Pain Management (34 page)

“You sick motherfucker . . .” SueEllen muttered, even as she was doing what she was told.

“Good. Now take off those boots. And the pants. Quick!”

She did it, making below-audible sounds.

“Travis, you there?” I called softly.

Three distinct raps on the side of the trailer SueEllen was facing answered me.

“Pick up her pants and boots. Find someplace to throw them away. She’s not going to be running anywhere real soon without them. And when she finds them, I don’t think she’s going to the cops, either, are you, lady?”

“No!” SueEllen hissed at me.

“I didn’t think so. Your husband might not understand, huh? Now, you,” I said to the driver, “open up your cab.”

“I don’t keep no money in the—”

“Friend, this isn’t about money. Me and Travis, we broke out three days ago. We’ve been hiding out around here ever since. What we need is a ride out, understand? Now, Travis, he says he can drive a big rig. But, me, I got my doubts. So you’re going to be the chauffeur, understand?”

“I . . .”

“A
ride,
pal. That’s all. We don’t need to make this a murder rap. You can’t see what I look like, and Travis’s going to be behind you . . . in that sleeper . . . all the way. You get us to where we need to go, we jump out, you keep driving. Far as we’re concerned, you can tell the cops the truth after that—we’ll be over the border.”

“The border? I’m not set up for—”

“Yeah, you are, pal. You don’t have to make the crossing into Canada. All we need to do is get close. The rest of the way, we go on foot, get it? Now, let’s go. Either you be the chauffeur, or we find out if Travis can really drive. Your choice.”

I had him open the cab, turn his head to face me as Ann climbed inside and got in back. I let him get in from the passenger side, the scattergun so close he never even thought about doing anything but obeying, me right behind.

We pulled out of the parking lot and headed north.

“Your name’s Norman?” I asked the driver, glancing at his license. I’d made him hand over his wallet, but hadn’t touched the bills inside. “What do your friends call you? Norm?”

“Hoss, my friends call me Hoss.”

“Used to play some ball, huh?”

“In high school,” he said modestly. “Defensive end.”

“Uh,” I said, thinking of Pop, “must have been brutal.”

“It wasn’t so bad.”

“Neither is this, Hoss. I promise you. Just keep this rig rolling, don’t be silly with the lights, you know the deal.”

“I got you. Don’t worry.”

“We’re not worried. Are we, Travis?”

For answer, Ann stuck the tip of a hunting knife just behind the driver’s ear, then flicked the lobe.

He shuddered.

I shared a sympathetic look with him. “That’s right, partner. Be glad it’s me holding this shotgun and not Travis. He is one stone-crazy psycho motherfucker.”

We were gone almost an hour when the CB crackled with the news that any trucker in the area could go pedal-to-metal without worrying about the law. Seems the troopers were all converging on the spot where some drunken lunatic was driving a bulldozer right through some little town. I mean
through
the town. Had the ’dozer all covered up in sheet metal, like a damn tank, one of them said. And the driver was armed. Kept shooting out windows and stuff like that, too.

“Kee-rist!” Hoss said. “Some people.”

“That’s the truth,” I agreed.

The roads were near-empty. A light rain came and went. And the big rig motored right on through, just a tad over the limit. Hoss and I talked about football, women, and prison. . . . He was real interested in prison.

I gentled him down, working the job. When you need people to do as you tell them, you need to induce a little fear. But you have to avoid panic at all costs. If you’re going to be with them for a while—like if you’re waiting for the banks to open in the morning so they can make that phone call you want—the sooner Stockholm Syndrome sets in, the better. You handle it right and they start to see you as a friend, not a hostage-taker.

Just like I was taught,
I thought to myself, thinking about hijackings I’d pulled with my own family. Next to those, this was a cakewalk. I felt my people with me, heard the Prof in my mind: “You want to walk that track, you better know where the third rail is, Schoolboy.”

When we got close, I had to give him step-by-step directions, but he handled the semi like a maestro, never missing a beat.

Somewhere in the darkness, a rich woman was watching. A rich woman with a cell phone. When we got within sight of the warehouse, I could see the door was wide open.

Hoss pulled in. Killed the motor.

