The Scared Stiff

by Donald E. Westlake

  This kind of cord is not one rope but a lot of thin twines braided. I suppose I must have gnawed my way through half of those twines before I felt that first slackening, but after that it all went much faster. Sprong! Sprong! I could feel them on my lips as they popped apart, losing their tension. And all at once, my hands were free.

  Oops. I must have moved, because here came that probing foot again. I lay still, but it wasn’t enough. I’m going to get hit, I thought. The side of my head is against this metal truck bed, and coming down from above is this—

  •

  Stop. Bounce. Dip. Jerk. Darkness. Conversation. Men farting.

  Memory and horror returned together, hand in hand. The truck had stopped somewhere, and they were getting out. Are we here? My hands were free, but my ankles weren’t, and I was still inside the bag, and they were still six to my one, and they were armed at least with clubs and machetes while I was…

  Feeling doomed, is what I was.

  The male voices and fartings receded. A screen door somewhere to my right opened and slammed.

  What was going on? Was I alone? Very hesitantly, because I didn’t want to get whomped again, I moved my left hand until I could see the Rolex, and the little numbers gleamed in the dark: 10:09. This dear little machine would tell me the time in other places, too, if I wanted to know; Madrid, say, or Adelaide. It could not, however, tell me how to get to one of those other places now, right now.

  Four and a half hours on the road. We must be in Tapitepe, at one of their houses. They’d come for the shovels and things they’d be needing soon, unless I figured something out this second.

  How strong was this damn bag? I poked it, and I felt new frays, new scratches in it. That would mostly be from when the beer truck door was opened, doing as much damage to the bag as to its contents. I poked at a weakened spot down below my chin, scratched at it with nails I was glad I hadn’t gotten around to trimming recently, and after a few little scritch-scritches, my finger went through.

  A hole. I widened it, first slowly and then rapidly. I widened it until my head and shoulders could fit through, so there was nothing above me any more except the tarp. I wriggled and wriggled and got the bag off the rest of me, and then spent five frustrating minutes working the knots of the cord holding my ankles before I finally managed to loosen the damn thing and free myself.

  And now what? Cautiously I moved under the tarp to the right, the direction from which I’d heard that screen door slam. I found the edge of the tarp, peeked out from underneath it, and saw a million stars in an indifferent sky. It can look cold even in the tropics. A mosquito buzzed me, and I blew on it, and it tumbled away somewhere.

  Beside me was the side wall of the pickup. I snaked over to it, and lifted my head, and looked out at a many-windowed shack lit by some candles and some kerosene lamps. To left and right, some distance away, were similar shacks. I saw no electric light anywhere at all.

  Tapitepe. It’s a very poor town, Tapitepe, and I suspected this was one of its poorest neighborhoods. These people wouldn’t mind at all trading some gringo’s life for their share of millions and millions of dollars.

  Movement in the house. They were all in there, talking together, perhaps arguing about where to bury me. I saw a couple of them drinking beer. I saw a couple of them eating what looked like burritos. On the other hand, I also saw one of them carry a shovel over and put it down next to the screen door.

  They’d driven four and a half hours, and they were tired and hungry. They’d have dinner, and deal with the inconvenient but trussed-up Barry Lee later.

  I lowered myself to the truck bed. On top of the tarp now, I squirmed myself forward. I had two options. If they’d left the keys in the truck, and in these rural places people mostly leave the keys in the truck unless they’re staying in for the night, then I would try to escape by stealing the truck. If they had not left the keys in the truck, even though that would be uncommon and unfair, I would try to escape by climbing over the side of the truck away from the house and scampering into the darkness.

  Most of the back window of the truck was gone. I looked through the space, but it was too dark in there. I couldn’t see if the key was present or not.

  All right. All right. We don’t have time to stall around here, they won’t keep eating forever. I made it to the left side and went sliding over like a snake, riding down, clinging to the door handle and whatever other parts I could find to keep me from falling straight to the ground yet again.

