Liars in Love

by Ian Bull

  Paul screams. Inge grabs his shoulders and stretches him back. She grabs the tendons of his forearm and pinches hard.

  “Inge, not the Rolfing! Please! No!”

  Inge flops him over, unbuckles his belt and yanks it through the loops. Paul weeps like a prison bitch who’s ready to bite a pillow. Inge slaps his face, then uses the belt to tie his wrists and knees together like a rodeo calf. She rips his shirt and tears off a big strip of fabric and ties it in across his mouth to deaden his whimpering.

  While she’s knotting the gag in place, Paul stares at Sam and then at Kath, begging them with his eyes for help. They don’t move.

  Inge stands up. Her white jeans and white shirt are covered in brown dust. She brushes herself off, then reaches down and pulls Paul by the belt and heaves him over her shoulder, like he’s a bale of hay to load on a truck. She turns and walks back down the hill to his car.

  “I think they could be very happy together, if he gives it a chance,” Sam says.

  “And the police don’t stop them,” Kath adds.

  Inge tosses Paul in the back of the Cadillac, gets in the driver’s seat and heads back down the hill, leaving her Datsun behind.

  “I hate Datsuns. I don’t want that piece of junk on my land,” Kath says.

  “Now you’re talking,” Sam says, and he reaches for her. She walks into his arms and they kiss long and hard, like they used to kiss in the beginning.

  Kath breaks away and looks at him. “How much money do you have on you?”

  “I have the five hundred I took out of my shoe, minus fifty I used for the taxi.”

  “I still have my five hundred. How’s your back?”

  “I’ll survive,” Sam shrugs.

  “Let’s go somewhere and celebrate.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  S am and Kath park the Camaro on the road outside the Deep Water Motor Motel in rustic Incline Village, Nevada, a small town at the top of Lake Tahoe, right on the California Nevada border.

  The Deep Water Motor Motel is built to look like a Swiss chalet with two rows of rooms running off each side of the main building, like a “V.” The rooms are small, but each has a colorful carved wooden arch above each door, adding to the Swiss kitsch. Sam and Kath hug each other as they tumble into the motel lobby. The motel owner steps out from inside his Swiss chalet office. He’s a young man, tall and with dark hair. He looks more Italian than Swiss.

  “We’d like a room with a Magic Massage please,” Sam says.

  “We saw the sign out front,” Kath says. “And color TV.”

  “We can pay cash up front,” Sam says.

  The manager looks them up and down, and then hands them a register and a pencil. “Fill out this form. It’ll be forty-eight dollars a night, including tax. How many nights are you staying?” he asks.

  “Just one. Can we get a room close to the ice machine?”

  “That’ll be room three at the end,” the manager says. “Do you have a car?”

  “We parked on the street,” Sam says, dodging the question. He hands the man three twenty-dollar bills. “Keep the change.”

  He takes Sam’s money and hands Sam his key “Enjoy,” he says.

  Kath and Sam smile and walk out arm in arm.

  Once they are out of sight, the owner picks up the phone.

  Five minutes later, Sam and Kath are in Room 3 with all their clothes off. Kath wraps her arms around him, forgetting the wounds on his back. He winces, and she pulls away. “Sorry my love,” she says, and pulls him down onto the bed.

  She rolls under him and they kiss, gently at first, and then with more passion.

  Sam breaks away and reaches for a shoe at the foot of the bed. He aims and smashes the Magic Massage box. He so good at it by now, he can reach in and rip apart the wires and twist them back together, all with one hand while still kissing Kath.

  The bed roars to life and Sam and Kath vibrate across the mattress. He gets between her legs and slides into her and she pulls him deeper into her. At last she can be with the man she loves without any worry or fear. Neither of them has any reason to lie anymore, and it makes her feel happy and free for the first time in her life.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  H al Weinstein answers his phone on the first ring. He grabs a pencil and starts scribbling while Hiram and Detective Alden Stone rise out of their chairs and hover so close to him that Hal must push them both away so he can write.

