The Getaway (Read a Great Movie) (10 page)

"Practically anything." Doc slid instantly into her mood.

"If I ever get nasty again, give me a good hard kick in the pants."

Doc said he would have to investigate the possibility of breakage first; he had a very delicate foot. Then he laughed and she laughed. And quivering with the movement of the train, the dead man seemed to laugh too.

When they got off the train, Doc waved a smiling good-bye toward the window, then advised the conductor that his friend was doing nicely. "I gave him some aspirin and he's going back to sleep for a while. That's all he needs, just rest and quiet."

The conductor said there was no reason at all why the gentleman shouldn't get it. "He can sleep till Doomsday as far as I'm concerned!"

Doc thanked him for his courtesy and gave him a warm handshake. As the train pulled out, the conductor examined the bill he had received during the handshaking process. And glowing pleasantly-telling himself you could always spot a gentleman-he started back down the line of cars. His happy musings were interrupted with nerve-shattering suddenness by a screamed demand to "Stick 'em up!"

The owner of the voice had been crouching between two seats. He was about seven, dressed in cowboy regalia, and equipped anachronistically with a toy machine gun.

"What are you doing here?" the conductor gasped, his hair slowly settling back to his scalp. "I've told you about fifteen times already to stay with your moth…"

"Bang, bang, bang!" The boy screamed. "You're an old stinky booger man, an' I'm gonna shoot you dead!"

He dropped into a crouch, triggered the gun. It chattered and barked realistically. Even more realistic was the water which jetted from its muzzle, and sprayed the conductor's starched white shirtfront. The conductor grabbed at him. The boy fled, screaming with laughter, shrieking insults and threats, spreading consternation through the next six cars until he reached the sanctuary of his mother. She responded to his pursuer's complaints with a kind of arch crossness.

"Oh, my goodness! Such a fuss over one little boy. Do you expect him to just sit still with his hands folded?"

She glanced around, smiling, at the other passengers, soliciting approval. None was forthcoming. The conductor said that he expected her to keep an eye on her son; to see that he cease his rambunctious ramblings forthwith.

"I mean that, lady. I'm insisting on it. I don't want to find that young man outside of this car again."

"But I just don't
understand!
" The woman frowned prettily. "What possible
difference
does it make if the poor child moves around a little? He's not hurting anything."

"But he might get hurt. In fact," the conductor added grimly, "he's very likely to. And you'd be the first to complain if he did."

He trudged away, reflecting that it was such brats and such mothers who provided unanswerable argument for the proponents of capital punishment.
Bang, bang, bang!
he brooded bitterly.
Ol' stinky booger man
. I'd like to booger-man him!

If he could have looked ahead a few hours-but he could not, fortunately. It would have been much to bear, in his mood, to see the boy acclaimed, however briefly, as brave, bold, brilliant and, in sum, a national hero.

Which is just what happened.

Doc McCoy had a fairly good map of the United States in his mind, surprisingly detailed, and as up-to-date as he could keep it. So, leaving the train, he inquired about a remembered landmark-although it was ten years since he had been in the area. And learning that it was still in existence, he and Carol taxied out to the place.

It was some five miles out on the highway, a family-style roadhouse set down amidst several acres of picnic grounds. They had lunch inside the establishment; then, taking several bottles of beer with them, they located a secluded picnic table and settled down for the brief wait until nightfall.

They could not get a car before then; at any rate, it would not be wise to attempt it. And the way they intended to get it made night travel advisable. A hot car was always cooler at night-providing, of course, that its loss was unreported. People weren't so alert. There was a sharp reduction in the risk of raising some yokel who knew the owner.

"And there's no big hurry," Doc pointed out. "I've got a hunch that our late traveling companion will go right on sleeping, undisturbed, until that ten o'clock stop. Even if they found out the nature of his slumber before then, it wouldn't matter much. The body has to be posted. That takes time, and it can't be done in just any hick village. Then there's the conductor's story of an old neck injury-along with the conductor's guilty conscience-to add confusion to the proceedings." He laughed softly. "If I know anything about human nature, he'll swear that our friend was alive and in good health at the time we left him."

Carol nodded, laughing with him. This was the old Doc talking,
her
Doc. She wanted more of his warming reassurance, and Doc did his best to supply it.

"Of course, we will be suspected of bringing about the gentleman's death," he went on. "Sometime tomorrow, say, when the conductor has come clean and it's definitely determined that the broken neck was inflicted rather than accidental. But who are we, anyway? What good is our description if they don't have a channel for it? Now, if there was anything to indicate we were bank robbers, we'd be tabbed in five minutes. Just as quickly as a batch of 'wanted' cards could be run through the sorter."

"It's not going to happen," Carol said firmly. "So let's not talk about it."

"Right," Doc said. "No point to it at all."

"But it's still smart to get off the highway. One more night is as much as we can risk."

"Well, that may be putting it a little strong. We won't be tagged with Beynon's car, and we helped our chances with that long jump north. Let's just say that the railroad still seems like our best bet."

Obviously, he continued, they couldn't go back to the line they'd been on. In fact, any of the due-west routes were a poor risk; unless- -and the time element precluded this-they were able to take one across the northern rim of the United States.

"So I'd say we do this. Pull another swing back; get completely away from this east-west travel route. We can push hard tonight, make Tulsa or Oklahoma City by morning, and take a southern route train. We can miss Los Angeles that way. Come into California through the Carriso Gorge, and then straight on into San Diego. We can make it in forty-eight hours if everything goes all right."

"And it will, Doc." Carol squeezed his hand. "I know it!"

"Of course it will," Doc said.

Actually, he was more than a little uneasy about their situation. There was much that he disliked about it. But since it could not be changed, he put the best possible face on it, if he was secretly, perhaps subconsciously, annoyed at the necessity for doing so.

