Ask the Parrot p-23

by Richard Stark

  But then the phone stopped ringing, and Brian said nothing else, and somehow, despite the discomfort, despite the fear, despite the embarrassment, Suzanne had fallen asleep. Asleep! To wake up who knew when, with gunshots somewhere outside.

  Finished now. Who was shooting guns? Was the bank robber back, had he decided he should kill them, after all? But it had been so long since he’d gone away; still daylight then. Wouldn’t he be miles and miles from here by now, while Suzanne slept like a rag doll on the floor of Brian Hopwood’s filthy gas station, wouldn’t he be deep into some other badness by now?

  She tried a whisper: “Brian.”

  “Yes.” Gruff but not unfriendly.

  “Brian, what’s going to happen?”

  His laugh now was bitter, and not friendly at all. “Well, we’re trussed up here like Thanksgiving turkeys. There isn’t a thing for either of us to do until somebody decides to look for us.”

  “But they’re shooting out there. Brian? Who’s shooting?”

  “How would I know?” He was getting really irritated now.

  Looking as much for some way to appease him as for some way out of their trouble, she said, “Would Edna come here?”

  “I don’t think that was her, on the phone.”

  Struck by a sudden thought, she said, “You know, it could have been Jack. You know, my grandfather.”

  “I know who Jack is,” Brian said, very testy. “Why would he call me?”

  “Looking for me.”

  “Oh.” Brian considered that, then said, “Will he come looking for you?”

  “Not after dark.”

  “Wonderful.”

  The silence now outside was worse than the gunshots; in the silence, you didn’t know where anybody was. Feeling sudden panic, Suzanne shrilly whispered, “Brian, we have to get out of here!”

  “Go ahead.” Sardonic, unbelieving, unsympathetic; in other circumstances, rude.

  Which she ignored. “No, really,” she whispered. “I know you can’t move in that chair there—”

  “Huh.”

  “But I can move.”

  “You’re tied hand and foot.”

  “But I can move. Brian, what if I came over there and—”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, crawled or rolled or something. What difference does it make?”

  “All right,” he said. “So you’re over here.”

  “I tied that knot on your wrists. I know what I did. I think maybe, I think maybe I could untie it.”

  “How do you get at it?”

  She thought about that. Now that she was awake and oriented, she could see the office more clearly, even though all the illumination came from outside, from the gas pumps and the soda machine and the streetlight. She and Brian were near each other in the front left corner of the room, where no one looking through any window would be able to see them. The chair Brian was in, taped to the floor, was the only furniture near them. Beyond the dark doorway to the service area, Brian’s desk hulked like the recently abandoned headquarters of a defeated army. No, not army; a defeated platoon. An armless kitchen chair, a reluctant acknowledgment that there might someday be a customer to accommodate, stood against the wall on the far side of the desk.

  She said, “Brian, is that chair on wheels?”

  “No, why should it be?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “Suzanne, let it go. In the morning, they’ll find—”

  “I can’t wait till morning,” she said, and realized it was the truth. Now that she was fully awake, she needed a bathroom, and soon. “Let me just try something,” she said, though with every movement the need grew more urgent.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, testy as ever, as she started hunching herself across the floor toward him.

  “Just let me see . . .”

  Ankles and wrists tied together, she could only move in strange little lunges, but soon she was where she wanted to be, with her back to Brian, her tied hands down by his ankles, her hunched shoulders against his shins. Exhausted from the effort, she rested her head a minute, until she realized she was resting it against Brian’s thigh and that Brian hated that. So she lifted her head, felt around behind her, and at last came to a part of the duct tape holding the screwdrivers as chocks against the floor, to keep the chair from moving.

  Now he grew silent again, and she was aware of his head bent as he tried to see what she was doing and whether or not it would get them anywhere. The duct tape clung fiercely to the wooden floor, but finally she felt far enough along it to reach an end, and could yank that upward. Once started, the tape came more readily, and then the screwdriver itself helped, and, out of breath but triumphant, she could whisper, “I got it!”

  “It’ll take more than one,” he said. “But then I’ll be able to help.”

  This shift in him from being testy with her, scornful of her, impatient with her, to someone who could help was instantaneous and unremarked-upon. She simply accepted the offer with a nod and scooted backward a bit more until she could find some duct tape to assault.

  The second screwdriver was easier to remove, now that she knew how, and then Brian could move his chair, though only in tiny increments, since his ankles were still tied together and to the chair. “Now what?” he said. “I don’t think I can drive this thing through that door.”

  “Let me bring that other chair over,” she said. “If I can get up on it, maybe I can reach the knots on your wrists.”

  “What good does that do? They’re tight, Suzanne, trust me.”

  “I tied them myself,” she said. “Just let me see what I can do.”

  “Whatever you want,” he said, disbelieving her.

  She didn’t care. Now that she was moving, she was moving. She rolled across the floor, making herself dizzy, but at last bumping into that other chair. Her legs tied together with jumper cable made for a blunt instrument, but with them she could kick the chair away from the wall and around the edge of the desk and over toward Brian, who, astonishingly enough, was doing what he could do to help. That is, he kept shifting his body forward while pressing down and back on the floor with his white socked feet, inching the chair on its casters out away from the corner, where she would find him easier to reach.

