The Passenger Read online

  Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, she thought and she couldn’t help it, she giggled like a goddamn little kid and as the pair of guards in combat gear parted the crowd and dragged the two men away across the bloody floor a skinhead with tattoos of a swastika and a bolt of lightning on his arm prodded the shaved naked woman

  hard in the ribs with his rifle as though it were her fault all this had happened so that she jerked away in pain, more pain, and Marion finished her beer and set it on the bar and turned toward where she hung and started forward.

  * * *

  Janet watched her move through the crowd. The others didn’t seem to notice she was gone.

  “You want this?” Emil said.

  He pointed to her beer on the bar. She shook her head. The last thing she wanted was a beer. He upended it and she watched his throat move. The man is nervous, she thought. Fine.

  “Just four this time,” he said to the bartender. The bartender set them on the bar. He passed one to Ray and one to Billy and only then did he realize they were missing somebody.

  “Where’s Whatsername?”

  He sounded more annoyed than she’d have expected and there was something else there too. Fear? From Emil? If so, fine again. The only question was as to why.

  “Let’s go,” a voice behind them said.

  The black man in the suit. The first guard’s twin.

  “Where to?” said Emil.

  “We got to go deal for your transportation, my man.”

  Not quite so well-spoken, she thought.

  “Wait a minute. I can’t... listen ... just hold on a second, okay? Have a beer.”

  He handed the man his beer and started pushing his way through the crowd.

  “Hey! What the fuck? Fuck you, asshole! ” The man slammed the beer down on the bar and moved after him. Ray took her by the arm and then they were moving through the crowd too with Billy trailing behind. They heard somebody scream ahead, throaty and then shrill. Marion?

  I should be so lucky, she thought.

  She spotted Emil and the guard at the edge of the crowd and then saw Marion standing beneath the woman, staring up. A thin line of blood ran from the woman’s rib cage to her navel. The neo-Nazi skinhead had his arm around Marion’s waist boyfriend-and-girlfriend-style and was gesturing toward the woman with a broad, sharp-looking knife like an instructor working a blackboard with his pointer. Like the woman was some sort of math problem.

  “See?” the Nazi said. “You cut her here and it don’t hardly hurt.”

  He sliced the top of her foot just above the second toe.

  “You cut her here though .. .”

  He moved the knife across the sole of her foot and the woman screamed again. Emil grabbed Marion’s arm.

  “What the hell you doing?”

  She didn’t answer. Just stood there watching the blood drip off the woman’s foot along either side.

  “Hey, Maria. We got to go.”

  “Damn right,” said the guard.

  “Fuck off,” said the Nazi. He pointed the knife at Emil. Emil let go of Marion’s arm and backed off, hands in the air.

  Now this was interesting.

  “Got nothing to do with you, friend,” he said. “We got business, that’s all.”

  “I told you, fuck off!"

  He jabbed with the knife and as Emil darted back and away the black guard stepped forward easy as you please. He placed the tip of his index finger against the lip of the blade and smiled.

  “Play nice, ” he said.

  The Nazi didn’t seem to know what to make of that.

  “Like the gentleman says, it’s business. This what you came for?” he asked Emil.

  He nodded. The guard looked at Marion.

  “Come on, sweetcakes,” he said. “She gonna be hanging around awhile.”

  “Not yet.”

  She turned to the Nazi and put her hand out, palm- up. The Nazi didn’t seem to understand at first and then he did. He handed her the knife. Marion looked at the guard.

  “Is this okay?” she said. “I can do anything I want, tight? I mean, that’s true, isn’t it? Hell, I can kill her if I want, right?”

  “Excuse me, lady?”

  “Suppose I killed her, is anybody going to mind or what?”

  “Jesus, Marion!”

  “Oh, shut up, Emil.”

  She turned back to the guard. He smiled again and hook his head.

  “Nah, can’t kill her, honey. She belongs to somebody. You could hurt her a little, though. Nobody going to bother you about that.”

