But then Cathy saw that the man wasn’t looking at her at all. His eyes were fixed on the magazine rack next to the cash register. He muttered, “That Entertainment Weekly there? Could you hand it to me?”
She passed him the magazine. Without thanking her, he flipped quickly to an article inside. Cathy couldn’t tell what the story was about, only that it featured three or four cheesecakey pictures of some young, brunette woman, which he stared at intently.
Cathy slowly forced herself to be calm. Then, suddenly, her shaking hands rose to her mouth and she began laughing out loud. The man looked up once from the pictures of his dream girl then returned to his magazine, not the least curious about this tall, plain woman and what she found so funny. Cathy wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes, turned back to the cart and began loading her groceries onto the belt.
THE FALL GUY
The headlights lit the sensuous sweep of the road ahead of her.
Cruising through the dark pines, swaying left right, left right. A damp evening, a cold spring. Her Lexus strayed slightly over the centerline of the wet asphalt and she wondered whether she’d had two martinis with Don or three.
Only two, she decided, and sped up.
She drove this same road, from her job in New Hampshire to her home just over the Massachusetts border, every weekday night—and every night she thought the same thing on this stretch of Route 28: sensuous curves.
Like the cliché of a sign two miles back: Soft Shoulder.
A lot of nights—slightly drunk, listening to Michael Bolton on the radio—she’d laugh at those words on the yellow diamond. Tonight she was somber.
Twelve miles from home.
Carolyn eased her stockinged foot off the gas. Her white Ferragamo spike heels rested on the seat next to her (she often drove barefoot, less for control than to avoid scuffing). Then she piloted the car through the final set of, yes, sensuous curves that led to the minuscule town of Dunning.
The gas station, the general store, a propane company, an old motel, a liquor store and an antique shop in which she’d never—in the five years of commuting to and from the hospital—seen anyone buy a single thing.
She slowed to thirty at the rusted harvester, which is where the avid young cops of Dunning caught their speeders and tormented anybody driving a vehicle nicer than a Buick. She stopped here every night on the way home from work—buying gas and a large coffee—but the service station attendants never seemed to notice that she was a regular.
As she climbed out of the car she saw another customer, a man with a rough face and a five o’clock shadow, leaning against his car, talking on a cell phone. He nodded unhappily; whoever was speaking on the other end of the line was delivering bad news.
Carolyn slipped the nozzle into her gas tank and set the catch on the handle. She stood up, felt a chill. She was wearing her beige Evan Picone suit, low cut, no blouse, and a short skirt. With some satisfaction she noticed the customer’s eyes lift from the asphalt and scan her body. Even though there was something crude about him—the craggy face, the meaty hands—he was dressed well. A smooth gray suit and a dark trench coat with lots of flaps. His car was a Lincoln, golden brown. It cost, she figured, about the same as hers. She approved of men in expensive cars.
The nozzle snapped off and she went inside to pay.
A cup of black coffee, a roll of Lifesavers. Pep-O-Mint. Without a hint of recognition, the young clerk looked up from his portable TV only long enough to glance at her chest while he gave her the change; maybe it was just her face he didn’t recognize.
She stepped back outside, glancing at the man with the Lincoln as he tossed his phone on the seat of the car and reached into his pocket, fishing for money. He glanced toward her again.
Then he froze. His eyes went wide, focusing just past her.
And she felt an arm snake around her waist, felt cold metal at her ear.
“Oh, God . . .”
“Shut up, lady,” a young man’s voice stuttered in her ear. He was nervous and smelled of whisky. “We’re gonna get in your car and drive. You scream, you’re dead.”
Carolyn had never been mugged. She’d lived in Chicago and New York City and briefly in Paris but the only time she’d ever been physically threatened, the perpetrator hadn’t been a crook but the wife of the man who lived across the hall from her on the Left Bank. She was now paralyzed with fear.
As the mugger dragged her toward her car she stammered, “Please, just take the keys.”
