“No!”
“Nobody around to hear you anyway. Couple frogs maybe. They build these stores like concrete bunkers. I guess I could let up a little.”
“Pu… please do.”
The man did but still held on to her with one hand so that the pain wound down to a dull throbbing ache while he leaned over and closed the door with the other and settled back in his seat.
“Better?”
“Y… yes.”
“You’re welcome.”
The man called Emil opened the door on his side and climbed out of the car.
“Ray, stay with her. What’s your name again, honey?”
“Janet.”
“Stay with Janet here. Billy, come on along with me.”
The man who had her was Ray and the little one was Billy.
He turned to Marion and smiled.
“C’mon,” he said. “You’ll see something.”
“Wait here,” Emil told her so she stood by the counter like she was interested in the magazine rack and listened to some old duffer in a white T-shirt and suspenders bend the balding store clerk’s ear with some ragtime about plaster dust and sawdust just pullin ’ the moisture right out of his hands, just pulling it outa my hands, look at them hands, just pullin’ it right on out, i’nt that awful? and the clerk looking at the upturned palms of his hands and saying Yeah, Bob, that’s terrible, the customer paying for his bottle of Old Times and the clerk brown-bagging it while Billy set the two six-packs down on the counter just to the left of her and Emil his fifths of Makers Mark and J amp;B next to that.
The old man shoved his wallet into the front pocket of his baggy tan pants, hefted the bag into the crook of his arm and started to leave.
“Excuse me? Sir?” Emil said.
The man stopped and squinted at him.
You’ll see something, he’d said. She guessed this was going to be it. She had to work to keep from smiling.
“Pay for this for me, will you, friend? I’m short on cash.”
The man glanced at the whiskey and the beer. He shook his head.
“Crazy sumbitch,” he muttered.
He moved toward the door again, and Emil flung his arm across her shoulders from behind and pulled her between the man and the door. When she felt the gun against her cheek the gasp was real.
“Pay for it. Or I shoot the lady and then I shoot you.”
“He means it,” Billy said. “He’s not facetious.” “And you behind the counter. Don’t move.”
You could see the old guy sizing up the situation. She wondered what war he’d served in. He wasn’t particularly rattled. Tough old bird.
She was doing all right so far though, she thought, playing the victim, eyes wide and mouth hung open in what she hoped looked like sheer terror though she was practically coming in her pants here for god’s sake- and then Emil made things worse by sliding his hand down over her breast and squeezing and the old guy seemed to get the picture all at once. His face changed, hardened. And Emil must have seen that too because that was when he turned the gun and fired and the old man dropped to the floor howling and clutching his left foot, the Old Times bursting beside him.
“I forgot to mention that I could just as easily do it reverse order,” Emil said. “Bag it. Ring it up,” he told the clerk. He caressed her breast and she couldn’t help it now and didn’t try, she moaned. “Soon as he can, I know he’ll be happy to pay up.”
Which was exactly what both of them did.
They’d come whooping out of the package store like schoolkids at a panty raid but she’d heard the muted gunshot and now Billy was driving, with Emil and Marion in the back with Ray and she glanced around and saw the two of them kissing and his hand between her legs, so that she wasn’t at all surprised when he told Billy to pull onto the narrow dirt access road and then to stop and cut the lights. They got out, a bottle of scotch in Emil’s hand, and went running, laughing, for the woods.
They didn’t go far. Just behind a stand of pines. She could hear them over the drone of crickets through the open window. Marion giggling and then groaning. Emil grunting like a goddamn animal. Brush crackling beneath them in the still air.
They were animals. So was the one Ray with the gun against her cheek, running it along first one side of her face and then the other so that each time she had to pull away and finally rapping her head with the barrel to make her sit still-rapping her lightly but her head was taking such a beating tonight it still hurt like hell-and then she could feel him lean over her, could smell the beer on his breath as he ran the barrel down over her neck and collarbone, heading for her breast and she could feel Billy’s eyes on both of them.
You’ve got to stop this, she thought. Now. Already she felt bathed in filth.
“You’d better be ready to kill me,” she said. “Just one more inch.”
“Who says I’m not?”
“You didn’t do the cop. He did the cop. You get caught, I can say that. You kill me, I can’t. You’ve heard of state’s evidence?”
“Uh-huh.”
“ Course he has,” Billy said. “Everybody has. It’s where you angle in on somebody and you get impunity.”
The little guy was short a few major cable stations. She’d keep her pitch to Ray, who at least appeared to be somewhat sane-and she’d damn well have to hurry. The sounds from the bushes had all but stopped now.
“If you don’t hurt me and you don’t abuse me I can help you. I know what I’m talking about. I’m a lawyer. It’s my job to know.”
“A lawyer?”
“A defense attorney.”
“Bullshit.”
She’d expected that. She dug into her purse for the wallet, opened it and flashed the laminated card at him.
“See that? That’s a court pass. They don’t come in cereal boxes, Ray.”
He took it from her. The gun no longer pressed her flesh.
“I’ll be damned.”
He studied it a moment and handed it back to her. “Well,” he said, “I probably wouldn’t be the one to shoot you anyway, truth be known. ’Less you started something. I’m a family man, you know. Want to see?” She heard him digging into his back pocket, pulling out his own wallet and flipping through the plastic inserts. He couldn’t seem to find what he was looking for.
“I had a lawyer once,” he said. “I kinda liked the man. I appreciated his efforts on my behalf.”