Southtown Read online

Page 4

 

  “Hard level?” I asked again.

  No response.

  I wanted to tear the game pad out of his hands and fling it into the night, but hey—I wasn’t his dad. What did I expect the kid to do for endless hours in the back of a van? Read?

  “Yeah,” he said at last. “The evil panda bears—”

  “Honey,” Erainya said, her voice suddenly urgent. “Turn the sound off. ”

  I looked out the windshield, expecting to see some action at the Ortiz cousins’ house.

  Instead, Erainya was focused on the radio. A news brief about the prison break that afternoon—five dangerous cons on the loose. The Floresvil e Five, the media had instantly dubbed them—Wil Stirman, C.

  C. Andrews, Elroy Lacoste, Pablo Zagosa, Luis Juarez.

  “Not a good day for the warden,” I agreed. “You see the pictures?”

  Erainya glared at me. “Pictures?”

  “On TV this afternoon. Don’t tel me you’ve missed this. ”

  The news announcer recounted how the cons had been left unsupervised in a religious rehabilitation program. The five had overpowered the chaplain, kil ed a guard and a fel ow inmate, driven straight through the back gate in the preacher’s Ford Explorer after stealing several handguns, a shotgun, and an unknown amount of ammunition from the prison armory. They should be considered armed and dangerous.

  No shit.

  The alarm hadn’t gone up for almost fifteen minutes, by which time the cons had ditched the SUV in the Floresvil e Wal-Mart parking lot and vanished, possibly in another car provided by an outside accomplice. A map of Kingsvil e had been found in one of the cel s, leading authorities to believe that at least some of the fugitives might be heading south toward the Mexican border. Police al along the Rio Grande were on alert.

  The suspected ringleader of the jailbreak, Wil iam “the Ghost” Stirman, had been serving ninety-nine years on multiple convictions of human trafficking and accessory to murder. Prison psychologists described him as a highly dangerous sociopath.

  “The Ghost,” I said. “He’l be the one wearing the sheet with the eyeholes. ”

  Erainya didn’t smile. She turned off the radio, fumbled for her cel phone.

  “What?” I asked.

  She dialed a number, cursed. With the storm, cel phone reception inside the van, especial y here on the rural South Side, was almost nonexistent.

  She opened her door. The van’s overhead light blinked on.

  “Erainya—”

  “Got to find a clear signal. ”

  “It’s pouring. ”

  She slid outside in her rain jacket, and waded into the glow of the only street lamp, where everybody and God could see her.

  Since the day I apprenticed to her, she had harped on me—getting out of the car while on stakeout was an absolute no-no. You jeopardized your position, your ability to move. Otherwise I would’ve peed a long time ago.

  I knew only one person she might break the rules to cal —her ENT, Dr. Dreamboat, or whatever the hel his name was, whom she’d met during a romantic prescription for cedar fever last winter and had been dating ever since.

  But I couldn’t believe she would cal him now.

  I was pondering whether I’d have to shove a cel phone up Dr. Dreamboat’s sinus cavity when the porch light came on at the Ortiz cousins’ house.

  A heavyset man in a silky black warm-up suit stepped outside. Dimebox Ortiz.

  I tried to kil the overhead il umination, found there was no switch. “Shit. ”

  “Owe me a quarter,” Jem told me, his eyes stil glued to his game.

  “Put it on my account. ”

  My “bad word” account was already enough to buy Jem his first car, but he didn’t complain.

  I leaned and tapped on Erainya’s window.

  Halfway down the sidewalk, Dimebox Ortiz froze, staring in our direction. The rain was drenching him.

  You don’t see us, I thought. We are invisible.

  Dimebox yel ed back toward the house—his cousins’ names, some Spanish I couldn’t catch. He ran for his Lincoln Town Car, and I gave up on discretion.

  “Erainya!” I yel ed, pounding on the driver’s-side door.

  She took the phone away from her ear, just catching the fact that something was wrong as Dimebox’s tail ights flared to life and Lalu and Kiko came lumbering out their front door, their fists ful of things I was pretty sure weren’t wax apples.

  Erainya climbed in, hit the ignition. “Jem, seatbelt!”

  We peeled out, hydroplaning a sheet of water into the faces of the Ortiz cousins, who yel ed plentiful contributions to Jem’s cuss jar as they jogged after us, brandishing their army surplus door prizes.

  Dimebox’s Lincoln turned the corner on Keslake as the first explosion rocked the back of our van. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw chunks of wet asphalt spray up from the middle of the street where our tailpipe had been a moment before.

  “Fireworks?” Jem asked, excited.

  “Sort of,” I said. “Get down. ”

  “I want to see!”

  “These are the kind you feel, champ. Get down!”

  The twins sloshed after us like a couple of rabid hippos.

  Up ahead, Dimebox’s Lincoln Town Car dipped toward the low-water crossing on Sinclair.

  A few hours ago when we’d driven in, Rosil io Creek had been ful , but nowhere near the top of the road.

  Now, glistening in our headlights, an expanse of chocolate water surged over the asphalt. Clumps of grass, branches and garbage piled up on the metal guardrail. It was hard to tel how deep the water was. There was no other road in or out of the neighborhood, even if we could turn around, which we couldn’t with Se?or Dee and Se?or Dum lobbing munitions right behind us.