“No way, babe. I want you’s much as I want your wheels.”
“Please, no!” she moaned. “I’ll give you a lot of money. I’ll—”
“Shut up. You’re coming with me.”
“No, she’s not.” Lincoln Man had walked up to the passenger side of her Lexus. He was standing between them and the car. His eyes were steady. He didn’t seem afraid. The skinny kid, on the other hand, seemed terrified. He shoved the gun forward. “Get the hell outa the way, mister. Nobody’ll get hurt, you do what I say.”
The man said calmly, “You want the car, take the car. Take my car. It’s new. Got twelve thousand miles on it.” He held up the keys.
“I’m taking her and her car and you’re getting outa my way. I don’t want to shoot you.” The gun wavered. He was a scrawny young guy, backwoods, with dishwater-brown hair in a snaky ponytail.
Lincoln Man smiled and continued to talk calmly. “Look, friend. Carjacking’s no big deal. But a kidnapping or rape count? Forget about it. You’ll go away forever.”
“Get the hell out of my way!” his voice crackled. He moved forward a few feet, forcing Carolyn along with him. She was whimpering. Hated herself for it but she had no control.
Lincoln Man stood his ground and the kid shoved the gun directly into his face.
What happened next happened fast.
She saw:
Lincoln Man turning his palms toward the mugger in a gesture of surrender, stepping back slightly.
The passenger door swinging open and the kid shoving her inside. (Carolyn, thinking crazily: I’ve never been in the passenger seat of my car before, the seat’s too far forward, I’ll tear my panty hose. . . .)
The mugger walking around the front of the car to the driver’s side of the Lexus, forcing Lincoln Man—hands still raised—out of the way.
Carolyn glanced hopelessly into the gas station window. The young attendant was still behind the counter, still eating potato chips, still watching Roseanne on the tiny TV.
The mugger started to climb into the car, then paused, looking back, realizing the nozzle was still in the gas tank of the car.
Then Lincoln Man was lunging, grabbing the mugger’s gun hand. He gasped in surprise and fought fiercely to free his hand.
But Lincoln Man was stronger. Carolyn pushed open her door and sprang out as the two men tumbled onto the hood of the Lexus and grappled for the gun. Lincoln Man banged his opponent’s wrist onto the windshield several times and the black pistol flew from his grasp. Carolyn squinted as it landed at her feet. The gun didn’t go off.
She’d never held a gun in her life, not a pistol anyway, and she now crouched down and lifted it, felt its heavy weight, felt its heat. She shoved the muzzle into the face of the mugger. He went limp as cloth.
Lincoln Man—a good foot taller than the kid—rolled off the hood and took him by the collar.
The mugger looked at Carolyn’s uneasy eyes and must’ve concluded that she wasn’t going to be shooting anybody. He pushed Lincoln Man away with surprising strength and took off at a gallop into the brush beside the gas station.
Carolyn thrust the gun generally in his direction.
Lincoln Man said urgently, “Just shoot for his legs, not his back. You’ll be in trouble, you kill him.”
But her hands began to tremble and by the time she forced herself to steady it, he was gone.
In the distance a car started, a car with a rattling tailpipe. Then a screech of tires.
“Oh, God, oh, God .
. .” Carolyn closed her eyes and leaned against her car.
Lincoln Man came up to her. “You all right?”
She nodded. “Yes. No. I don’t know. . . . What can I say? Thank you.”
“Uhm . . . ” He nodded toward the gun, which she was carelessly pointing at his belly.
“Oh, sorry.” She offered it to him. But he glanced down and said, “You better hold on to it until the cops get here. I’m not supposed to have too much to do with guns.”
Carolyn didn’t understand this. For a moment she thought that he was in recovery and touching a gun would be like somebody in AA taking a drink. Maybe people got addicted to guns the way other people—her husband, for instance—got hooked on gambling or women or coke.
