WEST ON 66 Page 2

  Slum kids and runaways have it. And battered wives. And streetwise prostitutes. It's an ingrained, instinctive kind of war­iness that doesn't just come from being afraid. It comes from living a life where the blows can come at you from any direction at any time. It's born out of an existence where dodging and running and fighting isn't anything special; it's just how you stay alive.

  It didn't match up with the rest of her. Not at all.

  As she quietly ate her sandwich, I found myself accepting a fourth cup of coffee and ordering a piece of cherry pie that I didn't particularly want, just to study her for a little longer.

  People are your stock-in-trade when you're a police officer. You constantly find yourself trying to figure how they get to be the way they are, what makes them and what moves them. Something else was going on here, something beyond a pretty girl in a rain-wet car coat. Who was she? What combination of experiences and events had put her together? And what would happen with her next?

  The problem is, even a cop can't go crashing into someone's private life for no good reason. And you can take an across-the-room fascination just so far. The waitress brought my tab, and I paid it there at the table. Tossing a quarter down beside my plate, I stood up to leave.

  And she was standing beside me as I turned, studying me levelly out of those dark, expressive eyes. "Excuse me," she said quietly, "but are you headed south? I could really use a lift to Saint Louis if you are."

  To Saint Louis? To Miami? To Tierra del Fuego? Oh yeah,

  I think so.

  "Sure. Why not."

  Every other guy in that room hated my guts as I led her back out into the night. If they'd known what was waiting for me out there, they might not have been so envious.

  Her wariness returned as we left the pool of light around the truck stop buildings and headed out across the parking lot. She walked fast, her head turning as she scanned the darkness, act­ing as though she expected hostility out of the night. The feel­ing was infectious. I found myself cranking up my own alertness level, suddenly wishing that the '57 wasn't so far back

  in the shadows.

  She had reason to be wary. They were waiting for us. Three of them. Three men moving fast out of the chasm of total blackness between a couple of parked big rigs. A massive form in a dark raincoat loomed in front of me, and a vicious sucker punch drove into my guts.

  If he'd taken me totally by surprise, he would have laid me out with a couple of broken ribs. As it was, it felt as if I'd been swiped across the stomach with a two-by-four.

  But I'd caught sight of his arm cocking back and I was just barely able to ride with the punch. I think I could have stayed on my feet if I'd really wanted to. However, I didn't. I dropped hard to the sodden gravel, curling into a semifetal position.

  I wanted them to think I was out of it. I wanted them to shift their attention elsewhere for a second. But most of all, I wanted the gun under my jacket. Maybe Robert Mitchum or Troy Donahue could duke it out with three guys in a dark alley and win, but I just work around Hollywood, not in it.

  My move paid off. Their focus was all on the girl now. While the biggest of the trio had been taking me out, the num­ber two man had been clamping his hand across the girl's mouth, not even giving her a second for a decent scream. Now, despite her frenzied efforts to resist, they were hustling her swiftly back into the shadows.

  It was as sweet a snatch as you could have asked for. They'd just gotten a little overconfident.

  I rolled to my feet. Drawing the Colt Commander from my belt, I executed a fast MP cock, snagging the front sight on the pocket of my jeans and pumping the automatic's action to lift a shell into the chamber.

  All three of the gentlemen recognized the dulcet clang of a .45's slide going into train. They spun to face me, two of them starting moves that looked like they might have guns at the end of them.

  But by then, the Colt was leveled.

  "Okay, that's it! Let her go!"

  The girl didn't wait. She tore loose on her own. Snatching up her fallen shoulder bag, she started to back toward me.

  "Lisette." Just one quiet word, almost a whisper, from the big man who had slugged me.

  "No!" The girl packed more raw hate into that single-syllable scream than I ever could have thought possible.

  What in the hell was going on out here? Obviously a whole lot more than I'd ever conceived in my cafe fantasizing. OK, Saint George, you were hot to rescue the fair damsel in distress. Well, the dragon's just shown up and he's brought along a couple of buddies. Get with the rescuing.

