“Okay… all right. I know a place. It might work anyhow.”
“So tell.”
“You ever hear of a place called Hole-in-the-Wall?” she said, and then turned toward him.
He was smiling.
The night was awash in artificial light. Police flashlights slow-arced through the scrub and field along either side of the road. Flashbulbs burst sudden and stark against the human ruins in the wagon. Six sets of headlights set to high poured off the cruisers and the Volvo of the guy who’d called it in. Alan leaned against one of those cruisers and tried not to puke.
He’d seen what was inside.
Hee was shaking like it was zero degrees out, clammy with sweat at the same time. All he kept thinking was at least she wasn’t one of them. At least that.
Frommer stubbed out his cigarette on the center line n| the tarmac and then carefully policed his butt into his jacket pocket and walked over.
Alan shook his head. “I never… Jesus, Frommer, that little girl…”
“I know,” Frommer said. “But I’ll tell you, I think we can still hope for the best here, Mr. Laymon. I don’t think we’ll find her out there. I think she’d have been in the car with these poor people. These guys don’t seem to take too much trouble hiding what they do.”
He glanced toward the car and then back to Alan.
“I told you you shouldn’t have looked,” he said. "Hell, I shouldn’t have either.”
“How far?” Ray asked her.
Ray was nervous, Emil could see that-almost as nervous as goddamn Billy driving. It wasn’t like Ray. It wasn’t the guy who could lift a wallet in plain sight or steal a car in broad daylight on a busy street. Billy, on the other hand, was probably born nervous. He wondered if maybe he should be doing the driving but then thought no, it was better back here with his arm over whatsername’s shoulder and his hand playing with her tit. Irresponsible but what the hell. They’d be all right.
“Just a few miles or so,” she said.
“They’re not gonna do this for free,” he said.
“I know,” Emil said.
“So?”
He’d already thought that out. He didn’t answer though. There was no way he was going to let that out of the bag just yet. But he knew about Hole-in-the-Wall from the joint and didn’t think it was going to be a problem. Ray obviously did. He dug into his pocket and pulled out some wadded bills and change and counted it. Emil watched him and almost had to laugh.
“I got a total of seventeen dollars and seventy-eight, cents.”
He grabbed the lawyer lady’s purse out of her lap and flipped open her wallet and started counting the cash inside. She didn’t make any effort to stop him.
“She’s got fifty-nine. Makes sixty-six, seventy-eight. What about you, Billy?”
“Exactly twenty-five dollars. Exactly what I came out with-you and Emil being kind enough to entail me my drinks for free.”
“That’s ninety-one, seventy-eight. Shit. Not even a hundred bucks. Emil? Maria?”
“Marion.”
“Marion, sorry. What’ve you got?”
Emil pinched her nipple and she jumped and smiled, then reached over for her purse.
“Forty-three dollars, fifty-two cents, hon.”
“Okay, okay. Shit, forget the cents. Forty-three dollars. Forty-three dollars and… what?”
“I believe we were up to ninety-one, Ray. Ninety-one dollars, seventy-eight cents, when you bash your groupings,” said Billy.
“Forget the seventy-eight cents, all right? Forget the goddamn cents! That’s… one hundred thirty-four. Emil?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Huh? Don’t worry about it? Jesus, Emil! We’re asking them to get us outa state here, you know? And so far we haven’t got fifty bucks apiece!”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got plenty.”
“You got plenty. Fine. What’s plenty?”
“Your turn’s right here,” the lawyer said. “Road to your left, just ahead.”
“Goddammit, Emil,” Ray said. “ What the fuck’s plenty?”
She’d driven by one day, curious, but as an Officer of the Court and “Little” Harpe’s attorney of record, she’d been restricted from going any farther or seeing any more than she was seeing now-a wide dirt strip maybe twenty yards across cut through open, uncultivated fields on either side, rising up the slope of a mountain. No house in sight and no gate. No structures at all. But any approach observable from above.
They drove slowly and in silence until they crested the hill and that was when the first guard appeared along the side of the road, a big man almost comically dressed in nightfighter makeup and combat gear, his assault rifle held at port arms. There was nothing comic about the rifle.
“Slower, Billy,” said Emil. “Stop if he tells you to.” But he didn’t. He didn’t look interested in them at all. Didn’t even bother to wave them on.
Nor did the second guard a quarter-mile up, the field narrowing around them by then, gradually being swallowed by scrub and pine.
At the top of a rise, with dense forest pressing close now on either side, narrowing the road to a single lane funneling them up the mountain, she saw a third guard dressed in biker’s colors talking into his cell phone, saw him shove the phone into his utility belt and raise his automatic rifle. The guard checked their license plate but didn’t even glance at them.
It was eerie. As though they didn’t matter.
And maybe they didn’t.
The road narrowed even more. The woods drew closer.
At the top of another rise two more guards in military gear stood across from one another on either side of the road, one black man and one white. Each had a sleek black Doberman on a short leash.
“I hate those doggies,” said Billy. He pronounced it dawgies.
“Shut up,” said Emil. “Slow down.”
Because this time the guards were stepping toward them. The men stopped and turned their flashlights into the car and then the black guard on Billy’s side motioned them on.