The Getaway Man

by Andrew Vachss

  I had always wanted to see it again, but I never did—until Daphne told me all about video stores.

  The Driver, it was called. I didn’t know who was in it, but the star, the guy they called “The Driver,” he was real handsome. Always very calm and cool, no matter what was going on.

  When I told her about it, Vonda asked me if I had it on videotape. When I said I did, nothing would do but that she had to see it for herself. But I was … I don’t know, kind of edgy about it.

  So Vonda begged me. Not like real begging, just playing around. “Please, please, please!” she said, leaning down to where I was working. I thought maybe she was making fun of me, but I said okay. Only I didn’t want to watch my movies in front of J.C. and Gus. I never did that. I didn’t know what they would think.

  She said that was all right. “We’ll get our chance, Eddie,” is what she said. “There’s no rush.”

  Finally, J.C. and Gus had to go somewhere for a few days, to make sure about stuff for the job. They were always doing that.

  The first night they were gone, Vonda watched the movie with me. I’ve been to movies with girls enough times, but Vonda was the first one who never said a word all the while it was on. Not one word; like the movie was important to her, and she didn’t want to miss any of it.

  And the minute it was over, she started asking me all kinds of questions about it.

  Nobody ever did that before, either.

  So I told her, the driver in the movie, he was supposed to be a getaway man, but he really didn’t do it right. Vonda asked me, what did I mean? Asked me serious. So I explained. The man in the movie, when he had to do a job, he’d steal a car for it. That part was okay. But he never checked the car out.

  You have to do that. You have to make sure the tires are good. Even the tire pressures are real important. The brakes, the shocks. You can be the best driver in the world, but if the suspension’s no good, you can’t make the car do what it’s supposed to. You can’t just grab something off the street and use it on a job right away.

  Vonda never knew any of that. Her eyes got real big when I explained it to her. They had little black glints in the turquoise, like metalflake chips in paint.

  It made me feel good, that she could see there was a lot more to my job than just driving for a few minutes each time.

  So I told her other stuff, too. The chases, they went on too long. In the movie, I mean. It was like the driver had a plan that all the cop cars behind him were going to crash, and then they’d just leave him alone while he rode off. That’s plain silly. It never happens like that.

  The driver in the movie looked cool behind the wheel, but you could see he didn’t really know how to do it—he was just acting.

  Vonda told me the man who played the driver was famous. He was once married to some girl who was so beautiful she was in magazines. Vonda had a lot of those magazines. I thought they were J.C.’s, when I first saw them around the cabin. Maybe they were, even. But Vonda was always reading them.

  The next morning, Vonda cooked me breakfast. She always cooks, but she never eats anything in the morning. I thought, with J.C. and Gus gone, she wouldn’t bother. But she made me a real nice omelette, with all kinds of stuff in it.

  I went out to work on the cars we were going to use for the job. But I got distracted by the way the sun came in through a crack in the beams.

  The sunlight fell right across my Thunderbird, and I felt bad, like I was not taking care of it. I had a set of headers for it that I was pretty sure would fit, but I’d never gotten around to trying them. I figured this was a good day to do it.

  “Did you miss me?”

  It was Vonda, standing behind me. Real close.

  I looked at my watch. It was after three o’clock. I guess Vonda hadn’t come out to exercise that day, like she usually did.

  “I was working on the headers,” I said. “I almost got it done. They’re going to work perfect.”

  “Is this your car, Eddie?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “For real?”

  “What do you mean, Vonda?”

  “I mean, do you own it? Or did you just steal it?”

  “It’s mine,” I said. Just for a second, I thought about the preacher and the sin of pride. I thought I knew how he felt. “I bought it, and I’m fixing it up myself.”

  “It’s so cool!” Vonda said. “I think I saw one like it, once. In the movies.”

  “It’s an original Thunderbird,” I told her. “A nineteen fifty-five.”

  “That’s as old as J.C.,” she laughed. “Does it still run good?”

