Jack and Susan in 1953 (27 page)

Woolf, frightened by the crowd, all of a sudden threw himself against Jack's back in an effort to escape. This propelled Jack forward onto the policeman, and the policeman in turn fell to the ground beneath Jack.

The policeman's head struck a little uneven outcrop-ping of cement on one of the pillars that supported the stadium. He was stunned. Jack saw his opportunity and pulled himself out of the policeman's grasp, then quickly melted—as best he could despite his height—into the crowd that was headed for the site of the accident.

The crowd gathered around the wrecked racing car, which was perched neatly and upside down atop a decrepit Ford. Both cars burned sullenly, creating a column of black smoke. The driver of the racing car had miraculously dragged himself out through the window of his vehicle, and now was sitting on the ground, alternately coughing and spitting up shards of broken teeth.

Jack did not see any corpses lying about, which was a good sign. But he saw neither his wife nor Libby, and that was a bad sign.

The ambulance was snaking its way across the field toward the wreck as Jack backed away, keeping a lookout for the two women.

He began to circle the crowd, peering toward the wreck, but also peering under other vehicles, in case they were actually hiding.

Suddenly right before him was a slowly moving vehicle—a dark green Cadillac with a smashed red light in its left tailfin. He caught a glimpse of the person in the front passenger seat. It was Libby!

He ran alongside, and his shadow falling across her face alerted her. She turned, and her eyes went wide with fear. She shook her head vehemently, and mouthed the words
Go away!
through the closed window.

“Where's Susan?”
he mouthed.

Even though the Cadillac was not going very fast, it was hard to run alongside it. Jack was also keeping an eye out for policemen, at the same time trying to keep Woolf away from the wheels of the car. He also had to avoid running into the fenders, bumpers, and other sharp corners of parked vehicles.

But he did manage to lean down and peer across Libby's ample bosom at the driver of the Cadillac. It was Rodolfo! And Rodolfo, having sensed some strange motion outside the car, turned his head.

Jack dropped to the ground out of sight, flinging out his bad arm so that he would not fall atop it. Nevertheless, it jarred nastily against the earth and cracked the plaster.

Jack looked up at the Cadillac as it sailed on toward the exit of the field. Just then a scrap of paper fluttered out of the window on the passenger side. After the car had disappeared, Jack sneaked between the crazily parked vehicles and retrieved it.

The paper was the foil from the inside of a pack of cigarettes. It had peculiar scratchings on it, and when Jack held it up, and turned it this way and that in the sunlight, he could make out the nearly illegible words:

S
USAN
T
RUNK
F
OLLOW
.

Susan was in the trunk of the car, and Jack should follow them.

So much was clear.

What was also clear to Jack was that the Cadillac had not gone toward Havana, but turned toward the south—and Jack didn't have a car.

Keeping low, and doing a kind of duck-walk between the vehicles, Jack looked for a car or a truck with the keys left in the ignition. This search was hampered by Jack's height, his broken arm, and Woolf's conviction that his master had devised some new sort of man–dog game.

When Jack finally found a vehicle with keys inside, after examining a couple of dozen, he discovered why the owner had been so careless. The engine wouldn't start.

He might have spent the rest of the afternoon in this fruitless search, so he decided he'd have to take his chances. He stood up straight, walked out to the road, and got into the back of the first taxi waiting in line.

In a quarter of an hour he was back at the Internacional, having reflected on the way that if he survived this, and ever divorced Susan, and fell in love and married again, he would not spend his second honeymoon in the Pearl of the Antilles.

As he entered the lobby of the Internacional, he tried to appear inconspicuous and nonchalant. This was difficult, for not only were his clothes filthy, but he was holding his broken cast together with his good hand—the hand he also needed to hold on to Woolf's leash—and there was the dangling handcuff, still attached to his wrist, jangling loudly beneath the sleeve of his shirt.

He tipped the porter two pesos to hold the dog for fifteen minutes. He instructed the man at the desk to find him a car with an automatic shift, and to find it quickly and without regard to cost. He went upstairs, changed shirts, improvised a sling by ripping apart a pillowcase, gathered up all his and Susan's money and whatever jewelry they had that looked as if it might be possible to convert into money, and then walked out again. He went down the stairs, for he could easily imagine that if he waited for the elevator, the doors would open on half a dozen police with drawn weapons.

At the desk, Jack dropped off his room key, saying, “Just in case my wife comes back in the next few minutes…” He picked up the key for the Ford that was almost ready for him in the garage behind the hotel. Then he retrieved Woolf, returned to the desk for a map of Cuban roadways, and went whistling merrily out through the back garden of the Internacional.

In the garage he waited for a few minutes while the car, privately rented at an outrageous sum from one of the assistant managers of the hotel, was being filled with gas. Jack studied the map, tried to ask a few directions of an old man who, it soon became clear, knew nothing about English, Cuban geography, or the desperation of a hunted man.

