Then he ran. He didn’t turn to look behind him, he just took off running as fast as he could down the street, past the theater. He heard the kid’s high voice, yelling something, a low grumble from someone else, and then the squealing of the van’s tires as the driver gunned the engine. He felt like his back was a target a mile wide under the lights. He saw the faces of people down the street and wanted to call to them, signal them somehow, but his throat was frozen and he couldn’t force any sound out of it.
He saw a gap between the stores on his right that resolved into an alley as he got closer, and he pivoted as he reached it and poured on as much speed as he could as he made the corner. He was a few steps down the alley when the van screeched its brakes and stopped on the street behind him. Then he could hear it bumping over the curb, trying to jockey into the alley. He could hear the footsteps, too, the kid’s lighter ones and the heavy clomp of the big guy’s boots farther back.
Ahead of him the alley emptied into a small parking lot with meters. Past the lot the town was dark and he tried to move faster. He was about five yards from a white Lexus SUV trying to make up his mind which way to break at the end of the alley, the van’s engine getting louder, when he heard a popping sound and the side window of the Lexus blew in. Two more shots smacked into the car, leaving black holes the size of quarters, and he involun-tarily jumped left, away from the shots, and cut between a Mer-cedes and another SUV, a Lincoln Navigator big enough to give him some cover as he kept going, the air burning in his mouth and lungs.
He heard a roar behind him, and he looked over his shoulder in time to see the van two feet behind him hit the massive Lincoln dead on the rear end with a popping noise of breaking glass and grinding metal. The Navigator rocked on its springs, and Ray dropped and clawed his way under the Mercedes. He could smell oil and metal and fried food from the kitchens of restaurants. There was shouting now and the sound of feet scraping along the asphalt, a civilian getting into it with whoever was driving the van.
“What the fuck?” he heard a raspy voice say, a man, maybe in his fifties. “That’s my fucking car.” Ray shimmied back and forth, trying to see what he could from under the Mercedes. It was a tight squeeze. His hair caught on something; flecks of rust drizzled into his eyes. The older man was loud, and his voice echoed from different points around the small, boxed- in lot.
“What the fuck are you doing?” To his right he saw oily black boots and then a pair of white bucks, probably the guy with the raspy voice. He heard someone hitting the buttons on a cell phone. “Don’t go anywhere,” he heard the guy say. He heard two low voices conferring, then a pop and a scuffling noise. The white bucks tilted, and a face slapped the ground, inches away from his, and Ray almost shouted. It was a man with white hair slicked back from his face. The face was tan, freckled, the eyes blue. The features were empty and slack, and a red arc of blood poured out of his temple and hit the ground. Ray had to cover his mouth with his hands to keep from making some kind of sound.
“Dumb fuck!” He heard a young voice, out of breath, probably the kid with the sunglasses. “You are the dumbest dumb fuck I ever saw.” There was more of the other voice, low, and then running steps and the van engine roared. He saw the van tires backing up and heard a sound of tearing metal and plastic, and the rear bumper of the Navigator hit the ground. There were sirens now and more running feet and screaming somewhere away to his left.
He could see the van tires arcing away to his right, and then it vanished from view. He began shimmying again, pushing with his feet against the tires of the Mercedes and slowly extracting himself from under the car on the driver’s side, away from the body of the man with white hair and his terrible blank eyes. He got free and lay there for a second, his chest scraped raw, his heart hammering.
There was a guy in a white apron holding a meat cleaver standing a few feet away who jumped a little when he saw Ray trying to pull himself upright. “Jesus Christ, are you all right?”
Ray made a dismissive wave with his right hand. “Okay,” he finally got out.
“Did you see them shoot that guy? Jesus Christ. They just shot him.”
“I, uh.” Ray was suddenly dizzy, out of breath, the words hanging somewhere in his brain he couldn’t get to. “I just…” He made a diving motion with his hand: himself crawling under the car. “When I heard the shots.”
“No shit.” The cook nodded; he’d have done the same thing. “Who needs that shit? That big fuck must be crazy.” A crowd was starting to form, people coming out of a restaurant, a bar, a candy store and taking tentative steps toward what ever was going on in the lot.
Ray moved toward them, bending over, trying to look as stricken as possible. “I have to…” He pointed vaguely toward the bar door he could see open.
“Sure,” the guy in the apron said. He waved with the knife. “The cops are on their way. Fucking shot, over a fender bender. Christ.”
Ray walked through the crowd. The first few people he passed looked at his face, but farther back in the crowd people were just trying to see past him, craning their necks, moving around him. He picked up the pace as he reached a sidewalk, a path between some shops that led toward the street. He walked faster, then began to jog. Where was his car?
He moved north along a tree- lined street, looking for a way to cut back toward where he had left the Camaro. He walked a long block and turned left and there was a police car, its lights on, stopped at the curb. Ray’s breath caught in his throat. A young kid with long hair was bent over, hands in his pockets, talking to the cops through the open window. Ray tried not to react, walking purposefully, trying to look as interested as any passerby would be in a cop car with its lights on, slowly blowing through his nose to keep his breathing under control. The block was short, and he kept moving up a hill as if he knew where he was going. He kept his eyes straight ahead and resisted the urge to turn and look at the cops. He passed a low building, some kind of club or lodge or something. One of those places that Ray imagined was full of dark paneling and leather chairs where men smoked cigars and talked about business. Past that he came to where another small alley opened out to the street. He turned left and saw the cop car coming out of a three- point turn and then heading up the hill toward him. No siren, but the lights going; blue, red, white.
When he was out of sight of the cops Ray began to run, his steps echoing between the close- set houses, and he looked for a place to disappear. He passed two low stone houses and jogged left and pushed through a waist- high wood gate and followed a cement path green with mildew into the dark behind a three- story Victorian haunted house, the windows dark and empty. He stopped and listened but didn’t hear the cop car or see its lights. They might not even be looking for him, might not know he was involved in what had happened in the parking lot. He stood for a while in the dark, listening to faint sounds from other parts of town. Sirens, kids shouting, music from a house somewhere nearby. A party maybe. He took his time threading his way through an abandoned garden of flattened tomato plants, gray and dead in the heat. He stepped over a low fence of iron bars and came out into a small space between two massive hedges. It was full dark, the street in front of him lit orange- white by a streetlight.
He was standing in the shadow, trying to orient himself to the street he had parked on, when Michelle appeared two feet away. She was walking uphill, a book under her arm. Her head was down, and she looked lost in thought, her lips moving silently. He put his hand out but didn’t touch her or speak, just watched her pass slowly, inches away. If she had raised her eyes, turned her head, anything. If he had made a sound, cleared his throat, moved suddenly…