Ryatt stared at the driver, his vision smudgy. The driver must have sensed the hatred because he put his arms down, turned around, and sprinted.
Poor asshole never had a chance.
Ryatt got off the remaining shots. Three bullets were buried in the back of the driver’s head, millimeters apart from each other. The driver half lurched, half stumbled, then face-planted. His arms hung loosely on his sides as he slid across the greasy tarmac.
Ryatt got in the truck, reversed from the alley, and drove towards the level crossing. The dead man blobbing on Ryatt’s side had no exit wound. If it weren’t for the unbridled way his head bounced, he would easily pass for a sleeping guy.
“Your friend shouldn’t have hit Leo.” Ryatt leaned across, pulled the door handle, and unlatched the seatbelt. “If he hadn’t, he would be alive now. Not dead on the roadside.” Ryatt could push the man out with his hand but he was raging inside, so he lifted his leg from the accelerator and placed it on the man’s arm. “Like you.”
He then kicked the dead body, twisting his hip in the process, and the truck jerked. Ryatt put his foot back on the pedal and got the truck back under control. In the side mirror, he saw the limp body rolling twice before coming to a halt, sprawled out in the middle of the road.
The door hung open. To shut it close, Ryatt swerved the truck violently, not caring about the 18-wheeler on the other side. It honked in panic and they both avoided a collision by microseconds. Ryatt, having blown the steam off, smiled and sighed.
Then he heard the sirens.
Oh shit!
He floored it and within a mile, the railroad crossing came into view. Ryatt had to pinch himself to believe it. Had he been only a minute away? When he was hanging from the truck, it felt like they were driving forever. Must be the adrenaline distorting the sense of time.
Leo was squatting on the sidewalk, still wearing his red demon mask. The truck stopped beside him and Leo climbed in, saying, “I knew you wouldn’t need me to finish the job.”
Ryatt shook his head. “Not true. I had to do double the work.”
“And double the acrobatics.” Leo cackled.
Ryatt gave out a dry laugh and rubbed Leo’s head, over the mask.
They drove to a predestined road two and a half miles away from the hotspot. A semi-trailer was parked at the curb, carrying a 40-foot container. Seeing Ryatt, its back was opened up and a ramp was placed on it. A big old monster lolling its tongue out.
Ryatt drove straight into the mouth and Thomas quickly shuttered the backdoor. As Leo and Ryatt finally removed their masks, the semi moved and, minutes later, climbed the old highway of I-96, locally known as Jeffries Freeway.
Leo opened the door and slipped on the wet blood on the running boards. He lifted his foot up, saw the red smear under the sole, and cackled.
“You gonna open it up?” Ryatt asked.
Leo nodded and switched on a generator at the corner. Then he tugged a jackhammer connected to it and went to work on the weapons truck.
The battering noise was too much for Ryatt, nauseating him. He used the internal door that connected the trailer to the driver’s cabin.
Thomas’s fingers clasping the steering wheel were visibly tight.
“What’s up with you?” Ryatt slapped Thomas’s stiff shoulder and sat on the passenger seat.
Thomas took one hand off the wheel, and his trembling finger pointed outside the window.
The side mirror showed an army of police cruisers racing through the traffic. Ryatt shook his head and tsk-tsked. “Have some faith, will you?”
Ryatt nodded at the first cruiser that overtook their semi and kept on driving. In the next few moments, half a dozen police vehicles whizzed past them, none of which gave the semi a second glance.
Chapter 10
December 25, 1981. 12:04 A.M.
Thomas reversed the semi into a building not unlike their hangout. Rubble was strewn across the floor, and graffiti adorned the walls. No one occupied it, except a few hobos whom Leo chased away, running towards them wearing a red demon mask and shooting at the sky, cackling as they stumbled over each other and screeched in horror to save their meaningless existence.
Leo had breached open the truck with the jackhammer, and they found caches of weapons inside. Ryatt hadn’t been happier on Christmas mornings. He spent quite some time with the contents, until he remembered they had work to do.
He sauntered to the Caddy they had stashed in a corner and opened the door.
Twenty minutes later, Ryatt entered Oak Park and rolled the car to a stop in front of a payphone booth on Parklawn Street. He fished out a ten-cent coin, fed it into the slot, and dialed.
The call was answered on the second ring.
“It’s done.”
Silence.
“Hello?”
Roman said, “Drop the trailer at the boathouse like we’ve planned. My guys are waiting there.”
“Change of plans,” Ryatt said.
“What change?” Roman asked. Ryatt could practically see those bushy brows suffocating the bridge of his nose.
“I want to meet Mr. Hat.”
“What? Why?”
“I… the other day, I shot your guy’s finger off. Now I understand how stupid it was of me to do that.”
“All’s forgiven.”
“Yeah, no, pardon my skepticism but I find it hard to believe. There ain’t no guarantee you’ll let me leave the boathouse vertically.”
Roman laughed in a condescending tone. “Nothing like that will happen. Come on down.”
“You can’t expect me to just believe your word and hand over the truck.”
Roman took a breath and sighed. “What do you want then?”
“To meet Mr. Hat,” Ryatt said, making it sound like he respected Bugsy a lot and he wanted to be in Detroit Alliance’s
