I was about to cross the lot and go into the building to use the pay phone when Spanky’s motor coach came roaring down the road and barreled past us.
Hooker and I went slack jawed.
“Guess I gave him too much chain,” Hooker said.
“We really need to stick to racing,” I said to Hooker. “We’re total police-academy dropouts.”
Hooker rammed the SUV into drive and took off after the coach. “I prefer to think we’re on a learning curve.”
Rodriguez fishtailed to a stop at the end of the airport road. He made a wide left turn and headed for Speedway Boulevard.
An average motor coach is about 12 feet high, 9 feet wide, and 45 feet long. It weighs 54,500 pounds, travels on diesel, and has a turning radius of 41 feet. It’s not as complicated to drive as an eighteen-wheeler, but it’s big and unwieldy and requires some care when maneuvering.
Rodriguez wasn’t taking care. Rodriguez was overdriving the coach. It was rocking from side to side, sliding back and forth over the centerline of the two-lane road. The coach veered onto the shoulder, took out a residential mailbox, and swerved back onto the road.
“Good thing he can kill people,” Hooker said, dropping back, “because he sure as hell can’t drive.”
We followed the coach onto Speedway and held our breath as Rodriguez merged into traffic. Speedway is multiple lanes and heavily traveled. It was dusk, and cars were leaving the shopping center and seeking out fast-food restaurants for Sunday dinner. Ordinarily traffic on Speedway was orderly. Tonight, Rodriguez was causing havoc. He was straddling lines and oozing into adjoining lanes, scaring the heck out of everyone around him. He sideswiped a panel van and sent it careening across the road. A blue sedan hit the van and probably a few more cars were caught in the mess, but it was all behind us.
“Do you think he knows he hit that van?” I asked Hoo
ker.
“Doubtful. He’s slowed down, but he still can’t control the sway on the coach.”
We were coming up to a major intersection with traffic stopped at a light. The coach was cruising at 40 miles per hour, and I wasn’t seeing his brake lights.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “This isn’t good. We should have put a seat belt on Bernie.”
Hooker eased off the gas and increased the space between us.
“Brake!” I yelled at Rodriguez. Not that I expected him to hear me. I just couldn’t not yell it. “Brake!”
When his lights finally flashed, it was too late. He fishtailed and swung sideways, the right side of the coach scraping a truck hauling scrap metal. The right-front coach skin peeled away as if it had been cut with a can opener, four cars slammed into the left side, and the entire mess moved forward like an advancing glacier or lava flow or whatever bizarre disaster you could conjure up. There was one last crunch and the behemoth bus came to rest on top of a Hummer.
A headline flashed into my head: Bonnano Motor Coach Humps Hummer on Speedway Boulevard.
We had fifteen to twenty cars between the motor coach and us, not counting the cars directly involved in the crash, and cars were in gridlock behind us.
“I really want to run up there and take a look,” Hooker said, “but I’m afraid to get out of the car.”
“Yeah,” I said to him. “You’d probably have to sign autographs. And then the police would come and take you away and do a body-cavity search.”
I climbed out of the window and stood on the ledge to see better.
Caught in the glare of headlights and smoky road haze, a lone figure ran between wrecked cars. He had a chain and part of a handrail tethered to his ankle. Hard to tell from my vantage point if he was injured. He approached a car stopped at the intersection, yanked the driver’s door open, and wrenched the driver out of the car. He angled himself into the car and drove off with the chain caught in the door and the handrail clattering on the pavement. So far as I could see, no one stopped him or followed him. The driver of the stolen car stood in frozen shock. Sirens screamed in the distance.
I slipped back inside and took the seat next to Hooker. “Rodriguez carjacked a silver sedan and drove off into the sunset.”
“He did not.”
“Yep. He did. Still had the chain and handrail attached.”
Hooker burst out laughing. “I don’t know who’s more pathetic…him or us.”
I slouched in my seat. “I think we’d win that contest.”
Beans sat up and looked around. He gave a big Saint Bernard sigh, turned twice, and flopped down.