The Passenger (10 page)

Humpty
Dumpty sat on a wall
,
she thought and she couldn’t help it, she giggled like a goddamn little kid and
as the pair of guards in combat gear parted the crowd and dragged the two men
away across the bloody floor a skinhead with tattoos of a swastika and a bolt
of lightning on his arm prodded the shaved naked woman

hard in the ribs with his rifle as though
it were her fault all this had happened so that she jerked away in pain, more
pain, and Marion finished her beer and set it on the bar and turned toward
where she hung and started forward.

* * *

Janet watched her move through the crowd.
The others didn’t seem to notice she was gone.

“You want this?” Emil said.

He pointed to her beer on the bar. She
shook her head. The last thing she wanted was a beer. He upended it and she
watched his throat move. The man is nervous, she thought. Fine.

“Just four this time,” he said to the
bartender. The bartender set them on the bar. He passed one to Ray and one to
Billy and only then did he realize they were missing somebody.

“Where’s Whatsername?”

He sounded more annoyed than she’d have
expected and there was something else there too. Fear? From Emil? If so, fine
again. The only question was as to why.

“Let’s go,” a voice behind them said.

The
black man in the suit. The first guard’s twin.

“Where to?” said Emil.

“We got to go deal for your
transportation, my man.”

Not quite so well-spoken, she thought.

“Wait a minute. I can’t... listen ...
just hold on a second, okay? Have a beer.”

He handed the man his beer and started
pushing his way through the crowd.

“Hey!
What
the fuck? Fuck you, asshole
! ” The man slammed the beer down on the bar and
moved after him.
Ray took her by the arm and
then they were moving through the crowd too with Billy trailing behind. They
heard somebody scream ahead, throaty and then shrill.
Marion
?

I should be so lucky, she thought.

She spotted Emil and the guard at the
edge of the crowd and then saw Marion standing beneath the woman, staring up. A
thin line of blood ran from the woman’s rib cage to her navel. The neo-Nazi
skinhead had his arm around Marion’s waist boyfriend-and-girlfriend-style and
was gesturing toward the woman with a broad, sharp-looking knife like an
instructor working a blackboard with his pointer. Like the woman was some sort
of math problem.

“See?” the Nazi said. “You cut her here
and it don’t hardly hurt.”

He sliced the top of her foot just above
the second toe.

“You cut her here though .. .”

He moved the knife across the sole of her
foot and the woman screamed again. Emil grabbed Marion’s arm.

“What the hell you doing?”

She didn’t answer. Just stood there
watching the blood drip off the woman’s foot along either side.

“Hey, Maria. We got to go.”

“Damn right,” said the guard.

“Fuck off,” said the Nazi. He pointed the
knife at Emil. Emil let go of Marion’s arm and backed off, hands in the air.

Now
this was interesting.

“Got nothing to do with you, friend,” he
said. “We got business, that’s all.”

“I told you, fuck
off
!"

He jabbed with the knife and as Emil
darted back and away the black guard stepped forward easy as you please. He
placed the tip of his index finger against the lip of the blade and smiled.

“
Play
nice
, ” he said.

The Nazi didn’t seem to know what to make
of that.

“Like the gentleman says, it’s business.
This what
you came for?” he asked Emil.

He nodded. The guard looked at Marion.

“Come on,
sweetcakes
,”
he said. “She gonna be hanging around awhile.”

“Not yet.”

She turned to the Nazi and put her hand
out, palm- up. The Nazi didn’t seem to understand at first and then he did. He
handed her the knife. Marion looked at the guard.

“Is this okay?” she said. “I can do
anything I want, tight? I mean, that’s true, isn’t it? Hell, I can kill her if
I want, right?”

“
Excuse
me, lady?”

“Suppose I killed her, is anybody going
to mind or what?”

“Jesus, Marion!”

“Oh, shut up, Emil.”

She turned back to the guard. He smiled
again and hook his head.

“Nah, can’t kill her, honey. She belongs
to somebody. You could hurt her a little, though. Nobody going to bother you
about that.”

You don’t need to see any more of this
shit, Janet thought. You can just turn away. But it seemed important to know
exactly how far this goddamn woman was
willing
to go. So she watched her as she reached up and traced a slow deep line across
the woman’s thigh from hip to knee with the point of the knife, the woman trembling
and moaning, and watched the blood well up thick over the blade of the knife
onto Marion’s white- knuckled hand. Watched the hand draw away and poise to cut
again and then the black man’s bigger hand close over it gently and take the
knife away and hand it to the Nazi.

“Come on, baby,” he said. “Leave a little
somethin
’ for later.”

As he moved her away she was smiling.

“You’re not entirely a real nice person,”
said the guard as the music welled and boomed again. “You know that?”

They followed him through the crowd to
the stairwell at the end of the bar.

* * *

At the top of the stairs he led them down
a long dark oak-paneled hall, empty but for half a dozen vases on pedestals
from which dozens of long-stemmed red roses sprouted and scented the still air,
rioting away the odor of cigarettes and stale beer below. He opened a set of
double doors to a stark, brightly lit room with a single long table and chairs
around it the only furnishings—a boardroom not unlike those back at the
courthouse except that this table and these chairs must have cost a lot more
than the taxpayers were going to put up with. Closed glass doors beyond the
desk led to an open porch—a widow’s walk. Beyond them she could see moon and
stars.

