The Passenger Page 4

  He nodded. “Thanks, Officer. Good luck. Hope you get the bastard.”

  “Bastards,” he said. “Three of them.”

  Alan guessed it was just his night to be corrected. He pulled out and tried her again on the cell phone.

  “Leave a message,” she said.

  * * *

  “Vehicle described as a late-model four-door Buick station wagon, light blue. Suspects are assumed to be armed and . .

  “Dangerous,” said Emil.

  Billy reached over and flipped off the police band and pounded once at the steering wheel. “Shit,” he said. “How’d they make the wagon?” said Ray.

  “The car that passed us by back there. While Billy was toyin’ with the Man.”

  “Shit!” He pounded the wheel again.

  “Called us in as an accident, probably. Good citizen. Well hell, we are an accident. An accident waitin’ to happen!”

  It seemed to break the tension and they laughed. Broke it for them, anyway, if not exactly for Janet. They were all too damn matter-of-fact about this. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t normal. And Emil. Couldn’t anything shake Emil?

  “We’ll just find us another car, that’s all,” he said. “Meantime we better get off the road awhile.” He turned to Marion. “You know a place?”

  She looked at Janet.

  “Do I know a place? Hell, yes.”

  She draped her arm over Janet’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze.

  “ ’Course I do,” she said.

  * * *

  She’d chosen the house because, unlike the Justice Building, where every footfall echoed like pistol fire across the marble floors, where even the walls were polished on a weekly basis, where the air was processed and always traced with disinfectant, the house was as much of nature as in the midst of it. Over 120 years old, it stood surrounded by tall untended grass atop a hill at the end of a two-lane dirt track that wound past a small country graveyard and an abandoned church of even earlier origin. Its beams were hand-hewn. Both fireplaces worked. The occasional bat still fluttered upstairs in the attic.

  Her nearest neighbors were over a mile away. The house was quiet. It was private.

  Now it was remote.

  “How many phones?” Emil said. He’d walked in with his gun drawn. He shoved it in his belt.

  “Just the one in the kitchen.”

  “Truth, now.”

  “Just the kitchen.”

  “Ray? You want to take care of that?”

  “Sure.”

  Ray walked into the kitchen, put the paper bag containing the whiskey down on the counter and the beer in the refrigerator and unplugged the wall jack. The blinking light on her answering machine blinked out.

  “Any guns?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. You want to hide the carving knives? I promise not to look.”

  Emil smiled. “I just might do that.”

  Billy plopped down in her armchair like a man after a hard day at work. Emil went to the refrigerator to get himself a beer. He popped one for Ray and handed it to him, then another for himself and closed the door.

  “Hey,” said Marion.

  “Oh, right.”

  He got her a beer, opened it and stepped out of the kitchen and handed it to her.

  “Sorry, Marie.”

  “Marion.”

  “Sorry. You care for one?”

  “No,” Janet said.

  She needed something a whole lot stronger. Not too much, god knows she had to keep her wits about her. But Jesus, something. She went to the kitchen cabinet and took down the fifth of Glenlivet and a glass and uncorked the bottle.

  “Scotch?” Ray said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Hey, we got scotch too. Have some of ours. Be our guest.”

  “No thanks. This is scotch. You bought rubbing alcohol.”

  She poured herself a double. Ray took the bottle from her hand.

  “So educate me,” he said.

  She got him a glass. He poured and drank.

  “Smooth. What is it?”

  “Single malt.”

  “Good stuff,” he said.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” said Marion.

  Janet pointed. “Through there. Through the bedroom.”

  “What’s over there?” Emil said.

  He was pointing to the closed door to the study. Neither Emil nor Marion knew what she happened to do for a living yet and for some reason she didn’t want them to. So far the others hadn’t said anything. But if he went browsing around in there he could probably figure it out for himself.

  “A study. Books and papers.”

  He moved to the door and opened it and flicked on the wall switch and his eyes went to the cluttered desk.

  “You work here?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You some kind of writer or something?”

  “I write.”

  She walked over and as she turned the light off again and closed the door in front of him she saw Alan’s forgotten briefs on the end table.

  He needed them tomorrow.

  He’s supposed to be staying in town tonight.

  “Please,” she said. “This room’s private.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “Sure. Okay. You figure on writing about me?”

  “Would you want me to?”

  She glanced at Billy, slumped in the armchair, opening and closing a big sharp-looking folding knife, his brow furrowed as though deep in thought. Billy’s got a knife, she thought. You damn well remember that too.

  “Sure I’d want you to. Farm boy makes good, right? You know I’m the seventh son of a seventh son? Supposed to be magic or spiritual or something, real powerful. Now Billy here’s a preacher’s son. A very spiritual being in his own right. And Ray ..

  He turned to Ray, who was drinking Glenlivet straight out of the bottle.

  So much for a second one for me, she thought.

  “Hey, Ray, what’s your story anyhow?”

  “No story, Emil.”

  He laughed. “That’s what I thought.”