“What?”
“I have a record.” He said this without shame or pride but in a tone that suggested he was used to mentioning it early in a conversation, getting the fact out of the way, and seeing what the reaction was. Carolyn had none, and he continued, “Somebody finds me with a pistol . . . well, it’d be a problem.”
“Oh,” she said, as if he were a Safeway clerk explaining about an expired spaghetti sauce coupon. His eyes dipped again to her beige suit. Well, more accurately: to the part of her body where her suit was not.
He glanced inside the station, where the clerk continued obliviously to watch his TV program, then he said, “We better call the cops. He’s sure not going to do it.”
“Wait,” she said. “Can I ask a question?”
“Sure.”
“What’d you do time for?”
He hesitated. “Well,” he said slowly. And then must’ve decided that Carolyn, with her beautiful suit, her tight skirt, her black lacy stockings from Victoria’s Secret, this wonderful, fragrant package (Opium, $49 an ounce) would never be his and so he had nothing to lose. He said, “Assault with a deadly weapon. Five counts. Guilty on all of them. Oh, and conspiracy to commit assault. So, should we call those cops?”
“No,” she answered, slipping the gun into the glove compartment of her car. “I think we should have a drink.”
And nodded toward the lounge of the motel across the road.
They awoke three hours later.
He looked like a smoker but he wasn’t. He looked like a drinker too and drink he did but he’d had only one beer to her three from the six-pack they bought at the party store beside the motel, after one martini each in the bar.
They stared at the cracked ceiling.
“You have someplace you have to be?” she asked.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“I mean now. Tonight.”
“No. I’m just in the area for the day. Going back home tomorrow.”
Home, he’d explained over the martini, was Boston. He was staying the night at the Courtyard Inn in Klammath.
His name was Lawrence—emphatically not Larry. After prison he’d gone straight and given up his job of collecting debts for some men he described vaguely as “local businessmen.”
“I collected the vig, they call it,” he’d explained. “The interest on loan shark loans. You gotta pay the vig.”
“Like Rocky.”
“Yeah, sorta,” Lawrence said.
When she asked his last name his eyes went cloudy and though he said, “Anderson,” he might as well have answered “Smith.”
He said, “None of the above,” to her inquiry about a wife and family and she was inclined to believe him.
The one thing she knew about him for certain was that he was an incredible lover.
Sensuous road, sensuous curves . . .
Nothing soft about his shoulders.
For nearly two hours, they’d kissed, touched, tasted, pressed together. There was nothing kinky about him, nothing odd. He was simply, well, overwhelming. That was the only way she could describe it. His strong arms around her, his large body atop hers . . .
As they lay now in the warm, cheap bed, she watched his chest rising and falling. There was a nasty scar on it, clearly visible beneath the black, curly hair. She wanted to ask him about it but couldn’t bring herself to.
“Lawrence?”
He glanced at her cautiously. This was the revered moment after coupling. A risky time. Certain conventions had to be followed. Honesty was dangerous but sincerity a must. Synonyms for commitment and love and the future—if not those words themselves—had ruined many rosy evenings.
But Carolyn’s mind wasn’t on any of those matters. She was picturing the black gun in her glove compartment and the high, frantic voice of the man who’d nearly kidnapped her.
“What do you do for a living now?” she asked him.
A pause.
“I used to sell auto parts. Well, manage a store. I’m between things right now.”
“Got fired?”
“Yeah, got fired.” He stretched, a bone popped. “You have a record, they’ll fire you if some kid in the mailroom takes a box of staples home. You’re always the number-one suspect. I came up for a job interview in Hammond today. Didn’t work out.”
She remembered his sullen face during the conversation on his cell phone:
“Can I ask you a question?” he asked.
“Sure. I’m married, no children. I love sex and I drink too much. Anything else?”
“Why didn’t you want to call the cops?”
But instead of answering she asked, “Why didn’t you get shook back there?”