  There was a coiled-spring tension in all three men. My gun was just barely holding them. They were waiting for me to make that one little mistake that would let them regain the initiative. Trying to pat them down out here without backup would be a real bad idea. In fact, some instinct told me that even announcing that I was a cop might trigger an explosion of blood, guts, and feathers all over this parking lot.

  The girl and I had to disengage. We had to get out of here before one of these guys got the nerve to try for a weapon, or a passerby mistook me for a stickup artist, or any one of a thousand other little dumb-ass things happened that could get us killed.

  "You know how to drive?" I asked quietly. "Yes," she replied, raking her dark hair back. She sounded like one cool kitten for somebody who had just barely ducked a kidnapping.

  "My keys are in my right front pocket. It's the black-and-white Chevy down at the end of the line. Go get it and bring it down here."

  She didn't reply, but she passed around behind me, carefully not blocking my line of fire. A moment later, a small, warm hand slid into my pocket, retrieving the keys. A moment more and her light footsteps ran away across the gravel.

  I realized there was a very real possibility that she could just steal the '57 and leave me standing here with these goons. But just then I had to trust somebody and my list of available pros­pects was god-awful short.

  "Boy." It was the big man speaking again, the one who had tried to deck me and the one I was beginning to sense was the leader of this show. "You don't know how much trouble you're making for yourself." It was a voice as cold and gray and gritty

  as wet concrete.

  "Yeah? Well, in case you haven't noticed, you're the one standing at the wrong end of the gun at the moment." I'd been slowly panning the automatic across all three of the kidnappers, but gradually my sight picture had come to rest in the center of the big man's chest. That same instinct that had told me to keep my mouth shut about being a cop was whispering another message now. It said that if it came to a fight, I'd have to kill this guy with my first bullet to have any chance at all of getting out alive.

  "This is a family affair," he continued. "My family. It's no business of yours."

  "You made it my business, man, when you took that swing at me. And if this is a family affair, you'd better tell Uncle Fred over there to quit edging sideways. If he gets out of my line of sight, I'll pull this trigger and then look to see where he's got to."

  Oh, I was way ahead on the witty repartee, but I was run­ning short on time. Where in the hell was the girl?

  A flash of headlights and a familiar rumbling roar answered me. Tires spun and gravel rattled in the '57's wheel wells as the girl fought with the stiff racing clutch; then she had the car lurching down the parking lane toward us.

  She was smart. She didn't pull in behind me. She turned and pulled up alongside, putting the headlights on the men and giving me my first good look at them.

  They were like the three bears. Three sizes. Baby Bear, Mama Bear, and Papa Bear.

  Baby Bear was my age or maybe a little younger: thin, acne-scarred, and wearing a beat-up army field jacket. He had enough grease in his DA to make the rainwater bead on it. Among the three, he was the only one who looked uneasy star­ing down the barrel of the Commander.

  Mama Bear wasn't all that motherly. Medium height, dark eyes, lean and wiry, hawkish, almost Indian-like features. An Apache warrior in a snap-
brim fedora and a trench coat. The only regret he displayed was likely born out of the fact that he couldn't reach that ominous-looking bulge in his side pocket.

  Papa Bear was the big man.

  He beat my own five-ten by a good four inches, and he probably outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds, damn little of which I suspect was anything but bone and muscle. A gray-black fringe of hair showed beneath the brim of his hat, and his large, angular head sat square on his massive shoulders, like a cinder block balanced on top of a refrigerator. His skin seemed to fit loosely over his skull, as if the cinder block was being carried in a sack of flesh, and his mouth was a lipless slot across the bottom of his face.

  The eyes, though, they were what got you. Like some last lingering memory out of a nightmare. Colorless, cold, and with­out a whole lot of what you would consider human behind them. Those eyes were fixed on me now, promising that next time he wouldn't make the mistake of leaving me alive.

  I risked a sideways glance. The girl had the driver's side door open and had slid across to the passenger seat. She watched me for the next move, her face underlit by the dash­board lights. I sidled across to stand behind the open door.

