“Ooooo eee!” Duke celebrated. He’d fired through the louvers. “Perfect head shot, man, fifteen, maybe twenty feet!”
Duke loped out, the Webley still smoking. He picked up the policewoman’s hat and put it on, laughing.
My God, Erik thought.
“Get the stuff,” he said, “and move the cop’s body into the room. I’m moving the car.”
Duke whistled gaily, dragging the body toward the room. “S’shame, though, you know? Wasted a perfectly good set of tits. Could’ve had me a good ol’ time with this girl-fuzz.”
Erik parked the station wagon behind the motel. Then he jogged back around to see what was keeping Duke.
Duke was sitting in the passenger side of the woman’s patrol car. He adjusted the hat on his head and looked up, grinning.
“Come on, buddy. We might as well ride in style, right? I’ll ride shotgun.”
By now Erik had resigned to Duke’s sociopathy. He had no choice. He started the car and tromped the accelerator. Duke wailed.
Luntville was just north. Erik sped south. The cop had probably radioed in her location when she’d spotted the station wagon. When she didn’t answer up, her friends would come looking.
Duke looked like a kid in a candy shop, surveying the car’s interior. Erik’s mind raced. “We’ve probably got five minutes before they’re onto us. When they find the cop you killed, there’ll be a hundred cars after us.” Erik turned off the main road, fishtailing. The further off the main roads they got, the more time they’d have to change cars. He remembered the area well. The back roads were a maze. “We have to ditch this car and get a new one real fast.”
“Why? I like this car,” Duke complained. He tore open a pack of Twinkies. “How come we gotta change cars all the time?”
“Don’t you understand anything? As long as they know what we’re driving, we don’t stand a chance. We need a car that nobody knows we’re in.”
And that prospect worried him. Taking a car meant taking (or killing) the owner. Erik didn’t want any more people dead, but he knew Duke had other ideas in that regard. How can I control an uncontrollable person? he grimly asked himself.
The mobile radio, a plug in Motorola, began jabbering. Then, much more clearly, a woman’s voice broke: “Two zero eight?”
Erik stuck his head out the window. The front fender bore the stenciclass="underline" 208. “That’s us,” he croaked.
“Two zero eight, do you copy?”
Duke gaped at him, cheeks stuffed.
“Two zero eight, acknowledge.”
“Give it a shot,” Erik advised. “We’ve got nothing to lose except our lives, and we’ll probably lose those anyway.”
“Think positive, buddy.” Duke pointed to his own head. “Positive, that’s the way. How do you work this thing?”
“Just pick it up and push the button when you want to talk.”
Duke keyed the mike. “This is two zero eight. Go ahead.”
“Two zero eight, what’s your status?”
“A okay. Everything’s just fine.”
Erik was shaking his head.
The radio fizzed through a pause. “Two zero eight, are you ten eight?”
“That’s a roger. I’m the big ten eight.” He released the button and chuckled. “What the fuck’s ten eight?”
“I don’t know,” Erik said. “What do I look like? Adam 12?”
Duke laughed.
“Two zero eight, do you want a disregard on that possible fifty five?”
“Yeah, sure, gimme a disregard. Why not?”
Another fizzy pause. Then: “Two zero eight, state your ID number.”
Duke looked at Erik. They both shrugged.
“Two zero eight, identify yourself by name and ID.”
“This is bad boy Duke Belluxi, baby!” Duke wailed into the mike. “I am your friendly neighborhood walkin’ and talkin’ schizoaffective paranoid schizophrenic. And sittin’ right by my side is Captain Erik Tharp of the Starship Psychopath. We boldly go where no escaped mental patients have gone before, oooooo doggie!”
“Jesus,” the dispatcher muttered. “Two zero eight, please put the unit’s officer on the line.”
“Oh, you mean that pretty redheaded girl-fuzz? Well, she can’t talk right now on account of she seems to have misplaced her mouth. Oh, and do me a favor, okay? Shag my balls.”
Suddenly, a wave of voices panicked over the transmission. “Thirteen, thirteen! Officer down at Gein’s Motel!” Others shouted in the background. “She’s dead! The motherfuckers killed her!” “Check the back!” “Harley, get the gas gun!” “Holy fucking—” “The car, the motherfuckers took her car!” “Jesus Christ, they blew off her—”
“Head,” Duke finished into the mike.
“This is two one two to dispatch. Officer is shot and killed. No sign of unit two zero eight. Repeat, unit two zero eight is missing.”
Duke made pig noises in the microphone. Then he stuck the mike between his legs and farted. “How about all you pigs out there go fuck each other, and lick my crack too, while you’re at it, just like all your mamas do to me every night. Catch me if you can, piggies! Oink oink oink!”
The dispatcher was yelling over the air: “Ten three! All units ten three! Ten three, ten three, ten three!”
A crystal clear silence filled the void, which seemed anticipatory and vivid. Then: “Duke Belluxi, Erik Tharp, this is Chief Lawrence Mulligan of the Luntville Police Department.” The slight drawl sounded easy, almost chummy. “I want you boys to come to your senses. Give it up. Give us your location.”
“We’re at your mama’s house, Chief. Where’d you think?” Duke said, then made some more pig noises. “Looks like we’re going to have to wait, though. See, there’s a big line going all the way around the house, starting at the bedroom. Course, good poon like your mama’s is always worth waitin’ for, don’t ya think?”
“I want you fellas to know that every available state and local police car in this county is heading your way from every direction. You got a world of hurt bearin’ down on your asses, boys.”
Duke bubbled laughter. “Say, Chief, your wife’s the one with the really big titties who blows every guy in town for free, ain’t she? Think maybe she’d tongue my balls if I asked her nice?”
All this time during Duke’s profane fun, Erik had been fishtailing deeper and deeper into the back roads.
“You’re askin’ for serious trouble, boys,” Mulligan was saying. “You don’t want my men to catch ya on the run. Now be reasonable.”
“Shag my balls, Chief,” Duke answered. “How’s that for reasonable? Say, I heard your daughters do the football team. That true?”
“Listen to me, son. It’s goddamn impossible for you all to get away. Pull that car over right now, give us your location, and give yourselves up. You all have my personal guarantee that you won’t be harmed.”
“I got a better idea, Chief.” Duke chuckled. “You give me your mama’s location, and I’ll give you my personal guarantee that I’ll diddle her poon like your daddy never dreamed.”
Duke then repeated his rendition of pig noises into the microphone.
Erik turned off the radio.
“Say, buddy, you’re whippin’ this car around these turns like a regular Mariano Mandretti.” Duke dug into some more Twinkies, and burped. “And how do you like that no dick chief? Thinks we’re just gonna give up, just like that. Fucker would kill us in less time than it takes me to shake the piss off my pecker.”
Duke had that right, however uneloquently. Most cops down here thought the U.S. Constitution was a ship from the War of 1812. They’d shoot first and ask questions next month.