“Is there a point to this?” Derek asked.
“Yep. You said I had two options, big brother. But you forgot a third one.”
With that, he pulled out his revolver and shot him.
He put the shovel back into the trunk, the blade crusted with moist sand. It had been hard work and his hands ached, but by God it was over. No more phone calls, night visits, or demands. Or even airplanes. It was over, buried in the sand. He slammed the trunk lid in satisfaction, thinking, I had to do this. I had no choice. I am still a good person. And he tried to forget what looked like a smile on Derek’s face, just as he started shoveling the dirt in.
After he started the BMW he found his headache was gone. He had never felt so much alive, and he looked forward to going home and having a long bath and a drink with Terry, and hell, on Monday, he’d give Marcie a raise and plead with her to stay. It would all work out.
He felt so good he started to whistle, and he was halfway down the dirt road before he realized what tune he was whistling.
SuperSport
by Doug Allyn
Chris cranked the leather-covered wheel hard left, skidding the Morgan into the turn at sixty-plus. He eased off the gas pedal for a split-second, power-shifted into fourth, and then mashed it again. The carburetors whistled, sucking air, and the car responded with a surge of power that jammed his shoulders back into the seat as he gunned it through the curve. Sunlight was glinting off the mountain face, dancing across his windshield, and the rhythm of the road hummed through him like a heartbeat.
For an instant Maraschal’s Alfa Romeo flashed into view in the comer of the rear view mirror, at least a quarter-mile behind. Good. But Buchek’s roadster had disappeared around the curve ahead and Chris slammed the wheel with his palm in frustration. Second place. Unless he really poured it on.
He kept the pedal floored longer than necessary through the next curve, pushing the car to the limit, punishing it for being too slow to win. The course was tricky, a fourteen mile sprint up Mount Lemmon to Windy Point, but he was beyond caring about risk. He was running on the edge, fueled by anger and exhilaration, his spirit fused with the low-slung roadster, snaking through the blind curves, pedal to the metal, half man, half machine. Blind to the beauty of the mountain beside him and the desert below, he was totally focused on the road and the tachometer. A few seconds. Buchek couldn’t be more than a few seconds ahead.
He caught a glimpse of something yellow as he powerslid into the third curve in the series. A warning flickered in the back of his mind but he ignored it, invincible now, invulnerable. He downshifted into third, the engine howled in protest and the tires screamed, barely clinging to the asphalt as he stormed out of the curve. And saw the huge auto-hauler rolling slowly backward across both lanes of the road ahead.
Instinctively he cramped the wheel hard over, trying to squeeze past the truck on the right, but the car bucked when it hit the narrow shoulder. It skidded broadside into the steel guard rail and went shrieking along the barrier, grinding itself to pieces in a white-hot river of sparks. A rear wheel hooked on a guard post, snapped off, and suddenly the Morgan went airborne, plunging over the railing into space, cartwheeling on the highway, two hundred feet below.
There was a moment’s hush, broken only by the rattle of pebbles raining down the mountainside onto the pavement around the wreck. And then there was a shout, and then another, and the sound of footsteps as spectators and judges sprinted toward the accident. But Chris didn’t hear them. Dazed, and broken, he was still struggling feebly with his safety harness when gasoline from the smashed carbs trickled onto the exhaust headers. The fuel ignited with a gentle whuff, enveloping the shattered roadster in an intense, ochre shroud of flame that sent a twisted ribbon of ebon smoke coiling lazily upward into the steel blue Arizona morning.
“no..."
Five hundred miles away, in a darkened hotel room, Andy McMahon lurched suddenly upright in bed. Groggy, barely awake, he groped for the telephone, listened numbly to the dial tone for a moment, then fumbled the receiver back on its cradle and switched on the bedside lamp. His battered travel alarm clock read eleven forty-five. The glow rimming the room-darkening shades told him it was nearly noon, and after a moment he remembered where he was. Los Angeles. He’d flown into LAX late the night before and taken a room at the Marriott.
He massaged his eyes with his blunt fingertips, then buried his beefy face in his palms, trying to recall the subconscious signal that had dragged him up from the depths of the darkness.
Nothing. He couldn’t remember a thing about it. Still, a feeling of foreboding seemed to linger in the room, skulking like a jackal just beyond the halo of light from the bedside lamp.
He slid the blankets back, levered his bulk out of bed, and padded silently to the door. He stood there a while, listening, a pallid, pudgy giant in baggy white boxer shorts. He cautiously released the lock, opened the door a crack, and peered out into the hall.
An elderly Oriental couple with matching leather trench-coats and maroon cowboy hats were chattering with a uniformed bellman as they checked into a room a few doors down, but otherwise the corridor was deserted.
McMahon eased the door closed, leaned his back against it, and took a deep breath. A dream. That’s all it was. He brushed his thinning sandy hair back with his fingers, still not entirely awake. Only a dream. But a bad one. Its dark tendrils were still roiling and twisting at the edge of his memory like oily smoke. A warning? He tried to shrug it off. But in the end he lumbered back to the night-stand, and picked up the phone.
The Stone Street squad room of the Tucson City Police Department was sunlit and deserted, a warehouse for sleeping typewriters and empty desks, wrapped in Sunday morning silence. The office door at the far end of the room opened as McMahon walked in, and Lieutenant Art Gomez glanced out. Their eyes met in a wordless exchange, and then Gomez grinned.
“Andy Mac,” he said, “I’ll be goddamned.”
“No doubt,” McMahon nodded, “you got a minute, Art?”
“Sure, sure,” Gomez said, waving him in, “come in, lemme buy ya some coffee.” McMahon followed him into the tiny cubicle where Gomez spent most of his working hours. The room was a shambles, files stacked in every corner, nondescript sport-coats dangling from hooks on the door, Styrofoam coffee cups everywhere. It was a decorator’s nightmare, but it suited Gomez. He was mid-fortyish, rumpled and round-shouldered, with coarse dark hair worn unfashionably long, and a melancholy man-in-the-moon face. He looked exhausted, and one cheek was reddened, as though he’d been sleeping at his desk.
McMahon was wearing a polyester navy blazer over gray slacks, plain white shirt, no tie. His large, amiable face was a bit flushed, as though he’d tipped a beer or two too many the night before, but he looked presentable otherwise, an over-the-hill jock, a stranger you might sit next to in a bar if you felt like talking.
The orange plastic office chair squeaked a protest as he eased down on it. Gomez passed him a Styrofoam cup of black coffee, and McMahon sipped it cautiously, wincing at the bitterness.
“So what brings you back to sunny Tucson, Andy? Business or pleasure?”
“Definitely business,” McMahon said, “a murder.”
“Yeah?” Gomez said, his smile fading. “Anybody I know?”
“Chris Wilde, the writer. I understand it’s your case.”
“It’s ours,” Gomez said cautiously, “what there is of it. It only happened yesterday. But I don’t get it. Why’s the DEA interested? Is there a narcotics angle I should know about?”