I've got nothing against you, man."
I couldn't even be bothered to answer him. I shouted into the back, "Throw your purses out! Now!"
My Southern drawl was quite good, I thought. I just hoped I was looking scary enough. The girls passed over their handbags.
By now the driver was trembling, and quiet tears rolled down his cheeks. The girls huddled together.
I looked at the front passenger.
"You."
He looked at me as if he were one of a hundred I could be talking to.
"Yes, you. Give me your money, out this window." It took all of two seconds for him to comply.
It was the driver's turn. He beat his pal's record. I reached in, took the keys, and put them in my pocket. He didn't seem too clever now. I had another look around for lights. All clear.
The pistol was still against the driver's skin. I said quietly into his ear, "I'm going to kill you now."
Everyone else heard it and wanted nothing to do with him.
I said, "Say whatever prayer you need to say, and be quick."
He didn't pray, he begged.
"Please don't kill me, man, please don't."
I looked down and saw that his shorts, made of gray sweatshirt material, were rather darker now. Daddy would not be impressed with the stains on his nice beige leather.
I was quite enjoying it, but knew I had to get going. I stepped back and picked everything off the road. I glanced at Clueless Two. She looked like she'd swallowed a wasp.
"What's bitten you?" I said.
I got in the car, did a one-eighty, and drove off.
Kelly said, "How come you made those people give you their money?" She sounded confused.
"Because we need loads of money, and we're much nicer than they are, so they wanted us to have it."
I looked at her in the rearview mirror. She knew damned well I was lying.
I said, "You want a job?"
"Like what?"
"Count this money."
She opened up the bags and wallets and piled all the bills in her lap.
"At least a million dollars," she said at length.
"Maybe count it once more to check."
Five minutes later I got the more realistic figure of $336.
The clueless girls were wrong. Daddy was a diamond.
We started seeing signs for Florence. That would do me fine.
The town was about sixty miles away, and it was about five-twenty in the morning. It would be getting light by sevenish, and if possible I wanted to be in a town before dawn. I'd dump the Dodge, and we'd have to find some other form of transport. We had to get to Florida if I was to get the help I needed.
About ten miles short, I saw a sign for a tourist information area. I pulled in and took a free map of the town and surrounding area. Kelly was half-awake as we parked. I opened the door and got out. The birds were singing, and I could just make out first light. There was a little nip in the air, but you could tell it was going to be a nice warm day. It felt great to have a stretch. I stank of sweat and had a layer of grease on my skin; my eyes were stinging and no doubt bloodshot and swollen from lack of sleep. The pain in my neck still made me walk as if I had a plank of wood strapped to my back.
The map showed a train station in the town; not necessarily helpful, but it was a start. I got back into the car and started to get the bags and wallets together to dump. All were expensive leather. A couple were even monogrammed. Inside one of them I found coke and a lump of pot in a plastic bag. The spoiled brats had obviously been on spring break, college kids using up all their hormones before the end of the semester. Mom and Dad worked their asses off and provided for these kids and they thought the world owed them a living.
Fuck 'em, I was glad I'd robbed them. I laughed; they were probably still sitting there blaming each other, trying to think of a way of getting piss stains off leather upholstery. There was a good chance they'd be too embarrassed to even report it. I dumped everything in the trash cans.
We drove toward the train station. It looked as if the town center were terminally ill, but big efforts had been made to keep the patient alive; the old historical part had been rejuvenated, but it seemed that every store sold candles, perfumed soap, and potpourri. There was nothing there for real people, no life in it at all.
We got to the station, which could have been any station in any town, mil of the homeless who stay there because it's warm. It reeked of bodies and decay. Drunks were sprawled on benches that nobody in their right mind would go near for fear of getting their head bitten off.
I looked at the departure signs. It seemed we could get to De Land by train, with a bus transfer to Daytona Beach. It was just before six; the train would be arriving at seven.
The ticket office was already open and looked as if it had been modeled on an urban 7-Eleven, wire mesh everywhere, painted white but chipped. I could just about see the large face behind it that was demanding to know where I wanted to go.
An hour later we got on the train, found our seats, and collapsed. Our car was no more than half full. Kelly cuddled into me, dog-tired.
"Nick?"
"What?"
I was busy looking at the other passengers. They all looked like me, frazzled grown-ups looking after kids.
"Where are we going?"
"To see a friend."
"Who's that?" She sounded happy at the idea. Probably she was fed up with my company.
"He lives near the beach. His name is Frankie."
"Are we going on vacation with him?"
"No, Frankie's not that kind of friend."
I decided to keep the conversation going, as she would be asleep in no time at all. The rhythmic sounds and motion of the train would soon send her off.
"Who is your best friend? Is it Melissa?"
"Yes."
"How come she's your best friend?"
"Uh we ride bikes together, and go to each other's houses a lot. We have secrets."
"What kind of secrets do you have?"
"Silly, that would be telling! Who's your best friend?"
That was easy, but I wasn't going to say his name. If we were lifted again, I would hate it if he was mentioned and put in danger. The sun was starting to burn through the windows;
I leaned across her and pulled down the blind.
"My best friend is called ... David." It was about as far away from Euan as I could think of.
"Just like you and Melissa, we tell each other things that no one else knows. In fact, he has a daughter who's just a little bit older than you.
No one else knows about her apart from David and me and now you!"
There was no reply. It seemed she was starting to doze off. I continued anyway, I didn't know why.
"We've known each other since we were seventeen, and we've been friends ever since." I started to stroke her hair. I was going to talk more but found it really hard to tell her. I couldn't put it into words. Euan and I were just there for each other and always had been. That was it, really. I just didn't have the tools to describe it. Frank de Sabatino had been crossed off the Christmas-card list of LCN La Cosa Nostra in Miami and for his own protection had been sent over to the UK as part of the federal witness protection program. I had been one of the team charged with looking after him for the three months he spent in Wales before returning to the US. I remembered Frankie as about five-foot-five and seedy; he had very black, tight, curly hair that looked as if it had been permed in the style of a 1970s pop star.
The FBI had been investigating LCN in South Florida they don't use the word "Mafia" and had discovered that de Sabatino, a thirty-four-year-old computer nerd who worked for one of the major players, had been skimming off hundreds of thousands of dollars from their drug operations. The government agents coerced de Sabatino into gathering evidence for the prosecution. He had no choice if he were arrested, LCN would be told what he'd been up to. LCN members in prison would have done the rest. Pat had had a good relation ship with him during the job, and we'd later joked that maybe that was why he'd got out right afterward. I now knew that Pat had liked to sample the goods a bit too much.