Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
He was back in Long Beach, in dreamlike Los Angeles, ambling up an empty sidewalk on northbound Ocean Boulevard on a Sunday morning, and there she was.
A 1967 Shelby Mustang GT-500. Satin nickel paint job, deep-set, shark-profile grill, and sculpted side panels, parked at the curb. She was beautiful.
He was Randall "Memphis" Raines, dark hair, medium build, black turtleneck, black leather duster, jeans, boots--at twenty-three, the best car boost in Southern California.
They were made for each other.
"You gonna steal her or kneel down to her and pray?" someone said.
The voice came from the street. Memphis turned at once to see another car rolling up--a 1990 Ford Thunderbird. Ice blue, chrome racing wheels, blackout glass, thundering bass in the trunk, its driver grinning bone-white teeth at the open passenger-side window. It was Atley Jackson.
Black, handsome, late twenties, jocular, black T-shirt, black leather jacket, black sunglasses. In the cars black leather interior he looked like an angel from the dark side out on parole, cruising around sunny L.A. and seeing the sights.
You gonna steal her or kneel down to her and pray?
The T-bird's power window went up like a curtain closing, and the car rolled away in the downtown direction. Atley wasnt waiting for any kind of answer from Memphis, really. No need. They knew each other all too well.
Memphis checked the street in both directions. It was deserted, even for Sunday morning. He pulled a small "slim jim" from his coat (never left home without it), a handy door-opening tool popular among uniformed police officers, AAA service representatives--and yes, car thieves.
He slimmed the door panel, popping the lock from underneath the button, opened the door, and got into the bucket seat behind the wheel. He ran a cordless screwdriver over the dress panels around the steering column, thus revealing the ignitions lock cylinder. Finally he pressed a small, socketlike device known as a "gizmo" into the key slot, and with a twist of the wrist, the 320-bhp 289 V-8 engine rumbled like a jackhammer.
Whats this--no seat belts? You could get a ticket for that. Oh, well. He pushed a cassette tape into the deck, and Bruce Springsteens "Ramrod" wailed from the coaxials.
And then he floored it.
Tires screaming, engine roaring, the smell of asphalt in the morning--these were a few of his favorite things. He had the needle halfway around the speed dial, halfway to the charge of super-satisfaction and well-being known locally as an Ocean Boulevard speed rush. Here came the sun, and the birdies were flyin. Welcome to L.A.! Have a nice day!
Two unmarked South Bureau cop cars briefly spotted Memphis jetting through some intersection--too quick to tell which one. They slapped magnetic bubble-flashers on their roofs and called in a Code Three (emergency, use lights and siren)--pursuing a 510 (speeding vehicle), possible 503 (stolen), traveling south on O.B.
Memphis checked them in the rearview, carved a right, and punched the accelerator again. He raced the Shelby toward the Pacific Ocean, down the early-morning, harbortown streets now echoing with the woeful siren cry.
Turning north again, he encountered a two-cycle delay backed up at the light and gutterballed around it, skating the shoulder. A new pursuit car slipped into his wake--the South Bureau operations dispatch was broadcasting a chase report on an open channel, and now every cruiser in the harbor area was in on the act, closing the net.
The trap itself was set for an on-ramp to the Terminal Island Freeway. They herded him there, never doubting the suspects intentions to outrun them and then stow the car under a bridge or in the parking deck of a mall in the back-country suburbs. It would wait there, tucked between mothers minivans, for the truck from the chop shop to come.
Traffic control had a detour in progress and two aging cruisers nose to nose like a gate in the ramp. A news traffic copter was on the scene too, ready to put the live feed on TV.
A lucky cruiser met him head-on and flashed its headlights, spooking him in exactly the intended direction. He swerved onto the entrance ramp, pedal to the metal, aimed point-blank at the roadblock. Uniformed officers scattered as he gunned it, then at the last possible second, he bailed out--banged the gearshift into neutral and yanked the parking brake, putting her into a spin, popping her up the curb, and flipping her over the guardrail and into a side roll in the path of something with an air horn, coming on like a locomotive.
He screamed--
--and woke up in a cold sweat.
It was a dream. Only a dream!
The nightmare was still to come.
