Somebody else could pull into the rest stop any time, and I had no desire to rack up collateral damage. So I worked fast, searching Charlie’s coat pockets, coming up with a big shiny. 357 magnum and the Caddy keys. In hopes of robbery being the initial motive the local cops came up with (eventually the mob connection would surface), I performed the distasteful task of checking Charlie’s pants pockets, too. And, listen, it had already smelled bad in there, thanks to Leon’s chicken attack. With Charlie vacating in his trousers after I blew his spine apart, this was turning into a real hellhole.
But Charlie had his own fat money clip, and between Charlie’s and Leon’s cash, I gave it a quick count of three thousand and change. Not a bad perk, and the diamonds on Leon’s clip were real. I left the razor behind, still down in the sink. Not my style.
I did stay long enough to clean up one mess: I ran some water and got that Brylcreem out of my hair, then stuck my head under the electric hand drier for a few seconds. When I got that girl out of the trunk, I didn’t want to look like a total fucking nerd.
NINE
When I opened the Caddy trunk, its light clicked on and the girl gazed up at me with those big brown eyes, and a wide range of human emotion-fear, surprise, relief, hope, confusion-flashed one at a time through them, each punctuated by a blink. Under the duct tape gag, she made an unnnngggh that, while not as impressive as what her eyes had done, was fairly communicative at that.
“No questions,” I said, as I peeled off the tape. “We have to get out of here, right now.”
She complied as I helped her up and out of the compartment. That those long lovely legs had been somehow compressed into that space seemed as impossible as the old one-thousand clowns and one car gag. Her white leather coat with the white fur collar and a green pants suit with ruffle-neck blouse looked remarkably fresh, but her hair was every which way. The innocuous brick structure of the rest stop was our backdrop, nothing to hint at the horrors within the men’s room. She was stiff and I had to walk her over to the Maverick as gently as if this tall young woman were a little old lady. I guided her into the front seat passenger side, and came around and got in behind the wheel.
Luck was kind: nobody had pulled in here off I-80 to take a break or a dump or piss or any combination thereof in the vital seven minutes or so it had all taken. I had passed a larger rest stop perhaps twenty miles back where many trucks were parked, their drivers snoozing, but this stop was too small to accommodate more than a handful of semis, and we didn’t have even one at the moment. Nice to catch a break.
I had to keep going east, needing an exit that would allow me to get off and come around to head back west to Iowa City, although I wasn’t sure, frankly, if returning was such a good idea. Of course, I wasn’t sure of much at all, right now.
The heat was going in the car, just at a comfortable warm setting, but Annette was shivering, even though she was bundled in that lined leather coat with its fur at the neck, long brown hair spilled over her shoulders. She had her seat belt on, but was hugging the door, leaning in on herself as if trying to assume a fetal position while sitting down.
“You want more heat?” I asked.
She shook her head. Her fists clenched each side of her coat, holding it to her by the lapels as if she were freezing, but she shook her head. That shivering didn’t have much to do with the cold, I didn’t think.
“I’m going to turn around as soon as I can,” I said. “I’ll head us back.”
She nodded.
“Did they hurt you?”
She shook her head.
I just drove for a while. Maybe ten miles later I came to an exit, used it and then we were going west again. I still had the radio on, that easy listening station, but down so low you could barely make Dino out doing “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime.”
After a while, I glanced over at her and she wasn’t shivering any more. Her askew hair nonetheless framed in a striking fashion the olive oval that held her beautiful features. She looked more relaxed, even a little sleepy.
I said, “I was coming out of the restaurant when I saw those two grab you.”
She turned her head and gazed at me, almost as if noticing I was there. “What happened to them?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. This was the daughter of one of the top mob bosses in Chicago, so the notion of killing shouldn’t shock her; but then she’d just spent an hour or so stuffed into a car trunk, waiting to be raped and killed herself, so I thought I should err on the gentle side.
“I took care of them.”
Her eyes tightened.
I returned my gaze to the road and the moonlit highway and the surrounding snow-patched landscape.
She asked, “Who are you?”
“I’m Jack, remember?” I glanced at her. “Are you okay? Did you take a blow to the head or something? Don’t you recognize me?”
“Who are you really?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You work for my father, don’t you?”
I didn’t say anything.
“What happened to those men? Did you…kill them?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Did you, Jack?”
“…Yes.”
She swivelled her gaze toward the road. “Good.”
I was thinking fast, or anyway trying to. This had all been on the fly, and there’d been no time to waste cooking up a story for the girl, if I somehow managed to rescue her. Now that I’d pulled off that unlikelihood, I had no option but to improvise.
“I do work for your father,” I said, “but I’m not one of his…whatever you call it.”
“Soldiers?”
“Yeah. I’m not a mob guy.”
“What are you, Jack?”
“I’m a PI out of Des Moines. I mostly do divorce work.”
“Aren’t you a little young for that?”
“I’m not the boss. I’m just an employee of the agency.”
She was studying me. “Just an employee, for some private eye agency in Des Moines. Not a soldier, for my father back in Chicago.”
“That’s right.”
“But you killed those two? Those big black fucking sons of fucking bitches?”
“I, uh…I was in Vietnam. Thought I mentioned that.”
“Oh. Yes.” Her eyes were on the highway now. “You did say something about that, to K.J. Sorry. I…I forgot.”
“Under the circumstances, understandable.”
We rode in silence for maybe a minute.
Then she asked: “You were watching me for my father? Why would he do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he had the wild idea you needed protection.”
You’d think that would have stopped her for a second, but instead she came right back: “Then you were watching me.”
I thought for a moment. The closer I could get my story to the truth, the better it would play and the easier it’d be to maintain.
“No,” I said. “I was watching Professor Byron.”
Her face jerked toward mine, eyes and nostrils flaring. “Why?”
“I don’t know for sure. I’m just doing a job.”
“Tell me what you do know, Jack.”
“Well…this is reading between the lines. I’m just a grunt in this war. But I think your father wanted me to gather evidence showing what a louse your prize professor is.”
“ What?”
“I gathered photos of Professor Byron with another coed. And he’s married.”
She was sitting forward, shaking her head, which sent her long hair tumbling back into more or less its normal down-her-back configuration. “Are you kidding? I told you before, at Sambo’s-I know all about K.J. He’s a free spirit. I don’t love him, not that way.”
I could have been a stickler for accuracy and reminded her that she’d been blowing the dude in his study the first time I saw them together. But she was running short enough a fuse already.
“Yeah, I get that,” I said. “I understand. But your father, and I’ve never met him, but knowing what generation he’s from, my guess is, he assumes you would be shocked and appalled by the professor’s lecherous activities. I mean, these guys from the Depression and World War Two, they have a whole different way of looking at the world. Sex and love are interchangeable to them. The idea that a nice girl like you could admire your professor and want to collaborate with him and also go to bed with him without being in love with him, without wanting to spend your life with him, and not caring how much action he’s getting on the side…well, that just doesn’t fly with that crowd.”