The Passenger (4 page)

* * *

“
Marion
!”
Janet screamed.

Her hands slammed the dash and the
harness scraped her breastbone as Marion hit the brakes and wrenched at the
wheel but for a moment she was absolutely certain it was much too little much
too late, the headlights were almost on them, so close she could see the Jeep’s
tires smoking and then it jerked suddenly off to the right and they were
tumbling down a low shoulder, Marion struggling for control, and the last thing
she saw was the tree.

* * *

The cop’s car hit them like a cargo tank
on a tanker braking without baffles, when what’s behind is a shit-load heavier
than what’s in front, jackknifing ninety degrees and slamming into the
driver’s-side door and throwing Emil clear across the seat. He was aware of Ray
and Billy piling out of the back on the passenger side and through the webbed
broken window of the cop’s car could see him slumped against the wheel,
bleeding from a head wound but at just that moment beginning to move.

He opened the door and got out onto the
tarmac, sprinted to the passenger side of the cop’s car just as the cop’s head
disappeared from view and thought,
Gun,
you want to bet he’s going for his goddamn gun?
and pulled open the door
and there it was, tumbling out onto the scruffy grass in front of him. He
picked it up. Pointed it at the cop. The cop was mopping blood out of his eyes
with his fingers.

“Head wounds,” Emil said. “They’re a
bitch.”

Marion watched him pull the cop from his
car and drop him to the ground. She knew it was a cop because she’d registered
the cherry. Her tits hurt like hell from the steering wheel but otherwise she
was fine. Poor Janet seemed to have bumped her head. Poor Janet wasn’t moving.
She just lay back in her seat with her head lolling and except for the nasty
cut across her forehead you’d have thought she was sleeping.

Well, she’d said she was exhausted.

She saw the three men surround the cop
and the gun glint in the moonlight and then heard him howl and yelp as the
smaller of the men began kicking him in the shoulders, in the legs and ribs.
She could hear muffled voices.

She watched all this with interest.

Then the man with the gun looked up,
looked directly
at her.
Stared
at her in fact, directly into her eyes.

Marion looked right back.

Behind them she saw headlights coming up
fast, bathing them all in light. She watched the three men freeze, trapped
there beating on a wounded cop for godsakes should the driver decide to play
Angel of Mercy and stop. The car slowed, the curve of the road throwing its
lights on her too for a moment. Then it accelerated and moved on. She realized
she’d been holding her breath all the while.

“
What
...
?”

Beside her Janet was moving, pressing her
hand to her forehead, aware of the wetness there and looking down into her
glistening hand.

“Shhhh,” she said.

“What...?”

“Shut up.”

The man with the gun had returned his
focus to the cop. She saw the little guy kick him in the ribs again and heard
him cry out and then moan and she guessed that got Janet’s attention too.

“Marion . . .” she said.

“I told you to shut up.”

“Marion, get us
out
of here!”

But by then the man had raised the gun to
the cop’s head and she watched and saw him fire and heard the flat report of
the gun, felt its impact deep within her, and the cop jerked to the side and
rolled over on his back and lay there and the man looked up and over at her
again and she looked back.

“My god, will you get us out of here?”

“We’re fine. Relax.”

And they
were
fine, she knew that, but she guessed
Janet didn’t believe her because she
turned and reached for the door handle and Marion had to grab her by the arm and
haul her back.

“You try to leave here and they’ll see
you. And you’ll be dead. You get that? Look. Watch.”

They were piling into the Jeep. The man
with the gun was trying to key the ignition but all he was getting was a
metallic grind. Obviously the cop’s car was useless— there was smoke pouring
out from under the hood. She could see the two men in back were starting to
panic now, could hear their voices raised and the little one hopping up and
down in his seat and then the driver turned and looked at her a third time.

That was when she smiled.

The man stared back, expressionless.

“Oh
my god,
” Janet
whispered beside her.

Then her hands were at the glove
compartment, Bloody palms pounding at the button, leaving bloody palm prints
all over the thing. The compartment popped open and she pushed the pint bottle
aside and groped for the gun. Marion waited until she had it out waving around
in front of her and then reached over and simply wrenched it from her slippery
hands.

“
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&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.