Closure
CLOSURE
Looming Out of the Blackness Like an Insane Ghost, He Let Fly his 200-mph Missiles
THE COUNTY ROAD starts at Castaic, south of the Grapevine, and wanders toward the coast. It's a rider's dream as it leaves the orchards west of the junction and skirts the edge between the mountains and the Santa Clara valley.
As Nick Hernandez straightened up from a third-gear, uphill corner, he could see the narrow ribbon of blacktop stretch out like a lazy snake in the early morning sunlight. There were over a hundred corners from Castaic to Montalvo, where Nick drove a truck for the Orange Growers Association. He made them every day, each way, unless he came home by the south road across the valley. Nick didn’t use that one much— it was longer, and by the time his evening classes at Ventura College were
over, he was too tired to go around, even on the Norton. It had been the hard way to get an education, especially when you added Vietnam to the score, but now it was almost over.
He dropped over the crest, eased into fourth, and crouched as the ’61 Norton thumper built up the revs. The sun felt good on his back as he banked left for a sweeping top-gear bend. Driving straight ahead, Nick waited as long as he dared, braked hard and clutched into third, and then into second for a sharp, reverse camber right-hander. He could feel the Dunlop starting to drift as the shortstroke double-knocker pounded out the torque. He fed in more lock, sensing the back end crawling away, and then shifted his weight smoothly as the road snaked back toward the valley floor.
JARD DE VILLE
“Whoo, boy,” Nick grunted loudly. “That’s enough to keep the adrenalin pumping until noon.” He needed it with a day which stretched from sunrise to 10 at night. The spotless old Manx was his only pleasure these days. The hills, the tight bends and the fast, demanding ride at the start and the finish of each day gave him a chance to unwind from the grind of working his way through design school.
Nick was the only driver at the packing house who rode a bike to work. There had been some wisecracks when he showed up just out of high school on his oily, old, cast iron Beezer Single, but that had been nearly five years ago. Only Cecil Chavez was left of that old bunch. The other drivers were new, though most of them had been there when he got back from Saigon last July.
Load by load, the day’s work melted away as Nick and Cecil shuttled their trucks back and forth between the grove and the packing house. Shortly after noon, Nick, running empty, spotted Cecil’s Dodge coming toward him with a full load. As they closed, he could see Cecil waving at him—it looked as though he was holding something in his hand. He was. It was an orange he had grabbed from one of the boxes. With a broad grin, he playfully snapped the fruit at Nick’s oncoming truck.
The young driver jerked his head to the left as the cab exploded in a spray of glass, orange pulp and juice, blinding him momentarily. The GMC lurched erratically as Nick fought it to the edge of the ditch before bringing it under control. When he finally blinked his eyes open, he could see a plate-sized hole in the windshield, the seat covered with a sticky paste, and the back glass missing completely.
“What the hell are you trying to do?” he yelled, as Cecil came running up.
“Nick, are you OK?” Cecil had lost all his cool. “I didn’t know it would do that,” he stammered. He leaned weakly against a fender, looking at the ruined windshield, shaking his head. “It was an orange,” he half whispered. “How did it do all that?”
“Cecil, how fast were you going when you threw that damn thing?”
“About 60. Why?”
“So was I. That adds up to 120 miles an hour. How hard did you throw it?”
Cecil looked down in embarrassment. “Hard enough,” he admitted. “I wanted it to reach you.”
“Well, it did. At about 170 miles an hour. Another foot to the right and you’d have taken my head off.”
“Geez, I’m sorry, Nick,” the older man muttered sheepishly. “I never saw anything like that before.” Gradually a broad grin broke through his worried look and he started to laugh.
“What’s so funny now?” Nick growled, throwing his soaked handkerchief away.
“Wait’ll the boss sees that truck. He’ll be mad—Oh! he’s gonna be one mad Anglo.”
After his final exam that evening, Nick found a Triumph parked outside the Beachcomber’s, so he pulled alongside and went in. An old friend, Terry Dryer, motioned him to a booth. “Eating or drinking?” Terry called out.
“Some of both,” Nick said, holding up one finger to the barmaid. “I didn’t take time for lunch.”
“Aren’t you finished at the college?” “About 15 minutes ago,” Nick told him.
