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  Speedy let go at him with a burst from the Tommy gun, the right way: starting low and walking the rounds up into him.

  The bigger guard was putting on the brakes, skidding to a stop on his heels and bringing the shogun to bear even as he saw Speedy. But he hadn’t even come to a full halt, nor had a chance to raise his shotgun all the way before Speedy walked the Thompson’s fire up onto his center mass.

  When Speedy let up on the trigger the guard’s chest resembled a scooped-out bloody melon.

  Speedy’s ears were ringing from the Thompson’s chattering song; the old girl was really enjoying her vocal solo tonight. She was the diva brought out of retirement and Speedy was only her newbie assistant lugging her around on stage for her aria.

  The archway at the back of the house seemed to hypnotize Speedy, the prospect of the big payoff an inescapable fascination. He ignored the dead guard on the floor as he advanced across the front room with the Thompson extended in front of him and his finger ready on her trigger.

  When Speedy reached the archway, he could see Beau and Esteban standing side by side next to a couple pieces of luggage, by a rolled back patch of carpet revealing an empty floor safe. These dealers were getting ready for a trip; maybe Fat Bob taking out Oso had spooked them.

  Beau and Esteban both had pistols in their hands but only Esteban was aiming in on him; Beau’s iron was pointed at the floor.

  Esteban seemed detached, indifferent somehow as he aimed his pistol at Speedy’s face. Beau appeared pretty punch-drunk, like he couldn’t believe these current developments. Seeing Beau’s face, Speedy finally knew for sure that Fat Bob’s death battle hadn’t been in vain: without Oso for muscle, Beau was nothing.

  Speedy wished he’d been a fly on the wall when Esteban had learned of his right hand man’s death. Speedy even took time to wonder: Could a fly laugh out loud?

  “Shoot him, Esteban,” Beau said as Speedy made his tactical entrance into the room, the Thompson covering them both while he approached.

  Speedy figured he had to get this over with quick, before Five-O came to spoil all the fun.

  He sidestepped over and put his back to the wall, staying aimed in on Esteban’s face while simultaneously keeping a close weather eye on Beau. From this spot he could chop them both with a single burst, but could also keep an eye on the rest of the house to make sure no one could surprise him from behind.

  “Shoot. Shoot Steban, you little pussy,” Beau said, his own pistol still hanging useless at his side as if his arm were paralyzed.

  “Oh hell,” Beau said, water coming from his eyes to pour down his cheeks. “I need you hermanito. Don’t let me down.”

  “Don’t freak out at what happens next,” Esteban said, favoring Speedy with an apologetic glance. “I’ll be moving slow. Just chill, huh?”

  Speedy felt a slight pang of relief as Esteban began to shift his pistol away from Speedy. But Speedy felt an instant sense of unreality as Esteban slowly swiveled his aim until his pistol was pointing at Beau. Beau was completely oblivious to this development, staring at Speedy wet-faced and red-eyed, right up to the instant Esteban shot Beau in the side of the head.

  Speedy’s trigger finger cramped as he forced himself not to unload in Esteban’s face with the machine gun. Speedy stood amazed as Beau’s corpse dropped to the floor and Esteban tossed his pistol next to his brother’s corpse like he had no further use for it, like Esteban didn’t even care what Speedy did to him next.

  Speedy lifted the butt of his Thompson from his shoulder and pointed the muzzle straight down at the ground. This room belonged to him now; he didn’t have to act on reflex.

  Esteban gave Speedy a strange lopsided smile. “You’re here for my brother’s money.”

  Speedy nodded without moving otherwise, not wanting to scare Esteban, very interested to see what this kid would do next.

  “It’s all right here,” Esteban said, gesturing with his chin at the two pieces of luggage.

  Esteban stepped back to give Speedy room and Speedy gravitated to the gym bag, not pointing the Thompson at anything in particular as he squatted next to it and tugged the zipper open.

  Speedy looked at all those bundles of bills in assorted denominations; more money than he’d ever seen in an eventful career of banditry. He picked up that heavy gym bag and looked at Beau’s body, lying there on the floor with its head centered in a pool of coagulating blood.