  Then the door to the bedroom opened and Marion appeared and her anger at all four of them flared from dull to blazing. She was wearing the black Versace nightgown, the one Alan had more than splurged for in Manhattan last Christmas, the one she’d worn just four times since—that night and then on his birthday, her birthday and the Christmas following and the garter belt was hers too and the panties and the black silk stockings.

  “I borrowed some things,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  Oh, I mind, she thought. You bitch. You bet I mind and you damn well know I do.

  “Lord, Maria! Look at you!”

  He went to her and Janet had cause to wonder exactly how much jealousy was floating around here in the room just then between these guys because Ray moved toward them too from the kitchen, the expression on his face unreadable as Billy stood up gawking while Emil ran his hands over her, showing off for them and for Janet too, Marion laughing and wrapping her arms around him as he dragged her back through the doorway to the bedroom and pulled her down on top of him across the bed, hips already grinding.

  She saw Marion break the kiss, his big hands roving her breasts, and saw her turn and stare at her and knew that Marion was showing her something at that particular moment too. It was something about power and spite, she thought, that the girl from the wrong side of the tracks was all grown up now and somebody to be reckoned with. She got that message clearly. And never broke the look as she purposefully and calmly walked over to the bedroom and closed the door.

  Billy slumped back into his chair. Began fiddling with his evil-looking knife again. She crossed to the couch nearby and sat. He wasn’t going to scare her. Damned if he was. In the kitchen she could hear Ray swilling at the bottle. In the bedroom she could hear them. They all could. She had the feeling that it bothered each of them in one way or the other. She reached into her purse.


  “You mind if I smoke?”

  “Unh-unh. It’s your domesticity.”

  She lit it, crossed her legs and tried to relax.

  “Your TV work?” he said.

  “Remote’s right over there.”

  He took it off the table and pushed the power button. Some innocuous family comedy sprang out at them and the sounds from the bedroom disappeared beneath canned laughter. He started surfing the channels. His attention span seemed to be just about what she’d expect it to be: nil.

  “Cinemax? HBO? Showtime?”

  “No.”

  She saw him take in the furnishings—the Boston rocker, the rows of hand-carved decoys, the country primitive desk and pie safe and chairs and table, the 1821 children’s sampler, the hundred-year-old map of the Hudson River, the heavy carved-oak shelving, the Tiffany-style lamps.

  “I wouldn’t think you were that penurious,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I wouldn’t think you were that penurious. That you’d just have basic cable, I mean. You have so many encumbrances here.”

  She sure did.

  * * *

  It seemed forever sitting there with Billy flicking his goddamn knife open and shut with one hand and the channels with the other but it was probably no more than fifteen minutes because she was only on her second smoke when the bedroom door opened and there was Marion, this time draped in a bedsheet. Her bedsheet.

  “Janet? Come on in a minute, would ya?”

  Her bedroom seemed sullied to her now. Foreign. Enemy territory. She didn’t care for the notion of going in.

  “Why?”

  “Got to ask you something.”

  “Ask me here.”

  “It’s girl talk, honey.”

  She stubbed out the cigarette. As she passed she saw Ray seated in the kitchen, the bottle in front of him, pulling cards out of his wallet and shoving them back again, frustrated. Still looking for that family photo. She wondered if it even existed.

  At the door Marion took her arm and led her into the room and there was Emil on the bed lying sprawled beneath her coverlet. Marion closed the door behind her and stood there and Emil smiled.

  “Next,” he said.

  It was a gut punch that turned instantly to rage and fear.

  “Fuck you!” she said, and turned and saw Marion blocking her way and didn’t hesitate for a moment— her two elder brothers had taught her to fight way back when and damned if she’d forgotten. She threw her right to the side of her jaw and Marion went down against the pinewood door like so much raw meat. She shoved her out of the way and her hand was on the doorknob when Emil lunged naked off the bed and she felt the warm sweat of his arms around her waist straight through her clothing. He pulled her down on top of him and she turned in his arms, kicking and squirming and trying to pull free but he was too strong. He shoved and rolled her so that he was on top of her straddling her hips, his hands pinning hers to the mattress near the foot of the bed. Then she felt other hands on her wrists, not as strong but strong enough and she heard Marion spit the word bitch and looked up at her naked and looming over her and holding her down, Billy and Ray standing in the doorway behind her and she knew she’d get no help from either one of them.

  “Don’t do this. Please, Marion!”

  Marion smiled. And there was so much wrong with that smile that she knew she’d never understand it as long as she lived.

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “It ain’t nothing. I had boyfriends used to give it to me rough all the time. You lay back, watch the ceiling. You’ll get used to it.”

  Emil’s fingers went to her blouse, to the buttons. Billy had his pocket knife in one hand and was poking its tip to his opposite thumb as though testing it while he and Ray moved to the bedside, watching them, an impossible drift of soulless motion and for the first time she really did fear for her life, knew that this might be the end of her right here on this bed, knew it so deeply and well that when her skirt went down and her panties went down and she felt his cock, hard and still beslimed with Marion against her thigh the room swirled and she nearly fainted in the knowledge, but she didn’t, she wasn’t going to be that lucky. She just looked away from them, from all of it and heard him spit on his hand and felt him wipe it across her and then the bright pain of entry like a thousand needles sinking all at once into her flesh and she cried out and heard the drone of Marion’s voice above.