  “It runs great,” I said. “And when I get these headers all tightened down, it’s going to run even better.”

  “Let’s take it for a ride!”

  “You know I can’t do that, Vonda,” I told her. “Nobody’s supposed to see any of the cars we’ve got back here.”

  “This cabin’s on thirty acres, Eddie. We wouldn’t have to go off the property. Just a little ride, so I can see what it’s like. Come on.”

  “Somebody might still see.”

  “From where? The road’s got to be a mile away. And the woods are so thick around us. Just around the back, on the dirt path. We wouldn’t have to go fast or anything. Please!”

  We went so slow a fast runner could have caught us. I was a little worried about the undercarriage, but the ground was almost as smooth as a road.

  “It’s such a beautiful afternoon,” she said. “Too bad your car’s not a convertible.”

  “It is,” I said. “I mean, I don’t have the convertible part of it, but the top, this one, it comes off.”

  “Oh, do it! Come on.”

  “It doesn’t just go back, the way a convertible does. You have to lift it off. Like with a hoist.”

  “But you could do it, if you wanted?”

  “It’s nothing special I’d be doing,” I said, so she wouldn’t think I was blowing myself up. “It’s supposed to do that. It’s called a removable hardtop. All of them had it.”

  “So we could do it, someday, right?”

  “I guess,” I said. But I didn’t really see how.

  When J.C. and Gus got back, Vonda said, “You boys have a good time?”

  “We weren’t there to have a good time,” J.C. said. “After this job, we’ve got the rest of our lives to do that.”

  “Did you bring me anything?” Vonda asked.

  “We’ve got to go again on Friday,” J.C. said. “Tell me what you want, I’ll bring it back for you.”

  Vonda turned her back on him and walked off.

  J.C. looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Do you like her?” Vonda asked me, the day after J.C. and Gus took off.

  “It’s just a picture in a magazine,” I said. “I don’t know her.”

  “I don’t mean her personality, Eddie. Isn’t she pretty?”

  “She’s not as pretty as you, Vonda,” I said. As soon as I said that, my face got hot, and I felt stupid.

  “How can you say that?” Vonda asked me.

  “I … don’t know.”

  “Look at the picture, Eddie. Now look at me. What’s the difference?”

  “She’s a blonde, and—”

  “And she doesn’t have any clothes on. So how could you say I’d be as pretty as her?”

  “I could just tell,” I said.

  Vonda’s eyes got smaller for a second. Then she just reached down to her waist and hauled her sweater up over her head.

  “Watch!” she said.

  She took a deep, deep breath, and made her back curve. Standing just like the girl in the picture. Her boobs stuck way out, like they were going to pop loose from her bra.

  “Now you can tell,” she said.

  For this job, there’s two cars I have to get ready. One isn’t a car, really; it’s a truck. Not a pickup—this one has the back all closed up, like those yellow ones you can rent if you want to move your stuff. But I didn’t have to do much
of anything to it, really. Just check it over, make sure everything’s working right.

  The other car, the one J.C. bought, that’s special. It’s a big black Cadillac. Kind of an old one, but that’s right for what its job is. It’s a hearse. Not the open kind that carries the flowers in the back; this is the one for the coffins.

  I put a lot of time in on that big hearse. We need it for the way it looks and all. But if things go wrong, it will have to be our getaway car, too.

  Every time J.C. and Gus went away, Vonda would watch movies with me.

  One night, she didn’t come.

  The next morning, she didn’t make me breakfast, either.

  I went out to the barn to work on the hearse.

  She came out to do her workout. When she was finished, she came over to where I was.

  “Did you miss me?” she said.

  “I figured you wanted to watch the TV. I mean, in the cabin, not the movies.”

  “You didn’t figure, maybe I was sick?”

  “No, Vonda. I mean.…”

  “You know I love to watch your movies with you, Eddie. If I don’t come to be with you, there’s a good reason. There’s always a good reason. Okay?”