  “He was trying to go into Witness Protection,” Esteban said, following Speedy’s gaze and looking down at his dead brother. “He called the DEA after you killed Oso.”

  “I killed Oso?” Speedy asked challengingly. “What makes you think I had anything to do with it?”

  “I’ve seen you and your friends watching us for days.”

  Esteban looked wistfully through an open door into a bedroom. Speedy glanced in there himself and saw all the religious paraphernalia; saw the Bible lying open on the neatly made bed.

  “We’re all going to hell,” Esteban said, looking down at dead Beau again. “That’s what he says.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not,” Speedy said. He gestured with the barrel of his Thompson at the remaining piece of luggage; an aluminum briefcase, (presumably) full of money. “All I know is, I’m by myself and in a hurry so I can only carry the one bag. There’s nothing to stop you taking the rest for yourself and getting out of here, same as me.”

  Esteban gasped a deep intake of a breath and looked at Speedy wide eyed. “Where would I go?”

  “Wherever you want,” Speedy said, scowling at Esteban’s paradoxical neediness.

  The expression on Esteban’s face was simultaneously joyful and terrified as he picked up the briefcase. Speedy watched carefully as Beau ignored the pistol on the floor he’d used to murder his brother.

  The two men hurried through the front room together, each moving as quickly as they could with a heavy load of cash dragging them down to one side. For Speedy at least, reaction was setting in: he felt like he was moving in slow motion as he passed the bigger guard’s remains.

  Drifts of stinking cordite smoke parted in front of them. The back wall, floor and ceiling of the room looked like a gang of psychotic children on Ritalin had attacked them with hammers and blow torches.

  They stepped over the little guard’s semi-headless corpse and out the front door. Speedy set down his bag, picked up the wool blanket from where he’d left it on the porch and draped it over his hot-barreled Thompson.

  He made a lightning quick scan of the neighborhood: still no visible reaction. He’d been in there less than 60 seconds.

  Esteban started down the steps first and Speedy stared at his back, still buzzed with the combat high, not wanting the party to end. Speedy felt a sudden urge to run after Esteban and just get in the Coupe de Ville with him.

  Speedy realized he could make this kid do whatever he wanted if they crewed up together; he’d own Esteban and undoubtedly be a much more benevolent taskmaster than Beau had been. Away the two of them would go, still in the Life, still running through that asphalt jungle, still on top of the world.

  But then Speedy’s eye fell on Carmel as she waited for him in the Vega, looking like she couldn’t decide whether to pop a vein or finally actually piss herself. She’d been right – there was a part of him that just wanted to run away from Carmel and everything she represented, to run away from her love.

  And then it snapped all the way open for him: he really did need Carmel. Carmel wasn’t Reseda, and she was his last real chance.

  Louis had been right: Speedy had to move on. No more gun in his hand, no more panicked people running back and forth while he moved forward to own the situation.

  Speedy was done with it all.

  He was shocked to realize that he’d been just standing there on the porch steps for several seconds, in front of a house full of dead bodies with a hot machine gun in one hand and a duffel bag full of equally hot money in the other.

  Speedy made his choice. As Esteban tossed h
is bag of loot into the Coupe de Ville then clambered in after and peeled out, Speedy ignored him and trotted to the Vega.

  As he got in the car, the slamming of the door sounded like a trap shutting him in. But it was a trap Speedy entered willingly.

  Chapter 43

  Carmel swooped north on Peralta, past the Cozy Den and Danny’s Liquor and American Steel. Light industrial lots and houses in various states of dismantlement and disrepair blurred past on each side as they approached and entered the underpass angling beneath the double-decker Cypress Viaduct.

  The angle between Peralta and the Cypress was only maybe 20 degrees, so narrow that the street and elevated overhead freeway felt almost parallel. It seemed to take forever to punch through that gloom to the other side of the Cypress.

  Speedy had a sudden vision as they roared through that endless underworld forest of cylindrical concrete elephant legs supporting the span above: he seemed to feel the earth rolling beneath him like a heavy sea; he imagined both decks of the Cypress collapsing and pan-caking down on top of the Vega, crushing them flat . . .

