The fact of that, the cold hard reality of it, hit and stopped her cold.? They still had Pamela.? Lola began to cry.? Her body shook with the force of her sobs.? She was quiet about it, and half-buried her face in her hands, which were still tied together.??
"I'm going to kill those two guys," Hal said.? "You with me on that?"
A long moment passed.?
When she finally answered, Lola did not recognize her own voice.? "Yes," came the voice, sounding small and very far away.?
"I've got a plan," he said as he worked on the knots that bound her wrists.? "But I'm going to need your help."
Lola tried her voice again.? "I'm with you," she told the pornographer, the man who had almost raped her.?
This time it sounded like she meant it.
?
* * *?
?
"Pamela, give me a hand with this guy, will you?"
They stood over the massive figure of the man who had burst through her front door earlier that night.? He lay on the floor, facing the ceiling.? His head and face were streaked with blood.? His stringy hair was tacky with it.? His shirt and his pants were splotched with it.? His eyes were open and staring.? He was the biggest man Pamela had ever seen, and something terrible had happened to him.
"Is he dead?" she said.
Cruz toed him in the side.? "Moss, you alive?"
The big man groaned.? His eyelids fluttered closed.?
"Oh, I think he's plenty alive.? You should see what the other guy must look like.? Right Moss?"
Pamela stared down at the bloodied man.? She had come alert running along that road, almost as if she had gone to sleep when these men had burst into the apartment, then awakened on a two-lane blacktop in the dark night, running, running, searching for any sign of life, anyone she could run to.? Then Cruz had caught her, and falling into his arms had been almost?? No, it hadn't been anything.? Cruz had stuffed her into the trunk of a car, and now he wanted to act like they were friends.? He could act that way, but Pamela was awake now and looking for a way out.?
Cruz kneeled down beside the one called Moss and checked under his eyelids.? He checked Moss's pulse at the neck.
"He's fine, but it looks like he lost Lola on us."
He gave Moss a slap across the face.? It made a sharp sound in the quiet of the cabin.? "Hey Moss.? Come on, work with me here.? Was it Dugan?? Did Dugan come here?"
Slowly, Moss shook his head.? It moved like it was attached to his massive neck with a rusty hinge.? "Not Dugan."
Pamela looked around at the room.? The door had been smashed apart.? The wall in the back of the cabin had a huge hole ripped in it.? And the big man, the monster, had been laid low.? Then it came to her.? Lola had done all this!? She had beaten him like she had beaten the two rapists.? Then she had run away, and now she was out there calling the police.? Any minute they would hear the sirens and these two scum would be on their way to jail.
"Pamela, I need you to help me lift him.? We've got to get him out to the car and he weighs a ton."
"Why should I help you?" she said, emboldened by Lola's success.
Cruz looked up at her.? He pulled back his shirt, revealing the gun.? "Because I'm being a nice guy and not killing you, that's why.? Now come on and grab the other side there.? We don't have all night."???
It took several minutes just to drag the man upright and flop him onto the bed.? Cruz seemed to do okay with his side, but Pamela could barely move Moss at all.? He was immense.? The weight of his arm alone was enough to scare her.? When they dropped him on the bed, he grunted and his eyes came open.?
"Come on, Moss," Cruz said.? "You gotta help us.? We can't stay here anymore."
When Moss spoke, his voice was low.? "I can walk."
"Show me."
Moss rose on his own power and stumble-stepped out the door to the car.? Cruz directed him to the back seat.? Moss sprawled out back there and the car groaned under his weight.? He promptly passed out again.
Cruz looked at Pamela.? "You drive."?
?
* * *
?
Brian Knox, the bent cop, sat on the couch nursing a beer.
His modest suburban home was dark.? The only light was the glow from the TV set in front of him.? He had the sound all the way down.? Upstairs, in the bedroom, his wife was sleeping.? She had to work in the morning.
He was watching Full Metal Jacket.? Knox must have seen this movie half a dozen times.? It was the scene where the squad of American soldiers was under attack by a mysterious Vietnamese sniper during the battle for the imperial city of Hue.? Every time an American would dash out into the deserted street to save one of his buddies, he too would be gunned down.? It was a frustrating scene, all the more so because in a few minutes, when they finally managed to shoot the sniper, they were going to find out it was a teenage girl.? But Knox barely noticed.
