hinges.
My red Nash Rambler was parked against a salmon-pink stucco wall that ran the length of the alley separating the houses on the residential street behind. There was no sign of Leon, his horned car, or his nameless friends. Elana slid into the passenger’s seat and laid her head against the window. She was a picture-perfect damsel in distress.
If I were Fearless Jones I would have run headlong into the fray, taking any blows and doing anything to protect her. But I didn’t believe that even Fearless would have stood long against Leon Douglas.
I started the motor and we slid off into the afternoon.
“Where to?” I asked.
She rattled off an address on a street named Hazzard.
“Where’s that?”
“It’s off Brooklyn Avenue in East L.A.”
“What’s there?”
“Prob’ly nuthin’.”
I WAS CUTTING left and right on side streets, making my way east, looking up into my rearview mirror from time to time. We’d driven for more than five minutes in silence.
“What does this Leon guy want from you?” I asked.
“You don’t want to get involved, remember?” she said.
“Have it your way, honey. All I thought was that maybe I could give you some advice.”
“The only thing anybody could give me is manpower or money. Either that or Leon Douglas is gonna kill me.”
I looked over into the side mirror and saw the flash of a powder blue Chrysler with horns on its grate as it swerved, aiming to cut me off.
“Shit!” I hit the brakes, narrowly avoiding the collision. He banged into a parked car at a wide angle, blocking the street. I hit the gas and drove up onto the sidewalk. The lawns on that block were small hills leading up to the little homes. I put deep ruts across three of these lawns, fishtailing as I went. As soon as we cleared Leon, I cut a hard left back down to the street. Once on the asphalt, I gunned the engine and we took off. I would have felt good about the maneuver except by then Leon had straightened out also. He was barreling down on us.
I careened left, scraping an oncoming Ford. Leon did the same thing. Then I heard something that sounded like a chicken bone breaking.
“They’re shooting at us!” Elana cried.
I made three more wild turns. Shots popped off at irregular intervals. There were no cops anywhere.
“Take the gun outta my pocket!” I yelled.
Elana wasn’t slow. She didn’t resist or think or pretend that it was too much for her. She just jammed her hand into my pocket and rolled down her window.
A bullet ricocheted off the side of my door.
I made a right turn and Elana leaned out, taking four fast shots at the rampaging bull of a car. I had turned onto Edison, a warehouse street with very few pedestrians. I remembered, too late, that most of the side streets off it were dead ends, so I couldn’t afford a turn. We were on a straightaway with only two bullets left.
“Did you hit anything?” I shouted.
“I don’t think so.”
The Chrysler was coming on strong for three blocks, four, five. I swerved and banked to pull around cars ahead of me. Leon matched me move for move. After Leonard Street the bull slowed. By the next block there was smoke from the car’s hood. They pulled to the curb soon after that.
I almost fainted when I realized we’d survived.
I turned onto Hooper and headed downtown.
“Where are you going?” she asked me, the steely calm of her voice in deep contrast with my racing heart.
“You’ll see when we get there.”
After half an hour or so we came to an underground parking lot on Flower. It was expensive, thirty-five cents an hour, but I wanted to be careful now that I had a killer on my trail. A killer with whom I had just been in a running gun battle in the streets of L.A.
I reached out to Elana Love and said, “Gun, please.”
