So I finished my coconut cream pie and iced tea, and paid the check, and went back to my Maverick and started it up and sat waiting. Within minutes, Leon in his green hat and Charlie in his red hat returned to the Eldorado. Charlie again drove; maybe it was his wheels.
I let them leave the lot and take their ramp before I picked up the chase, if you can call it that. I was praying that that chicken, which everybody in the truck stop was gobbling down like junkies jamming heroin, was as greasy as it had looked and smelled going by on waitress trays. That might mean a bathroom break would come our way, and with just a little luck, that would also mean a state-run rest stop, not a restaurant or gas station.
Since I hadn’t seen either of them go off to the can, that meant those guys had the Sambo’s breakfast in their guts mingling with that greasy chicken, and if that combination didn’t explode into flying shit sooner or later, I didn’t know my chemistry.
And less than forty-five minutes later, the Eldorado pulled into a little rest stop right off the Interstate.
So did I.
The brick building was small, a glorified shed. Through its smoky glass front doors glowed vending machines. A car and two open spaces were between the Eldorado and where I sat in the Maverick. I watched the now hatless Leon rush in, holding his belly. Casually I got out of the Ford and walked into the little rest stop building. I had been able to glimpse a disgusted Charlie sitting at the wheel of the parked Eldorado, beating the heel of his hand against the steering wheel, possibly in tune to something on his radio. The engine was going.
Inside, the vending machines and a bulletin board that was mostly a big map of Illinois were in between the doors marked MEN at left and WOMEN at right. Next to the WOMEN’S door, just past the bulletin board, was another door that said PRIVATE.
I tried that door; it was locked. Over in one corner was an abandoned mop and pail, and a yellow plastic sign, an inverted V that said, CLOSED FOR CLEANING. This sign was up against the
brick wall at my far right, just shoved there when a lazy employee took off work. This theory was validated by a notice on the bulletin board above the map: NO ATTENDANT IN ATTENDANCE 10 PM-6 AM.
That seemed awkward to me: “ATTENDANT”/“ATTENDANCE.” Maybe I was hanging around the Writers’ Workshop too much. Anyway, it was nice news, knowing I didn’t have to deal with some poor janitor.
A guy came out of the MEN’S, a pasty-faced middle-aged character in a rumpled blue suit and no tie, probably a salesman. I had my hand on the restroom door, half-open, taking my time going in, watching the blue suit go out and cross to that other car parked between mine and the Eldorado.
Good.
I went in.
Man, it smelled like shit in there. Okay, that’s no surprise, but the chicken clearly wasn’t sitting well with Leon, who was in one of two stalls making a lot of noise, some of it from his mouth. I waited for him. Pee-yew, I thought.
I took a position at the electric hand drier, which I turned on, initiating its electronic wheeze, just as he finally flushed. My back was to him, so he couldn’t see I was wearing black Isotoner gloves and that the nine millimeter was in my right hand. I was hoping he had some sense of hygiene, because this would be easier if he did.
And, bless him, Leon went to a sink and began to wash up. “Man!” he said, and smiled over at me, flashing two gold teeth under the thickness of mustache. “I ain’t gettin’ any younger.”
I turned and showed him the nine millimeter and said, “You might not be, at that.”
He frowned; I’ve never seen more wrinkles in a face that young. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.
“Are you shitting me, white boy?”
“No. You’ve done enough shitting for both of us. This is a straight robbery. Behave yourself and we’ll be fine.”
“You got your fuckin’ nerve — ”
I was in the corner between the sinks and the drier, good positioning in case Charlie got impatient or curious or something and came in looking for Leon.
“Very slowly,” I said, “take off that coat. I can see there’s something heavy in the right pocket, and since it’s probably a gun, I’d encourage you to go nowhere near it.”
“Fuck you!”
But he did it. He unbuttoned the jacket and folded it in half and laid it carefully across the sink, not wanting it to go onto the bathroom floor. Couldn’t blame him.
“Now carefully empty your pockets onto that jacket.”
He did. He had various stuff, including a fat diamond money clip, but what attracted my attention was the straight razor.
“Okay. Now get into that stall. Make it the one you used.”
That was the closer of the two.
I didn’t have to ask him to put his hands up. As my gun and I moved forward, he backed up toward the stall, and edged in, his eyes moving fast. He was thinking. He was planning.
“You wait five minutes,” I said, “before you come out. I’m going to leave you your watch. You exit any sooner, and you’re a dead man.”
Something in his eyes relaxed.
“No problem,” he said. “Just take my money and split. Everybody got to make a living.”
“I like your new attitude. Stay with that.”
He was in the stall now.
“Turn around,” I told him.
“Don’t do that, man. Don’t knock me out! You don’t need to do that shit.”
“I won’t. Turn around.”
With a sigh of defeat and a disgusted sneer, he did.
“You can put your hands down,” I said.
He did, and that relaxed him.
When I cut his throat with the razor, the arterial spray got on the wall and maybe a little on him, but not a drop on me. I hate razors and knives, but they do have their uses, if you take a little care.
I arranged him on the floor so that he knelt over the bowl, where he did the rest of his bleeding into the water. That gave him the look of a guy throwing up, though the scarlet Rorschach test dripping on the wall was a dead giveaway.
I shut him in there.
The razor I threw in the sink. I wouldn’t be needing it. His leather coat I stuffed in the trash receptacle. Finally I glanced at myself in the mirror, checking for blood spatter I may have missed: nothing. My horrific greased-back hair was still in place.
In the outer area of the rest stop, through those smoky glass doors, I could see that no other cars had pulled in. I went over and grabbed that yellow plastic V saying CLOSED FOR CLEANING and placed it out in front of the MEN’S, but not blocking the path.
Quickly I went out to the Eldorado and knocked on the driver’s side window.
Charlie’s mustached face glowered at me; he didn’t have his red hat on now, and his head was shaved. Behind his window, he said, “What the fuck?”
I made a “roll the window down” motion, and he powered down the glass and said, “Do I know you?”
Hope not.
“Listen, your friend is in the restroom and he’s very sick. He asked me to come and get you.”
“Aw, shit, what is it now?”
That was to himself, or to the absent Leon; but I answered, anyway. “I don’t know, but he’s puking his head off. He said he was throwing up blood!”
Now some alarm came into Charlie’s face, and I stood back as he shut off the Caddy engine and shoved the keys in his pocket and threw open the door and rushed into the rest stop and on into the bathroom, past the yellow inverted-V CLOSED floor sign, with me on his heels.
He opened the stall door and said, “Charlie, what the fuck?”
I shoved the nine millimeter against the small of his back, right up against the leather of his coat, which muffled the blast, not as good as a silencer, but not bad under the circumstances. His spine must have been severed, because he dropped like a bag of laundry on top of the kneeling Leon. Just to make sure, I put one through his head, and red and white and gray and green splatter daubed the porcelain and steel fixtures, glistening and shimmering like spilled liquid mercury.