The Ravagers

XX

JENNY AND I waited in the car outside the lone general store in a small town named after some saint or other. I suppose it was a kind of loyalty test. If we waited obediently where Naomi had put us, we proved one thing. If we drove off and left her, we proved something else, and she'd get on the phone and prepare a suitable reception for us at the Nova Scotia end of the line. She might do that anyway. In fact, I didn't think there was much chance she wouldn't.

Waiting, I amused myself by reading the various metal signs nailed up around the place. It was better than, for instance, worrying about cops and corpses and what Mac might or might not have been able to accomplish in the way of clearing trail for us. If anything can make Madison Avenue's cigarette and soft-drink slogans seem even cornier, it's being translated literally into French. Jenny stirred beside me.

"Dave."

"What is it, Irish?"

"You're not really going to… I mean, you can't possibly trust her!"

I glanced at my companion. She looked pretty good for having spent a hectic night in her clothes-well, mostly in her clothes. She looked attractive and resilient and, for an amateur, reasonably competent. It was a relief not to have to think of her in connection with a jug of acid. It was an association that had never seemed very plausible.

I told myself that mother love excused, or at least explained, most of her far-out behavior to date. I even considered trying to enlist her as a working ally. Acting together, systematically, we were much more likely to get the job done and get out alive afterward, than if we struggled along independently, hoping for individual breaks.

I was tempted. There's always the risk, in the business, that you'll get so damn wary and smart and suspicious that you won't take a chance on anybody, not even when it may mean the difference between failure and success. It was a mistake I didn't want to make here. On the other hand, I had my orders. Security was paramount. I was not allowed to take anybody into my confidence; I couldn't tell Jenny enough of the truth to sound convincing and persuasive after everything that had happened. And there was a conflict of interest. She was presumably concerned most of all with the safety of her daughter, while I had strict instructions to strangle any young girls who got in my way.

I said, as Clevenger, "Have I got a choice? Who else is going to get me out of this now? You?"

"She's a vicious, sadistic little monster," Jenny said. "You don't know what it's been like, driving with her all that way, living with her, pretending to be her mother, for God's sake! If I had a child like that, I'd dump it out of the crib and squash it underfoot! Like a tarantula!"

"Sure," I said. "What's the story on Penny, the real Penny?"

Jenny's expression changed. "They're holding her somewhere, somewhere out where we were a couple of weeks back. A mean-looking, farmer-type couple took her away. That's all I know. I could go crazy thinking about it, Dave. She's kind of a sensitive kid. Not a typical teenager at all. A shy, bright, studious fifteen-year-old, not really very pretty but awfully sweet. I suppose I should have left her home, as you keep saying, but my husband… well, it takes a special kind of man to make a reasonable home for a child all by himself. I knew Howard wouldn't even try. He'd be too busy with his light rays. I thought she'd be better off with me." Jenny moved her shoulders jerkily. "The way it turned out, I guess I was wrong. I was brought up too civilized. I didn't expect all this violence. Dave?"

"Yes."

"Will you try to help? Hans was supposed to call long distance after I'd turned over the papers and… and he'd made sure they were okay. He was supposed to call and have Penny set free. Naomi knows how to get in touch with them back there. Maybe you can persuade her… Oh, hell, here comes the little bitch now. What do you bet she didn't get anything for me to wear, just for herself." Jenny hesitated, seemed to go through a mental struggle, and said very quickly in a low voice, "Dave, there's something you'd better know. Don't count too much on what we'll find in Inverness."

I looked at her, startled.."What the hell do you mean by that?"

She shook her head. She was watching Naomi approach, carrying a big package, looking like a sweet little thing in the morning sunshine, with her plain blue jumper and ruffled blouse and piled-up hair. Jenny whispered, "There isn't time now… Just be careful. There, I've done you a favor. You will try to help Penny, won't you?"

"I'll try."

I spoke mechanically. I was wondering what she was holding back that could louse us up. If, after all this, the stuff wasn't waiting in the Inverness post office, or if there was something wrong with it… well, I could worry about that when it happened. The present had enough worries without my borrowing from the future. I leaned forward so Naomi could squeeze into the back seat of the Volkswagen.

"Do you know they don't have any jeans in this forsaken country?" she asked brightly. "Why, it's practically subversive. All right, Dave, let's go. Stop in the first patch of woods. I want to get out of this droopy teen-age outfit before I'm picked up for playing hooky from junior high."

She sounded brisk and cheerful. You'd never know, listening to her, that she'd committed murder and had a few other crimes in mind. I drove out of town and found a track running down into a stand of pines and stopped when we were out of sight of the highway.

"Your dressing room, ma'am," I said, and got out so she could tilt the seat forward. She reached back for her package and straightened up beside me.

"Come with me, Dave. I want to talk with you."

"Sure."

"Take the keys. We wouldn't want Mummy-dear driving a car all by herself. She might hurt herself."

I took the keys and followed Naomi. She moved off a little ways but stopped where we could still see, and be seen from, the car. She put her package on the ground and turned her back to me.

"I'm told you're a great button-and-zipper man. Demonstrate."

"Always happy to oblige."

I got to work on the familiar fastenings, reflecting that I was getting in a rut. If I wasn't bullying them for information, I was helping them take their damn clothes off.

"I'll just bet you're happy." Naomi's voice was tart. "Is she any good in bed?"

"Who, Jenny? You never gave me a chance to find out!"

"She's an awful pill, really. She was going to chicken out, you know. But Hans was way ahead of her. He never really expected her to go through with it all the way, voluntarily. That's why he had me ready to step into the kid's shoes, so he'd have something on Mummy-dear that would keep her in line until we got out of the country."

She pulled her dress and blouse off her shoulders and let them drop at her feet. Then she kicked off her shoes, peeled off her stockings, whipped her slip off over her head, and stood before me in nothing but a little pantie-girdle and a very tight, flat brassiere.

"Unhook me," she said, and when I'd done so she pulled the brassiere off and threw it as far as she could, and drew a long breath, turning to face me. "God, it's nice to breathe again. And eat. Did you ever try chewing a steak with a mouth full of stainless steel? There's another bra in the package. Get it out for me, will you? The next brat I impersonate, I hope she won't be so damn flatchested. Dave?"

"Yes?"

"Do you like it?"

"What?"

"What you see, stupid!" She laughed. "What I mean is, we can have a lot of fun together, but first we've got to get rid of Mummy-dear. I mean, once we've made sure she isn't playing any tricks. I called Gaston Muir from that store back there. I told him to expect two passengers on his boat. Just two."

It was no time to act shocked or high-principled. And it was no time to act curious about where the proposed boatride might end. I merely shrugged.

"Very cozy," I said. "Just so it's the right two passengers, doll. Don't you try any tricks. I wasn't born yesterday."

She smiled up at me approvingly. "What a suspicious tall man it is! Don't worry, darling. We're going to have a swell time together. We'll have a million kicks, a million laughs. Hand me that shirt, will you?"

I handed her a dark print shirt and a pair of tight black pants and she put on a pair of sandals all by herself and we went back to the car where Jenny was sitting with a disinterested, disdainful look on her pretty, freckled, adult face, that was supposed to tell us she hadn't even noticed the striptease that had been performed under her nose, and mine. Fourteen hours later we were in Inverness, having stopped for no policemen-we'd hardly seen any; I wondered if Mac had somehow managed to get them clear off the roads-and for nothing else, either, except food and gas.