They went on. She gave a sudden start.
“What is it?” Brock demanded.
“He... he made me watch out the back window. And he started going around a lot of turns. He acted frightened. More than at any other time. He wouldn’t tell me what he was afraid of. Then we parked on a dark street for a while, with the lights out. I could never remember all those turns.”
“You’re doing wonderfully, Beth.”
“But I don’t know what happened next.”
He pulled into a narrow street and parked. He said, “Okay, think it over.”
She leaned back and closed her eyes. Cluttered impressions. Senseless things.
“Talk while you’re thinking, Beth. Say it out loud.”
“I had to walk. It was dark and icy. He gave me something, and I was carrying it. There was noise, and a big place and... I don’t know.”
“Positive?”
“Brock... I can’t...”
“So we try a hunch.” He started the car up and drove swiftly through the back streets, turning so that he entered the downtown section beyond the river, in the area of missions and empty buildings with broken windows. He drove across the overhead and parked by the gloomy railroad station.
He gave her the bag and told her to walk in alone, that he would follow.
She walked, feeling far away from all the world. Her heels echoed sharply on the tile floor of the station.
She stopped and turned and waited for Brock. “I came in the other door.”
“What were you carrying?”
“String, cutting my hand through the glove. A package. He was waiting a long way off. Two blocks. Through dark streets. I had to do just what he said and then go back to him.”
He walked her over to the other door, told her to walk on into the station. She turned directly toward the ticket windows. She stopped, uncertain of what to do.
“You bought a ticket, then.”
“I must have.”
“And checked through the package on the ticket. What happened to the baggage check?”
“He gave me an envelope. I put the baggage check in the envelope and mailed it in that wall box over there.”
“Where was the ticket to?”
“I don’t know.”
He asked the ticket sellers. He went to the baggage room. No one remembered her.
She stood, drugged by fatigue and by the liquor. He gave her a smile and took the small suitcase from her and said, “Well, this is a dead end. What you need is sleep. We’ll start here tomorrow night, and see if we can pry it open a little further. You must have looked at the address on the envelope. And you’ll be able, sooner or later, to remember where you bought the ticket to. Come on, honey. I’ll take you home.”
“I won’t ever remember.”
“Yes, you will. We’ve started the process now. It will come along by itself.”
They walked out of the station. The rain had dwindled to something more mist than rain. The air had a washed smell. They walked toward the car.
She slowed her pace, stopped, stood frowning. “What is it?” he asked.
“I think I remember the ticket now. I tore it up in little pieces as I walked back to the car. He told me to do that.”
“The rest of it, all of it, will come back the same way, Beth. A little at a time. We’ve started the process. That’s what counts.”
She yawned violently. “I’ve never been so tired. Ever.”
They reached the car. He set the small suitcase down on the damp pavement, bent over to fit the key in the lock. She stood aside, barely able to keep her eyes open. The wet empty sidewalks were black-shiny, mirroring the haloed street lamps. Far away a stop light clicked from red to green, controlling the nonexistent traffic with idiotic efficiency. She caught a bit of movement from the corner of her eye, heard a muted scrape of leather on wet pavement, and some ancient reflex warned her, brought her rigid out of the lethargy of weariness.
She tried to turn toward the movement, toward the shadow. It moved faster, sliding behind her before she could see it. And her wrist was caught by a coldness that seemed part of the night. It was twisted quickly and brutally up and back.
Brock turned with an exclamation. The station lights, half a block away, made a thin and wicked high light on the metal that pointed at him. For a moment both Brock and the smallish man, with collar high, hatbrim down, were caught there in time. Brock would die now, and in her fear for him she forgot pain, tried to move toward him.
The one with the gun took a half step back, hooked a cautious foot forward, and pulled the small suitcase toward him. The metal caps on its corners rasped on the sidewalk.
A taxi, dome light glowing, came down the street. The shadow behind Beth turned her a bit toward the cab. The man facing Brock pulled the gun back a bit, his elbow tight against the dark coat. The taxi slowed, then leaped ahead as the driver stepped hard on the gas.
“Pick it up,” the shadow whispered.
The man with the gun bent his knees, groping for the suitcase handle, his eyes never moving from Brock. “Very cute, doc,” the man with the gun said softly. “Checked it, did he? Cute as bugs.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brock said. Beth sensed Brock was trying to keep his voice casual.
“Just get it done,” the shadow behind her whispered.
She tried to cry out, tried to say a hundred things, but there was no time. The metal glint flickered and came up in a short, brutal arc. The viciousness of it sickened her. Brock tried to block it, but the metal made a crisp sound against the angle of his jaw. As Brock sagged against the car, the man facing him kicked him in the stomach.
The man who held her spun her around to face him. As she staggered, off balance, he followed her. His small, hard palm ripped back and forth across her face, across her mouth, dazing and bewildering her, exploding flashes of light across the darkness. She fell to her knees and was picked up by the front of the raincoat, dimly aware that it had ripped and that Marian would be furious. The flat-handed blows continued, and now they came to her through a numbness, without pain. She lay with her cheek against wet cement, knowing only that she was being left alone. Someone whispered, “Okay.” And then she was on hands and knees, sobbing silently and with an odd shame through broken lips, hearing the neat cadence of their heel taps as the two men walked away into the night. She went over to Brock on her hands and knees. His jaw sagged at a crazy angle. There was blood at the corner of his mouth. The keys were in the car door. She unlocked the door, climbed into the car, and leaned on the horn ring. The hard, continuous blasting of the horn began to fill the night. She was in a half faint, and only barely aware when someone moved her, shifted her away from the horn ring.
They let her see Brock the next afternoon. He was sitting up in bed, his jaw heavily bandaged, his teeth wired to hold the jaw in place. He stared at her and said, his words distorted by the wire, “Aren’t we the pretty pair? Did you run into a swinging door, Beth?”
“Does — it hurt?”
“It isn’t exactly a caress, but I’m not going to break into tears. We got even with them, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m glad I put a little weight in that suitcase to make it more convincing to you. Can’t you imagine their faces, or Sal Lorrio’s, when they brought it in proudly, opened it up, found a mess of newspapers and magazines? By the way, smart work on that horn business. Tom told me about it.”
“I’m so sorry this happened, Brock.”
“Don’t be. A good lesson for me. I was a sap to let them take me so easily.” She sat on the chair by the side of his bed. She didn’t look at him. She said, “It came back, like you told me it would. All of it. Part of it is horrible. That car gaining on us, and Roger cursing, and the way it cut in on us. At the last minute, he shoved me down onto the floor. Then the whole world exploded.”