CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (11 page)

"Come on, and let's listen to the CB. The girls are all over the channels." Since there was no chance of finding Chloe, he might as well continue being Molly's host into the underworld of the night.

Installed inside the car, Molly adjusted her seat to a half recline, her gray eyes closed to slits. She watched Cruise. He turned up the volume on channel nineteen, the trucker's

channel. The voice traffic was a horrendous mishmash. Cruise turned down the squelch control. They listened.

"What about a guy with twenty-five in his pocket? Anybody else for commercial company?" The voice was a woman's, slightly accented.

"Mexican," Cruise said.

"Where you at, Baby Doll? Come on over here to the 76."

"Can't do it. 76 has security. Meet me in the bar parking lot next to the Metro."

"You pretty clean?"

There was a pause as if the woman was trying to decide how to answer that. "Yeah," she said finally. "I just got here."

"You ain't gonna give me anything to take home to my ole lady she wouldn't want to have, are you?"

"That's a negatory. What's your handle?" the woman asked.

"Call me Sugar."

"Back?"

"They call me
Sugar
."

Another male voice overrode Sugar's. He said, "Spend the night with me?"

The same woman replied, "Come over here, we'll talk about it, okay?"

"Let's talk it over now."

"Come on down to ten, one-oh. This is Melody. If you want a good massage, get all your muscles relieved, come down to ten, we'll talk."

Cruise reached out and clicked the channel tuner to ten. Melody's voice came on immediately. "That all-nighter, are you there? Come back."

"Hey, baby, what you want for all night with Big Hooch here?"

"Back?"

"l want you all night. I want you to sleep with me."

"That'll be a hundred twenty-five."

"Does that include everything?"

"Whole body massage. It's well worth it. You'll be relaxed, not tired."

"I'll see you in a few minutes then. I gotta fix my radio first."

"Call me back on ten when you're ready."

The channel went silent. Cruise flicked back to channel nineteen. Melody and another girl calling herself Candy put out their calls. "Anybody else for commercial company, come on."

One man said, "Any ladies out there want to go to Shakey's?"

Someone answered, "Who the hell, male or female, wants to go to Shakey's?" He sounded incredulous.

Another man remarked, "Sounds like a goddamned parched monkey to me."

A third man said, "Best soap opera I heard all week."

Another voice cut in, "Anybody need any electronic work done on their radio, come back to the Electronic Man."

While Cruise and Molly listened in, they heard handles like Hannibal, Top Dollar, Shaker, Yankee Doodle, and of course, Sugar and Big Hooch, the fellow who wanted

Melody for the night and the full body massage.

"They're everywhere," Molly said, sitting up in the seat to peer out the windshield as if she'd find truckers and the Lot Lizards strolling the paved parking area. Except for diners going to and from the restaurant, she was disappointed.

"You won't see them out there. All the action's here on the CB. You heard Melody. They have to go to a specific place to meet her. These guys are in their cabs setting up

the times, the prices, what they want to get."

"There must have been a hundred guys talking on there."

"At least," Cruise said.

"How many of them do you think one of those girls takes, uh, care of?"

"Who knows? Ten, twenty a night. No telling." Cruise turned down the CB volume and reclined his seat back. He lay like that a full minute before speaking again. "Did you

see that sign inside the truck stop for the guided tours?"

"No."

"For ten bucks they'll pick you up here and take you over the border shopping in Juarez, then bring you back. Quite a bargain."

"I didn't see it," she repeated.

"Not that we'd want to go on a guided tour. I know more about life south of the border than they do, probably. Want to go with me down there when it gets night again?"

"Uh...I don't know."

"Just for one night. I'll take you to a place I know. The natives are friendly. You can eat real Mexican food, see the sights. You liked this truck stop, wait till you see Mexico."

He thought that might convince her.

"You don't really need company down in Mexico," she said carefully. "Maybe I should see about another ride ..."

