CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (2 page)

The woman shook her head either in amazement or disbelief, Molly didn't know which. "You'd have to have your parents sign a permission form. And besides, we don't need anybody here. Sorry."

But she hadn't been sorry at all, that was the bad part. She thought Molly was a thirteen-year-old, and she hadn't believed a word Molly said.

Still undefeated, Molly tried getting work again in Pensacola at a service station off the freeway. "Do you need a cashier? I saw your sign." She indicated the HELP WANTED sign in the window.

The paunchy middle-aged man who ran the place looked over his black-framed glasses at her and smiled slowly. "You?"

Damn. No, she felt like saying, I'm standing here alone asking if you'll hire my invisible rabbit, Harvey. "Yes me. I need a job. And I'm older than I look." She thought she'd better get that in quickly as possible.

"And how old would that be?"

Another skeptic. "Sixteen. I'll be seventeen soon."

He was already shaking his head. "Nope. Can't use you. Need a big strapping boy to help run the station." Then he turned his back and waddled away to sell a quart of oil.

Molly knew then getting work was beyond possibility. They wouldn't believe she was sixteen, or else they'd want parental permission. Either way the job market was a closed world.

So it had come down to sex. Selling it. As bad as it worried her—her stomach wasn't in such good shape just thinking about it—as bad as she didn't want to, she simply couldn't survive any other way. She'd lost her virginity to an awkward, unsmiling boy back in the summer of her fourteenth year on a deserted beach in Dania, Florida.
Don't even think about sex.
Her father's words. How could she not think about it? Every girl she knew had rid herself of virginity just as quickly as she could. Though her father didn't know it, an intact hymen had lost its importance a long time ago. Maybe before she was born. As for selling sex, though, that was something else again. The guys could be old, hairy, heavy, and filthy. They were
strangers
. She didn't know how she'd endure the grunting, sweating ten or fifteen minutes to get enough money to move on down the line. She just knew she had to.

She had never tried scoring at truck stops, never tried scoring
anywhere
yet. Before she was even out of the pickup that dropped her at Gene Ray's, a sloe-eyed girl at the corner of the building gave her a long heated look. Right off Molly knew she was hooking. Everyone, Molly guessed, knew that. The girl wore shorts short enough to bare her ass when she stooped over, and a fluorescent green halter top with her breasts swelling out the top and sides like the white coconut goo found in a Mound's bar.

It took some courage for Molly to sidle over and ask advice. She dropped down into what she thought of as her toughest, most adult-sounding voice. "Is there enough action for me to work here with you awhile?"

The girl shifted her weight onto the other leg as if she'd been standing a long time. She smelled like cigarette smoke, damp sex, and spearmint. Molly saw her thoughtfully chewing gum, more like a cow chews a cud, intermittently, and with relish.

You wanna be a Lot Lizard?"

Molly thought about that. She didn't really, no, that's not what she'd aspire to given any choices, but she hadn't a choice so she supposed that yes, for now, she wanted to be a Lot Lizard. Sounded prehistoric and slimy, but what could you do.

"If that's what it's called, yeah."

"These truckers, honey, they're horny as wild boars. You look a little outta shape to stand the rigor."

What she meant, Molly knew, was that she looked either too young or too skinny. That was plain insulting and, by God, she was getting steamed at how everyone insulted her. Even if she didn't want to hook, even if it scared the living daylights out of her, she still hated being treated like some innocent numb-nut kid. "I'm okay. I can handle it." She squared her shoulders and stared defiantly into the other girl's eyes.

The girl shrugged and chewed her gum. She glanced idly around the parking area and over to the side where the massive trucks pulled up for fueling. "It's your choice, kid. There's plenty of men to service tonight and JoJean ain't showed up yet. You got rubbers?"

Molly nodded, then blushed. Did this dimwit think she'd be selling herself raw? She didn't want AIDS, for chrissakes, end up dying before she could get out of her teens. Not to mention the garden variety venereal diseases some people walked around with. She wasn't totally without a brain. In her carryall bag she had a box of lubricated Trojans. She didn't know how she was going to get the guys to use them, but if they didn't, she meant to hightail it, leave them gawking.

