“There it is!”
“I see it, Cal. Take it easy.”
Cory watched the Ford recede almost out of sight before he started the Jetta and followed, keeping well back. Beside him, Cal, breathing loudly through his mouth, pulled up his shirttail in front and reached down inside to come out with a smallish automatic, the High Standard GI model in .45 caliber.
Cory stared. “What are you doing with that?”
Cal laughed. “Don’t leave home without it.” He hadn’t seemed drunk before this, but now, hours since he’d had that beer, there was a sudden slurry electricity to him as he sat there holding the automatic with both hands.
“Oh, come on, Cal,” Cory said. “You never said you were gonna bring that.” Up ahead, Tom Lindahl’s Ford moved at a slow and steady pace, easy to follow.
“Well, I just knew you’d give me a hard time if I said anything about it,” Cal said. “So I figured, I’ll just bring it, and then there won’t be any argument.”
“If we get stopped by a cop—”
“What for? We’re doing”—Cal leaned the left side of his head against Cory’s upper arm so his right eye could see the dashboard—“forty-five miles per hour. Who’s gonna stop us for that?”
“Cal, I don’t want to see that thing.”
“No, no, you’re not gonna see it.” Cal leaned forward to put the gun on the floor, then sat back and rested his right foot on it. “See? Just sitting there.”
“Is the safety on, anyway?”
“Sure it is. Whada you think?”
“When we talk to those guys,” Cory said, “please, Cal, don’t start waving that goddam gun around.”
“He’s the one talking tough, do you remember that? ‘You’d be dead now.’ Oh, yeah, would I? We’ll just have this little fella down here on the floor here, out of sight, out of mind, and if there has to be a little surprise, somewhere down the road, well, guess what, we got one.”
“Just leave it there,” Cory said.
“It’s there.”
Somehow the idea of his brother’s gun in his sister’s car made Cory nervous, as though he’d got himself involved in some kind of serious mistake here somewhere. Cal had bought that goddam thing years ago, in a pawnshop, on a visit to Buffalo, for no reason at all he could ever explain. He’d just seen it and he wanted it, that’s all. From time to time, the first year or so, he’d take it out in the woods and practice, shooting at trees or fence posts, but eventually it more or less just stayed in a drawer in his bedroom, barely even thought about. Cory hadn’t thought about it for so long it was like something brand-new, a Gila monster or something, when it suddenly appeared in Cal’s lap in the car.
All right, let it stay on the floor. If it made Cal feel more secure to have it down there, fine. When it came time, though, to get out of this car, Cory would make damn sure that stupid gun didn’t come out with them.
It was a few miles later they saw the bright red and white lights of their first roadblock of the night. Slowing down, Cory said, “Put the damn gun under the seat.”
“Right.”
Even Cal seemed a little chastened, as he bent down to hide the gun. Cory drove as slowly as he dared, to give Tom a chance to clear the roadblock, then eased to a stop beside the waiting trooper as he reached for his wallet.
The trooper had a long flashlight that he shone first on Cory and then across him on Cal, not quite shining the beam in their eyes. He was the most bored trooper they’d met yet, and he studied Cory’s license without saying a word. Cal had the glove compartment open, but the trooper didn’t even bother to ask for registration, just handed the license back and used his flashlight to wave them through.
Tom’s Ford hadn’t gained much ground, was still slowly moving along as though in no hurry to get anywhere in particular tonight. When Cory caught up, and slowed to maintain the same distance as before, Cal said, “What’s goin on, Cory? Is he just out for a drive?”
“I don’t know,” Cory admitted. “But I just figured out what’s out there, down this way.”
“Yeah, what?”
“That racetrack where he used to work.”
“What? Tom?”
“He worked there for years, and then they fired him for something.”
“What the hell would he be going down to that racetrack for?”
“I don’t know what they’re doing,” Cory said. “I mean, there they are, they came out tonight, everything like we thought they’d do, but now I don’t get it. They aren’t leading us to any money.”
“Maybe Tom’s helping the guy get away from here.”
“At forty-five miles an hour? Besides, he could’ve done that last night. Or today.”
“Get up closer,” Cal said. “Let’s see what they’re up to.”
“They’re driving,” Cory said.
“Come on, Cory, close it up.”
“You can’t see inside a car at night.”
“Close it up, goddammit.”
So Cory moved up much closer, not quite tailgating the Ford, and they drove like that awhile, trying to figure it out, getting nowhere. Then, way ahead, Cory saw the lights of the next roadblock and said, “I gotta ease back,” just as Cal yelled, “Goddammit!”
“What?” Cory’s foot was off the gas, the Jetta slowing, the Ford moving toward the distant roadblock, its brake lights not yet on.
“He’s alone in there!”
“What?”
“Pull over here, pull over here, goddammit!”
A closed gas station was on the right. Cory pulled in, drifting past the pumps as he said, “What do you mean, he’s alone in there?”
“Tom! I could see those lights down there through his windshield, and he’s goddammit alone in the goddam car! Stop!”
Cory stopped. “Then where is he? Maybe he’s lying down in back.”
“For a roadblock? He isn’t there,” Cal insisted, and a black car suddenly passed them on their left and angled to a stop across the front of the Jetta. Cal’s one eye stared. “What is this?”
The driver of the other car got out, looking over its roof at them, and, of course, it was Ed Smith. Cory reflexively shifted into reverse as Smith took a step down the other side of his car, as though he wanted to come around and talk to them.
Cal didn’t give him the chance. All at once he was lunging out of the Jetta, and when Cory turned to him, he had that automatic in his hand. Cory yelled, “Don’t!” at the same time Cal yelled some damn thing at Smith and lifted the automatic as though to shoot Smith, and in the same instant Smith laid his own hand on the roof of his car, with something small and black in it that coughed a dot of red flame and Cal went reeling backward, the automatic dropping onto the gas station’s concrete.
Cory screamed, and tromped on the accelerator, and the Jetta tore backward past the pumps, the open passenger door not quite hitting them but rocking as though it would come off its hinges, until Cory pounded his foot on the brake and the door slammed.
Ahead of him across the gas station, Smith was striding forward, that gun in his hand down at his side. Cory spun the wheel, shifted into drive, and tore away from there northward, leaving Cal and Smith and the Ford and the roadblock and everything else to shrink and disappear in the rearview mirror.
Absolute panic compelled him to drive hard for three or four minutes on a road with no traffic until he overtook a slow-moving pickup and had to decelerate. As he slowed, the panic receded and clear thought came back, and he knew he had to go take care of Cal. He was the younger brother, but he’d always been the one with brains, the one who went along with Cal’s stunts but then—sometimes—got them both out of trouble when things went too far.
Cal was hit. Shot. How bad?
Cory made a U-turn and headed south again, and would have missed the gas station this time if he hadn’t seen that roadblock far ahead. But there was the station, and Cory pulled in, went past the pumps to where he’d stopped the last time, and stopped again. Smith and the black car were gone.