  This was going to be the tricky part. We were about thirty feet back from the three men, and I wasn't going to be able to keep them solidly covered and get into the car at the same time.

  And they knew it.

  I was going to have to be inventive. "Reach over and kick on the high beams," I whispered.

  She obeyed and the headlights flared. The three men winced back for an instant in the brightness, and in that instant I dived behind the wheel. I jammed the gun into the crack in the seat back, hit the clutch, and slammed the floor shift into low almost within the same second.

  The '57 screamed and lunged forward as I firewalled the gas pedal, her rear tires scrabbling for traction like the claws of a startled cat. The acceleration slammed my door shut, and the three men were barely able to fling themselves out of our way.

  Shucks.

  I aimed for the dark passage between a parked grain truck and a Texaco tanker, praying there was room enough for us to fit. There was, by about three inches. My radio aerial thwacked loudly against a side view mirror, and then we were out and clear of the parking area and turning on to the frontage road that looped around the truck stop.

  "Are they going to come after us?" I demanded.

  "You can count on it," the girl replied grimly.

  "What kind of car?"

  "A 1957 Chrysler. A black coupe. One of the fast kind."

  Fan-damn-tastic. There were maybe three production au­tomobiles built in the United States that the '57 couldn't just walk away from. And the 300-C Chrysler was at the head of the list.

  "Any of those three guys know how to really drive?"

  "Randy, the youngest one, is a first-class wheelman."

  We were batting a thousand tonight, folks.

  "There's a seat belt over on that side," I snarled. "Put it on and pull it tight. You might need it."

  There was a gap in the traffic on 66, and I blew past the access stop sign and onto the highway. Fishtailing a little, we accelerated hard out onto the four-lane, our tires slashing through the water sheet on the concrete. After an entire evening of drizzle, the sky had to pick right now to really start unload­ing. Rain roared against the windshield like a pattern of buck­shot, and the wipers overloaded in seconds, leaving nothing to be seen but sodden blackness and glare-starred car lights.

  The '57 didn't like it. She started riding dangerously loose as we passed through eighty. With more water under her tires than pavement, she was hydroplaning like Miss Thriftway. It would be almighty easy to break loose on this road tonight and take a real short drive to hell.

  Under these conditions, the guys chasing us had all the edges. I couldn't identify car makes or gauge distances in my mirrors, while they could catch and hold me in their headlights. My first warning of their presence would be when that big 392 Hemi engine came pulling them up alongside. In any kind of a shoving contest, the Chrysler would have the edge as well. It outweighed the '57 by a good half a ton. Well-handled, it could bounce us into the ditch like a Ping-Pong ball.

  Most of all, though, the guys behind us would know just how bad they wanted to win this race and how crazy they'd have to drive to do it. I'd have to guess.

  The girl sat straight and slim on the bench seat, not looking out into that berserk night but watching me, waiting for me to pull another miracle out of my back pocket.

  Ho-kay, the safest place you can be when you are being tailed is behind the guy who's tailing you. The trick was how to get us there. I had to get off the highway and disappear.

  A bridge exploded at us out of the night, and we thundered through it like a bullet through the barrel of a rifle. Lights ahead. Town lights. A sign. ATLANTA 1 MILE. Right! Here we go!

  The white numbers on my odometer dial clicked off a count­down like the army missile men use out at White Sands. Nine-tenths of a mile, eight-tenths, seven-tenths . . . The tailgate reflectors of a lumbering Campbell 66 Transport tractor-trailer blazed in my headlights.

  "Hang on!" There was no time for more words than that. We snaked around the truck. Gaining a little clearance on the big rig, I cut back in front of it. One-tenth of a mile to the Atlanta turnoff. I stood on the brakes, praying that whoever had been putting up these signs had gauged his distances right. For a long sickening second, absolutely nothing happened. Finally, as I savagely pumped the brake pedal, we caught pave­ment and the '57's tires sobbed and grabbed. Behind me, air horns blared as the trucker protested my committing suicide across his front bumper. Then the turnoff materialized on my right and I swerved for it.

