Free Mortality Bridge by Steven R. Boyett Page B

cabbie slows down, suddenly in no hurry to overtake the Franklin. “Listen,” she says. “There’s one place where he won’t have to force an entrance. The old Belmont Tunnel where Beverly, Glendale, and Second all come together. It’s a portal where the old Pacific Electric Railway used to go to ground. The old subway from the Twenties.”
    “It connects to the Red Line?”
    “It connects to the same thing the Red Line connects to.” The cabbie swerves around a wide-eyed mendicant standing in the middle of the road holding high a cloudy squirt bottle and a filthy rag with no more thought than if he were a roadcone. “Same thing all tunnels connect to if you know how to work em.”
    The light at Second Street turns green but the Franklin still sits motionless.
    “Why’s he letting us catch up to him?”
    “He knows he can’t shake me so he’s about to push back.” The cabbie catches his eye in the rearview. “This might be rough.” They’re coming up on the Franklin now.
    Niko throttles the strap. “I’m holding on.”
    “You’ll need to hold on to more than that.”
    Ahead of them the twelve-cylinder engine revs and the tires shriek and the Black Taxi hangs a left at Second and howls down the night before them. The Checker Cab follows, baying tires blending with the mournful wail of Jimi’s ghostnotes on the haunted radio as they pursue the Franklin down the throat of the Second Street tunnel. Glossy tiled walls pale orange and wetlooking in the sodium lights.
    The tunnel dims, the throat constricts. Niko starts to ask the cabbie to turn on the headlights but stops when he realizes he can’t even see her in front of him. Her everpresent cigarillo glow has vanished. Peripheral dashboard light is gone as well. The pressure of the seat beneath him and the hardcase against his hand his only reassurance of the solid real. The only light the twin red taillights up ahead.
    They brighten into burning suns and the assault begins.
     
    CHRISTMAS MORNING AND Niko dumped his stupid Mr. Mechano to grab the just-unwrapped Sears & Roebuck guitar from Van’s hand and his mother told him You should be ashamed of yourself while little Van looked too bewildered to even cry.
    Niko bathed in the light of his past thinks Oh you lousy motherfuckers.
    Jemma’s face when she came home to their ratty little Hollywood apartment to find him drunk on the kitchen floor pathetically piecing together blue shards of the Cookie Monster jar that fell when Niko pulled it from the top shelf to use her emergency cash to buy himself another fifth.
    Even knowing these little videos star someone Niko murdered long ago he feels the turning worm of shame for who he was.
    Stephen’s sleepy smile in the motel room holding up the hypodermic and pushing out the air and Niko fixed already and sitting on the floor with his back against the wall halfnodding off saw how big the dose was and said Hey as Stephen slid the needle underneath his tongue and shot and sank back in the chair and stared at the ceiling and stopped breathing. And Niko took the dead man’s rig and smack and cash and left and never told a soul.
    The unremitting truth. Well hell with you. I can weather this. I already did.
    Niko smiling meanly in the quiet early morning as he slid Van’s cheap guitar behind the right rear tire of Dad’s new Ford because last night his father told him Nikkoleides your brother doesn’t mind you playing it sometimes but it still belongs to him now give it back.
    He shuts his eyes but the images still come.
    The strain behind Jem’s smile as she clutched tight his hand and slid into the little CAT scan. Niko smiling back while his demon voice said Take a bow, buddy pal, ’cause this is your work.
    Faces gone these many years now, withered in the transmutating earth. He can smell Dad’s Old Spice, see the defiant tilt of Van’s jaw, hear Mom’s voice across a continent of wire, You were there when he died and now you won’t come home to