  Hal hangs up and looks at Hiram. “You were right. A couple fitting their description just checked into a motel in Incline Village, Nevada. They asked for Magic Massage and a room near the ice machine, and they paid in cash.”

  “I know that motel! We can be there in six hours!” Hiram says.

  Stone calls for help from the Highway Patrol and within fifteen minutes he, Weinstein and Hiram Valosek crowd into the back of a Highway Patrol cruiser and zoom across the Bay Bridge towards Donner Pass and Truckee.

  Six hours later, Sam wakes up. It’s nine p.m. and dark outside. Kath is asleep, a look of bliss on her face. Sam eases out from under her. The Magic Massage box is ruined, and the white sheets have streaks of red on them from the cuts on his back, but he smiles with happiness. Sam is content, for the first time in years. He pulls on his pants and shirt and eases out the door with the ice bucket.

  Sam stands behind a wooden lattice at the end of a long row of rooms and loads up his ice bucket with scoops of ice from the ice machine. Tomorrow they'll drive into town and get a First Aid kit so that Kath can bandage him up. He hears a car engine and peeks out from the corner of the building and sees a line of police cars hidden in the trees by the highway.

  Then he spots Hal Weinstein and Detective Stone walking into the main office.

  Sam darts back inside Room 3 and shakes Kath awake.

  “What’s wrong, my love?”

  “I just saw my parole officer with a cop. They went in the main office.”

  Kath leaps out of bed and pulls on her clothes. She’s still only got her Apex uniform from the heist, so it doesn’t take her long to dress. “How did they find us?” Kath asks, running her hands through her hair.

  “Does it matter? We’ve got to split up. You take the Camaro. Inge’s Datsun is still on that mountain. I’ll get to that somehow.”

  “I don’t want that.”

  “You’re not safe with me. I’m the one they’re looking for.”

  “I said I don’t want that.”

  "Let's get out of here first," Sam whispers. He lifts the edge of the curtain and sees two cop cars drive past on the road out front. "Shit. They're here in force."

  “Can we go out the back window?” Kath asks.

  “No. They’re watching this room,” Sam says.

  He paces like a caged animal, but he’s thinking. He stops and focuses on the closet, then throws open the flimsy folding doors.

  “Sam, we can’t hide in there!”

  Sam grabs a chair, leans against it and kicks the inside of the closet with a hard mule kick with the heel of his boot. His foot goes through. He kicks again, making the hole larger. Three more kicks and the wall cracks. He backs up, lowers his shoulder and runs at the wall, and busts through into the next room. It’s empty. Kath steps through the hole, then reaches back through the hole and closes the closet door behind her. She helps a dazed Sam to his feet.

  Outside, three Nevada State Trooper patrol cars line up outside Room 3. The troopers exit the vehicles with their rifles and take position behind their open car doors.

  In the next room, Sam yanks open the flimsy closet doors, leans against a chair and mules kicks the second wall. He puts a hole through the thin drywall and plywood, then makes it bigger. He backs up, lowers his shoulder and runs at it again, busting through. Sam lands in a pile of drywall dust on the purple shag rug. An elderly man and woman scream and run from the room, leaving their bags behind.

  Detective Stone watches the older man and woman run out of their room and down towards the road. “Wha
t are they doing? We called them and told them to wait!” he yells.

  Inside, Sam grabs his knees and gasps for air as Kath reaches back through the hole and again closes the closet door behind her. Sam gets air back in his lungs and staggers to his feet.

  “Two more, honey. You can do it,” Kath whisper to him as she slides him a chair to lean against. She opens the closet door behind him. Sam hauls back and mule kicks the thin closet wall and smashes his foot through once, then smashes through again. Kath and Sam can hear yelling on the other side.

  Kath pulls the chair away and steadies Sam before he falls over like a drunken redwood tree. She turns him and aims him where he should run. “Go, big boy! Bust on through!”

  Sam lowers his shoulder and runs low and hard – and smashes through in a shower of splinters. This time he lands in a cloud of drywall dust on an orange shag carpet. A younger couple stops packing their bags and runs screaming from the room.