The man at the head of the table was
middle-aged and small and thin, his wrists wiry in his rolled-back

shirtsleeves. He looked like a
businessman who’d just spent a rough but eventful evening coming up with whole
new ways to hammer the competition. Papers fanned across the desk in front of
him. Behind him stood an immaculate gentleman with manicured fingernails and a
rose in his wide lapel and the word thug writ plain all over him.

“Mr. Thaw?” said the guard.

“Fine. You can leave now.”

He backed out of the room and closed the
door.

The man looked up from his desk.

“Harold Thaw,” he said. “This is my
associate, Mr. Coombs. And you are Rothert, Short and Ripper. You want a car,
I’m told. Is that all?”

“That’s all, Mr. Thaw,” Emil said.

“Fine. Ten thousand cash.”

Ray looked stricken. “Ten
thous
. . . ?”

“You killed a policeman, Mr. Short. It’s
a very good price.”

“I was thinking of something else, sir,”
Emil said. “Were you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What were you thinking, Mr. Rothert?”

“I heard that... I understand you do ...
a certain business. With certain parties. Foreign investors, sort of..

For the first time Thaw smiled. “What
business would that be, Mr. Rothert? I have any number of businesses and you’re
interrupting all of them. Please do get on with it.”

She saw that Emil was distinctly
uncomfortable now but determined to do as the man said and
get on with it.
And even before he opened his mouth again she knew
exactly where he was going with all this.
It was rumored at the courthouse. She’d heard it a dozen times. You goddamn son
of a bitch, she thought.

“
Women
,
sir,” he said. “I understand you .. . that you deal in women sometimes.”

For a moment Thaw just stared at him as
though he was speaking in some unknown tongue. He looked at Marion and then at
Janet and when his eyes went back to Emil again he laughed and his hands went
wide and spiderlike across the table. Behind him, Coombs smiled.

“You’re offering me
these
? In exchange for a car?” “Uh, yes, sir.”

Thaw laughed again and shook his head.

“Rothert,” he said, “these
parties
you’re talking about are
interested in twelve-year-olds. Twelve-year-olds, Rothert. Do you understand
me? Do you see the problem here?”

Emil nodded toward Marion.

“Sir, this one in particular. Have
somebody try her out, that’s all I’m asking. She’s a little crazy, see? She’ll
do anything. You don’t think you can use her? Fine, no car. We’ll figure out
something in the morning.”

“Hey, Emil,” Marion said, “screw you!”

“That’s all I’m asking, sir.”

“Fuck
you
,
Emil!”

She turned on her heel and went for the
door, turned the knob. Twisted it. Shook the door and pounded it. “What have
you got to lose, sir?” Emil said.

“You fucking prick! Open the fucking
door!” she yelled to the guard outside. She turned to Emil. ‘Tell him to open
the
fucking door!
”

Thaw leaned back in his chair and sighed.
Marion twisted at the knob one last time and then she was moving fast across
the room to the glass double doors to the widow’s walk beyond, and to Janet it
looked like she just might kick the damn things in
in
order to get out of there. Thaw stood up from his chair and shouted.

“
Big
!”

The glass doors parted and Marion stopped
dead in her tracks. The man standing in front of her was big all right—as big
as a goddamn bear and looked easily as dangerous. She recognized the long
square jaw and scraggly beard. The arms beneath the cutoff sleeves of his faded
denim shirt were easily as wide as her thigh. A massive chest tapered down to
an almost graceful waist.
Six-foot-six,
320 pounds
, she remembered.
“Big ”
Micah Harpe. In person.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t have to.

And seeing him there finally after having
searched for him ever since arriving scared the hell out of her and made her
heart leap all at once. With Micah Harpe it would be all or nothing. She’d
known that from the very start.

Thaw sat down again and leaned back in
his chair.

“You heard?” he said.

“I heard a talking asshole, sure. How
about you?”

Harpe’s voice had a Kentucky twang to it
that surprisingly was not at all unpleasant.

“About the same, Big. About the same. I’m
wondering, though. Is Mr. Harrison still here?”

“Downstairs, I think.”

“Downstairs?”

“Think he was planning to stay awhile.”

“You might try him, then. If he’s happy,
perhaps we can accommodate these gentlemen. If not...”

“Will do.”

He took a single step toward Marion,
reached out and wrapped his huge hand in her hair and pulled her toward him. Then
he turned to Emil, released her hair and shoved her at him like a kid would
pass a basketball and with no more effort.

“You’re the one trading here,” he said.
“You handle her.”

* * *

The waiting was making Alan crazy. He
guessed it wasn’t doing Frommer a lot of good either. The man kept lighting one
cigarette after another. A couple of puffs and he’d stub it out and a couple
minutes later light another. It was as though he
wanted
to smoke but was determined to be smokeless if and when any
news came through. The roadblock was one of dozens throughout the area but
standing at this one felt like being all alone in the world, cut off from
everybody and everything, waiting for a train that was never going to pull on
in.

“I don’t get it,” Frommer said. “Homes
are pretty few and far between around here and we’ve pretty much covered them
all. We’ve got the roadblocks set and we’ve checked the access roads for miles
damn near to the state line. We’ve got enough highway patrol units working
these mountains to flush out a jackrabbit. They can hide overnight in the woods
but the car sure can’t. So how come I’m doing everything right and they’re
still not showing?” He lit another smoke. “You maybe thinking what I’m
thinking?”

He
was.