  You don’t need to see any more of this shit, Janet thought. You can just turn away. But it seemed important to know exactly how far this goddamn woman was willing to go. So she watched her as she reached up and traced a slow deep line across the woman’s thigh from hip to knee with the point of the knife, the woman trembling and moaning, and watched the blood well up thick over the blade of the knife onto Marion’s white- knuckled hand. Watched the hand draw away and poise to cut again and then the black man’s bigger hand close over it gently and take the knife away and hand it to the Nazi.

  “Come on, baby,” he said. “Leave a little somethin’ for later.”

  As he moved her away she was smiling.

  “You’re not entirely a real nice person,” said the guard as the music welled and boomed again. “You know that?”

  They followed him through the crowd to the stairwell at the end of the bar.

  * * *

  At the top of the stairs he led them down a long dark oak-paneled hall, empty but for half a dozen vases on pedestals from which dozens of long-stemmed red roses sprouted and scented the still air, rioting away the odor of cigarettes and stale beer below. He opened a set of double doors to a stark, brightly lit room with a single long table and chairs around it the only furnishings—a boardroom not unlike those back at the courthouse except that this table and these chairs must have cost a lot more than the taxpayers were going to put up with. Closed glass doors beyond the desk led to an open porch—a widow’s walk. Beyond them she could see moon and stars.

  The man at the head of the table was middle-aged and small and thin, his wrists wiry in his rolled-back

  shirtsleeves. He looked like a businessman who’d just spent a rough but eventful evening coming up with whole new ways to hammer the competition. Papers fanned across the desk in front of him. Behind him stood an immaculate gentleman with manicured fingernails and a rose in his wide lapel and the word thug writ plain all over him.

  “Mr. Thaw?” said the guard.

  “Fine. You can leave now.”

  He backed out of the room and closed the door.

  The man looked up from his desk.

  “Harold Thaw,” he said. “This is my associate, Mr. Coombs. And you are Rothert, Short and Ripper. You want a car, I’m told. Is that all?”

  “That’s all, Mr. Thaw,” Emil said.

  “Fine. Ten thousand cash.”

  Ray looked stricken. “Ten thous. . . ?”

  “You killed a policeman, Mr. Short. It’s a very good price.”

  “I was thinking of something else, sir,” Emil said. “Were you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What were you thinking, Mr. Rothert?”

  “I heard that... I understand you do ... a certain business. With certain parties. Foreign investors, sort of..

  For the first time Thaw smiled. “What business would that be, Mr. Rothert? I have any number of businesses and you’re interrupting all of them. Please do get on with it.”

  She saw that Emil was distinctly uncomfortable now but determined to do as the man said and get on with it. And even before he opened his mouth again she knew exactly where he was going with all this. It was rumored at the courthouse. She’d heard it a dozen times. You goddamn son of a bitch, she thought.

  “Women, sir,” he said. “I understand you .. . that you deal in women sometimes.”

  For a moment Thaw just stared at him as though he was speaking in
some unknown tongue. He looked at Marion and then at Janet and when his eyes went back to Emil again he laughed and his hands went wide and spiderlike across the table. Behind him, Coombs smiled.

  “You’re offering me these? In exchange for a car?” “Uh, yes, sir.”

  Thaw laughed again and shook his head.

  “Rothert,” he said, “these parties you’re talking about are interested in twelve-year-olds. Twelve-year-olds, Rothert. Do you understand me? Do you see the problem here?”

  Emil nodded toward Marion.

  “Sir, this one in particular. Have somebody try her out, that’s all I’m asking. She’s a little crazy, see? She’ll do anything. You don’t think you can use her? Fine, no car. We’ll figure out something in the morning.”

  “Hey, Emil,” Marion said, “screw you!”

  “That’s all I’m asking, sir.”

  “Fuck you, Emil!”

  She turned on her heel and went for the door, turned the knob. Twisted it. Shook the door and pounded it. “What have you got to lose, sir?” Emil said.

