The Getaway Man

by Andrew Vachss

  She asked me if it was for Valentine’s Day. I could tell by the look on her face I should say yes, so I did.

  “Then you’ll want it wrapped,” she said.

  She put it in a little box that was just the right size. Then she wrapped it in shiny silver paper, and put a thin red ribbon all around it, tied in a bow.

  By the time I left, it was the middle of the afternoon. I was a little hungry, so I thought I’d look for a place where they sold food. I never knew a mall that didn’t have them.

  “Hey,” a woman’s voice said.

  I turned around. It was the girl from the store, the one in the black dress.

  “That was very chivalrous of you,” she said.

  I didn’t know what she meant, but I could tell from the way she said it that it was something good.

  “That’s all right,” I said.

  “I’ve been waiting for you. The least I could do is buy my rescuer a drink.”

  She took hold of my arm and steered me down the corridor. I thought we were going to a bar, but she kept going until we were in the parking lot.

  “Where’s your car?” she said.

  “It’s in the shop,” I told her. Which was kind of the truth.

  “How did you get here, cab?”

  “That’s right,” I said. Which wasn’t true, but I didn’t want her to know I was staying so close by. Or the kind of place I was staying in, either.

  “Then we’ll take mine,” she said, and started steering my arm again.

  After we walked a little bit, she reached in that pocketbook of hers and took out some keys. She had one of those things that unlocks your car from a distance. When she pressed on it, I heard a chirping sound. I looked in that direction. There was a big Lexus sedan, plum-colored, with its lights blinking.

  “That’s mine,” she said. “Do you like it?”

  “I never drove one,” I told her.

  “Then you should drive this one,” she said, and handed me the keys.

  I wanted to explain to her that I didn’t mean I wanted to drive that car; I just couldn’t say if I liked a car if I’d never driven that kind. But I didn’t say anything.

  “You drive very … carefully,” she said, after we’d gone a few blocks.

  “I’m getting the feel of it,” I told her. “You have to do that a little bit at a time.”

  “Oh. Are you a professional driver?”

  I liked the way that sounded in her mouth. “That’s right,” I said. “Driving is what I do.”

  “Do you race cars?”

  I liked her for saying that. I was afraid she was going to think I drove a cab, or something like that.

  “No, not that kind of driving,” I said.

  “Well, do you like the car now?” she asked me.

  “I still don’t know yet. You really can’t tell about a car unless you put it through its paces.”

  “Like a horse?”

  “I … guess so. I don’t know anything about horses.”

  “Like a test drive,” she said. “Only a hard one, yes?”

  “Yeah. That’s it.”

  “All right,” she said. “I know where you can do that. Turn left at the next light.”

  We ended up on a farm. Not a farm where people grow things, just a place with a lot of land. I know it belonged to someone rich, because there was a gate to get in. She pushed a button on a box she had clamped to the sun visor, like one of those garage door lifters, and the gate opened right up.

  “Is this yours?” I asked her.

  “My father’s.”

  “It’s a big place.”

  “Not so big,” she said. “If you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t know what she meant, so I just nodded. That satisfies most people.

  “Is this a good spot?” she said, after a little while.

  It was a single strip of blacktop, laid down like a runway for an airplane. Grass on one side of it, dirt on the other.

  “Does it curve at all?”

  “Up ahead it does.”

  “Okay,” I said, and stomped the gas.

  The car was faster than I would have thought, big as it was. Got around turns pretty decent, too, although it heeled over a bit. At the end of the stretch, I slammed on the brakes. The car didn’t skid at all, just scrubbed off speed in a straight line. Just as I got it stopped, I flipped the lever into reverse and floored the pedal. We went flying backwards. I spun the wheel all the way to the right and slammed it down into drive as I gave it the gun and cranked over to the left. We went steaming on back the way we came.

  “Wow!” she said. “What was that?”

  “It’s called a bootlegger’s turn,” I said. “In case you have to reverse yourself real quick.”

  “Do it again!”

  I thought she wanted to see how I did it, so she could do it herself, but no matter how many times I showed her, she never asked to try.

  It worked even better on the dirt road.

  “Pull over there,” she said, after a while. “I never smoke in the car.”

  I could tell somebody smoked in that car, but I didn’t say anything.

  She got out and sat on the front fender, crossing her legs like she was on a couch. I stood next to her and gave her a cigarette.

  “So that’s the kind of driving you do,” she said. “Executive protection.”

  “I guess you could say that,” I said, although I wasn’t real sure what she meant.

  “What kind of gun do you carry?” she asked me.

  “I don’t carry a gun,” I said. “I’m a driver.”

  “Oh. What’s your name?”

  I told her. That’s when she said her name was Daphne. I never knew a girl with that name before.

  We drove off the farm. I followed her directions to a big apartment house.

  The garage was in the basement. She had a different box to open the door.

  “That’s my space,” she said. It had little walls on each side, I guess so other cars wouldn’t bang into it when they opened their doors.

  I backed the car in.

  “You did that in case you had to get out quickly?” she asked me.

