Boy oh boy, what a ride it is. Vi is shouting at the top of her lungs for me to slow down and each time she hollers, I jump the needle up a notch. The police car is dropping away fast when I hear a couple of slugs smack the back of the heap. I’m allergic to bullets. And those guys aren’t fooling. The turns save us. We have a two hundred-foot lead and bullets can’t shoot around corners. Then when we hit the straightaway, I give it everything she has, and when I look in the mirror, you could hardly see the black sedan.
“You fool!” Vi says. “You’ll kill us all. Stop this instant!”
“Why, chick, I thought you had nerve. Golly, if I thought a little thing like that would scare a red-blooded American gal like you, why I’d...”
“Who’s afraid? Pam said you’d never driven a car in your life and I don’t want to be run off a cliff by a crazy maniac at the wheel of something he’s never handled!”
“Oh, there isn’t a cliff for miles. Relax.”
I don’t slow down a fraction until we hit the city limits, then I lead a rat race up and down every street and alley I can find. We can hear sirens all over the place by that time. Every cop on wheels is cruising the town with an eye out for the limousine. I park outside a theater, grab Vi, and yank her out on the sidewalk.
“Now what, bright boy?”
“So we’ll leave Punchy behind and he can tell the bulls how he was held up by a maniac, slugged and taken for a ride. Come on, we have a vacation to enjoy.”
I pull her down the street on the gallop, and turn into the first place that carries a beer sign in the window.
But we don’t get a beer. A miniature tornado jumps from a table and points a finger at me.
“It is you! So you think you evade your debts. Now I have you on the spots and will wring my moneys from you. Garcon! Garcon! Call the gendarmes... at once. This man is a crook!”
“Not you again, pally,” I yip.
It is Alfred from the train.
“So,” Vi howls, “they even chase you in this country to get their money back. Now you’re in for it... and brother, will I squeal on you! You won’t get back to the old country for ten years! Waiter, call the cops!”
He doesn’t have to be told twice. When Vi lets loose, four guys detach themselves from another table and move to cover the doorway. This kind of response I can understand. I grab a pair of chairs and go for the roadblock.
If I could reach it, I’d be out of there in nothing flat, because the opposition doesn’t like the way I am moving those pieces of chromed steel and leather, but a hundred-twenty pounds of southern fried chick take me out high, and a butterball of one-fifty name of Alfred does the same down low, and the opposition moves in for the pile-up. A referee in navy blue blows the whistle, and I go to the Black Maria.
I guess I am the only sad one on the trip to the station. Alfred smirks and makes faces. “Now even if I have to sell the suits on your back,” he says, “I will get my moneys. Aha, you never get away from Alfred as long as I live. We shall see anon. Aha!”
“Aha yourself and shut up.”
“So! You still insist you do not know me. Ho. So I will prove it to you who you are. Tonight you have a nice bed in the clink and I will have my moneys. So! Ho!”
“And I,” says Vi, “will send you cigarettes. Nice moldy ones.”
The cop at the end of the paddy wagon tells everybody to shut up. Which is fine with me. I need time to think. The wagon tears down the main drag, makes a right turn and brakes screech.
I climb out of the cage with the cop standing by, one hand on a billy, while the driver gives me the thumb to get inside. Vi is absolutely overjoyed. She is loving every minute of it. So is Alfred. He marches in to present his case like a bantam rooster.
The cops on the inside are collecting us in a group with motions to be quiet when from outside comes the most gosh-awful racket you ever heard. Somebody is yelling bloody murder, and a deeper, raspier voice is for the other guy to stop or be killed.
A whistle blows, two cars bang together, and women shriek. Whoosh! Just like that the doors bang open and I run in. No. It isn’t me, but it is me. Hell, I don’t give it too much time. I get smart fast. Right behind me is Punchy waving a club ready to bash out my brains. No, that other me’s brains.
It is all so confusing, but I am lucky. I see it all before anyone else does and make a dive for the water cooler just as the other me buries himself in the arms of the cop that is supposed to be guarding me.
Somehow Punchy is disarmed, but he isn’t devoiced. He swears up and down that he will rip me apart with his bare hands, he will cut me into little pieces and make me eat them before I am dead.
Alfred starts to voice first claims on my body and Vi wants to call the undertaker right away, but the cop stops her. I don’t know how the bulls manage it, but they get everybody in front of the chief’s desk before murder is committed. This leaves me out behind the cooler still in a fog.
So I can take a joke. I have me a drink of water, pat the cooler affectionately, then find a side room to peek in from on the proceedings.
The chief is next door to a stroke, Vi is having a laughing spasm and Punchy is fit to be tied. But poor other me. I stand there watching myself shake like a bowl of pudding.
The other me cries out “Alors! Woe is me! I am entirely innocent, I insist it. Here I am walking calmly down the street when I am attacked by this... this thing! I seek the protection of the noble police and what do I find? I am incarcerated! This cannot be America. I will refer the matter to my consulate! I will...”
“You will shut up,” the chief tells me. I mean, the other me.
Punchy yells, “He beaned me, that’s what he did. Picked up a rock and beaned me, then stole the boss’ car. He’s a kidnapper!”
This is Vi’s cue. Yes sir, she swears, she was kidnapped, right there in broad daylight. I was a villain, even worse. And what was more, I was practically an extortionist to boot.
At that moment who comes in but the state troopers. One look is all they need. Yep, that was the guy who drove the speeding car. Yup, yup. They had a good close look and couldn’t forget a face like that, yup, yup.
The other me is up there screaming that it isn’t so. It is an international conspiracy so that good American dollars can’t be exported to the old country. It is a foul plot!
No kidding, I like to split a gut watching it. The only trouble is, I felt sorry for myself even if it wasn’t really me out there.
Then more people come in. The mama bear, the papa bear, and Pam, the baby bear. One peek at them and the other me lets loose in a foreign language that switches back and forth to English in tones that imply Incredible Heights is a suburb of Looneyville and that all was off in the wedding department. Mama faints, Pam opens the dam and forth comes a flood of tears.
“So now the would-be duchess is cry!” the other me says. “Ha... never would you see the inside of a royal court. For your moneys I care not a pouf! So there!”
Papa plays it smart. He grabs me fast. I mean, the other me. He says, “Are you refusing to marry my daughter?”
“Of the certainty, that I am. Arrest me, torture me, I am unsway. I do not marry anyone!”
Old Pop just grins like a fool. So does Vi.
She says, “I guess that tears it, Pop. We can go home now.”
“But my moneys, what about my moneys?” Alfred hoots. “Am I to be deprived of my moneys? Am I to be deprived of what is owed me?”