Jonathon King - Midnight Guardians

When I turned back to the Brown Man, I saw Andres come out of the BioMechanics door, now empty-handed. The two men appeared to exchange a few words, and then split, Andres into his car, the drug dealer into the office. When the white Corolla pulled out, I relaxed a bit and went back to surveillance mode. I gave Andres a few hundred feet, and then eased my truck out to follow. We’d gone three blocks when the metallic green Monte Carlo yanked into view, the rumble of its engine guttural and ominous. When the car jumped in behind Andres’s, I was thinking only one thing: pursuit.

It took the kid about thirty seconds to figure what was going on. Once the Corolla hit the turn onto State Road 7, it bolted south without the slightest hesitation at the stoplight. Oncoming traffic screeched to a halt as the Monte Carlo rumbled unimpeded through the intersection. Stupidly, I was too far back; by the time I got close to the turn, irate drivers were already starting to inch forward. I cut the corner through a gas station driveway at a speed that turned several heads and elicited a “fuck you” from a patron. The move put me back on tail of the Monte Carlo.

Andres had now pulled a Jekyll and Hyde as a driver. As patient and unhurried as he’d been on the roadway to make his delivery, he was now a madman. I kept my eyes fastened on the chrome of the Monte Carlo. But ahead of him, I could see dozens of brake lights flashing, and the roofs of vehicles skewing off to the left and right. I didn’t bother to look at my own speedometer, but I knew from experience that in this kind of traffic and on this kind of road, our cars might have been hitting forty-five m.h. or fifty at certain stretches. But even those speeds were twice as fast as anyone else, and crazy enough to scare the shit out of everyone caught in the mix.

I worked my way up within a two-car length of the Monte Carlo’s bumper and rode it, following like it was a snowplow in bad weather, thus avoiding the swerving commuters and obstacles slewing in its wake. The Monte Carlo’s rear window was too tinted to see how many people were inside, or whether they had noticed me following. The only thing I could make out on the back window was a cartoon of a devilish-looking boy pissing on an oval Ford symbol. Somehow the insult seemed personal; I was starting to get angry.

We swerved through traffic. I knew these high-speed gigs didn’t last long, despite the ones you see on most dangerous police videos. It was going to end soon, and badly. Trying to anticipate, I took a chance, looking up ahead as we approached another traffic light. Andres’s white Corolla jerked east, with the Monte Carlo following, cutting off a wall of vehicles and stomping out of the turn, smoke roiling out of its wheel wells as he punched it. I was caught in the cloud, unable to see a damn thing. As I waited for the inevitable jolt of some other blind driver hitting me, my stomach clenched. The scream of tire rubber and the blare of horns created a noise cloud of its own. All I could do was hold the line until we straightened out.

Now the kid was getting wild, searching like a trapped mouse for someway out: he’d start left, get cut off, and spin right. It wasn’t working. The Monte Carlo was on him. I was on it. And no doubt a dozen people behind us were calling 911-fine with me. I just hoped the kid was smart enough to keep moving. Once he stopped, that automatic rifle that had been trained on me and his sister was going to start blasting. And this time, I was sure it wouldn’t be firing into the trees.

My hope ended when the white Corolla pitched right, jumped a curb, and squealed into a neighborhood complex. We’d suddenly ducked out of traffic, but Andres had isolated himself in a corridor of attached, two-story condos. There was one way in and one way out-no yards between the buildings. Zero lot lines. Zero choices. I saw him hit the cul-de-sac in front of the Monte Carlo and whip into a circle. It was a face off he could not win, so I punched it.

Two of the passengers in the Monte Carlo were halfway out of their car, rifles in hand, when my truck smashed into their trunk. Given that my bumper is set much higher, it buried into the green metal and sent the two men rolling into the street like tossed-away dolls. I’d long ago disabled my air bags, so I saw their weapons go clattering across the macadam. Still the jolt stunned me for a second, and the sight of the violent rear-ender must have done the same to Andres. When I shook off the initial shockwave, I stared over the top of the Monte Carlo into Andres’s eyes. He hesitated, looked at me, and then started cranking his steering wheel.

As the Corolla started past, I caught movement from the back passenger-side door of the Monte Carlo, and punched my accelerator again until the whole tangled mess of metal and rubber started scraping across the pavement. The Monte Carlo’s door stayed shut. I threw the truck into reverse and punched it again, cranking the wheel one way and then the other, trying to free the front end of my truck from the ass end of the Monte Carlo like some giant blue-black cat dragging a metallic green lizard from a neighborhood garden. Finally, bumpers tore loose and I was free.

But so were the inhabitants of the drive-by sedan-and they were armed. I kept the truck in reverse until I closed on the main road, and then U-turned it. I might have heard sirens in the distance, but I didn’t hear gunfire. I shut out the voice that said someone might be hurt, and pulled out into traffic. In the vernacular that would surely show up in the police report, I fled eastbound.

By the time I reached I-95, my heart had stopped thrumming and my fingers had finally come out of their vise grip on the steering wheel. In my head, I ran the list of charges that a responding officer would soon be tallying: leaving the scene of an accident with injuries; reckless endangerment, including multiple moving traffic violations. I knew most major intersections in South Florida had video cameras mounted above their traffic lights. We’d probably blown through three of them during the chase. They’d have all our tag numbers and descriptions and, soon after that, our DMV records. If the first responding officers arrived on the cul-de-sac scene before the Monte Carlo got away-if the damn car was even drivable-they might get lucky and bust the occupants in possession of deadly weapons, which would make it easier to explain my role. But it still wouldn’t be a free pass.

When the cops start pulling info from their computers, the first thing they’d get is my attorney’s address. Billy’s is the one I’d used on my Florida driver’s registration as my home. What the hell else was I supposed to use, the longitude and latitude of my shack on the river? They’d be knocking on Billy’s door within twenty-four hours.

I pulled over into the driveway of a gas station just before reaching the interstate entrance and watched an employee and two people pumping their own gas stare at the front of my truck as I parked. When the attendant sauntered over, I raised a palm to him to indicate I’d be with him in a minute; then I got on my cell. Billy’s a preemptive strike kind of guy. I would need him eventually. It would be better to get him into the loop early. He answered on the third ring.

In all his roles as lawyer, friend, and a hell of a smart human being, Billy listens. His end of the conversation was nonexistent until I finished giving all the details I could of the last few hours. In his silence, I could almost hear his analytical mind at work. There was a long pause before he spoke.

“Max, from your directions to the cul-de-sac, you were in county jurisdiction. Go straight to the sheriff’s office off Broward Boulevard and wait for me in the parking lot. We’ll go in together. You’ll turn yourself in.”