  It made me feel all different ways when she said that. Like I was driving real fast, right at a fork in the road, and I didn’t have a plan. But I just said “Okay” back, like she wanted me to.

  J.C. came back from his trip alone. I didn’t know where Gus was. J.C. asked me, could I have everything ready three weeks from Saturday? I told him I guessed so, but I would rather have more time, if I could.

  I didn’t look at him when I said that. I was afraid he would see it on my face. That once we did the job, we’d split up, and I’d never see Vonda again.

  I think that’s when he started hitting her. I heard him late that night. Right through the wall. “You stupid bitch,” then the slap. I didn’t know what to do.

  I closed my eyes and tried to think about something else.

  He was gone the next morning. I was working on the hearse when Vonda came out.

  “You heard?” she said.

  “Huh?” I said. That’s what I always say when I don’t know what to say.

  “I know you heard, Eddie. It’s okay. J.C.’s got a bad temper, you know. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  I kept my head down. In prison, one of the things J.C. was famous for was never losing his temper. Guys called him an iceman—it was high respect.

  “It was my fault, Eddie,” Vonda said. “J.C. told me I shouldn’t spend all day sitting around on my fat ass, and I mouthed off to him.”

  “You don’t.…”

  “Don’t what, Eddie?”

  “You don’t sit around all day. You always make breakfast, and you keep the house all nice and you—”

  She bit her lower lip and looked sad. “Oh, now I’m disappointed.”

  “Why, Vonda? What did I say?”

  “It’s what you didn’t say, dopey. What you were supposed to say is, ‘You don’t have a fat ass, Vonda. Yours is just perfect.’ You think I do all those workouts to be fat?”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Come on, Eddie. Tell me the truth. You do think I have a fat ass, don’t you?” she said.

  “I never—”

  “Tell me the truth!” she said, like she was mad. She bent all the way over, so she was touching her toes. She was wearing little white shorts, and they rode up on her. She looked at me from upside down, her long black hair trailing down to the ground. “Well?”

  “No, you’re not fat, Vonda. You’re … perfect, is what you are. I swear.”

  She straightened up, came over to where I was working on the axle. She kissed me. On the cheek. “You’re so sweet, Eddie. I feel much better now,” she said.

  I knew things had gone wrong, then. But I couldn’t stop myself from watching her as she walked away.

  We watched some of my movies that night. I showed Vonda where they went off the track. Where they stopped being real.

  J.C. came back the next morning. Vonda was real nice to him, fetching him his ice-cold Cokes, and rubbing the back of his neck.

  J.C. had a big map spread out all over the kitchen table. He was sitting there, smoking. You could see he was thinking deep. Making plans. Every once in a while, he’d draw something on the map.

  Vonda came over and tried to sit on his lap. “I’m working,” he said.

  “Oh come on,” Vonda said.

  He pushed her away and said something mean to her.

  I went out to the barn that night. I was going to fix up the little drapes that cover the back window of the hearse so they stayed closed, but I ended up watching one of my movies instead.

  Vonda never came, not even for a minute.

  Late that night, J.C.’s voice came right through the wall.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I heard him say.

  I couldn’t hear what Vonda said back, but I could hear the hitting.

  In the morning, he was gone again. Gus still hadn’t come back.

  We were watching one of the movies, when Vonda started to cry. I asked her what was the matter—it wasn’t a sad movie.

  She wouldn’t tell me. I kept after her. Finally, she said that J.C. was really hurting her. She was terrified of him.

  I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t thinking it was okay to slap her around or anything like that, but I couldn’t see why she would be so scared, all of a sudden. She’d been with J.C. a long time, I knew. And, in the daytime, it always seemed like they had made up.

  That’s when she showed me. The little round scar. She took off her shorts to show me, like it was the only way I would have believed her. I would have believed her, no matter what she said.

  Way high up on the inside of her leg, right next to her … where it was so soft and tender.