The truth was he often sat up like this at night, drinking beer with the TV set on, staring into space and absently scratching the long, snake-like scar that would its way around his torso.? Gut-stabbed, he had been.? Ripped open from ass to tea kettle.? He was on permanent disability now, and he realized he might never work again.
He had been a cop down in Boston once, but those days were gone.? They were gone since the night he was sliced up by a guy who was supposed to be easy to kill.? It was a hit, and he was the hitter.? OFF DUTY COP KILLS DRUG DEALER.? That's how it was supposed to read.? And it did, except for the four pints of blood he lost before the meat wagon even got there.? He had died, they told him, and then come back.?
He remembered none of it.? No warm, beckoning light at the end of a tunnel, no feeling of well being and love washing over him, no St. Peter telling him he still had work left to do on earth.? Nothing.?
He didn't even remember the hit.? The last thing he could picture was lunch that afternoon at an old railway car diner all the way out in Worcester, a guy wearing a floppy hat telling him about the job.? Then, three weeks later, waking up in a hospital bed, in pain, the overhead lights too bright, an old black aide scowling down at him.
"You're a very lucky man," she said, flashing a mouth low on teeth.
"Lucky," he said now, sitting in the glow of the televised carnage, not even aware he was speaking.? "Yeah."
Physically, he was okay.? The doctors had put everything back where it belonged.? He could probably work some sort of desk job.? He could drive a truck, or maybe he could become one of those guys on roadside construction sites who stands there with the SLOW sign so that commuters know to slow down.? Yeah, his body was fine.?
It was his mind - his mind - that was fucked.
He saw a therapist twice a week.? She asked him how things made him feel.?
How did it make him feel to be ripped apart like that, to know that he had been sprawled in a pool of his own blood in a convenience store parking lot?? How did it feel to know he had killed the man who had stabbed him?? How did it feel to fill his empty days with television shows and drives in the countryside?? She thought it made him depressed.? He denied it.? She tried to push some drugs on him.? So far, he had resisted.? He wasn't the kind of guy who needed drugs.
The phone rang.?
Knox looked at the receiver.? It was rare that anyone called at night.? He picked it up on the second ring.?
"Yeah?"
The gravelly voice came over the line.? "Kid?? How ya doing?"
"Why are you calling me at home?"
"It's an emergency."
The scar across Knox's belly itched more than ever.? "Okay," he said.
CHAPTER SIX
The first rule in making nitroglycerin: don't blow yourself up.
Smoke wouldn't normally risk fucking with nitro - it was too easy to die in the process.? C4 plastic was his explosive of choice.? C4 packed a wallop, and was so stable American soldiers had used bricks of it as firewood in Vietnam.? But Smoke couldn't get C4, not in his current circumstances.? He couldn't get C4,
but he could make nitro.
He was lying on his bed, fully dressed, the Derringer on the pillow by his head.? He was in Walter O'Malley's ground floor room at the Best Western, gazing at the supplies laid out on the desk.? To the items he bought at the store, he had added a blasting cap, one of several he kept in the trunk of the car.? The Best Western was across the massive parking lot from Governor's restaurant.? If Smoke wanted, he could pull the wide curtain back from his window and look out at the eatery where he was supposed to surrender himself tomorrow.???
He didn't want to do that.
He didn't want to get started on the nitroglycerin, either.? The remote detonator he planned to make from the numeric pager?? That was simple and not dangerous.? He could make that in his sleep.? A kid could make it.? The clothespin detonator wired to the blasting cap, and tripped by someone opening the door from outside?? That was trickier, but still not dangerous.? He could do it, even now, even after the day he had lived through.?
The nitro, the very thing both detonators would be wired to set off?? That was the trouble.? It was a highly explosive concoction, and very unstable.? If he let it get too hot, it would blow up in his face.? If he did anything too fast, it would blow up in his face.? If he jiggled it too hard, it would blow up in his face.? Any little mistake at all, and Smoke would die right here in the hotel room, his head blown off by his own hand.?