The girl had sneaked a look from the corner of her mascara-laden eyes at how Molly nodded to answer the question. "Okay, go on. No skin off'n my ass. Go around back and just bang on the door of a cab' till one of 'em opens. I always take the Peterbilts and the Western Stars so stay away from those, but anything else, you go for it big as you can go."

Again Molly nodded, accepting the rules, and left the girl's side. She skirted red muddy puddles behind the building to reach the dozing, idling trucks. She gathered her courage and climbed to the driver's door of the first truck she came to, a moving van company truck, and balling her knuckly fist, she started in. After sixty seconds of steady banging she was about to hop down to try another cab when a face showed in the closed window. He was old. Maybe Sixty. Bald. Probably didn't know what an erection was anymore, Molly thought with some despair. She couldn't do this. She'd never be able to give herself to some old grubby man. She bit her lower lip, leaned out of the way so he could open the door.

"Have you been baptized?" he asked.

Molly wondered briefly if he was using another language or if he meant something to do with being clean. The longer she took to answer and the longer she scrutinized his face for clues, the more it came to her that he meant baptized in the regular religious sense. She'd had the awful luck of knocking on the door of a Bible Thumper. Never mind that she was scared to death, that she was about to go against everything she had been brought up to value, she had to face the guilt this stranger meant to heap upon her head.

"I'm going," she said, beginning to clamber down. She didn't need this. Couldn't take it.

"Child, you're living a life of sin. Christ died on the cross for people like you. Won't you be washed in the blood of the lamb?"

"I'm gone," she said, hitting dirt and stalking away. Behind her she heard him above the roar of a dozen rumbling engines.

"Your soul is in high peril! Go immediately to a church and ask them to pray for you!"

Sheez. Mama, if she'd had a mama, would have told her there'd be days like this. The warped hayseed who picked her up in Mobile and dumped her at Gene Ray's had groped her for twenty miles before he got to the point and asked if she'd piss on his back if he could find a place to pull over. She had told him in no unequivocal terms that she wasn't into kinky, and no, she would not piss on his fool back, but she'd knock out his fool teeth if he didn't get her to the next exit before she puked. Now a Bible Thumper was laying down God's law to a potential sinner. It was too much.

Sheez.

Molly was so incensed, she forgot all about having nubs for breasts and was stomping across the lot looking for a likely cab to bang on, her shoulders back, hands fisted at her sides. Her small carrying bag of clothes and toiletries swung out behind her as she walked, bumping her hip as she went. A movement at the far corner of the building slowed her walk. She glanced that direction and saw a big guy aimed her way. He threw a monstrous shadow that leapt before him as he moved forward. He was way over six feet and sported massive shoulders, narrow hips, long legs. He wore neat gray tweedy slacks and a pale lemon sport shirt open at the throat, but God, the guy's hair was longer than hers. And silkier. But then any hair was silkier than her naturally curly unruly mop. His hair was brown streaked with silver, straight and shiny as a horse's mane. A gray beard, not too bushy, but long enough to touch his chest, covered the lower half of his face. He looked like a great fallen angel she had seen portrayed in a picture in a Bible back home. He also looked a little like the guy on the old TV show who lived in the wilderness with a bear for a friend. Molly wondered if he was Gene Ray, and if she was about to find her ass in a sling. Maybe in a holding cell in the Mobile jail. That was about what she deserved at this point. Jail and a one-way ticket home.

She stopped in her tracks and hung one arm on her clothes bag. She waited to see what he wanted. She'd try to talk him out of running her in, if that was the problem. She could get a ride out of the truck stop in a hot second if she had to.

He was near enough now for her to tell he was smiling in all that hair covering his face. He couldn't be near as old as his graying hair and beard announced. Maybe it was premature. He was a good-looking guy for someone more than twenty years--thirty?-- her senior.

He raised a hand in greeting and she relaxed a little. Maybe he was just a regular guy. Not a guy on the make, but a nice guy. If he turned out to be a customer, her
first
customer, she wasn't sure how she'd handle it. They called them "johns, " didn't they? He was too big and too hairy, but he looked clean—woodsy, in some way—and his eyes crinkled as he smiled. She liked that. He looked just like the TV character he reminded her of, what was his name? Oh, yeah, Grizzly Adams! That was wild. Maybe he was the actor, and wouldn't that be cool beans?

