Harboring a Criminal

The car shot out the junction on Slint like a pistol slug, cornering just in time to avoid two delivery trucks in convoy delivering tobacco leaves to the manufactory there. Seven in the morning was a busy time round here as the factories tried to get a few good hours in before the day really heated up. Miguel sat with Rico in the back and Roberto occasionally glimpsed the expressions on their faces, both tense but for different reasons. Mostly though Bob was concentrating on the vehicle they were chasing. His Buick was a more powerful car than the Ford 3 but the driver could corner like a demon racer. Desperation was making him careless though and Bob thought he could guess the direction they were headed.  

Sure as hurricane season, the Ford span around the intersection on Geraci and began to speed up as the road descended to the waterfront. Now this could go either way.  If the driver was local to these docks he might have some route, some pattern or some shed that he could sneak in that would confuddle his pursuers.  But, and this is what Bob sincerely hoped, maybe he was simply driving here out of desperation and the need for escape. He might then actually be leading his enemies into his lair where, cornered like a marsh rice rat, he would attempt a battle. With Miguel here and Rico for bait, this would surely be a gain for them, so long as the guy didn't bite it before he could cough up Lucie's whereabouts.

The Ford turned right along a pier, heading out to sea but Bob looked around and saw what was intended, the pier was connected to a host of others and there were many options to exit from.  He put the car in reverse and backed up a bit to about halfway between the more likely options.  

'What you thinking?' Asks Miguel.

'Well, I'm thinking he can't go too fast on those duckboards. I'm gonna see which way he's headed and come around to meet him.'  Roberto put the car in gear and began speeding up and around the piles of nets heading North the way they had come previously.  The driver on the jetty noticed and tried to reverse back and around onto a different gangway but wet wood is not a happy medium for narrow tires and the rear driver's wheel slooshed right off and left the car just dangling there. Although a front wheel drive, the front wheels could not have been gaining enough traction to pull the body back on and up because the engine revved but still the carriage went nowhere. Miguel threw Rico out across his lap and followed the hapless idiota, gun pulled ready to shoot.

No sooner than Miguel's shoe leather hit the dirt but a hole appeared in the tailgate of Bob's shiny silver caboose, followed an instant later by the crack of gunfire that had sent it there. Miguel flattened to the ground as Bob threw himself into the passenger foot well.  Rico, who had spent his life making very few decisions that counted, began running away from Miguel.  The man terrified him so much that Rico used the opportunity afforded to escape his clutches, not making particularly sound judgement however as the path he choose led him right out onto the exposed pier.  The driver of the Ford meanwhile did not see him as he was too busy trying to body-push the back of his car back up onto the wooden planking.  But that meant, realised Miguel, that the gunshots were coming from someone else.

A second car roared out of a warehouse 400 yards along the dockside, the owner of the rifle standing up and aiming from the sun roof.  The car headed out and away from this sorry mess. Miguel yelled and scrambled to get back in the car, Roberto making way for him up front as he gunned the engine and pulled away from the quay.  They sped away after the rifle wagon leaving Rico to his fate with the driver of the Ford.  This new car had at least four men on board and, if they didn't have Lucie in there somewhere with them, they sure as hell knew where to find her.  Not for one second did they believe Lucie wasn't being cared for - so much as gangsters could care for a toddler without her mother - she was far to important to them in this game.

As they followed the dust cloud up the rising road to Wesley Chapel, Roberto saw Rico in his rearview dive inelegantly off the walkway and swim away across the harbor.