldn’t, that’s why.

“Now! Make this left!”

Moss veered in front of an oncoming car and made the left. They cruised down a steep hill, a side street with run down houses climbing the hill. At the bottom, there were low-slung garden apartment style housing projects. From an unlit basketball court, dark black faces peered at them as they passed.

“I’m telling you, son. I’ve been in this game a little while now. There ain’t nobody back there. It was a kid that broke the taillight.”

“Why ours?”

“Why the fuck not? You paranoid, Cruz? That the problem?”

Cruz didn’t like it. The variables were piling up. Two girls in a trunk. A broken taillight. It was supposed to be a quick snatch, and then a return drive to New York. Goodbye, Smoke Dugan O’Malley, you worry about your problems, I’ll worry about mine. Instead, two people were already dead, and this Lola girl would have to go when all was said and done. She would have to go just as surely as the skinny girl, her roommate, would have to go.

And all the while, Cruz thinking about getting out. Face it. He was no good for this business anymore.

Moss cruised the side streets, moving slow, making random rights and lefts, stopping at all stop signs. They passed a parked police car. The cop was inside, writing something in his book. He didn’t look up.

“We done out here? You mind if I get back and get on the highway now? That’s all we need, a porky little pig try to pull us over for a broken light,” Moss said.

“That’d be one dead pig,” Cruz said absently. He meant it. No matter what trouble he himself was having, he knew Moss would drop a cop without giving it much thought.

He checked in back of them one last time. No one back there. Just dead, deserted streets.