kill me. The odds are fair that if they see you first, they’ll kill you, too, so pretty please, with sugar plum fairies, tell me where Bruce went.”
“He ran out to get us all some dinner. He said he had steaks in his freezer at home.”
I pressed down on the gas and the Charger lunged forward. “I will be there in seven minutes,” I said. “If those two men get any closer to the house, shoot them.” I hung up and called Sam. “Change to the itinerary,” I told him. “The Ghouls are staking out my mother’s house.”
“That’s not good, Mikey.”
“Understatement,” I said. We came to a stoplight and, after safely checking both directions of oncoming traffic, and properly flashing my lights and honking the horn… I blew through it going about ninety-five. Beside me, Fiona was loading guns and strapping knives to herself, which, while hot, would not be a great experience if we happened to get sideswiped.
Or pulled over by a cop.
Like the one I didn’t see hiding behind a parked RV until I was already fifty yards beyond him and screaming toward my mother’s house.
His lights immediately went on, as did the blaring siren.
“Do I hear a siren?” Sam said.
“No,” I said.
“That’s good,” Sam said. “Because for a minute I thought maybe highway patrol was chasing you.”
“It’s actually a siren and a horn you hear,” I said. I looked in the rearview mirror. “And he looks like a regular traffic cop.”
“That’s a relief,” Sam said. “You have some direction for me, Mikey?”
“One moment please,” I said. We were approaching a school zone and even though it was early evening, police tend to hang out near school zones to pick up speeders. And drug dealers. And gangbangers. And if they got lucky today, they’d get a former bank robber for the IRA who now sold guns to Cuban revolutionaries and a burned spy, both of whom had enough artillery on them to take down Guam in a bloody coup.
The motorcycle cop was still behind me and by that point was probably actively working the radio. If it was a slow crime day, they’d probably scramble a helicopter, which would then get the news helicopters in the air, which would then get all of this on the news.
This could work to my advantage, so I gunned the Charger through the school zone, my own horn honking, my own lights blinking, trying to get as much attention as possible.
“Bruce is either dead or hiding somewhere near my mother’s, so I need you to drag the Banshees there.”
“I’m not sure if the rental van can outrun a bunch of hogs,” Sam said.
In my rearview mirror, I could see the motorcycle cop gaining on me. He wasn’t close enough to see my plate and we hadn’t traveled far enough for this to be considered a high-speed chase, because a reasonable lawyer could conjecture that while the cop was on my tail, I was driving so recklessly as to not notice. Plus, I was driving fairly conservatively, if incredibly fast. Safety first and all that.
“You have to try,” I said. “How close are you to the weed house?”
“I can be there in five minutes,” he said.
“When you get there,” I said, “shoot it up. Maybe take out the SUV, make a big bang, big enough that they’ll follow you quick.”
“You sure Fiona got all the C-4?” Sam asked. “I’d rather not add a meteor crater to the list of Miami’s attractions.”
I turned to Fiona-she was quietly sharpening a knife against a mortarboard, as calm and detached as if she were doing her nails (while driving ninety-five miles per hour with the cops on her tail). “All of the C-4 is out of the SUV, right?”
Fiona lifted one shoulder.
“Yes or no, Fi, because Sam is going to blow it up in about three minutes.”
“I guess he’ll know when he blows it up,” she said. “I’d advise him to stand at least one foot from any open flame.”
“Sam,” I said, “do the drive-by like the kids do these days. No stopping to admire. But hang back enough for the Banshees to see you. We need to draw them out right now and get them heading toward my mother’s.”
“On it,” he said and hung up.
As soon as the phone was off, it rang.
Nate.
I handed the phone to Fiona. “Would you mind taking a message?” I said. “I need to not accidentally kill anyone.”
“You really need to get a Bluetooth,” Fiona said. “It’s very dangerous to talk on the phone while driving.”
We flew through an intersection just as another motorcycle cop came peeling into view.
We were now being chased.
This would take some explaining, but that was fine. I’d be happy to explain that I was coming to help my mother, who apparently was being held hostage by a brimming motorcycle gang turf war.
Provided I could get to the house before shots started getting fired.
Fiona answered the phone, said a few words, and then dropped it in my lap. “It’s your brother,” she said.
Sometimes Fiona is difficult just to be difficult. It suits her, but it’s not always an enjoyable aspect of her personality.
“Nate,” I said, just as we passed a Starbucks that used to be a coin-op laundry Nate and I used to steal quarters from (a knife, a paper clip and a can of WD- 40 were all you needed to pry open the coin depository on the old washers). “I can’t really talk. I’m being chased by the police.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I hear a bunch of sirens. That you?”
“I’m about half a mile away,” I said, “coming from the east. That where the sound is coming from?”
“Actually, it’s coming from all over. In stereo, pretty much.”
“Good,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Is there something you wanted to talk about, Nate, or can this wait until after I’m done evading capture?”
“I just wanted to apologize,” he said. “I think these guys found the house because of me.”
“Why is that, Nate?”
I turned left, which was technically away from the house, but I wanted to get a sense of how many police were potentially following me. I knew of two at least, but hadn’t seen any air support.
I used my blinker.
My seat belt was on, and apart from the cache of guns in the car, I was really only guilty of speeding at this point.
And failure to yield.
And some red light problems.
But I was thinking of killing my brother.
“I dropped Zadie off and ran a couple of errands. When I got back she said she had a really nice conversation with a young lady in leather pants about me. Zadie points her out in the parking lot, so I go over and drop a little game on her.”
“Drop a little game on her?”
“I talked her up, told her I was staying out at Mom’s, and, you know, to call me there. Maybe we’d get together and watch religious television together and hand-knit bedspreads. Couple hours later, I realized, you know, maybe that she was a plant.”
“Maybe.”
“And, well, now there’s about fifteen bikers circling the house. I’m really sorry, Michael.”
“How about instead of apologizing, maybe load a couple of guns?”
“Mom is on that,” Nate said. “And Maria is pretty handy around a nine. Zadie’s boiling water in case they