  “There, there, darlin’. You might as well know it. Life’s nothing but a trail of tears for us girls. You might as well know.”

  * * *

  And then later, Billy demurring but not Ray. Ray the family man, solemnly stripping off his clothes. She turned away again.

  And again that voice above her. Dreamy and cooing evil at her.

  “You’ve never seen what I’ve seen. There’s so much you’ve just been protected from. Had a guy once, beat me morning, noon and night, regular, pretty much every day. And people used to say, why do you stay with him? He beats you! And I’d say I love him. He's mine. And I did, and he was. He may be crazy drunk nights but days he’s mine, I said. What’s a woman to expect from a man, anyhow? So don’t you worry about any of this, honey. A woman can get over near anything. And I’m the living proof. ”

  * * *

  When it was over they left her alone but did not completely close the door and she knew they could hear her sobbing so she stopped sobbing and wiped away the snot and tears and got up and used the bathroom, gave herself a whore’s bath in the sink and washed away the blood across her face and hairline, then left the water running so they could hear and went back to the bedroom and opened the bedside drawer and silently as possible took out a pen and notepad, thought hard and began to write.

  * * *

  Emil leaned into the room just as she was zipping up her skirt and asked if she was ready. She said she was. She guessed they weren’t going to kill her quite yet. He looked strangely hesitant for a man who’d just finished raping her.

  “You’re pretty much okay, right?”

  “I’m . . . (going to fucking get you) . . . yes. (Somehow I’ll see you dead for this.) I’m all right.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  She walked past him, fists clenched, on into the living room and saw the other three standing set to leave but ignored them and walked straight to the kitchen, took the half-empty bottle of Glenlivet off the counter and poured all that was left into a tall tumbler off the dish rack and drank prodigiously—an old magician’s trick, a little slight-of-hand, fellas—because as she drank they were watching that and trying to gauge her. So that they did not see her set down the bottle on the small square of paper she’d slipped onto the counter beside it.

  She drank most of what was in the glass. It wasn’t only to complete the illusion. She needed it.

  She slammed the glass to the counter.

  “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  “Janet!”

  Ever since the crime scene back on the highway he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong. Something wrong with Janet. He’d phoned Kaltzas’s garage and got through this time and nobody had heard from her. It was the most likely place in go for help and she hadn’t.

  Why?

  Inside the house was silent. Living room, study, silent. Just as he’d left them.

  But not the bedroom.

  The sheets were stripped off the bed and piled on the floor and that wasn’t like her at all, they’d be in the hamper if she was planning to do a laundry when she came home tonight and that was troubling enough but then he saw the pair of beer cans on the dresser. She never drank beer. Hated the stuff.

  So that now he was really worried.

  Phone the police.

  In the kitchen he saw more beer cans in the garbage and two more on the counter along with the empty bottle of Glenlivet.

  Jesus. The Glenlivet was fucking empty. That was wrong too. They’d had a nightcap last night before bed and the bott
le was still nearly full when he put it away. Then he saw the scrap of paper beneath it and pulled it out from under.

  NY TA45567

  blue Dodge wagon

  regist Marion Lane

  Emil? Ray? Billy?

  murder, Rt 605—8:30 p.m. ?

  HELP!

  The handwriting was shaky but hers. He reached for the phone and heard nothing but dead air so he followed the line down to where they’d pulled it out of the wall socket—Who? Emil? Ray? Billy?—plugged it back in and dialed 911. What if I hadn’t come back for the goddamn briefs? he thought. What in god’s name if I hadn’t? Then the cop was on the line.

  “Officer Hutt speaking. How can I help you?”

  He put on his most businesslike, no-nonsense voice. A little amazed that he could do so.

  “Listen carefully. My name is Alan Laymon and I’m an attorney. I have specific information regarding the murder of a police officer on Route Six-o-five at approximately eight-thirty this evening. 1 have a plate number for a blue Dodge wagon. The killers are holding at least one hostage, maybe two. I have names or partial names for all of them. Do you understand me?”

  He did.

  * * *

  All told, Emil thought, things were looking good. He’d had two pieces of ass in a single night. He more or less preferred the one he hadn’t raped. Which was fine since it was simpler. He had both of them here in the front seat beside him right where they ought to be.

  He’d shot a cop—dangerous as hell, sure, but something he’d seriously wanted to do since fucking prison.

  Not a bad night at all.

  They were headed along a narrow dirt access road toward a farmhouse. Margaret or whatever her name was had spotted it, one light burning in a window in the valley below. She’d killed the lights when he told her to but the moonlight was plenty bright enough.

  “Go easy,” he said.

  To the side of the farmhouse he saw a rusted-out Ford pickup that looked like it hadn’t been on the road in years but beside it in front of the porch, a light-colored, four-door Chevy. It would do.