Win Some, Lose Some

Chapter 12

Inside the baited trailer, Shayne heard a truck go by, brake, and come back. Frieda was sleeping. She awakened instantly at his touch.

The driver of the pickup either had a good eye or he was getting good directions; he made the hitch in one move. Somebody spoke sharply. It sounded to Shayne like the voice that had shouted commands at Canada over the bullhorn.

Frieda was on her feet, the gun in her hand. “Take them now?” she whispered. Shayne shook his head. This time he was armed, but he wanted if possible to do it without shooting. There were too many people sleeping around them. Rourke would follow when they moved out. If they were too badly outnumbered, he could call for help on the van’s phone.

They got away with a jerk. The wide road had been ditched with a succession of shallow speed bumps. They took the first of these too fast, and the jolt caused the big payloader tire to waver out from the wall. Shayne wedged it back. On his first inspection, he had noticed a two-way phone system in the little kitchen. Usually these things were designed so only one end had a talk button. The other end never stopped transmitting. Using his flashlight, he found the instrument and turned up the volume.

“Stop bitching,” a voice said, and another voice answered, too faint to be heard.

The first voice: “Oh, that went beautiful. Smooth as silk. Show these country slobs a couple of ounces of real H and they go out of their skulls. A little confusion right now is all to the good. Muddy the waters, you know? The thing of it is, we’re completely anonymous.”

“I’ll sell you my share right now for sixty thousand.”

“If I had sixty thousand, I’d take you up on that, boy. I think Larry would like to set a record, don’t you? Help the image. All this extra trouble, we ought to revise the numbers. How does a million and a quarter sound?” After a moment: “Well, hell, a straight million. It’s easier to take in.”

“Will everybody please keep quiet for a minute?”

It was a woman’s voice.

The long wait under the trailer had made Greco sluggish. They had to be back in their rented car by the time the pickup and the thieves’ trailer pulled out of the park. He was trying to think ahead to their next move.

And then he had a truly sensational idea, the best idea so far. Explosion and fire! Earlier he had ripped off somebody’s gas can to have something to carry. Now he ran back to get it. Nick wanted to know what he was doing.

“Tell you in a minute.”

Pam, sitting between the two men in the cab of the pickup, had a different kind of pressure coming at her from opposite sides. That strength and certainty of Downey’s, she was beginning to see, masked a kind of obtuseness. What made people take the police exam in the first place? Whatever it was, Downey had it in excess. In that threesome, he was the man of experience. When he spoke, everything about his tone and manner declared that he knew what he was talking about. Events frequently proved that he didn’t. It never fazed him a bit. His ego was iron-bound. He wanted more than compliance, he wanted admiration.

As he drove, his hand dropped to its usual place on the inside of her thigh. Perhaps he had forgotten Werner. Perhaps this was merely an announcement of how things were going to be from then on. It was impossible to tell what Werner was thinking.

Downey had decided to drive to the truck stop where they had left Werner’s car, and put Canada into that for the rest of the journey. It wouldn’t be easy, maneuvering that dead weight between vehicles, but when they got to Miami Heights they could off-load in the garage with the door down. The trailer wouldn’t be seen entering their driveway. They could sort out the cars afterward.

The great field was between crops at the moment. A certain amount of vegetable litter had been left lying around, but absolutely nothing was growing in the poisoned soil. Nick was carrying his shoes. They moved at a pace between a walk and a shambling run. There had been clouds earlier. Now there were stars, and it seemed to Greco that whenever he looked up he saw a meteor. On the way in, they had aimed at the lights of the camp. Now there was nothing but stars, and even they didn’t seem to want to hold still.

Nick was swearing a steady stream. Every time he stepped on something sharp, he hated Greco more. He thought it had been stupid to leave the car so far away. That trailer would haul-ass out in a minute, and if they weren’t in their own car by then, they couldn’t hope to overtake it. It was Greco’s fault, but they would both be blamed.

“DeLuca won’t listen to alibis. He’ll cut off our balls.”

“Or give us a medal, one.”

The gas can kept banging against Greco’s leg, and he was tempted to throw it away. But he hung onto it. They still had a way to go when the pickup and trailer combination came under the lighted sign.

“We won’t make it,” Nick gasped.

“Oh, yes, we will,” Greco said grimly.

Taking his partner’s arm, he ran with him until they went out of step and he had to let go. But the ground was smoother here, and all of a sudden they were on the road. The pickup began its turn, and Greco pulled Nick down so they wouldn’t be seen in the headlights. Another undignified move, and Greco, with his mouth full of dirt, was hoping it might be the last.

He ran ahead, slammed the lifted hood of the car, and was back on pavement by the time Nick hobbled up. The trailer’s hind end, lit up like a Macy’s window, dwindled away. Another camping vehicle, this one a van-a Dodge, Greco thought-came out of the park.

“What are we getting into here, a shoot-out?” Nick demanded. “Three people is already too many.”

“Hell with them,” Greco said, having to smile. “No shooting. Were going to set the mother on fire.”

“How, throw matches?”

“Why do you think I lugged this Goddamn can? There’s gas sloshing around in there.”

Dazed as he was, Nick took a moment to see it. “You mean give them a cocktail.”

“That’s just what I mean. They won’t even know what happened. DeLuca will love it.”

