by Jack Ketchum
“Nah,” she said. “I want the company.”
They were standing behind her a little to the left by the jukebox along with three other guys watching her make her shot, the girl leaning way over the table to reach the cue ball so that her ass punched the cutoffs from within like a blast of helium into a balloon. She was wiping the floor with this kid. She made the corner shot and then lined up the seven to the right side pocket and sunk that too. Gently easing it in so that the eight ball was directly opposite. The kid was shaking his head and scratching distractedly at his pimples while Patsy Cline sang “Faded Love.”
“Side pocket,” she said.
Her voice had a hint of country twang to it.
Not a New York State kid.
She took her time. Aimed low for the backspin and got it right. The eight clattered home and her cue ball stopped on a dime directly in front of the pocket. She smiled and the skinny kid smiled and shook his head again and somebody applauded and Billy and Ray and one of the other guys across the room laughed along with the kid’s former partner. She picked up the quarter off the table. Her fingernails were cut short and flat.
“Who’s next?”
“Me,” Billy said and stepped over with his cue.
“You any good?”
“I am the best.”
Emil couldn’t help it. With Billy sometimes you just had to smile. She put the quarter in and when the balls dropped gathered them to the table and racked them efficiently and perfectly over the head spot while Billy chalked his cue halfway to death. She rolled him the cue ball over the foot spot. Directly over the foot spot.
“Your break.”
“Side wager, miss?”
“Sure. Ten?”
‘Ten will be fine. May I buy you a beer?”
“Thanks. I got one already.”
She lifted it and drank.
By the time she sank the fifth ball he was ready to make his move. Billy’s break had sunk nothing but scattered everything as was typical of Billy, who was decidedly not the best and she was popping them in all over the place. Guys were hollering encouragement. The girl was smiling. Billy looked like he was about to blow any minute but you had to know him like Emil and Ray did to see that.
He moved behind her and when she drew back the cue took hold of the hilt and held it. The girl turned around. Annoyed with him.
“Guess that’s it,” he said.
“Huh?”
He reached into his back pocket, fished out his wallet and flashed her the phony shield. Then returned it to his pocket.
“Got any ID?”
“Hey, come on. What is this?”
“I think you’re underage. I think you’re drinking in a public place and hustling my buddy here for pocket money. I’ll take the cue now, miss.”
She handed it to him and he set it against the wall.
“Lean over on the table. Hands on the table. Spread your legs, please.”
And yeah, he’d been right all along. She was underage and she was scared now and humiliated and she did as she was told so he proceeded to pat her down, thinking it was too bad about the cutoffs because he’d have liked to give those good smooth thighs a squeeze but there was no excuse for that with the girl bare-legged, though the ass was fine and the tits were especially fine and those he did squeeze and when she gasped and the two burly men who saw him do it started forward he reached for the pool cue and pointed it at them.
“Don’t even think it, gentlemen.”
The room was quiet now except for Patsy Cline and the girl, who had started to cry. Emil stepped away from her toward the men and watched them back down in front of the cue and move silent and sullen back to the wall.
“Okay, miss,” he said. “Get your purse. Officer Short here and I will escort you to the station. Billy? Officer? Let’s go.”
Again the girl did as she was told and bent and retrived her purse, and Ray had her by the arm and was starting to move her along when the kid she’d just beat muttered something to his buddy across the room.
“What’s that?”
“I said you guys ain’t cops. You didn’t read her her rights.”
“You’re interfering with an officer of the law, sonny. Put your quarter on the table and let somebody else whip your ass before I take you along and read you your rights.”
He took her other arm and Billy trailed along behind while they marched her out of the room and into the bar, weaving their way through the tables and only then was he aware that the barman and some of the guys at the bar were watching all of this, so he stopped in front of the barman and pointed at him.
“You I’ll be seeing a little later, friend,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
The barman frowned and turned his head away, all of a sudden paying very close attention to the glasses in the sink.
Offensive action. Worked every time.
Lieutenant Paul Wellman picked up his Dewars and finished it and turned to the bartender.
