by Bob Bickford
“That's three,” Sal said. “Good. You know what to do now.”
I tasted my bourbon and felt the cold burn in my throat. When I set my glass down, the ice cubes chimed once. Annie glanced at me, and I saw the ghost of a smile before she turned her attention back to Sal. Her eyes shone darkly. I looked at her cheek and brow, and I was reminded again of Nefertiti. I wondered if I protected her, or if her strange magic protected me.
“Three, six, nine,” Sal smiled. “Of spades. No one takes what's mine, and the deal never changes. Never.”
Annie passed a hand over the three cards and turned one face up. The hearts on it looked at us.
“Eight.” she said. “Hearts.”
“Liar,” Sal breathed, his smile gone. “You lie.”
She turned the second card, and there were more hearts, seven of them this time. Sal leaned forward, his face drained. I shifted slightly and moved one hand toward the Browning in my pocket. The dark room was breathless.
Annie turned the third card, and her smile was radiant, nearly angelic.
“Five of hearts,” she smiled. “Five, seven and eight...how about that?”
Sal's face transformed. He glared at her, and then his eyes shifted to me. I flinched and looked away from what was in them, looking out at me.
“You lie,” he growled. “You lie.”
The music started again, and the bar was all at once noisy. The smoke moved and shapes began to form in the blue air. Sal turned in his seat and signaled wildly to someone in the shadows. I pushed myself back and heard the chair fall and clatter on the floor behind me. I yanked out my gun and caught Annie's elbow.
Cleveland raised both of his hands and snapped his fingers. I could see it, even if I couldn't hear it over the music. Whoever he signaled was still hidden in the shadows at the back of the room.
“Time to go,” I told Annie. “Quickly.”
-Eighteen-
I pulled her through the swinging doors into the kitchen. On our through this time, the cooks were suddenly a lot busier than they had been earlier, and the sound of our hurried steps on the tile floor got lost in the clatter of pots and pans. No one looked up.
“It might be too late,” Annie called from behind me. “He threw a spell.”
“I don't care about spells,” I called back. “I care about bullets.”
We burst outside into the parking lot. The night air was warm and dry after the air-conditioned chill inside the lounge. I glanced at the big Buick as we passed, as black and empty as it had been. I caught Annie's hand with mine. “I figure we've got about thirty seconds before they come through that door,” I said. “Can you run?”
“Faster than you.”
She was as good as her word. And gone. I went after her. She ran, fleet as a deer. She kicked out a delicate spray of gravel as she flew around the back corner of the lounge and made for the parking lot in front with me following about fifty feet behind.
We made it into the blue neon glow. We were headed across the parking area to the dark line of scrub and grass that separated the Star-lite from the hotel next door when the headlights caught us from behind.
“Don't look!” I yelled as Annie slowed and turned.
I heard the eight cylinders wind up into a howl. We sprinted for the trees and bushes at the parking area's edge. I felt dry grass under my feet and followed Annie's slender whiteness into the brief shelter of darkness and then tires shrieked as the Buick slid to a stop.
There was a pause, and then a gun discharged. I recognized the sound as a shotgun. The air pressure changed as pellets flew over us. Branches shredded over our heads, and then we were through into the hotel parking lot and running for the Mercury.
“Who's driving?” I yelled at Annie.
“Are you kidding me?” she answered without slowing down.
I could hear the laughter in her voice, and wondered if she was hysterical. The Mercury sat by itself, a bare outline against faint yellow lights from the hotel. We ran faster and it seemed to stay just as far away. Out of sight, somewhere behind us, I heard the Buick's big voice, raised angrily.
Finally, we reached Annie's car and I yanked at the passenger door. She was already in the driver's seat, calmly working out the ignition key. I had the absurd wish that there was time to raise the convertible roof, as if the canvas would offer some protection from what was coming.
The Flathead engine cranked and ground and didn't want to start. I watched the distant hotel entrance. Cleveland's men couldn't bring the Buick through the trees. They would have to come through on foot the way we had, and I didn't think they'd leave the car. We were going to meet them on the frontage road.
Annie got the Mercury's engine going. It was choppy and loud. She raced it a couple of times and it smoothed out. She glanced over at me, her face lit by the glow from the gauges. “Flooded it,” she said. “Always happens when you're in a hurry, doesn't it? It's like a rule.”
Her smile was radiant. She held it for as long as it took her to find first gear, and then the clutch went out and we were flying across the gravel lot toward the entrance. We passed the golden-lit hotel portico and came to a sliding stop at the road. It was completely dark in both directions.
“Are they gone?” she asked.
“They're here,” I said. “Waiting to see which way we go.”
