On the Run (8 page)

There was no change in her. She kept the speedometer motionless at seventy. He watched her. She bit into her underlip and began to frown. Suddenly she hit the brakes too hard. He was thrown forward. The car fishtailed, tires screaming. She fought the wheel, straightened it out, pumped the brakes again, then went over onto the shoulder in a rumbling of gravel and cloud of dust, and the big car rocked to a stop, stalling the engine.

She slid over toward him, turned to half face him, put her hands flat against his cheeks and looked into his eyes.
She took the sunglasses off, took his off, stared thoughtfully at him. “Not one full hour of sleep,” she said in a husky voice. “Not one. Laying awake there and trying to hang onto the feeling you had dirtied me and you were an evil bastard. Trying to hate you. But I couldn’t hang onto it. And I figured it out my way. And came up with the same thing you’ve said. It was another act of running. So I decided to wait and watch and see if I could find some clue that I was right.” Tears spilled out of her eyes. “Damn you, Sid. Damn you! I’m not the enemy. You don’t have to try to smash me. I’m your friend Paula. Okay?”

“Okay.”

She kissed him on the mouth, her lips as tender as though she were kissing a child. He put his arms around her and held her close. Finally she gave him a little push. “Now you drive. I’m too shaky.”

He went around the car and got behind the wheel. In a few moments he had it back up to road speed. He glanced at her. She smiled at him. She settled herself so close to him they touched from thigh to shoulder.

“You know, I certainly didn’t get to see much of Houston,” she said.

He passed a pipe truck and settled back into the right lane. “No punishment?” he asked.

“What do you mean, Sid?”

“Don’t you have to get even a little? Shouldn’t it cost me a little more than this? It seems too easy.”

She reached to the wheel and put her hand on his for a moment. “The ones who matter punish themselves.”

“You’re a rare one.”

“That’s what I tried to tell you last night.”

They stopped in Marshall for a late lunch. While he bought a thermos, an air mattress, a pillow and a blanket, she went down the block and bought a pair of slacks, a pair of sandals for driving and, at his suggestion, a warm cardigan. When they made a gas stop at the far side of the city, she went to the ladies’ room and changed into the slacks. He had folded the rear seat down, moved their bags to one side, and had just finished inflating the mattress with the air hose when she came walking back across the wide concrete apron toward the gas island. The tailored gunmetal slacks made her look leggier, but
did not obscure the tilt and tensions of her hips as she came toward him. He saw her become aware of herself observed, and saw a small constraint. She came toward him, properly aware of self and moment, the lines of her, long and strong and clear, coming near with the heavy brows shadowing the dark eyes, her mouth level with promises, grave with awareness. It was disconcerting to him that all of this could have happened so quickly, and kept happening, changing, growing with each hour of nearness. What had been an irrevocable affront to her pride and dignity as a woman now seemed merely a little awkward hitch, a catching of balance, even a quicker way of knowing. All the wanting was there, but this was not the gross simplicity of lust. This was the complexity of a total involvement, a promise of all the ninety percent she had spoken of. Involvement is the heart committed, in the way of an adult—and with this woman, anything less than that would be worse than nothing. But all he could offer was one small option on despair.

They went off into afternoon, the sun behind them. She looked at the maps. “How are we going?”

“Texarkana, and then if we move east too soon we fight too many hills. We’ll cut over on 60 to 51. Up through Cairo, Vandalia, Decatur, angle right on 66, and then take the pikes. Fast and flat.”

“I don’t want to get lost when you’re sleeping.”

“I’ll mark it out for you when we change.”

In a little while she said, “Whatever became of Sid Wells?”

“He was a quiet type. Peddled the cars, ran the lot, wrote the ads, paid his bills. He isn’t quite dead yet. I’ll kill him off after I unload this car. His name is on the paper.”

“What do you do then?”

“Sell the car for cash, find a new city, pick a new name, start picking up the little bits of paper a man has to have. Write myself some predated references and weather them up a little. They never check. Avoid the outfits that want to bond you. It isn’t hard.”

“You talk as if you won’t get any money from Tom.”

