The Passenger (6 page)

He turned to Ray, who was drinking
Glenlivet straight out of the bottle.

So
much for a second one for me
,
she thought.

“Hey, Ray, what’s your story anyhow?”

“No story, Emil.”

He laughed. “That’s what I thought.”

Then the door to the bedroom opened and
Marion appeared and her anger at all four of them flared from dull to blazing.
She was wearing the black Versace nightgown,
the one Alan had more than splurged for in Manhattan last Christmas, the one
she’d worn just four times since—that night and then on his birthday, her birthday
and the Christmas following and the garter belt was hers too and the panties
and the black silk stockings.

“I borrowed some things,” she said. “Hope
you don’t mind.”

Oh, I mind, she thought. You bitch. You
bet I mind and you damn well
know
I
do.

“Lord, Maria! Look at you!”

He went to her and Janet had cause to
wonder exactly how much jealousy was floating around here in the room just then
between these guys because Ray moved toward them too from the kitchen, the
expression on his face unreadable as Billy stood up gawking while Emil ran his
hands over her, showing off for them and for Janet too, Marion laughing and
wrapping her arms around him as he dragged her back through the doorway to the
bedroom and pulled her down on top of him across the bed, hips already
grinding.

She saw Marion break the kiss, his big
hands roving her breasts, and saw her turn and stare at her and knew that
Marion was showing her something at that particular moment too. It was
something about power and spite, she thought, that the girl from the wrong side
of the tracks was all grown up now and somebody to be reckoned with. She got
that message clearly. And never broke the look as she purposefully and calmly
walked over to the bedroom and closed the door.

Billy slumped back into his chair. Began
fiddling with his evil-looking knife again. She crossed to the couch nearby and
sat. He wasn’t going to scare her. Damned if he was. In the kitchen she could
hear Ray swilling at the bottle. In the bedroom she could hear
them
. They all could. She had the
feeling that it bothered each of them in one way or the other. She reached
into her purse.

“You mind if I smoke?”

“Unh-unh. It’s your domesticity.”

She lit it, crossed her legs and tried to
relax.

“Your TV work?” he said.

“Remote’s right over there.”

He took it off the table and pushed the
power button. Some innocuous family comedy sprang out at them and the sounds
from the bedroom disappeared beneath canned laughter. He started surfing the
channels. His attention span seemed to be just about what she’d expect it to
be: nil.

“Cinemax? HBO? Showtime?”

“No.”

She saw him take in the furnishings—the
Boston rocker, the rows of hand-carved decoys, the country primitive desk and
pie safe and chairs and table, the 1821 children’s sampler, the hundred-year-old
map of the Hudson River, the heavy carved-oak shelving, the Tiffany-style
lamps.

“I wouldn’t think you were that
penurious,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I wouldn’t think you were that
penurious. That you’d just have basic cable, I mean. You have so many
encumbrances here.”

She sure did.

* * *

It seemed forever sitting there with
Billy flicking his goddamn knife open and shut with one hand and the channels
with the other but it was probably no more than fifteen minutes because she was
only on her second smoke when the bedroom door opened and there was Marion,
this time draped in a bedsheet.
Her
bedsheet.

“Janet? Come on in a minute, would ya?”

Her bedroom seemed sullied to her now.
Foreign. Enemy territory. She didn’t care for the notion of going in.

“Why?”

“Got to ask you something.”

“Ask me here.”

“It’s
girl
talk
, honey.”

She stubbed out the cigarette. As she
passed she saw Ray seated in the kitchen, the bottle in front of him, pulling
cards out of his wallet and shoving them back again, frustrated. Still looking
for that family photo. She wondered if it even existed.

At the door Marion took her arm and led
her into the room and there was Emil on the bed lying sprawled beneath her
coverlet. Marion closed the door behind her and stood there and Emil smiled.

“
Next
,”
he said.

It was a gut punch that turned instantly
to rage and fear.

“Fuck
you
!”
she said, and turned and saw Marion blocking her way and didn’t hesitate for a
moment— her two elder brothers had taught her to fight way back when and damned
if she’d forgotten. She threw her right to the side of her jaw and Marion went
down against the pinewood door like so much raw meat. She shoved
her out of the way and her hand was on
the doorknob when Emil lunged naked off the bed and she felt the warm sweat of
his arms around her waist straight through her clothing. He pulled her down on
top of him and she turned in his arms, kicking and squirming and trying to pull
free but he was too strong. He shoved and rolled her so that he was on top of
her straddling her hips, his hands pinning hers to the mattress near the foot
of the bed. Then she felt other hands on her wrists, not as strong but strong
enough and she heard Marion spit the word
bitch
and looked up at her naked and looming over her and holding her down, Billy and
Ray standing in the doorway behind her and she knew she’d get no help from
either one of them.

“Don’t do this. Please, Marion!”

Marion smiled. And there was so much
wrong with that smile that she knew she’d never understand it as long as she lived.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “It ain’t nothing.
I had boyfriends used to give it to me rough all the time. You lay back, watch
the ceiling. You’ll get used to it.”

