Courier (27 page)

 

Rick parked on G Street just south of the gay bar and left his helmet and heavy gloves locked to the bike. He walked up 8th Street, trying to watch everything and everyone around him.

It was early enough that the bar was still locked. He knocked on the thick green paint of the door and waited, then knocked again. Finally, he heard the lock click, and the door opened; the owner gave him a suspicious glare and let him in.

"I need to go get something we left upstairs," Rick explained.

The owner shrugged his shoulders without saying anything and went back to stacking beer in the big coolers behind the bar. Rick took that as permission and made his way to the upstairs apartment. The can of film and the printouts were behind the dirty tub where he'd left them. He untucked the back of his shirt, loosened his belt, and stuffed the photos flat against his back. Then he tightened the belt over them and tucked the shirt back in. With the leather jacket, it was hard to tell he was carrying anything.

Before he left, he looked out the window. He spotted the 240Z immediately and then saw that one of the Vietnamese men was already heading toward the bar. For a moment, he felt regret that he hadn't taken care of this one earlier. Then he shook his head.

No more killing.

On the other hand, the man in the street had his hand in his jacket pocket. Clearly, he didn't have the same feelings of restraint. It was time to leave.

First, he put the papers and the film back behind the tub. He wasn't going to take any chances with them flying out at high speed – he'd seen a courier lose a multivolume legal brief when he hit a pothole coming down Pennsylvania Avenue. Extremely sensitive and quite expensive documents had fluttered down like a heavy snow.

In his motorcycle boots, he made a lot of noise coming down the back stairs, and the owner had straightened up from the cooler and was giving him an annoyed stare by the time he came into the bar.

"Don't open the front door," Rick said. "A guy with a gun is looking for me. Is there another way out of here?"

The owner looked disgusted. "Did you really have to drag your goddamn troubles to my place? Dina really owes me a big one." Then he pointed back over Rick's shoulder. "There's a door all the way back through the storeroom. There's an alarm on the door that'll go off and alert the cops, but frankly, I think that's probably a good idea right now." He started to bend down. "I'm going to just lie quietly on the floor until the police show up. Just don't steal anything on your way out."

"Thanks a lot." Rick spun around and headed down the short hall. "I owe you."

"Damn right you do."

A fist began to hammer on the door.

As soon as Rick opened the back door, a loud, clanging bell went off overhead. He was in another narrow alley crowded with trash barrels and piles of old boxes.

He jogged over to his bike, kicked it to life, and took off without bothering to put on his helmet or gloves. He turned south on Eighth Street and passed the Marine Corps barracks, which always triggered the same question in his mind. How did the short-haired, wide-shouldered White House Marine guards get along with the "Great Gay Way" just a block north? Not well, he suspected.

At the south end of 8th, he turned right on M Street. Then he pulled over to the side and took the time to put on his helmet. Being stopped by the DC police could really be dangerous today.

Suddenly, he heard the heavy, almost flatulent sound of the Datsun's engine making a double-clutch downshift as it swung onto M Street only yards behind him.

Time to dance.

CHAPTER 31

 

The BMW
thunked
up through the gears, but Rick knew the sports car could take him in a straight-line speed contest. That being the case, he should probably avoid engaging in one. He came off the throttle just a bit and threw what he hoped looked like a frantic glance over his shoulder.

They were closing fast. Perfect.

Abruptly, Rick hit the rear brake, kicking it into a screeching slide to the left. Then hard pressure on the front brake really brought his speed down, the Earles forks pushing the handlebars up. At the last second, he released both brakes, dropped the front down, swept into an easy half- right turn, and accelerated up New Jersey Avenue.

He could hear the Datsun's brakes slam on, but the tires stopped squealing almost immediately. They'd realized they couldn't make the turn and were going to take the next right and cut around the block. With that thought, he took a fast left and blew right past them going the other direction just as they came around the corner.

