“ Unh-unh,” she said. “Nope. Not today you don’t.”
She leaned out the window.
“Guys!”
At first they just sat there watching her. Then she turned the ignition key and the car fired up nice and easy, so she backed away from the tree and shifted and pulled forward to the roadside and waited.
The driver got out first and started across the street. The others followed. And that was when Janet went for the door again so she had to whack her on the head with the gun barrel and hit the automatic lock.
“Hey, prom queen. Stay the hell put.”
He was a good-looking guy, this one with the Colt. Reminded her of some actor. Scott something. Craggy face, thin sandy hair, deep blue eyes that stared at them now through the open window. And then moved down to her gun.
“Oh, this?” she said. “It’s not loaded.”
She handed it to him and he broke it open, inspected it and handed it back to her. She hit the automatic lock again.
“Hop in, fellas,” she said. “My friend and I were just out for a little ride.”
Alan didn’t know why he was doing this. He was younger than Janet by nearly five years-too young, maybe, to be stuck with just one woman-and he guessed that was one reason.
Though being stuck with Janet was hardly being stuck.
He’d have to cut it out though once they got married. He’d emulated his father by going into criminal law but he didn’t have to emulate the rest of his behavior.
Does the word satyrasis mean anything to you, buddy?
She was a cute one, though, this little blond waitress from the Turtle Brook. Cute and so young and firm he’d lay odds her breasts didn’t even bounce when she jogged and he’d lay more odds she did jog, and if her apartment was the kind of godawful mess a high school kid would be proud of, you didn’t notice that under the sheets where he was, doing what he was doing. He listened to her groan and then suddenly he remembered.
“ Shit,” he said into her pubic hair. He threw off the sheets.
She sat up against the headboard. He looked at her and guessed he’d been pretty good so far. Her breastbone was glistening with beads of sweat.
“I’m sorry. I don’t believe it.”
“What’s the matter, honey?”
“I left my briefs at the house. They’re sitting on the goddamn table.”
“So?”
“I can’t stay. Sorry.”
“I don’t get it. Who cares where you leave your underwear?”
Yeah, he thought, he was going to have to cut this out.
She felt as though she were trapped inside a kind of living thing, Jonah in the belly of a speeding whale that hurtled through a lonely electrified night. She couldn’t seem to wrap her brain around the fact that a trio of killers were riding along behind her or that Marion was doing this or that she’d just watched one man kill another the way you’d put down a wounded dog. She’d represented killers before. She was representing one now for godsake-Arthur “Little” Harpe. Yet she’d never seen or felt the impact of what they did.
She was feeling it now.
The little man-the one sitting in the middle- seemed nervous, the others calm. How could they be calm?
“Where we going, Emil?” he said.
“Don’t know.”
The killer’s name is Emil, she thought. You remember that.
“I could use a drink I guess.”
“There’s a package store ahead,” Marion said. “Or do you want a bar?”
“Package store will do.”
He was sitting directly behind Marion and she saw them exchange glances in the mirror and Marion’s was amazing and simple to read. She’s turned on by this, she thought. Jesus. She’s crazy. Hell, they’re all crazy. Either that or stupid as they come. Driving around like nothing had happened back there at all. When a cop was dead. It frightened her but it made her mad too. Stupidity disgusted her.
“You’re going to a package store?” she said. “What about the car? I can’t believe you people.”
“What car?” said the man sitting behind her.
“The Jeep you left behind. Don’t you think somebody might be looking for you?”
“Well, that Jeep ain’t actually ours, ma’am. Sort of a loaner. You don’t have to worry about the Jeep. It was nice of you to ask though.”
“Your fingerprints will be all over it.”
“Fingerprints don’t work. They never get anybody on fingerprints. That’s TV.”
He wasn’t exactly right there but he wasn’t exactly wrong either.
“I’ve got a police band here,” said Marion. “We can turn it on if you want. Just in case.”
“Later, maybe,” the man called Emil said. “Police band’s a godawful noisy thing.”
Marion slowed and turned into a gravel lot with two cars parked in front of a squat stucco building and a neon sign saying WILEY’S LIQUORS over the door and even before they stopped Janet wrenched at the door handle, her heart racing as the door opened and the impulse was irresistible, the gravel was going to hurt like hell but damn the gravel she was about to leap and roll when a hand gripped the back of her neck and pain shot through her head like a sudden migraine.
“When you got up this morning,” the man behind her said, “did you get up this stupid?”
She could barely hear him, the pain was so bad. Some pressure point or something.
“ Please… let… go. ”
“You gonna scream?”
“No!”
“Nobody around to hear you anyway. Couple frogs maybe. They build these stores like concrete bunkers. I guess I could let up a little.”
“Pu… please do.”
The man did but still held on to her with one hand so that the pain wound down to a dull throbbing ache while he leaned over and closed the door with the other and settled back in his seat.
“Better?”
“Y… yes.”
“You’re welcome.”
The man called Emil opened the door on his side and climbed out of the car.
“Ray, stay with her. What’s your name again, honey?”
“Janet.”
“Stay with Janet here. Billy, come on along with me.”
The man who had her was Ray and the little one was Billy.
He turned to Marion and smiled.
“C’mon,” he said. “You’ll see something.”
“Wait here,” Emil told her so she stood by the counter like she was interested in the magazine rack and listened to some old duffer in a white T-shirt and suspenders bend the balding store clerk’s ear with some ragtime about plaster dust and sawdust just pullin ’ the moisture right out of his hands, just pulling it outa my hands, look at them hands, just pullin’ it right on out, i’nt that awful? and the clerk looking at the upturned palms of his hands and saying Yeah, Bob, that’s terrible, the customer paying for his bottle of Old Times and the clerk brown-bagging it while Billy set the two six-packs down on the counter just to the left of her and Emil his fifths of Makers Mark and J amp;B next to that.
The old man shoved his wallet into the front pocket of his baggy tan pants, hefted the bag into the crook of his arm and started to leave.
“Excuse me? Sir?” Emil said.
The man stopped and squinted at him.
You’ll see something, he’d said. She guessed this was going to be it. She had to work to keep from smiling.
“Pay for this for me, will you, friend? I’m short on cash.”
The man glanced at the whiskey and the beer. He shook his head.
“Crazy sumbitch,” he muttered.
He moved toward the door again, and Emil flung his arm across her shoulders from behind and pulled her between the man and the door. When she felt the gun against her cheek the gasp was real.
“Pay for it. Or I shoot the lady and then I shoot you.”
“He means it,” Billy said. “He’s not facetious.” “And you behind the counter. Don’t move.”
You could see the old guy sizing up the situation. She wondered what war he’d served in. He wasn’t particularly rattled. Tough old bird.