Cruise nearly lost his temper and said something unforgivable. Like what a snot-nosed kid she was. Like hadn't he taken care of her this far? Hadn't made a pass, hadn't asked anything from her, hadn't tried to scare her. Like who did she think she was trying to ruin his plans? She was his witness. She was his. And until he cut her goddamned throat she'd stay his.

But he said none of this. He just lay back quietly in the seat waiting for her to come around. Because if she didn't, she'd be going to Mexico anyway, but she'd be bound hand and foot, lying on the floorboard with a rag stuck in her mouth.

After a short pause he heard her draw a deep breath and twist in her seat until she faced him. "Well, I guess it wouldn't matter, really. We'll be back on the road for California in a day or so, you said. And you were right, I'm not on a schedule or anything. I don't actually have any pressing plans or people waiting for me."

Cruise rose up in the seat and leaning over, patted her folded hands that lay like cold rocks in her lap. "That's great. I knew you'd want to come. Now how's 'bout we get a little shut eye? It's going to be dawn soon. Too soon."

He switched off the CB and silence intruded on them like the boom of an ocean wave until their ears adjusted to the lack of squeal and crackle. Cruise draped the towel over his eyes. "Tomorrow we'll get a shower," he said.

"A real shower?"

"Absolutely. With soap and water, the whole shooting match. Even real towels."

"God, that'd be good."

He heard her seat reclining. His smile stretched grotesquely behind the cover of the kitchen towel. He amused himself with an image of her naked, wet, slick hair plastered

to her head. He would like to stand her out in the desert beneath that sickle moon poised over El Paso's corruption, stand her naked there and dump a few gallons of purified water over her head until she shivered and trembled with new-found fear at what he might do to her. He'd like to see her turn and run, like to chase her like a jackrabbit across the desert floor, see her fall helpless, begging mercy.

Sleep came to muffle the edge of his imagination. It turned his dream into nightmare where the naked girl was armed with an Indian's spear tipped with flint, feathers dangling from a leather throng attached to the end. She menaced him, laughed at how small his knife was, how it disappeared in the thickness of his great hand. She threw the spear. It sliced through the air, singing
tum, tum, tum
, a death song, narrowly missed him, stuck quivering in the hard-packed ground. When he turned back to her, she had a bow, an arrow tautly strung, and meant to end his days. His nights! The arrow released even as he screamed for her not to kill him, and it sang on the wind,
tum, tum, tum, tum,
a death song that meant to end his days...his nights...

#

Molly lay in the reclining car seat with her eyes closed, heart bumping heavy and slow. She experienced the mental equivalent of gnawing at a pesky hangnail.
Mexico
. She had

acquiesced to Cruise's wishes, but even now her thoughts turned over a fiery pit of protest. Somewhere deep inside, she knew she should not go. Going with Cruise--still a

virtual stranger to her despite the stories he had told about his life--gave over to him her freedom. She would have no one to turn to in a foreign country if for some reason she wished to escape his company. She could not speak Spanish. She didn't know the customs or what was expected of her in Mexico. Did she need a passport, a visa? God, she was still so stupid, but at least she knew it. And she might be dumber yet to put herself into Cruise's hands, dependent upon him to protect her. She was not yet convinced she should.

In the States she could always walk away from Cruise, get another ride in a truck stop or service station. Or she could appeal to someone for help if something went wrong between them. But in Mexico, helpless, disadvantaged, she must rely on his good intentions. The worry stemmed from that. For she didn't know for sure what his intentions were.

Oh, he had not made any untoward move and he had not said a word to intentionally frighten her--just the opposite--yet...yet... It was risky, wasn't it, to give herself into his total care? She liked him. She was attracted to him, who wouldn't be? But still...

It was all academic now. She had agreed to go. She must go. To refuse at this point would create a fracas, and she didn't want to alienate him. She did like him, found him intriguing and strange. He exerted a pull on her she couldn't deny. It wasn't sexual, not exactly, not all the time, although that worked into the equation. It was more as if she had fallen under a spell, charmed as a cobra in a basket lured into the sunlight by the notes from a haunting flute.