  I got sick thinking of the vicious red tip of J.C.’s cigarette, making her hurt.

  I kissed where the scar was. She put her hands in my hair and pulled my head up. Then she kissed me, hard.

  The next night, she told me the scar was old. J.C. had done it a long time ago. But he always told her he’d do it again if she ever crossed him. The next time, it would be one of her nipples, he told her.

  “Right here,” she said.

  I closed my eyes. I looked down, so she wouldn’t see what I was doing. But she must have figured it out.

  “Look!” she said. “J.C. says it wouldn’t be so bad, since they’re nothing but fakes.”

  “Fakes?”

  “My boobs,” she said, so soft I almost didn’t hear her. “You know what implants are, don’t you, Eddie?”

  “I guess I do.”

  “I didn’t do that just to make them bigger,” she said. “When I was a kid, the people who raised me never gave me enough food. Some days, all I got was laundry starch and water. It makes your belly swell up, like you’re pregnant, so you don’t get hungry. But it’s not real food. That’s no nutrition.

  “That’s what I had. Malnutrition. It’s like when you almost starve to death. It sucks all the fat out of your body. Didn’t you ever see pictures of kids like that on TV?”

  “Like in Africa?”

  “Just like that. Only, people here get it, too. Some people, anyway.”

  “Why didn’t they—?”

  “I got taken away from those people. And they put me in a different place. It wasn’t so great, but there was plenty of food.

  “And when I got bigger … older, I mean, my boobs never grew. They were just these sad little droopy lumps on my chest. As soon as I could save the money, I went and got the implants.

  “You know what the doctor told me, Eddie? He said, now I look just like I should have looked, if I hadn’t had that malnutrition when I was a kid. I could have gone a lot bigger, like some of the girls do, but I wanted to look natural.”

  “They look perfect, Vonda,” I said. “Nobody could tell in a million years.” It was the truth.

>   “They don’t look perfect to J.C.,” she said. “He’s always saying I’m a freak.”

  “But you look—”

  “There’s a little packet in there,” she said. “They put it right over the muscle. J.C. says it feels like a sac of water. He doesn’t like to touch me there.”

  “I don’t.…”

  “Eddie, tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Do they feel like that to you? Like sacs of water?”

  “Vonda.…”

  “Just tell me,” she said. She was crying.

  I reached over to her. Even with my eyes closed, my hand went right to where she wanted.

  “They feel perfect,” I told her.

  “You swear?”

  “No one could ever tell,” I said.

  That wasn’t true, but I guess I fooled her, because she stopped crying.

  “I hate him,” she told me, the next morning.

  It felt strange to talk about J.C. in the cabin. The cabin was like J.C.’s place. The barn, that was my place.

  “Why don’t you leave?” I asked her. “Go someplace else. Plenty of guys would be—”

  “I’d be too afraid,” she said. “You know J.C. How … dedicated he gets to things. He’d find me, no matter where I went. I don’t have any money. I’d have to go back to dancing. And you can’t do that with a bag over your head. He has pictures of me. Somebody would spot me for him.”

  “This job … the one we’re going to do … there’ll be a lot of money, Vonda,” I told her. “With your share, you could—”

  “My share?” she laughed at me. Only it wasn’t funny, the way she did it. “I never get a share, Eddie. I only get what J.C. gives me. When he wants to. You understand? It’s like he’s got a chain around my ankle.”

  “We don’t have to t.c.b. on the spot,” J.C. said to Gus. “He’s got no moves. He doesn’t know where we’re going when it’s done, and he doesn’t know about this place at all. He’s got to lay up at wherever he runs to, and wait for us to contact him at the number so he can pick up his share.”

  “It’s fucking amazing amateurs live as long as they do,” Gus said, shaking his head.

  “Are you going to take all your tapes along when you go, Eddie?” Vonda asked me a couple of nights later, when J.C. and Gus were gone again.