Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(89)

Lucas could see the intersection of Paradise Road coming up. “I’m at Paradise,” he said into the cell.

Deese said, “Take a right and keep going.”

“I’m going,” Lucas said. “Where am I going?”

“You’re going until I tell you to stop.”

Tremanty: “That road runs down to the airport and stops. Something’s got to happen in the next minute or so.”

Deese said, “You should be coming up to Harmon Avenue. Take another right. Tell me as soon as you do. The second you make the turn.”

Lucas came up to Harmon and said, “Taking the right on Harmon.”

“That’s the Hard Rock Hotel on your right. Go past it, you’ll see some grass and trees, and shit, and you’ll see a bridge with a red balloon tied to one end of the railing. Turn there onto the bridge and stop. Tell me when you have.”

Tremanty: “Tighten the box. Get tight. This is the tricky part. Cessna says there are some people in a drainage channel, farther down. He can’t see what’s going on.”

Lucas turned at the red balloon. “I’m on the bridge. I’ve stopped.”

Deese: “Get out, walk to the bridge railing on the driver’s side, throw the money off the bridge into the ditch. Get back in the car and drive away.”

“We’re tight on you, around the corner, ten seconds,” Tremanty said in Lucas’s ear.

Deese: “Throw the money, throw the money, motherfucker. Get out of the car and throw the money in the ditch.”

Lucas got out, carrying the bag. He looked down to the drainage channel, could see people a hundred yards away to his left. It looked like there was a homeless camp under the bridge—piles of trash, wrecked shopping carts, plastic sheets rigged as tents.

“Throw the money, motherfucker, then get back in the truck. We’re watching, Gloria’s got the gun in her mouth right now.”

Lucas threw the bag down into the channel and stepped back to the car but didn’t get in. A second later, he heard a harsh buzzing coming from under the bridge, and then an Army-green dirt bike rolled out from under it and buzzed up to the bag. The rider was wearing a helmet with a blacked-out faceplate. He glanced up at Lucas, snagged the bag with one hand, and roared off down the channel toward the homeless camp.

And then the bike and rider disappeared under the bridge.

Tremanty was in his ear. “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?”

“I’m going down to the bridge,” Lucas shouted into the phone.

He left the Porsche on the bridge, ran around the end of it and down a slanting retaining wall into the channel and toward the second bridge as another car came in from the left and two FBI agents jumped out and looked down at him. Lucas shouted, “He went under the bridge.”

Tremanty, in his ear: “That’s not a bridge, there’s no bridge there. Where’d he go?”

Lucas ran toward the camp and around a tent there made of a blue plastic tarp . . . and found himself looking into a tunnel.

An emaciated bearded man said, “Hey, man . . .”

“Where’d he go?” Lucas shouted. “Where’d the bike go?”

“What’d he do, man?” the thin man asked.

“Where’d the fuck he go?” Lucas shouted again, grabbing the man by his shirt and pulling him up on his tiptoes.

The man pointed a finger and said, “You can see those tracks? Almost ran over my ass.”


LUCAS LET HIM GO and ran in the direction he’d pointed, found the motorcycle tracks where they disappeared into the tunnel. There were sparks of light in the darkness, and Lucas turned to one of the FBI agents who was coming up behind and shouted, “Get on the radio and tell them where he went and which tunnel it is. See if they can figure where it comes out. You don’t have a flashlight, do you?”

“In the car.”

“Get it and throw it down to me. I’m heading into the tunnel.”

The agent broke away, and Lucas stepped into the darkness, which wasn’t quite absolute. As his eyes adjusted, he could see there were more people inside, spots of illumination from flashlights and from kerosene lanterns—old-timey glass-and-metal vessels that put out a golden glow stronger than many of the other sources.

Behind him, the agent ran down the sloping embankment and shouted, “I’m coming with you.”

He handed Lucas the flashlight from his car and had one of his own. The two of them ran into the tunnel, following the track of the motorbike.

The tunnel was dotted with lights and each one signified another camp. The floor of the tunnel was covered with sand, ankle-deep in spots, with the freestanding tents/tarps fastened to the walls. There was crap all over the place: food wrappers, McDonald’s cartons, old discarded blankets clogged with damp sand. The series of lights ended with a single kerosene lantern a hundred yards in and the heavyset woman who sat next to it with two shopping carts draped with a blue plastic tarp as a tent.

“You cops?”

Lucas grunted as he went by.

And she called out after him, “I think he shot somebody. I heard a shot. I think.”


LUCAS AND THE AGENT continued running down the tunnel; it had smelled bad from the beginning, but the stink got heavier as they ran. The agent pulled the tail of his jacket up over his mouth and nose, and called, “I think this is their toilet,” and Lucas nodded and pulled his shirt up over his nose. He took it down once, to see if he could talk to Tremanty on the handset, but the handset was dead.