What of Terry Conniston? (18 page)

“It can be done—but why? Didn't you just sell a hundred thousand shares short through our office?”

“I did. I trust you're keeping that under your hat.”

“Your name hasn't been mentioned. Oh—I see. You want to force an uptick to get out from under the short sales.”

“Will you do it?”

A pause; then, in a more cautious tone, “Why not? I get a commission, don't I?”

“Thank you,” Oakley said. When he hung up his face was less taut.

Orozco said, “The market assumes that if a close insider like you buys a block of stock like that, it must be going up. So you get your uptick and then you announce Earle Conniston's death and the price of the stock dives to the floor and you make a few million bucks on your short sales. Cute.”

“I didn't know you followed the market.”

“I'd have to be pretty thick in the head not to follow what you're up to,” Orozco said. “It ain't no skin off my nose, except I won't feel so bad about socking you with a king-size bill for the job I been doing here.”

“I won't haggle over it,” Oakley said, and exchanged a guarded glance with the fat man in which there was the gleam of shrewd mutual understanding. Oakley leaned back in the expensive leather chair and put a cigar in his mouth and smiled. It was quite some time before he realized, not without dismay, that he hadn't even thought about Terry Conniston once in the past hour.

C H A P T E R
Thirteen

Mitch's right hand was swollen; clumsy and jumpy, he had pushed the red sports car out of the barn to get more light on the work but still the shadows beneath the dash conspired against him. He lay on his back like a contortionist, both legs hanging out the open door, the small of his back painfully braced against the ridge of the doorsill. His arms, lifted above his head, kept tiring quickly and he had to lower them to his chest and rest them. He had positioned the car so that by raising his head he could look past his knees at the porch of the abandoned store across the street; thus, at quick intervals, he kept surveillance on both the girls. He had let Terry keep the knife; it seemed to discourage Billie Jean from thoughts of assault.

He didn't know what he wanted to do. Vague plans, half-formed, flitted through his mind. Maybe slip into some half-sized town in the Pacific Northwest, pick a common sort of name, slowly accumulate documentation for it and keep out of trouble so they wouldn't have cause to fingerprint him.

Sudden agony bolted him out of the car. Terry came off the porch and walked toward him. He watched her: every move she made was vital and alive. Laced with hurts, he arched his back.

“What's wrong?”

“I've got a goddamn charley horse.”

“I'm sorry—can I do anything?”

He straightened slowly and stared at her. “Look, I'm the kidnaper, you're the kidnapee remember?”

She said, “I don't think I'm afraid of you any more. If I ever was. What are you going to do?”

“I don't know,” he admitted.

“You'll take the car and run, of course. Leave me here. But I don't want to be left here with her.” She gave Billie Jean, across the street pouting, a slantwise look.

“Okay, maybe I'll take her with me a ways, put her off the bus someplace else.”

“That wouldn't be too smart, would it?”

“Why not?”

“She'll be found if you leave her alone on some desert road. She'll be arrested and she hasn't got the brains to keep quiet. She'll tell them everything.”

“I guess so. What choice have I got? Kill her?”

“Could you?”

“No,” he said, not even hesitating. He made a face and got back down under the steering wheel and poked his knife up among the wires. Sooner or later he would have to hit the right combination; there were only so many wires leading into the ignition switch. He had cut them all, stripped the insulation with the pocket knife and twisted wires together until they began to break with metal fatigue. Sweat was sticky in the small of his back, in his palms, in his crotch, on his lips and throat. He talked in exasperated bursts while he worked. “I keep feeling Floyd like a weight on me. A goddamn ghost or something. I knew he wouldn't come back—as soon as Georgie died I knew it but I didn't have the guts to do anything. The bastard can't live unless he makes everything dead around him.”

He lowered his arms to rest and lifted his head. She was still there when he twisted his face to locate her. It was no good: his muscles were cramping again, he had to stand up. He sat up on the doorsill and tugged up his baggy socks and got to his feet. “I don't feel too great about leaving you here, either.”

