Stolen Prey

was imagining himself in the new life when he got to his apartment door. He put the key in, pushed it open, and the Mexican hit him in the back. They’d been in the apartment across the hall and they took him down in a heap.
    Turicek was strong, and he fought back, tried to scream, or shout, but managed nothing but a gargling sound as they rolled across the floor. One of the Mexicans had his arms and legs wrapped around him, while the other one stumbledover them, punching him in the face, then picked up a plaster lamp and whacked Turicek on the forehead and everything went gray. He heard them cursing, heard the door close, knew, vaguely, that he had to resist, but couldn’t make anything work, felt them rolling him, his arms pinned, his hands taped, then his feet.
    They picked him up, like a six-foot cigar, slung him over their shoulders, looked out in the hall, and then they were running, away from the entrance to the fire stairs. They went down the stairs, then they were outside and Turicek, coming back now, felt himself folded at the waist, and thrown in the trunk of a car. He heard two doors slam, and the car began rolling.
    T URICEK COULD feel himself bleeding, was sick with the impact of the lamp, but knew in a cold corner of his mind, just as Kline had, that he was a dead man, but not for a while—the time it took them to cut him to pieces.
    When they’d thrown him in the trunk, they’d folded him at the waist, with his hands behind him. He realized then, cramped as he was, that he could touch the back of his feet, and the tape that bound them together. He tore at the tape, felt fingernails ripping, but caught an edge, and ripped at it frantically, now pulling whole fingernails loose….
    As he did it, he thrashed around, and saw a green-white glow, a small T-shaped plastic handle, with a pictogram of a stick-figure man jumping out of the trunk of a car. An emergency trunk release. The Mexicans must not have known it was there.
    It was, as bad luck would have it, near his head, not far fromhis eyes, but he couldn’t lever himself far enough up to catch it with his teeth. So he pulled at the tape, and he thrashed, and tried to turn around, thought he would break his neck, but finally one foot came free, though the other was wedged against something, and it took another ten seconds to wiggle it free, and another long two minutes to turn himself around.
    Now he felt hope for the first time. The car suddenly slowed and pitched down, going down a hill, and he got a foot up near the emergency release, cocked himself as best he could: if he kicked it loose, he’d throw his legs over the back of the trunk, and then throw his body backward.
    He took a breath, and did it: kicked the release. Nothing happened. He kicked it again, and again, then thought to hook it with his toe, and pulled, and then the trunk popped an inch. He kicked it open, and threw his legs out the back, and heaved himself out of the car.
    The car was traveling thirty or forty miles an hour, and he hit with a terrific impact, unable to protect his head, felt and even heard a shoulder break, was clouted in the face, rolled forever and forever, bouncing; it was like being beaten by a bare-knuckle boxer, without defense, simply pounded, until finally … he stopped.
    Still alive.
    He heard the noise, the screaming noise, looked wildly back and at the very last instant realized that he’d thrown himself into the middle of a freeway ramp, and though he didn’t have time to think it, or to recognize it, a Ford F-150 pickup was twenty feet away, slewing wildly as the driver tried to stop.
    Then it hit him.
    A ND U NO LOOKED OUT the back window and said,
“Pinche hijo de…”
and said to Tres, “Faster now, faster.”
    V IRGIL F LOWERS called Lucas and said, “Things are getting interesting.”
    “Yeah?”
    “There’s a farm here, and your robbers are apparently going in and out of there with their loads of horse shit,” Flowers said. “We can’t figure out why anybody would need so much horse shit, but I’ve got Richie Jones interested. You know Richie?”
    “Yeah.” Richie was the sheriff.
    “We’re going to take a look at the farm,” Virgil said. “Talk to some people around there. There might be something else going on.”
    “Virgil, goddamnit, all I want to do is bust these two. I don’t need a fuckin’ Shakespeare festival.”
    “Yeah, well, that’s because you’ve got something to occupy your time up there. I’m just