Run Run Run

"What is it? What is wrong?" Dick was still wide and shaky.

"Did you see that car on the street? I saw  the same car in front of the police station before we ran down the stairs. It  took off when the police cars were pulling up. I think it might have been waiting for the killer guy. I think there may be more like him in that car."

Dick looked like his dog had died. I felt worse than that.

"We have to do something. I think it is only a matter of minutes before the cops show up."

"Zeno, the cops are not coming; not anytime soon, for sure. Think about it. All the police that saw us are dead."

He was right. I thought about it. The only police connection between us and the dead woman or the nutjob mass murderer were the twin patrolmen, Hanson,  the Captain, and maybe the desk sergeant. None of them were in any condition to point at us, or at anything else. 

So it was the guys in the car that were the only immediate problem. We could stand around until daylight and hope that we wouldn't freeze before then (unlikely), or take off without the stuff from our rooms. I wasn't sure what Dick had to get, but I could live without the rest of my clothes. Everything else I owned was still on the boat, which, by now was probably off the coast of Nova Scotia. 

"Dick, why don't we just blow off the stuff in our rooms? We can't get in except through the front door for the next few hours. They'll see us, and if they are happy to shoot up a police station and kill cops, they won't even think twice about blowing us up in a crappy hotel."

Dick's face hardened, and to my complete surprise, he said, "No" through clenched teeth. "I am going to my room for my belongings." 

"But Dick the guys in the car..."

"No!" he hissed, vehemently. "I will not leave my things behind for these pigs."

"Oookay. What do you suggest we do? I am fresh out of invisibility pills."

I didn't know what Dick had in his room, but whatever it was, he wanted it back, and badly.

Dick appeared lost in thought for a moment, and then he looked at me sharply. "This is something I know how to do, I am thinking. Something from my happy childhood." He was grim.

This was not a Dirty Dick Abdallah  I had known before. 

"Wait here."

Dick went back a few feet, hugging the wall of the building, and slipped into an alley. I waited. I couldn't stand it, so I followed. I turned into the alley to find Dick head down in a dumpster, barely visible in the dim edge of streetlights. Finally his feet came down, and his head popped up, and he dropped down to the ground. He was holding a long piece of cheap fuzzy twine, like the kind they use to tie stacks of packages on to shipping pallets. 

He saw me watching him, all tall and skinny and serious. "Wait here."

"Whoa, Dick, what are you going to do? You can't fool with these guys. They have serious guns, and they are very happy to use them. Plus, they seem to hate us more than a little." 

"When I was a boy, we would sometimes find an Israeli jeep parked while the soldiers patrolled nearby. There was a sort of prank we would play on them. I was never brave enough to play the prank myself, but I have seen it done. Now I will be brave enough. At least the Israelis were soldiers. These people are nothing but murderers."

OK, now Dick had surely used up his weekly allotment of words.

Before I could say a word, Dick crouched and started slinking toward the parked car. The windows were fogged enough that I couldn't tell how many people were in the car.

When he got within 30 yards of the car, Dick dropped and began a long, and no doubt painful crawl. The street in front of the hotel was old cobblestones, and they were wet and rough and colder than a banker's heart. It hurt me to watch him. 

All the way to the back of the sedan he crawled. There was no reaction from the car. I saw Dick roll over to the driver's side rear, and look. Then he moved to the passenger side rear and looked again. The he went to the back of the car and sat down, still. What was he doing? Suddenly he lifted his head, and turned around. He reached for the rear license plate. I saw it move. He pulled it down and reached behind it and began moving his arm. What? His arm came back and he put something on the ground carefully.

Ah! The gas tank! That's what he had been looking for. He continued to hold the plate down while he reached into his parka pocket. He came out with his long piece of twine. He doubled it over and began pushing it into the gas tank. He took a long time. Finally he pulled it out, and then pushed it back again. Then he picked up the gas cap and wedged it behind the license plate to hold the spring loaded door open. He had maybe three feet hanging out the back.

Dick slid backward with his feet toward me, on his belly. He reached into his pocket and a moment later I saw a tiny flame. It didn't stay tiny for long, though, as the entire visible length of the rope immediately caught fire. He had managed to get it all soaked in gasoline. 

I looked at the car rear window. Still nothing to see, still frosted over. 

Dick was crawling back toward me on all fours as fast as he could, his long skinny arms and legs moving quickly and all at once almost, so that he looked like a daddy-long-legs doing a wind sprint.

He got about 20 feet from the rear of the car when the gas tank exploded with more of a loud thud than a big boom, but with lots of very impressive flame. Dick didn't even look back, he just scuttled faster.

Both front doors flew open and to men jumped out, both holding guns identical to the one their murderous friend has used so effectively. They jumped back, hands held in front of their faces, and watched as the entire car began to burn angrily. They never saw Dick jump back into the alley with me, breathing like he had run a hard mile. I wondered if they opted for the additional insurance.

"Wow, Dick. That is some "prank". 

"Yes. Well, Palestinian children have a different sense of humor than many. The key is to make sure the rope is well soaked with petrol before lighting or it won't work."

The two men looked up and down the street. The guy on the passenger side joined the other guy on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, just as someone ran out of the hotel and saw the car burning like crazy. He glanced at the two men and ran back into the hotel before the two thugs could react. They talked quickly while looking up and down the street, on edge. A siren fired up not far away. One spoke to the other again, and they both put their guns under their heavy parkas, and began walking quickly away from the car, down the street.

 Directly towards us.

"Shit! Come on!" I pulled on Dick's sleeve and we ran to the toward the back of the alley. The sound of the car burning covered our noise, but also the sound of the men coming our way. 

We got to the end of the alley. I opened the top of the dumpster. "Climb in," I said to Dick. 

"I will not," he replied. It is filthy in there."

"You have already been in there once tonight. Besides, the people whose friend I just killed and whose car you just blew up and burned have automatic weapons and are now about ten feet from walking past this alley and seeing us. Move!"

Dick nodded, and jumped in. I followed him and carefully closed the top. It was black dark, and considering everything in the dumpster was frozen solid, it still stunk really badly. It wasn't even half full, and I was glad.

We stood crouched in complete darkness in the dumpster and waited, sirens getting louder and louder. We had heard a lot of sirens tonight. And by the way, all of them had been that weird "wee-ooo wee-ooo" sound European sirens make, not the Dragnet wailing kind.

Way more than enough time had past for the bad guys to pass, so I lifted the top open a tiny bit, just enough to peek...and lowered it again very carefully. 

Dick, right next to my ear, whispered, "What did you see? What is it?"

I turned my head and whispered back, "They are in our alley. Looking down the street. Waiting for whoever torched their car to make a move for the hotel."

It was too dark to actually see anything, but I could feel Dick deflate.

Then another siren with a different pitch started getting closer from another direction. it was going to pass our alley. I peeped again. The two killers were looking up and down the street, doing their own peeking out of the alley, not happy about the approaching siren.

Cops coming. 

I closed the dumpster top just as one of them started to turn around to look at the back of the alley.

For a place to hide.

There was nothing to do but wait for the top to open. In the gloom, the first one in would probably not see us until it was too late and we could grab him during his awkward slip into the bin. And he would sound the alarm, and the other guy would lean over the edge and shoot us like fish in a barrel. A big trash barrel.

I waited and waited, heart pounding. The siren was blaring as the police passed the mouth of the alley. Nothing happened. Dick started to whisper a question. "Shhh!," I hissed. 

Still nothing.

I waited a couple of seconds more and turned my head sideways so that I could barely lift the lid and look out with one eye.

They were gone.

"Let's go," I said, lifting the top all the way.