  He shook his head to clear away those whimsical claustrophobic imaginings as the Vega finally came out into the open air past the Pacific Pipe Company at West Grand. They roared past Cypress Auto Salvage, and the old Lone Star plant, and the hordes of aluminum-can-laden homeless waiting outside Alliance Metal for it to open.

  “Right on Macarthur, then jog left onto Adeline,” Speedy instructed.

  Carmel obeyed, the Vega’s rear end fishtailing out as she rode it sideways into the turns. Traffic seemed to part for the Vega like the surrounding flow of cars was the Red Sea – not a good thing, for other drivers to be focusing on them at all.

  “Slow down now girl,” Speedy urged. “Speed run’s over, we’re already far enough away. Never break the limit when you’re dirty if you don’t have to.”

  Carmel dropped their speed and continued north, entering the six-way intersection between San Pablo, Adeline and West Macarthur. Speedy noted warily that yet another Doggie Diner dachshund head leered at him from the corner there – that wiener dog was everywhere it seemed.

  They crossed San Pablo Avenue and out of West Oakland proper. Behind them a roller blew past, going the opposite direction but late to the party at Beau’s house.

  Speedy scanned the sky through the rear windshield as he wiped the plaster dust off his face with a corner of the blanket. A chopper was stooping in over the Bottoms – but it was far behind them on the other side of the Cypress, circling around with no indication it was heading in their direction.

  They’d escaped the initial cordon then.

  After Adeline they crept along back streets parallel to the main drags till they got to Willy’s squat, then turned up the side driveway and into the backyard to park next to the Valiant. It was time to wait and see, to decide whether they needed to hunker down for a bit or move on quick in the other car.

  Speedy put the sawed-off in his field jacket pocket and got out with the Thompson in his hands. He stretched luxuriously and brandished his machine gun overhead. Carmel exited the car and he turned to her with a smart aleck grin, opening his mouth to say something, to crack wise.

  Then a police cruiser skidded into the side driveway with its lights flashing, effectively corking them. Officer Louis got out with his service pistol in his hand.

  Louis’s shoulder mike squawked and he reached up, turned it off. “You had to do it, didn’t you white boy?”

  Speedy slowly swiveled his body to face Louis, the Thompson grasped in both hands but aimed at the ground.

  Louis’s pistol was pointed right at Speedy’s belly, center mass. “You going to try and shoot with me with that thing, Speedy?”

  Despite everything that had happened tonight, despite what was likely to happen to her, all Carmel could think about was the horrible prospect of her and Speedy being separated. A pang wrenched her, making her feel actually nauseous that this man was going to take Speedy away from her.

  Carmel watched, waiting for the Thompson’s trigger to be squeezed, waiting to see this cop fall down dead behind the steel bitch’s .45 slugs. But Speedy lowered the Thompson all the way, unable even to point her at Louis.

  The old cop moved in, plucked the submachine gun from Speedy’s hands and dropped it behind him in the direction of the house.

  “You think you can ever stop running now?” Louis asked, his tone bantering. “This isn’t just 211 or even ADW. They’re all over the crime scene, forensics and newsies. The Feds are really interested too, for some ungodly reason. A machine-gun assault, a houseful of dead bodies and piles of missing money? You’re too high profile now, there’s no way you can walk on this.”

  Suddenly Speedy spun to face the basement door, his right hand reaching for the sawed-off in his pocket. Louis was whirling toward the house too, dropping to one knee and raising his revolver to aim at the darkened basement doorway – Louis was one fast fat man.

  But it was too late. The sound of a gunshot cracked out, and the muzzle flash from the doorway illuminated the backyard in a freeze frame.

  A dark splotch appeared on the side of Louis’s upper chest, just above the edge of his bullet proof vest. Louis’s pistol fell from his hand as he sagged to the lawn and laid full length.

