Gone in 60 Seconds

  High-Speed Chase

  "Run It!" Tumbler yelled.

  "Damn!" Kip floored it straight for the middle, hoping it was something like bowling a seven-ten split, where he knew he'd probably only hit one. The cops had time for a few shots, and one wild, over-the-shoulder throwaway got lucky, drilled the windshield, and came to rest in Toby's shoulder. The Cadillac swerved onto the grass median, through a road sign, and back onto the road on the other side. Kip punched the gas, getting them out of there.

  "Just hold on, Toby," Kip said, seeing his shirt and the spreading stain of blood. "Please. Just hold on."

  He was back in Long Beach, in dreamlike Los Angeles, ambling up an empty sidewalk on northbound Ocean Boulevard on a

  Sunday morning, and there she was.

  A 1967 Shelby Mustang GT-500. Satin nickel paint job, deep-set, shark-profile grill, and sculpted side panels, parked at the curb. She was beautiful.

  He was Randall "Memphis" Raines, dark hair, medium build, black turtleneck, black leather duster, jeans, boots—at twenty-three, the best car boost in Southern California.

  They were made for each other.

  "You gonna steal her or kneel down to her and pray?" someone said.

  The voice came from the street. Memphis turned at once to see another car rolling up—a 1990 Ford Thunderbird. Ice blue, chrome racing wheels, blackout glass, thundering bass in the trunk, its driver grinning bone-white teeth at the open passenger-side window. It was Atley Jackson.

  Black, handsome, late twenties, jocular, black T-shirt, black leather jacket, black sunglasses. In the car's black leather interior he looked like an angel from the dark side out on parole, cruising around sunny L.A. and seeing the sights.

  You gonna steal her or kneel down to her and pray?

  The T-bird's power window went up like a curtain closing, and the car rolled away in the downtown direction. Atley wasn't waiting for any kind of answer from Memphis, really. No need. They knew each other all too well.

  Memphis checked the street in both directions. It was deserted, even for Sunday morning. He pulled a small "slim jim" from his coat (never left home without it), a handy door-opening tool popular among uniformed police officers, AAA service representatives—and yes, car thieves.

  He slimmed the door panel, popping the lock from underneath the button, opened the door, and got into the bucket seat behind the wheel. He ran a cordless screwdriver over the dress panels around the steering column, thus revealing the ignition's lock cylinder. Finally he pressed a small, socketlike device known as a "gizmo" into the key slot, and with a twist of the wrist, the 320-bhp 289 V-8 engine rumbled like a jackhammer.

  What's this—no seat belts? You could get a ticket for that Oh, well. He pushed a cassette tape into the deck, and Bruce Springsteen's "Ramrod" wailed from the coaxials.

  And then he floored it.

  Tires screaming, engine roaring, the smell of asphalt in the morning—these were a few of his favorite things. He had the needle halfway around the speed dial, halfway to the charge of super-satisfaction and well-being known locally as an Ocean Boulevard speed rush. Here came the sun, and the birdies were flyin'. Welcome to L.A.!Have a nice day!

  Two unmarked South Bureau cop cars briefly spotted Memphis jetting through some intersection—too quick to tell which one. They slapped magnetic bubble-flashers on their roofs and called in a Code Three (emergency, use lights and siren)—pursuing a 510 (speeding vehicle), possible 503 (stolen), traveling south on O.B.

  Memphis checked them in the rearview, carved a right, and punched the accelerator again. He raced the Shelby toward the Pacific Ocean, down the early-morning, harbortown streets now echoing with the woeful siren cry.

  Turning north again, he encountered a two-cycle delay backed up at the light and gutterballed around it, skating the shoulder. A new pursuit car slipped into his wake—the South Bureau operations dispatch was broadcasting a chase report on an open channel, and now every cruiser in the harbor area was in on the act, closing the net.

  The trap itself was set for an on-ramp to the Terminal Island Freeway. They herded him there, never doubting the suspect's intentions to outrun them and then stow the car under a bridge or in the parking deck of a mall in the back-country suburbs. It would wait there, tucked between mothers' minivans, for the truck from the chop shop to come.

  Traffic control had a detour in progress and two aging cruisers nose to nose like a gate in the ramp. A news traffic copter was on the scene too, ready to put the live feed on TV.

