Body Rides (11 page)

He found Elise in the kitchen, rinsing out their glasses.

When she turned around, he spread his arms. ‘Shirt’s fine.’

‘Other than the bloodstains that didn’t come out. And the rips.’

‘No big deal. It did look a lot better on you, though.’

‘A matter of opinion.’ She dried her hands.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Guess it’s about time for me to hit the road.’

She came toward him. ‘You have my number?’

Neal patted his rear pocket.

She stepped up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Stay in touch, okay?’

‘I will.’

‘And speaking of wills, I meant it about mine.’

‘You shouldn’t do that.’

‘I do need your address and number. Do you have a card?’

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘Thought you might.’

As he pulled the wallet out, Elise dropped her hands and stepped back. She watched him pluck a business card out of its slot. He handed it to her, and she read it. Then she looked up at him. ‘No cute little typewriter or ink bottle?’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘How do I know you’re really a writer?’

‘You don’t.’

Grinning, she slipped the card into the pocket over her left breast.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Guess I’d better go.’

‘This time, you can use the front door.’

They walked side by side to the front door. She opened it for Neal, and stepped outside with him. ‘Will you be able to find your way home from here okay?’ she asked.

‘I think so.’ He nodded to the left. ‘San Vicente’s that way, right?’

‘Left.’

‘Exactly.’ He faced Elise. The porch light was on. She looked beautiful in its mellow glow.

I must be nuts to leave, he thought.

Yeah, and what would Marta have to say about that?

Who cares?

I do. Obviously. Or I wouldn’t be leaving
.

He sighed. ‘Well. Thank you for the bracelet.’

‘Use it in good health. And thank
you
for saving my life.’

‘We were just lucky, I guess. But, you know what? I sort of feel as if my life is going to be downhill from here.’

‘Oh, very nice.’

‘No, I don’t mean it that way. Just that . . . I’ll probably never do anything as important as saving you. So it’s bound to be an anticlimax.’

Smiling, Elise shook her head. ‘Don’t count on it.’

‘Well . . .’

‘How about a kiss?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not trying to seduce you.’

‘Maybe not. But I might get carried away.’

‘You don’t want the temptation?’

‘That’s about it.’

‘That Marta of yours, she’s a lucky gal.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Has herself a loyal fellow like you. And a hero, to boot.’

‘I’m no hero.’

‘Sure you are.’ With a smile, she said, ‘So you’re going to leave me standing here, kissless?’

‘I’d
like
to kiss you. It’s just . . . like I said.’

‘We’ll compromise, then. A friendly kiss. A chaste kiss.’

‘Without any hugging,’ he added.

‘Gonna leave me kissed but hugless.’

Neal laughed softly.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll take what I can get.’ She stepped closer to him, but stopped before their bodies met. Then she turned her head sideways, offering her cheek.

He leaned forward to kiss it.

Her head turned quickly.

An old trick. An ancient trick. He nearly laughed, but his urge to laugh was shut down fast by the feel of her lips.

As he drove away, he thought about the kiss. He smiled, remembering the trick she’d pulled on him. Then he sighed, remembering the feel of her lips.

He’d put his hands on her sides, ready to pull her against him, but she’d lifted them away and stepped back, saying, ‘Ah-ah. No hugging allowed.’

Good thing she stopped me, he thought.

It had hurt, though. He’d wanted so badly to hold her, to embrace her hard and feel the whole length of her body pressing against him.

I could go back
.

Yeah, right. And that’d be the end of me and Marta. You don’t
dump someone like her just because you run into the most gorgeous gal in the world . . . who also happens to be intelligent and sensitive and funny, who is also rich, who also happens to be eternally grateful to you for saving her life.

Not even if you’ve fallen in love with her?

How can I be in love with her? he asked himself. We just met. I hardly even know her.

But he felt as if he’d known her for a long, long time.

How does she
really
feel about me, he wondered. Is it only that she’s so grateful?

It had seemed like more than that.

Could it be possible, he wondered, that she might actually love
me
?

An easy way to find out.

Neal’s hands were near the top of the steering wheel. The gold bracelet hung heavily on his right forearm, a couple of inches below his wrist.

One kiss . . .

And I crash and burn.

I’d have to pull over, he thought.

That’d be real safe. Pull off to the side of the road at this hour.

Deep in thought, he hadn’t been paying much attention to his route. Now he found that he was heading east on Venice Boulevard.

He must’ve simply backtracked.

A mistake. Long before reaching Venice, he should’ve turned onto Pico. This route had taken him two or three miles farther south than he needed to go.

That’s what I get for daydreaming, he thought.

He kept on driving.

I’ll be home in fifteen minutes, he told himself. I can wait that long.

He knew that he shouldn’t pay Elise a visit, though.

What good is the bracelet if I don’t use it?