  Speedy stood there in the middle of the lawn looking stupid with his hand not even dipped into his pocket yet, finally outgunned by someone faster. Carmel stood by the Vega wearing an expression like a deer caught in the headlights. Ghost’s upper body stuck up from the sunken stairs leading down into Willy’s basement, his hoodie snug on his head.

  “I knew you’d come back to me,” Ghost said, holding a smoking .45.

  Chapter 44

  Ghost pointed the .45 at Carmel’s head as he strode up the basement steps, and Speedy raised both hands, fingers spread as he said, “Me. It’s me you got to talk to if you want the money. The pig and the bitch don’t mean shit.”

  Carmel wasn’t sure whether or not Speedy was pretending the brassy fear quavering in his voice. From Ghost’s enthralled demeanor, he didn’t seem to think Speedy was kidding.

  Ghost hesitated for a long moment with the muzzle of the .45 in Carmel’s pale face, and then he tugged off his hoodie so his nappy head of medusa hair was uncovered. Ghost backed away from her and picked up the Tommy gun, now a double threat with a gun in each hand.

  “You see Speedy?” Ghost said. “I will do as you say.”

  Ghost looked down for a long second at Louis as if still considering casually popping him in the head for shits and giggles, or maybe feeding a machine gun burst into his prone body to see how long he could make Louis spasm around under the Thompson’s rounds. But instead Ghost focused his full attention on Speedy – an attention Speedy was surprisingly relieved to have aimed his way instead of at Louis and Carmel.

  Looking into the shock of emptiness behind Ghost’s eyes, a shiver rushed up Speedy’s spine. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be: Ghost should be the one afraid of Speedy here instead of the other way around.

  Speedy caught a peripheral glimpse of Carmel to the side, squatting next to Louis and holding his hand. Her face was a frozen mask as she watched Speedy and Ghost interacting, but she was whispering to the old cop as if trying to comfort him. Speedy got a grip as Ghost stopped just outside kicking range.

  “The money’s not here,” Speedy said. “I’m the one you’ll need to talk to if you ever want to find it.”

  “Money?” Ghost asked, his voice sounding almost like he wanted Speedy to like him, to think he was friendly.

  Ghost’s sweater hung open. Speedy could see a big butcher knife stuck in his belt.

  “What’s the blade all about?” Speedy asked, trying to make Ghost react to him instead of the other way around.

  “You already know,” Ghost said, a scowl of surprise marring his brow. “What money?”

  “You’re after the loot I stole,” Speedy explained slowly, not sure of that at all anymore.
“It’s not here but I’ll take you right to it if you let these ones go. We can’t make any more commotion here, you’ve made enough noise already.”

  Speedy peered more closely at the .45 in Ghost’s hand, his heart sinking. “That looks like my brother’s piece,” Speedy said.

  “Yes, it was Willy’s, once.” Ghost stuck the .45 in his waistband and pulled the knife with his left hand, took one long step closer so that he loomed toward Speedy from his greater height like a pine tree bending in the wind.

  “We belong together forever,” Ghost said gently but firmly. “We both know this is fated, neither of us can fight it. You want it as much as I do, don’t you? It’s all right, Willy told me. You don’t have to pretend anymore.”

  There was a smile inflicting Ghost’s usually immobile face that Speedy would have interpreted as benign under any other context, with any other person. The muzzle of the Tommy gun was stuck in Speedy’s face, and Speedy backed away from it as Ghost kept advancing, until Speedy’s butted against the Vega with nowhere left to retreat.

  “Willy can’t be part of this, he was never good enough. But now you’ve delivered yourself up as he promised, so I can forgive him,” Ghost assured Speedy magnanimously. “Now I know he was telling the truth, and you can stop your gaming.”

  Speedy hissed, frozen in place though shivering in repression.

  “I love you, Speedy,” Ghost said, aiming the Thompson’s long barrel away to the side as he stepped in tenderly to do something with the knife.

  Speedy’s paralysis vanished and he dove sideways toward the ground, sticking his hand in his field jacket pocket as he fell. Speedy was still in midair as he grabbed the sawed-off without even pulling it from his pocket and unloaded both barrels straight up into Ghost’s upper body.