  “You fucking prick! Open the fucking door!” she yelled to the guard outside. She turned to Emil. ‘Tell him to open the fucking door!”

  Thaw leaned back in his chair and sighed. Marion twisted at the knob one last time and then she was moving fast across the room to the glass double doors to the widow’s walk beyond, and to Janet it looked like she just might kick the damn things in in order to get out of there. Thaw stood up from his chair and shouted.

  “Big!”

  The glass doors parted and Marion stopped dead in her tracks. The man standing in front of her was big all right—as big as a goddamn bear and looked easily as dangerous. She recognized the long square jaw and scraggly beard. The arms beneath the cutoff sleeves of his faded denim shirt were easily as wide as her thigh. A massive chest tapered down to an almost graceful waist. Six-foot-six, 320 pounds, she remembered. “Big ” Micah Harpe. In person.

  He didn’t move.

  He didn’t have to.

  And seeing him there finally after having searched for him ever since arriving scared the hell out of her and made her heart leap all at once. With Micah Harpe it would be all or nothing. She’d known that from the very start.

  Thaw sat down again and leaned back in his chair.

  “You heard?” he said.

  “I heard a talking asshole, sure. How about you?”

  Harpe’s voice had a Kentucky twang to it that surprisingly was not at all unpleasant.

  “About the same, Big. About the same. I’m wondering, though. Is Mr. Harrison still here?”

  “Downstairs, I think.”

  “Downstairs?”

  “Think he was planning to stay awhile.”

  “You might try him, then. If he’s happy, perhaps we can accommodate these gentlemen. If not...”

  “Will do.”

  He took a single step toward Marion, reached out and wrapped his huge hand in her hair and pulled her toward him. Then he turned to Emil, released her hair and shoved her at him like a kid would pass a basketball and with no more effort.

  “You’re the one trading here,” he said. “You handle her.”

  * * *

  The waiting was making Alan crazy. He guessed it wasn’t doing Frommer a lot of good either. The man kept lighting one cigarette after another. A couple of puffs and he’d stub it out and a couple minutes later light another. It was as though he wanted to smoke but was determined to be smokeless if and when any news came through. The roadblock was one of dozens throughout the area but standing at this one felt like being all alone in the world, cut off from everybody and everything, waiting for a train that was never going to pull on in.

  “I don’t get it,” Frommer said. “Homes are pretty few and far between around here and we’ve pretty much covered them all. We’ve got the roadblocks set and we’ve checked the access roads for miles damn near to the state line. We’ve got enough highway patrol units working these mountains to flush out a jackrabbit. They can hide overnight in the woods but the car sure can’t. So how come I’m doing everything right and they’re still not showing?” He lit another smoke. “You maybe thinking what I’m thinking?”

  He was.

  “Hole-in-the-Wall,” Alan said.

  “We’ll need a warrant. Know any judges who are early risers?”

  “As a matter of fact I do,” he said.

  A year ago he’d slept with her. Janet never knew.

  * * *

  Now, she thought, it’s got to be now.

  Ahead of her on the stairs Emil was hauling Marion down, cursing and fighting him all the way but Janet knew his strength firsthand and knew it wasn’t going to do her a damn bit of good. Billy was smiling, having a fine old time with all this, laughing and poking her with his index finger from behind. Ray ignored him but seemed to consider Marion with something like regret.

  In one way or another each of them was focused on Marion. She stopped and turned.

  “Micah Harpe,” she said. “Big.”

  He looked puzzled. How would this woman know his name? So did the black guard behind him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Two things. My name’s Janet Morris. Does that ring a bell?”

  “You been on the bands all night. I know who you are.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m a lawyer. I represent your brother. And our defense is based solely on you, Mr. Harpe. We’re saying it was you who killed George and Lilian Willis and not Little. That’s the first thing.”

