I tried not to look him in the eye.
“How much money you got?”
I swallowed hard. “About four bucks.”
He stared at me.
“I don’t get paid much, Ed.”
He kept on staring at me. I took out my wallet from my back pocket and pulled out the four bills and handed them to him.
“Those two cars out back the ones you were talking about — the van and the Chevy?”
I nodded.
“Both of them gassed up and ready to roll?”
I nodded again.
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Donny?”
“No, Ed, I wouldn’t.”
“And the keys are in the office?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
I led the way back into the garage and over to the office door near the pay phone on the wall.
Ed tried the door. “It’s locked, dammit.”
“Mr. Johnson locks everything up at night,” I told him. “Except for my room.”
Ed looked around, and went over to the big red tool chests against the wall, the ones with all the sliding drawers.
“Timmy locks his tools, too,” I said.
Ed went over to the workbench. He found an old hammer and screwdriver and a bunch of ignition wires and a lot of other junk. He took the hammer and the screwdriver and went back to the office door. He raised his foot high and kicked it straight out against the office door. It burst open. Ed gave me a look over his shoulder and went into the office, and I followed him. The street light outside gave us enough light to see by.
Ed went straight to Mr. Johnson’s old wooden desk. “Which drawer?”
I pointed to the top drawer on the right. Ed didn’t even bother to check and make sure it was locked. He stuck the screwdriver into the top of the drawer next to the lock and banged away with the hammer. The drawer popped open.
Ed reached into the drawer and poked around and came up with two sets of keys in his fist. “These them?”
I nodded.
Ed grinned and stuck the screwdriver in his belt and walked over to me. He reached out with his free hand and gave me a light slap on the face. “You coulda done just what I did now, Donny.” He gave a little laugh. “And then I wouldn’t of had to walk all the way out here, would I? You coulda come for me at the bus depot just like I asked you to, right?”
I didn’t say anything.
Ed gave that little laugh again and sighed. “Well, what could I expect? Always said you were too dumb to steal.” He jingled the keys. “You tried it once on your own, and where did it get you? In a cell with me, that’s where.” He shook his head and stared at me.
I looked down at the pointy toes of his boots.
Ed punched me on the shoulder, not really hard, and turned around and went back into the garage and into my room. I followed him.
Ed stood in my room and looked down at the keys in his hand. “Spaulding Real Estate,” he read from the leather key holder. “That’s gotta be the luxury van, right?”
I nodded.
“Rich bastard, huh?”
I shrugged.
“Think the van’ll get me to Ellenville any faster than the old Chevy?”
I shrugged again.
Ed turned away a little from me, then all of a sudden swung around and slapped me hard in the face. I staggered back and fell down on my bed and sat up and rubbed my face where he hit me and looked up at him.
He was smiling. “That’s for being too dumb to even answer me.” He tossed the van’s keys next to me on the bed. “I’d get real far driving a splashy van like that through this hick town, wouldn’t I? Bet it’s the only one like it, right?”
I rubbed my face again. It still stung.
“Sit there,” Ed said.
He went out of the room and back into the garage. I heard him at the workbench, and then he came back holding the bunch of ignition wires. He dropped them on the bed, and before I even knew it was coming, his fist smashed into the side of my face.
I fell over on my side on the bed. My head was spinning. I felt him pulling my hands behind me and holding my wrists together. And then there was something being wrapped tight around my wrists, and I knew it was one of the ignition wires. I tried to sit up, but he pushed me down on the bed and then he grabbed my feet and another ignition wire went around my ankles. He worked fast, while I was still a little dizzy, and then real quick he had me all tied up like one of those little calfs the cowboys rope in rodeos on TV.
He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me up so that I was sort of curled up on the edge of the bed facing him. He slapped me again, then backhanded me with another slap. My eyes started to tear.
“Know why I’m doing this, Donny?” he said. He slapped me again. “Maybe you think it’s because you wouldn’t come and get me at the depot like I asked?” Another slap. “No, it’s not really that, old buddy.” My face was on fire. “But it would have told me something if you’d busted into the office like I just did and got the keys and come out to me.” The slap was even harder this time. “It woulda told me that you were still my real buddy, just like back in the cell, and I might’ve said to myself, well now, little Donny might be just the one to take along with me to Ellenville and then we could hang around together afterward and have lots of money to spend.” He slapped me two more times and let go and I fell back on the bed.
“But it didn’t work out that way, did it?” I heard him say. My ears were ringing now, and his voice came through all muffled and far away. “I don’t like it when things don’t work out for me.”
He grabbed my shirt again and pulled me up. I looked up at him, blinking because my eyes were tearing. He gave me that little laugh again. “I’m really doing this to help you, Donny.” This time his fist smashed into my nose. I felt it crunch and tasted blood. “I still like you. You can’t help that you’re dumb.” His fist got me on the jaw. I felt like I was blacking out, but the pain kept me from going under. “When they find you, you can tell them I beat you until you told me where the keys were, and then I tied you up so you couldn’t call for help after I left.”
He held me up by my shirt, and through the tears I could see him looking at me and then shaking his head. “Doesn’t look right,” he said. “Gotta make this look real so they’ll believe you.” His fist smashed into me two more times, one after the other, first in the eye and then on the side of my head.
He let go of me. I fell back on the bed. I heard him moving around and then the door shut. Then there was the sound of Charlie Fenway’s old Chevy starting up and the squeal of the tires when he pulled out of the parking lot.
It was quiet in the garage now. I lay there on the bed and tried to breathe through all the blood in my nose and mouth, and the pain kept me from passing out and I was glad of that. I wanted to be conscious when they came to get me.
I lay there and thought how they’d have to believe me now when I told them the truth. They really couldn’t think I had been in on this with Ed, even if they found out later that we were cellmates back upstate. They’d have to believe that no one would take this kind of a beating just to make it look good. Ed had really done me a favor. He hadn’t really meant to. He was just talking when he said that. He liked beating me up. I knew that. He got a kick out of it, and that’s why he did it. But it was going to turn out to be a good thing for me that I was so beat up when they came and found me.
I lay there and waited for them to come. It would be soon, I knew. Ed would never make it across the river to Route 90.
I could see it inside my head — Ed driving up to the toll bridge at the river and reaching out to pay the dollar toll at the one booth they kept open at night, reaching out of the old Chevy’s window to put a dollar bill into the hand of Charlie Fenway where his wife had dropped him off for the night shift on the bridge.