“LUDMILLA LEFT WITH THE MONEY?” Leo said. He seemed genuinely shocked. “Are you sure, Gary?”
“Am I sure?” Merker said. “You see a bag of money around anywhere? I left it at the bottom of the stairs, and not only did she take that, she stole my fucking truck.”
Leo was perplexed. “She seemed like such a nice person. We talked about all sorts of things while you were gone. Did you know that someday she wants to open her own beautician’s shop?”
Merker looked at Leo, dumfounded.
“I know she’s not what you’d call a beauty herself, she could stand to lose a few pounds, but she has a nice way about her,” Leo said. “I don’t see why she couldn’t make a go of it.”
Merker, who still had a gun at my head, said to me, “Keys.”
“What?” I said.
“Car keys.”
The only car left in the drive was Trixie’s, and if he wanted to take it and find his way to Burger Crisp on his own, that was fine with me.
“In my pocket,” I said, reaching in and dropping them onto the kitchen counter. Merker snatched them up.
Then he grabbed me by the back of my jacket and started leading me to the door. “Just take the car,” I said. “What do you need me for?”
“Navigator,” Merker said. “Leo, come on.”
Leo said, “I feel like I might have to go to the bathroom again.”
“Leo!” Merker said. “We’re going! We’re picking up three hundred fucking thousand dollars. If you shit your pants, you can buy a new pair.”
Leo still looked uneasy, but followed as Merker and I went out the front door. He hit the remote button on the key to open the doors of Trixie’s sedan. “You,” he said to me, “up front with me. Leo, you take the back.”
I got in the passenger side, Merker slid in behind the wheel, and Leo got into the back seat. He got in gingerly, favoring his ass.
“Take off your belt,” Merker said to Leo, who was just buckling up.
“You don’t want me to wear my seatbelt?”
“No, on your pants. Take off your belt and tie his head to the headrest.”
“Aw, come on,” I said.
Merker looked at me and pointed. “I don’t want you trying anything. I’m tired of getting fucked around. Letting your wife and the kid leave, letting that bitch run off with my money, that was wrong.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize I was working for you.”
“You see? That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. It’s your attitude. Leo, what are you doing?”
“I’m just trying to get my belt off, okay?” I glanced back, saw him slip it out of the last loop of his jeans. “How am I supposed to keep my pants from falling down, Gary?”
“I’ll buy you a new belt this afternoon,” Merker said. “I’ll buy you a hundred belts.”
The belt went over my head and down to my neck. Leo looped it around the two aluminum posts that supported the headrest.
“It’s kind of loose,” Leo said. “I got it on the last hole.”
That, thankfully, was true. While the belt prevented much mobility on my part, it didn’t keep me from breathing. As long as I didn’t lean forward suddenly, it wasn’t touching the front of my neck. I sat rigidly in the seat, pressing my head back against the cushioned headrest.
“All comfy?” Merker said. When I did not reply, he put the car into reverse and backed out of the drive. “Which way?” he asked me.
I pointed. Merker headed north. “Second stop sign, hang a right,” I said.
Merker put his foot to the floor, listened to the engine’s powerful surge. “Nice wheels. This is yours?”
“Trixie’s,” I said.
“No shit. Hey, Leo?”
“Yeah?”
“Like this car?”
“Yeah. It’s really nice. Nice upholstery.”
“We’re gonna keep this car. Make up for the fact that we got shortchanged on the safety-deposit box.”
“Okay,” Leo said without much enthusiasm.
“You don’t mind, right?” Merker asked me with mock consideration. “It’s not like it’s your car.”
“Be my guest,” I said, pushing my head back against the headrest.
Leo called to me. “Hey, mister, that burger? I think there was something bad about it.”
“You were warned,” I said.
“Huh?”
“It was written right on the box.”
Leo didn’t have anything to say about that.
“Here?” Merker asked. We had come to the stop sign. I nodded and he turned right. The car surged forward again.
“At the light, a left on Welk,” I said. “It’s up five or six blocks on the right. Burger Crisp.”
“Gotcha.”
“You going to let them keep twenty-five thousand dollars?” I asked.
Merker smiled. “Oh, I’m going to give them something. I’m definitely going to give them something.”