Another shriek of tires. That driver isn't bad, he thought as he watched in the side mirror. There's not a lot of room for a bootlegger turn with all those cars parked on both sides. There was a crash of metal on metal behind him and the wailing of a car alarm.

OK, the driver wasn't all that good.

The sports car slowly gained on him as he whipped to the right – weaving through a gas station and surprising a couple of drivers at the pumps – then north into the spaghetti of ramps where South Capitol Street merged with the Southwest Freeway. There wasn't much traffic, but you could always count on at least some tourists to be driving around in a daze.

Rick spotted the blue-and-gold license plate of a Pennsylvania driver in front of him and shot past on the right as the driver slowed in confusion at an unmarked split at the top of the ramp. He knew the poor guy was going to slow there, because it had taken Rick months to master those stupid ramps.

Heading down and into the eight-lane tunnel under the Mall, he met still less traffic, because the road didn't go anywhere. Sam Watkins said that someone had the bright idea of routing I-95, and the massive river of traffic flowing up and down the East Coast, and squeezing it straight through the middle of DC. The protests over the plan had resulted in the cancellation of the rest of the road, leaving only a tunnel to nowhere.

The Datsun must have worked out the ramps: Rick could hear the engine echoing off the tiled tunnel walls. He swerved across three lanes and onto the exit marked "US Capitol". He could hear the Datsun gaining on him as he tore up the ramp.

He made an illegal right turn coming out of the tunnel, hauled the big bike right again onto E Street, and right again at the end of the bridge over the highway. Three DC cops were sitting, smoking, on their Vespas, outside the Pension Building, and one of them gave him a small wave as he thundered past. The cop knew the scooter could never catch up even if he tried.

A hard left and Rick was in Chinatown. Since these brightly colored restaurants were open, it was one of the few places in the city where the streets were filled with pedestrians. He thumbed the horn button, but there were just too many people. Behind him, he could hear the Datsun getting closer, moving faster in the clear space he left behind.

Then his only remaining side mirror exploded.

He shot a look back and saw the passenger's head and shoulders poking up through a sunroof and taking aim again. They clearly weren't worried about collateral damage.

He began to swerve to throw off the man's aim, but that only forced him to slow down. He slammed into a right turn, the bike so low that the crash bars in the front were grinding sparks from the pavement. A block ahead, he could see the temporary board barriers that marked a Metro dig. He frantically checked on both sides, but they were blocking the entire street.

Standing on the pegs, he peered ahead and into the dig, hoping it wasn't deep – just a short drop onto soft dirt where he could still drive.

No luck – he couldn't even see the bottom.

Straight ahead, Rick saw a gap in one of the barriers. Stretching across the dig was an I-beam that braced the timbered walls against the pressure of the surrounding earth. Only a foot wide and looking smaller by the second, it offered a slim chance of escape.

At his speed, there wasn't time to think. Without slowing, Rick shot through the gap and sped across the narrow beam, his knees braced against the tank, every muscle straining to stay still. His eyes were locked on the far side, trying to ignore the front tire as it tracked along the beam.

He could feel when the front wheel began to creep to the left. Any attempt to correct the drift might make it worse and he could not stop. Glancing down past the beam, he could see that the curving sides of a subway station were being built far below, fingers of concrete and reinforcing steel reaching up for him. It looked like an enormous bed of nails.

There was no way he'd survive a fall.

Ahead, there was another temporary wooden barrier, an eight-inch-square balk of timber across the bottom holding a rough fence made up of two-by-fours. On the other side, there had been just enough space between timbers to cut through to the I-beam. This time, the fence was set dead center, and there was no way around.

At the last second, he pulled hard on the front brake, loading up the front shocks and putting all the bike's weight over the front wheel. Then, just as he hit the heavy timber and he could feel the bike begin to rotate forward, he jumped.