  Maneuvering them into position wasn’t hard, with his back turned to her and the other chair so that, if she were sitting sideways on it, Suzanne would be able to reach Brian’s wrists. No, the hard part was for her to get up onto the chair. She did manage to lunge herself up so she was lying facedown across the chair seat, but then could do no more, had no traction anywhere. At last, half-muffled in that position, she said, “Brian, I need your help.”

  “Sure. What?”

  “I have to put my foot in your lap, and you have to not let it get away. I can’t get up on this chair unless I can brace against something.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but all right. Let’s try it. Jesus, Suzanne, try to be a little careful.”

  “This will be very fast,” she promised.

  Well, it wasn’t, and she was sorry to have to hear him grit his teeth as her right heel bore into his crotch, but she needed that brace to be able to swivel around on the chair seat, first on her side, then faceup, so that then she could pull herself up with her bound hands behind her against the slats of the chair back.

  “There!” she said.

  “Jesus.”

  “I’m sorry, Brian. Can you turn a little more away from me?”

  “I certainly can.”

  There was some fumbling involved, but then, behind her, she could feel his thick-fingered hands, and then the wrists, and then the thin strong shoelace.

  Yes, those were the knots she’d made, good strong knots that could be slipped if you knew which part you were pulling. Here’s a loop, here’s an end, here’s—

  He jumped as though he’d been electrocuted. “What’s that? Wait—wait a minute! My hands are
loose!”

  “Brian, please, please, untie my wrists, please, please—”

  “Yeah, wait, let me see what I’m doing here. He didn’t make it easy, that sonofa— There!”

  “Oh, thank God!” she said, and bent to tear off the jumper cable pinning her ankles.

  He was still struggling with the duct tape on his socks. She jumped to her feet, patting the wall. “Lights.”

  “We’ve got to be careful when we go out there, Suzanne, we don’t know what’s—”

  “I don’t want to go out there,” she said, hurrying through the doorway into the dark interior room. “I want the ladies’!”

  He called after her, “You’ll need the key!”

  12

  Where was Tom going? It didn’t make any sense.

  Around seven-thirty, Tom Lindahl’s Ford SUV had driven away from the little converted garage he lived in and headed south out of Pooley, with Cory and Cal in the Volkswagen Jetta far behind, and an hour later they were all still driving, heading steadily southwest across New York State, away from Pooley and away from Massachusetts, the site of the bank robbery that Ed Smith’s money was supposed to be from.

  Were Tom and Smith on their way to get the money? What else could they be doing? Cory had more and more questions in his mind about what was going on here, but he didn’t want to voice them, afraid Cal would insist on doing something rash, like ramming that vehicle up ahead just to see what would happen. So Cory kept his doubts to himself and just drove, hoping this journey would soon come to an end.

  Cory’d had no trouble borrowing the Jetta from his sister. In fact, she’d been so happy at the idea that Cory might get himself a real job—by which she meant white collar, not the factory-floor stuff he and Cal usually did—that he felt guilty lying to her. But he assured himself it was all going to work out fine, and she wouldn’t ever have to know the truth, so he wasn’t going to worry about it.

  What was a little worrying, at least at first, was that, when Cory went back to the diner, Cal had obviously not limited himself to coffee, the way he’d promised. The beer on his breath wasn’t as plain as if they’d been in the cab of the pickup together, but you could still smell it. Cory could have said something, but what was the point? Cal would just deny it, that’s all, just lie about it and wait for the question to go away.

  That was how Cal always handled problems. It wasn’t that he was a good liar—in fact, he was a piss-poor liar, unlike Cory, who had a smooth plausibility about himself—but that once Cal took root in a lie, he would never move from it, so why waste your breath?

  At first, when they set up in a driveway next to another of Pooley’s empty houses, having to keep well away from Tom’s place because it was still daylight, Cal had been tensed up and edgy, because of the beer, wanting something to happen right away. His left eye, covered by the black patch, was neutral, but his working eye was staring and agitated, straining to see through walls, around windows. “When are they gonna make their move?”

  “We’ll just wait and see.”

  “Maybe I oughta go peek in the window.”

  “No, we’ll just wait here. We’ll know when they’re going somewhere.”

  Cal had to get out and pee then, and that kept him calmed down for a while, but not for long. Three more times he wanted to go over and peek in Tom’s window to see what was going on over there, and three times Cory had to remind him there was nothing those people could do except, sooner or later, leave the house and come out to the road in this direction. Did Cal want to be halfway down their driveway, on foot, when they came out? Of course not. Did he want them to catch him peeking in the window? Definitely not.

  As for what they thought was going on, they’d been over all of that more than once, but restless and bored in the car, waiting for something to happen, Cal had to rehash it just once more. “There’s money in it, we know that much for sure,” he said. “Only thing that makes sense. Tom wouldn’t be hanging out with that guy, giving him cover, pretending he used to work with him, if there wasn’t some sort of payoff in there someplace.”