“Okay, partner,” I told him. “Hands on the wheel. I’m going to cuff you there. By daylight, someone will be here to open up.”

“But we’re not that close to Canada,” he said, sounding almost disappointed.

“No. That was kind of a scam, Hoss. We’ve got friends waiting. Right outside. In a few minutes, we’ll be gone.
Ka-poof!
Let’s see, it’s almost four in the morning. By the time they get you loose, we’ll have three hours. More than enough. Come on, now, let’s get it done.”

He put his hands on the wheel. I worked the cuffs one-handed until I had him locked.

“Look straight ahead,” I told him as Ann slithered out of the cab. “You know better than to yell, right? I mean, I don’t have to gag you or nothing?”

“No,” he said, shaking a little.

“Re
lax,
Hoss. If I wanted you dead, I would have let Travis go to work with his blade as soon as we had you cuffed.”

I jumped down from the cab, leaving him alone.

We let a few minutes pass, just to be sure Hoss was going to play his role. Then we let him hear some car doors slam, people moving around. . . .

I popped back into the cab. “Okay, partner, we’re ready to split. Your smokes are right here. Be a little tricky, but you can reach them all right. Just flick the butts out the window when you’re done. Don’t worry, the floor’s all been swept—they’ll just burn themselves out. I can’t offer you much to pass the time. Sorry I had to disable the CB, but you want the radio on? It won’t run the battery down that much.”

“Yeah. Please.”

“All right, Hoss. You’ve been a man about all this. Now that my boys are here, I’m not broke anymore. I’d like to show my appreciation.”

“You don’t have to . . .”

“I know. I was thinking, maybe you could use an extra ten grand,” I said, bringing closure to the job the way I’d been trained, by cementing the bond. When you make the victim a beneficiary, it may cost you a little cash . . . but it costs the cops a witness. “But I can’t just stick it in your wallet,” I told him. “The cops look at all that, they might think you were in on this. Maybe I could stash it somewhere in the cab for you?”

He didn’t answer, but his expression told me everything I needed to know.

“All right. Now, I
could
just have it mailed to the address on your license,” I said, “but, for all I know, your wife . . . Ah, look, never mind. I wasn’t trying to insult you. I got ten thousand, right here,” I said, holding up the thick wad of hundreds so he could see them. “I can mail it to your address, plain brown wrapper . . . or even mail it someplace else, if you want. Your call, Hoss.”

He was quiet for a minute. Then he gave me an address. A different one than was on his license.

“Okay,” I said, shaking his cuffed hand to seal the bargain. “Now, how about a cold one?”

“A beer?”

“Sure. The boys brought a cooler-full. Been a few years since I had one, but there’s plenty to go around.”

“I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

“Wait here,” I told him.

When I got back with an ice-cold bottle of Bud, he was real grateful. I even held it for him as he gulped it down.

He was out in ten minutes.

I walked past what seemed like dozens of people unloading the truck and transferring the cargo to all kinds of different vehicles. A couple of women ran around with handheld bar-code scanners and clipboards. A lot more folks than I’d expected. And a lot more efficient, too.

I found the anonymous little Neon out back, where they’d promised me it would be.

Clipper was standing next to it. “You did a great thing,” he told me. “This load, it’s going to change the lives of—”

“If the meet doesn’t go down, and Rosebud isn’t where you say she is, Big A’s going to be an orphan,” I told him.

I drove myself to downtown Portland. Found a legal spot. Walked for a lot of blocks through the Northwest sector, stopping to throw the Neon’s ignition key into a Dumpster.

The streets were crawling with bottom-feeders, looking for carrion. None of them bothered me. Smart fucking move.

I was in bed with my alibi before six.

Sometimes after a job, the fear-jolts that kept me alert while I was working keep dancing around inside me for a while. They have to work their way to the surface, and it looks like I’ve got the shakes, bad.

Didn’t happen this time. I didn’t feel anything.

When I woke up, it was mid-afternoon. Gem was standing over the bed, looking down at me.

“Why did you go to see Henry?” she demanded.

“Not for the same reason you do,” I said.

I didn’t even try to block her slap. In a few minutes, I heard the door slam.

