"Put on some music, doll," he called to Carole.
"Sure thing. What?"
"Something loud," he shouted.
A moment later Led Zeppelin chugged from the speakers. York punched off the cruise control and pushed the accelerator to the floor.
Sitting in his white surveillance van, near Ray Trotter's pink adobe house, Stan Eberhart heard his phone chirp. "Yeah?"
Julio, one of the rent-a-cops, said, "Stan, got a problem."
"Go on."
"Has he left yet?"
" York? Yeah, an hour ago."
"Hmm."
"What's the matter?"
"I'm at a NAPA dealer near the landscaping company."
Eberhart had sent people to stores near Trotter's house and business. Armed with pictures, they were querying clerks about purchases the man might've made recently. The security people were no longer in the law enforcement profession, of course, but Eberhart had learned that twenty-dollar bills open as many doors as police shields do. Probably more.
"And?"
"Two days ago this guy who looked like Trotter ordered a copy of a technical manual for Mercedes sports cars. It came in yesterday and he picked it up. The same time, he bought a set of metric wrenches and battery acid. Stan, the book was about brakes. And that was just around the time we lost Trotter for a couple of hours. "
"He could've gotten to York 's Mercedes, you think?"
"Not likely but possible. I think we have to assume he did."
"I'll get back to you." Eberhart hung up and immediately called York.
A distracted voice answered. "Hi."
"Mr. York, it's -"
"I'm not available at the moment. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as possible."
Eberhart hit disconnect and tried again. Each of the five times he called, the only response was the preoccupied voice on the voicemail.
York was nudging the Mercedes up to a hundred.
"Doesn't this rock?" he called, laughing. "Whoa!"
"Like, what?" Carole shouted back. The roar of the slipstream and Robert Plant's soaring voice had drowned out his voice.
"It's great!"
But she didn't answer. She was frowning, looking ahead. "There's, like, a turn up there." She added something else he couldn't hear.
"What?"
"Uhm, maybe you better slow down."
"This baby curves on a dime. I'm fine."
"Honey, please! Slow down!"
"I know how to drive."
They were on a straight-away, which was about to drop down a steep hill. At the bottom the road curved sharply and fed onto a bridge above a deep arroyo.
"Slow down! Honey, please! Look at the turn!"
Christ, sometimes it just wasn't worth the battle. "Okay." He lifted his foot off the gas.
And then it happened.
He had no clue exactly what was going on. A huge swirl of sand, spinning around and around, as if the car were caught in the middle of a tornado. They lost sight of the sky. Carole, screaming, grabbed the dash. York, gripping the wheel with cramping hands, tried desperately to find the road. All he could see was sand, whipping into his face, stinging.
"We're going to die, we're going to die!" Carole was wailing.
Then from somewhere above them, a tinny voice crackled, " York, stop your car immediately. Stop your car!"
He looked up to see the police helicopter thirty feet over his head, its rotors' downdraft the source of the sandstorm.
"Who's that?" Carole screamed. "Who's that?"
The voice continued, "Your brakes are going to fail! Don't start down that hill!"
"Son of a bitch," he cried. "He tampered with the brakes."
"Who, Stephen? What's going on?"
The helicopter sped forward toward the bridge and landed – presumably so the rescue workers could try to save them if the car crashed or plummeted over the cliff.
Save them, or collect the bodies.
He was doing ninety as they started over the crest of the hill. The nose of the Mercedes dropped and they began to accelerate.
He pressed the brake pedal. The calipers seemed to grip.
But if he got any farther and the brakes failed he'd have nowhere to go but into rock or over the cliff; there was no way they could make the turn doing more than thirty-five. At least here there was sand just past the shoulder.
Stephen York gripped the wheel firmly and took a deep breath.
"Hold on!"
"Whatta you mean -?" He swerved off the road.
Suitcases and soda and beer flew from the back seat, Carole screamed and York fought with all his strength to keep the car on course, but it was useless. The tires skewed, out of control, through the sand. He just missed a large boulder and plowed into the desert.
Rocks and gravel spattered the body, spidering the windshield and peppering the fender and hood like gunshots. Tumbleweeds and sagebrush pelted their faces. The car bounced and shook and pitched. Twice it nearly flipped over.
They were slowing but they were still speeding at forty miles an hour straight for a large boulder. Now, though, the sand was so deep that he couldn't steer at all.
"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…” Carole was sobbing, lowering her head to her hands.
York jammed his foot onto the brake pedal with his left foot, shoved the shifter into reverse and then floored the accelerator with his right. The engine screamed, sand cascaded into the air above them.
The car came to a stop five feet from the face of the rock.
York sat forward, head against the wheel, his heart pounding, drenched in sweat. He was furious. Why hadn't they called him? What was with the Blackhawk Down routine?
Then he noticed his phone. The screen read, 7 missed calls 5 messages marked urgent.
He hadn't heard the ring. The wind and the engine… and the goddamn music.
Sobbing and pawing at the sand that covered her white pant suit, Carole snapped at him,
"What is going on? I want to know. Now."
And, as Eberhart and Lampert walked toward them from the chopper, he told her the whole story.
No weekend vacation, Carole announced.
"You, like, might've mentioned it up front."
Showing some backbone for a change.
"I didn't want to worry you."
"You mean you didn't want me to ask what you did to somebody to make them want to get even with you."
"I -"
"Take me home. Now."
They'd returned to Scottsdale in silence, driving in a rental car; the Mercedes had been towed away by the police to look for evidence of tampering and repairs. An hour after walking through their front door Carole left again, suitcase in hand, headed to Los Angeles early for the family visit.
York was secretly relieved she was going. He couldn't deal both with Trotter and his wife's crazy moods. He returned inside, checked the lock on every door and window and spent the night with a bottle of Johnny Walker and HBO.
Two days later, around five p.m., York was working out in the gym he'd set up in a bedroom – he was avoiding the health club and its deadly sauna. He heard the doorbell. Picking up the pistol he now kept in the entryway, he peered out. It was Eberhart. Three locks and a deadbolt later, he gestured the security man in.
"Got something you should know about. I had two teams on Trotter yesterday. He went to a multiplex for a matinee at noon."
"So?"
"There's a rule: anybody under surveillance goes to a movie by himself… that's suspicious. So the teams compared notes. Seems that fifteen minutes after he goes in, this guy in overalls comes out with a couple of trash bags. Then about an hour later, little over, a delivery man in a uniform shows up at the theater, carrying a big box. But my man talked to the manager. The workers there don't usually take the first trash out to the Dumpster until five or six at night. And there weren't any deliveries scheduled that day."
York grimaced. "So, he dodged you for an hour. He could get anywhere in that time."