He was shifting up fast, getting all the acceleration out of the car that it was willing to give them. They had a bottle of rum in the back seat. Nick pissed it out the window as they went. When the bottle was empty, he gave Greco a nod. Greco stopped to let him pour. Without a funnel, he spilled quite a bit. When Greco was unable to find a rag, Nick contributed a sock, which he soaked in gas and twisted up tight to make a wick.

Shayne, in the kitchen of the moving trailer, listened closely to the conversation in the cab. The driver continued to boast of how well he had read the scene at the hot plant. He was the one who had insisted they shouldn’t give up. And did they know why? Because he knew the criminal mentality.

The woman was needling him more and more openly. He wasn’t getting it yet.

“Mike.”

Frieda gestured urgently from the doorway. Shayne jumped to join her.

She had tilted the slats when she looked to be sure that Rourke, in the van, had followed them out. The van was an eighth of a mile back, ambling along at a comfortable forty-five, the minimum on this road. Now Shayne saw a black sedan beginning to pull out to pass them.

Frieda whispered, “They came up before and dropped back. Two men. Something peculiar about them.”

Shayne caught the license number as the car crept closer. It was a rented Ford from the Hertz fleet. The driver, young and dark, was clutching the wheel as though about to go into a dangerous skidding turn, although the highway here ran as straight as a ruled line. The man beside him was fiddling with something on his lap.

These couldn’t be cops. Canada’s men wouldn’t be driving a rented car. Nevertheless, it seemed to Shayne that a strange electricity was flickering in that front seat. His eye jumped to his. 357. It was across the trailer, where they had arranged the lamps so their beams would converge on the door.

For an instant, the second man in the Ford looked straight at the trailer window. His face was in eruption. His head bobbed at the end of a stalklike neck. His hands came up, and when Shayne saw the flame of a cigarette lighter, he came around fast. There was no time for the gun. He kicked a chair aside and dislodged the great payloader wheel. It started to move, and Shayne gave it a hard push as it passed. It came up hard against the back wall. The sudden weight shift caused the trailer to veer toward the Ford.

The two windows were almost parallel when it happened, the window at Nick’s elbow and the trailer’s window. Greco was riding the brake, giving him plenty of time. It was an easy side-hand toss, but it had to shatter the glass and get through the blind.

With a faint clash of metal, the vehicles kissed. Greco had seen the fishtail starting and instinctively twitched away. It was this more than the slight collision that threw Nick off. He couldn’t wait to make sure that the flame had taken hold. He had to touch it off and throw in the same motion, and he couldn’t afford to miss. If he missed and the flaming gas dribbled harmlessly onto the highway, Canada’s kidnappers would know they were under attack, and out would come the guns. Greco would have to pull alongside, and it would be Nick who would bear the brunt of the shooting. Three people, three guns, and nowadays women could shoot, too, you know.

When the trailer’s bumper dug into their rear door panel, crumpling it inward, the throw was already underway. Nick started back in horror as a ball of fire exploded directly in front of his eyes.

The bottle had shattered on the edge of the window frame, breaking a pane and sending some of the blazing fluid into the trailer. But much of the explosion came back into the Ford. Nick yelled in astonishment, swinging his arms like a man attacked by hornets.

“Stop! Stop!”

Greco was fighting the wheel. He swerved back across both lanes and finally brought the car to a shuddering stop in the dirt.

Nick fell out, uttering sharp, high-pitched screams. His loose shirt was on fire. He whipped it over his head, setting fire to his hair. Greco embraced him roughly and put out the flames with his hands.

Nick’s thin screams subsided to moans. “It hurts, Greco, it hurts.”

Greco’s hands were hurting, too, but that didn’t mean they could stand there feeling sorry for themselves. Their good plan had gone sour for reasons Greco was unable to understand. That trailer had behaved as though King Kong or somebody had given it a push. It was already out of sight down the road. The gas Nick had slopped around when he was filling the bottle had caught fire with a whoosh, and the Ford’s front-seat compartment was burning fiercely. Greco backed away. This was a fire nobody would put out with his hands.

Headlights were coming toward them. It was the same Dodge van he had seen coming out of the trailer park. When Greco saw that they didn’t intend to stop, he leaped out, waving both arms and yelling.

The van swung to the right, trying to get by on the inside. Greco snatched out his gun and popped a shot through the windshield. It was done without aiming, but he aimed the next one, and when the driver realized what Greco was aiming at, and at that range was unlikely to miss, he put on his brakes and came skidding up to within a couple of feet of the blazing Ford.

Greco was so mad at this guy for his lack of concern for a fellow motorist in trouble that he was ready to shoot him out if he didn’t get out of his own free will. He must have conveyed that purpose, and the driver, a tall skinny fellow in glasses, slid to the ground, vibrating.

“What the hell is the gun for? I’ll drive you.”

“Get over there,” Greco snarled.

Doing what the gun told him, the thin man moved out in the weeds. Greco yelled for Nick, who was standing on the roadside, not in too great shape. Another yell brought him out of it. He looked for his gun. It was probably still in the burning car. Greco really yelled the next time, and Nick started toward him. They needed both guns, but the way Greco felt now, he was willing to take on the whole outfit with only his teeth and his fingernails.