“I might get it. But I might not want to show up to claim it.”

“Would you try to change your looks again?”

“Again? Oh, you mean the change from Jacksonville. I was getting too heavy. A little soft. Wore my hair a lot longer.”

“Do you wear contact lenses now?”

“No. There was a fair amount of correction in the lenses. It bothered me for a couple of months, being without glasses. Then it stopped bothering me. I think my eyes adjusted some. Things are hazy way off, but not enough to matter. I think Wain could walk right by me on the street. I mean, I like to think he could. I’m not about to test it.”

“Nobody should have to
live
that way!”

“Go to any big city at random and go up behind ten strangers, one after the other, and clap them on the shoulder. One out of ten will try to run right up the side of a building. When somebody wants you dead, you make a choice. You kill, or you run, or you build a fort, like Trotsky. Anyway, save your indignation. Name somebody with complete freedom of choice. I feel sorry for myself, but not all the time. I’m alive. I’m healthy. I can make a living anywhere I go, a good living.”

“So can a nurse,” she said thoughtfully. “Not a good living. But get along.”

In a little while she began to yawn. He stopped and she got into the back. He’d arranged the bed on the right side of the car. He found he could sit tall and get a quick glance at her. When he was up to speed he said, “How is it?”

“Golly, it’s awful jiggly. Like some kind of therapy.”

“Will you be able to sleep?”

“I don’t know yet.”

A few minutes later there was a sudden warmth of her breath against his ear, a nearby fragrance of her hair, a hand light on his shoulder. She was kneeling behind him. She kissed his cheek. “Thanks for not letting me be gloomy, Sid.” She chuckled deep in her throat. “That damn thing will jiggle me to sleep if it doesn’t get me too excited first.”

“Think pure thoughts, Paula.”

“Are there any other kind?” She patted his shoulder and stretched out again. He smiled. Her bawdy little remark had been another peace offering, and a token of trust that he would not take it in any sense of offer. And
it also told him something important about her. To be truly desirable, he had learned, a woman has to have a quality of animal playfulness about her sexuality. The broody ones who try to make of it a dark and solemn magic are trapped by their own dramatics. She would have that too, but at the right time and right place. The essential woman has the wisdom to know that it is a romp, a joy, a play, a game for grownups.

When he looked back at her again, she slept there in sweet trust, prone, her hands wedged under the small pillow, face turned away from him, long legs sprawled at rest. The sun was low when he went through Texarkana and headed northeast on 67 toward Little Rock.

When he pulled into a service complex on the far side of Little Rock and stopped by the pumps, under the night glare of the white fluorescence, she sat up slowly, blinked at the glare, arched her back, screwed her face up and stretched and yawned with lioness luxury.

“Sleep all right?”

She got out of the car and reached in and got her purse. She pawed her hair back and looked at him with slightly puffy eyes. “Talk to me before I’m awake and I bite.” She went trudging off in search of the ladies’ room. She came back with her hair tidied and wearing a fresh mouth.

“I slept like a bear in January,” she said.

“We can leave it here and go across to the restaurant. The man says it’s okay.”

“Can we keep going a little while until my stomach wakes up, too?”

“Sure.”

“Should I drive now?”

“After we eat.”

Thirty miles further he found an attractive roadside restaurant. It was almost empty. They had a corner booth. After the waitress had gone off with their order, and with their thermos to fill it with coffee, Paula leaned toward him slightly, smiled in an odd way and said, “The invisible man.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re big. You have a very strong face. You can look terribly impressive and important. But in public places, you blur somehow. I saw it in the airport. You
sort of fade into the scenery. It’s quite a trick. And I don’t want you to be like that.”

“After I worked so hard learning how? I studied the kind of people you never really see. They move slowly. They speak just loud enough to be heard. They never change expression. They never look at people. They act as if they are tired all the time. I worked at it a long time. Now it’s habit. If you overdo it, you look furtive and people notice you. The easiest way is to pretend you’re exhausted and you have a headache. I won’t have to work so hard at it while I’m with you. They’ll look at you. They won’t remember me. I could walk in on my hands. They wouldn’t see me.”