When the car was ready, Jack opened the back door, shoved Woolf inside, and wound the end of the leash around the window handle. He got into the front and drove off with a grim smile.

Two dark cars pulled up in front of the hotel just as Jack was passing by, and he knew without even having to look that policemen were getting out of them.

The road south took him past the racetrack, where the wrecked racing car still smoldered in the field. The remaining automobiles in the Gran Premio still circled the dusty track.

Jack thought he knew why Rodolfo had turned the Cadillac south, instead of returning to Havana.

It looked as if Jack was going to get to visit The Pillars after all.

S
USAN HAD TIME for reflection in the trunk of the Cadillac. After an hour or so of travel, it became obvious to her that Rodolfo had not driven back to Havana, but was headed elsewhere.

Susan didn't like this conclusion.

She wasn't happy in the trunk of the Cadillac. Since the car was new, the space was tolerably clean, but it was small, and had hardly been designed for the accommodation of riders. There had been a time when Susan tended toward claustrophobia. That time had been until she climbed into the trunk; but now she knew that she could not allow that fear to overcome her. That fear of not having enough air to breathe; of having a small space suddenly lurch smaller; of walls bending inward and of sharp objects piercing through them; of locks failing to open; of gas seeping inside…

There were a great many things about the trunk of a Cadillac on a fairly long trip that were not pleasant, and in succession, Susan suffered every one of them.

She wondered if Libby had been playing a part, if her old rival somehow remained her rival still, despite the fact that they had neatly traded off Manhattan fiancés. Was Libby
ever
satisfied? Had she lured Susan into the trunk of the car, and was she now laughing in the front seat? Probably not, Susan concluded with relief. Libby was capable of the laughter, yes. Of making the plan and playing so consistent a part, no. Susan suspected that, uncomfortable as she was, with only the two small, heavy boxes as pillows, Libby might be almost as distressed though she had the freedom of the front seat of the Cadillac.

Through painstaking and dextrous investigation, Susan had discovered that inside the small heavy boxes were rifle cartridges. This discovery did not improve her peace of mind.

Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and she could see little slits of light here and there around the seams of the trunk. When she stretched and altered her position she even found a tiny hole where a screw had fallen out, through which she could see the rough road over which they were traveling.

It began to rain, and the rain beat deafeningly against the metal that was only a couple of inches over Susan's ears, making her feel even more trapped than before.

She tried to remember her geography. Cuba, unfortunately, was more than seven hundred miles long. And it would be just her luck that Rodolfo's destination was at the very tip of the island.

Then another danger occurred to Susan. Libby had obviously anticipated that Susan would spend a short time in the trunk. What if she began to fear for Susan's life back there? Would she reveal Susan's presence? Susan certainly didn't want that; she preferred claustrophobic metal walls. Would Rodolfo realize, by Libby's nervousness, that something was wrong? And stop the car, and beat Libby till she told him what was bothering her?

An unpleasant journey became unpleasanter still.

The rain kept up, and despite everything, Susan fell asleep.

When she awoke again, the automobile was no longer moving.

Rain no longer drummed on the roof.

Her neck ached from her rifle-shell-case pillow.

She wished desperately that she had taken advantage of the ladies' comfort station at the racetrack.

Another hour passed. Visions of Libby's treachery ran through her mind alternately with fears that there might be some very good and very terrible excuse for Libby's not coming to let her out of the trunk.

Not only had the rain stopped, but now the sun came out, and it beat down hard on the metal trunk. Susan began to feel as if she'd been caught in the back room of a steam laundry. Then it felt as if she'd actually been moved in between the blades of one of the presses. She felt woozy, as though her brain were bubbling and boiling inside the casing of her skull. She no longer had any desire to visit the comfort station, but there was an easy and embarrassing reason for that relief.

Outside the automobile all seemed silent. She heard a few anonymous creaks and snaps, but they were muffled and brief and uninterpretable.

She slipped in and out of consciousness, but this wasn't sleep. This was something else. Something darker and more dangerous, but there was nothing she could do to prevent it.

Suddenly her ears were assaulted with a tremendously loud grating, which was actually nothing more—and nothing less—than the key being pressed into the lock of the trunk.

She breathed in deeply, as if fresh air were already hers for the taking.

The trunk lid rose upward with a sweep. Light and air and even the surprising smell of the warm sea poured in upon her. She was blinded with sunlight—and relief.

“Libby…” she whispered.

But when her eyes had adjusted, she saw that it wasn't Libby who'd opened the trunk.

It was a little boy—about nine years old.

Susan had seen him before.

He was the child who had slashed the throat of her uncle on the Havana pier.

He smiled.