  Out. Knees on the ground, left hand on the driver’s door. When I opened this door, I knew, the interior light would go on, alerting the six in the house. So I wouldn’t have much time, whichever option I got. I took a deep breath, held it, and opened the door.

  No interior light. Of course not. This was a no-frills truck. On the other hand, I still couldn’t see if the goddamn key was in the goddamn ignition. I leaned into the truck, feeling around the steering column, the dashboard… the key. There it was, in the ignition. Dangling from it by a little chain was a key-ring decoration shaped like a sombrero. How nice.

  Quickly I slid up behind the wheel. I didn’t even bother to shut the door; acceleration would do that. I put in the clutch and ground the accelerator.

  Pandemonium in the house. They came barreling out of there. The engine coughed into life, sounding as though it would prefer death. But I would not; I shoved the gearshift into first, ground gears like mad, and the truck jolted forward just as the first of them got to the right side door. He clung to the door, he got his arm inside, he was trying to climb in the open window.

  Where were the goddamn lights? I was driving in the dark, no idea what was out in front of me, hand pawing all over the dashboard, turning on the windshield wipers — then huzzah! Light!

  I was on a dirt road, flanked by scrubland featuring broad-trunked, wide-leaved trees, with shacks spaced here and there among them. Such a tree was just up ahead to the right. I steered for it, pointing at it, yelling, “You’re gonna die!”

  The guy half through the window looked out his side of the windshield, yelled, and decided not to try to live without his bottom half. He shoved himself backward and disappeared from the window; I swerved to avoid the tree. Looking in the truck’s only mirror, its interior one, I saw that my recent passenger did not avoid the tree; his momentum kept him rolling along the dusty ground until he smacked straight into it. He stayed there, arms around the tree, kissing it, and moved no more.

  The others were moving, though. They’d given up chasing the truck on foot, which did not mean they’d given up chasing the truck. Engines roared back there, and here came two more pickups and one motorcycle.

  A wider road was up ahead. Which way was which? I had no idea. I hung a left because it was easier to make the wider turn without slowing down.

  Still no electricity anywhere in this neighborhood, still just kerosene lamps and candles making small warm glows in the darkness. No other traffic either, except me and my retinue. The other two pickup trucks were as beat up as this one, but the motorcycle was faster. I could not stay ahead of him, he was catching up, he was trying to pass me, I was swerving left and right to keep him from coming around me.

  I didn’t know which one he was, but he had a machete, and he was using it like a polo player, trying to swing it at my tires. I veered this way, veered that way, and he was constantly there, trying to disable me by destroying my tires.

  So I did the only thing I could. I veered right, and he angled left behind me. I veered left, he angled right behind me, and I stood on the brake.

  The truck squealed to a near stop. The motorcycle didn’t. It crashed into the back of the pickup and went I knew not where, while its driver flipped up over his handlebars, over my tailgate, and crashed into the bed of the pickup.

  That must have hurt. True, the tarp and my ex-bag were there to cushion the fall, but they couldn’t have helped much. In any case, he just lay there, spread-eagled on his back, and didn’t move, which was
fine by me.

  Past him, in the mirror, in the headlights of the oncoming pickups, I could see the motorcycle still on its wheels, weaving drunkenly this way and that in the road. The first of the pursuing pickups tried to avoid it and therefore hit a tree instead. The second pickup juked like a basketball player around everything, motorcycle, first pickup, trees, whatever, and kept coming — but farther back.

  There was more darkness around me now, fewer of those warm little lights. I was on a reasonably good blacktop road, and I appeared to have chosen the right direction. Tapitepe is a border town, abutting both Venezuela and Brazil, and clearly I’d been in the outskirts, so my choices would be either to go toward the border, which would mean I’d first have to pass through the center of town, or to go northward, back toward Marona. Since the town was petering out along here, I was northbound.