“Idiot. I’m really quite a plain woman.”

“You don’t realize how that rubber mattress has changed you.”

“I knew
something
was different. I was whistled at. Back at the station. A very small dirty little man. And a very small dirty little whistle. But I’ve been bursting with morale ever since.” Her expression changed suddenly. “It’s so strange and so unreal, floating through the night past all the towns and the people on that mattress. Nobody knows where we are or who we are. Like a little dark boat in the middle of a dark ocean. I never had such a feeling of anonymity.”

“That’s the feeling of running.”

“Are we running? That’s strange. Now I’ll be looking over my shoulder.”

“Not while we’re running. After you stop, then you get back the habit of looking behind you. When you stop, they can catch up.”

“You’ve traveled like this before?”

“Yes.”

“With a woman?”

“A very rough woman. A very dangerous woman. Miss Dexedrine. She can keep you going for forty hours before you fold.”

“But she wasn’t much for conversation.”

“She had me talking to myself.”

They ate and went back out to the car. He explained the route. He got into the back, took his shoes off and stretched out under the blanket. The car held at cruising speed. The pillow had caught a slight fragrance of
her hair. He looked up out of the window at the motionless stars. He heard little songs and rhythms in the drone of tires and engines. When he closed his eyes he could see her face very vividly and distinctly, looking at him across the restaurant table.

The executioner stood at the bar of a roadhouse on Route 5 between Albany and Schenectady, nursing a bottle of ale. He was a stocky, sturdy man in his forties, with light brown hair, pale eyes, and a broad, ordinary, unremarkable face. He wore a grey summer-weight suit which needed pressing, a blue shirt, a maroon tie with a soiled knot. He wore a cocoa straw hat pushed back off his forehead.

He stood and wondered how far away this one would be, and how long it would take. He wondered if this would be the one that turned out to be one too many.

At exactly nine o’clock he picked up his change and walked out into the dark parking lot beside the building. His small dark car was parked at the far end of the lot, away from the others. He unlocked it, got in, reached deep under the dash and pulled the small handgun free of its retaining spring. He put it in his lap and made certain the bulky silencer had not worked loose. He rolled the window down and blinked his lights on and off again, briefly, and sat and waited. Soon a man came walking across to the car. He came up to the window. He looked young and nervous. The man behind the wheel did not like them young and he did not like them nervous. “Jones?” the young man asked.

In the cover of darkness the man held the weapon aimed at the middle of the pale blob of face. “What’s the name of Lanti’s wife?”

“Huh? Oh, her name is Bernajean.”

“Come around the back of the car and get in beside me.” As the young man went around the car, the man behind the wheel tucked the gun under his left thigh. As the other got in, he said, “Don’t tell me your name. I
don’t want to know your goddam name and I don’t want to see your goddam face.”

“Sure. I understand.”

“Now tell me about it, and if any of it is guesswork, leave it the hell out because I don’t want to be confused.”

“It has to look like an accident.”

“The rate just went up.”

“Where he’ll be, if he shows, is in Bolton, New York. It’s a small town. It’s north of Syracuse someplace.”

“An accident in a small town? The rate just went up again.”

“His name is Shanley. Sidney Shanley. He’s about thirty-four, thirty-five.”

“He expecting it?”

“Yes. For a long time. A couple of years anyway. They haven’t been able to find him.”

“Oh fine! The rate on this one is going to make a record. Has anybody had a try at him?”

“Twice. And they missed twice.”

“Bodyguard?”

“They say probably not. The reason he could show up at Bolton, there’s a grandfather there, Thomas Brower, and the old man is dying, and maybe there’s some money. Maybe he is going to show up, and maybe he has been there all along, at least for the past year. I brought a newspaper picture of him. It’s over two years old.”

“Bring it out of that pocket an inch at a time, friend, and lay it down on the seat between us. That’s nice. You did that just right. What’s the timing?”

“As quick as possible.”

“But he might not show up at all?”

“That’s right.”

“Let me think a minute.” The young man stirred restlessly in the long silence. Finally the executioner said, “I wouldn’t try it for less than twelve five.”