Don Winslow - A Cool Breeze on the Underground

“You hurt my baby!”

Neal tried to push her off with his left hand, but she had a death grip on the inside of the window. Neal glanced at the rearview mirror and saw Colin hobbling toward him, a stick in his hand and blood in his eye.

Crisp felt ashamed as he looked out the window. Here was the love of his life and his best friend doing desperate battle in the street. And here he was, two stories above the fray, snug and safe. “I’ll save you, Vanessa!” he yelled, and went looking for a way to make that good.

“Nessa, offa car,” Allie said sweelly but thinly from her less than commanding position in Neal’s lap. “Jes’ goin’ for a ride.”

Vanessa was trying her best to pull the driver’s door open and vent her full fury on her love’s attacker, but Neal was at the same time holding the door shut and trying to start the car and was doing a pretty remarkable job of it, considering the bashing he was taking. But it wasn’t working. So Neal let go of the gearshift to get leverage, leaned back, and popped Vanessa square in the chops with an overhand right. This girl can really take a punch, he thought. He had to give her that.

Colin reached for the passenger door to get his hands on that bitch Alice before he beat her new boyfriend into bread pudding. He had the door half open…

“Okay, nessa, have it your way,” Allie said, her patience exhausted. She wanted to go for a ride. Squeezing herself onto Neal’s lap, she shoved her left foot down on the clutch, yanked the shift into first gear, and stepped down hard on the accelerator. This Keble did just what Daddy’s Keble always did. It took off like a rabbit on Dexedrine.

Neal was surprised when Vanessa suddenly dropped from sight as glass shattered all over the roof of the car. He didn’t have time to think about it, though. He just had time to grab the wheel as the Keble suddenly surged forward.

Which action presented colin with a clear choice: let go, or lose his arm. He took the former course, and only rolled fifteen or sixteen times before coming to rest in the street.

“Sorry, vanessa!” shouted Crisp, whose aim with the gin bottle had been off by that much. He threw another one at the fleeing car.

The keble zoomed off into the night with its two fugitives. Neal gripped the wheel and played with the gearshift. Allie slept soundly against the door.

Then the damnedest thing happened. It started to rain.

The sky had been saving up all summer for this one and now it really let go. It didn’t take Neal more than four or five minutes of frantic fumbling to figure out the windshield wipers and another minute or so to roll up the windows, by which time he was soaked down to his shoulders. He pulled the car over to the side of Camden High Street to check the map. The route had seemed simple when he’d memorized it earlier, but everything looked different on the ground, especially when you had a split lip, a blossoming shiner, and couldn’t see a thing through sheets of rain in the dark.

He decided to take the Seven Sisters Road to the A406 and the A406 to the M-11, the major thoroughfare north.

He didn’t even notice that he didn’t have any trouble slipping into first gear and easing out onto the street.

Colin hissed with pain as he straddled his motorbike. Rain? he thought. Bloody rain? It hasn’t rained in three months and now it has to come down in great awful buckets? There is a God, he thought, and he’s a ball-stomper. Well, there was nothing to do but head off after them and see whether his luck was changing. He turned up the throttle.

The kid at the gas station was thrilled to death to see Neal pull up.

“I need gas. Fill it up,” Neal said.

The kid spit a mouthful of water out and answered, “if it’s gas you want, go to the States. We have petrol here.”

“Whatever it is that makes this car run.”

“Cars are on a train, mate. Over here we call it an auto.”

“You want to stand there getting soaked or you want to hold a comparative linguistics seminar?”

“Money first. Then the petrol for your auto.”

Neal handed him a ten-pound note.

“How do I get on the A406?” he asked when the attendant had finished pumping.

“Roundabout straight on. Second right.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The kid was even more thrilled when some moron on a motorbike roared in.

“Little sports car pass by?” the biker shouted above the din of the rain.

“Didn’t pass by. Stopped for petrol.”

“Where was he going?”

“I don’t know where he was going, but he was using the A406 to get there.”

“How-”

“Roundabout straight on. Second right.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Neal took it nice and slow in the rain. Allie was peacefully sleeping and he was in no particular hurry-until he saw a single headlight in the rearview mirror, coming on fast.

Neal slowed down. If it was Colin, he might as well find out now instead of letting him follow them and blow another safe house.

He was going about forty when Colin pulled up along the driver’s side.

“Pull over!” Colin shouted.

Neal tapped the gas pedal and the Keble shot ahead.

Colin kept up with them.

“Pull over!” he shouted. He was soaked, flushed, and furious. His white suit clung to him.

Neal tapped the accelerator again, forcing Colin to speed up. Neal knew the bike was no match for the Keble.

Trouble was, he was afraid to go too fast, in this rain. Colin could probably win a game of chicken. Oh well, he thought, what the hell.

He stepped on the pedal again, getting a good head of steam and bringing Colin speeding up beside him. Then he hit the brakes.

The back wheels skidded and turned out and the car sped sideways for a good hundred feet. Colin sped right past it, twisted the brake handle, and flipped the little bike over the top of himself.

Neal remembered that old driving-school bit about turning in the direction of the skid, but didn’t remember what it meant, so he just kept spinning the steering wheel back and forth until the car pointed ahead again and came to a stop. He looked in the mirror and saw

Colin disentangling himself from the bike-very slowly. He fought off an insincere urge to go back and see whether he was all right. Then he put his foot on the gas and took the Keble for a ride as fast as he dared.

All this action actually woke Allie up for a second.

“We there yet?” she asked.

“Just looking for a place to park.”

Colin watched the taillights of the little car disappear over the hill. It had been a very bad night. He had lost the book, the money, the dope, Alice, Neal, his bike, and about a pint of blood. He was well and truly fucked.

Neal eased off on the pedal until the Keble slowed to something less than the speed of sound. Now that he didn’t have to shift, he felt okay driving the thing, his heart was settling back into his chest, and he was headed for a place he could actually hear it beat.

Simon’s cottage was made of stone.

Neal felt stupid when he thought about the third little pig who was safe when the big bad wolf came huffing and puffing, but figured he was glad to be thinking at all, tired as he was. Allie was asleep as he pulled the car slowly up the dirt trail that led through the moor and up to the cottage. Far below and behind, the chimneys of the small village peeked above the last line of trees. They had driven north out of the rain, and the ground beneath the wheels was hard and firm, so he had no trouble pulling up to the cottage.

Leaving Allie in the Keble, he got out, stretched his sore legs and back, and looked around him. He’d never been anyplace like this. The view commanded miles of the barren moor. The cottage sat on a plateau beneath a sharp, rocky slope. The moor ran fairly level to both his left and right, and in front of him, the hill ran down to a small stream and a copse of frees, and a mile or so beyond that, the village. Faint purple heather, scrub grass, and rock covered the ground. It was windy up here, and the cool breeze that dried the stale sweat on his face felt wonderful. His eyes ached from fatigue, and as he took a deep breath of the fresh air, he knew he wanted sleep… needed sleep.