Cruise was teaching her about a world she had never known existed. It was an underground night world where people behaved impulsively, and in ways they might not

behave during the day. Truckers and Lot Lizards and travelers who crisscrossed the country, they were all bound together in a neon-lit world that hummed while the rest of

humanity slept unaware in their beds. They had different agendas. They lived so unconventionally.

She liked it. It was nothing at all like her life in Dania, Florida. This new world opened doors and led down dark passages she didn't know were there. She wanted to see it, to walk with the night people and be one of them. It was like being in a dark, serious novel, something from Dostoyevsky or Tennessee Williams. She had read those authors in high school and the worlds they wrote about felt alluring.

The things she had witnessed in the Metro Truck Stop ignited her curiosity even further. The voices clamoring on the CB sparked her prurient interest. Now this truck stop wasn't either Dostoyevsky or Williams. It was like a voyage through a science fiction movie filmed in sepia tones. These were humans engaged in activities normally done during

the day, except for the sex, activities like eating, laundry, bathing, driving. It was an upside-down world, an Alice in Wonderland place where the unexpected experience waited around the next corner.

If she wished to prolong her contact with that world, she must accompany Cruise across the border. It might be a harmless trip, full of exciting characters and revelations, but it also involved chance; there might be danger there.

Her father would
hate
to hear she was thinking of leaving the country--for
any
reason. She loved her father, she just didn't like him very much. She really missed her mother...

She squirmed in the seat, her spine aching, her shoulders pinched in the confines of the seat back. So tired. Sleepy.

Wished she had a bed to rest in.

Oh, well, it was pointless to wish for what she didn't have. Pointless to indulge in self-recrimination now. She had said she would go. She had sealed her fate. She must

continue trusting Cruise, and rid herself of the nagging warning voice that argued against the risk. Hadn't she already broken ties with normal society by leaving home? She'd dropped out of school, turned her back on her father and his rules, accepted the idea, however much it scared her, that she would sell herself in order to survive. Could a side

trip into Mexico be such a bad thing?

It was just that...just that she didn't know what to expect. How to behave. What might happen to her.

Or why it was important to Cruise to leave the country right at this time. As if pursued by something invisible, something threatening at his back. She didn't know why she felt this way, but it was her impression that Cruise identified with the night world for more reason than that the light hurt his eyes, as he claimed. There had to be more to it than that.

To calm herself, Molly imagined a lovely time shopping for sombreros and serapes, eating exotic foods, watching the sun set over a foreign horizon while sipping a cold, imported bottle of Coca Cola on a veranda surrounded by flowering plants.

It would be all right
. She would, have a glorious time.

She was about to become a world traveler, thanks to Cruise. He wouldn't let anything bad happen to her.

Anything
bad
. Happen to her.

#

The evening crept over El Paso with chill stealth. Cruise stirred in the car seat, eyelids fluttering. Like a predator that does its hunting at night, his consciousness returned

as the sun left blood-red streaks west behind the mountains. He came fully awake and rubbed down his bare arms. He and Molly had left the windows partially open for fresh

air that now had turned cool without the sun's rays to heat it.

Cruise needed a sweater. He looked at Molly where she slept scrunched up into an uncomfortable fetal position, knees pulled to her chest. She was cold too. Tonight he

would rent rooms so they could get the kink out of their abused bodies. At least a room would protect them from tomorrow's nippy-aired dusk. A mattress to sleep on would

feel like a cloud.

"Molly?"

Her knees slid to the floorboard and she stretched, eyes still closed tightly. He could see the outline of her bra through her white blouse.
Small. Sweet.

"Molly, wake up. It's time for breakfast and a shower."

That woke her completely. She blinked at him and licked her lips. She cleared her throat, wrapped her arms around herself. "Cold." More a statement of fact than a complaint.

"Do you have a jacket or a sweater?"

Molly shook her head. "Forgot. It's never very cold in Florida. I just forgot. California's supposed to be warm too."

"I'll buy you one in Mexico. Ready to go inside?"