  She was talking for her life now and she knew it. She also knew learning of her defense strategy wasn’t going to make him happy.

  “I’m interested. The second?”

  “I read your rap sheet. The attempted murder, the one in prison.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She glanced down the stairs. The others had reached the bottom and Emil was staring hard at them, suspicion knotting his brow.

  “The man was your cellmate. He’d been there just three days. You beat him into a coma. Why?”

  “I didn’t like him.”

  The guard was smiling.

  “You didn’t like him because he’d murdered his wife and children. His children. You seemed to feel very strongly about that.”

  “Nobody on the inside likes a baby-killer. Maybe me less than most. So what?”

  “What if I told you what you haven’t heard on the police bands yet?”

  She looked over her shoulder. Emil had handed Marion off to Ray now and was climbing back up the stairs. He was already halfway there.

  “What if I told you I just saw these people shoot a four- or five-year-old girl to death in her parents’ car, just to steal the car? Would you still let them walk on out of here? Because that’s what they did. A man, a woman, a teenage girl and a five-year-old child, Mr. Harpe.”

  She was aware of Emil right behind her now and knew he’d heard that last part but she didn’t give a good goddamn what or how much he’d heard and her anger was real when she whirled on him.

  “Tell him!” she said.

  Emil looked too damn surprised to answer.

  “That true?” said Harpe.

  Emil just looked at him.

  “You a pimp and a baby-killer, asshole?”

  Then suddenly his confusion seemed to resolve itself. He threw his arm around her neck and yanked her off the stair she was on and slid the gun out of his belt and jabbed the barrel to her forehead, his breath hot and sour against her face.

  “Fucking bitch!”

  The guard behind them raised his rifle.

  “Go ahead,” said Harpe. “Shoot her. And then I guess you’re gonna shoot your way outa here, right?”

  She glanced down at Billy and saw him draw Marion’s .22. Harpe saw it too.

  “Looks like you are,” he said. “You are one bunch of stupid people, you know that?”

  “Back off!”

  He slammed her forehead with the gun barrel. His arm was choking her. She s
aw stars and tried not to fall.

  “Back off, goddammit!”

  He hit her again, harder this time, exactly where she’d hit the windshield hours ago so that she was bleeding again, yet even through the bright spreading pool of pain she could feel him trembling, fear or anger or both, and that drove her own anger, keeping her afloat above the pain. She was aware of all the people watching them below and that the place had gone practically silent, that somebody had finally killed the chaos they’d been listening to all night. So that the third time he hit her it thundered in her ears like a single blow on a drumhead.

  “You want a dead lawyer here? I’ll damn well give her to you!” Emil screamed.

  “You already did that, remember?”

  “What?”

  “I said you already did. You’re damaging your own merchandise. Fool.”

  And that was true enough. She could feel the warm blood crawling down her cheek. Emil didn’t seem to understand.

  She did, though. Hope seemed suddenly to fly away down those stairs.

  “Did I say what you did or didn’t do changes anything?” Harpe said. “Mr. Thaw says to try Harrison, I try Harrison. You get it now, you ignorant sonovabitch?”

  Then he did get it finally and lowered the gun and let go of her and she fell to her knees against the stair. Harpe held out his hand. Emil hesitated and then handed him his pistol. Then turned to Billy downstairs.

  “Put it away, Bill.”

  “I don’t have any accord with this man,” Billy said. The gun was pointed directly at Harpe.

  “The man don’t like you either. Put it away.”

  “It’s all right,” said Harpe. “Let him hold it if he wants. Don’t matter.”

  He nodded. Just once. And suddenly the room exploded in gunfire, all of it pouring across the floor at Billy, at least a dozen guns at once, Ray and Marion pitched flat-out beside him with their hands covering their heads as Billy danced and twitched like some boneless thing erupting flesh and blood, muzzles flashing and bullets tearing into him from every which way keeping him on his feet until he dropped like a sodden sack, the gun still clenched in his bloody right hand.