What of Terry Conniston?

by Brian Garfield

  “Hail, hail,” Mitch muttered dryly, “the gang’s all here.” Floyd’s irrelevant humor was contagious. He realized that and made a face.

  He caught Floyd’s caustic grin; Floyd said, “All right, Mitch, cool the wit. Get the flashlight, that’s a good boy.”

  Mitch went past the others to the car and got the flashlight out of the glove compartment. He tested it twice and put it in his hip pocket. Floyd made some nonvocal signal behind his back; by the time he turned, he saw Theodore opening the trunk of the car. Theodore removed various pieces of wood and began to assemble a pair of sawhorses. Floyd said, “Lend a hand, Mitch.”

  Mitch helped Theodore carry the sawhorses and detour signs and firepot bombs to the edge of the main road. When he looked back he could see Floyd watching him, one hand in the pocket that contained the revolver. Floyd’s expression was unreadable in the dimming twilight. He heard Floyd talking out of the side of his mouth to Billie Jean:

  “Remember what to look for. Little red sports car with a girl driving. You’ll see it come under the bright lights at the freeway ramp when she gets off.”

  Billie Jean said, “I just flash at you, right?”

  “That’s all, sweetness. But you had better be God damn sure it’s the right car.”

  Mitch’s lips pinched together; for a moment he felt faint. He knew what to expect before he heard Floyd speak: “Mitch, come over here and give the flashlight to Billie Jean.”

  Mitch swallowed an oath and came forward, Theodore tramping heavily behind him. He gave the light to the girl. She swayed her bottom at Theodore. “Rub it for luck.”

  When the girl had climbed the hill to her lookout post and Theodore had gone back to the road, Floyd said to Mitch, “You didn’t really think I was going to let you go up there by yourself, did you?”

  Keeping a neutral tone by an effort of will, Mitch said, “I thought you might. I’ve seen the car before. Billie Jean hasn’t. What if she makes a mistake?”

  “She won’t. Part of my genius, old cock, is that I never expect people to do more than they’re capable of doing. Billie Jean has the best eyesight of anybody in this bunch. And she’s not as likely to take a powder over the far side of the hill as some people I might mention.”

  “If you’re so sure I’m not going to be any help why keep me here?”

  “I’ve got a use for you, old cock. Don’t worry about it.”

  Georgie was standing hip-shot against the front fender of the car, rubbing his nose. His eyes were red, his movements taut. His eyes looked dull and indifferent; he said in a complaining whine, “Hey, Floyd?”

  “Okay, okay.” Irritated, Floyd went over to the car. Georgie was watching him unblinkingly. Floyd got into the car and said, “Mitch, come over here where I can see you. Georgie, turn around.”

  Mitch walked forward reluctantly. A slow anticipatory smile spread across Georgie’s gray face and he turned around to face away from the car, folded his arms as smugly as a child awaiting a surprise birthday present, and closed his eyes.

  Floyd fumbled inside the car for a minute before he opened the door and got out holding a syringe that glistened dully in the failing light. He struck a match and held the needle in the flame, saying tonelessly, “We wouldn’t want the kid to catch hepatitis from a dirty needle, would we?” Afterward he turned his smiling brother around like a mannequin and plunged the needle into the vein in the crook of Georgie’s elbow. Georgie was tense; now he threw his head back and grinned, his mouth sagging open in slow ecstasy.

  Floyd dropped the plastic syringe and crushed it under his heel. There were plenty more where it had come from. He said gently, “Get in the car, Georgie,” and helped his brother into the back seat. Georgie slumped back with his eyes shut, rolling his face from side to side, moaning softly. Floyd shut the door on him and stood for a moment frowning at the ground. Then he stirred. “Come on.”

  Mitch followed him over to the road. Theodore was sitting on one of the sawhorses, dangling one leg; Theodore’s grotesquely scarred face was ghoulish in the falling darkness. Floyd said mildly, “We all know what to do. Watch the hill for Billie Jean’s signal. Theodore, if Mitch here gets cold feet you can warm them up for him.”

  Theodore said, “Yeah.”

  “Meanwhile stick your finger back in your nose.”