  “Sure,” I said. “I always park like that.”

  “Come on,” she told me.

  There was a little elevator in the basement. It only went to the lobby. We got out there. A guy in a uniform and a hat said “Good afternoon” to her, and called her by her name, with a “Miz” in front of it, like she was his boss.

  We got in the elevator. She touched PH on the pad. I watched the numbers as we went up—PH was the top floor.

  The room we walked into was bigger than a lot of houses I’d been in. It was all black and white, except for slashes of red in different spots—across the back of one of the chairs, on the seat of the couch, cutting across a lampshade. Even the floor was black and white, in squares. It kind of looked like a fancy bathroom, with a red rug.

  “Would you like a drink?” she said.

  I didn’t know the names of the kind of drinks she probably was thinking of, and I didn’t want to ask her for a beer, so I just said, “No thanks.”

  She went over to the bar to mix herself something. I looked out the window. It was easy—one whole wall was glass. I could see there was some kind of a terrace out there, but I couldn’t see how you could get to it.

  She came back with two glasses. “Ice water,” she said, handing one to me.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re a wonderful driver, Eddie. Did you have to go to a special school to learn all those tricks?”

  “No,” I said. “I just pick things up on my own.” I wanted to tell her that what I showed her wasn’t tricks, but I couldn’t really do that without telling her what it was used for.

  She asked me a lot of questions. And she talked a lot, too. I guess I got lost in the sound of her voice. The sky outside got dull, then it turned dark. I didn’t care—there was nothing for me to do until at least the next day. Nobody was waiti
ng for me.

  “Is this all yours?” I asked her.

  “This apartment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All mine. Would you like to see the rest of it?”

  “No, I was just … wondering.”

  “If I was married?”

  “No. How come you … ?”

  “What, Eddie?”

  “You have this place. And that car. And you dress so good. You’ve got a great job, right?”

  “I don’t have any job,” she said. “What I have is a trust fund.”

  “A trust fund?”

  “Money that was left to me. I can’t spend it all, but I can spend a lot.”

  “You don’t have to work?”

  “No,” she laughed. “I never have to work. What difference does that make?”

  “It doesn’t, I guess. Only, with all this, how come you … ?”

  “What?” she said again. Only she sounded annoyed that time.

  “How come you boost stuff?”

  “Boost? Oh, you mean … in the department store.”

  “Yeah. What you took, it couldn’t have cost that much.”

  “What did I take?” she said. “Let’s see.”

  She got up and went over to where she had tossed her pocketbook. She brought it back, opened the top, and spilled it all out on the couch.

  “Hmmm.…” she said. “You’re right. This is all very tacky.”

  “Daphne.…”

  She came over and sat real close to me. “Want to hear a secret,” she said, very soft.

  “If you want to—”

  “Ssshhh,” she said. She slid into me. I put my arm around her. “Don’t look at me,” she said.

  It was real dark in there by then, but I still closed my eyes.

  Her voice was soft, but I could hear every word. “When I’m in a store … not all the time, but only sometimes … when I’m in a store, sometimes, I get … excited. It’s like there’s this pressure inside me. Stronger and stronger. I get very anxious. Tense. I don’t think about anything else. I know, as soon as I take something, it will be like a … release. All the tension will be gone.

  “But, after I leave the store, I never want what I take. Just looking at it makes me feel bad. Guilty.

  “I wish I could pay for what I take,” she said. “Not with money. I could just buy things, if I wanted them. Before, when you told me I was being watched, I felt like I wanted to die. I don’t know what I would do if I was ever caught.

  “I mean, I have been caught, but not caught-caught. Once, a detective stopped me, but I was still inside the store, and I told him I was going to pay on my way out. They couldn’t do anything. And once a store girl was watching me in the changing room. They had a little camera in there, can you imagine that? She saw me cutting the security tag off a dress and putting it in my bag. She knocked on the door of the changing room. I let her in, and she told me what she saw me do. All in whispers.

  “But she let me go. All she wanted was a kiss. That kiss, kissing her, it felt like a punishment to me. And that made me feel … good. Because I deserved it.

  “I had this dream, once. I was in a store, and a man caught me. He took me back in his office, called me a spoiled brat, and gave me a spanking. I was crying. He made me promise to never do it again. But I knew I would. I knew I would come back to that very same store.”

  She was quiet for a minute, like she was waiting for me to say something. I do what I always do when I can’t figure out the right thing to say.

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” she said. “Taking chances? I always do that. Look at you. I don’t know you. I don’t even know if your name is a real one. You seem like some kind of a criminal to me. A dangerous man. Are you a dangerous man, Eddie?”

  “Only behind the wheel,” I said, thinking of that judge, from when I was a kid.

  “Oh, you’re precious,” she said. She was laughing or crying; it was hard to tell with her face buried.

  Late that night, she woke me up. I was on my back, looking up at her. She was holding the silver box with the red ribbon.

  “What’s this?” she said. “A present for someone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s for me, now,” she said.

