“Not easy,” Frank said, back at the table in Mindle’s. He was feeling cold in the pit of his stomach. There were things you did, and things you were foolish to do. This was beginning to look foolish.
Joey, of course, didn’t get it. “All we gotta do is take out that backup car,” he said. “Look, Frank, between Belleville and Millstadt there’s a long run, maybe ten minutes, lotsa places where we could get rid of that other car. Then it’s easy.”
“What do you mean, get rid of that other car?”
“Take it out,” Joey said, shrugging the whole problem away. “Listen, I know a guy down in Missouri, down in Branson, we can get hand grenades, no fooling. We drive by, we flip one in the car, we—”
“Goodbye,” Frank said, and got to his feet, and walked out of the bar.
He was half a block toward the furnished room when Joey caught up with him, looking bewildered, maybe even a little put out. “Whad I do? Whad I do?”
Frank kept walking, Joey sweaty beside him. “I don’t ever go near violence,” he said. “Never. You start throwing hand grenades around—”
“So we just shoot the driver,” Joey said, shrugging, making what he must have thought was a decent compromise.
“No.”
Then Joey grabbed Frank’s arm and stopped him on the street. Joey was a fat slob, but he was also a muscleman fat slob; those fingers holding Frank’s arm hurt. And Joey had something else in his voice now, when he said, “Hold it a minute, Frank.” Something meaner, more dangerous.
Frank stopped, because he had to, and looked at Joey’s angry little eyes. “What now, Joey?”
“What now, Mr. Big Man,” Joey said, “is this. I look around this neighborhood, I don’t see a whole lot of people working on being saints and angels, and that includes you. Don’t give me bullshit, Frank. I brought you a job, we looked it over, it could be nice. All of a sudden, you’re too good for me. You don’t do violence.” Joey was still holding Frank’s arm, and now he squeezed a little, bearing down. “Well, I do,” he said. “I’m not afraid of violence, Frank. You wanna be, that’s okay. You get my meaning?”
This scumbag is turning mean, Frank thought. I made a mistake dealing with him in the first place, and now he’s getting resentful, his little piggy mind’s gonna decide I’m his enemy. I got to cut away from this shit. He said, “Joey, you knock over one day of one of Leo Ganolese’s operations, it won’t hurt him that much. He’ll look for the people did it, naturally, because nobody’s supposed to get away with crap like that. But you’re right, he’ll probably figure it’s some punk hanging around over at the horse show.”
“Just like I said,” Joey agreed, and gave Frank’s arm a little shake.
Frank ignored that. “But,” he said, “you start killing his people, you start acting like Leo Ganolese doesn’t deserve any respect, he’s gonna find you. So you can squeeze my arm all you want, I’d still rather face you than Leo Ganolese.”
Joey thought about that. Finally, reluctantly, he let Frank’s arm go, and Frank resisted the impulse to rub it where it ached. Don’t give the slob the satisfaction.
Meantime, Joey was saying, “Okay. We’re partners, we respect each other. You wanna come up with another way, fine by me.”
“So let me think about it,” Frank said, telling himself, maybe I’ll just leave this town tonight, score something along the way, just enough to take me maybe to Indianapolis, someplace like that.
But Joey said, “Frank, the horse show’s now. My way, I can get this hand grenade tomorrow, we can do it.”
There’s no way out, Frank thought. But somewhere, at some point, I’ve got to protect myself. Joey’s a nasty piece of shit. I shouldn’t be here with him at all, but here I am. “We’ll have to drive the route,” he said. “See what looks good.”
“Okay, Frank,” Joey said. “And I’ll get the hand grenade, too. Just in case.”
As it turned out, they did use the hand grenade, but not in the way Joey had in mind. A hand grenade, yes, but nonviolent.
The situation was, out around Smithton and Floraville, another area where the old man had a long empty ride between pickups, at an intersection in farm country, there was a stop sign. That was where they took him over, running out from both sides of the road as he halted, pulling the ski masks down over their faces, Frank pulling open the driver’s door as Joey hurled himself into the car on the passenger side, put his hands on the old man, and yanked him out from behind the wheel. The old man screamed, and Frank got his hands on the wheel, his right foot on the accelerator, and they shot out into the intersection, swinging around hard to the right.
The old man was yelling — what are you doing, are you crazy, do you know whose car this is, all this shit — and Joey cuffed him across the head to shut him up, the three of them wedged together in the front seat. Frank didn’t look in the rearview mirror, not wanting to know how close that other car was; it would be on their asses, he knew that much, coming along at top speed.
The narrow farm road was another right turn. Frank was so keyed up, so nervous about this part of it, that he almost took the turn too hard and rammed them into a tree. But he recovered, the tires digging into the oiled-gravel surface, spraying stones everywhere as they jolted on down the empty road, and when now he did dare look in the mirror that other car, a gray Toyota, was way the hell and gone behind them, a lot farther than he would have thought. Perfect.
The little bridge was a mile down this road, over a fast-running shallow boulder-strewn stream; Frank slammed on the brakes and they shuddered to a stop on the bridge, the terrified old man pressing his palms against the dashboard to keep from going out the windshield. Frank glared past him at Joey, screwing around with the hand grenade: “Drop the fucking thing, Joey!”
“Right! Right!” Joey dropped the grenade out the window, throwing the pin after it. Frank accelerated, and in the mirror he saw the roadway back there suddenly produce a red and yellow bouquet of flame, with black leaves of smoke. The chasing Toyota spun and shuddered and squealed to a stop, short of the explosion. The road gaped open over the stream. Nobody would be driving down this way any more today.
The beat-up old pickup truck Frank had stolen this morning was still there behind the burned-out shell of an old farmhouse. Frank steered in next to it, pulled the key from the ignition, and jumped from the car. He hadn’t taken anything today, not even a beer, but he was all hopped-up, adrenaline pumping through him. He almost felt as though, if he were to speak, his voice would come out all high-pitched and weird, like somebody who’s been sniffing helium. He couldn’t keep still, but had to go over and touch the pickup, then bounce back to the car, where Joey was still backing out, looking in at the old man. “Shit,” Joey said.
Frank paid no attention. The hard fast driving is what had keyed him up like this. If he held a light bulb it would glow, he knew it would. “He can stay in there,” he said, talking over the top of the car at Joey. “He can stay in there till we’re gone.”
“Oh, yeah, he’ll stay in there,” Joey said. “You’re fucking right he will.”
Something in Joey’s voice finally caught Frank’s attention, and he bent to look through the open driver’s door at the old man, who had gone on sitting in there, tilted slightly to the left now, staring out the windshield as though they were still doing eighty-five down the farm road. “Aw, Christ,” Frank said, seeing the old guy stare, seeing how his mouth hung open, how his hands were curled in his lap, how he didn’t move. Straightening, feeling like shit, he again looked across the top of the car at Joey. “We gave him a heart attack or something.”