He was too damned tired to face the nitro.??
Before coming here, he had made two reservations by telephone.? The first was this room, under the name O'Malley.? Certainly, it was the name of a dead man, but Best Western wasn't going to know that.? Also, O'Malley's workshop hadn't burned down today with a man inside it.?
Soon, probably within twenty-four hours, the police were going to know about Walter O'Malley, but as of yet, Smoke reckoned, they couldn't know.? Smoke Dugan, on the other hand, was probably wanted for questioning RIGHT NOW.? They were looking for him.? So the other person who made a reservation at Best Western was a man named Barry Fillmore.?
When he checked in as O'Malley, he made a point of asking the young woman working at the desk clerk when she would go off shift.? He did it by asking her if she wanted to go for a drink afterward.? With him?? Bruised face, missing teeth, dark bags of exhaustion under his eyes.? Of course she didn't.? But she did tell him that she would be off shift at eleven.? At precisely one in the morning, Smoke planned to walk in again and check in as Barry Fillmore with a new desk clerk.?
Cruz and Moss had no reason to suspect anyone named Barry Fillmore.? They didn't even know such a man existed.? Nobody did, and that included Lola.
The items on the desk began to fade from view.? First they became fuzzy and insubstantial, then the world went black and they were gone.? He was drifting off, not a good thing, but his body was weary, more tired than he had been at any time since he had first escaped New York three years before.???
The phone rang.
He picked it up on the second ring.? He looked out through the partially drawn curtains.
"Yeah?"
"O'Malley you're calling yourself now?? I thought you didn't like that name."
He recognized Cruz's voice.? Cruz was on a cell phone, fading in and out with the movement of the car.???
"I'm sorry, I don't know who this is."
"Dugan, let's cut the bullshit.? We want to make the trade.? You know the one I'm talking about?"
Smoke took a moment to respond.? "Of course."
"Tomorrow morning at nine, you walk into that restaurant and look for us."
Smoke interrupted.? "Let me speak to Lola."
"Tomorrow you can speak to her.? We'll have a table for four, and there'll be four of us sitting there, including Lola and her friend Pamela.? You sit down with us and we'll all have a nice breakfast.? You can talk all you want.? After we eat, the girls get up and walk out of the restaurant, just like that.? No big farewells, they just get up, walk out, and run as far and as fast as they can.? They go to the cops, you know we'll get them.? If they go away, maybe we never find them again.? Maybe we never even try.? If you want to hand Lola a big pile of cash under the table, so much the better her chances, and so much the better you'll feel.? As you know, we don't want her."? Cruz's voice paused for just a moment.? "After the girls have been gone a few minutes, we all three of us get up and walk out to the car.? Then we take a nice long ride to New York.? You'll have time to make peace with everything while we drive.? I'll even let you listen to my CD player if you want."
Smoke listened.? He said nothing right away.? Of course, something about it sounded wrong.? Everything about it sounded wrong.? Lola getting away seemed the longest of possible long shots.? Smoke getting away was no longer an issue at all.
"Dugan?"
"How do I know you won't have somebody waiting outside the restaurant to grab her as soon as she leaves?? Then you've got us both."
Cruz laughed.? "I guess you don't know your girlfriend very well.? There's not many who could just grab her, as you say.? And if somebody shoots her, how far are they gonna get in a crowded parking lot on a weekday morning?? Come on, Dugan.? We'll let her run.? Don't worry about that."
Smoke gave it a moment's thought.? "Okay," he said.? "I'll walk in there at exactly nine."
"That's what I like to hear.? See you then.? And Dugan?? No funny bullshit this time, okay?? That's how innocent people get killed."
The line went dead.
After Smoke hung up, he lay there, thinking.?
Lola was either already dead, or would be just as soon as they had hold of Smoke.? There was no way they were going to let her go.? The thought of Lola already being dead stabbed him in the heart.
?That was tit for tat, but more than just that.? They didn't leave witnesses behind.? He knew the mentality.? In his early years, when he still went on bank jobs, he had seen people killed simply because they might have seen something, might have known something.?
