“If you or any of your Mission Imfuckingpossible force are caught, the Secretary will disavow you ever fuckin lived,” Moochie said from the back seat, and there was more laughter.
Sandy looked around for other cars—witnesses—but there were no planes due for more than an hour and the parking lot was as deserted as the mountains of the moon. The weather had turned very cold, and a wind as keen as a fresh razor-blade whined across the runways and taxi-ways and hooted miserably between the ranks of empty cars. Above and to his left, the Apco sign banged restlessly back and forth.
“You can laugh, you retard,” Sandy said. “I never saw you, that’s all. If you get caught, I’ll say I was takin a crap.”
“Jesus, what a baby,” Buddy said. He looked sorrowful. “I never thought you were such a baby, Sandy. Honest.”
“Arf! Arf!” Richie barked, and there was more laughter. “Roll over and play dead for Daddy Warbucks, Sandy!”
Sandy flushed. “I don’t care,” he said. “Just be careful.”
“We will, man,” Buddy said sincerely. He had saved back a seventh bottle of Texas Driver and a pretty decent toot of nose-candy. Now he handed both up to Sandy. “Here. Enjoy yourself.”
Sandy grinned in spite of himself. “Okay,” he said, and added, just so they’d know he was no sad sack: “Do a good job.”
Buddy’s smile hardened, became metallic. The light went out of his eyes; they became dull and dead and frightening. “Oh, we will,” he said. “We will.”
The Camaro drifted into the parking lot. For a while Sandy could follow its progress toward the back by the moving tail-lights, and then Buddy doused them. The sound of the motor, burbling through twin glasspack mufflers, came back for a few moments on the wind, and then that sound was gone, too.
Sandy dumped the coke out on the counter by his portable TV and tooted it with a rolled-up dollar bill. Then he got into the Texas Driver. He knew that being discovered drunk on the job would also get him canned, but he didn’t much care. Being drunk was better than being cat-jumpy and always staring around for one of the two grey Airport Security cars.
The wind was blowing toward him, and he could hear too much, he could hear.
A tinkle of breaking glass, muffled laughter, a loud metallic thonk.
More breaking glass.
A pause.
Low voices drifting to him on the cold wind. He was unable to pick up the individual words; they were distorted.
Suddenly there was a perfect fusillade of blows; Sandy winced at the sound. More breaking glass in the dark, and a tinkle of metal falling on the pavement—chrome or something, he supposed. He found himself wishing Buddy had brought more coke. Coke was sort of cheery stuff, and he sure could use some cheering up right about now. It sounded as if some pretty bad stuff was going on down at the far end of that parking lot.
And then a louder voice, urgent and commanding, Buddy’s for sure:
“Do it there!”
A mutter of protest.
Buddy again: “Never mind that! On the dashboard, I said!”
Another mutter.
Buddy: “I don’t give a shit!”
And for some reason this produced a stifle of laughter.
Sweaty now in spite of the knifing cold, Sandy suddenly slid his glass window shut and snapped on the TV. He drank deeply, grimacing at the heavy taste of the mixed fruit juice and cheap wine. He didn’t care for it, but Texas Driver was what they all drank when they weren’t drinking Iron City beer, and what was he supposed to do? Make out he was better than them, or something? That would get him fried, sooner or later. Buddy didn’t like wimps.
He drank, and began to feel a little better or at least a little drunker. When one of the Airport Security cars did pass, he hardly even flinched. The cop raised a hand to Sandy. Sandy raised a hand right back, just as cool as you could want.
About fifteen minutes after it had cruised toward the back of the lot, the blue Camaro reappeared, this time in the exit lane. Buddy sat cool and relaxed behind the wheel, a three-quarters-empty bottle of Driver propped in his crotch. He was smiling, and Sandy noted uneasily how bloodshot and weird his eyes looked. That wasn’t just wine, and it wasn’t just coke, either. Buddy Repperton was no one to fuck with; Cunningham would find that out, if nothing else.
“All taken care of, my good man” Buddy said.
“Good,” Sandy said, and tried a smile. It felt a little sick. He had no feelings about Cunningham one way or another, and he was not a particularly imaginative person, but he could make a good guess about how Cunningham was going to feel when he saw what had come of all his careful work restoring that red and white Plymouth. Still, it was Buddy’s business, not his.
“Good,” he said again.
“Keep your jock on, man,” Richie said, and giggled.
“Sure,” Sandy said. He was glad they were going. Maybe he wouldn’t hang around Vandenberg’s Happy Gas so much after this. Maybe after this he didn’t want to. This was heavy shit. Too heavy, maybe. And maybe he would pick up a couple of night courses, too. He’d have to give this job up, but maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, either—it was a pretty dull fucking job.
Buddy was still looking at him, smiling that hard, gonzo smile, and Sandy took a big drink of Texas Driver. He nearly gagged. For an instant he had an image of puking down into Buddy’s upturned face, and his unease became terror.
“If the cops get in on it,” Buddy said, “you don’t know nothing, you didn’t see nothing. Like you said, you had to go in and take a crap around nine-thirty.”
“Sure, Buddy.”
“We all wore our wittle mittens. We didn’t leave any prints.”
“Sure.”
“Stay cool, Sandy, Buddy said softly.
“Yeah, okay.”
The Camaro began to roll again. Sandy raised the gate with the manual button. The car headed toward the airport exit road at a sedate pace.
Someone called “Arf! Arf!” The sound drifted back to Sandy against the wind.
Troubled, he sat down to watch TV.
Shortly before the rush of customers who had come in on the ten-forty from Cleveland began to arrive, he poured the rest of the Driver out of the window and onto the ground. He didn’t want it anymore.
26
CHRISTINE LAID LOW
Transfusion, transfusion,
Oh I’m never-never-never gonna speed again,
Pass the blood to me, Bud.
The next day Arnie and Leigh rode out to the airport together after school to pick up Christine. They were planning on a trip to Pittsburgh to do some early Christmas shopping, and they were looking forward to doing it together—it seemed somehow terribly adult.
Arnie was in a fine mood on the bus, making up fanciful little vignettes about their fellow passengers and making her laugh in spite of her period, which was usually depressing and almost always painful. The fat lady in the man’s workshoes was a lapsed nun, he said. The kid in the cowboy hat was a hustler. And on and on. She got into the spirit of the thing but was not as good at it as he. It was amazing, the way he had come out of his shell… the way he had bloomed. That was really the only word for it. She felt the smug, pleased satisfaction of a prospector who has suspected the presence of gold by certain signs and has been proved correct. She loved him, and she had been right to love him.
They got off the bus at the terminal stop together and walked across the access road to the parking lot hand in hand.
“This isn’t bad,” Leigh said. It was the first time she had come out with him to pick up Christine. “Twenty-five minutes from school.”
“Yeah, it’s okay,” Arnie said. “It keeps peace in the family, that’s the important thing. I’m telling you, when my mom got home that night and saw Christine in the driveway, she went totally bullshit.”