  Mitch kept wary watch on Theodore—the gleam of his one good eye, the heavy roll of his brutal lips. Theodore would enjoy a chance to knock him around. Bleakly Mitch turned his back and stared at the hilltop. He could barely make out Billie Jean’s plump silhouette against the night sky.

  The signal light flashed.

  “All right,” Floyd murmured. “Move.”

  They lit the firepots and set them out in the road, blocking off the passage with the sawhorses. Detour with arrows pointing to the right into the narrow dusty side road that led nowhere. Fifty yards up the arroyo the Oldsmobile stood across the side road, making it a cul-de-sac.

  Theodore touched Mitch on the shoulder and Mitch unhappily followed him across the road into the brush, where he crouched down with Theodore’s hand on his shoulder, keeping him captive. He could hear the rattle of dislodged stones as Billie Jean hurried down the hill to join Floyd by the Olds.

  Headlights came over a rise and stabbed the night, throwing their harsh brightness against the sawhorses, and he heard the snarl of the engine, the change in its tone when the driver discovered the obstacle and down-shifted. There was a brief squeal of rubber—she had been traveling fast. The little sports car came into sight, darkly red in its own reflected lamplight, slowed to a crawl, the girl plainly visible and frowning with baffled irritation, and turned off into the cul-de-sac, bumping along on its butt-jolting springs. The headlights picked up the Olds and the brake-lights flashed brightly. The sports car slowed to a halt, the girl’s head lifting alertly. Floyd’s leonine shape leaped from the shadows to her right. He jumped into the car with both feet, lighting on the right-hand bucket seat, and crouched forward to twist the keys and yank them out of the ignition before the girl had time to react. The rumble of the engine died with a chatter and dust swirled in the headlights.

  Theodore said in his ear, “Okay, okay. Let’s go.” Theodore dragged him onto the road and they picked up the sawhorses and firepots and carried them into the cul-de-sac. Mitch heard the brief sound of a struggle, a girl’s high shriek cut off in its middle; he couldn’t see through the dust. The headlights were switched off; he stumbled and almost dropped his armload. “Go on,” Theodore said testily behind him. “Pick up your feet.”

  “I can’t see in the dark,” Mitch snapped.

  Someone turned on the headlights again. Billie Jean was bent over the passenger door of the sports car, tying a gag in the captive girl’s mouth. Floyd climbed out of the car and grinned, his face flushed with excitement. “She’s a great little fighter for her weight.”

  Mitch carried the sawhorses back to the trunk of the Olds and put them inside. Theodore extinguished the firepots, put everything away in the trunk and slammed the lid. They walked back to the sports car. Floyd and Billie Jean had the girl outside, on her feet. Her hands were tied together in front of her with coat-hanger wire. Spirited and beautiful, she held Floyd with a surly glance of steel contempt. If she was afraid she concealed it well. She was disheveled and scratched up; Mitch thought, She’s gorgeous, and sucked in his breath.

  When he came closer he saw the telltale thread of moisture on her upper lip. Scared but game. Floyd came around the car and chucked the girl under the chin. “Delicious, isn’t she? A hundred and twenty pounds of pure platinum. How about it now, Mitch? Piece of cake.”

  When Theodore looked at the girl his neck swelled with musty desire. Theodore said, “How about we all knock off a piece before we go?”

  The girl blanched; her eyes flashed toward Floyd. Floyd said to her, “Don’t be too offended. Theodore has an unfortunate manner. He’s a wonderful example of the miracle by which a human body can function without t
he help of mental power.” He wheeled: “Keep your hands and your mouth off her, Theodore. The lady’s our guest.”

  Theodore worked up saliva in his mouth and spat emphatically on the ground. Turning away, he said, “She looks cold tittie anyway.” Billie Jean glared at him.

  Floyd said mildly, “Put her in the Olds. Theodore, you’ll drive her car. Let’s go.”

  The two cars prowled quickly across the graded desert roads, twisting through the hills. They turned north once and ran five miles along an unpaved secondary road, mainly because Floyd wanted to throw pursuit off in case the police had instruments capable of identifying their tire tracks. They turned west on a paved highway and south again after another five-mile run, going down a gravel road toward the Mexican border. Fifteen miles short of that boundary Floyd indicated a turn to the left and Mitch put the Olds into a narrow pair of rocky ruts that took them uncomfortably, even at five miles an hour, through a notch in the hills. Beyond the notch the country leveled out and the, road surface became slightly smoother although it was evident the road was seldom used or graded. Once they passed a weathered sign: DIP—WARNING—QUICKSAND—DO NOT ENTER WHEN WET.

