It was a name he made up for himself, Weecho, still using it at nineteen, a photographer now trying to make good for what happened that morning he took those shots of the crash.
He’d been walking a pot-holed street out in Queens, under the elevated BQ Expressway, scoping backgrounds for a grunge band poster, camera in one hand, cell phone to his ear.
“You’ll look right at home here,” he said, “a real stinkhole.” He had street in his voice, a little roll to his moves. “I’m thinking black and white, shoot you guys against a green screen, stick you in wherever. Or we can come back out here, soak up the glamour.”
A grunge guitarist in Greenpoint name of Sludge, a Gibson slung over one tattooed shoulder, had stepped away from band practice to take Weecho’s call. “Flannery says the papers could pick it up, get you some nice ink.”
“Flannery happen to mention money?”
“I’m sorry, what’d you say?”
“I’ll call you later.”
Weecho shook his head and thumbed his cell off, stuck it in his pocket and went back to taking pictures. The neighborhood was for all intents done – shut-down factories collecting soot, stripped cars rusting where they were dumped… Basically the look he was going for.
He took a few shots of this and that building, checking them on the Canon’s LCD screen, liking the edgy shadows. He clicked his way down the empty sidewalk, eye out for maybe some decent tags, stepped around the front of a trailer truck backed into an alley.
The guy in sunglasses and ball cap behind the wheel was the only other face around, didn’t look pleased when Weecho casually pointed his lens at the rig.
“Get that thing outta here,” the guy growled.
Before he could do anything about it, another truck came bombing out of nowhere, a container truck with a DIPLOMATIC CARGO sticker on its side.
Chasing the truck, maybe a block behind, was a speeding black Mercedes.
Weecho had his camera up, started shooting.
Behind him, the guy in the alley goosed his engine. Weecho turned, saw him pulling out, pointing the 18-wheeler toward a BQE pillar across the street.
The container truck flew by, missing the 18-wheeler by maybe a foot, disappearing down the street.
Weecho panned with the 18-wheeler stretching across the street and then stopping, nose to the pillar, cutting off the Mercedes coming up fast.
The Mercedes didn’t have a chance, went into a screeching sideways slide.
The air filled with a booming crash, sparks bursting, glass flying, car crunching itself into a scrapheap halfway under the trailer.
All this Weecho was seeing through the viewfinder while he kept on shooting.
The 18-wheeler’s cab wasn’t touched. The driver, still in his shades and ball cap, jumped to the pavement and jogged back to a Nissan SUV, a blue one, squealing to a stop next to what was left of the Mercedes.
The SUV driver’s door swung open and another guy got out, him too in a ball cap and shades, plus he had this little tuft, a soul patch on his chin. He stepped over to the mangled Mercedes, pulling on a pair of gloves. Yanked open the twisted rear door enough to squeeze partway inside. Weecho could see him snaking around in there, got a shot of him coming back out with a laptop, the cover smeared with blood.
The soul patch guy was taking it to the SUV when the truck guy stopped him and pointed.
“Kid’s got a camera.”
Soul Patch whipped around and Weecho started backstepping. The two men jumped into the SUV. Weecho spun around and took off, just him and them, no one else in sight.
Weecho darted a look back, saw the SUV coming fast, ran harder, swerving, Nikes do your number. The SUV tires were squealing right behind him, cutting back and forth every time he did. He jumped over a pile of trash, they plowed right through it.
This wouldn’t end nice if he didn’t do something different. With their bumper maybe two feet off his tail, Weecho faked left, spun right, did a one-eighty and bee-lined back for the wreck.
Headed for the truck cab. If he could get past the rig, there wasn’t room for them to get by in the SUV. If they chased him on foot, it’d be at least even, him being on the small side and quick. Able to get into places they couldn’t. He dove under the cab and crawled for where he could see it was clear, still keeping hold of the camera. Halfway through, he heard a terrible sound coming from the wrecked Mercedes.