  A lucky cruiser met him head-on and flashed its headlights, spooking him in exactly the intended direction. He swerved onto the entrance ramp, pedal to the metal, aimed point-blank at the roadblock. Uniformed officers scattered as he gunned it, then at the last possible second, he bailed out—banged the gearshift into neutral and yanked the parking brake, putting her into a spin, popping her up the curb, and flipping her over the guardrail and into a side roll in the path of something with an air horn, coming on like a locomotive.

  He screamed—

  —and woke up in a cold sweat.

  It was a dream. Only a dream!

  The nightmare was still to come.

  What truly distinguished the 1990 Trans Am tracking up the street was not the sparkle from the paint job, the slickness

  in the sidewalls, or the throaty rumble of the tailpipe. What distinguished it was the bare fact that it had managed to go a half mile through upscale Beverly Hills without the cops even once curbing it for a dope search. Or, as it was known in more polite circles, "a license check."

  The car had two occupants in front and one in back. Behind the wheel was Kip Raines, built for surfing, cocky and glowering. Riding shotgun was the unobtrusive Freb, a complacent number-two man who found contentment traveling life's highways in Kip's shadow. In the backseat was "Mirror Man," who was named after his sunglasses. In their twenties, Kip, Freb, and Mirror Man had crossed into the years of peak production for their chosen craft. By the time they reached thirty, most car thieves were either retired by the government or dead.

  The Trans Am pulled over into a pool of light softly spilling from an exhibition of astronomically priced cowboy clothing. Freb checked their instruc-tions, hastily scribbled on the inside wrapper of a torn cigarette package.

  "The corner of Wilshire and Wetherly. Tum-bler messed up," Freb said. Tumbler, a partner in the firm, had provided the directions to the client. "He said the Porsche would be at the corner of Wilshire and Wetherly."

  Nothing like a Porsche was parked at the cor-ner of Wilshire and Wetherly.

  Then Kip's hand on the wheel pointed a finger at a building taking up the corner across the street. "He didn't mess up. There it is."

  Behind the twenty-foot-high, glass showroom window of a Porsche dealership on the corner of Wilshire and Wetherly. That's what Tumbler had meant. The ear they had come for, a new 996 Aero Coupe, turned slowly behind the glass on a revolv-ing platform, reminding Kip of Thanksgiving Day at Mom's house—dinner on the rotisserie. The car gleamed in the all-night showroom lights.

  "That?" Freb said.

  "You're shittin', right, Kip?" Mirror Man said.

  Kip answered with a grin, then said, "I need my tool." He popped the trunk, got out, and went around back. Freb and Mirror Man traded puzzled looks.

  What Kip meant was that he needed a brick.

  "Oh, no," Mirror Man said.

  Calm and cool, Kip went to the curb in front of the windows, wound up, and hurled the brick through the safety-glass door, which exploded, showering glass like champagne spray under the showroom lights. Alarms squealed as Kip stepped inside, through the crumbs of glass. Freb and Mirror Man were visibly impressed.

  Inside, Kip jimmied the key box at the receptioni
st's desk, removed a handful of ringed sets with yellow paper tags stamped Showroom, and took them over to the Aero Coupe on the turntable. He found the VIN—vehicle identification number—stamped into a small metal plate on the car's dashboard visible through the windshield, matched it to the right showroom tag, and dropped the rest of the keys to the floor.

  They only needed one car.

  He used the keys to open the coupe, started it, and Mirror Man climbed in on the passenger side. "How we supposed to get outta here?" he asked Kip.

  This was no off-road vehicle; the seats were firm, spare, and low to the ground, the chassis practically kissed the road, and even if they could somehow get the car off the turntable, the windows wrapped them in, all around the showroom. Never mind the two-foot drop to street level.

  "You expectin' to fly?"

  Kip grinned, revved the engine, and set his eyes dead ahead.

  "Oh, no," Mirror Man said. "You ain't gonna—"

  Kip floored it, striping the turntable with rubber lines, skated across the polished floor all the way to the windows—and went right through them.

  The car slammed onto the sidewalk, rebounded on its shocks, then gyrated into the street, barely missing a passing car. Kip forced the wheel over, regained control, then peeled up Wilshire Boulevard with Freb in the Pontiac chasing his smoke.

