If nothing else, this gem of English syntax annihilated the remainder of my fears about them having the wrong man. However, it didn’t make the pain in my backside any better, and it didn’t make me feel any happier. Nor did it give me any better clue as to who they were or what they wanted: a corpse, or a source of information — at the end of it all, probably both. I wasn’t overly inclined towards letting them have either; however, in light of the current situation, unless I did something pretty smart, and pretty quickly, it didn’t seem that my opinion was going to amount to a hill of beans.
We turned off the Parkway onto 9 West, curving round and underneath the Parkway onto a thickly wooded two-lane road. It was starting to rain; it was light rain, but it hit the car with a distinct slashing sound — a sound I had heard before when it rained in temperatures as cold as it was today: freezing rain — one of the most lethal of all driving hazards. To the driver it looks like ordinary rain, and it is, except that the moment it touches the surface it turns to ice; within moments of freezing rain starting, the road turns into an ice rink. It is not an uncommon phenomenon in the north eastern seaboard states during the winter. It is very difficult and very frightening to drive on. Muttered curses from the front seat, and the motion of the speed of the car easing slightly, indicated that the driver had recognised the hazard; whilst this rain lasted, and it wouldn’t last for long, I didn’t have to worry about the driver.
I tried in the gloom to study as best I could the shooter that was wedged between my legs; it was either a Smith and Wesson .44 revolver or a cheap copy cranked out by some back-street supplier. Either way it would be about the nearest thing to a hand-held Howitzer, well capable of carrying my crown jewels down through the seat and out through the bottom of the car. If it was a copy then I needed to worry about the trigger mechanism since it probably would be unreliable and more than a little sensitive to the slightest movement — ideal for the type of gorilla holding it, since his breed were not the type to discriminate too much about when or where their shooters went off just as long as they went off long enough and often enough to keep them on someone’s payroll.
The goon on my right was gazing out the window, off guard. The one in the passenger seat in front was wiping condensation off the windshield. Through the windshield, a long way ahead, was a green traffic light. Between us and the traffic light was the battery of tail lights of a large truck, probably a tractor-trailer. We were travelling downhill, and too quickly for the surface.
The goon in the front passenger seat switched on the ordinary radio; a commercial jingle blared out. The music stopped and a jolly voice told us all what rotten, lousy, stinking husbands we’d all be if we didn’t rush out instantly and make arrangements to have Whamtrash drainage systems installed in our homes and make life for our wives one whole lot easier. From the silence of the goons I could only think they were contemplating the advantages of a Whamtrash system.
‘One of your friends came into my apartment last night and shot the wrong guy,’ I announced.
The goon with the halitosis swivelled his head around. ‘Shaddup.’ He turned his head back to watch the road.
The traffic light was turning red. The radio told us of amazing bargains to be had at a local Pontiac dealer. All we had to do was go there and ask for Elmer Hyams. Elmer Hyams would do us real good. We would do our family unit a lot of good by buying a brand new Pontiac. We couldn’t buy a brand new Pontiac anywhere else in the United States of America cheaper than by dropping in and saying ‘Hi!’ to Elmer Hyams.
I rammed my left thumb down hard, real hard, into the trigger mechanism of the goon’s 44 and felt the hammer hit my thumb, hit it hard; my right hand smashed down on the reflex nerve of his gun hand, the gun jerked up and I jerked my thumb out; the hammer carried on down to the shell, hit the shell good and hard; the bullet blew out and took a chunk out of the roof; another bullet blew out and took another chunk out of the roof; another bullet blew out and took off most of the roof of the goon on my right’s head; another bullet blew out and went in between the goon in the front seat’s shoulder blades, and came out of his chest carrying most of his heart with it, and took most of his heart out through the windshield and into the New Jersey countryside.
I now had the gun. The driver had both hands on the wheel and was trying to see what was going on in the back. He forgot for a moment about the red light and the truck that had stopped, then remembered. He stamped on the anchors on the iced-up road and was turning the wheel this way and that. I thumped the goon on my left’s balls so hard he jumped up in the air. I had the door handle down and shoved him hard before he came back down in his seat, shoved him out into the road, and I was rolling out there with him. Another bullet blew out and went through his Adam’s apple. I thumped into the grass verge and rolled over. I saw the big black car do one complete circle and then slide, nose first, straight under the long, long tailgate of that big, big truck, and that tailgate swallowed up the big black car as it went further and further under, slicing through the windshield, and through the steering wheel, and clean through the necks of the driver and his passenger, depositing their heads in the lap of the goon in the rear seat; it carried right on, slicing through the neck of the goon in the rear seat and depositing what was left of his head out through the rear windshield, so it rolled down the trunk of the car, bounced off the rear fender, and came to a rest a little way up the road.
The stabbing pain in my ass was still there. I gingerly felt my behind and found a big lump, a big, sharp lump. I pulled, and it came away from my trousers, and I held it up in the gloom: it was a set of false teeth.
I sat down, took some gulps of air and carbon monoxide. The highway had gone very quiet. Away up, I could hear the sounds of the truck driver retching. It was the only sound and it went on for a long time.
4
I was working in New York for the Intercontinental Plastics Corporation. The company occupied seven of the thirty-two floors of the modern high-rise office block at 355 Park Avenue. Six of the floors were lumped together, the fourteenth to the nineteenth; the seventh was the penthouse floor, containing two private apartments for visiting clients or executives. No doubt in order to spare the expense of renting me lodgings during my lengthy stay over here. I was billeted in one of these apartments.
The company looked smart and successful. Its offices were plush, the receptionist and secretaries were pretty, and the facade of the building, with its brown steel and smoked glass, oozed the aura of money.
Intercontinental Plastics Corporation started life under a less grand name: the Idaho Wooden Box Company. It was founded by an out-of-work chicken sexer midway through the Depression. His name was Leo Zlimvaier. A Russian by birth, his father had emigrated with his family to the United States early in the twentieth century.
It was a familiar story. Leo was one of nine children who found themselves uprooted from their home, herded under the decks of an overcrowded boat and thrown around the ocean for weeks on end, amid sweat and vomit and a hundred other discomforts. Eventually young Leo and his family were disgorged into the full glory of the USA, and found themselves at the focal point of Western civilisation: in New York Central Station.
There was a choice open to them of five different railroad tickets. Leo Zlimvaier’s father picked the one that, unknown to him at the time, assured him and his family of the bleakest of the five futures on offer. Two and a half days later they emerged, blinking and stupefied, into the bowels of God’s country: Boise, Idaho. The first blinding realisation to hit Zlimvaier Senior as he stepped down onto the soil was this: they were in the middle of absolutely nowhere.