A high-pitched cry, a woman in pain.
He scrambled through and stood up, could hear the SUV pull up on the other side of the trailer, heard the doors open and the two guys jump out.
Heard the truck guy say, “He’s over there.”
Soul Patch saying, “Just pop the little pissant and get the camera.”
Which got Weecho back on the run.
The woman in the Mercedes cried out again.
Which got truck guy looking her way. “I thought she was dead.”
“Just get the kid,” Soul Patch said. “I’ll do this.”
He dug some matches out of his pocket, struck one and tossed it at the wrecked Mercedes. Poof! A pool of leaking gas ignited.
Weecho was halfway down the block when a siren sounded from up on the BQE. Somebody must have called 911. He looked back, saw the truck guy under the cab now, aiming at him with a pistol. Bam! The bullet pinged off something nearby. Weecho put a light pole between him and the gun and kept running.
He knew they wouldn’t be staying there with cops on the way, ran a little further, heard the SUV doors slam, heard the tires peel out.
He slowed down, waited to make sure they were gone, then ran back to the wreck. Could see even before he got there and crawled under the trailer that they’d set the Mercedes on fire, car leaking gas, feeding the flames.
“Please… get me out.” The woman inside was still alive. “I can’t move.”
Had to be feeling the heat. Weecho set the camera down away from the car, crawled over and looked through the half-opened door.
She was wedged between the back seat and a big dark guy in a blood-soaked suit. He had to go 300 pounds and was dead. There was probably a driver but Weecho couldn’t see him. The woman’s legs were pinned by the crushed roof, which in a minute would be like a hotplate. She had one hand free and was reaching to him.
“Please…”
She was maybe twenty-five and had a face that even in the wreckage Weecho could see was beyond gorgeous. A face that it hit him he knew from someplace.
He grabbed her hand and started to pull, stopped when she screamed in pain. He had to get that dead guy off her. Wriggled inside and grabbed the guy’s shoulders, couldn’t budge him, Christ, all that fat. Weecho weighed maybe one-thirty, fully fed.
The flames were spreading, Weecho knowing the tank behind that seat there would go up any minute.
“Can you move at all?”
She tried. “No.”
Weecho seeing she was blood-soaked, too. “Help’s coming,” he said. Like hurry it up.
She looked at him, eyes in and out of focus, then urgent.
“Alex…,” she said.
“No, Weecho.”
“Call Alex…”
“Right.” Didn’t have a clue.
He needed something to lever her loose, move that dead guy and get to her legs. Backed out and looked around, some kind of metal bar, a tire iron…
That’s when the gas tank blew. WHUMPF! Lights out.
Next thing he knew somebody had him under the arms, dragging him back from the flames.
“Lemme go!”
“Take it easy.”
“She’s in there!”
He was looking up from on his back, could see a cop, blurry and hard for him to hear, the ringing in his ears. The cop kept his grip, wouldn’t let him go, knew nobody was coming out of that fire.
The impact from the explosion had knocked Weecho back far enough he’d been clear of the flames. Probably was out for two or three minutes. Kept twisting until reality sunk in, and finally he just went limp. The cop took it easy getting him to his feet, walked him over to a patrol car where his partner was calling in.
“…can’t tell what year, it’s got diplomat tags.”
The partner squinted into the fire, read off the Mercedes’s blistering license plate.
Another patrol car had pulled up, one of the cops standing by with a small fire extinguisher, glancing over this way, not much he could do. Weecho feeling the guy’s helplessness, trying not to think what was happening in those flames.
The cop who was calling in turned and looked at him. “There’s a kid here probably can tell us something.”
Not likely, Weecho’s thing being stay off the radar. Unless, of course, there was benefit.
“This yours?”
It was the cop who’d dragged him away from the fire, had the camera he’d left on the pavement. Weecho nodded. The cop thumbed the display button. A shot of the crash came onto the screen.
“Why were you taking these?”
