The Road To Ruin

6

THEY WHILED AWAY THE empty hours in the little brown Taurus singing the union anthem:

At which point Mac interrupted, saying, “Here comes the Healey.” He was in the backseat, looking toward the guard-shacked entrance to the Monroe Hall compound that stretched away behind them.

“And here we go again,” Buddy said, pessimistic as hell, but he did switch on the Taurus engine.

“You know it’s just the wife,” Ace said, up front in the passenger seat.

“It is,” Mac said, seeing her blond hair fly as the Healey picked up speed once it reached the county road, coming this way as the compound’s gate closed behind her.

“Follow her,” Ace said.

Buddy said, “Again? Why? What’s the point?”

“Maybe he’s hiding in there,” Ace suggested.

Buddy snorted. “In a two-seater? Where? Besides, he never did before.”

The Healey zipped past then, still accelerating, and Buddy’s point was made. The Healey was so small and so open you could see the wife’s brown suede purse on the passenger seat to her left, the Healey being a British car, with right-hand steering. It was a beautiful car, in truth, small and neat, over fifty years old and still looking like a spring chicken. It was topless, with a wide rectangular windshield—windscreen, its makers would say—edged in chrome and tilted back. The slightly raised air scoop on the hood, like a retroussé nose, had twin low flaring nostrils over a gleaming grill shaped like an Irish harp. The body was a creamy white, like very good porcelain, and the fenders, standing out to the side of the body, were arched like white leaping dolphins. With the beautiful long-haired blonde at the wheel, flashing through the lush green Pennsylvania countryside on the first day of June, it was a sight to make you glad there’s evolution.

Mac and Buddy and Ace had seen that sight enough—in fact, too much. What they wanted to see, and so far had not seen, was the man himself at the wheel, Monroe Hall, come out to meet his judgment.

Once or twice a week the wife emerged, usually in the Healey though sometimes in one of the other cars, the 1967 Lamborghini Miura or the 1955 Morgan Plus 4, for example, and in her automobile of choice she would drive apparently aimlessly around the rural back roads surrounding the compound.

Mac and Buddy and Ace had discussed among themselves whether or not these trips actually were aimless, merely the random actions of a bored woman stuck in a gilded cage the size of Catalina Island, or if there were some purpose to them after all. So far as they knew, she’d never stopped anywhere on any of these jaunts, never met anybody, never did anything but drive around for an hour or so, and then back to the Monroe Hall compound.

That was as far as they knew. Unfortunately, they didn’t know everything. From time to time, on these trips, on some particularly empty back road, the wife would floor it, apparently just for fun, and all at once the Taurus would be alone on the road, poking along, following nothing. That’s when Ace started calling the Taurus the tortoise, which Buddy, who owned the car, took offense at, not even cooling off after Mac pointed out that the tortoise had won that particular race.

Something had to be done. They’d been staking out the Hall compound for weeks now, months, and except for the occasional gallop with the Mrs. they had nothing to show for it. They could only keep this stakeout going until their unemployment insurance ran out, which would be in just a very few weeks. Something had to be done.

As they drove along the country road, well back from the gleaming white Healey, the wife taking her time today, so far not zipping off unexpectedly over some hillock and out of sight, Mac said, “Listen, something has to be done.”

“We know,” Ace said.

Mac said, “Okay. What if we kidnap her?”

Ace shook his head. “He’ll never pay.”

“She’s his wife.”

“He won’t pay,” Ace said. “You know the guy as well as we do, and he won’t pay. We could send him her fingers, one at a time, and he wouldn’t pay.”

Mac scrinched up his face. “I couldn’t send him her fingers.”

“Neither could I,” Ace said. “Even if it would do any good. I’m just saying.”

“Besides,” Buddy said, steering around curves, keeping the Healey just barely in sight, looking from time to time in the rearview mirror, “he’s what it’s all about. That was the agreement at the beginning.”

