The Long Fall by Lynn Kostoff Page B

cartons of Camels and a couple bags of Almond Joys to Frankie and then the paperwork from his last meeting with Richard. Frankie took a distressingly short time looking over the stuff. There was also a lot of slow head-shaking.
    “It’s straight,” he’d said finally.
    “No holes?” Jimmy asked.
    “None that matter.” Frankie had gathered up his Camels and candy bars and raised his hand, signaling to the guard that the meeting was over.
    Familia,
he’d said, shaking his head one more time before he left.
    A master plan, Jimmy is thinking on the drive back, that’s what he needs. Not some scrawny, mewling runt of an idea, but a full-fledged master plan with all the accessories.
    First, though, he has to make a quick detour to an Auto Zone for a quart of thirty-weight and some tranny fluid, replenishment for the beast he holds the pink slip on, which today, as usual, is burning one and leaking the other.
    When he gets back on Route 10, Jimmy thinks he sees a flash of orange in the rearview, but it’s not there when he checks a second time.
    The sun’s coming straight through the windshield and baking the cab of the truck. Jimmy had tried wedging a piece of cardboard into the skeleton of the visor, whose insides had dry-rotted away, but after a half hour of rattling and flapping, the cardboard had blown off and out the window.
    Phase one of the master plan pretty much comes down to Jimmy trying to stay out of Ray Harp’s way until he can come up with something that will net him some quick cash without landing him in Perryville Correctional again.
    Phase two is finding some way to get his inheritance back or, barring that, making his brother pay one way or another for what he did.
    Jimmy’s still working on phase three.
    When he checks the rearview this time, it’s definitely there. A bright splash of orange.
    It’s there, and it’s closing.
    Jimmy, he knows how it’s supposed to work. He’s seen all the movies, the action flicks, the hero tailed by the bad guys, then suddenly kicking it in and rocketing out of there, the bad guys cranking it up, too, high-speed-pursuit time, lots of smoking and screeching tires, blaring car horns, sharp cornerings, narrow misses with buses and trucks, running red lights, civilian cars swerving and tipping over, the hero redlining it, the bad guys blasting away at him, Jimmy, like everyone else, able to summon up all the choreographed chaos and mayhem, the fancy stunt maneuvers and all their variations, until the hero either loses the bad guys through a stroke of daring and luck, or the bad guys screw it up and crash into something in a ball-of-flame finale.
    Jimmy knows how it’s supposed to work, but when he presses the gas, the Chevy starts shuddering, the transmission slipping into a long torturous whine before shifting up, and his breakaway move is a half-assed forty-seven miles per, barely two clicks above the minimum speed limit for Route 10. He glances in the mirror, hunches over the wheel, and keeps the truck pointed east.
    The orange El Camino pulls into the space behind him. Newt Deems gives the horn a short tap.
    Jimmy helplessly watches the 51st Avenue exit flip by. Even if he could run, he’d still have a hard time losing Deems. Not in Phoenix, he thinks. The streets in the city and every one of its subdivisions are laid out in a rigid right-angled grid. Eight hundred square miles of boxes. One, that’s it, just one damn street in the whole town, Grant Avenue, that runs at a diagonal.
    Newt Deems pulls the Camino into the left lane and even with Jimmy’s pickup. Without looking at Jimmy, Newt hooks his hand over the roof and points at the sign for the next exit. Newt then punches the Camino into the right lane. Jimmy follows him down the ramp and a half block later into a dirt lot next to a roadside fruit-and-vegetable stand.
    Newt Deems gets out and stretches, then walks over to the produce stand. Jimmy stays in the truck, trying to keep the engine at