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“I guess so. What choice have I got? Kill her?”
“Could you?”
“No,” he said, not even hesitating. He made a face and got back down under the steering wheel and poked his knife up among the wires. Sooner or later he would have to hit the right combination; there were only so many wires leading into the ignition switch. He had cut them all, stripped the insulation with the pocket knife and twisted wires together until they began to break with metal fatigue. Sweat was sticky in the small of his back, in his palms, in his crotch, on his lips and throat. He talked in exasperated bursts while he worked. “I keep feeling Floyd like a weight on me. A goddamn ghost or something. I knew he wouldn’t come back—as soon as Georgie died I knew it but I didn’t have the guts to do anything. The bastard can’t live unless he makes everything dead around him.”
He lowered his arms to rest and lifted his head. She was still there when he twisted his face to locate her. It was no good: his muscles were cramping again, he had to stand up. He sat up on the doorsill and tugged up his baggy socks and got to his feet. “I don’t feel too great about leaving you here, either.”
A piece of a smile shaped her mouth. “I’m sorry. You sort of got stuck with me, didn’t you? Like a blind date.”
Mitch was sweat-drenched; he felt greenish and sick. “Floyd figured it out real good. I can’t even turn myself in to the cops. The cops believe facts—and the facts about this are as phony as a three-dollar bill. Two people dead and a kidnaping and a missing half million dollars. They’d throw me in hock and throw away the key.”
“You talk like somebody jumping out a window. It’s not the end of the world, Mitch. Don’t throw in the towel.”
“All suggestions,” he said acidly, “gratefully welcomed.” He got in the car on his back and reached for the wires again. His fingers trembled wildly. The merciless orange sun beat down vengefully.
Terry’s smoky voice came down to him, low but hard. “Let’s not just mope around and bleed about it, Mitch. What’s important is to keep a grip on yourself. Look—the thing to do is go after Floyd and get the money away from him. He doesn’t deserve it.”
He sat up, banging his head on the steering column; he emerged and stared. “What are you talking about?”
“Go after him, Mitch. You know where he went, don’t you?”
“Floyd? He’s a barracuda—he’d swallow me whole.”
“I’ll go with you. I’ll help.”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll go with you. Let me go with you.”
He gaped at her.
Her face hardened; she lowered her eyes. “I want my father to go on thinking I’m dead, for a little while at least.”
He blinked at her, dumbfounded; she said earnestly, “I can’t explain it all in a sentence, Mitch. But I want to teach him a lesson he’ll never forget. I want to punish him for—for a lot of things, I suppose. If you were a psychiatrist you could find all kinds of names for it. Maybe it’s bitchy and mean and neurotic and sick. But I want him to think I’m dead. I want him to cry!”
She turned away from him until he couldn’t see her face. He took a step forward but her back registered his advance; he stopped and opened his mouth, and closed it.
Terry said in a small voice, “If we run fast the world can’t catch us, Mitch. We can get the money from Floyd and disappear somewhere, together.”
He swallowed. For want of anything more coherent to say he mumbled, “I wouldn’t take that money on a Christmas tree if it’s got Floyd attached to it. He’d grind us up into hamburgers.”
“No he won’t. You can figure something out.”
“I’m not that long on brains. Floyd can think circles around me.”
“No.” She turned to face him. “You’re good, Mitch. Better than you think you are.”
“Am I?”
“You know you are. You just needed to have someone tell you.”
He wondered if he would ever emerge from this nightmare. Her voice pounded at him: “Go after him, Mitch. What else can you do? There’s nothing else. Go after him—and I’ll come with you.”
He shook his head slowly, not ready to catch up with the speed of her resolution. “Hell—what about her?”
“We’ll take her with us, at least as far as the border. He did go to Mexico, didn’t he?”
“Yah.” He turned and brooded at Billie Jean’s squat shape across the road. “Do you really think we can do it?”
“I think we have to try.”
Fastening his mind onto it, he got back down into the car and pushed wires together—and the starter popped and spun. Startled, he jerked back. He touched the wires again and the starter whirred. He gri
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“I always do.” He held one hand to his head, climbed to his feet and said, “What the hell. We might as well.”
She looked almost amused; she knew she had shamed him into it. If she was game for it, how could he refuse? Easy, he thought—I could use my head. But when he looked at her he suddenly knew he couldn’t.
He called Billie Jean. Hands impudently on hips, she took her insolent time, walking slowly forward with writhing buttocks. Her dress, wrinkled and creased and filthy, was stretched tight across her fullnesses; she came up and flicked her body at him.
“You get in back.”
“Huh? That seat’s built for little kids and dogs. Midgets.”
“Sit sideways,” he said. “Or would you rather I left you here to starve?”
Billie Jean’s eyes shifted toward Terry and back. “You cooked up something with her?”
He opened the little door. “Get in.”
“There’s something you two know that I don’t know.”
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re going after the money. You want some of it, don’t you?”
“You mean going after Floyd?” she said, incredulous.
“Why not?” He tried to sound casual. “Half a million bucks, Billie Jean. Some of it’s ours.”
“What about her?”
“She’s going with us. She can’t talk to anybody if she’s with us.”
“Why not leave her here?” Billie Jean said with quiet cu
He said, “I won’t argue with you. Get in or stay here, it’s all the same to me. More money for me if you don’t come along to split with.” With cavalier indifference he nodded gravely to Terry, watched her get into the right-hand bucket seat and went around the car to climb into the driver’s seat. He slammed the door, gu
With a disgusted grunt Billie Jean climbed over the back and plumped herself down sideways with her knees up near her chin. She was still squirming to get comfortable when Mitch winked at Terry and shot the clutch. The little car bolted forward; Billie Jean shouted, “Hey!”
He left town fast on the dirt road, trailing a swirling fu
He felt better on the move. The wind roared around the speeding open car; he had its power in his hands, he felt more in control of things. It was the first time in days when he had enjoyed any sense of self-confidence at all. Fleetingly he even entertained the heady thought that perhaps he could best Floyd Rymer after all. He would have to figure out the way to do it.