"What can I do you?" she asked when he was within speaking distance. This shorthand language worked on the road. Men, especially, hated to waste words. There was no extra time when traveling to play the sophisticate and talk about the weather. She had decided early on that she must talk tough no matter how her insides quaked. It was protective coloration; she blended into the background when she talked like older, more experienced women. She wasn't as vulnerable.

He walked right up to her, so close that she felt impelled to move back a step from him. He wasn't the actor, but he looked just as fine. She saw his eyes were beautiful green— almost a mint color. Despite all the hair, he was downright gorgeous, enough to make some girls back in Dania drool like the dweebs they were. She, of course, wouldn't let on she thought he was so fine. After all, he was real old. Old as her father. Ancient.

"Hi there. I saw you on your way back here when I drove in a few minutes ago. Do you need a lift somewhere? I'm heading west."

Sounded nice enough. Like a regular guy. Those green eyes crinkling and glittering like he knew all her secrets and they didn't bother him a bit.

Molly looked around at all the trucks, sniffed the hot, diesely air, and decided in a hasty instant that Lot Lizardry wasn't her specialty. Who wanted to make it in the sleeper of an eighteen-wheeler anyway? Her first time hooking had to be done in a better place than this. It must be cramped in one of those cabs. And smelly. And . . . scary.

She looked carefully at the man, sizing up the possibilities. Virile. Very goddamn big. Maybe she could talk him into something other than straight sex where he'd crush her to death. He had to weigh over two hundred. Maybe he wouldn't want sex at all. But then there was no use living a fantasy, lying to herself. He'd want it. When it came time, she'd have to find a way to steel herself to doing it. There was no other way.

"Sure," she said finally. "I could use a ride on down the road. Seems they're having a camp meeting here." She hooked her thumb back at the Bible Thumper who hadn't given up on her. He was hanging half out of his cab blabbering inanely about Sin and Retribution.

The big fellow spared one glance at the hysterical driver and dismissed him with a shake of his head. "There are too many nuts on the road. You have to be careful."

"You can say that again." Molly hitched the bag higher on her shoulder and started walking beside the big man. "What do you want me to call you? I'm Molly."

"You can call me Cruise, Molly. Because that's what I do. I cruise." And then he laughed.

Molly looked up at him, but couldn't see his face in the new shadows. Several hairs on the nape of her neck stood straight up on end just for a second. She shivered. Too late now. She was taking a ride from the Long Hair and that's all there was to it. She had never welshed on a deal or backed out on a decision once it was made. At least not since she left home.

"Okay, Cruise," she murmured. "Let's eat some miles."

She waited for him to unlock the passenger side of an old blue Chrysler, looked over at the blank plate-glass windows of the cafe, blinked at the Lot Lizard in the halter top, and slid into the bucket seat while Cruise held the door for her.

"Buckle up," he said when he got into the car. He sounded cheerful, happy to have her along.

He started the engine, pulled on the headlights, buckled himself into the seat, shifted into reverse, then drove slowly from the puddle-covered drive onto the entrance road to the freeway.

"So where in the West are you headed?" Molly wanted to be friendly, wanted to forget the cakewalk her hair made at the back of her neck earlier when he laughed.

Cruise gave her a disarming smile. She could see the fleshy part of his lower lip where it hid in the beard. The rosy soft lip in the gray brush made her think of a newborn pup lost in a tangle of barbed wire. It was a lip someone could nibble. She wished he was closer to her age. She could go for him, if he was. But no matter how handsome, he was still too old.

She smiled back, at ease. She had good teeth and liked to smile when she had reason.

"Far as the land will take me," he said. "Right to the shores of the blue Pacific Ocean."

"Job waiting for you out there?"

He eased the Chrysler into traffic on 1-10 and held his speed at fifty-five. Most cars overtook him, their headlights swinging out to the left of the car and spearing past into the darkness. "Maybe," he said. "We'll see."

She decided not to press him for details. It was none of her business. I'm sixteen," she said. "Be seventeen in three months. I'm a runaway and . . . sometimes . . . uh . . . I'm a prostitute. It's, you know, a living."