Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(9)

I climbed outside, lowered myself into the current, and got slapped flat against the van.

Up ahead, a few impossible feet, the passenger’s side of the Lincoln was bobbing in the current. I could see Dimebox Ortiz in the driver’s seat, up to his earlobes in water.

I didn’t so much walk as crawl along the side of the van.

My efforts spurred Lalu and Kiko into a new round of yel ing. I couldn’t make out words. Maybe they were arguing about whether they could blow me up without hurting Dimebox.

I kept the rope taut around my waist, inching out a step at a time, not even kidding myself that I could keep my footing. The side of the van was the only thing that kept me from being swept away.

The worst part was between the cars, where the water shot through like a ravine. When I slipped one foot into the ful current, it was like being hooked by a moving train. I was ripped off balance, pul ed into the stream. My head went under, and the world was reduced to a cold brown roar.

I held the rope. I got my head above water, found the fender of the Town Car, and clawed my way to the passenger’s side.

The Lincoln’s shotgun window was open, making a waterfal into the car.

Dimebox’s hands were tugging frantical y at something underwater. He was craning his ugly head to keep it above the water. His face was like a bank robber’s, his features al pantyhose-smeared, only Dimebox didn’t wear pantyhose.

“Can you move?” I yel ed.

He pushed at the wheel as if it were pinning his legs.

“Lalu!” he shouted. “Kiko! Push!”

Push?

Then I realized he wasn’t struggling to get free. He was attempting to start the ignition. He expected his cousins to wade out here and give him a jump start.

“You’re underwater, you moron!” I told him. “Give me your hand!”

“Fuck you, Navarre!” he screamed. “Get the f**k away!”

“Me or the river, Dimebox.”

“I ain’t going to jail!”

I didn’t understand his stubbornness. Dimebox was up on some stupid charge like assault. He was constantly going in and out of the slammer, constantly jumping bail, which I guess you can do when your bondsman is your brother-in-law. We’d bounty-hunted him plenty of times. I didn’t see why he was making such a fuss about a couple more weeks in the county lockup.

Another metal ic groan. The guardrail bent, and the Lincoln shifted a half inch downstream. My side of the car began to levitate. For a moment, a ton of Detroit steel balanced on the fulcrum, my armpits the only thing keeping it from flipping.

“Now!” I told Dimebox. “Over here now!”

“Mother of Shit!” Dimebox lunged in my direction, wrapped his arms around my neck, damn near pul ed me into the car with him.

A few more seconds—an eternity when Dimebox is hugging you—and I hauled him out the window. The Lincoln seemed to settle with both of us pressed against it, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. We inched our way back toward the van, the rain driving needles into my cheeks, Dimebox reeking a lovely combination of wet sewage and Calvin Klein. On shore, Lalu and Kiko yel ed wildly, brandishing their hand grenades.

We’d just reached the van when Dimebox’s Town Car rose on its side with a huge groan, flipped the guardrail, and crashed upside down in the creek bed, its body submerged, wheels spinning uselessly in the foam.

The guardrail bent like licorice. Our van would go next.

Erainya yel ed at me, “Throw them the rope!”

“What?”

“The cousins!” she yel ed. “Throw it to them!”

Only then did I realize that Lalu and Kiko weren’t waiting around to kil us. They wanted to help.

Forty minutes later, after Erainya’s van, Jem’s PlayStation, and a bagful of perfectly good spanakopita had been washed into oblivion down Rosil io Creek, Erainya and Jem and I sat in the Ortiz cousins’ living room, wrapped in triple-X terry cloth bathrobes, eating cold venison tamales and waiting for the police, who were coming to pick up Dimebox.

The guest of honor sat on the sofa, stripped to his jockey shorts and T-shirt, his ankles and wrists tied in plastic cuffs. He kept muttering cuss words, and Jem kept tel ing him he owed us quarters.

“You okay,” Kiko told me, smashing the top of my head with his paw. “Save Dimebox’s sorry ass. Put him in jail. Kiko not have t’sleep on the couch no more.”

“Won’t do you any good, Erainya,” Dimebox snarled. “Bounty money won’t help you worth shit, wil it?

We’re both screwed.”

“Shut up, Ortiz.” Her voice was harsher than I’d ever heard it. “Don’t curse in front of my son.”

“Stirman’s coming. He’s got plenty of friends in the county jail. You lock me up, you’re signing my death warrant.”

“I said shut up.”

I looked back and forth between them, wondering what I’d missed, or if my brain was stil waterlogged.

Then the name clicked.

“Stirman,” I said. “The escaped con on the news.”

“I ain’t staying in jail,” Dimebox said. “You know what’s good for you, you’l run, too.”

Erainya wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I remembered her reaction to the radio news, the intense, almost frantic look she’d given me.