Emil’s fingers went to her blouse, to the
buttons. Billy had his pocket knife in one hand and was poking its tip to his
opposite thumb as though
testing
it
while he and Ray moved to the bedside, watching them, an impossible drift of
soulless motion and for the first time she really did fear for her life, knew
that this might be the end of her right here on this bed, knew it so deeply and
well that when her skirt went down and her panties went down and she felt his
cock, hard and still beslimed with Marion against her thigh the room swirled
and she nearly fainted in the knowledge, but she didn’t, she wasn’t going to be
that lucky. She just looked away
from
them, from all of it and heard him spit on his hand and felt him wipe it across
her and then the bright pain of entry like a thousand needles sinking all at
once into her flesh and she cried out and heard the drone of Marion’s voice
above.

“
There,
there, darlin’. You might as well know it. Life’s nothing but a trail of tears
for us girls. You might as well know.
”

* * *

And then later, Billy demurring but not
Ray. Ray the family man, solemnly stripping off his clothes. She turned away
again.

And again that voice above her. Dreamy
and cooing evil at her.

“
You’ve
never seen what I’ve seen. There’s so much you’ve just been protected from. Had
a guy once, beat me morning, noon and night, regular, pretty much every day.
And people used to say, why do you stay with him? He beats you! And I’d say I
love him. He's mine. And I did, and he was. He may be crazy drunk nights but
days he’s mine, I said. What’s a woman to expect from a man, anyhow? So don’t you
worry about any of this, honey. A woman can get over near anything. And I’m the
living proof. ”

* * *

When it was over they left her alone but
did not completely close the door and she knew they could hear her sobbing so
she stopped sobbing and wiped away the snot and tears and got up and used the
bathroom, gave herself a whore’s bath in the sink and washed away the blood
across her face and hairline, then left the water running so they could hear
and went back to the bedroom and opened the bedside drawer and silently as
possible took out a pen and notepad,
thought hard and began to write.

* * *

Emil leaned into the room just as she was
zipping up her skirt and asked if she was ready. She said she was. She guessed
they weren’t going to kill her quite yet. He looked strangely hesitant for a
man who’d just finished raping her.

“You’re pretty much okay, right?”

“I’m . . . (
going to fucking get you
) . . . yes. (
Somehow I’ll see you dead for this.
) I’m all right.”

“Good. That’s good.”

She walked past him, fists clenched, on
into the living room and saw the other three standing set to leave but ignored
them and walked straight to the kitchen, took the half-empty bottle of
Glenlivet off the counter and poured all that was left into a tall tumbler off
the dish rack and drank prodigiously—
an
old magician’s trick, a little slight-of-hand,
fellas
—because
as she drank they were watching that and trying to gauge her. So that they did
not see her set down the bottle on the small square of paper she’d slipped onto
the counter beside it.

She drank most of what was in the glass.
It wasn’t only to complete the illusion. She needed it.

She slammed the glass to the counter.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

“Janet!”

Ever since the crime scene back on the
highway he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that something was seriously
wrong. Something wrong with Janet. He’d phoned Kaltzas’s garage and got through
this time and
no
body had heard from her.
It was the most likely place in go for help and she hadn’t.

Why
?

Inside the house was silent. Living room,
study, silent. Just as he’d left them.

But not the bedroom.

The sheets were stripped off the bed and
piled on the floor and that wasn’t like her at all, they’d be in the hamper if
she was planning to do a laundry when she came home tonight and that was
troubling enough but then he saw the pair of beer cans on the dresser. She
never
drank beer. Hated the stuff.

So that now he was
really
worried.

Phone
the police.

In the kitchen he saw more beer cans in
the garbage and two more on the counter along with the empty bottle of
Glenlivet.

Jesus
. The Glenlivet was
fucking
empty. That was wrong too. They’d had a nightcap last night
before bed and the bottle was still nearly full when he put it away. Then he
saw the scrap of paper beneath it and pulled it out from under.

NY TA45567

blue Dodge wagon

regist
Marion Lane

Emil? Ray? Billy?

murder,
Rt
605—8:30 p.m. ?

HELP!

The handwriting was shaky but hers. He
reached for the phone and heard nothing but dead air so he followed the line
down to where they’d pulled it out of the wall socket—
Who? Emil? Ray? Billy?
—plugged it back in and dialed 911. What if I
hadn’t come back for the goddamn briefs? he thought. What in god’s name if I
hadn’t? Then the cop was on the line.

“Officer Hutt speaking. How can I help
you?”

He put on his most businesslike,
no-nonsense voice. A little amazed that he could do so.

“Listen carefully. My name is Alan Laymon
and I’m an attorney. I have specific information regarding the murder of a
police officer on Route Six-o-five at approximately eight-thirty this evening.
1 have a plate number for a blue Dodge wagon. The killers are holding at least
one hostage, maybe two. I have names or partial names for all of them. Do you
understand me?”

He did.

* * *

All told, Emil thought, things were
looking good. He’d had two pieces of ass in a single night. He more or less
preferred the one he hadn’t raped. Which was fine since it was simpler. He had
both of them here in the front seat beside him right where they ought to be.

He’d shot a cop—dangerous as hell, sure,
but something he’d seriously wanted to do since fucking prison.

Not a bad night at all.

They were headed along a narrow dirt
access road toward a farmhouse. Margaret or whatever her name was had spotted
it, one light burning in a window in the valley below. She’d killed the lights
when he told her to but the moonlight was plenty bright enough.