She backed up too far and one of the tires slid off the soft shoulder. She stupidly floored the gas pedal, in her panic, sinking a radial into several inches of Missouri gumbo. It was all he could do not to laugh with glee. He started back toward the weapons.
But who would have thought she could run so fast? The buxom young Jew bitch was screaming at him, almost on him, “You fucking Nazi killer! What did you do with my father?” and he never saw the tire iron. On the word father, a sharp shock of pain exploded down through his shoulder and he fell to the wet pavement.
“Don't! Please! I'm not—” he pleaded.
“You bastard son of a—” She was raising the iron back again when he grabbed a slim ankle, yanking savagely. The woman's arms broke her fall but the tire iron went clattering away.
She tried to kick him between the legs as he struggled to his feet and a pointed, high-heeled shoe caught him solidly on the inside of the left leg, just missing his groin. He screamed and smashed a fist towards her face, which she somehow deflected, scratching his arm as she tried to get at his eyes, and then they had hold of each other, screaming and panting as they rolled across the blacktop and into a muddy ditch.
The woman was fighting for her life but so was he. She'd lost a shoe, and managed to kick the other one off, but in doing so lost her balance and he got away and started up the ditch. She grabbed for his legs, trying to pull him back down, but he was able to kick her in the face and scrambled for the car as she ran up the ditch bank behind him.
Emil Shtolz was covered in mud. There was blood dripping from his left arm. His right shoulder felt as if it might be broken. He was limping. His glasses were broken. He was gasping as if he were about to have a coronary. But he made it to the car before she did and grabbed for the grip of the Luger just as she pulled him backward.
They were back on the pavement. Muddy and bloody and fighting like animals or little children, screaming and kicking and scratching, untrained combatants suddenly learning what it was like to battle tooth and nail. He kicked at her as he racked a shell into the gun, more frightened than he'd ever been in his life, knowing that if he dropped the gun she would kill him.
He fired as she leaped at him and, even as close as they were, he managed to miss. She grabbed for the gun and he shot her in the hand and wrist. She fell back, and he shot her again, but he got her with the next one. Hit her dead center.
He knew several things in that instant: he'd won, he knew that. He knew she was dead. He didn't need to check for vital signs, he'd seen innumerable Jews die, and one more had joined their ranks. He had to resist the temptation to blow her apart inch by inch, because he was going to have to do something with this meddlesome sheenie and her car as well. He knew he had chains in the trunk.
All of this flashed through his head like lightning as he wobbled around and somehow regained his feet. His right hand could scarcely hold the damned Luger, so he took it in his blood-encrusted but uninjured left hand and carefully moved around to where he could administer a coup de grace to her head. As he was starting to bring the front sight up even with her temple under its wet mop of hair, a truck appeared in the distance.
Why should he take the chance of moving her and the car as well? Suddenly it was all too much trouble. No one would be able to prove any connection between himself and the dead girl, no matter how much they cared to speculate. His reputation would protect him—these were his people, after all. He hurried to his car, got in, started the motor, cut the wheel as sharply as his condition permitted, and floored the gas pedal, roaring back in the direction he'd come.
Shtolz’ eyes were riveted on the approaching truck. Would the driver notice her? Would he stop to help, or assume that since no one was behind the wheel of the vehicle that the person had gone for a tow truck? Was it someone who would recognize his car? He sighed deeply when the truck turned as it reached the nearest corner, and devoted his attention to making it back through the deep water and, above all else, not driving off the road.
Once he was on the other side he tested the brakes. This time they held after a few taps. He stopped, backed to the water's edge, and got out, aching but with a strong sense of relief. His problems were almost over. When he was sure no one was observing him he took the Luger by the barrel and, with his good arm, flung the weapon out into the moving stream of water. He got back in the car and headed toward his house. He would give himself a chemical bath, patch himself up, and by the time the authorities came around with questions he'd have an airtight alibi scenario for them.
Sharon Kamen no longer thought of Dr. Royal or avenging her father. She felt herself turning cold, sculpturelike, coming unhinged at the pit of her stomach, abdomen, and chest, coming apart like one of Jean Ipousteguy's reclining bronze nudes. She knew she was fading fast, her arms raised, legs in an unladylike sprawl, too weak to stop the wounds that bled onto the hard surface. She could only think of the woman in La Femme au Bain, recumbent, weird, cold, unhinged ... and very still now in the rain.
57
Wedged under the wheel of a four-year-old family Plymouth, Chaingang observed a spill of treasures in the seat beside him. His duffel and weapons case, a pile of packages bearing the high-concept imprint, “Porky's Big Fashions—elegance for the extra large, tall, and portly.” He made a few quick pit stops: behind a bustling gas station (Goin’ Fishin'? We Got Your Bait Here), where he loaded a hundred and forty pounds of innocent bystander into a dumpster, and at a tire-repair place (We Aim to Please so Retire Here!), where he made more than full use of the rest room.
He took a careless sponge bath of sorts using a piece of tarp for a towel and the lukewarm faucet water, then changed into strange long-legged boxer-jockeys that fit in the crotch like a massive diaper for an incontinent sumo wrestler, the largest bib overalls ever made, and a fresh T-shirt. When he left the men's room it looked as if someone had attempted to give his seal a bath in the wash basin.
These needs met, his thoughts turned to his growling gut. He was ravenous for decent munchies. He drove past Esther's Cafe (Home of Famous Bayou Catfish), only because he counted fourteen trucks in the postage-stamp lot and he wasn't sure he had that much ammo. Finally he wheeled into the drive-up lane of a Fastfood.
“Welcome to Fastfood. May we take your order?” the intercom rasped.
“Gimme six Swiss with mushroom, six triple curly-crisps, six mondo munchburgers, six hacienda grandes, six beef ‘n’ bean burritos, and six large conquistadores."
“What would you like to drink?” the box asked, but he was already driving toward the food window, salivating like a bear coming out of hibernation and smelling salmon.
“That'll be sixty-six dollars and sixty cents, sir,” a girl announced through a small crack in the security window, getting a look at the leviathan whose arm, a massive, rock-hard, hairy-pelted thing with a skillet-size paw on the end, was extending payment even as she spoke. She had to force herself to touch the money. An arm roughly the size of a railroad tie rested on the sill, huge fingers drumming impatiently while she filled the security port with numerous sacks of food and his change. “Thank you, and come back,” she said, insincerely, as he stacked the food sacks across the floorboard of the Plymouth, where the corpse of its previous owner had recently rested.
She shuddered as the big thing drove away, a hand shoving mushroom-'n'-Swiss-triple-curly-somethings into its gaping maw. Snaggleteeth meant to wrest meat from bone and bite the caps off beer bottles tore into six sacks of fast food in a salivating, frenzied greaseorama of feasting. Next best thing to a live one.