  In the PI business, we have a technical term for getting yourself into this kind of situation. We cal it fucking up.

  Dimebox’s brake lights flashed as he approached the crossing.

  “He won’t make it,” I said, as he revved the Lincoln’s engine and plunged hood-first into current.

  Ka-BOOM. Behind us, the low-water-crossing sign splintered into kindling.

  “He’l make it,” Erainya insisted. “So wil we. ”

  I started to protest, but she’d already nosed the van into the water.

  The sensation was like a log ride—that stomach-lurching moment when the chain catches under the boat.

  Water churned beneath the floorboards, hammered the doors. The van shuddered and began drifting sideways.

  Through the smear of the windshield, I saw Dimebox’s Town Car trying to climb the opposite bank, but his headlights dimmed. His rear fender slid back into the torrent, crunched against the guardrail. His headlights went dark, and suddenly the Lincoln was a dam, water swel ing around it, lapping angrily at the bottom of the shotgun window.

  “Go back,” I told Erainya.

  She fought the wheel, muttered orders to the van in Greek, eased us forward. We somehow managed to get right behind the Lincoln before our engine died.

  Our headlights dimmed, but stayed on. I could see Dimebox Ortiz in front of us, waving one arm frantical y out his window. His driver’s-side door was smashed against the guardrail. Water was sluicing into his shotgun window.

  Behind us, Lalu and Kiko were barely discernible at the edge of the water, watching mutely as our two vehicles were trash-compacted against the guardrail.

  The railing moaned. Our van skidded sideways. The Lincoln’s back left wheel slipped over the edge, and Dimebox’s whole car began to tilt up on the right, threatening to flip over in the force of the water.

  I grabbed Erainya’s cel phone, dialed 911, but in the roar of the flood I couldn’t hear anything. The LCD read, Searching for Signal. The water inside the van was up to my ankles.

  “Rope,” I shouted to Erainya. “You stil have rope?”

  “We have to stay inside, honey. We can’t—”
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  “I’m getting Ortiz out of that car. ”

  “Honey—”

  “He won’t make it otherwise. I’l tie off here. ”

  “Honey, he isn’t worth it!”

  Ortiz was yel ing for help. He looked . . . tangled in something. I couldn’t tel . Nothing but his head was above water.

  I looked back at Jem, who for once wasn’t focused on the PlayStation.

  “Pass me the rope behind your seat,” I told him. “You’re the man of the van, okay?”

  “I can’t swim,” he reminded me.

  His eyes were calm—that creepy calm I only saw when he tried to remember his life before Erainya, his thoughts thickening into a protective, invisible layer of scar tissue.

  I shoved him the cel phone. “It’s okay, champ. Keep trying 911. ”

  He passed me the rope—fifty feet of standard white propylene. I didn’t know why Erainya stored it in the van. I suppose you never knew when you’d have to tie somebody up. Or maybe Dr. Dreamboat the ENT had strange proclivities. I didn’t want to ask.

  I made a knot around the steering column, a noose around my waist. Then I rol ed down the passenger’s- side window and got a face ful of rain.

  I climbed outside, lowered myself into the current, and got slapped flat against the van.

  Up ahead, a few impossible feet, the passenger’s side of the Lincoln was bobbing in the current. I could see Dimebox Ortiz in the driver’s seat, up to his earlobes in water.

  I didn’t so much walk as crawl along the side of the van.

  My efforts spurred Lalu and Kiko into a new round of yel ing. I couldn’t make out words. Maybe they were arguing about whether they could blow me up without hurting Dimebox.

  I kept the rope taut around my waist, inching out a step at a time, not even kidding myself that I could keep my footing. The side of the van was the only thing that kept me from being swept away.

  The worst part was between the cars, where the water shot through like a ravine. When I slipped one foot into the ful current, it was like being hooked by a moving train. I was ripped off balance, pul ed into the stream. My head went under, and the world was reduced to a cold brown roar.

  I held the rope. I got my head above water, found the fender of the Town Car, and clawed my way to the passenger’s side.

  The Lincoln’s shotgun window was open, making a waterfal into the car.

  Dimebox’s hands were tugging frantical y at something underwater. He was craning his ugly head to keep it above the water. His face was like a bank robber’s, his features al pantyhose-smeared, only Dimebox didn’t wear pantyhose.

  “Can you move?” I yel ed.

  He pushed at the wheel as if it were pinning his legs.

  “Lalu!” he shouted. “Kiko! Push!”

  Push?

  Then I realized he wasn’t struggling to get free. He was attempting to start the ignition. He expected his cousins to wade out here and give him a jump start.

  “You’re underwater, you moron!” I told him. “Give me your hand!”

  “Fuck you, Navarre!” he screamed. “Get the fuck away!”

  “Me or the river, Dimebox. ”

  “I ain’t going to jail!”

  I didn’t understand his stubbornness. Dimebox was up on some stupid charge like assault. He was constantly going in and out of the slammer, constantly jumping bail, which I guess you can do when your bondsman is your brother-in-law. We’d bounty-hunted him plenty of times. I didn’t see why he was making such a fuss about a couple more weeks in the county lockup.