Hamilton, Donald - Novel 02 (3 page)

 
          
He
thought of the empty trunk. Adjusting the rear-view mirror to his eyes, he saw
his own face, rather young and long, now in the evening beginning to need a
shave, the black eyebrows raised in an expression of wry surprise. He brought
the eyebrows down to a frown, watching his ears waggle with the tightening of
his scalp. A car whipped past, going east. He settled himself behind the wheel,
glanced at the gas, radiator temperature, oil pressure, and ammeter readings,
and let the speedometer steady at sixty-five.

 
          
Nothing
but the car and wad of bills and the clothes she is wearing, he thought.

 
          
They
crossed the bridge at Clinton well after dark. As the lights of the town
dwindled behind them and the speedometer crept back toward seventy, Emmett
looked up and saw headlights in the rear-view mirror. The bastard’s back again,
he thought. He was no longer trying to tell himself that there was nothing
particularly strange about two cars going west at the same speed along Highway
30; but he had not yet decided what to do about it, or even what to think about
it. At midnight he pulled into a gas station. The girl behind him roused and
made an interrogative sound.

 
          
“Gas,”
he said curtly. A car flashed past on the highway, but in the darkness he could
tell no more than that it was a sedan. He told the attendant to fill the tank,
and walked stiffly across the oil-stained concrete to the station. Flies buzzed
around the electric lights. An old man with steel-rimmed glasses and a
collarless white shirt jerked his head toward an unmarked door, and Emmett went
inside.

 
          
“When’s
the last time you had that oil changed, Mister?” the attendant asked him when
he came out.

 
          
“Why?”
Emmett asked. “Is it pretty black?”

 
          
“Never
seen any dirtier,” the man said.

 
          
Emmett
recalled the boiling radiator stinking of alcohol, now, in July. Hell of a way
to treat a new car, he thought. It was almost as if he were pleased to find
something about the girl to irritate him. He got into the car to drive it over
the pit.

 
          
“What’s
the matter?” Ann Nicholson’s voice asked sleepily.

 
          
“Going
to have the oil changed,” he said, without looking around. If he looked at her
he would have to tell her about the car that had been following them, and it
seemed a ridiculous thing to have to say.

 
          
“Where
are we?”

 
          
“Damned
if I know,” he said, jockeying the car up the ramp. “I didn’t look at the sign.
About a hundred and thirty miles west of Clinton.”

 
          
“What
time is it?”

 
          
“Twelve-fifteen,”
he said. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Can I bring you one?”

 
          
“No,”
she said. “Yes. If you don’t mind.” She was only a voice from the darkness
behind him.

 
          
“Sugar
or cream?”

 
          
“Both,
please.”

 
          
“I
won’t be long,” he said, getting out. “Doughnut or sweet roll?”

 
          
“Yes,”
she said. “It would taste good. Either one.”

 
          
The
air was rather cool and the sky was clear so that, above the lights of the
town, the stars seemed quite close. There were not many lights in the town and
of the four gas stations clustered together on this side of it, two were
closed. Beyond them he could see, in the distance, the uneven black horizon and
occasional scattered lights out on the plain. The cars and trucks came and went
along the concrete highway. He felt the wind of them as he walked; then,
opposite the lunchwagon marked Al’s Diner, he waited while a Chicago bus went
past, and darted across. Two men were seated on stools at opposite ends of the
counter, and the counterman was chatting with one of them when he came in.
Emmett seated himself in the middle. The counterman came over and wiped a space
in front of him, not as if it needed wiping, but as if the gesture were a
formality, like shaking hands.

 
          
“Coffee,”
Emmett said. “Black.”

 
          
He
felt very much like a stranger sitting there in the brown suit he had put on to
wear on the train; he felt almost as conspicuous as Ann Nicholson had looked in
the garage in Jepson. It was not an expensive suit, nor was it particularly
well pressed at the moment, but it was a suit, complete with vest and tie, and
it labeled him as a foreigner and a transient. He did not belong either to the
town or the highway, he was just a tourist. The man slid a mug of coffee in
front of him and went back to his conversation in the corner.

 
          
The
silent man at the other end of the counter put down a coin and walked out.
Emmett sipped his coffee and found himself uneasy about his camera and fishing
tackle. After all, he told himself, he did not know anything at all about the
girl, except that she had too little luggage and too much money, and that
somebody was following her. He looked around and saw, through the grimy window,
the convertible on the far side of the highway, still over the pit where he had
left it

 
          
A
sedan stopped outside the diner, arriving from the west; two people got out,
came to the door, and entered. Emmett realized that he was staring and turned
deliberately away to drink his coffee. He could still feel them behind him,
standing there.

 
          
Then
the strange girl was sitting down beside him.

 
          
“Hello,”
she said.

 
          
He
glanced at her. The man was standing at her elbow. There seemed no point in
acting like a virgin accosted on a street corner.

 
          
“Hello,”
Emmett said.