He shrugged those great shoulders again. “I’ve had guns pointed at me before. I can tell when somebody’s going to use a piece and when he’s not. Oh, that kid’d been a pro, I’d’ve said so long, lady, and hoped the state troopers got to you before it was too late.”
“Have you ever killed anybody?”
The hesitation was his answer.
“No more questions from you till you answer mine,” he said. “Why no cops?”
“Because I have a business proposition for you.”
“What, you need some auto parts?”
“No, I want you to murder my husband.”
“Divorce him,” Lawrence said. “That’s what they make lawyers for.”
“He’s worth a lot of money.”
“If he’s cheating, you’ll get half. Maybe more.”
“Well . . .”
“Oh. He’s not the only guilty party.” Lawrence laughed and gestured toward the bed they were lying in. “Guess not. Who cheated first?”
“He did.” Then she added, “Well, he got caught first.”
“Tough luck. But I’m not a hit man. I never was.”
“What can I say to convince you?”
“Nothing. Not. A. Thing.”
“What can I do to convince you?” She moved her hands along his body, pinched his thigh playfully.
He laughed.
He stopped smiling when she asked, “Fifty thousand?”
But after a moment: “I’ve done my time. I didn’t like it.”
“A hundred?”
The hesitation was probably only a millisecond but to Carolyn it was plenty long enough.
Lawrence said, “I don’t think so.”
“I don’t think—that’s not the same as no.”
“It’s not easy killing somebody. Well, matter of fact, that part is easy. But getting away’s tricky. That’s the almost-impossible part.”
As she often did in the meetings she ran at the hospital—when the people who worked for her would come up with excuses for not having their reports or proposals in on time—Carolyn said, “I’m hearing almost. I’m hearing tricky. But all that tells me is it’s doable.”
“You ever threatened him?”
She shrugged. “I found him with his girlfriend once at the mall. I lost it. I said I’d kill them both. . . . No, I think I said they’d wish they were dead by the time I got through with them.”
“Ouch.”
“I don’t think anybody heard me.”
“Well,” he said slowly, like a doctor formulating an opinion. “You’ve got
a reason to kill him. That’s a problem. It means you’ve got to find a fall guy. You’ve got to make it look like it’s more likely somebody else committed the crime than you, even if you have a motive. We need—”
“Another suspect?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled and eased her breasts against him. “Like a carjacker. Or a mugger?”
“Sure.” His eyes swung toward the gas station. He nodded. “That kid, we’ve got his gun . . .”
Stan had several guns. Carolyn remembered the forms he’d had to fill out to buy them; she knew gun shops kept good records of ownership. She mentioned this now.
“Might be stolen, might not be his,” Lawrence said.
“It’d have his fingerprints on it.”
“We’d have to wipe it—you touched it, remember?” But then he laughed.
“What?”
“Well, even if we wiped the gun, the bullets’d still have his prints on them.”
She nuzzled against his neck.
“But,” Lawrence added, “he’s just a carjacker. You really want to bring him down on a murder charge?”
“He was going to rape me,” she pointed out. “Maybe kill me. Look at it like this: We’ll be doing a good deed, getting him put away before he hurts someone.”
“A hundred thousand?” Lawrence gazed up at the ceiling. “You know, those social workers and counselors . . . in prison, I mean? They’d ask about all sorts of crazy stuff. What appealed to me about antisocial behavior? What was I angry about? Was my childhood conflicted?” He laughed. “They didn’t like my answers. I told ’em I could make five thousand a day just to break some poor schmuck’s arm. Who the hell wouldn’t want a job like that?”
“Well, here’s a chance for your nest egg.” She kissed his ear and whispered the words that always thrilled her, “Tax free.”
He thought for a moment. “We’d have to set it up carefully. Maybe we find the motel where he’s meeting his girlfriend—”
“I know it. They always go to the same place.”
Twisted: The Collected Stories Page 10
