Only Child

Max landed on one knee, pivoted and came up ready to...But Heltman was already sprinting in the opposite direction.

The Mustang roared out of the lot, leaving us both on the ground.

Max beat me to the Plymouth by a couple of seconds, dived into the back. The motor was idling quiet, Giovanni behind the wheel. I shoved him over, stomped the gas, and plowed sideways across the gravel, the Mustang’s lights still in sight. I took the hint, hit the rocker switch on the dash, and our own taillights went dead.

He had maybe a quarter-mile on us as he wheeled onto a stretch of two-lane blacktop. The Plymouth swallowed the distance in a gulp.

“He’s heading for home,” I yelled. “We don’t stop him first, we’re done.”

“He’s the one who’s done,” Giovanni said, jerking a chrome semi-auto out of an ankle holster. “Get alongside of him.”

The Mustang’s taillights were huge in our windshield. They went bright red as it skidded almost to a full stop before suddenly lurching off to the left.

“He knows he can’t take us on the straights, so he’s going for the twisties,” I said.

“He’s ours,” Giovanni said, patting the Plymouth’s dash affectionately.

Heltman knew the roads, but it wasn’t enough. I held the Plymouth in second gear, barnacled to his rear bumper.

The Mustang slashed back and forth, trying to shake us loose. I had to end it before the noise woke up the wrong people. As he leaned into a long right-hand sweeper, I hit the high beams and the landing lights at the same time, flooding his mirror with blue-and-white fire. I dropped the hammer. The Mustang seemed suspended in place as the Plymouth came on like a rock from a slingshot, dead-aimed at his exposed right rear quarter-panel. I rammed the soft spot, and he lost it. The Mustang went into a wild spin as we powered on past.

I decked the brakes, threw it into reverse, and ripped back to the scene, Giovanni watching out his opened window. The Mustang was against a tree, crushed all the way into the windshield. Its airbag had deployed, but the driver’s face was buried under blood—he hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt.

Max hauled him out and laid him out on the ground.

“His wallet,” I said to Giovanni. “Quick! We need an address.”

I ran back to the Mustang, wrenched open the glove compartment. A pair of black leather gloves, some condoms, and the owner’s manual. The gym bag was on the floor in front of the passenger seat. I ran back to where the others were.

“He’s out,” Giovanni said. “This was in his back pocket”—holding up an alligator billfold.

“We’ve got to split,” I told him. “Even way out here, someone might have heard the crash, called it in. Don’t worry about him; he won’t be able to identify any of us.”

Giovanni looked down at the sprawled body, said, “Any chance he was one of the ones?”

“Giovanni...”

“One of the ones that killed my daughter?”

“I don’t know. Come on!”

Giovanni dropped to one knee, pinched the twin’s nose closed with one hand, blocked his mouth with the other.

“Giovanni, no! It’ll take minutes for that to...”

Max grabbed Giovanni under his arms, lifted him off the ground, and tossed him to the side. He looked at me. I nodded. Max rolled the twin on his stomach, mounted him, one knee against the spine. He took the twin’s head in both hands, pulled it all the way back, and gave it a short, vicious twist.

“Maiden Lane,” I said, my mini-Mag trained on the driver’s license we’d found in the dead man’s wallet. “That’s right around here, close by; I remember seeing it on the map. This must be a good address. Only I can’t see asking for directions at this hour. Even a gas- station attendant would...”

“Maiden Lane,” Giovanni said into his cell phone.

He listened for a minute, then said, “Drive, Burke. We’ve got a street map on the screen. Just go where I tell you.”

The Plymouth’s right-side low beams still worked, but they threw light at the same angle as the Mustang driver’s neck. I couldn’t feel any difference in the steering; it tracked straight and true. When you build a car to bounce off the wall at Talladega, nerfing a Mustang isn’t going to change its personality.

The wood-frame house stood well back from the road. My flash picked up a “30” on the mailbox.

“This is the one,” I said. “Let Max out,” I told Giovanni.

I counted to a hundred in my head, said, “Some of the lights are on. He’s not going to spook at a car coming up the drive; he’ll be expecting his brother. Max is going to come in from the back. Ready?”

“Yeah, yeah. Come on!”

I motored up the long driveway, not trying to be especially quiet, but not making a show of it, either. As soon as I saw the pristine red Mustang convertible at the far end, I knew the dead man’s driver’s license hadn’t lied.

We walked up to the front door, Giovanni behind me and to my left. I pounded on the door with the side of my fist.

Nothing.

I did it again.

Heard sounds of someone moving, somewhere in the house.

I pounded harder.

“Who is it?” An angry, guarded voice, slurred with...sleep?

“Fucking key!” I grunted, hitting the door again.

The door opened a little. “You asshole...,” someone said. I hit the door with my shoulder, drove it open as Giovanni slipstreamed in behind me, his pistol up. The twin chopped at Giovanni’s wrist, as panther-quick as his brother had been. The pistol hit the floor. I dived for it, took a sharp kick in the side of my neck. Giovanni was against the wall, his right arm dangling useless at his side. “Come on, pussy!” he offered the twin.

But Max had him by then. With both arms this time.

“Move the car around the back,” I told Giovanni, urgently. “Make sure it’s in shadow. I don’t know how fast they’ll find the wreck, but if they run its plates, they could be coming here, and we’ll need the edge. Pull the dummy plates off the Plymouth. And take that white square off the driver’s-side door. It’s not painted on—just a piece of vinyl—there’s a couple of pull-tabs along the top.”

In the back bedroom, I found a woman. Naked, lying on her belly, head twisted to one side. She was breathing raggedly through a wide-open mouth, a thin line of drool trailing down her chin to her neck. A large blue dildo was sticking out of her like a freakish flagpole, anchored in what looked like dried blood.

“Filthy fucking animals,” Giovanni said, over my shoulder.

“An address book,” I reminded him. “Anything that looks like names and phone numbers.”

I was expecting a computer. Hoping for a laptop.

Nothing.

There was a big-screen TV and a VCR, but the tape collection was all commercial porn.

A sharp crack! Max snaps his fingers when he wants you to come and he’s out of sight-line.

Even with handcuffs on his wrists, the twin looked dangerous. Giovanni held the pistol in his left hand. Max kept his forearm over the twin’s Adam’s apple.

“We came for the tapes,” I told him, flat. His brother had taught me not to offer money, so I was groping, blind.

“I don’t know nothing about no—”

“Then you’re dead,” I said, doing the math for him.