  The moon came up; Floyd said, “We’re just about there. Take it easy along here.”

  “What do you think I’m doing? I wish to hell somebody’d taught Theodore not to tailgate so close.”

  “Good brakes in those little cars,” Floyd observed. “He can stop on a dime. Don’t worry about it.”

  “What if the dime happens to be in my pocket?”

  “Very droll.”

  In the back seat the girl after trying to talk through the gag in her mouth had subsided. Billie Jean sat watching her maliciously.

  Mitch said, “What’s her name again?”

  “Terry Conniston,” Floyd said. He held up the girl’s handbag. “I checked, to make sure. We got the right girl.”

  “Be funny if we hadn’t.”

  “How kind of you to remind me.” Floyd hipped around in the seat. “Beautiful girl, isn’t she, Mitch?”

  “Why ask me?”

  “I thought you were taken with her.”

  “What are you driving at now?”

  Floyd only chuckled.

  “Endsville,” muttered Billie Jean. The dark little desert town had a cemetery look. After the maze of signless dirt roads Mitch was surprised Floyd had found it on the first try. It was a sprawl of melting adobe relics, half concealed by clumped cactus and mesquite—a ramshackle disarray in various states of caved-in collapse. Empty windows stared dark and vacant from a few shells left standing.

  They drove into a barn. It was pitch-black when they turned off the lights. Floyd took the flashlight and said, “Everybody out,” and stood by the car holding the beam toward the wide front door to light their path. Mitch waited for Billie Jean to push the prisoner out of the car; Terry Conniston’s knees buckled and Mitch reached out to catch her. He heard Billie Jean snicker when he picked up the girl and half-carried her outside.

  They stumbled over debris, across the ghost street. The faded lettering crescent-shaped across the high front of the building was hardly readable when the flashlight played across it, General Mercantile. The sign on the door said the store was closed. It had been drawn freehand, red paint on wood. An old metal RC Cola sign creaked and banged in the rusty breeze. Billie Jean looked around and said again, “Endsville. Pillsville. Christ. I’m hungry and dusty and I don’t s’pose there’s anyplace to take a bath around here.”

  Georgie stood off in the background, blinking drowsily, just coming around from his jolt of horse. Mitch felt the captive girl’s warm weight against him. She had gone limp but she hadn’t fainted; forcing them to carry her was her form of protest.

  Floyd went in with the light, ducking under a fallen beam. “Bring her in here.” The musty place had been stripped of interior appointments. Strips of faded wallpaper hung from the walls; the windows had rags stuffed in them; most of the room was a foot deep in rubble. The flashlight beam stabbed one corner: “Set her down over there.”

  Mitch lowered her very gently, eliciting Billie Jean’s cackle: “She won’t break, Mitch.”

  The light went out. In the absolute blackness Mitch heard the girl catch her breath and then Floyd struck a match and touched it to the wick of a blackened oil lamp with an old-fashioned chimney. The weak yellow light flickered up into cobwebbed corners. Mitch sneezed and stayed where he was, on one knee on the floor beside Terry Conniston. She sat with her back against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees, glaring at all of them with icy scorn. She looked fragile and slim, young, virginal.

  Floyd said, “Everybody pay attention. Nobody opens the door again unless we put the light out first, understand? You can spot a light from forty miles away out here. All right Mitch, take the gag off her.”

  Mitch reached around warily, watching the girl’s eyes. Billie Jean edged close and said, “She looks kind of sad.”

  “That’s all right,” said Theodore, “I’m the comforting type.” He gave a hooting bray of laughter that rang back from the roofbeams.

  “Take it easy,” Mitch murmured, clumsy with the knot at the back of her head. The girl uttered short nervous little gasps every time he touched her. Her eyes were narrowed, sullen, trying to hold back fear. When he removed the scarf she spat out the wadded handkerchief and licked her lips fiercely.