There was a slow, quiet moment as he flew over the handlebars, his boots just scraping the top rail of the barrier. Then he smashed into the pavement, skidding for yards before he could force his body sideways and turn his momentum into a thrashing roll, his helmet banging. Rolling was no fun, but it was a lot less damaging than scraping along the asphalt.

It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to stop, and when he finally did, he lay on his back for a moment to take inventory. While every damn inch of his body hurt, nothing seemed to have stopped working. Anyway, he thought, a fair amount of his body was already throbbing – how much worse could it get?

He rolled over, pushed up to his knees, and looked back. The only evidence of the collision was that the heavy wooden barrier had been pushed a couple of inches forward and skewed it a bit to the side. There was no sign of the big BMW.

With a groan, he levered himself to his feet, fighting to keep his balance, then stumbled back to the I-beam. Below him, the beautiful black machine lay impaled on rebar and bent almost in half.

People had gathered and stood watching him, asking if he was OK, did he need an ambulance, and probably wondering if he had just been showing off. He took off his helmet, thanked them for their concern, said he was just fine, and limped off.

The leather jacket, gloves, and boots had done their job – held against the abrasion, but everywhere his jeans had touched the pavement, the tough cloth had simply vaporized. Blood flowed from several shallow gouges on his legs, spreading a crimson stain into the fabric. He knew that although only his legs hurt like hell now, it would be inevitably worse when all the abused muscles in his body began to stiffen.

He had to find a place to hide or a place to fight – it didn't look like there were any other choices. Heading west, he passed shuttered shop windows and an open wig shop – thinking for a moment of buying one of the red, white, and blue Afro wigs as a disguise. He dismissed that idea as crazy and wondered if it meant he was going into shock.

Behind and to his right, he heard the distinctive snarl of the 240Z. From the sound, his pursuers had found another way across the Metro construction and were closing in. He had to get somewhere safe – and fast. There was only one place to go.

A handful of bikers were lounging around Motor Mouse as he staggered up. The beefy one who had insulted his front forks the first time stood up. "Man, you look like shit. That German piece of junk fall apart under you?"

"Nah, I decided you were right, and so I dropped it straight into a Metro dig," Rick responded. "Looks like a shiny black pretzel now."

"Too fucking bad. Looks like you picked up a bad case of road rash as well."

"Really?" Rick looked down at his shredded and bloodstained jeans. "Hadn't noticed," he said casually. "Hector inside?"

"You kidding? Bars aren't open yet. Where else would he be?"

Stumbling in out of the winter sun, Rick couldn't see anything in the dark garage. "Hey,
Gordito
," he called.

"Goddamn it! I hate that fucking name!" Hector roared. He spun around with an enormous crescent wrench raised, and then saw how cut-up Rick was. He dropped the wrench into the top tray of his tool chest and approached, wiping his hands on a rag. "Zippo, you keep coming back like a dead-broke bar girl, and now you look like you just tried to screw one of the bears in the zoo."

"What can I tell you? She was one goddamn cute bear." Rick slumped down on a stack of tires. "I'm here to pick up the rice burner." He paused as he heard the screech of brakes outside. "But I seem to have a little problem. These two Saigon street thugs keep trying to kill me."

"Understandable."

"Yeah, screw you too. That's them outside."

Hector shot a quick glance at the door and shouted, "Hey, Smits, Hawk. Tell those two zipperheads we aren't open and they aren't welcome."

Rick could hear the scrapes outside as the bikers stood up from their plastic chairs.

"What the hell do they want with you?" Hector hit a doorbell button on the wall over his workbench, and Rick could hear a buzzer go off upstairs.

"I've got something they want." Rick turned to head outside. "They've already tried to kill me and even some of my friends to get it."

"What the hell have you got? You started selling smack all of a sudden?"

"Nothing that profitable," Rick said as he limped back into the sunlight. "Apparently, it's the reason all of us were stuck in the shit over in Nam for so long. The reason a lot of good guys died." He stood up slowly and walked to the garage door. The two Vietnamese were out of their car, facing off against the bikers.