Hostage For A Hood (7 page)

Bart had preferred the road to the parkway.

"Sure," he would say, "I know we can make better time on the parkway and I know Twenty-two is always crowded, but the scenery is nice and anyway we aren't in any hurry."

It was absolutely essential that she keep her mind on Bart. The initial shock had worn off; she was past hysteria now, past the point where she might faint, or go into a state of shock. Now it was pure and unadulterated fright.

She must keep her mind busy, think of something, think of anything but that blood-soaked, bullet-ridden armored car driver lying back there beside his truck on the cement pavement. Must think of anything but the lean, hard man who sat tense and waiting at her side.

God, to think that this was she, Joyce Sherwood, celebrating her first wedding anniversary.

She lifted her eyes from the road ahead for a moment and looked at the dogwood trees lining the side of the highway. They had been in bloom on that day of her life when she and Bart had made the one most important drive of all along this road. It was a day which she often remembered and now once more she forced her mind to dwell on it ....

They had been going together for quite a while and they'd found a lot to like in each other, but there had been nothing serious. Joyce had been orphaned at an early age and had spent most of her childhood in a convent. Her guardian was a distant relative who lived abroad and had little interest in the child who had been left in his care. He'd shifted his responsibilities to a trust company which in turn had seen to it that Joyce was raised in the convent until she was in her teens. She'd gone to a good finishing school and later had been entered in a New England college.

It was during her sophomore year that the guardian died and shortly after she received the news, the trust company had gotten in touch with her. It seemed that the money for her education had long ago run out and that the distant relative had been paying her expenses out of his own pocket. The first thing his heirs did was to cut off her allowance.

Joyce had to leave the college and take a job. The job was with the Markson Advertising Agency, and it was there that she'd met Bart. Until the time of her first date with him—he took her to dinner after work and then to a movie at one of the midtown art theaters—she'd had almost no contact at all with men. There'd been a couple of dates while she was still in college, but her years in the convent had made her afraid of men and she was extremely shy. Once or twice a boy had tried to kiss her and make love to her but she was embarrassed and frightened and they'd soon given up.

Bart also had tried to kiss her that first night after he had returned with her to the apartment she shared with another girl. Again she had been shy and a little frightened and had pushed him away. Only Bart hadn't given up. He'd been wise and considerate. They continued to see each other outside of the office as well as in
it. Gradually she became used to him.

And then came the time they took the drive, planning to spend the day in the country and end up having dinner at the little inn over the line in Connecticut.

Bart was in good spirits and she herself was feeling gay and carefree as they had started out. They'd sung together all the way up, she carrying the tunes of the modern songs and Bart attempting to join her with his deep, soft voice, which never could find the right key. They'd reached the inn early in the afternoon and had gone in and Bart had ordered daiquiris for them. She'd never cared much about drinking, but this day something had happened to her. She was ecstatically happy, for no reason at all except that she was with Bart and it was spring and they were young and full of life.

They had two more drinks apiece and then Bart had ordered the dinner. He'd ordered a very special dinner, sautéed guinea hen and wild rice, and it had taken a while before it would be ready.

While they waited they decided to take a walk and they followed the path behind the inn and down by the little pond. They were standing there at the edge of the pond when Bart had reached over and taken her in his arms and had kissed her. She had acted instinctively then, pushing him and leaning away, and then her feet slipped and the bank began to crumble and the next thing she knew both of them were waist-deep in the pond.

They were laughing wildly as Bart helped pull her out. That's when she suddenly turned to him and raising on her toes, put her arms around him and lifted up her lips.

Ten minutes later they returned to the inn, both dripping wet.

Mama Galuzzi, who ran the place, had thrown up her hands and screamed when she saw them. She yelled at her husband who was cooking in the kitchen and when he came to the door, she spoke to him rapidly in Italian.

Mama Galuzzi took charge. She showed them upstairs and into what must have been her own bedroom. She threw Joyce a great woolly bathrobe and told her to get into it at once. She wouldn't even listen while they tried to argue with her. And then she took Bart down the hall to a second room and handed him a second robe and ordered him to take off his soaking garments. He'd started to protest and she moved in and Bart knew that if he didn't obey she would literally take the clothes off his back. So he, like Joyce, had agreed and had stripped to his skin.

Mama Galuzzi left them up there then while she took their clothes down to the kitchen to dry out.

It was Joyce who walked down and entered the room where Bart sat, hunched up on the edge of the bed. This time there was no hesitation at all when he held out his arms. They didn't even bother to see that the door was locked.

Later on, as they sat opposite each other at the table down in the dining room and ate the guinea hen and wild rice, Mama Galuzzi peeked in on them now and then, a sly smile on her old face. Bart had tipped her outrageously and they had left, driving back to New York the same way they'd come up, on Route Twenty-two. Neither had talked much on that return trip; neither had to. They knew then that it was all settled. It was just a case of setting the date ...