Much of their predicament was Carol's fault. She should have been absolutely frank with him about Beynon. Failing that-having made that one serious error-she should have kept the bag with her at the Kansas City station. That was little enough to expect of her, wasn't it? It was simple enough. But she had had to blunder again, again forcing him to plan extemporaneously, which was another way of saying dangerously. And now, instead of being properly apologetic, willing to look the facts in the face, she had to be cajoled and bolstered up.

If I'd known she was going to be like this, he thought-and left the thought at that. He took another drink of the beer, smiling at her, inwardly grinning the wry, pained grin of a man who has bumped his elbow.

"Doc." She was looking down at the table, idly scratching at the chipped paint with a fingernail. "Doc," she raised her eyes. "I've changed a lot, haven't I? You think I have."

"Oh, well," Doc began. "After all, it's been…"

"You seem the same way to me, Doc. Almost like a stranger at times. I mean-well, I don't mean it as though I was criticizing or blaming you or anything, I've seemed to have done something dopey every time! turned around, and you've been a damn sight nicer about it than you should have been. But…"

"Now, don't feel that way." Doc laid a hand over hers. "We've had some bad luck. We've never been involved in anything quite like this before."

"I don't think that's the trouble. Not the real trouble. We had our difficulties before, and they didn't seem to matter. We were so much closer, and-" she hesitated, thoughtfully. "I guess that's it, isn't it? We kind of are strangers. We aren't the same people we were four years ago."

"Essentially the same," Doc disagreed. "Let's say that perhaps we've forgotten what those people were like. In toto, I mean. We've forgotten their bad times, the occasions when they rubbed each other the wrong way, and remembered only the good."

"Well-maybe. Yes," she added. "I suppose that is it."

"I know it is. Just as soon as we've gotten a little reacquainted-have time for something besides running…"

"Doc." She looked down at the table again, a faint blush spreading over her cheeks. "I think we should, you know, get really acquainted again. I think we've just about got to. Very soon. C-can't we-isn't there some way we could manage to-be together?"

Doc murmured that he was sure they could. Beneath the table, he pressed her ankle with his, and the silken flesh quivered in response.

He began to feel a lot better about her, about everything. His inherent optimism reasserted itself, smothering his worries, re-creating him in the delightful and irresistible image that had burned so bright in Carol's memory.

"I know we can't lay over, stop anywhere," she said. "But, well, do you suppose we could travel together on the train? Take a stateroom or a bedroom, and…"

Doc said he thought so; he was pretty sure of it (although he wasn't sure). "We'll count on it, anyway.
I'll
count on it, my dear."

And Carol blushed and squirmed deliciously.

In the deceptive half-light of dusk, Doc walked down the highway a couple of hundred yards and took cover behind a hedgerow. Carol, meanwhile, took up a position at the edge of the picnic grounds-protected by the thickening shadows of the driveway but within a quick step of the road.

Doc heard two cars stop for her, then speed on again almost before they had stopped. Soon there was a third car, and the opening and slamming of a door. And Doc came out of his place of concealment.

The car stopped for him jerkily; Carol was holding a gun in the driver's ribs. Doc climbed into the back seat and, putting a gun to the man's head, ordered him to relinquish the wheel. The man did so, fearfully, too frightened for speech, limbs stiff and numb as he slid over in the seat. With Carol driving, they moved on again.

Naturally, the car was from out-of-state; had it borne local license plates, Carol would never have gotten into it. The owner was a salesman, a man of about thirty-five with a plump well-fed face and a wide good-natured mouth. Doc spoke to him soothingly, putting him as much at ease as the circumstances would allow.

"We're sorry to do this," he apologized. "Believe me, we've never done anything like it before. But we ran out of money, and the wife can't take another night on the road, so-I hope you understand. You're a married man yourself, I take it."

The salesman wasn't. He'd tried the double harness once and it hadn't worked.

"Oh, that's too bad," Doc murmured. "Now, I wonder if you could drive us down into Oklahoma? I can get some money there, and…"

"S-sure, I could! Glad to!" The salesman was pitiful in his eagerness. "Naw, I really mean it. I was figuring on taking a fling at Tulsa myself, just for kicks, y'know. I'm not due back in Chicago for three days yet, but I already made all my calls and…"

Doc slugged him with the gun barrel. The man grunted, and slumped forward. Carol gave him a shove, pushed him down on the floor of the car.

"Side road, Doc?" She spoke over her shoulder.

Back on the train, the boy in the cowboy suit napped, dined and resumed his wanderings. After a longer absence than usual, he returned to his mother, shouting brassily that he had just killed a robber man. "I did so, too!" he screamed, as she laughed indulgently. "I told him to stick 'em up an' he didn't so I poked him an' he fell over dead, an' the money he stole fell out of his pocket an' I got it! I got it right here!" He pulled a thick sheaf of bills from his blouse, waved them about excitedly. Across the aisle, a man reached out and took it from him; frowned, startled, as he read the imprint on the paper banding. The Bank of Beacon City! Why, that was the place that had been robbed yesterday morning! He jumped up and went in search of the conductor.

Doc frisked the salesman, taking his wallet and all other identification. Then, with the whispering of the car's radio fading behind him, he dragged the man down the ditch to the culvert and placed the gun muzzle inside his mouth. He triggered the gun twice. He shoved it back into his belt, began squeezing the now faceless body into the culvert.

"Doc!" Carol's voice came to him urgently. "
Doc
!"

"Be right with you," he called back easily. "Just as soon as I…"

The car's starter whirred. The motor coughed, caught and roared. Doc hastily clambered up the side of the ditch, yanked open the door and climbed in.

"What's the matter?" he demanded. "Can't I leave you for two minutes without…"