“Which way should we go?” she asked. “Right or left?”
Before I could speak, headlights came on to our left, flooding the road and pinning us in the glare. Annie didn't hesitate. She put the accelerator pedal against the floor. The Mercury screamed, and she wrenched the steering wheel to the right. I grabbed the windshield frame to steady myself and looked back.
The Buick's high beams rocked, swayed and then steadied as it accelerated behind us. I leaned toward Annie and cupped a hand.
“Fast as you can!” I shouted.
I didn't know if she could hear me over the engine's wailing and the rush of wind, but it didn't matter. She was doing better than seventy anyway. We were going to reach the highway entrance soon. I didn't want to get on the long stretch of blacktop where the Buick's big engine would give it an advantage, but I didn't know where the frontage road went. We couldn't risk getting trapped.
“Take the highway and get back off as soon as you can!”
A different noise started, as though we had run through rocks and the undercarriage of the car was being pummeled. I looked back and saw the star-shaped bloom of flame just as the noise came again and bullets punched through the Mercury's trunk lid. They had a machine gun.
“You have to move!” I shouted. “Don't let them have a target!”
“Let me drive!” she screamed back, but began to swerve back and forth, from gravel shoulder to shoulder.
A second pulsing light flower joined the first, but there were no strikes. Annie's evasion was throwing off their aim for now. A Thompson is hard to control at the best of times, and hitting a target from a moving car takes time and a lot of ammunition.
Still, I had the sudden, sure knowledge we weren't going to survive this. There were at least two sub-machine guns taking turns with us, and shooters who seemed to be comfortable with them. The Buick was bigger than Annie's Mercury, and while the convertible might be more nimble, we were losing ground. I had spent my life thinking my way out of dicey situations, but there are times when the options have all been used up.
Annie flew us up the entrance to the highway and then pushed the Mercury as hard as it would go. I steadied my arm as best I could on the back seat. The Browning kicked against me, the noise of the shots lost in the general cacophony. I emptied it in the direction of the other car, but I might as well have been throwing pebbles. It gained steadily.
The machine guns had stopped firing, and as the Buick came abreast I saw why. Mary Raw leaned far out of the passenger window. Her eyes were slitted against the wind, and her features were stretched into a grin. She cradled a shotgun, and as I watched she brought it to bear. I struggl
ed to reload the Browning, and knew I was going to be too slow.
There was another face in the back window, a very pale man. He watched us without expression from behind the glass.
“Creep!” Annie screamed.
Mary Raw fired, and the night lit up like a photographer's flash. Our windshield exploded into a hurricane of glass just as Annie locked the emergency brake. I grabbed onto what I could as the Mercury began a wild uncontrolled spin. There was a crunching thud as we caught a corner of the Buick, and as we slewed around I saw that it was spinning, too.
The world became incomprehensible with light and sound. I saw Annie's slender arms wrestling with the steering wheel as the cars did an insane ballet down the highway, both somehow staying on the road.
We spun, and the Buick spun in time with us, round and round, tires screaming protest against the torture of tearing metal and breaking glass. Over and over, our headlights caught the faces in the other car as they twirled close and then away again. I saw Mary Raw's lipsticked mouth opened in a long scream, and the white skin and emotionless features of the man in the back seat.
The Mercury finally shuddered to a stop. It rocked once on its springs and then came to rest. The air grew thick with the odor of boiling motor oil and scorched rubber. I looked over my shoulder at the big Buick, stopped diagonally across the road a hundred yards behind us. One tail light was out. Its headlights pointed into the brush. Nothing inside the car moved. I looked over into Annie's eyes.
“Will this thing still run?” I asked. “Can you get it started?”
She pressed the button, the starter ground and caught, and we were away again. Air buffeted the broken edges of the windshield frame. I brushed the worst of the glass pebbles from her hair as she drove.
“There's blood on your face,” I said. “You'd better stop somewhere.”
Annie laughed and twisted up the volume dial on the dash-mounted radio. I reached out to turn it off and she slapped my hand away. Horns and saxophones sang over the wind, about love and loss and the sick kind of lonely that can't be cured.
Five miles later, she slowed the Mercury and steered it across the gravel shoulder and then down into a shallow, grassy ditch. The wounded car struggled up the other side, and the single working headlight beam picked out trunks of trees as lined and orderly as soldiers standing at attention.
The exhaust burbled as we drove into the rows. We bumped gently over the soft dirt, and branches trailed fingers down the sides of the car when we passed. When we were well out of the highway's view, Annie set the brake and shut the engine off. After all the noise and light, the quiet darkness was a balm.
“Well, now,” she said, breathless. “Wasn't that something?”