I shouldn’t use it on her. Anyone but her. She hated it, having me inside knowing everything. Embarrassed the hell out of her.

Besides, he thought, Brentwood’s awfully far to travel. Especially for my first solo.

Eight or ten miles?

It’d be crazy to try that sort of distance right off the bat. What I need is to try a few things closer to home, first. Work my way up.

But not so I can go to Elise’s house.

I’ve got to
never
use the bracelet on her. Never again.

While I’m busy making pledges, Neal thought, I should promise never to use the bracelet on Marta, either.

He didn’t feel quite ready for such a pledge; if he made the promise and broke it, he would feel ashamed of himself.

We’ll see, he thought.

But it’s definite about Elise. If I want to find out how she feels or thinks, I’ll do it the right way. By going to her, by being with her, by talking to her.

How about tomorrow?

No.

I’ve got to stay away from Elise unless things go wrong with Marta.

I don’t
want
things to go wrong with Marta. I love her.

You can’t love them both
.

What a mess, he thought.

A nice sort of mess, though. A lot better to be crazy about two women than none at all.

Probably.

Neal saw the sign for Video City. Suddenly remembering the man he’d shot, he felt a plunging sensation as if the car had suddenly dropped out from under him.

Though he’d never completely forgotten about the man, his strange, amazing experiences with Elise and her bracelet had occupied most of his thoughts for the past couple of hours. He’d been given a temporary reprieve.

But now it all came slamming back through him.

Memories of the terror. Worries about getting caught.

What if the cops get me for it?

How could they? he asked himself.

Easy. All it would take is one person who saw a bit of what was going on, got suspicious, and wrote down Neal’s license plate number.

Other than that?

If nobody got the license number, he was home free.

Unless he or Elise should make the mistake of telling someone about the incident.

Not likely.

If it ever
does
come out, he told himself, we shouldn’t have much trouble convincing the cops that it was self-defense.

So why did we cover up?

‘Seemed like a good idea at the time,’ he muttered.

And then he turned left at the first street after Video City. He drove past the parking lot entrance.

Am I nuts? he wondered.

Still time to turn around
.

No. He needed to take a look down the next street to see if the area was crawling with cops.

Suppose it is? he thought. If they stop and search me, they’ll find the gun in my pocket.

They’d need probable cause for anything like that. Can’t just search a guy for no good reason, and they’ve got no reason to suspect me of anything.

All I have to do is act normal.

Besides, Neal would be turning onto the road more than a block past the area where the cops would likely be – if they’d arrived, at all. He could simply hang a left before reaching the crime scene, and return to Venice Boulevard.

Easy.

As he approached the dead-end, his headlights pushed twin, pale beams into the field, lighting the old railroad tracks, junk and rocky ground, weeds, and the strip of woods below the freeway embankment.

He slowed, signalled a left, and made the turn.

His headlights swept sideways.

No lights among the trees or on the road. No people wandering about. No street barricade. No police cars.

And no van.

The van’s gone!

Neal felt as if his wind had gotten kicked out.

‘Oh, shit,’ he muttered.

Heart slamming, mouth parched, he drove slowly toward the place where the van had been parked.

It was gone, all right. No question about it.

He swung to the side, stopped his car on the dirt shoulder, and killed the headlights.

What the hell is going on?

He gazed across the dark field.

Nothing at all seemed to be going on.

But where’s the van?

Neal realized he was gasping for air as if he’d just finished a race.

Calm down, he told himself. No reason to panic.

Like hell
.

Somebody drove the bastard’s van away!

Best case scenario: a thief came along and stole it.

A possibility.

But what if the guy had climbed back into his own van and driven off?

He was dead!

Maybe not.

Neal had fired four shots. He’d seen the man go down. But he’d never examined the wounds. Never checked vital signs.

I hit him. I know I hit him
.

Three in the body and one in the head
.

One or two of the body shots might have been misses, but he doubted it. And he was sure that the head shot had been on target.

Doing research for various scripts, however, Neal had encountered stories of men surviving multiple gunshot wounds. Cole Younger, the western outlaw, had supposedly caught about twenty rounds from the posse that ambushed him and his gang. He’d recovered.

And what about Rasputin?

This jerk even looked like Rasputin
.

That crazy old Russian monk had been damn near impossible to kill. He’d survived being poisoned, stabbed and shot. They’d finally managed to drown him.

Those were oddities, though.

This guy didn’t get up and walk all the way over here and drive away
.

Probably.

If he did come over, there should be lots of blood on the ground.

Neal put on his headlights, leaped out of the car and hurried to
the front. Standing in the brightness of the beams, he scanned the shoulder of the road. He saw tire tracks in the dry dirt – plenty of them. He also saw a few patches of grass and clumps of weed, a smashed beer can, glittery shards of broken glass, candy and cigarette wrappers, an old dark sock, the flattened ruin of a small paper sack.