He heard a vehicle approaching, but didn’t look up. Finding the brown ignition wire, he pulled it out of its harness and touched it to the two red wires.
The jeep started with a growl. Now, which way to go? Ritchie raised his arm and pointed right.
“You’d better be correct,” Crocker whispered, gunning the engine, the pistol now clutched in his right hand.
Almost immediately he was blinded by headlights that swung into the alley. He turned the wheel sharply right, causing the side of the jeep to graze the wall and sending up a shower of sparks that cascaded onto Ritchie’s head. The other vehicle passed, then screeched to a stop. He heard boots hitting the street, mags slamming into rifles, men shouting in Spanish.
“Alto! Alto!”
He turned sharply right onto Avenida los Cedros and floored the accelerator. The jeep swerved and skidded past another military truck. The driver stared at Crocker with big saucer eyes, then ducked as Crocker opened fire, shattering the side window.
Bullets sailed over Crocker’s head as he shifted into fourth and sped past the entrance to the country club through a red traffic light, then burned serious rubber onto another street, then another and another, and stopped, breathless.
Ritchie moaned something that sounded like a question. Fishing a phone from his pocket, Crocker punched Neto’s number.
“It’s Crocker,” he said, out of breath.
“Where the fuck are you?” Neto asked urgently. “What happened? Where’s Ritchie?”
“He’s with me. He’s injured. We need to get him to an emergency room ASAP!”
“What’s your current location?” Neto asked.
“I’m in a stolen military jeep. I’m about a mile or so west of the country club.”
“Use the GPS on your phone and give me the name of the street.”
Crocker checked as sirens screamed in the distance and echoed off the walls around him. “We’re on Calle Garcia, near Avenida Cuello.”
“All right, turn onto Cuello,” Neto said. “Take the first left. There’s a restaurant on the corner. Pull into the parking lot. Find a dark corner in the back. I’ll meet you there in five.”
Chapter Eleven
Despite all these lucky breaks, why do I still feel that I got screwed somehow?
—Woody Allen
The light from the fluorescent bulbs burned Crocker’s weary, bloodshot eyes. He leaned on the edge of a gurney at a comfortable angle for his aching back while a nurse with thick glasses used cotton swabs dipped in alcohol to clean the blood off his chest. His mind shifted to the golf course, to the meeting with Rappaport, to the fevered drive in the jeep, in no rational order, picking up speed. A voice in the background screamed, Why did you do it?
He didn’t have an answer. The green curtain parted and Mancini stuck in his head, looking like a cartoon criminal with his neck and face covered with a dense stubble of dark whiskers. He said, “Boss, they’re about to wheel Ritchie into surgery. He wants to see you.”
“Where?”
The nurse tried to stop Crocker from pulling on a light blue robe and following Manny out of the room, but she failed. They trotted down a yellow hall to a little room where Ritchie sat in a wheelchair with a white bandage covering half his face.
“Ritchie?” Crocker whispered. “How’s it hanging?”
He opened his left eye, tried to smile, mouthed the words “It’s still hanging,” then pointed to a yellow legal pad and pen on the table to Crocker’s right.
“You’ll be fine,” Crocker said as he gave it to him and noticed Ritchie’s dried blood all over his hand. Hiding it behind his back, he said, “There’s no major structural or neurologic damage. They’ll patch you up, fix that ugly mug of yours, and you’ll end up looking better than before.”
Ritchie’s concentration was focused on the pad and what he was slowly writing. He held it up for Crocker to read. The letters were thin, long, and slanted to the right. They read: “I saw Alizadeh, the Falcon. He was in the house.”
Crocker felt a sudden burst of energy. “Alizadeh? You sure it was him?”
Ritchie nodded and attempted to mouth the word “Yes.” He wrote, “I’d know his ugly face anywhere.”
Crocker wanted to hug him, but only said, “That’s great, Ritchie. Very important. Good job.”
A doctor and orderly in white jackets arrived to wheel Ritchie away. He quickly scribbled one last message, which he handed to Crocker. It read: “Tell Monica we have to postpone the wedding, if she still wants me like this.”
“I’ll tell her, Ritchie. Don’t worry about anything. You’ll be fine.”