“What are your plans now that you’re through?” Terry asked.
“I’ve got a job lined up in Santa Barbara. I’ll start as design assistant for Harrison Brothers.”
“It beats herding trucks, huh?”
“You know it,” Nick sighed. He took a long pull on a mug of beer. “Been working my tail off since we were in high school. I’m gonna live a little now.” After he finished eating, they drank a pair of beers and rode back toward Santa Paula on the way to Castaic. Nick and Terry eased through the moonlight along the river, enjoying the ride. On the far edge of Santa Paula, Terry motioned to his tank and pointed to a service station ahead. Two cars were parked in the drive, but no one seemed to be around. Terry pulled alongside a pump, blipped his engine and stopped. Nick cut his switch in the drive, but still no one came out of the station. They could hear loud voices from the lube area but couldn’t make out what was being said. Terry got off, lifted the Triumph onto its center stand and started to count the coins fished from his Levis when a shot sounded from the station.
They spun around to see a man stagger from the service center, a bloody stain spreading across his chest. As he fell, a woman ran to him, screaming. “He’s dead! Oh God, you’ve killed him! You’ve killed him!”
Before either of the startled riders could move, a short, heavy man stepped around the corner, with a pistol in his hand. He pointed it between them. “Stay put,” he ordered coolly.
As they froze, he focused on the woman. “I told him I’d shoot him if he tried to stop me.” He grabbed her roughly by the arm, and half pulling, half lifting, forced her into the back seat of one of the cars. “You’re my insurance, baby,” he said, tossing a money bag on the seat. Keeping the riders covered, he slipped under the wheel. The woman, still screaming, grabbed his hair, tearing at his face with her nails. He swore and twisted free, lifted the gun and clipped her across the temple. Without a sound, she collapsed to the floor of the car. Quickly, he swung back. “I’ll shoot anybody who tries to come after me,” he promised, “and I can kill her before the cops get to me. You tell ’em that.”
When the car pulled away, Nick and Terry sprinted to the fallen man. Nick checked his breathing as Terry went to the phone. The receiver was torn from the wall. “He’s alive!” Nick cried, as Terry told him about the phone. He hesitated for a few seconds and then started for the Norton. “Call an ambulance!” he shouted over his shoulder, pointing to the lights of a liquor store in the next block, “and the cops. I’ll see where he’s going.”
“What’ll you do?” Terry wanted to know.
Nick shook his head as he hit his switches and ran and bumped the Norton. As Nick banked onto the highway and headed up the valley toward Castaic, the big Single rattled the windows of the shacks which lined the road. The street lamps flickered by as he shifted into second. When the last cross street vanished behind him, Nick caught third gear and crouched low. For a while he feared that the car had doubled back on a side street. Nick shut his lights off as soon as he passed the railroad tracks and the junkyard. He was surprised how well he could see in the moonlight, though at speed it would have been impossible but for his constant practice on the road.
The powerful machine bellowed through the darkness, using all the road in one gear and then another, as the rider worked to keep it on the cams. He thought he had lost them and was ready to turn back when he saw the flicker of taillights far ahead. Nick turned up the wick and settled down to work in earnest. The lights showed again as the driver tapped the brakes once more, setting up for a turn. Slowly the realization came to the cyclist that the driver was good. He was really moving.
Screwing it on a little tighter, in a full road-race crouch, Nick moved up a little on each turn. The lights grew closer. A beetle ripped across his cheek, causing him to flinch violently. Suddenly he was afraid. An oncoming car slewed crazily when the motorcycle loomed before the startled driver. Nick swallowed hard, wishing that his heart would quit pounding as he continued the attack. He used all his skill, fighting not only for the woman’s life, but for his own now. The cool, moist air from the ocean poured around him, but sweat trickled down his ribs, and his hands were slippery on the grips.
The Manx caught the line and drifted out behind the car at a couple of hundred yards. The machine wasn’t breathing hard, though Nick was. A house-sized boulder appeared suddenly and vanished as quickly. “Oh God,” he whispered, “if I blow it in these rocks, they’ll swear I was stoned for sure.”
