Floyd dropped the plastic syringe and crushed it under his heel. There were plenty more where it had come from. He said gently, “Get in the car, Georgie,” and helped his brother into the back seat. Georgie slumped back with his eyes shut, rolling his face from side to side, moaning softly. Floyd shut the door on him and stood for a moment frowning at the ground. Then he stirred. “Come on.”
Mitch followed him over to the road. Theodore was sitting on one of the sawhorses, dangling one leg; Theodore’s grotesquely scarred face was ghoulish in the falling darkness. Floyd said mildly, “We all know what to do. Watch the hill for Billie Jean’s signal. Theodore, if Mitch here gets cold feet you can warm them up for him.”
Theodore said, “Yeah.”
“Meanwhile stick your finger back in your nose.”
Mitch kept wary watch on Theodore—the gleam of his one good eye, the heavy roll of his brutal lips. Theodore would enjoy a chance to knock him around. Bleakly Mitch turned his back and stared at the hilltop. He could barely make out Billie Jean’s plump silhouette against the night sky.
The signal light flashed.
“All right,” Floyd murmured. “Move.”
They lit the firepots and set them out in the road, blocking off the passage with the sawhorses. Detour with arrows pointing to the right into the narrow dusty side road that led nowhere. Fifty yards up the arroyo the Oldsmobile stood across the side road, making it a cul-de-sac.
Theodore touched Mitch on the shoulder and Mitch unhappily followed him across the road into the brush, where he crouched down with Theodore’s hand on his shoulder, keeping him captive. He could hear the rattle of dislodged stones as Billie Jean hurried down the hill to join Floyd by the Olds.
Headlights came over a rise and stabbed the night, throwing their harsh brightness against the sawhorses, and he heard the snarl of the engine, the change in its tone when the driver discovered the obstacle and down-shifted. There was a brief squeal of rubber—she had been traveling fast. The little sports car came into sight, darkly red in its own reflected lamplight, slowed to a crawl, the girl plainly visible and frowning with baffled irritation, and turned off into the cul-de-sac, bumping along on its butt-jolting springs. The headlights picked up the Olds and the brake-lights flashed brightly. The sports car slowed to a halt, the girl’s head lifting alertly. Floyd’s leonine shape leaped from the shadows to her right. He jumped into the car with both feet, lighting on the right-hand bucket seat, and crouched forward to twist the keys and yank them out of the ignition before the girl had time to react. The rumble of the engine died with a chatter and dust swirled in the headlights.
Theodore said in his ear, “Okay, okay. Let’s go.” Theodore dragged him onto the road and they picked up the sawhorses and firepots and carried them into the cul-de-sac. Mitch heard the brief sound of a struggle, a girl’s high shriek cut off in its middle; he couldn’t see through the dust. The headlights were switched off; he stumbled and almost dropped his armload. “Go on,” Theodore said testily behind him. “Pick up your feet.”
“I can’t see in the dark,” Mitch snapped.
Someone turned on the headlights again. Billie Jean was bent over the passenger door of the sports car, tying a gag in the captive girl’s mouth. Floyd climbed out of the car and grinned, his face flushed with excitement. “She’s a great little fighter for her weight.”
Mitch carried the sawhorses back to the trunk of the Olds and put them inside. Theodore extinguished the firepots, put everything away in the trunk and slammed the lid. They walked back to the sports car. Floyd and Billie Jean had the girl outside, on her feet. Her hands were tied together in front of her with coat-hanger wire. Spirited and beautiful, she held Floyd with a surly glance of steel contempt. If she was afraid she concealed it well. She was disheveled and scratched up; Mitch thought, She’s gorgeous, and sucked in his breath.
When he came closer he saw the telltale thread of moisture on her upper lip. Scared but game. Floyd came around the car and chucked the girl under the chin. “Delicious, isn’t she? A hundred and twenty pounds of pure platinum. How about it now, Mitch? Piece of cake.”
When Theodore looked at the girl his neck swelled with musty desire. Theodore said, “How about we all knock off a piece before we go?”
The girl blanched; her eyes flashed toward Floyd. Floyd said to her, “Don’t be too offended. Theodore has an unfortunate manner. He’s a wonderful example of the miracle by which a human body can function without the help of mental power.” He wheeled: “Keep your hands and your mouth off her, Theodore. The lady’s our guest.”
Theodore worked up saliva in his mouth and spat emphatically on the ground. Turning away, he said, “She looks cold tittie anyway.” Billie Jean glared at him.
Floyd said mildly, “Put her in the Olds. Theodore, you’ll drive her car. Let’s go.”
The two cars prowled quickly across the graded desert roads, twisting through the hills. They turned north once and ran five miles along an unpaved secondary road, mainly because Floyd wanted to throw pursuit off in case the police had instruments capable of identifying their tire tracks. They turned west on a paved highway and south again after another five-mile run, going down a gravel road toward the Mexican border. Fifteen miles short of that boundary Floyd indicated a turn to the left and Mitch put the Olds into a narrow pair of rocky ruts that took them uncomfortably, even at five miles an hour, through a notch in the hills. Beyond the notch the country leveled out and the, road surface became slightly smoother although it was evident the road was seldom used or graded. Once they passed a weathered sign: DIP—WARNING—QUICKSAND—DO NOT ENTER WHEN WET.
The moon came up; Floyd said, “We’re just about there. Take it easy along here.”
“What do you think I’m doing? I wish to hell somebody’d taught Theodore not to tailgate so close.”
“Good brakes in those little cars,” Floyd observed. “He can stop on a dime. Don’t worry about it.”
“What if the dime happens to be in my pocket?”
“Very droll.”
In the back seat the girl after trying to talk through the gag in her mouth had subsided. Billie Jean sat watching her maliciously.
Mitch said, “What’s her name again?”
“Terry Conniston,” Floyd said. He held up the girl’s handbag. “I checked, to make sure. We got the right girl.”
“Be funny if we hadn’t.”
“How kind of you to remind me.” Floyd hipped around in the seat. “Beautiful girl, isn’t she, Mitch?”
“Why ask me?”
“I thought you were taken with her.”
“What are you driving at now?”
Floyd only chuckled.
“Endsville,” muttered Billie Jean. The dark little desert town had a cemetery look. After the maze of signless dirt roads Mitch was surprised Floyd had found it on the first try. It was a sprawl of melting adobe relics, half concealed by clumped cactus and mesquite—a ramshackle disarray in various states of caved-in collapse. Empty windows stared dark and vacant from a few shells left standing.
They drove into a barn. It was pitch-black when they turned off the lights. Floyd took the flashlight and said, “Everybody out,” and stood by the car holding the beam toward the wide front door to light their path. Mitch waited for Billie Jean to push the prisoner out of the car; Terry Conniston’s knees buckled and Mitch reached out to catch her. He heard Billie Jean snicker when he picked up the girl and half-carried her outside.
They stumbled over debris, across the ghost street. The faded lettering crescent-shaped across the high front of the building was hardly readable when the flashlight played across it, General Mercantile. The sign on the door said the store was closed. It had been drawn freehand, red paint on wood. An old metal RC Cola sign creaked and banged in the rusty breeze. Billie Jean looked around and said again, “Endsville. Pillsville. Christ. I’m hungry and dusty and I don’t s’pose there’s anyplace to take a bath around here.”