  "News flash, Kip," Mirror Man said, enjoying the ride now. "You're driving a stolen car!"

  "Stolen fast car," Kip corrected, downshifting for a light. A half hour later, as they neared the Long Beach warehouse that was their rendezvous point, Kip rolled the coupe to the paint and discovered a starlet blonde in a black Honda Prelude by his side. She looked over, pushed the stick shift forward into first, and gunned the engine. Whoa! It looked like she wanted to race!

  The light turned green and Kip popped the clutch. Both cars pulled away hard, and Kip had to smile over at the blonde. Mirror Man was freaking out.

  "They say this thing can do one-seventy!" Kip hollered. "Should we test it out? Should we have a party?"

  Mirror Man's hands squeezed the dash. "Don't do it, Kip! Don't do it!"

  Too late. Kip did it. He floored it, and even though the cars stayed neck and neck to the speedometer's century mark, after 110, the Porsche pulled away.

  He was pushing 140 when they passed the cop.

  Officer Bill Figilis was an experienced uniformed cop in the LAPD's Office of Operations, the department responsible for several important duties: one, to stimulate mutual understanding between the police and the community to prevent crime; two, to patrol the streets to prevent crime; three, to identify and arrest criminal offenders; four, to recover stolen property; five, to enforce traffic laws; and six, to advise the public in an emergency situation.

  Kip Raines was giving him an opportunity to score points in all six categories with a single arrest.

  He put down his coffee cup and called the South Bureau dispatcher on the squad car's CB. "Ive got a silver Porsche doing a buck-forty west on Long Beach Boulevard," he said. He pulled out, then lurched to a stop as Freb blew past in the Pontiac.

  The dispatcher relayed an alert for both cars. It was received by a police helicopter pilot, who spotted the Porsche on the Long Beach Bridge and swept along behind it like a hawk tailing a rabbit.

  A scant mile from the bridge, at a warehouse on the harbor, was Tumbler, Kip's boyhood chum, a ripe old twenty-one years of age. He studied his watch, a little concerned. He shot a glance at Atley Jackson, who was staring at him.

  "Something wrong, Tumbler?" Atley said.

  "Yeah," Tumbler replied. "I'm missing Springer—" But he stopped at the sound of a car horn. It was Kip and Mirror Man, bringing the Porsche up the loading ramp and into the warehouse. Tumbler flashed Atley an I-told-you-so smile as Kip and Mirror Man emerged from the little car.

  Tumbler went to a plastic ice chest. He raised the lid and passed out forty-ounce bottles of beer in a celebratory manner.

  "Thirteen down," he said, as a toast. "Thirty-seven to go."

  Cars. Fifty of them. High-ends and exotics. It was a big order, even for Long Beach, where the movement of cars both inside and outside jurisdiction was big business. For Kip, who ran the operation, it was a chance to prove himself. "No problem," he said of the thirty-seven remaining to be boosted. "How ya doin', Toby?" he asked the kid, who was watching the toast.

  "It's all good," said the kid, at sixteen still an apprentice learning the ropes.

  The crew clinked bottles and turned them up. Kip thought about Freb, still due with the other car. He shot a glance through the open overhead door to the loading dock, the turnaround, and the driveway beyond it, expecting headlights, maybe. But some other light swept by—not headlights.

  A spotlight

  Kip, Mirror Man, Tumbler, Toby, Atley— everybody looked like zombies in the white-hot spotlight that bored through the warehouse skylight. Then they felt the rapid drum of helicopter

  rotors and heard the wail of police sirens closing in.

  Outside the warehouse, the Los Angeles Police Department was converging on the building.

  It was time to break up the party

  "Now you've done it, Raines!" Atley yelled. "Somebody get the board!"

  Tumbler was already wiping the list of car names off the board with his shirtsleeve. Spotlights in the windows were turning the warehouse into a stage scene. Tumbler panicked, smashed the black-light bulb that illuminated the board with his fist, rendering the marker lines invisible, and sprinted away.

  The turnaround beside the loading dock was becoming a parking lot for police vehicles, cruisers and wagons manned by uniformed officers. A Lexus SUV arrived, carrying detectives, the traditional follow-up to the raiders.

