And she gave my hand a little squeeze. “I’m sorry I’m so corny,” she said.
And that’s when it happened. I started to turn around in my seat and felt something fall out of my pocket and hit the floor, going thunk. I didn’t have to wonder what it was.
Before I could reach it, she bent over, her long blond hair silver in the moonlight, and got it for me.
She looked at it in her hand and said, “Why would you carry a gun?”
“Long story.”
She looked as if she wanted to take the gun and throw it out the window. She shook her head. “You’re going to do something with this, aren’t you?”
I sighed and reached over and took the gun from her. “I’d like to try and catch a little nap if you don’t mind.”
“But—”
And I promptly turned over so that three-fourths of my body was pressed against the chill wall of the bus. I pretended to go to sleep, resting there and smelling diesel fuel and feeling the vibration of the motor.
The bus roared on into the night. It wouldn’t be long before I’d be seeing Dawn and Kenny again. I touched the .38 in my pocket. No, not long at all.
If you’ve taken many Greyhounds, then you know about layovers. You spend an hour-and-a-half gulping down greasy food and going into the bathroom in a john that reeks like a city dump on a hot day and staring at people in the waiting area who seem to be deformed in every way imaginable. Or that’s how they look at 2:26 A.M., anyway.
This layover was going to be different. At least for me. I had plans.
As the bus pulled into a small brick depot that looked as if it had been built back during the Depression, Polly said, “You’re going to do it here, aren’t you?”
“Do what?”
“Shoot somebody.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I’ve just got a feeling is all. My mom always says I have ESP.”
She started to say something else, but then the driver lifted the microphone and gave us his spiel about how the layover would be a full hour and how there was good food to be had in the restaurant and how he’d enjoyed serving us. There’d be a new driver for the next six hours of our journey, he said.
There weren’t many lights on in the depot. Passengers stood outside for a while stretching and letting the cold air wake them up.
I followed Polly off the bus and immediately started walking away. An hour wasn’t a long time.
Before I got two steps, she snagged my arm. “I was hoping we could be friends. You know, I mean, we’re a lot alike.” In the shadowy light of the depot, she looked younger than ever. Young and well scrubbed and sad. “I don’t want you to get into trouble. Whatever it is, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. It won’t be worth it. Honest.”
“Take care of yourself,” I said, and leaned over and kissed her.
She grabbed me again and pulled me close and said, “I got in a little trouble once myself. It’s no fun. Believe me.”
I touched her cheek gently and then I set off, walking quickly into the darkness.
Armstrong was a pretty typical midwestern town, four blocks of retail area, fading brick grade school and junior high, a small public library with a white stone edifice, a courthouse, a Chevrolet dealership, and many blocks of small white frame houses that all looked pretty much the same in the early morning gloom. You could see frost rimed on the windows and lonely gray smoke twisting up from the chimneys. As I walked, my heels crunched ice. Faint streetlight threw everything into deep shadow. My breath was silver.
A dog joined me for a few blocks and then fell away. Then I spotted a police cruiser moving slowly down the block. I jumped behind a huge oak tree, flattening myself against the rough bark so the cops couldn’t see me. They drove right on past, not even glancing in my direction.
The address I wanted was a ranch house that sprawled over the west end of a cul-de-sac. A sweet little red BMW was parked in front of the two-stall garage and a huge satellite-dish antenna was discreetly hidden behind some fir trees. No lights shone anywhere.
I went around back and worked on the door. It didn’t take me long to figure out that Kenny had gotten himself one of those infrared security devices. I tugged on my gloves, cut a fist-sized hole in the back-door window, reached in, and unlocked the deadbolt, and then pushed the door open. I could see one of the small round infrared sensors pointing down from the ceiling. Most fool burglars wouldn’t even think to look for it and they’d pass right through the beam and the alarm would go off instantly.
I got down on my haunches and half crawled until I was well past the eye of the infrared. No alarm had sounded. I went up three steps and into the house.
The dark kitchen smelled of spices, paprika and cinnamon and thyme. Dawn had always been a good and careful cook.
The rest of the house was about what I’d expected. Nice but not expensive furnishing, lots of records and videotapes, and even a small bumper-pool table in a spare room that doubled as a den. Nice, sure, but nothing that would attract attention. Nothing that would appear to have been financed by six hundred thousand dollars in bank robbery money.
And then the lights came on.
At first I didn’t recognize the woman. She stood at the head of a dark narrow hallway wearing a loose cotton robe designed to conceal her weight.
The flowing dark hair is what misled me. Dawn had always been a blonde. But dye and a gain of maybe fifteen pounds had changed her appearance considerably. And so had time. It hadn’t been a friend to her.
She said, “I knew you’d show up someday, Chet.”
“Where’s Kenny?”
“You want some coffee?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
She smiled her slow, shy smile. “You didn’t answer mine, either.”
She led us into the kitchen where a pot of black stuff stayed warm in a Mr. Coffee. She poured two cups and handed me one of them.
“You came here to kill us, didn’t you?” she said.
“You were my wife. And we were supposed to split everything three ways. But Kenny got everything — you and all the money. And I did six years in prison.”
“You could have turned us in.”
I shook my head. “I have my own way of settling things.”
She stared at me. “You look great, Chet. Prison must have agreed with you.”
“I just kept thinking of this night. Waiting.”
Her mouth tightened and for the first time her blue eyes showed traces of fear. Softly, she said, “Why don’t we go in the living room and talk about it.”
I glanced at my wrist watch. “I want to see Kenny.”
“You will. Come on now.”
So I followed her into the living room. I had a lot ahead of me. I wanted to kill them and then get back on the bus. While I’d be eating up the miles on a Greyhound, the local cops would be looking for a local killer. If only my gun hadn’t dropped out and Polly seen it. But I’d have to worry about that later.
We sat on the couch. I started to say something but then she took my cup from me and set it on the glass table and came into my arms.
She opened her mouth and kissed me dramatically.
But good sense overtook me. I held her away and said, “So while we’re making out, Kenny walks in and shoots me. Is that it?”
“Don’t worry about Kenny. Believe me.”
And then we were kissing again. I was embracing ghosts, ancient words whispered in the backseats of cars when we were in high school, tender promises made just before I left for Nam. Loving this woman had always been punishment because you could never believe her, never trust her, but I’d loved her anyway.
I’d just started to pull away when I heard the floor creak behind me and I saw Kenny. Even given how much I hated him — and how many long nights I’d lain on my prison bunk dreaming of vengeance — I had to feel embarrassed. If Kenny had been his old self, I would have relished the moment. But Kenny was different now. He was in a wheelchair and his entire body was twisted and crippled up like a cerebral palsy victim. A small plaid blanket was thrown across his legs.