  She tore off the paper like she was in a hurry. When she saw the perfume, she made a little noise in her throat.

  “Is this your favorite?” she said.

  “I don’t know. I never smelled it.”

  Daphne opened the top of the bottle. She put her finger on the top and turned it upside down. Then she patted herself all over. Behind her ears, between her boobs, on the front of her legs. She kept going back to the bottle for refills. When she was done, she turned her back to me, so I could see where else she was putting the perfume.

  “Where are you going?” she asked me the next morning.

  “I have to see someone about work,” I said.

  “Take the Lexus,” she said. “I’ve got another car. Bring it back when you come tonight.”

  It took me a couple of hours to find my way to where I’d been staying. I had to backtrack over and over again, but I didn’t want to ask anybody for directions.

  I guess it all started when Daphne said I had to tell her a secret.

  I felt myself go cold in my spine when she said that. In my life, only one kind of person wants to know such things.

  “What secret?” I asked her.

  “Not any particular secret, you dope,” she said. “A secret, that’s all. It doesn’t matter which one. Everybody has secrets. When people share their spirits, that’s part of the deal.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. I say that a lot, to buy time. But, when I think about it later, I always see that I hadn’t been lying.

  “Didn’t I tell you secrets?” she said.

  “About stealing?”

  “Yes!”

  “I already knew that,” I said. “I mean, I saw you when you were—”

  “Secrets aren’t about what,” she said, whispering. “Secrets are about why. Remember what I told you, Eddie? About feeling guilty? And being punished … ?”

  “I.…”

  “That was a special secret. You’re the only one who knows. I never told anybody. Do you know why?”

  “Because they wouldn’t understand?”

  “That’s right, Eddie! Don’t you have feelings like that? Feelings you know other people wouldn’t understand?”

  “I … guess.”

  “You know you do. Everybody does. Everybody in the whole world.”

  It made me feel good, to know that. It made me more like a regular person.

  That was the night I told her about driving.

  I could never explain exactly what driving was. I guess I shouldn’t say it like that. Before Daphne, I had never really tried. She worked real hard at understanding what I was telling her, but I guess I wasn’t making much sense.

  “Remember I told you, about a dream I once had?” she said.

  “About getting caught?”

  “Yes. The truth is, I have that dream all the time, Eddie. Not just that once. And even when I’m awake. Do you have any dreams like that?”

  “About getting caught?”

  “No! Any dream that you have over and over.”

  I didn’t say anything. I wanted to tell her. There was no reason I couldn’t. I mean, it wasn’t like I would be ratting anyone out. My dream wasn’t about stealing, it was about driving. But something was making me not say it out loud.

  In my dream, I’m standing in the dark, by the side of a road. Yellow beams cut through the night; a car, coming. I can’t tell what kind, but it’s low to the ground. The car is black. Not pitch black—the same black as ravens, with a glisten to it.

  The car stops. I can’t see inside, but I know there’s no one in the driver’s seat.

  The car sits there, waiting. I know if I get in, I’ll be driving for all eternity.

  I never get in. But I know one night I wi
ll.

  “I dream about girls,” I finally told her. That was the truth, too.

  Daphne smiled at me, like I’d done something good.

  I was on a blue leather couch, in the room next to the black and white one, waiting for Daphne to get dressed. She had the biggest TV I ever saw in there. I was pushing the button to change channels. Daphne has a setup where there’s so many stations you could never really get through them all. She said there’s a way to do it fast, depending on what kind of shows you like to watch, but I didn’t care—I was just passing time.

  On the screen, a car came along the road. A black car, with black windows. I watched. It was a killer car. Not the driver, the car. That was the name of the movie, The Car. I’d seen it before. It was pretty stupid, a car with no driver.

  Not like my dream. In my dream, the car was waiting for a driver. Waiting for me.

  I didn’t hear Daphne come in. “What kind of car is that?” she said, right next to me.

  “A crazy one,” I told her. Then I explained what the movie was about, as best I could.

  “Oh, that’s like Christine,” she said.

  “Who’s Christine?”

  “Christine is the name of a book,” she told me. “It’s about a car that’s possessed by an evil spirit.”

  “What kind of car?” I asked her, just like she’d asked me. I wanted to see what she said, so I could say it myself, if anyone ever asked me about that movie again.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “An old one. It was in the book. By Stephen King, did you ever hear of him?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “He’s the biggest horror writer in the world.”

  “Oh.”

  “It was a movie!” she said, clapping her hands.

  “What was?”

  “Christine, Eddie. It was a movie. Would you like to see it?”

  “I … guess I would. But if it’s like this one.…”

  “No, it’s a lot better, I’m sure. Come on, let’s go get it.”

  We went to a video store. They must have had thousands of movies there. You could buy them or rent them.

  Daphne said the movies were all in sections, so you could find what you were looking for pretty quick. I looked for a section about driving, but there wasn’t any.

  “Just ask the clerk,” Daphne told me. “Here,” she said, putting bills in my hand, “buy whatever you want, okay?”