“I’m a photographer,” Weecho said.
“And just happened to be here.”
“That a problem?”
“We’re holding them. You, too.” The door to the patrol car was open and the cop slid the camera onto the front seat.
Weecho looked at it sitting there. “I get them back? I mean, I ain’t even seen them.”
“Don’t move. Stay right there.”
Weecho kept looking at the camera, seriously wanting those pictures back, find out what the hell was going on. And the way the woman in the fire had said Alex, there was somebody else might want them, too. So get them. If the cops wanted copies, well that’s what he was in business for.
An EMS van was just pulling up and the cop who took the camera went over to meet it. While he was filling in the medics – pointing at the flames, now even worse, them all looking grim – Weecho eased over to the open car door.
Casual as he could, he lifted the camera off the seat, one eye on the other cop who was still calling in. Kept the car between the cop and himself, eased around a BQE pillar.
"Hey!"
The cop who’d been talking to the medics was quickstepping back this way. Weecho took off, heard the cop right behind him, gear belt jangling, cursing for him to stop.
Weecho’s legs were loose after the other run and he opened up a lead. The camera weighed nothing compared to the cop’s stuff, and the guy had on boots, so pretty much no contest. Unless the cop called ahead. Weecho looked back and there he was, huffing into his shoulder mic. His partner was further back, trying to catch up.
Weecho turned his eyes ahead, and Jesus, there was the blue SUV sitting at the curb, ready to pounce. Soul Patch and the truck guy must’ve doubled back on the chance he’d come back to the crash. Everybody wanting those pictures.
He flicked his eyes over the boarded-up buildings, looking for an exit. Good luck. Was about to take his chances and try to run back past the cops, try an end sweep, when he remembered something he’d heard one time about turning a negative into a plus. Thinking he had two opportunities here, maybe play one against the other.
He did a quick little thing with the camera and cut across the street. Used a big roundhouse motion so everyone could see and pitched the camera into a Dumpster. Yelled out, “It’s yours, take it.”
With all their eyes on the Dumpster, he had a few seconds to make himself scarce. Let them sort it out.
He sprinted past Soul Patch’s opening door, turned at the end of the block and kept going, made rights and lefts through the empty streets, checking his back, crossing an intersection and ducking into a subway entrance.
Down on the platform, he stood in a recess under the stairs, didn’t want any security camera picking up his face for whoever. A train pulled in, he stayed where he was. Checked both ways, then jumped on just as the doors slid shut.
He had the car pretty much to himself, took a seat by the door at one end. After a minute to catch his breath, he settled down and started going back over what happened. It didn’t take heavy brainwork to see the thing had been some kind of heist – that DIPLOMATIC CARGO container, separating it from the Mercedes. But what was inside it? To kill like that for?
He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a little plastic card, the flash card he’d popped from the camera just before he threw it in the Dumpster – the card with the crash pictures on it.
He was turning it over in his fingers when he heard a woman’s voice:
“You get some good shots?”
Weecho looked up. Sitting across from him, the only other person in the car, was the woman from the crash.
“Whoever got that camera,” she said, “is going to be pissed.”
Her clothes were ripped and covered with blood, her hair singed and mangled. Half her face was burned off. She was an unsettling combination of hideous and beautiful.
Weecho stared. “I could’ve gotten you out.”
“You tried.”
“Yeah, but trying ain’t doing.”
“True,” she said. “You probably figured out it was about them getting the truck and that laptop.”
“Who’s Alex? You said call Alex.”
“Alex is important. He’d probably pay to know what you know.”
“He findable?”
“Everybody’s findable.” Her one good eye held Weecho’s gaze.”Speaking of which, do me a favor.”
“What favor?”
“Instead of beating up on yourself, use what you got on that card there to get the prick who did this to me.”
Weecho looked down at the flash card in his hand. When he looked back up, the woman was gone. Just an empty seat over there – no sign of her anywhere in the car.