  First out of the passenger side was Detective Roland Castlebeck, a cop's cop—tough, dedicated, and effective. The driver of the vehicle was his partner, Detective Drycoff, less experienced than Castlebeck, but perceptive and shrewd. The men were out of the Operations Headquarters Bureau, which served South and the other districts with investigative service. Their department, Detective Services, was a bureaucracy of specialized units organized by criminal activity. Castlebeck and Drycoff's unit was Burglary/Auto Theft. Due to a recent increase in stolen vehicles, BAT had formed a special task force known internally as GRAB— the Governor's Regional Auto-theft Bureau.

  Drycoff entered the warehouse ahead of Castlebeck to get the on-the-scene report from the uniforms, while Castlebeck surveyed the room, doing a walk-through with his hands instinctively held behind his back, preserving the evidence.

  "Anybody?" Castlebeck asked when he saw Drycoff off by himself. He was looking out at the dock. The first police units had backed off the scene for the investigators, but a few lingered in the parking lot. The reflections of their blue lights oscillated on the hull of a freighter in the harbor.

  "All gone. We didn't get one of them."

  A camera flashed. The warehouse and the vehicles were being photographed and measured. A fingerprint man was already dusting the obvious—doors, steering wheels, beer bottles. The police had recovered thirteen vehicles, a good night's work, but the real questions were yet unanswered. Who were the cars for? Was this the entire order? And who was doing the boosts? Castlebeck's eyes went to three Mercedes sedans, all brand new,

  "We're talking professionals," Drycoff said. "There's no visible damage to locking mechanisms, steering columns, or ignitions. And these aren't Honda Accords. Those new Mercedes? They're supposed to be unstealable."

  Castlebeck automatically did a rewind, imagined the scene, the vehicle, and the perpetrator, and mentally watched the crime unfold like viewing a short film in his head. "Say the suspects have laser-cut transponder keys, sent here direct from Hamburg. Dealer keys."

  Drycoff backed it up a step. "They paid off somebody working the inside. Somebody on staff at a car dealership."

  It made sense. "Find out which dealership sold these, serviced them, et cetera," Castlebeck said.

/>   Drycoff made a note. "I'm on it."

  Then Castlebeck spotted a thin, curved shard of blue glass on the floor. He toed it with his shoe, then bent and picked it up. It glinted in his hand.

  He dropped it into his coat pocket.

  "Impound the cars," he told Drycoff. "One month. I don't give a rooty-toot if they belong to Tom Cruise. Dust them, and dust every inch of this pigsty."

  "This would have been a pretty big score, you know?" Drycoff said. "And yet I heard you ran all the big dogs out of town. No one's tried a score this big since--"

  "Yeah, I know," Castlebeck said. "Six years ago."

  Four hundred miles to the north, in the little town of Independence, engines whined. Not like the Porsche, though. Thinner and higher, because they were smaller. Go-karts.

  For the life of him, he could not remember when he had spoken to a more canny and perceptive audience. Memphis

  Raines could tell anyone how to drive—but this group was onto something more heady the very soul of driving:

  Racing.

  "Acceleration, speed, and emotional self-pacing—these are the three fundamental components of the new generation of race car driver," he told them. "Unpredictability and adrenaline are the byproducts, but remember: To drive is to feel; to race is to live."

  Twenty uniformed and helmeted kart racers in the six- to eight-year-old age group regarded him with utter awe. To them, his words were like mantras. "Let's ride," he told them.

  Out on the track, a seven-year-old accelerated into a turn, the five-horse Tecumseh engine screaming like a bee. "That's it!" Memphis cried. "Don't ride the brake! Good! Good!"

  A Black Fox All-Terrain kart spun out and landed on its side near the surrounding wall and Memphis ran over and crewed for the boy driving, straightening out the kart. "Tommy, I don't know what that was," he said, "but it wasn't driving."

  Beyond the fence, a dark Cadillac with tinted windows pulled through the gravel parking lot and came to rest near the gas station that fronted the kart track. The driver's-side door opened, and out like a wraith emerged Atley Jackson, in a long leather coat, dragging on a cigarette. In apple-pie Independence, here was the worm. He sauntered over to the kart track and took a seat in the bleachers.