The Passenger Read online

* * *

  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 simpl
e 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.

  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.

  She was doing all right so far though, she thought, playing the victim, eyes wide and mouth hung open in what she hoped looked like sheer terror though she was practically coming in her pants here for god’s sake— and then Emil made things worse by sliding his hand down over her breast and squeezing and the old guy seemed to get the picture all at once. His face changed, hardened. And Emil must have seen that too because that was when he turned the gun and fired and the old man dropped to the floor howling and clutching his left foot, the Old Times bursting beside him.

  “I forgot to mention that I could just as easily do it reverse order,” Emil said. “Bag it. Ring it up,” he told the clerk. He caressed her breast and she couldn’t help it now and didn’t try, she moaned. “Soon as he can, I know he’ll be happy to pay up.”

  Which was exactly what both of them did.

  * * *

  They’d come whooping out of the package store like schoolkids at a panty raid but she’d heard the muted gunshot and now Billy was driving, with Emil and Marion in the back with Ray and she glanced around and saw the two of them kissing and his hand between her legs, so that she wasn’t at all surprised when he told Billy to pull onto the narrow dirt access road and then to stop and cut the lights. They got out, a bottle of scotch in Emil’s hand, and went running, laughing, for the woods.

  They didn’t go far. Just behind a stand of pines. She could hear them over the drone of crickets through the open window. Marion giggling and then groaning. Emil grunting like a goddamn animal. Brush crackling beneath them in the still air.

  They were animals. So was the one Ray with the gun against her cheek, running it along first one side of her face and then the other so that each time she had to pull away and finally rapping her head with the barrel to make her sit still—rapping her lightly but her head was taking such a beating tonight it still hurt like hell—and then she could feel him lean over her, could smell the beer on his breath as he ran the barrel down over her neck and collarbone, heading for her breast and she could feel Billy’s eyes on both of them.

  You’ve got to stop this, she thought. Now. Already she felt bathed in filth.

  “You’d better be ready to kill me,” she said. “Just one more inch.”

  “Who says I’m not?”

  “You didn’t do the cop. He did the cop. You get caught, I can say that. You kill me, I can’t. You’ve heard of state’s evidence?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “ Course he has,” Billy said. “Everybody has. It’s where you angle in on somebody and you get impunity.”

  The little guy was short a few major cable stations. She’d keep her pitch to Ray, who at least appeared to be somewhat sane—and she’d damn well have to hurry. The sounds from the bushes had all but stopped now.

  “If you don’t hurt me and you don’t abuse me I can help you. I know what I’m talking about. I’m a lawyer. It’s my job to know.”

  “A lawyer?”

  “A defense attorney.”

  “Bullshit.”

  She’d expected that. She dug into her purse for the wallet, opened it and flashed the laminated card at him.

  “See that? That’s a court pass. They don’t come in cereal boxes, Ray.”

  He took it from her. The gun no longer pressed her flesh.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  He studied it a moment and handed it back to her. “Well,” he said, “I probably wouldn’t be the one to shoot you anyway, truth be known. ’Less you started something. I’m a family man, y
ou know. Want to see?” She heard him digging into his back pocket, pulling out his own wallet and flipping through the plastic inserts. He couldn’t seem to find what he was looking for.

  “I had a lawyer once,” he said. “I kinda liked the man. I appreciated his efforts on my behalf.”

  Then she heard him slap the wallet closed and abruptly shove it back into his jeans and turned and saw Marion and Emil come thrashing through the brush. Marion leaned in through Janet’s window and smiled. “Nothing like the great outdoors, hon. Shove over.”

  * * *

  Alan was already thirty yards past it and headed along the downslope, briefs for the Mohica case foremost on his mind, when he registered Janet’s blue Taurus, warning lights blinking like fireflies, dark and silent by the road. It wasn’t safe to pull a U-turn here on the hill so he continued to the bottom and turned and drove back up again. He crossed lanes and parked into her dead headlights and got out of the car and peered in through the window. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or not to find that there was nobody home.

  He got back into his car and tried her on his cell phone but all he got was the machine and that definitely didn’t relieve him. The gas station, maybe? Arranging for jumper cables or a tow truck? Could be. He got Kaltzas’s number from Information but when he tried it the line was busy.

  The anxiety really didn’t hit him until he reached the roadhouse and saw the side of the road swarming with cops, saw the jackknifed car and the Jeep and the crime- scene tape and the forensics team working over the body of a man and then it really hit him when he saw the paramedics wheeling a woman into an ambulance. Janet? My god, he thought. He didn’t know why he thought it—the woman could have been anybody—but it came unbidden and pounded through his blood. He slowed and then stopped even as the officer waved him on. He flashed his ID. The officer frowned at him anyway.

  “What happened? Accident?”

  “Shooting. One dead. One of ours, dammit.”

  “The woman?”

  “Girl. Can’t be more’n seventeen. Concussion, fractures, god knows what else. It’s a helluva mess.”