  So was that pursuing pickup truck, of course, but he was still well back. And my passenger seemed to be asleep, which was nice for him.

  That other pickup truck was apparently in even worse condition than the one I’d stolen, which was why this was the one they chose for cross-country voyages. Whatever the reason, every time I looked in the mirror those slightly wall-eyed headlights were a little farther behind, and at last, one time that I looked, there was nothing back there but night.

  I smiled a very shaky smile, full of hairy rope. I’d got away.

  41

  When my passenger awoke, I almost didn’t notice in time. The darkness was nearly total. True, there was moonlight and there was starlight, but my truck’s headlights, while necessary, ruined my night vision to the point where I couldn’t see much of anything except what the headlights showed me. So when the guy in the truck bed came to and started creeping toward me, I almost missed it.

  Thank God for gold teeth. I suppose he was grimacing, not smiling, but for whatever reason his mouth was open, and a tiny ray of the not-so-good dashboard lights bounced off that gold tombstone and into my eye, and when I looked in the mirror, there he was, a darker shape against the countryside, on all fours, halfway to my broken window.

  It worked once, it’ll work twice. I stood on the brakes again, and over the squealing of the truck’s already bald tires there came the satisfying thump of a cousin’s head crashing into metal, with a reverberation I could feel all through the seat.

  Instead of driving on, I kept braking, more gently, until I stopped the truck right there, on the road. It was almost eleven at night, and most people in this part of the country tended to stay home after sundown, even though there haven’t been verified reports of bandits along this stretch of road for months.

  I got out of the truck, leaving its engine coughing along in that dispirited camel-on-a-bad-day manner, and went first to the rear of the truck to open the tailgate, which turned out to be done not by the manufacturer’s original method but by untwisting two lengths of wire. Then I climbed up into the truck, grabbed the cousin by the ankles, and dragged him backward. I eased him to the ground, somewhat more gently than they’d all done for me, though not that much more gently, and kicked him into the roadside ditch, so he wouldn’t startle any stray motorists.

  So much for him. I got my green vinyl bag out of the bed to put on the passenger seat beside me for safekeeping, left the tailgate down rather than go through that wire-twisting process again, and drove on.

  But where to? My first thought had been to return to Casa Montana Mojoca, but I knew the ferry didn’t run between midnight and 6 A.M., and I would never get there by midnight. Also, I’d been through a lot, and I looked it, and I just didn’t see myself walking through that lobby in the morning looking like the only survivor of the Alamo.

  Besides, this whole horrible experience was supposed to be nearly over. Next week, Lola would get the money and fly to Guerrera and we could start the process of getting out of here and back to our lives. So the hell with it. I would go back to Sabanon, back to Mamá and Papá’s house, and I would start to be Felicio now, and the only reason I’m not speaking is because I’m a cranky guy, and by this point I am a cranky guy.

  Also, Arturo could tell the surviving cousins — I certainly hoped I’d wasted some of them — that if they ever bothered me again I would announce publicly who I really was and that I was still alive, and there would go their share of the millions and millions of dollars.

  Enough is enough. I’m driving straight home.

  •

  And then I ran out of gas.

  Twelve thirty-seven in the morning it was, by my invaluable Rolex, so I was still at least an hour and a half by vehicle from Marona, plus another eighty-five miles to San Cristobal and another hundred miles beyond that on to Sabanon.

  This country could use some more direct roads.

  The engine had coughed and sputtered three or four times before it gave up the ghost completely and rolled to a stop on the weedy verge. I’d been worried about how much gas might be left in the tank, but of course that gauge was one of the many things in the truck which didn’t work, and in any case it wouldn’t have mattered, because I hadn’t passed any gas stations or anything else that was open at this hour along a road rumored to be the haunt of bandits.

  Bandits? I’m 250 miles from Mamá and Papá’s house, as the crow does not fly. I look a mess, and I don’t have any money. I don’t need bandits to be in trouble.