But put that away.? Assume for the moment that Lola was alive.? They had no plans to allow her to remain that way.
And that meant this meeting at the restaurant tomorrow was bullshit.? Either they would hold her and have the meeting, letting her go just long enough so that somebody else could grab her outside the restaurant, or something else would happen.? If someone was to grab her outside the restaurant, that meant they needed another person, who was either on the way or already here.? That person couldn't be known to Lola, because then she would avoid such a person in the parking lot.?
The whole parking lot thing was tricky.? If she walked out of that restaurant, she could throw herself on the mercy of the first person she saw.? It could be an old couple.? It could be a team of construction workers.? It could be a Mexican dishwasher outside on his break for a smoke.? Or cops could be pulling into the parking lot at exactly that moment.? Cops could be eating in the restaurant.? All of it meant collateral damage trying to get her back, high-visibility collateral damage in a very public place during busy daylight hours.? Lola could suddenly decide to run into the kitchen area and throw herself on the mercy of the people back there - causing a scene and screaming about the murderers there at that table, holding her boyfriend hostage.???
No fucking way.?
Which meant they couldn't let her go at all.? At the same time, they had to know Smoke would come in with a gun, or a bomb, or more than one bomb, or something rigged to explode out in the parking lot bringing cops and firefighters and rescue vehicles.? They also had to know he would use these things if they didn't let her go.
So the restaurant meeting was just an out and out sham.? They had no control of the variables in such a meeting, and so simply couldn't allow it to happen.? They were going to try to get him before he ever got inside the restaurant.? So now there were two other variables to consider.? Either they were going to try to grab him again, and bring him to New York, or after everything that had happened, they had abandoned that idea, and were just going to pop him as he stepped out his door to walk acr
oss to the restaurant.?
Smoke stopped to consider this deeply.? His mind became very still.? Minutes slowly passed, and he still couldn't decide.? It was an important distinction.? If they just wanted to kill him, that left very little wiggle room.? If they had started with that plan, he would already be dead.
After a long time, Smoke climbed off the bed, splashed some water on his face in the bathroom, and sat down at the desk to work.?
?
* * *
?
"Good girl," Cruz said.? "That's a good girl."
He had his left arm draped around Pamela as they hustled through the hushed corridors of the Portland Arms Hotel.? His right hand was in his jacket pocket, holding the silenced Glock in there, pointed across his body right at her.? They had dropped Moss off at the Holiday Inn just minutes before.? The big man, who had washed up at a highway rest area, walked into the hotel under his own power.?
Now, Cruz cooed to Pamela as they moved down the hallway toward his door.? There was no one around.? He kept that arm on her tight as he released the gun and fished the door card out of his pants pocket.? He slid the card into its slot and guided Pamela inside.
Right now he might kill for a cigarette, and he had a non-smoking suite.
Non-smoking suite?? Now why had he done that?? He couldn't remember asking for one - but he knew he sometimes did to keep his habit under control.? He glanced around the place.? They mounted smoke detectors above the bed, above the toilet in the bathroom, and out in the middle of the room.? The only out they gave you was you could sit right by the open window and blow the smoke into the street.
There was an old radiator in a corner of the bedroom, probably there more for style than for actual heat.? Cruz handcuffed Pamela to the radiator, then tied one of his T-shirts around her mouth as a gag.? She had started crying again while they drove back into town.? For a while, Cruz had been concerned that he would have to take the wheel, but she had hung on.? Now, she was no longer crying.? She must have cried herself out.? Instead, she was lying there morosely on the floor, staring into space, her head resting on the pillow he had given her.? No, he wasn't expecting any more trouble from Pamela.?
Cruz lay down on top of the bed, an unlit cigarette between his fingers.? He took a deep breath, and popped on the TV.? In front of him, a late night talk show host yukked it up with two celebrity guests.? One of the guests was a young Hispanic woman in a slinky gown who was stunningly, achingly beautiful.? Cruz kept the sound on MUTE.? Instead of listening, he watched the faces contort in mindless laughter.? Occasionally, the camera panned the studio audience, who laughed right along.???