A piece of a smile shaped her mouth. “I'm sorry. You sort of got stuck with me, didn't you? Like a blind date.”

Mitch was sweat-drenched; he felt greenish and sick. “Floyd figured it out real good. I can't even turn myself in to the cops. The cops believe facts—and the facts about this are as phony as a three-dollar bill. Two people dead and a kidnaping and a missing half million dollars. They'd throw me in hock and throw away the key.”

“You talk like somebody jumping out a window. It's not the end of the world, Mitch. Don't throw in the towel.”

“All suggestions,” he said acidly, “gratefully welcomed.” He got in the car on his back and reached for the wires again. His fingers trembled wildly. The merciless orange sun beat down vengefully.

Terry's smoky voice came down to him, low but hard. “Let's not just mope around and bleed about it, Mitch. What's important is to keep a grip on yourself. Look—the thing to do is go after Floyd and get the money away from him. He doesn't deserve it.”

He sat up, banging his head on the steering column; he emerged and stared. “What are you talking about?”

“Go after him, Mitch. You know where he went, don't you?”

“Floyd? He's a barracuda—he'd swallow me whole.”

“I'll go with you. I'll help.”

“
You'll what?
”

“I'll go with you. Let me go with you.”

He gaped at her.

Her face hardened; she lowered her eyes. “I want my father to go on thinking I'm dead, for a little while at least.”

He blinked at her, dumbfounded; she said earnestly, “I can't explain it all in a sentence, Mitch. But I want to teach him a lesson he'll never forget. I want to punish him for—for a lot of things, I suppose. If you were a psychiatrist you could find all kinds of names for it. Maybe it's bitchy and mean and neurotic and sick. But I want him to think I'm dead. I want him to
cry!
”

She turned away from him until he couldn't see her face. He took a step forward but her back registered his advance; he stopped and opened his mouth, and closed it.

Terry said in a small voice, “If we run fast the world can't catch us, Mitch. We can get the money from Floyd and disappear somewhere, together.”

He swallowed. For want of anything more coherent to say he mumbled, “I wouldn't take that money on a Christmas tree if it's got Floyd attached to it. He'd grind us up into hamburgers.”

“No he won't. You can figure something out.”

“I'm not that long on brains. Floyd can think circles around me.”

“No.” She turned to face him. “You're good, Mitch. Better than you think you are.”

“Am I?”

“You know you are. You just needed to have someone tell you.”

He wondered if he would ever emerge from this nightmare. Her voice pounded at him: “Go after him, Mitch. What else can you do? There's nothing else. Go after him—and I'll come with you.”

He shook his head slowly, not ready to catch up with the speed of her resolution. “Hell—what about her?”

“We'll take her with us, at least as far as the border. He did go to Mexico, didn't he?”

“Yah.” He turned and brooded at Billie Jean's squat shape across the road. “Do you really think we can do it?”

“I think we have to try.”

Fastening his mind onto it, he got back down into the car and pushed wires together—and the starter popped and spun. Startled, he jerked back. He touched the wires again and the starter whirred. He grinned insanely and bent his head against the accelerator pedal and touched the wires again. The engine started with a rattle and began to hum. Disregarding the low-amperage current that tingled in his fingers, he pulled the starter wire away, marking in his mind that it was the red one, and sat up. He banged his head again.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“I always do.” He held one hand to his head, climbed to his feet and said, “What the hell. We might as well.”

She looked almost amused; she knew she had shamed him into it. If
she
was game for it, how could he refuse?
Easy
, he thought—
I could use my head
. But when he looked at her he suddenly knew he couldn't.

He called Billie Jean. Hands impudently on hips, she took her insolent time, walking slowly forward with writhing buttocks. Her dress, wrinkled and creased and filthy, was stretched tight across her fullnesses; she came up and flicked her body at him.

“You get in back.”

“Huh? That seat's built for little kids and dogs. Midgets.”

“Sit sideways,” he said. “Or would you rather I left you here to starve?”