“None of us,” Mac said, “thought it would take this long.”

Ace said, “Sure. We thought he’d go out sometimes.”

“There used to be all these pictures of him in the magazines,” Mac said, “at the opera, at charities—”

“Hah,” Buddy said.

“Who knew,” Mac said, “he’d suddenly turn into a hermit?”

“It’s the publicity,” Ace said. “These days, he isn’t famous, he’s infamous, and he’s afraid to go out.”

“I don’t know,” Mac said. “I don’t wanna give up, but what are we doing here?”

“And it isn’t just for us,” Ace pointed out. “It’s for the whole local.”

“Hold on,” Buddy said. “Come on, lady, stop, then go.”

Up ahead, the Healey had reached an empty intersection, two minor roads crossing among evergreens, no houses or businesses around. The road they were on had the stop sign, and the Healey had stopped, but now it wasn’t moving on.

Buddy had slowed, not wanting to get too close, not wanting her to make a note of the Taurus and maybe remember it some other time, but he was also looking in the mirror again. “I got a guy behind me,” he said, “so I can’t slow down too much.”

Up ahead, a gasoline truck went slowly by, from left to right, explaining the wife’s delay, and once it cleared the road the Healey shot across the intersection and headed off around the next curve. Buddy accelerated to the stop sign, hit the brakes hard, the Taurus jolted to a stop that made Ace reach out to brace himself against the passenger air-bag compartment, and a black stretch limo crossed the intersection, also from left to right, very slowly.

Well, no. It didn’t cross the intersection; it entered the intersection, filled the intersection, and stopped.

“Now what?” Buddy said, and honked his horn. “Come on, Jack!”

Twisting around, Ace looked past Mac out the rear window. “What’s going on?”

Mac twisted around as well. Behind them was a big black Lincoln Navigator SUV, the most carnivorous vehicle on the road, the Minotaur of motoring. Both of its rear doors were open, and a man in a business suit and tie was getting out on each side. Both men wore sunglasses and were tall and thin and maybe forty.

“Holy Christ!” Mac said.

“God damn it!” Buddy cried. “They tipped to us!”

“Following the wife too much,” Mac decided, watching the men walk forward, taking their time, in no hurry.

“Lock the doors,” Ace said.

“Oh, come on,” Buddy said. “We’re past that.” And he rolled his window down.

The two men had reached their car now. The one on Buddy’s side bent down, hand on the Taurus roof as he smiled at Buddy and said, “Good afternoon.”

“Afternoon,” Buddy agreed.

“We thought maybe you’d like to join forces,” the man said. Across the way, the other man smiled at Ace through the window of his locked door.

So, Mac thought, these guys aren’t goons from the compound after all. This was something else.

Buddy said, “Join forces? Whadaya mean, join forces?”

“Well,” the man said, “we’ve got a stratagem aimed at Monroe Hall that doesn’t appear to be working out, and I’d say you gents also have some sort of plan in mind involving Monroe Hall that also isn’t working out.”

Buddy said, “Monroe who?”

The man’s smile was kindly, you had to say that for it. “You three have been staking out Hall’s place for weeks,” he said. “We’ve got enough Polaroids of you to fill a bulletin board. We’ve traced the registration of this car, so we know who you are, Alfred ‘Buddy’ Meadle, and we can pretty well guess who your friends are. Former coworkers. Mrs. Hall isn’t going to do anything interesting, she never does. We’ve got a nice stretch here, why not come on over, get comfortable, we can discuss the situation.”

“What situation?” Buddy asked him.

“I think we should do it,” Mac said. He didn’t know who these people were, but they looked to him as though they just might be the something that had to be done.

“The situation where we pool our resources,” the man said. His smile as he looked the Taurus up and down was pitying. “I believe we have more resources than you do. Your friend is right, you should do it. Why not leave your car on the side of the road here, and we’ll go for a spin in the stretch?”