“You know those guys?” he said.
“Nope.”
“That’s interesting. Neither do I.”
He tapped the three singles in front of him. “Yours,” he said. “And thanks. They’re right about one thing though. You shouldn’t have served her.”
He got off his stool and walked out of the bar, stood on the porch steps and lit a smoke. They’d moved fast. He could hear them laughing across the lot, but at first he couldn’t spot them. If they were cops at all, which he doubted, they were not from around here and thus had no jurisdiction. He knew that because he did have jurisdiction. Then he heard more laughter caught in the warm summer breeze and muffled screams and protests from the girl and by the light of the moon saw them standing in a tight half-circle around her behind a beat-up Jeep.
Christ, he thought. Right here out in the lot. When he was a boy his dad had talked about how stupid criminals were, but he hadn’t really believed him because there had always been their behavior on television and in the movies to contradict him. It was only when he followed in his footsteps and became a cop himself that he realized what he should have known all along.
Father knows best.
He moved off the stairs and casually across the lot as though he were headed for his own car, the Colt unholstered and held to his leg slightly behind him. He tossed away the Marlboro, wondering why in hell he’d lit it in the first place. Nerves, he guessed. At cigarette prices these days I can’t afford nerves.
The guy who’d spoken to the bartender had one hand inside her tank top and the other cupped over her mouth and must have been squeezing pretty hard because she was wriggling and pushing at him and trying to yell, her back arched against the hood of the Jeep and the other two were watching, leaning against the Ford Maverick parked beside it as he approached them. Waiting for sloppy seconds, he guessed. So that at first they didn’t see him. And then of course they did.
And then everything went to hell all at once because a car pulled into the lot and flooded all five of them with sudden rolling light.
“Police!” he said and raised his shield and Colt together.
The one with the girl grabbed hold of her by the hair and threw her headfirst into the passenger-side window of the Maverick. He saw blood splash the window and the girl slam down to the tarmac like a sack of rocks and the other two men were piling into the Jeep when he fired his warning shot into the air. But that stopped none of them—nor whoever had pulled into the lot, because the car stopped right the hell between them.
He ran around behind it and saw the fake cop lurch into the driver’s seat and heard the Jeep turn over and saw it start to pull away and fired for the left rear tire and fired again. Sparks scattered across the tarmac, but marksmanship had never been his strong suit so he ran to the driver of the car, an old guy in T-shirt and suspenders who from the look of him finally was aware of what kind of shitstorm he’d just driven into. He pointed at the girl.
“Go inside and call Nine-one-one. Tell them you need an a
mbulance. Tell them it’s an emergency!”
Get to your fucking car, he thought. And then he thought, Where? Jesus, where? Where the hell did I park it?
Inside the Jeep Emil was having his own goddamn problems. The piece of shit kept slipping out of gear, lurching forward, stopping, lurching forward. Through the rearview mirror he saw the cop running around through the parking lot like a confused dog who’d lost the scent and wondered briefly what the hell that was all about.
“Better move it, Emil,” Ray said.
Emil shot him a look in the mirror and tried again.
Wellman flung open the door to his car and slapped his cherry on the roof, hit his siren and slammed the door. He knew something was happening with the Jeep. He had that window, thank god. The Jeep kept stopping and starting and then as his own car roared to life he saw that the driver had finally got it right. He was headed for the exit and seconds later they were out on the road together and Wellman was riding up his tail pipe.
Emil felt the jolt from behind and then something went terribly wrong and he was swerving back and forth from one lane to the other, the Jeep nearly impossible to control and he glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the cop fishtailing all the hell over, their rear and front fenders locked together.
Then ahead of him he saw the headlights.
Wellman saw them too, headlights coming on fast, much too fast goddammit and reflexively hit his brakes. His tires locked, screeching, the car whipping back and forth like a trailer gone berserk. No belt again, you fool, he thought, smelling rubber smoke off the braking Jeep ahead as it veered suddenly and finally into the oncoming lane.
“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 shitload 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.