  Outside, Stone sees them exiting and motions for two cops to grab them. “These people are ruining everything!” he says.

  Hiram Valosek rushes forward, waving his arms. “Move in, men! Attack!”

  Hal throws Hiram against the car. “No! Stop!”

  It’s too late. Two cops run up with a battering ram and smash open the door to Room 3. Another four cops rush inside with pistols drawn. They look around and find nothing.

  Kath opens another closet door, puts a chair in place and helps Sam to his feet. “You can do this, honey! You’re doing great!”

  Sam grins and flashes her a “thumbs up.” He kicks hard, but the heel doesn’t go through. He kicks again and again, and finally there’s a crack.

  Back in Room 3, the police surround the sliding closet door and slide it open, and they see the hole. One cop yells. “They’re moving through the walls!”

  A line of officers runs through the hole, then kneel and aim at the next closet door. Another cop gingerly slides the closet door open and reveals the next hole.

  “Let’s move, move, move!” one cop screams, and the officers run through.

  In the last room, Sam runs into the closet hard enough to make a small hole – but bounces back. Kath darts inside the closet and looks through the hole. It leads to the outside.

  “I can see the outside through the hole, we’re almost there!” she yells.

  Sam nods. He backs up and runs at the wall hard…

  …and his upper body busts through to the outside. He crawls the rest of the way out of the hole and lays on a soft bed of pine needles until Kath crawls through hole and lands on him.

  “Leave me. Go.”

  "Come on; it's right there." She digs through his pocket and finds his keys and pulls him to his feet.

  It’s pitch black. They stumble through the trees behind the motel and loop back around to the road and the parked Camaro. Kath unlocks the car, opens the back door and pushes Sam inside. Kath closes the back door with a quiet click, then dashes around and gets in the driver’s side. She’s glad it’s dark.

  Through the windshield, she can see a line of cars and people in the street, gawkers who have come to see the biggest news in Incline Village in years. Kath puts the car into reverse and lets it drift backward down the hill. When she's one hundred yards away, she starts the engine, does a reverse U-turn and drives away. She leaves the headlights off.

  Back at the motel, the line of police burst through the hole into the last room, and then find the hole to the outside. They exit through the door and point at the road.

  “They went north!” the loud cop screams.

  Hal Weinstein and Alden Stone run to the street, with Hiram running close behind. They push through the crowd of onlookers and see the road rising and twisting into the distance. They all stop and listen. They hear the distant roar of a Camaro but see no lights.

  “Where does this road go?” Stone asks the first cop who runs up.

  “Highway 431 is the Mt. Rose Scenic Highway. It takes you to Reno,” the cop answers.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  T he Mt. Rose Scenic Highway is one of the steepest roads in the United States. The road rises from Incline Village to the Mt. Rose meadow, which is where the Ponderosa Ranch from the TV show Bonanza! was supposed to be. It then sneaks through a pass just below the 8,900-foot-high summit of Mt. Rose, and descends the other side of the mountain in steep hairpin turns to the desert floor, all in less than twenty-five miles.

  Kath took driving lessons from some of the cocky losers her mom dated, so she knows how to drive fast. She slides the muscle car into every turn, downshifts, and then accelerates into the next turn. Many times, her back tires slide into the gravel by the side of the road and they almost go over, but she knows how to accelerate out of the skid, and then adds even more gas.

  Sam gets tossed like a cracked egg in the back seat, rolling from one side to the other.

  "Sit up and put a seatbelt on! Right-hand side! You're throwing off my balance!" Kath yells at him.

  Sam sits up and buckles in then rolls down the window a crack and sucks at the air.

  “Inge’s car is the other way,” Sam mutters.

  “I went where the cops weren’t. We’ll ditch the car at a casino. We have to get a ride on a truck going somewhere, maybe back up the mountain to Inge’s Datsun.”

  “My shoulder’s broken. My back is bleeding again. I’m hurt bad.”

  Kath downshifts again and throws the car into another sliding curve that bangs Sam against the side door. He grunts in pain. Kath looks over her shoulder at him and they lock eyes. He’s in pain, and she feels it as bad as he does. “I’m sorry, baby,” she says.