Yes, this road would ever be associated in her mind with Bart. It was odd how now, with this sinister, deadly man sitting beside her with his empty right sleeve tucked into the coat of his jacket, she kept thinking of Bart. She didn't want to think of that empty right sleeve. She was too conscious of where the arm was which would normally have filled it. The arm was bent at the elbow and was concealed by his tightly buttoned jacket and his shirt. At the end of that arm was his hand and in the hand was the gun. The gun which was pointed directly at her as she carefully drove the old car.

They had reached Route Twenty-two shortly after dumping the other three, and he had directed her to turn north, through the crowded traffic of the series of suburban towns which were strung out like beads on a necklace. She was surprised, assuming that he'd stick to the back roads.

For a moment or so she'd felt a surge of hope, knowing there would be cars and people. There would undoubtedly be a roadblock, also, sooner or later. They must know about the robbery now, in Brookside. They would have found the armored car with its blood-drenched cargo.

He must have guessed what she was thinking, because he spoke quickly, in that short, clipped voice, which wasn't at all what she thought the voice of a gunman and killer would be, but which pronounced its words clearly and literately, for all of its deadly coldness.

"We may very likely hit a roadblock," he said. "It will be up to you, then. With all this traffic, they'll probably just check your driving license and take a look in the back of the car. If everything is all right, they won't go any further. You pray that they don't. It isn't only that I'll shoot you first; I'll get one of them, anyway, maybe more. I don't have a thing to lose. Remember that—I have nothing to lose. So it isn't just your life you'll be sacrificing. I'll have time to take at least another one along with me. Remember what I have told you. Tell them your right name, show them your license. I'm your father and I've been sick and you're taking me for a ride in the country."

"I'll do what you say," she said.

"You'd better."

They were past Bedford now and still heading north. She remembered the time early in the spring when Bart and she had stopped in Bedford and talked with the real estate agent who had shown them the houses, which were all too expensive. She remembered so many things and suddenly as she thought of Bart she realized that just about now he would be trying to arrange for the theater tickets.

She thought of the check for twenty-six hundred dollars which she had in her purse and of the surprise she had planned for him, the impractical new car which he wanted so badly. She fought to keep the tears back.

A mile or so further on Cribbins told her to slow down and he had her pull off the highway in front of a roadside stand. The carhop came out and smiled at them and Cribbins ordered four hamburgers and a couple of bottles of soda.

"You got change?" he asked, when the girl left to fill the order.

Joyce nodded.

He told the carhop they'd take the food and drinks with them and she didn't realize what he was up to until he made her stop the car a mile further along the road. Then he took the meat from one of the sandwiches and held it out to the dog, who until then had sat stiff and tense between them, growling now and then.

Flick looked at the rare meat and drew back and the man spoke gently. The dog's curly head shot forward and he took a piece of meat. He ate the second sandwich without being coaxed.

"I want him friendly if we get stopped," he said to Joyce. He told her that she could have the other sandwiches but she shook her head. She wasn't hungry. She did drink one of the bottles of soda.

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked. "Can't you just take the car and let me out and ... "

He smiled thinly. "You're staying with me," he said. "If I let you out now I'd have to kill you."

She gasped and the wheel jerked in her hands.

"Take it easy," he said. "Nothing's happened to you yet. Maybe nothing will. I don't know myself. Just keep driving."

They went on, passing through Bedford Hills and Golden's Bridge and into the three-laned highway leading to Brewster. It was a mile or two before the Brewster city line that the traffic suddenly became heavy and they were forced to slow down to around twenty-five miles an hour. He was very alert and noticed at once that traffic coming south was normal.

"This is probably it," he said. "Just remember what I told you."

He was right. Within a few hundred yards she had to put the car into second gear and then, as they barely crawled along, they passed a state trooper standing next to his motorcycle at the side of the road. He stared at them as they crawled past him and a moment or so later she had to stop. She could see the line of cars stretching out up ahead.

It took them almost half an hour to reach the point in the highway where the police car was pulled diagonally across the road, blocking the northbound lane.

The car directly in front of them was a low-slung, sporty convertible with its top down. A lone man was behind the wheel. She watched, held in dumb fascination as she saw the two troopers converge. Off to one side, in a second police car, another pair of officers sat. The doors of the police car were open and she could see that the trooper on the outside kept his hand on his holster.

Two state policemen approached the convertible from each side and the one opposite the driver just stood and leaned against the car and said nothing. The other trooper was asking to see the man's license. While he was getting it out, one of the men from the police car at the side of the road got out and strolled over. He looked into the tonneau of the convertible and then slowly circled until he came to the rear of it. He lifted up the trunk cover and looked inside.

Joyce Sherwood shuddered. She was thinking of the trunk of her own car; thinking of what lay in it. Not only of the money bags from the wrecked armored car, but the sub-machine gun and the pistols.

Once more Cribbins seemed to sense what was going through her mind. "I'm warning you," he said in a harsh whisper. "Do it just the way I told you to. Don't forget."

Flick growled low in his throat and tensed. A moment later he barked sharp and clear, his feet on the top of the door and his head out the opened window. Cribbins held the dog by his collar and spoke softly to him as the dog continued to bark.