Little Elvises Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Fifteen minutes. I’m in Blitzen.”
    “That’s so cute,” Louie said. “Marge try to give you Dydie?”
    The headlights were blinding. I angled the mirror down and said, “See you there,” and then dropped the phone onto the passenger seat.
    And the car rammed me.
    I was taking yet another sharp curve, to the right this time, and the impact caught the left rear fender, swinging my car halfway around. I spun the wheel in the direction I’d been shoved and gunned the accelerator, and the car jumped the curb on theright and plowed eight or ten feet up an ivy-covered slope with a Norman castle on top of it. For a moment, I was afraid I was going to roll, but I kept accelerating and cranking the wheel to the right, and then I was heading back down through the ivy to the street, and the car that had hit me was already a hundred yards past me.
    But it was turning around, making an ungainly three-point turn, and I could see why it had hit me so hard. The damn thing was a Humvee.
    Since I’d essentially made a U-turn, I was facing back uphill, toward DiGaudio’s house. If I’m going to be chased, I’d rather be chased uphill, where I can get some muscle out of the eight-cylinder Detroit behemoth of an engine Louie wedged into my innocent-looking white Toyota. I downshifted and punched the accelerator again, leaving rubber on the street, the tail of the car whipping around as I straightened up and followed the yellow cones of my headlights back up the hill I’d just come down. A couple of mailboxes whipped past, and then it was a tight crook, almost a hairpin, to the left, and there was nothing to the right except fifty or sixty feet of vertical chaparral, and I found myself grateful that they hadn’t rammed me there, or I’d be waving at coyotes as I plummeted past them, hoping to land in somebody’s swimming pool.
    Over the sound of my engine, I heard the souped-up roar of the Humvee, eating the distance between us, and its headlights briefly swung into my mirror and then out again as the road took another turn, right this time, and I ran it as fast as I could without losing the pavement and fishtailing hopelessly through the flimsy guardrail and out into space, hoping that the Humvee’s high center of gravity would force it to slow down, and then there was a hump in the road and I was briefly airborne and even before my tires hit the asphalt again, I saw the bright lights behind me.
    Closing fast.
    I own three Glock nine-millimeter automatics. They were neatly boxed up, wrapped in oilcloth and safe from rust, inside the storage lockers I keep in Burbank, Hollywood, and down near the airport. I had an electric screwdriver with me, but it was in the trunk, and it seemed unlikely that I’d be able to locate an outlet even if I managed to get the damn thing out without getting killed.
    Tight to the right again, scraping the guardrail this time, fighting the urge to brake, and instead dropping the car into second as the road took a dip down, the San Fernando Valley glimmering off to my right, and suddenly on the left a little street called Carol Way opened up—a little earlier than I’d anticipated—and I slammed on the brakes, spun the wheel left, and jammed the accelerator again, a half-formed image of a driveway assembling itself in my mind even as I passed the yellow diamond-shaped sign that said DEAD END .
    Carol Way was steep and narrow, just a series of drop-dead curves and suicide switchbacks that snaked along the side of the hill, a testimonial to the greed of some contractor who wasn’t going to let a virtual cliff-face prevent him from carving out a few lots. The Humvee wasn’t in my mirror yet, but I could see its lights sweeping the brush as it made the turns behind me, stabbing right and left through the darkness like a giant’s flashlight. They’d slowed a little now, having seen the dead end sign. They probably figured either that I’d made a bad turn or was planning to back into some driveway