  “Don’t be sorry. Just keep hauling ass. You’re a better driver than me.”

  Still, Kath slows the car. “Do you think they’ll catch us?”

  Sam doesn’t answer. He looks out the window instead.

  “Pull over at the next vista stop,” Sam says.

  The Mt. Rose Scenic Highway has vista stops every ten miles. Four minutes later, they reach the next vista spot. Kath slides the muscle car into the first parking spot, right next to the curved rock wall that runs along the perimeter of the parking lot. They limp out of the car. They are still up high enough that they can look down the steep mountain to Washoe Lake far below and see South Reno in the distance. The moon is reflected in the lake and the lights of the city sparkle in the distance.

  “Pretty.”

  “Yeah.”

  They look up at the mountain. They don't see any lights from any cars chasing them yet, but they both know they're coming.

  “Pop the trunk, babe,” Sam asks.

  Kath opens the trunk and Sam rifles through the back. “Bella only drove this once. We brought a picnic,” Sam says.

  “You had a picnic? I never had a picnic with Bella.”

  Sam takes out a blanket and a small coffee thermos. “You have the deed?” Sam asks.

  Kath hands him the crumpled roll of papers from her back pocket. Sam opens the thermos, stuffs the papers inside, and then wraps the thermos in the blanket.

  “Look at the road markers. Think you can remember this place?” Sam asks.

  Kath looks around. The moonlight bounces off the thirteen-mile marker on Highway 431. She nods at him. They walk around to the other side of the rock wall and creep down on the steep side of the mountain. Sam feels for a loose rock in the wall. Kath does too.

  “Found one,” Kath says, and tugs.

  Sam puts the rolled-up blanket between his knees and helps her pull. The small boulder comes out and falls to the ground in front of them. Sam and Kath dig the hole deeper with their hands, digging into the hole in the rock wall until their fingers bleed.

  “See if it fits,” Sam says, and hands her the blanket.

  Kath slides the blanket into the hole, and it disappears inside. Sam picks the rock off the ground and puts it back into the hole, locking the thermos and blanket into place.

  “Think you can remember this rock?” Sam asks.r />
  “I’ll never forget it,” she answers.

  They grip the wall and climb back up to the parking level. Far above them, they see the lights from a line of cars descending the mountain.

  “What do we do now?” Kath asks.

  “Let’s use the money we have left to do something special.”

  “Like what?”

  “We’re twelve miles from Reno. Let’s get married.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  R eno calls itself “The Biggest Little City in the World,” which is the perfect name for it. It has half as much excitement as Las Vegas but is twice as friendly. Highway trucks filled with California produce flow through Reno and across the country. Vital rail lines cross here. But Reno fights to keep its small-town feel. Gamblers like Bella often prefer Reno to Vegas, because Reno makes the old ladies feel welcome. There’s also snow in the winter, so Christmas is nice in Reno.

  It’s got plenty of wedding chapels too, like Arch of Reno Chapel, Chapel of the Bells, and The Silver Bells Chapel. But first, Sam and Kath visit The Gem Gallery on Virginia Street. It’s a small jewelry store with thick bars on the windows and doors. They ring the bell.

  The owner, Frank Jefferson, eyes Sam and Kath carefully on his closed-circuit monitor. He’s careful about who he lets in. He notices that the man is limping and wincing in pain, and that the woman is wearing a torn waitress shirt, but Frank has seen brides and grooms in much worse shape. They also got out of a handsome new Camaro, so they must have money. And how dangerous can they be at eight in the morning? He hits the buzzer that unlocks the gate and lets them in.

  Sam and Kath stare at the rings in the glass case for just a few seconds.

  “Those two look real nice,” Kath says, pointing at two rings on the first shelf.

  Frank opens the case and pulls out the two rings; one for a man, another for a woman. “Each band has three interlocking loops of gold. Very nice. They’re one hundred fifty each,” he says, then watches Sam and Kath very closely as they each try on their rings.