I froze the Chevrolet’s progress down into fraction of a second by fraction of a second movement. I could see the driver’s face clearly: thin, nervous, concentrating for all he was worth on the act of keeping his car travelling in a straight line down the dead straight road. I’d left it too late. No I hadn’t. Yes I had; better to wait for the next car. Maybe not get another convertible for some time, not for a long time perhaps, empty like this, travelling so slowly, so close in to the bank. Jump!
I sprang, feet thrust out in front of me; air rushed past. The car was moving one hell of a lot faster from here than it had seemed to be from the bridge. I aimed the metal tips of my heels at the middle panel of the roof, worried about the PVC — it could be damn tough — then felt them slice through; then a thump, a horrendous ripping rending sound, a winding crack of my back on a metal strut, followed by a searing pain on my arm as another metal strut sliced off the skin. I crashed down onto the plastic cover of the back seat, felt the springs flatten and snap beneath me, then bounced up like some clumsy elephant on a trampoline, crashed down again, thumping violently into the seat back, kicked out my feet against the side of the car, and sank them hard into the cushioning on the panel. As my ass crashed back down onto the seat I was already reaching into my breast pocket for my Beretta.
My method of entry into the car had done something terrible to the driver’s nerves. We did a sharp swerve across the approach lane and over both lanes of the Parkway; swerved back across the three lanes and onto the hard shoulder; back across the three lanes, this time with the tail end swiping a chunk of itself off against the central barrier. We swung back across the entire three lanes, then the approach lane ended and we swung back across the two remaining lanes, zigzagged wildly three times in succession, miraculously missing the central divider and the verge. My driver was getting the hang of things. We swerved back across only one and a half lanes this time, and then the idiot went and slammed on the anchors for all he was worth.
‘Don’t brake — accelerate!’ I yelled. ‘For Chrissake accelerate!’ But it was too late; there was a scream of tyres from behind and I turned to see the headlamps of a saloon pointing almost vertically down at the tarmac. I tried to relax against the impact. He hit us with a wallop that lifted us in the air and spun us half round, flung me up in the air cracking my head on a roof spar, flung my driver up against his seat belting. Then he bashed us again, this time more gently, just behind the driver’s door. There was a rapid succession of screeching tyres, the banging of metal on metal and the smashing of metal on glass, that trailed on way back into the distance as most of the southbound Parkway drivers behind us tailgated each other.
‘Shift it!’ I said. ‘Shift it!’
‘I… but… I…’
‘Move this goddam car, move it!’
‘Accident. Must stop. Police. Insurance. Must stop.’
‘Move it, you jerk, I’m telling you. Drive on!’
‘But… my car…’
‘Stamp on that accelerator — gas pedal — goddam stamp on it, or I’ll blow your fucking head and balls off.’
‘It won’t go.’ He started frantically to turn the ignition key; each time he did there was a horrible metallic grating sound. ‘It won’t go!’ he repeated.
‘It’s already going,’ I said.
He turned his head with a pathetic, pleading look, to find himself staring down the receiving end of an extremely unsympathetic and very determinedly held Beretta.
Something must have got through for he tramped on the gas pedal and the tyres, grinding themselves away against the wheel arches that had been rammed against them, spun protestingly round. As we grated forward there was a clattering, followed by a thunderous roar, as the exhaust parted company with us. Sounding like a cross between a tugboat and an iron foundry, we started to pick up speed.
‘Just keep it going, nice and easy and as fast as you can, my friend.’
He gave a tiny nod. He was welded to the steering wheel and sitting bolt upright in his seat, like a rabbit with premature rigor mortis. ‘Yes, er, sir.’ Unfortunately he was one of those people who find it impossible to hold a car on a completely straight course and he continually sawed at the steering wheel with his hands. Up to about 50 it was tolerable. As the needle started to flicker up to the 65-mark we started to sway in an uncomfortable manner, his sawing movements became bigger and we began to feel very unstable.
‘Slow down to 50 and hold it there. Hang a left onto the George Washington Bridge when we get to it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He was a natty little man, spick and span and dainty. A Chopin waltz was playing on his tape deck. He wore his hair short and it was slicked with hair cream. He had on a rather loud, brown checked jacket, with a bright red shirt and pale-blue polyester tie. He reeked of several different brands of after-shave and cologne and talcum powder and face lotion and under-arm spray and in-between-toes spray. He looked like a prime candidate for one of Elmer Hyams’s Pontiac bargains.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Henry, er, Timbuck — er, Henry Timbuck — er, Henry C. Timbuck, sir.’
‘Glad to know you, Henry C. Timbuck.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
He had a cute lisp. His whole voice in fact was cute. It was the typical nasally high-pitched accent of New York gays. He gave his words a little mince as he spoke, and minced his body at the same time. He relaxed, just a trifle, which was a mistake as he nearly put us up the back of a bus.
Henry C. Timbuck looked like he’d been all set for a Sunday night on the Manhattan tiles. I wondered vaguely whether he was off to some bar to sit on his own and try for a pick-up, or off to have dinner with his boyfriend, or off to that loneliest of all pastimes — cruising.
A hurricane was raging in through what was left of the roof, and I climbed over into the front seat to get the protection of the windshield. The stink of perfumes was even stronger.
‘What do you do?’ I asked him. I have no idea why I asked him; I didn’t give a monkey’s what he did, and I didn’t hear his reply. There were a lot of matters I had to sort out fast, and for me they all took priority over Henry C. Timbuck’s career. I churned over the events of today, trying to see where any of it fitted, if any of it fitted at all.
I was shivering with cold. ‘Got a heater in this thing?’
Timbuck fiddled with some knobs on the dash and the car went once more into a violent swerve. Fortunately there was nothing trying to pass us. A stream of roasting air poured onto my feet and a blast of freezing air shot into the centre of my stomach, accompanied by a noise from behind the dash not unlike that of an asthmatic bulldog.
I hit the button on what appeared outwardly to be a standard Seiko digital watch but inside contained the full technical treatment from MI5. Its level of accuracy was so high that it would not gain or lose more than a hundredth of a second in two years, either on the moon, on land, or five miles underwater. Not a lot of point in it, to my thinking, unless one is going in for inter-galactic travelling in a big way. Which I wasn’t. Today’s date beamed up on the dial. I shouldn’t have gotten the date — the button I pushed was for the time. I pushed it again and the date appeared once more, dark purple against the cream background. So I pushed the button for the date. That also gave me the date. I pushed the button for the time again and got my precise height above sea level. I made a mental note to strangle two gentlemen, one named Trout, the other Trumbull, on my return to England. I pushed the time button again, losing patience, and got the temperature, first in Celsius, then in Fahrenheit, followed by a barometric read-out. I patiently and gently pushed the button once more. It gave me the time in Japan, followed by the time in Iceland, Libya, Romania and Argentina, then a rapid-fire sequential coded print-out of all emergency dialling codes to Control in London from almost anywhere in the world. Finally the contraption took complete leave of its senses and began to spew out gibberish at an ever increasing speed until the face became a blur of blinking lights that made it look like the entrance to a rather smart strip club.