Roy had to laugh at that. "It's okay," he said, "she didn't hurt me."
"I am glad," the lady said. "And very much I thank you-" She took the purse from him as they got up, glanced into it, and saw what he had been careful to put into it while shielding it with his body from any possible onlooker. "Yes, everything is there, I must get this clasp fixed again, twice I have had that done and it is no better-"
They were both standing up again now, and Roy brushed himself off a little, and was rather surprised when the lady suddenly put her arm through his. "You are very kind to help me," she said, "and my car, it is right here, can I drop you?"
He raised his eyebrows and couldn't help chuckling a little at the turn of phrase. "Uh," he said, not knowing quite how to react to one of his "drops" actually being interested in him after the job was done.
"Also now there will be a message to send back," she said, "I can this way have a minute to give it to you? Yes?" She smiled at him.
Maybe there are some human beings out here after all… "Uh, thanks," Roy said, "that's nice of you."
"This corner," she said, and while the dogs pulled and bounced at the ends of their leashes in front of them, together they walked to the end of the arcade and out of the square, turning down another of the little side streets that fed into it. About half a block down a long black car was waiting, a VW-Mercedes, and as they approached, a man in a chauffeur's dark suit got out of the driver's seat and opened the back door for them.
Without a second's hesitation the collies jumped into the backseat, and Roy smiled slightly at the sight of it as he got in after them. There was shed hair all over-this lady's chauffeur ought to be smacked for letting the car go out this way. As she slipped in behind Roy, the chauffeur closed the door behind her and got into the driver's seat again. "Madame?"
"The parking garage," she said. "He will be meeting us there, he will have the article ready. Ah, mechants, a bas. R
The dogs, however, seemed to pay no attention to anything their mistress said to them, and kept trying to jump all over everything, so Roy caught them by their leashes again and held them still, while the lady went into her purse again and came up with a pad and a pen. "They are wicked," the lady said as she started to write, "they are very spoiled, they have an obedience course that cost a thousands francs, but do they become obedient, les nullos, mais non… "
She chatted inconsequentially to Roy for a few minutes more while writing, with occasional pauses to scrutinize what she had written. Roy resisted the temptation to spend too much time looking at where the car was going. Sometimes it was better not to notice such things. He spent that short time looking at the woman, and wondering how he had ever thought her face hard. It lit up delightfully when she laughed, which was often, especially when she talked about her dogs. Roy wondered briefly what it might be like to spend time around such a woman, maybe even to get her to smile at you the way she smiled at the collies…
The car turned into a driveway, and its front dipped downward. A moment later it was dark, and the lady smiled at him, just once directly, ripped the top leaf off the pad she had been writing on, and put the pad and pen away. "Alors," she said as the car came to a stop. "So now we are here."
The chauffeur got out and came around the car to open the door for the lady: She stepped out. Roy got out after her. The parking garage was like any other-harsh fluorescent lights, ribbed antisqueal concrete on the floor under his feet as Roy straightened up, after getting out of the car, and looked around him. What made it unlike Roy's usual experience with parking garages was that the chauffeur standing there had now produced a small but deadly-looking sonic, and was pointing it at him.
The man didn't speak, just gestured with the sonic at Roy, showing him the way he wanted Roy to move. Roy had seen this kind of thing before, and didn't panic. Some of his runner's clients were jumpy people, folks who were important either in the social or business communities, or more shadowy groupings about which Roy had his suspicions, and kept them to himself-criminal, intelligence, who knew what they were, some of them? His business was to deliver as promised, and keep his mouth shut.
There was a brief exchange between the lady and the chauffeur in French, none of which Roy followed, but none of it sounded particularly hostile. The collies were bounding out of the car again, and the lady caught them by their leashes and kept them from running off. "Over this way," she said. "Here is your message. Jacques? Ah, Jacques, void le marmaille disponable… fe pouvre faiblard."
Roy turned and found himself looking at a beige VW- Mercedes-the kind they used here a lot for taxis-with its trunk open, and standing near it, the biggest man he thought he had ever seen, easily seven feet tall, and not skinny, either, but a veritable giant with cropped hair, a dark face, a dark coat. Roy walked over to the car, not much liking the way this was going. If this guy's the driver, Roy thought, he must get pretty cramped behind the wheel..
Whether he was the driver or not, Roy never found out, for the next thing he knew, the man had grabbed him by the shoulders and whirled him around. The chauffeur came from behind, grabbed Roy's wrists, and before he even had a chance to struggle, pulled them around behind him, crossed, and snugged a pair of readybinders tight around them. The lady stepped forward and slipped the note she had written into Roy's breast pocket, inside his winter jacket. For just a moment while she was close, he got a whiff of her perfume, a fragrance dark and sweet. And the next moment, struggling-though it was too late now-Roy was lifted up into the air without an effort by that big man and folded ungently down into the Mercedes's trunk… and the lid of the trunk closed above him, leaving him in complete darkness.
It was hard to know how long the ride lasted. Roy lay there gulping again and again, ineffectively, his mouth dry with fear as the engine started and the car started to move. He tried to keep his wits about him, but it was hard. No matter what anyone said, no matter how he tried to convince himself otherwise, Roy knew that no one who stuffed you into the trunk of a car and drove off was very likely to want you to tell anybody about it afterward.
For what must have been an hour or so, in ever- escalating terror, Roy could do nothing but lie there, unable to move much, and afraid to try to thump or bang inside the trunk to attract attention, for fear that it should make whatever bad thing was about to happen, happen even faster. The blackness was full of the smell of tire irons and old gasoline spills and the cheap carpet they put inside car trunks, and lying there with his face against the harsh carpet, Roy tried to do a hundred things. He tried to think of a way out, to make a plan, even tried to pray and found that he couldn't even do that. The fear was just too great. And it was almost a relief when finally the car stopped, and he heard the driver's side door open, and close, and after a moment, the door of the trunk opened. Now at last it's over…
He looked up into the darkness, surprised. Somehow he had expected there would be daylight. What light there was was very faint, so that Roy saw only the faintest glint of it, bluish, off the blued-metal muzzle of what the driver held: and all relief and anger fled together in one last huge wash of fear. Suddenly everything was laid out plain before him, a long road that ended here and now, this second. Roy wished with all his heart that yesterday, or one of the days before, when there had still seemed to be endless tomorrows ahead, he had called his mother and just told her he was alive, and not to worry, so that if nothing else, she could have stopped wondering what had happened to him.