He misjudged for a split-second rounding a curve and had a quick, terror-filled view of the high edge before he brought it back. As the road curved off the hillside, Nick caught a pair of dips in quick succession. He clung like a monkey, clearing the second one completely. He cringed when his twin-cam engine howled with the loss of load. But the Norton kept pounding away, pushing the miles behind him.
(Continued on page 69)
Continued from page 65
As they bellowed out onto the openrange country, a long series of large, darker shadows flickered irregularly past. “Cattle!” Then they were behind him. The insane chase continued with the vehicles edging closer to the river, following the contour of the land toward the narrows of the valley. As Nick peered after the fleeing car, its brake light blinked several times in succession and then stayed on. It was braking hard. The rider pulled in his clutch and used the massive brakes of the road racer to kill off his momentum. As the car lost its speed, it powered hard right on a gravel road, splashing through the shallow ford to reach the south valley road.
The Norton pulled up at the turnoff. Slipping into neutral, Nick sat waiting, blipping the throttle till certain which way the car was going. It turned east, going the same direction as before but across the narrowing valley. The rider sat undecided. What should he do? How long could he ride the darkness at speed without going down? If he stopped to call the police, they wouldn’t be able to pick up the trail in time. Could they even get the woman before the gunman carried out his threat? He would have time enough to shoot her in a road block.
Nick took a deep breath and shook his head to clear it. “Dammit, Hernandez,” he cried aloud, “think!” Then in a flash he had his answer. Leaning down, Nick scooped up four or five egg-shaped stones, dropped them into the left pocket of his jacket, and thundered off.
In a short time he was parallel to the speeding car, but still on the north road. Running straight, the Norton continued to shatter the quietness of the night until he passed the 120 mark, still building revs, leaving the car lights far behind. Nick felt sure that the driver hadn’t seen him. The bike bellowed through Castaic, past the cafe, right onto the highway, grinding the pipe against the blacktop. It blasted across the bridge and cut back on the south road, heeled over like Duke’s Manx at Grosvenor’s Bridge. Nick ran up to red line in the gears, shifting into second at 58 and third at 83. He crouched again, feet well back, butt against the hump, winding down the straight chute. Far ahead he could see the lights of the oncoming car, the only one on the road. The lights danced crazily over the rough, patchy surface. Releasing the left grip, Nick fished the stones out of his pocket and got set. He banked slightly to stay centered on the road, wondering what the hell he was doing there. He had laid his neck on the line enough in the Army. Almost reflexively, the throttle started to close. But then he could picture the woman slumping to the floor of the car when the guy had pistol-whipped her. He had to try.
It all happened too fast for the kidnapper to get out of the way. It must have seemed as if he had gotten clear and was all alone on the deserted road. Nick was lined up perfectly when he came down the center line, looming like an insane ghost out of the blackness. At the last instant, with death filling his goggles, he sliced right just enough to clear the onrushing car and whipped the stones with a low side-arm pitch. He heard the rip of metal above their combined sounds, sensed the changed engine pitch, and then the great, tearing noise of a car out of control at speed. The closure was better than 200 miles an hour, and it was over that fast. Before he could brake the motorcycle and burn a half circle, the car had plowed through the tules along the river shore, blown both front tires, and rolled up on one side.
It was too late to be careful, so Nick leaped on the side of the wrecked car to pry open a rear door. He hauled the groggy woman out and dragged her to a ditch. “Stay here,” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure that she heard him. When no one moved from the car, he cautiously returned to peer into the front seat. It was a shambles. The man was jackknifed over the seatbelt, his leg bent at an impossible angle. The gun wasn’t anywhere in sight. He was still breathing as Nick leaned in to check, and as he lifted him out, the man moaned faintly. With a curious, detached part of his mind, Nick noticed that the stones had all entered the grill, where he intended. None of them had hit high at all.
Terry looked over at Nick after the ambulance was gone. “What did you use on them, a 105 howitzer?” He shook his head with a grin. “I can’t even find the radiator—it must be rammed back under the engine. The block’s cracked wide open and the carb was lying in the middle of the road a hundred yards down the valley. How did you think of this?”
Nick walked slowly to the Manx and leaned wearily against his bike. “You’d never believe me.” He lifted the machine from its stand and staggered, almost falling as he folded it back. “I'll tell you about it tomorrow.”
