Don't Get in the Car (Kit Tolliver #9) (The Kit Tolliver Stories)
Page 3
“You don’t want to have to lay that all out for the law.”
“No.”
“I can dig it. You live around here?”
She pointed in the direction she’d been walking, the direction he’d been heading himself. “I have a hotel room. I need to get my stuff. But once I do—”
“You want to get out of Dodge.” He patted the seat behind him. “Hop on.”
She didn’t pass out during the ride, or fall asleep, but it was almost as if she did. The bike sent the rest of the world away. All she heard was its engine, all she felt was the rush of the wind. She had her eyes closed, her arms around his broad back, her face pressed against the black jacket. She breathed in its old leather smell. Her mind took a break, and the next thing she knew the bike had stopped across the street from her hotel.
She said, “Can you wait? I’ll be like two minutes, I just have to grab one or two things.”
“Okay.”
“Or . . .”
“What?”
“Well, if you could wait, like, ten minutes, I could clean up and change my clothes. But if you’re in a hurry—”
“You ought to do that,” he said. “No rush. I’ll be here.”
She stripped, showered, washed her hair. Dressed in clean clothes, spread out Rodney Casselhart’s white button-down shirt on the bed, piled the clothes she’d been wearing on top of it, and folded it to make a bundle, tying the sleeves to secure it. Everything she could use, like her drugs and cash, or that might point them to her, like her cell phone, went in her shoulder bag.
She left the rest, along with her suitcase, locked the room behind her, and walked past the hotel desk with the bag over her shoulder and the bundled clothes under one arm. The clerk barely registered her presence, and her rent was paid for another five days, and by the time they realized she was gone they’d be past connecting her to the car in the field a few miles up the road, or the dead man behind the wheel.
She wasn’t sure he’d be waiting, but there he was, her knight in black leather armor, standing beside his bike. He reached for the bundle of clothes.
“Everything I was wearing,” she said. “And that was his shirt, I got it from his suitcase.”
“I’ll get rid of it for you.”
He stowed the bundle in a saddlebag. She said, “I’m glad you stayed.”
“I said I would.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t know what I’d have done if you didn’t.”
“You’d have thought of something. Where are you headed?”
Her thoughts hadn’t gone that far. “Just . . . some other city. Which way are you going?”
“South and west. Cincinnati for starters, but you probably want to get on the other side of a state line.”
“Probably, but if you could get me that far . . .”
“I could cut west now,” he said, “but that’d be Indiana, and I got reason not to go there.”
“Oh.”
“So I’ll run you through Cinci and into Kentucky. Let you off in Lexington or Lou’ville. That be all right?”
“Sure.”
He patted the seat behind him.
She said, “I really appreciate this. You’re going to a lot of trouble for me.”
“Not that much trouble.”
“Well, the thing is, if there’s anything I can do—”
“You could kick in ten or twenty bucks for gas. But if you’re short on dough, don’t worry about it.”
“No, that’s easy. And if there’s anything else—”
“You pay for gas and breakfast’s on me. But not until we’re on the other side of the Ohio River. There’s a good place in Covington. Can you hold out until then?”
“Sure. But what I meant—”
He turned to look at her, his eyes invisible behind the glasses.
“Just if there was, you know, anything else you wanted. It’d be okay.”
“Oh,” he said.
“I just—”
“Thing is,” he said, “I’m not really into girls these days.”
“Oh.”
“Girls, women. Or guys either. I’m just, you know, keeping it real simple these days.”
“Me too,” she said. “Real simple.”
She paid for their breakfast in Covington—eggs and grits and link sausage, and coffee that had stayed too long on the hot plate. She gave him twenty dollars for gas, and he took it only after she’d assured him that she was okay for cash. When he dropped her at a Louisville hotel, she still hadn’t told him her name, or learned his.
She dismounted, then remembered the dirty clothes in the saddlebag. He waved a hand dismissively, said he’d toss them once he’d crossed another state line. She wanted to say something, but all she could think of was “Thank you.”
“We’re cool,” he said, and reached out a gloved hand to touch her lightly on the shoulder. Her eyes stayed on him until he and his bike were around the corner and out of sight.
She took a room and paid cash in advance for four days, which was as much time as she figured she needed to spend in Louisville. Two hours later she was back at the hotel with new clothes and a suitcase. She took a long shower and put on some of the clothes she’d just bought, and decided to throw out the ones she’d arrived in.
By now, she thought, he’d probably crossed another state line.
Would she ever see him again? Jesus, would she even recognize him if she did? She didn’t know what he looked like, and except for his nose she hadn’t seen any portion of him that wasn’t covered by goggles or leather or beard.
She could smell his leather jacket. She could feel the touch of his gloved hand on her shoulder.
She couldn’t keep from having fantasies about him. They were full of the physical presence of him, and yet they weren’t specifically sexual. She envisioned the two of them on the bike, crisscrossing the nation together, stopping for gas, stopping for food, then moving on. They barely spoke, even as they’d barely spoken during their time together. You couldn’t talk over the roar of the engine, and the rest of the time there was no need for talk—as there’d been no need for it earlier.
He’d looked so scary. But the look that she’d feared at first glance had turned out to be a comfort. There was an individual beneath the leather, behind the mirrored lenses. There was a person with a history and an outlook and a world of likes and dislikes. But she didn’t get to see any of that, didn’t need to know any of it. There was safety, somehow, in all that impersonality.
I’m just keeping it real simple these days.
An older brother, she thought. A male cousin. Or, oh, a guardian angel, if you believed in that sort of thing.
She stayed in the Louisville hotel for the four nights she’d paid for. Took long walks, went to the movies, watched TV in her room. Ate three meals a day at the Denny’s on the next block. Took two showers a day, sometimes three.
By the time she left—a cab to the airport, a plane to Memphis—she had let go of the memories. They were still there, but they’d lost their edge. The man who would have killed her, the man who got her out of there, were both now just a part of the past.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LAWRENCE BLOCK published his first novel in 1958. He has been designated a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and has received Lifetime Achievement awards from the Crime Writers’ Association (UK), the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. He has won the Nero, Philip Marlowe, Societe 813, and Anthony awards, and is a multiple recipient of the Edgar, the Shamus, and the Japanese Maltese Falcon awards. He and his wife, Lynne, are devout New Yorkers and relentless world travelers.
Email: lawbloc@gmail.com
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock
Blog: LB’s Blog
Facebook: lawrence.block
Website: lawrenceblock.com
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vels listed in chronological order, go to About LB’s Fiction.
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Lawrence Block
Table of Contents
Title Page
Don't Get In The Car
About the Author