I watched the tapes Gem had made for me. Old movies, off cable. She probably figured I’d seen them before, give me a little edge. I hadn’t, so I watched them close.

Then I waited for night. My time, since I’d been a little kid. A scared little kid, just learning to prey.

I needed another pistol. And I didn’t want to ask Gem to paper me through again.

As I walked into the kitchen to see if there was anything ready-made to eat, I saw several perfectly aligned stacks of paper on the table. Gem’s work. From the computer runs, using the newly narrowed criteria she’d asked me for. I picked up a stack, being careful not to mess up the others, and brought it over to the easy chair.

By the time it was prowler’s-dark out, I knew I’d been right.

“I’m done,” I told Ann, holding the cellular a little bit away from my ear. “I told you where to leave . . . what you owe me.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s not what this is about. There’s something I want to give you.”

“Already had it. Thanks anyway.”

“It won’t work, B.B. That icy act isn’t getting over. And I’m not playing. I have something I know you need. I’m leaving. You can meet me and get what I’ve got before I go, or you can just buzz me off, it’s your choice.”

“I’ll meet you,” I said, playing out the string.

“Good,” she said. And gave me a street corner and a time.

The Subaru glided to the curb. Before I could open the passenger door, Ann bounced out, dressed in a gray sweatshirt that went almost to her knees. “You drive,” she said.

I got behind the wheel. “It’s got real good traction,” she told me. “Hard to spin the tires even in the wet. Try it.”

I mashed the throttle. Even on the slick streets, the Subaru felt solid under me. Ann gave me directions as I drove. The steering was nicely weighted, the brake pedal a little mushy for my taste, but the binders worked really fine.

“I never drove one before,” I told her. “Are they all like this?”

“Almost. This is a ’97, the last year they made them. I had it all redone, to get it looking like I wanted. They changed a few other things—gas shocks, bigger brakes, wheels, and tires. Even ‘freed up’ the engine, whatever
that
is.”

“I wonder why they didn’t sell a million of these.”

“I don’t know. Maybe the kind of people who buy Subarus didn’t want all the luxury stuff. And the people who buy luxury stuff didn’t want Subarus . . . ?”

“And what do
you
want?” I finally asked her.

“Just to tell you a few things. Things you need to know.”

“Like what?”

“Like the driver—Hoss—is fine. He woke up in Battleground—that’s in Washington, north of Vancouver. The company doesn’t think he was in on it, not at all. The cops cleared him completely. They figure it was a professional job all right, but that the hijackers thought they were getting something else. Like taking down an armored car and finding it empty. They had a pretty fine laugh over it.”

“Good.”

“It may interest you to know that Hoss described you as a black man.”

“No. I figured he’d turn out to be a class act.”

“Yeah. Only SueEllen isn’t saying the same thing about you.”

“What’s her problem?”

“You know what her problem is, B.B. Did you have to make her . . . do that?”

“I had to do
something
to make Hoss cooperate without thinking he was going to get murdered at the end of the run. The way I did it, he saw I wasn’t going to be killing people just to keep them quiet. And if SueEllen
really
had to run around looking for her pants in the dark, that would have given us plenty of time to get in the wind, especially with the back roads you had mapped out. It was simple and quick. Hoss never would have bought it if I told ‘Travis’ to tie her up and leave her somewhere. And it would have scared him a lot more than I wanted him to be.”

“Well, if I was you, I wouldn’t be stopping by SueEllen’s trailer anytime soon.”

“I don’t want to see any of you, ever again.”

“Except Clipper.”

“Not him, either.”

“So that last threat you made to him—”

“That wasn’t a threat. We had a deal. I kept my end. I was just telling him he better keep his.”

“It sure sounded like a threat to me.”

“Cherish the thought,” I told her.

“Here we are,” she said, a few minutes later. “Pull in there.”

I’d recognized the signs for the last few minutes. We were in that same place, on the riverfront in Milwaukie. I backed the Subaru in.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t like it here. Too much foliage. Anyone could just come up on you and—”

“Then let’s get out, talk outside. How’s that?”

“Okay,” I said, wanting to hear the rest of whatever she had.

We climbed out. Ann put both palms on the Subaru’s front fender and hopped up, posing the way she had when we’d first met.