“What do you mean, bump him?”
“Bump him so he has to get out!”
I came up slow, then stepped on it so I smacked right into the rear bumper of the sedan. I no sooner untangled than Bugs jumped out and ran around front, shoving the gun in his pants as he went. Sure enough, the guy gets out, and Bugs began yelling and pointing at the truck. But the guy can’t make any sense out of it because he’s looking at Bugs’s face, where it’s still running blood, and he can’t connect all that grief with the little bump he felt. Bugs just keeps on talking. All that time the freight is going by, and he can’t take a chance the train crew might hop off to help some guy out. But soon as the bell stops he whips out the gun and tells the guy to peel off his clothes and hand over his dough. I hop out then, and run around the right-hand side and jump in the sedan and slide over behind the wheel. But Bugs thought of that. By the time I was set he had the guy out front, blocking me off. The guy’s taking orders now, and each piece of his clothes he peels, Bugs lays it on the hood and covers it with the guy’s raincoat. When the guy’s stripped naked, so his teeth are chattering and he’s begging Bugs not to keep him out there in the rain any more, Bugs plugs him. It was like something in a movie. First I could see them in front, on the other side of this pile of clothes on the hood, then comes the shot, and I can see Bugs and I can’t see him. Then Bugs has scooped up the clothes under his arm and is jumping in the back door of the sedan, telling me to drive. I start up, and I cut the wheel hard left. But the right side of the car goes up, then bumps down, as we go over something soft.
When Bugs climbed up in the front seat, maybe a half hour later, he was all dressed up in the guy’s clothes and his face was wiped off a little. He didn’t really look good, but he wasn’t in prison denims, like I was, and he could take out some money and count it. There was quite a little money, and he took quite a while. Then he says: “I guess you wonder why you killed him too?”
“You’re running it, Bugs.”
“Nekkid like he is, they may be quite a while identifying him, see? Without any driver’s license, or Elks’ pin, or tailor’s label, or that stuff they generally go on, they might be some little time. Well, all that time we’re moving, you get it, stupid? We’re on our way, and they don’t know what car we got, or the number of it, or anything at all, except we’re not no longer hauling meat. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Oh, it’s clever. I can see that.”
“I killed him so he can’t talk to the cops and tell them what they might want to know. Of course, we all know you killed him.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“What do you mean, ‘that’s right’?”
“I mean if you say I killed him.”
“Quit cracking smart.”
“O.K.”
“And quit chattering them teeth.”
Changing cars I had got wet, and he hadn’t give me any chocolate bars, and I was cold and hungry and weak, and my teeth were chattering all right. I bit down on them, and they stopped. It was four or five in the afternoon by then, and we were in Los Angeles already, and I began wondering why he didn’t kill me. He had everything he wanted, a car, a suit, a raincoat, and dough. He didn’t need me any more. Then I got this awful sensation in the pit of my stomach, when I saw he was going to kill me, and it was just a question of when. He sat there staring at me, the gun in his lap, and I figured it would be at the next stop. So when we come to it I went right through. He snarled like a mad dog. “What’s the big idea, going through that light?”
“I didn’t see it.”
“I told you quit cracking smart.”
“I swear I didn’t see it.”
“You want some cops stopping us?”
“If you don’t see it, why would you stop?”
“You stop at the next one, though.”
“Oh, sure.”
The next one, I went through at seventy, and he began to scream. He’d have plugged me right there, but at that speed he was afraid. But I had the mirror and he didn’t, and back of us I see a light, just a single. Then behind that there’s another one, and then still another. I hold on seventy, but they begin closing in. The next light, I come off the gas, like I’m going to do like I’m told, and stop. I feel him tighten, and aim the gun. When we dropped to forty I hit the brake and cut the wheel. We spun around like something crazy. Inside, it’s like we’ve exploded, because he’s thrown on the floor but he shoots just the same. Whether I’m hit I don’t know, but I throw open the door and jump. Inside there’s more shots, and outside the motorcycles deploy, all three guns barking. I start to run, then I go down. But I don’t lay there. Because it was the torrent in the gutter that threw me, and it rushed me along like I was a hunk of rubble. I try to get up and can’t. Then all of a sudden it’s pitch dark and I’m falling. Then I crash down, so I think my back is broken. Then the water is rushing me along again, and I tumble where I am.
I’m in a storm drain.
They have them all over the city, some little, made out of terra-cotta pipe, some big, made out of concrete sections. They run under streets, and every so often there’s a manhole, so they can clean them out, and off under the sidewalks are intakes, to tap the flow in the gutter. In the intakes, they got handholds and bars, just in case somebody did fall in, and if I’d been quick I might have saved myself, but I was too crossed up. How big the pipe was that I was in I don’t know, but at a guess I would say three feet, maybe. In that was running about a foot of water, and I was bumping along with it, feet first. I kept trying to stop, but I couldn’t. Over my face all the time the water kept pouring, and I kept gasping for air, and every time I’d gasp I’d swallow a gallon and then start over again.
How long that went on I don’t know. It seemed like an hour, but figuring it up now, I’d say about a minute. Then I see some gray light, and almost before I knew it, I was shooting past another intake pipe. I caught it, and four or five feet away, I could see bars. I reached and tried to grab one, but the water was pulling me back. I slipped off and went helloing down the black pipe again, still trying to breathe, still strangling from the water that was pouring over me. But my mind began to work, anyway a little bit. I knew there’d be another intake further on, and I set myself to watch for it and grab for a handhold. But I was watching on the right-hand side, where the other one had come in, and I shot right by one on the left. Then a couple more went by and I began to scream. It came to me, somehow, what a no-account life I’d led, and here I was, winding it up like a rat in a sewer, and even with the water in my mouth I began to scream like a maniac.
I saw light again, and got ready, but it wasn’t an intake this time. It was a grating over a big square drain that my pipe spilled me into, and then I really began to move, and for just that long I could breathe better and my back didn’t bump any more, because it was deeper. I put my head up, and there must have been two feet of clearance above me. But then I noticed there wasn’t that much, and pretty soon I knew why. Every so often pipes came roaring in, and each one filled the big drain fuller, and pretty soon it would be running full with no air, like a water pipe. I wasn’t screaming any more. I had just give up. I was going along, but I didn’t care any more.
Pretty soon something clipped my nose, and I put up my hands. I almost died then, because the top was only six inches from my face. There was a roar, and I figured another pipe was coming in. I knew I was up tight, and drew the biggest breath I could. When the top bumped my face I pushed down under to keep it away. Then I rolled over. I could feel the top bumping my back, and I kept telling myself I mustn’t breathe. I had that many seconds to live till I breathed, and I clamped down on my throat like I had in the truck, when we were bumping down the hill. Then something bumped my belly, and I breathed. But what I breathed was air. I opened my eyes and it was almost dark, and street lights were on, and I was washed up on a slab of concrete in the middle of water that was boiling all around me. About twenty feet away I could see the square mouth of a drain, and I figured it was what I come out of. It was at least five minutes, I guess, before I doped it out I was in the middle of the Los Angeles River.