He said, “What? Are you kidding?”
“They were going to kill you, Charlie,” Artie told me. “They got their orders on the phone, I heard them talking. They were going to kill you and bury you out back. And when they got me, they figured to kill me too.”
“That’s a lie!” cried Miss Althea. “Clarence?”
“I can’t do nothing, miss.”
“We’ve got to get out of here, Artie,” I said.
“Take her along,” he suggested. “For a hostage.”
“Good idea. You two get into the barn. If I see either one of you coming after me, I’ll plug Miss Althea.”
Of course I knew I wouldn’t shoot Miss Althea, but they didn’t. Red-faced with anger and embarrassment, Tim and Clarence went reluctant and pouting on into the barn.
“Come on,” said Artie.
We went around the house, me still keeping a tight grip on Miss Althea, who from time to time wasted breath by telling me things I wouldn’t get away with. To Artie I said, “Where’d you come from?”
“After you left my place,” he said, “two tough-looking guys showed up, asking for you. They acted kind of odd when I told them you were gone. I got to thinking about it, you saying you were in a jam, and asking about Agricola, and then those two guys coming along, so after a while I figured maybe I better come look for you. You said you were coming to Staten Island to talk to Agricola, so here I am. I tried to sneak up on the house, see if you were around, but those two plug-uglies caught up with me.”
“I don’t know what you two are trying to do,” Miss Althea said, “but you’re wasting your breath. You can’t fool me.”
Artie said, “What’s she talking about?”
I told him about Agricola being dead and this being his daughter who thought I had killed him.
“And you did!” she cried.
“Quiet,” I told her.
Artie looked back at the house. “We’d better hurry,” he said.
“Maybe we should have taken the Continental,” I said.
“Car thieves too!” Miss Althea cried.
“I’ve got wheels,” Artie assured me. “Don’t worry.”
“Killers!” cried Miss Althea. “Murderers!”
Artie leaned close to me, so we walked a moment shoulder to shoulder. In a confidential tone he said, “Did you, Charlie? You know, did you do the old guy?”
“For Pete’s sake!”
“He did, he did! You’re an accomplice!”
“Oh, shut up,” I told her. She was a real pain sometimes. I said to Artie, “You know me better than that, for Pete’s sake.”
“I thought I did, baby,” he said, “but all of a sudden you’re like wow, you know what I mean? Like sleeping on the rug all night, like you’re in a jam with the rackets bosses, like here we are with a chick for a hostage, this isn’t exactly the same old Charlie Poole from New Utrecht, you know?”
“You do what you got to do,” I said.
“Killer!” she yelled.
I pinched her arm to make her shut up. I told Artie, “She don’t know about her father, I guess. About him being in the rackets.”
She shouted, “Are you insane? My father was a farmer! You two are crazy, you’re both crazy! Help! Help!”
I had to really twist her arm a good one before she’d quit hollering. I didn’t want to do it, but there wasn’t any choice. “Walk faster,” I told her, “and keep your mouth shut.” And I kept her arm twisted up behind her a little, so she’d do both and not give me any more trouble.
We hurried on out to Huguenot Avenue and Artie went off to the right, saying, “Down this way. Hurry!”
Parked down the road, next to the fallen tree on which I had been sitting not too long ago, was the most nefarious automobile I had ever seen. It made the killers’ black car look like a churchgoer. This one, purring a bit with the engine on and a trickle of white smoke at the exhaust, was a black 1938 Packard limousine, with the bulky truck and the divided rear window and the long coffin-like hood and the headlights sitting up on top of the arrogant broad fenders. It was as gleamingly polished all over as a toy from Japan, with sparkling white sidewalls and glittering chrome hubcaps and door handles that semaphored the sun. And there was Chloe inside, sitting at the wheel, like advance scout for a foray from St. Trinian’s.
“Where?” I said. “Wha.”
“My aunt’s,” Artie explained. “She lets me borrow it sometimes.”
Miss Althea said, “You can get the electric chair for kidnaping, you know.”
“Anything to keep from being shot,” I said.
We reached the car and Artie pulled open the rear door. “Put her in there,” he said.
I did, and followed her in, and Artie shut the door and got into the front seat. “Get out of here fast,” he said.
Chloe said, “Hi, Charlie,” and asked no questions. We roared off.
“Our best bet is Jersey,” Artie said. “Take your next left.”
“Right.”
“The Mann Act,” said Miss Althea.
“What do I care?” I said. “I’m going to the electric chair anyway.”
I have been in apartments smaller than the interior of that Packard. There was enough floor space between the front and back seats for a crap game, all softly carpeted and softly clean. Everything in the car was clean, spotless. The upholstery, which had to be the original stuff, was scratchy gray plush, as new-looking as the enraged girl sitting grim-faced beside me. There were leather thongs at the sides, for elderly ladies and gangsters to hold on to, and small green vases containing artificial flowers hung in little wire racks between the doors.
The steering wheel of this monster was itself nearly as big as Chloe, who drove with the nonchalance of one who knows she cannot die. I, lacking that assurance, sat and cowered like the coward I was. If death didn’t come from behind me, in the shape of Clarence and Mr. Gross and all the other minions of the organization, it would surely come from ahead of me, in the shape of something hard and immovable for Chloe to drive headlong into.
“You’ll never get away with this,” Miss Althea told me.
As if I needed reminding.
Chapter 10
At the tollbooths to the George Washington Bridge, Miss Althea stuck her head out the window and screamed, “Help! They’re kidnaping me!”
The toll taker in his uniform looked blankly at her.
“They’re kidnaping me!” she insisted.
The toll taker made a disgusted face, to show what he thought of modern kids, out running around with no sense of values, making noisy senseless jokes. He took the half-dollar from Chloe, and we rolled on past there.
“He’s in the plot, too,” I said.
“Oh, shut up,” she said. She flounced back in the seat, folded her arms, and glared furiously at the back of Chloe’s head.
We had taken an extremely roundabout way of returning to New York, leaving Staten Island by the Outerbridge Crossing and driving up past the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and all the way up to the George Washington Bridge, just in case the car had been seen by anyone who could describe it to the organization’s underlings, who were surely by now all in hot pursuit of us and our hostage.
As to the hostage, we were keeping her because we felt safer with her to hide behind. It seemed unlikely any organization tough would gun down the daughter of Farmer Agricola in order to get at an unimportant nephew like me.
On the trip up the Jersey coast, after filling Artie and Chloe in on the details of what had happened to me since last night — and that it had all occurred in less than sixteen hours, including time out for sleep on Artie’s bedroom floor, was itself as astonishing as anything else — I made a long and unsuccessful attempt to explain to Miss Althea Agricola just who and what her father had been and why I had gone out to the farm to see him. But she refused to believe any of it, and nothing I said would shake her firmly seated ignorance.