The two boys groaned and Rick leapt towards the video.
From the kitchen, the sound of the vacuum mingled with that of the waste-disposa! unit in the sink.
The noise stopped, at any rate the grinding of the disposal unit did, the vacuum seemed to roar even louder.
‘Mrs Garcia,’ yelled Rick.
No answer.
‘Mrs Garcia,’ he bellowed louder and the vacuum was switched off.
‘What you want, Rick?’ Elita Garcia asked, appearing from the kitchen like a blimp emerging from a hangar. She was a huge Mexican woman who always reminded Rick of an extra in a spaghetti western.
‘The vacuum is screwing up the picture on the video,’ Rick told her. ‘Couldn’t you do it later?’
‘Your mother ask me to have this finish before she come home,’ Mrs Garcia informed him.
‘Yeah, but the video …’
‘I no help that. I do my job, Rick. Sorry.’ And the vacuum started up again.
The two boys exchanged disconsolate glances and surrendered to Mrs Garcia arid her cleaner. Rick switched off the video and the TV and suggested they go into the garden for a while.
‘You no be long,’ Mrs Garcia called above the roar of the vacuum. ‘Your dinner ready soon.’
The two boys had been outside only minutes when Rick heard the approaching tones of an ice-cream van. He guessed it was less than a block away.
Lee Jacobs spun the wheel of the station-wagon, the tyres screaming as they tried to grip the road. The vehicle’s back end skidded and slammed into a parked Ford.
‘Jesus Christ, man,’ snapped Tony Sollozzo, who was kneeling on the station-wagon’s passenger seat. ‘Look where you’re fucking going will you.’
‘You wanna drive, motherfucker?’ shouted Jacobs, sweat pouring down his black face. It beaded in his short frizzy hair
like dew. ‘Are the cops still behind us?’
The sound of a siren answered his question for him and he glanced in the rear-view mirror to see the black and white speeding along in pursuit, lights flashing.
‘Step on it, will you,’ Sollozzo urged. ‘The bastards are gaining.’
if you’d stolen a car with somethin’ under the hood maybe we could outrun those lousy fucks,’ Jacobs protested. ‘Why the hell did you have to steal a fucking station-wagon?’
‘Maybe I shoulda’ walked around some showroom first, picked out somethin’ you liked, huh?’ Sollozzo countered.
‘We shoulda’ just turned ourselves in like I said,’ Jacobs said, swerving to miss a bus.
‘With nearly a kilo of smack in the glove compartment? Are you kiddin’ me?’
‘Stealing a station-wagon,’ Jacobs grunted, trying to coax more speed from the vehicle. ‘Dumb fuckin’ wop.’
‘Who’re you callin’ a wop you nigger son of a bitch. Now drive, man, they’re gettin’ closer.’
The blaring of horns greeted them as they sped through a red light.
The police car followed.
‘What time does Mrs Garcia leave?’ Andy Wallace asked, picking up the frisbee and throwing it back.
Rick Landers watched it carefully, jumping to catch it with one hand.
‘She stays until my mum gets home,’ he said.
‘How come? She never used to did she?’
‘Mum’s been acting kind of weird for the last couple of days,’ Rick disclosed.
‘She says she doesn’t like to leave me on my own too much.’ He threw the frisbee back.
‘My parents are as bad,’ Andy confided, i mean, they must think we’re kids.’
Rick nodded then he cocked his head on one side as he heard the chimes of the ice-cream van once more. It was closer now. Just turning into the street he guessed.
‘You want to get an ice-cream?’ he asked Andy, noticing the look of delight on his friend’s face.
‘You bet,’ he said.
The frisbee was forgotten as they both hurried around to the front of the house.
Lee Jacobs banged his hooter as the station-wagon narrowly missed a woman
crossing the road. He yelled something and turned the vehicle into another street. Beside him, Tony Sollozzo slid a Smith and Wesson .38 from his jacket pocket. He flipped out the cylinder, checking that each chamber carried a round.
‘What you doin’, man?’ asked Jacobs, glancing down at the gun.
‘Just in case,’ murmured Sollozzo, hefting the pistol before him.
‘You crazy fuck, I didn’t know you was packed,’ Jacobs gaped. ‘What you gonna’
do?’
The police car drew closer, its bonnet little more than ten feet from the rear of the station wagon. Sollozzo could see the two uniformed men inside as he turned. He wound down his window, pulling back the hammer on the .38.
Up ahead, Jacobs caught sight of an ice-cream van parked in their way. It was blocking the route. To by-pass it he would have to drive up on to the wide pavement.
Soilozzo steadied himself, bringing the gun up to a firing position.
Rick Landers and Andy Wallace ran towards the ice-cream van, unaware of the two speeding cars hurtling down the road. Andy suddenly stopped as his money spilled out on to the ground. He had a hole in his trouser pocket. Rick chuckled and watched as Andy stooped in the driveway of the house to retrieve his coins. He, himself, reached the waiting white van and asked for a chocolate sundae with lots of nuts. He hoped Mrs Garcia wasn’t watching.
As he turned to see where Andy had got to, Rick saw the two speeding cars.
Sollozzo took aim and fired twice, the pistol bucking in his fist. The first shot blasted off the wing mirror of the police car, the second punched a hole in its windscreen.
The station-wagon swerved violently as Jacobs momentarily took his eye off the road and glared at his companion.
‘Stop it,’ he shouted, reaching for the gun.
‘Fuck you,’ roared Sollozzo, firing again, a twisted grin across his face.
Jacobs looked ahead of him and screamed aloud as the white bulk of the ice-cream van loomed before him.
The station-wagon hit it doing about sixty, the impact catapulting Sollozzo through the windscreen. The steering column came back at Jacobs as if fired from a cannon, the wheel cracking, the column itself shattering his sternum and tearing through him as the two vehicles were pulped by the crash. Almost instantaneously, the petrol tank of the white van exploded with an ear-splitting shriek and both vehicles disappeared beneath a blinding ball of red and white flame.
Rick Landers, standing less than ten feet from the van, was lifted into the air as if by an invisible hand, his body catapulted a full twenty feet on to the pavement by the force of the explosion. His mangled body crashed to the ground, his clothes ablaze.
The patrolman driving the police car twisted the wheel to avoid the blazing inferno, the black and white mounting the sidewalk.
Too late the driver saw Rick’s body lying ahead of him.
He slammed on his brakes but the car was travelling much too fast.
The front offside wheel ran across the boy’s neck, crushing his spine and nearly severing bis head. Blood burst from the shattered corpse, spreading out in a wide pool around it.
Watching from the driveway, Andy Wallace felt something warm and soft in the seat of his pants as he gazed at the carnage before him. A second later he fainted.
Tony Sollozzo lay on the grass nearby, his face and neck shredded by the glass of the windscreen. Flames from the wreckage licked hungrily at his outstretched hand. Above it all a black pail of smoke hung like a shroud.