“Maybe when we get there I could use the washroom,” Leo said.
“You’ll be staying in the car, watching this asshole,” Merker said. “We can stop somewhere else, after.”
“Okay,” Leo said, but he sounded pretty uncertain.
And that was pretty much how I felt too. A few minutes earlier, I’d felt good that Sarah and Katie had managed to get away. But now, I was, literally and figuratively, feeling my neck. I was, once again, looking for an opportunity, a way out. It was something that I had shown myself, so far, to not be very good at.
My cell went off. This, I knew, would be Sarah. She’d have gotten Katie and herself someplace safe, and would want to know where I was.
“Give me that,” Merker said, and I reached into my pocket and handed him my still-ringing phone. Merker punched his power window button, tossed the phone out the window.
Merker pointed ahead and to the right. “That it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s it.”
Merker pulled into the Burger Crisp lot. There were three other cars there, and, best as I could tell, business was light. It was midafternoon, the lunch crowd had thinned.
“Check it out,” Merker said.
Parked down around the side of the restaurant was his Ford pickup. “We gonna get the truck back?” Leo asked.
“Fuck the truck,” Merker said. “We’re keeping this.” He had his left hand on the door handle, the gun in his right. To Leo, he said, “Keep an eye on him. Hang on to the belt. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
Leo grabbed the belt and pulled it taut as Merker got out of the car, leaving it running, and strode toward the Burger Crisp, the gun down at his side and slightly to the back.
“I can’t breathe,” I said, the belt cutting into my neck.
“Okay,” said Leo, loosening it only slightly. “I just don’t want you doing anything dumb. Gary’ll be really mad at me.”
“Leo, listen to me,” I said. “This is your chance. Let me go, and just walk away. The police are going to be after you guys, but especially Gary. He’s the one killed Martin Benson, right? He’s the one cut his throat.”
“Gary’s better at those kinds of things.”
Gary Merker opened the door of Burger Crisp and disappeared inside.
“Exactly,” I said. “You’re not like him, are you? He’s the violent one. The police will understand that, especially if you go to them, tell them what he’s done.”
“He’s my friend. He looks after me. I was riding with him one time, on his Harley, and he turned too sharp and I fell off and I hit my head and he’s been real good to me ever since then because ever since then things have been a bit cloudy, you know?”
“He’s a friend that’s getting you into a lot of trouble. You don’t kill people, do you, Leo? I’ll bet, when you and he found Katie, I’ll bet you didn’t kill those people who were looking after her.”
“I waited outside the barn when Gary shot them. I had Katie with me. I put my hands over her ears.”
“There you go. That was good of you. You see? You’re not like Gary. You’re actually a pretty gentle guy, am I right?”
“I like animals,” Leo said, still holding on to the belt but not quite as tightly. “I like all kinds of animals, but probably dogs the most. You like dogs?”
“Oh sure,” I said. “Who doesn’t like dogs?” To be honest, I had some bad, fairly recent memories concerning dogs, but I didn’t see much sense in getting into that. “Dogs are great. And I think I know something else about you, Leo. You wouldn’t even join in, would you, when Gary and others, back at the Kickstart years ago, were raping Candace. The woman I know as Trixie.”
“That was mean,” Leo said. “She’s actually pretty nice, you know?”
“I know. And her daughter, she’s nice too, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. So where did she go, exactly?”
“She went off with my wife. She’s going to be fine.”
“That’s good.”
I felt I didn’t have much more time. “Leo, you have to let me go. It’s the right thing to do. And you should go too. Just get out of the car and get out of here.”
“Gary’d be really pissed if I did that. He’d say-”
And then we heard the shots from inside the Burger Crisp. Five, it sounded like, in quick succession.
Bang. Then bang bang. And then one more. Bang.
There were screams inside the restaurant, people throwing themselves to the floor, it looked like, through the window.
And then the door burst open and Gary came running out, gun in one hand, gym bag in the other.
Looking like a crazy person.
He set the bag on the roof, opened the door, grabbed the bag and tossed it into the back seat with Leo, got in and closed the door.
“Whoa!” he shouted, nose twitching. “Holy shit!”
I didn’t want to ask what had happened.
In the back, Leo said, “There any chance I still might be able to use the washroom?”