She pulled the door away from me and kicked me in the chest, so I was flung back into the taxi.
“Let’s not make too big a mess,” she said. “The cleaners are already on their way.”
With her side to the now-open door, she pointed her gun toward Charlie in the backseat. And then we heard it.
An engine revving nearby, a rustle of weeds behind us.
Rhonda looked up just as a small, dark car burst out of the vegetation and headed right for us.
Rhonda’s gun arm swiveled.
The onrushing car’s high beams burst on.
She threw up an arm.
The car jumped forward.
There was an explosion near my head. And then, with a blast of hot air on my face, with a jumble of red hair and white limbs, with an aborted cry and the dying scream of torn metal, the car came upon us and beside us and rushed past us.
And just like that, the gun, the open car door, and Rhonda Harris had all disappeared.
67
Well, not quite disappeared. They lay about fifteen yards away, in a jumble of blood and bone and metal, all the elements mercifully indistinct one from the other in the darkness. To the side of the mess was the little car, its motor still running, its lights now washing across the weeds at the far side as it slowly started turning around.
I unbelted and stumbled out of the now-doorless entranceway of the cab. My knees were shaking so hard I lost my balance and fell to the ground, ripping my pants, before I climbed to my feet again. The night smelled of exhaust and cordite and terror, coppery and hard. And something else, too, something vaguely sweet and vaguely familiar. I looked around. The others were now out of the taxi also, looking as dazed and confused as did I. The three stared at me. I shrugged. Slowly, we approached the little car. We approached hesitantly, with undue care, as if it were a wild animal, turning so that it could gather us into its sight and leap ferociously at our throats.
I tried to peer inside the little car, but the headlights were now shining brightly in my eyes, and even with my hand up to shield me from the sharp light, I could see nothing but the dented bumper, the bullet hole in the windshield, and the cracked glazing over the twin beams that were coming ever closer.
Then the car stopped, the door opened. Out climbed a silhouette, small, dainty. It stepped forward into the light.
Lavender Hill.
“Toodle-oo, Victor. Isn’t it a beautiful night? Reminds me of the bayou, not that I am a habitué of the bayou, mind you, I have all my teeth, and I have never had leech stew, but this little stretch of New Jersey does have that unpredictable scent of violence about it, doesn’t it?”
“Lav, dude” was all I could muster.
“Yes, well, always one with the quip, aren’t you, Victor? You must tell me all about your trip west. Did you see any stars? Alan Ladd, now, that was a star. Is he still alive, do you know?”
“What are you doing here, Lav?”
“You told me you were bringing your client home so he could sell me the painting. I thought I better make sure you all arrived safely. Is that him there?”
“Charlie Kalakos,” I said, “let me introduce you to Lavender Hill.”
“Yo,” said Charlie. “Thanks for-”
“Saving your life? Oh, it was nothing.” He turned to look at the remains of Rhonda Harris. “Well, maybe not nothing.”
“But how did you get here?” I said. “How did you follow me, with all the precautions I took?”
“I’m sure your precautions were stunning in their design, though, of course, seeing that you ended with a gun in your face, not quite as effective as you might have hoped. But no, I didn’t follow you, dear Victor.”
“Then how?”
“I followed her,” he said, indicating the mass of bone and blood on the ground. “From the start I sensed she was trouble. I know the type. I am the type. Didn’t I tell you she was a killer?”
“I thought you were speaking metaphorically.”
“I’m a very literal person, Victor. You should know that by now. I followed her to this spot. I realized she was setting up a rendezvous. I slipped my car into a clearing in the woods and waited. Just me, my car, and my long-distance microphone. Quite the clever gadget, but one I would never use out in the open. The headphones make me look like Princess Leia.”
“So you heard about the girl,” I said.
“Yes, I heard. Too sad for words, actually, so why even try to speak of it?” He glanced at his watch. “But the woman with the gun mentioned something about cleaners coming. I assume she means Charles’s friends from the Warrick gang, hurrying this way as we speak to dispose of your bodies. So maybe we should cut our little gabfest short. Charles, are you ready now to sell?”
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry, and I think I owe you, what with you saving our lives and all, but I’m not going to sell it. I just want to give it back.”
“Are you sure? I’ve already made arrangements to dispose of the item without its going to your old friend.”
“I don’t want nothing good to come from what happened, ’cause it’ll only turn out bad, you know what I mean?”
“Not really, no. And what about you, Joseph? Are you willing to let such a payday disappear after all these years?”
“Good riddance, I say,” said Joey.
“Ah, the disappointment, but it seems there is little I can do. A wave of cheap sentimentality has seemed to overcome you both and I wouldn’t dream of crashing the party, though I’m quite shocked that you, Victor, have not endeavored to change their minds. But it would have been a pretty thing to gaze at before I delivered it on, don’t you think? All right, then, take my advice, all of you, and flee, madly. I too need rush off. There is a Fabergé egg available in a trailer park in Toledo. Imagine that. Toledo. The provenance is not quite clear, but with a Fabergé egg it never is, don’t you know. I mean, the last true owner was killed by Lenin in a pit. After that, it’s open season, don’t you think? Ciao, friends.”
We watched as he climbed back into his dented car, flicked his lights as if in farewell, and pulled around the taxi, past the picnic table and the collapsing shed, and onto the narrow two-lane road, heading west, toward Ohio, I assumed. He’d swept into my life, threatened it, saved it, swept out of it again. Funny the kind of people you meet in this business. I’d almost miss him.
“We have to get out of here,” I said.
“Back in the cab,” said Joey.
“There’s no door,” I said.
“I can drive without a door.”
“Maybe you can,” I said, “but how far we’d get before the cops stop us is another thing entirely. And then she probably told the cleaners what kind of car we had. If we pass them on the road, they’ll figure it out and spin around after us.”
“But it’s Hookie’s car. I can’t just leave it here.”
“We’ll retrieve it later, patch it up, I promise.”
“It’s a piece of crap anyway,” he said.
“Then how do we get out of here?” said Monica.
“We’ll take her car,” I said, gesturing toward the pulpy mass on the ground. “Let’s find her bag.”
“Is this a time to be rummaging for spare change?” said Charlie.
“We need the keys,” I said. “And her phone. Joey, check her car and see if the keys are there. The rest of us will comb the area, the bag should be somewhere around.”
The gun was off to the side. I picked it up carefully by the trigger guard and placed if in a jacket pocket. Joey came back, reporting that the car was locked, and we continued our search, moving slowly toward the heap of metal and flesh.
“She had nice hair,” said Monica, as we passed the corpse. “I always wanted red hair.”
Beyond the body, beyond the door, almost to the edge of the gravel lot, where the woods had already encroached, we found the bag. Phone, wallet, but no keys.
“They must have spun out in the crash, flying somewhere into the woods,” I said. It could take us another hour to find them.
“I could just pick the lock of her car,” said Charlie.
“Don’t they have electronic gizmos?”
“I can get around them,” said Joey.
I turned to stare at them.
“Hey, you were the man with the plan,” said Joey. “We was following you.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said.
A minute and a half later, we were in Rhonda’s rental car, the engine humming, Joey Pride pulling us out of the lot.
“Go east,” I said.
“Back to the shore?”
“Back to the parkway and then the Atlantic City Expressway,” I said. “It might take a little longer, but I don’t want to pass any goons on this little road on our way back to Philly.”
He did as I said, and then I made my calls.