 
          
“You
do push right along, don’t you?” the girl said, laughing.

 
          
“Do
I?”

 
          
“My
God,” she said, “yes,” and she rubbed the corners of her eyes and drew her
fingertips down over her cheeks. “Coffee,” she said to the counterman. “Keep it
coming. My God!”

 
          
She
was a moderately tall girl, and neither slight nor fragile; only her waist and
ankles, both slender, saved her from heaviness. She was wearing a
close-fitting, long-sleeved black silk dress, elaborately draped, the silk
printed with a great scarlet flower over her left shoulder and breast, and again
over her right hip, the petals trailing diagonally across her skirt. Her hair
was the color of polished brass, glossy and almost metallic without looking at
all artificial. It had once during the day been built into a smooth roll over
her forehead, but this was loosening now, and she looked rather as if she had
pulled a hat off her head without bothering to remove the pins. Waiting for her
coffee, she pushed idly at the trailing strands, unconcerned about their
untidiness. She picked up the mug as it came to her, drained it as if it were a
shot-glass of whisky, set it down hastily, and passed her hand across her chin.

 
          
“Damn!”

 
          
“I
suggest that we move over to a booth,” said the stocky man beside her.

 
          
The
girl glanced at him. “All right, Dr. Kaufman.”

 
          
Emmett
watched her rise and tug at the elaborate dress. He noticed belatedly that it
was creased and dusty, and that the strain of driving had caused the seam to
burst for a matter of inches at the back of her right shoulder.

 
          
“Come
on,” she said, a little irritably, turning her head to look at him. “You’re
invited.”

 
          
He
picked up his cup and followed them to the booth by the window. Glancing out,
he could see the fawn-colored Mercury convertible waiting on the greasepit
under the lights of the filling station. He sat down, facing the two of them.

 
          
The
man had removed, and was polishing, his glasses. He looked curiously unruffled
beside the gaudy dishevelment of the girl; a small compact man with a neat
square face, smoothly shaven except for a short moustache. His hair, when he
removed his hat, proved to be dark and thick and glossy. He was wearing a black
suit with a fine white stripe, a white shirt, and a silk tie printed with a
fine pattern of white and blue. He was somewhere around forty years of age. The
girl, Emmett decided, was about fifteen years younger.

 
          
She
brushed at her hair, brushed at the dust on her dress, and reached back
gingerly, the dress almost too snug to allow it, to feel the ripped seam.

 
          
“God,
I’m a wreck,” she said bitterly. “Start after lunch dressing for cocktails in
Chicago
, and wind up at
midnight
eating hamburgers in
Iowa
.”

 
          
She
had a rich, full mouth, a rather wide, slightly upturned nose, and hazel eyes
set wide apart under the light eyebrows. Her complexion was a little
disappointing, but it did not really matter. She looked at him quickly and he
felt a small shock of antagonism pass between them as their eyes met. She was
smiling a little. He looked away.

 
          
He
felt her rise. “Tell him French fries and pickles,” her voice said. “I’m going
out back for a minute.”

 
          
Then
she was gone, and he breathed a little more freely until he looked up and saw
the man watching him dispassionately. Suddenly he knew that he was afraid, and
had been afraid ever since they came in; for that matter, ever since he had
first noticed the headlights in the rear-view mirror. At the back of his mind
was the knowledge that they had crossed a state line at Clinton; that, although
the car presumably belonged to the girl named, presumably, Ann Nicholson, who
was now sleeping in it, he, John Emmett, had bought gas for it in Illinois;
and, finally, there was a law known as the Mann Act which, although he was not
familiar with its exact operation, was reputed to make crossing state lines in
the company of strange young women a hazardous occupation, particularly if you
paid the way. He could not remember if the prosecution had to prove that the
crossing had been done for immoral purposes.

 
          
At
the back of his mind was the uneasy awareness that, if Ann Nicholson had been
fifty years old, or ugly, he would now be asleep in upper 6 of a Pullman car
somewhere to the west of where he was sitting. The girl in the flowered black
dress, merely by appearing, had somehow made the purity of his motives deeply
suspect.

 
          
The
man across the table spoke. “Do you mind showing me some identification?”

 
          
Emmett
glanced at him, shrugged, and passed his wallet across. The man studied the
various cards carefully and finally slid the wallet back over the scarred gray
paint of the table.

 
          
“Very
good, Mr. Emmett,” he said. “And Miss Nicholson?”

 
          
“Asleep
across the road,” Emmett said stiffly. “Why?”

 
          
“Miss
Nicholson is a patient of mine,” the older man said.

 
          
“And
who are you?”

 
          
Then
he remembered that the blonde girl had called the man Dr. Kaufman. He looked at
the wallet the older man, in his turn, passed across, and read the professional
qualifications listed on the cards in their neat celluloid holders.

 
          
“Hell,”
he said sharply, looking up, “she isn’t crazy, is she?”