  So I changed my plan. I would walk through the night. After sunup, I would try to hitch a ride as far as Casa Montana Mojoca. I would clean myself up as best I could before I got there, changing into fresh clothes from the vinyl bag, and when I reached the hotel I’d call Arturo and ask him to come get me.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all I had, so I started walking, vinyl bag over one shoulder, truck looking after me with a mournful expression that didn’t bother me at all. You ran out of gas, not me.

  So I trudged along, tired and sore but at least free and alive. Moonlight gave me enough illumination to make my way. All I asked was that I not run into any of those alleged bandits.

  42

  No. What I ran into was worse than bandits.

  I became aware of light from behind me and looked over my shoulder, and here they came, a set of extremely bright headlights barreling toward me through the night.

  No. Not at night. I didn’t want a lift at night, didn’t want to meet anyone at night. It could be the cousins again, it could be somebody worse, it could be somebody who would tangle my stories and my identities even more than they already were. In the morning I’d be happy to thumb a ride, when I can see who my driver will be, but not now.

  So I immediately ran off the road to hide in the thick shrubbery along its side, hoping I’d been too far away to be seen by whoever was in that car. Just let them zoom on by, okay?

  I crouched down, and the dark roadway out in front of me got lighter and lighter, swept by the washed-out white light from high-beam headlights, and then the vehicle behind it appeared, moving very slowly, more slowly, more slowly… stopped. In front of me.

  I hunkered down. They’d seen movement, far away. It was an animal, that’s all; it was a deer, or whatever they have in Guerrera instead of deer; it was nothing, drive on.

  A spotlight switched on. It was mounted on a swivel at the left side of the car, by the driver. He angled it across the car body to shine along the right verge, where I was hidden.

  I hunkered lower and lower. I wasn’t breathing. The light moved this way, it moved that way, it moved this way. It stopped.

  Pointed at me.

  A voice called to me to come out, in Spanish.

  I didn’t move. In the first place, I was afraid to move. And in the second place, I didn’t know which way to move. Toward them? Away from them into the jungle behind me? Who were these people, that they had a spotlight like that mounted on their car?

  The voice called a second time. There was a brief silence while no response was forthcoming, and then the rear door on this side opened and somebody stepped out.

/>   A light had clicked on in the inside of the door when he’d opened it, and he left it open, standing beside it, so I could see his tan lace-up shoes and the bottoms of his light-gray trouser legs. Above that he was a kind of silhouette.

  He called something. This was a different voice, so the first caller must have been the driver. He waited, called something else, and then reached inside his jacket and came out with a pistol.

  Oh, my God. I could see the light bounce off its gleaming blackness as he pointed it in my direction. Did bandits drive cars like that, with searchlights like that? Well, what else would they do with their loot?

  For a third time, the man standing over there called to me, and for the third time I didn’t respond, so he took a shot at me. I heard, or thought I heard, the bullet slice through greenery above my head.

  “All right!” I yelled. “All right!”

  And I jumped up and stumbled through the undergrowth out to the road, hands in the air, the straps of my vinyl bag around my upper right arm.

  The man sounded surprised. “An American?”

  “Yes, yes,” I said. “Hi, there. American. Hi. Yes, that’s me.”

  “Put your arms down,” he said, sounding insulted, as though I were making fun of him.

  So I put my arms down, and stepped up onto the blacktop in front of him, and it was Rafael Rafez.

  Oh, no. I didn’t need this. Fervently wishing my mustache was still a removable fake, long since removed, I said, “I didn’t know who you were,” to explain my hiding. But then I realized what I’d said implied I now did know who he was, so I quickly added, “But now I see you’re all right.”

  “Do you,” he said. He was looking me up and down, and I knew what I looked like. He put his pistol away. “I must admit,” he said, “I am confused. I don’t expect to see a person such as you here so late at night.”