The woman was sobbing, and she cried, "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me," and Joe Mack took a long breath and said, "I'm running from the cops. I've got a gun. Fuck with me and I'll kill you in one second." He didn't have a gun, but he was scared enough that he sounded as though he might. MacBride stayed in the foot well.
She was half upside down, her purse on the floor under Joe Mack's feet. He picked it up, dug through it, stuck her wallet in his pocket. He'd need the money The van rolled up to a red light. He ignored it-no traffic coming-and made a left turn and headed west, then a right, and another left, and he was on Highway 13 headed west again, toward the airport.
He had to think, but couldn't seem to. He couldn't go outside or he'd freeze. He saw the airport sign. THEY GOT a ticket and parked in the top of the parking structure. Joe Mack said, "Get out of there and get in the back."
MacBride clambered out of the foot well and between the two seats and into the back, and Joe Mack said, "Lay down," and then, "I'm gonna go outside and make a call so you can't hear it. If you stick your head up, or try to get out, I'll chase you down and kill your ass. If you stay here, you'll be okay. You understand what I'm telling you?"
"Yes…"
Joe Mack got out of the van and took his cell phone out of his pocket and called Lyle Mack. When Lyle answered, Joe said, "Jesus Christ, I'm in fuckin' big trouble, man."
He told Lyle what had happened: "They know everything. They know about the haircut. They got me."
"So you kidnapped a fuckin' woman, you fuckin' idiot?" Lyle was screaming at him. "They might have been bullshitting you, but now they got you for kidnapping."
"I didn't kidnap her. She's right in the van, she's right here, she's fine, I'm gonna let her go," Joe Mack said.
"Don't do a fuckin' thing," Lyle Mack said. "Stay right there and keep her with you. I'm gonna call Cappy and have him pick you up. Then I gotta call the cops."
"What for?"
"To turn you in, you dumb shit. If I don't turn you in, they'll get me, too. I'll call them and tell them you called me, but I won't tell them where you're at."
"What about me?"
"Like you said the other day-you're headed for Mexico. Or Panama. You're gone, man." LYLE MACK, hurrying, not thinking, dug his clean phone out of the pocket of his old army uniform in a back closet and called Caprice Garner. "I can do that, but it'll cost you another five grand," Cappy said, when Lyle Mack explained the situation. Cappy was out test-driving his new van.
"Five grand. That's fine. But I'm gonna have to owe it to you. We've got all that stuff we took out of the pharmacy, that's worth way more than five grand. But you'll have to be patient."
"Hey, I'll wait," Cappy said. "For a while, anyway."
"Deal," Lyle Mack said. He put the clean phone in his pocket and called his lawyer on the house phone. They talked for two minutes, and then the lawyer said, "I don't want to hear any more right now. Wait till the thing has settled down, then come see me."
That didn't help. He started to pace: he felt caged, like an animal. Joe Mack might have finished them off. JOE MACK sat in the van and talked with MacBride: "Look, I don't want to hurt you, and I won't. But the cops are… framing me. I took off. I freaked out and grabbed you, which I know I shouldn't have done, but now I'm in trouble for that."
"I won't testify against you, if you let me go," MacBride said.
Joe Mack wasn't the sharpest knife in the dishwasher, but he knew she was lying the moment the words were out of her mouth, and he almost laughed. "You'd turn me in the minute you got loose," he said. "I know that, you know that… when my buddy gets here, we're heading for Canada. There's good jobs up there, and they don't care who you are. Just be a little bit patient, and then you can tell the cops whatever you want."
He told her about working in the bar, and how the cops were trying to frame him for holding up the hospital. "We did not do that," he told her. "We did not. We got a good business, why'd we want to go around breaking into a hospital? But we're in an unpopular group, you know? The Seed? Have you heard of us?"
She shook her head.
"Well, we're really called the Bad Seed of America, Inc. We're a motorcycle club that got started in Milwaukee and Green Bay back, you know, a long time ago. My dad was a member…"
He told her about riding with the Seed, and she told him about getting laid off by the West Metro Credit Union. "I've got a job interview tomorrow at Macy's, in the credit department…" She had two daughters, she said, and was separated from her husband, but hoping to get back together after they worked out some issues. She was a sincere-sounding, dark-haired woman, and Joe Mack liked her well enough, though she was not really his style, too thin and small-breasted, with the beginnings of a satchel ass.
"I was just going to pick up Stacy when… you know. They're going to wonder what happened to me…" CAPPY GARNER parked in the green ramp and took the elevator down, walked through the underground plaza, found the blue ramp, and went up to the top level, pulled on a watch cap, turned up his collar, walked across the open top level, his hands thrust in the pockets of his new navy pea jacket. Joe Mack saw him coming and said to MacBride, "Here's my buddy. Now you stay down and everything will be okay. He can be a badass, so you don't want to see his face."
"I'll stay down," she promised.
Joe Mack got out of the van and Cappy came up and asked, "She inside there?"
"Yeah, but I made her stay down, so she couldn't see your face."
Cappy looked around the deck. "Don't see any cameras."
"No, but they'll figure out who done it anyway. She'll tell them."
"No, she won't," Cappy said. "Lyle says we get rid of her."
Joe Mack was taken aback. "What?"
"Get rid of her. Doesn't nobody but her know you grabbed her, so if we get rid of her, you're in the clear."
"Well, Jesus, we can't just… I mean, she's a nice lady."
"Little shit's gotta fall in everybody's life," Cappy said. He grabbed the van's side door to pull it back.
"Come on, Cappy," Joe Mack said. "Don't…"
"Already got a contract," he said. He pulled the door back. MacBride was lying on her stomach, and she looked at him, startled, and then asked, "Who are you?"
"I'm Cappy," Cappy said. He crawled into the van and pulled the door most of the way shut. Joe Mack, outside, shouted, "Goddamnit, Cappy… "
Cappy crawled over to her and she tried to crawl away, seized with desperation, and Cappy grabbed her left arm and yanked her halfway over on her back, but she struggled to get back on her stomach. He hit her once, hard, in the back of the head, and her face bounced off the floor, and the next time, when he yanked her over, she turned, and he lurched over her hips, one knee on each side. He tried to reach for her throat, but she cut at him with her nails, and he hit her again, on the side of the head, dazing her, and then got his thumbs under her chin.
He'd never strangled anybody, and thought there couldn't be too much to it, but she bucked and fought him, and his thumbs kept slipping off her windpipe; she tried to claw him again and he lost patience, hit her in the forehead, then caught her arms and pinned them with his legs, and went back into her throat, with his thumbs, and squeezed…
She was a thin woman, with no fat to protect her neck, and he felt something pop and her eyes widened and she stopped struggling and began to shake, and then her eyes rolled away. JOE MACK thought Cappy would shoot her or something, but after a second, heard MacBride start to scream, the scream suddenly cut off. Mack ran a few dozen yards away from the van, stopped, looked back at it, paced this way, then that, then ran back and pulled the door open. Cappy was sitting astride MacBride, strangling her. His hands were bleeding, where she'd scratched him, but she was all done with that. Her eyes had rolled up in her head, and her body had gone into a dead-shake. Cappy was riding her like a horse, a strange, stretched grin on his face, teeth showing. He held her until she was gone, then looked at Mack with his pale eyes, smiled, and said, "See, nothing to it."