  Cory nodded. “That’s what we’re figuring on, anyway.”

  “That’s what we’re counting on,” Cal said. “There’s got to be some of that bank robbery money still hid somewhere, or Tom just wouldn’t be fronting for that guy. I mean, that’s a hell of a risk, Cory.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “So that’s the only reason he’s gonna do it. For the money.” Cal laughed in a sudden burst. “I don’t know about you, Cory, but I could use that money. Better than a job over at that college, anyway.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind that, either,” Cory admitted.

  Cal grinned at him and gave his arm a reassuring pat. “You’ll come through,” he said. “You’re the smart one.”

  “And you’re the funny one.”

  “Damn hysterical. Why don’t I find a phone somewhere and give them a call, just to see what they do?”

  “Because,” Cory said, “I don’t want them thinking about us, or thinking there’s anybody at all interested in them, that would keep them from what they mean to do.”

  “Well, maybe.”

  “Remember, I’m the smart one.”

  So Cal laughed at that and relaxed a little more, and they waited in companionable silence. Gradually evening came on, and then, just at that tricky twilight moment when it’s very hard to see because it’s neither day nor night, here came the Ford out of Tom Lindahl’s driveway and turned south, away from them.

  “There it is!”

  “I see it, Cal. Take it easy.”

  Cory watched the Ford recede almost out of sight before he started the Jetta and followed, keeping well back. Beside him, Cal, breathing loudly through his mouth, pulled up his shirttail in front and reached down inside to come out with a smallish automatic, the High Standard GI model in .45 caliber.

  Cory stared. “What are you doing with that?”

  Cal laughed. “Don’t leave home without it.” He hadn’t seemed drunk before this, but now, hours since he’d had that beer, there was a sudden slurry electricity to him as he sat there holding the automatic with both hands.

  “Oh, come on, Cal,” Cory said. “You never said you were gonna bring that.” Up ahead, Tom Lindahl’s Ford moved at a slow and steady pace, easy to follow.

  “Well, I just knew you’d give me a hard time if I said anything about it,” Cal said. “So I figured, I’ll just bring it, and then there won’t be any argument.”

  “If we get stopped by a cop—”

  “What for? We’re doing”—Cal leaned the left side of his head against Cory’s upper arm so his right eye could see the dashboard—“forty-five miles per hour. Who’s gonna stop us for that?”

  “Cal, I don’t want to see that thing.”

  “No, no, you’re not gonna see it.” Cal leaned forward to put the gun on the floor, then sat back and rested his right foot on it. “See? Just sitting there.”

  “Is the safety on, anyway?”

  “Sure it is. Whada you think?”

  “When we talk to those guys,” Cory said, “please, Cal, don’t start waving that goddam gun around.”

  “He’s the one talking tough, do you remember that? ‘You’d be dead now.’ Oh, yeah, would I? We’ll just have this little fella down here on the floor here, out of sight, out of mind, and if there has to be a little surprise, somewhere down the road, well, guess what, we got one.”

  “Just leave it there,” Cory said.

  “It’s there.”

  Somehow the idea of his brother’s gun in his sister’s car made Cory nervous, as though he’d got himself involved in some kind of serious mistake here somewhere. Cal had bought that goddam thing years ago, in a pawnshop, on a visit to Buffalo, for no reason at all he could ever explain. He’d just seen it and he wanted it, that’s all. From time to time, the first year or so, he’d take it out in the woods and practice, shooting at trees or fence posts, but eventually it more or less ju
st stayed in a drawer in his bedroom, barely even thought about. Cory hadn’t thought about it for so long it was like something brand-new, a Gila monster or something, when it suddenly appeared in Cal’s lap in the car.

  All right, let it stay on the floor. If it made Cal feel more secure to have it down there, fine. When it came time, though, to get out of this car, Cory would make damn sure that stupid gun didn’t come out with them.

  It was a few miles later they saw the bright red and white lights of their first roadblock of the night. Slowing down, Cory said, “Put the damn gun under the seat.”

  “Right.”

  Even Cal seemed a little chastened, as he bent down to hide the gun. Cory drove as slowly as he dared, to give Tom a chance to clear the roadblock, then eased to a stop beside the waiting trooper as he reached for his wallet.

  The trooper had a long flashlight that he shone first on Cory and then across him on Cal, not quite shining the beam in their eyes. He was the most bored trooper they’d met yet, and he studied Cory’s license without saying a word. Cal had the glove compartment open, but the trooper didn’t even bother to ask for registration, just handed the license back and used his flashlight to wave them through.

  Tom’s Ford hadn’t gained much ground, was still slowly moving along as though in no hurry to get anywhere in particular tonight. When Cory caught up, and slowed to maintain the same distance as before, Cal said, “What’s goin on, Cory? Is he just out for a drive?”

  “I don’t know,” Cory admitted. “But I just figured out what’s out there, down this way.”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “That racetrack where he used to work.”

  “What? Tom?”

  “He worked there for years, and then they fired him for something.”