Billie Jean's eyes shifted toward Terry and back. “You cooked up something with her?”

He opened the little door. “Get in.”

“There's something you two know that I don't know.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We're going after the money. You want some of it, don't you?”

“You mean going after Floyd?” she said, incredulous.

“Why not?” He tried to sound casual. “Half a million bucks, Billie Jean. Some of it's ours.”

“What about
her?
”

“She's going with us. She can't talk to anybody if she's with us.”

“Why not leave her here?” Billie Jean said with quiet cunning. “Nobody for her to talk to here.” Her eyelids fluttered and she rolled her body humidly toward him with an invitation that had all the subtlety of an elephant's mating trumpet.

He said, “I won't argue with you. Get in or stay here, it's all the same to me. More money for me if you don't come along to split with.” With cavalier indifference he nodded gravely to Terry, watched her get into the right-hand bucket seat and went around the car to climb into the driver's seat. He slammed the door, gunned the engine and shifted into gear.

With a disgusted grunt Billie Jean climbed over the back and plumped herself down sideways with her knees up near her chin. She was still squirming to get comfortable when Mitch winked at Terry and shot the clutch. The little car bolted forward; Billie Jean shouted, “Hey!”

He left town fast on the dirt road, trailing a swirling funnel of pale dust. He kept his right hand on the knob of the floor stick-shift and became aware that Terry's hand was timidly creeping toward his. He had not been able to figure her out; his feelings about her were contradictory but he was no longer able to ignore the way she was constantly in his mind, raging like a fever. He glanced at her and saw that she was watching him, her hair blowing wildly in the wind.

He felt better on the move. The wind roared around the speeding open car; he had its power in his hands, he felt more in control of things. It was the first time in days when he had enjoyed any sense of self-confidence at all. Fleetingly he even entertained the heady thought that perhaps he could best Floyd Rymer after all. He would have to figure out the way to do it.

They reached the paved county road and turned west toward the Nogales highway. So far they hadn't seen another car. The posted speed limit was sixty; at seventy the state police would give chase—if they detected the speeding car, and if they were in a mood for it; Mitch, with his attention whipping frequently to the rear-view mirror, was doing eighty-five. At that speed the little car bounced hard on its spartan springs; the wind flailed his face and he had to concentrate on keeping the car on the road, alert for chuck-holes and loose drifts of sand. Terry's warm palm rested on the back of his hand; she sat at ease, not worried by his driving, and her confidence in him gave him lift. In the mirror he could see Billie Jean press her palms to her temples to keep her hair from lashing her face; her eyes were shut against the wind and she was smiling with her mouth open in sensual enjoyment. He wondered what was going on inside her head; he knew very little about Billie Jean, really—partly because he knew very little about the facts of her background, but mainly because it was impossible to make assumptions about her. She was, perhaps, as simple as she seemed—but her simplicity was shaped by a different pattern from the ones he was accustomed to. He had never known anyone as freely immoral, as innocent of conscience: she was capable of extreme brutality but somehow it was utterly without malice. In that respect she was eerily like Floyd. Neither of them would have any compunctions at all about killing a fly—or a man—but at the same time neither of them would trouble to commit the necessary violence unless the fly, or the man, happened to be annoying them; and even when they did commit violence they would do it with an almost apathetic insouciance, uncolored by even the faintest shading of animus or relish or anxiety. Back there this morning Billie Jean had been perfectly willing to kill Terry—had tried to, on the porch—but only because she had felt there was a practical reason for it: she had, or at least she displayed, no personal feelings whatever toward Terry as a human being.

When they approached the main-traveled road he eased the speed to sixty-five. Cars began to appear—station wagons and dusty Cadillacs and rattletrap pickup trucks. He averted his face as they passed. He took the left turn into the wide highway, enjoyed the way the little car cornered, and was taken by surprise—because he wasn't used to small-car driving—when an onrushing Greyhound bus went by in the opposite direction and rocked the sports car in its wake of hissing wind.