Read Online Hot Wheels by William Arden - Free Book Online Page A

truck. Ty and Pete drove out of the salvage yard together, but turned in opposite directions. If the black car was watching, it would have to choose which one it wanted to tail.
    Ty turned at the first corner. He speeded up around the next corner, made a U-turn, and drove back the same way he had come.
    The black Oldsmobile was driving straight at them! It quickly parked to pretend it wasn’t tailing the truck, but Ty wasn’t fooled.
    “So they’re watching me,” Ty said. “That means it’s the cops. They must have been hidden near the salvage yard. Sit up, Jupe, and we’ll go get you a car. Let them figure out why a car thief is buying used wheels!”
    Ty drove from dealer to dealer, from owner-sales lot to owner-sales lot. He spurned every car in Jupe’s price range — which wasn’t very many. Then, at a small owners-lot near the harbor, Ty sported a ten-year-old Honda Civic.
    The owner of the little two-door hatchback needed money and was asking exactly five hundred dollars. He said the car had a rebuilt engine with less than twenty thousand miles on it. Ty examined the engine, took the car out for a drive with Jupiter, and pronounced that it did indeed have a new rebuilt engine and was a good buy.
    Jupiter made the deal. The car would be ready to be picked up the next day after the paperwork and some small repairs Ty wanted were completed. The owner promised to replace a missing window crank and a burned-out overhead light. Jupiter was so excited he could barely talk. He touched the little blue and white car with awe.
    “It’s all mine. Can’t I drive it off now?”
    Ty laughed. “Better let the owner make those repairs. We can take the truck to your research. Where do we go, Jupe?”
    Jupiter grinned. “Police headquarters.”
    *
    Pete took back streets down to the Freeway Garage. He saw no sign of the black Oldsmobile. To be safe, he parked behind a lumberyard two blocks away. He walked to the garage and settled behind a fence surrounding the vacant lot across the street.
    Hours passed with cars going in for service or to be painted or just to park. They stopped outside the garage and gave a couple of honks until the doors opened. The garage attendant on duty at the door was Max, Torres’s guntoting companion of the day before. Pete tried to decide if some of the cars were stolen. Some of the drivers who came out right away, as if they had just parked inside, didn’t look much like businessmen. But Pete had no real reason to think the cars they had driven in were stolen.
    Until he saw a gray BMW sedan.
    The driver looked carefully up and down the street before honking: one long, two short, a long, and a short. The doors opened and he drove the BMW in.
    The driver was Joe Torres.
    Pete left his post and ran back to his Fiero. He drove closer to the garage and parked where he could watch the door.
    Ten minutes later the black Buick appeared with two men in it. They drove past Pete without seeing him. The man in the passenger seat was Torres.
    Pete pulled out and went after the Buick.
    *
    Ty laughed as he parked in the lot of Rocky Beach’s police headquarters. “The cops in the Olds’re gonna be real confused.”
    “Look!” Jupiter said.
    The black Oldsmobile cruised past, hesitating as if its occupants were staring in disbelief.
    “What are we doing here anyway?” Ty wanted to know as they walked into police headquarters.
    “If Tiburon and the Piranhas are stealing cars when they go out of town on their gigs, there should be a lot of reports of stolen cars where they play.”
    “That’d figure,” Ty said, nodding. “How do we get the reports?”
    Jupiter grinned. “Watch me.”
    He asked for Sergeant Cota and was directed along a busy corridor to the police computer room. A short, dark-haired officer sat at the computer console.
    “Jupiter! Come on in.”
    Sergeant Cota and Jupiter were fellow computer buffs. Jupe often dropped in at the station to talk computers with him.
    After admiring