  We came off 66 hot, way too hot to make a ninety-degree turn on rain-slick pavement with any kind of safety. But then, "safe" wasn't really a consideration at the moment, was it? We were waltzing like a pig on ice, and I pulled us down a gear and leaned on the gas, praying we'd dig through the water and find some traction. For once, I didn't get a celestial busy signal. I'd used up every inch of both lanes and was hanging on the edge of the ditch when the '57 got her feet back under her again. The Chevy's wicked acceleration canceled out our lateral slide, and we hurled down the narrow frontage road.

  The girl sat half-twisted in her seat, looking back. "One set of lights followed us off the highway," she reported calmly. "They're coming fast. I think it's them."

  Son of a bitch! I hoped that the rain had cleared the streets of Atlanta, Illinois, because they are about to receive visitors.

  We thundered across the T intersection where the frontage road met the main street of the little farm town, the roar of the '57's engine penned up and echoing between the buildings. I had an impression of a set of grain elevators and a stone-sided courthouse outlined in the watery glow of a few weak street lamps. Then we were out the other side and tearing back into the night.

  The frontage road started a wide left-handed turn, angling back toward 66. Then a couple of things happened at about the same instant. For one, that malignant quad set of glowing car eyes in my rearview mirror disappeared as we broke line of sight in the curve. For the other, my own lights caught a flash of another sign at the side of the road. Somebody-or-other's FARM FRESH PRODUCE. JUST AHEAD.

  This time around, I didn't even have a second to yell a warn­ing before I went for the turnout. We slithered through the produce stand's parking lot with the brakes locked up, shoving a wave of mud and gravel ahead of us. The side of an unpainted plank building loomed ahead, and I got off the binders long enough to aim for a patch of darkness behind it, sincerely hop­ing it was a driveway or lane or something and not somebody's duck pond.

  We lucked out again. A driveway circled the produce shed. We tore around it, broadsiding to a stop just beyond the build­ing and in the shelter of its shadow. Instantly I killed the lights and engine and we lay doggo like a U-boat on the bottom of the ocean.

  For about ten fast heartbeats we
sat there and the tapping of the rain on the car top was the only sound in the universe. Then a pair of headlights streaked past out on the frontage road, going like a bat out of hell and not slowing at all as they dwindled away into the night.

  I recovered the .45 from where I had hastily stowed it. Mov­ing by rote, I ran the pistol through its unloading drill. Clip out of the butt. Shell out of the chamber. Shell back in the clip. Clip back in the gun. Gun back in my belt. Secured. Finally, I glanced up at the girl.

  A barn lot arc light down the road cast enough illumination to silhouette her, and I caught the faint pale flash of a smile. "Lisette Kingman," she said with a touch of ironic humor in her voice.

  "Kevin Pulaski. Pleased to meet you. Cigarette?"

  "Thanks," she replied. "I have my own."

  Fatima extra-lengths, no less. I guess I couldn't have ex­pected her to smoke anything as plebian as a Lucky Strike.

  We shared a light off the glowing car lighter, and I cracked my window, admitting a cool draft of air flavored with cow and wet clover. "Okay, Lisette Kingman," I said. "May I ask who those guys were and why I ended up doing this?"

  There was a pause over at the other side of the '57's front seat and a silence except for that inaudible sound of mental wheels turning. By the time she spoke, I knew that I wouldn't be getting the full story, or necessarily the straight one.

  "Those men are business partners of my late father. There's a problem concerning an inheritance. They've become kind of pushy about reaching a settlement."

  "I guess that's one way to put it."

  "That's why I'm going to Saint Louis, to see about part of that settlement. And I still need to get there."

  She studied me again, those wheels still turning.

  "You might want to consider going by way of the state police barracks in Springfield," I said. "They have ways of taking care of pushy business partners."

  She shook her head emphatically. "No. Maybe later, when I have some things worked out. But no police for now, for a lot of reasons.

  Well, that answered the question about whether or not to flash the tin on her. Miss Kingman didn't want the cops in on this. Okay, so I'd oblige her and not be a cop for a while. I slouched down behind the wheel and took a drag on my Lucky, pretending to think.