  Floyd came over with his knapsack and sat down crosslegged like an Indian, smiling amiably. He took the small tape-recorder out and connected various plugs and pushed buttons, and said, “One, two, three, four, five,” into the microphone, then played it back for a test and ran the tape back to the beginning. Terry Conniston watched, not speaking, rigid with uncertainty and fear. Above them, one shoulder propped against the wall, Theodore opened the snap-ring top of a beer can with a pop and a hiss. In the unsteady yellow light his face was a violent mask of raw evil.

  Floyd said, “Miss Conniston, please pay attention.”

  The girl stared. Her eyes whipped toward Floyd. Mitch leaned past her legs and lifted the canteen out of the knapsack, unscrewed the top and offered it to her. Terry Conniston shook her head, not removing her eyes from Floyd, who spoke to her in a gentle voice:

  “I guess you’ve figured out what we’re up to. You’re being held for ransom. We’ll be getting in touch with your father and making arrangements and when the ransom’s paid you’ll be turned loose. Nobody’s going to hurt you. You understand?”

  She nodded cautiously, her long eyes wide open. It occurred to Mitch she was afraid to speak. He reached out to touch her hand reassuringly but she drew it away.

  Floyd said, “Now, if you agree not to give us any trouble we’ll take the wire off your wrists. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  The girl made no reply of any kind. Floyd said patiently, “Look, honey, this won’t do. You see this tape-recorder? You’re going to talk into it for me.”

  Mute and stubborn, she shook her head. When she looked down at the recorder her hair swung forward, masking her face. She pushed her lower lip forward to blow hair off her forehead. She was stunning, Mitch thought.

  Floyd closed his eyes and seemed to be deep in thought. That was when Theodore spoke up: “Hell, let me do it. I can make her talk.”

  Floyd threw his head back. “Theodore, this discussion does not include you. Butt out. When you want to talk to me you raise your hand.” His eyes burned against Theodore until Theodore stirred in discomfort and drifted away, sucking beer.

  Floyd turned back to the girl. He smiled. “Sweetness, don’t make it rough on yourself. The longer you stall around, the longer it’ll take to finish this. All you have to do is talk into the tape-recorder, tell the truth. We’re not asking you to make up any lies.”

  Billie Jean said, “What if she tells where we are?”

  “That’s why they have erasing heads on tape-recorders,” Floyd said, unruffled. “All right, Miss Conniston?”

  Terry Conniston curled he
r lip. “Go crawl back under your rock.”

  Floyd’s smile was thin. “Don’t you want to be friendly, Sweetness? Then we’ll put it this way. Either you rap with me or I turn Theodore loose on you. What do you say?”

  Sulky silence was the girl’s only answer until Floyd turned, making a show of regretful reluctance, and drew in a breath to call Theodore.

  “Okay, damn you. Okay. What am I supposed to say?”

  Floyd took the gun out of his pocket and held it casually, not aimed at anything in particular. He handed the microphone to Mitch and said, “I won’t dictate anything. Use your own words. Make it short because I’ll be playing this back over the telephone and we don’t want any long speeches that would give your daddy time to put a tracer on the line. Just tell him you’re being held by people with guns and you want him to bail you out. Tell him you’re all right but we’ve threatened your life if your daddy doesn’t come across.”

  Floyd nodded to Mitch and pushed the button. The tape began to whir softly. Mitch held the mike close to Terry Conniston’s lips. She stared at it, frowned with concentration and finally blinked at him. “I can’t think of what to say.”

  Mitch opened his mouth but Floyd shook his head. The tape hissed for at least a full minute before the girl closed her eyes and said in a dull monotone, “Daddy, please listen. They’re recording this on tape. They’ve kidnaped me but I’m not hurt. Please do what they want…. I can’t think of anything else to say. What else do you want me to say?”

  Floyd switched the machine off. “That ought to be enough for openers. Later he’ll want confirmation and you’ll have to talk some more.”

  He ran the tape back and played it back, frowning; he listened to it twice before he shook his head and said, “It’s no good. Not enough feeling in your voice. You don’t sound scared enough.”

  “What do you want me to do? Tear my hair and shriek?”

  Floyd smiled. “You’re a cool one, Sweetness. It wouldn’t hurt for you to get choked up a little and bust out crying. Might persuade your daddy to come through fast. Let’s try it again.”