“I talked to Dad last night,” Crystal said. “I told him that you were worried about him doing an escape to help promote the show.”
“What time was this?” Jan asked.
“About two. I heard him come in, and we talked for a little while. He said he doesn’t really have a choice.”
“Are ticket sales that bad?”
“Yeah. He said we could go bust if they don’t improve. He already contacted a local TV station, and they agreed to televise it on Friday night.”
“Wait a minute. Your father has already lined this up? Which escape is he planning to do?”
“It’s something new.”
“Did he tell you? Come on, Crys, don’t keep secrets from me.”
Her stepdaughter glanced out the window.
“Hey, that guy across the street is staring at us.”
“Stop avoiding the question,” Jan said.
“I’m not avoiding the question. Come on, you’re supposed to be protecting me, aren’t you?”
Jan had a look. The driver in question had double-parked his van in the street, his face buried in some papers.
“He’s not staring anymore. Tell me what your father’s planning to do. I have a right to know.”
“The roller-coaster escape.”
“Oh, my God. You can’t be serious.”
“Dad says it’s a winner, and will get a lot of publicity.”
“Didn’t a performer down in Mexico get killed trying that stunt? What on earth is your father thinking?”
Crystal shook her head. “He’s made up his mind, Jan.”
Jan knew what that meant. When Vince decided he was going to do something, there was no turning back. She angrily got out of the cab, and slammed the door behind her.
Jan stood in line and waited for her dry-cleaning. She felt betrayed. Her husband was confiding in his daughter, but not in her. Had it been over something small, she could have excused it, but this was anything but trivial.
She paid for her order. Walking outside, she came around the corner to where their cab was double-parked, and saw broken glass in the street. She shivered at the sight of where a bullet had frosted the driver’s window.
The dry cleaning slipped through her fingers. She ran around the vehicle, and pulled open the driver’s door. Their affable cabby was slumped behind the wheel, a bloody, half dollar sized bullet hole above his left ear.
“Crys...? Crys!”
The backseat was empty. A wave of absolute dread swept over her. Crystal hadn’t been imagining things. The guy in the van had been stalking them.
Jan opened the driver’s door and rolled the corpse onto the pavement. Jumping in, she threw the running engine into drive and the cab leapt forward like an uncaged animal. She ran the next traffic light, stopping in the middle of the intersection to look both ways. The van had vanished. In desperation she grabbed the microphone to the cab radio.
“This is an emergency. I need help. Does anyone hear me?”
“Who the hell is this?” barked a radio dispatcher.
“My name is Jan Hardare.” She glanced at the operator’s license on the dash. “I’m driving the cab of Fami El Hassad.”
“Where’s Hassad?”
“He’s dead. The man who killed him has abducted my stepdaughter. I’m driving west on Pico Boulevard just past La Cienga in pursuit of a white van. Please call 911.”
“I’m dialing right now,” the dispatcher said. “Hey lady, please don’t do anything crazy with the cab.”
The screech of brakes drowned him out. She ran a red light and swerved out of the path of an oncoming Mercedes, the passengers cries making her skin crawl. At the next intersection she hit the brakes again, and looked both ways. The van could be hiding in an alley, or parked behind a larger truck, there was no way to know.
“Hey lady,” the radio dispatcher said.
“Yes...” she said, grabbing the microphone.
“The police are coming. I put an emergency call out to my fleet. One of my men just spotted a van on the corner of Fairfax and 18th Street, heading west. He said the driver was really hauling.”
“I don’t know where that is,” she shouted, horns blaring around her as she dangerously weaved through traffic. “I’m heading south on Spaulding. Can you get me there?”
“Sure. Make a right and go to Fairfax. Hang a left, and that takes you to 18th Street.”
Jan followed the dispatcher’s while flooring the gas. A block ahead, she saw the spotted the van jockeying between cars.
“I see him! He’s still on Fairfax. I’m going after him.”
“Lady, let the police handle this. Lady... lady!”
Chapter 18
Monkey Toes
It had all happened so quickly.
“Do you have a map?” the driver of the van had asked the cabbie. He wore a gray uniform, a hat, and black wraparound shades. “I’m lost.”
“Oh, yes. I have a wonderful map!” the Iranian cabby said enthusiastically, slipping the driver a spiral-bound street guide through a crack in his window.
“Thanks. I’ll give it right back.”
“Take your time,” the cabby said.
Lifting the front of his shirt, the driver had drawn a gun and stuck its barrel to the window. There had been a loud Pop! and the cabby had lurched forward on the wheel.
Crystal had lost it. Only moments before the cabby had told her about a cereal commercial his six year old daughter was starring in. He wanted her to be on TV, then the movies. The United States was a great country, he proclaimed.
The driver pulled her out of the car at gunpoint. It was the same crazy killer who’d attacked them in the desert.
“Please don’t hurt me,” Crystal begged.
Death dragged her across the street. Opening a sliding door on the side of his van, he shoved her into the darkened interior, where she landed face-first onto an enormous pile of sheets that smelled like paint. Straddling her, he snapped a handcuff around her wrist. He was talking under his breath, whispering obscene things about her breasts and the sweet curvature of her ass, and Crystal thought Please God, Help me.
Death pulled her up and handcuffed her wrists around the top shelf of a metal rack that was bolted to the ceiling. Forced to stand on her tip-toes, Crystal got a good look at him: he was her father’s height, a flat nose, and had the strangest skin she’d ever see on a man, his face smooth and creamy white. He produced a nylon stocking from his pocket and gagged her.
He climbed up to the front and got behind the wheel. Turning the radio on, he burned rubber down the street. At each traffic light, he glanced in his rear view mirror, watching her.
“Having fun, little girl?”
Crystal waited until he was watching the road before she gave the handcuffs pinching her wrists a look. They were standard issue Smith and Wesson, nothing a bobby pin wouldn’t open. Except her pins were in her purse on the floor. When he wasn’t looking, she slipped off both her shoes.
Thank God she rarely wore socks. Working in unison, her two big toes unzipped her purse, then nimbly picked through her stockpile of gum, mints and hair clips. Houdini had taught himself how to untie complicated knots in pieces of rope using his toes. Her father had refined the technique so he could hold lock picks between his toes and open doors. Crystal wasn’t that adept, but she could use her feet as well as most people used their hands.
“Hey — what are you doing!
Death ripped off his shades, his eyes popping wildly in the rear view mirror.
“I’m talking to you, sweetmeat!”
He did not sound like the same person. Like he had a demonic amplifier in his chest.