“What was that with the cards?” I asked. “Some kind of Tarot?”
She slid down and rested her head on the back of the seat. Through the exhaustion and the blood, her face was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
“Sort of,” she said. “Hearts. Seven, eight, and five. You and me...and June.”
“How did you do it?”
“I didn't do anything,” she said. “The cards are what they are. They move by themselves.”
Far off, the buzzing whine of a small engine broke the silence. It sounded like a small motorcycle. Annie was listening, too.
“That sounds like one of those Italian scooters,” she said. “I love them. What do you imagine it's doing, riding around out here?”
I tensed, listening to the noise, and then I heard the spray of water that went with it.
“It's an irrigation pump,” I said. “Thirsty trees.”
I sensed her nod in the dark.
“Almonds,” she said. “Can you smell them?”
She folded her arms around my neck and pressed her face to me. I was enveloped by her perfume; it mixed with the night fragrance of almonds, earth, and water. I tasted her blood and her tears, and I never wanted to be anywhere else, ever again.
“Where should we go?”
“Just drive,” I said.
We took an unlit canyon road, climbing until the road ran out. Then we climbed the rest of the way on foot, until the city spread beneath us, a carpet of lights with the vast blackness of the ocean beyond it.
The night wind rolled in off the desert, and the surface of the reservoir sparkled. We stood above it, looking. I hoped that we’d be able to find our way back down the hill without slipping and breaking something. The loose rock and brush, easier to navigate going up than down. I knew we’d been a little bit crazy to climb up here without flashlights.
“Did we accomplish anything tonight?” she asked me.
“I know that the older Sal Cleveland is the same man you knew when you were young,” I said. “You hadn't seen his face for a lot of years, and I had to be sure. It isn't just a logical conclusion now, it's a fact. I'm sorry I put you through it, though.”
The reservoir was a column of blackness rising straight up from the city’s electric glow, and to the west another rising pillar of darkness was the cemetery. I had never seen darkness contained that way. It shone straight up like twin gray searchlights in all of the yellow light.
“I used to walk there every night,” Annie said, pointing at the cemetery. “It was my place to go. The silence is outstanding, but if you listen closely, it isn’t quiet at all.”
I looked over at her. She stared out at the city, her arm extended to point. Her profile caught the faint ambient light from below, an imperial ruler like one who now ruled museums.
“You can walk it in a loop, all the way around. The whole place changes, depending on whether you turn right or left on the path when you first go in. Whichever way you go, you know you’ll come out different.”
“I’d like to go with you, sometime.”
“I don’t know if you can or not. We could try.” She turned slightly toward me, and I felt her smile. “Whatever happens, though, I’ll always see you on the way out.”
Something moved in my chest. I still didn’t know what to think about her. We stood quietly for a little while, just looking. When she finally spoke, her voice was very soft. “I’m a little afraid of the dark lately,” she said. “It’s kind of scary, sometimes.” She shook her head. “There, I said it.”
“Afraid is allowed,” I said. “I was afraid tonight.”
“I don’t go the distance in the cemetery anymore. I still go there, but it’s very different and I’m trying to be okay about that.”
I was beginning to think she might be the bravest person I had ever met, but I had no way to say so without sounding foolish, so I didn’t say anything. I reached out and gently caught her wrist and held it. A warm wind moved against us, and I felt her shiver. The air smelled dry, like cinnamon.
“There are snakes up here,” Annie said. “Rattlesnakes and king snakes. You have to be careful and watch where you’re going, but there’s really no way that you can in the dark.”
I nodded. I knew about the snakes.
“It’s just a matter of making a little noise,” I said. “They mostly prefer to stay out of your way.”
She didn’t respond. She watched something in the shadows, and I didn’t think she had heard me. Finally, she nodded, to herself. “I like that about the night time,” she said. “You know you should be careful, but you can’t.”
I touched her face and then looked at my fingertips. “You're bleeding again, Annie,” I said. “I need to get you somewhere to take care of it.”
“Home,” she said.
“I don't think home is safe tonight, for either of us.”
“Home is what we have,” she said. “It's the only place we can go.”
The bleeding was a shock in the harsh light. Annie sat on the toilet and watched me. Her eyes were brighter than they should have been. Blood was nothing new to me, but this felt different. Water ran and splashed in the sink, and the bathroom smelled of carbolic.
“I think it looks worse than it is,” I said. “Just flying gl
ass...no bullet holes.”
I gave her a couple of aspirin tablets and then wrung a cloth out, surprised my hands were steady. I was going to be a lot surer we were both still alive after a double bourbon and a few hours of sleep.
“What would it feel like?” she asked. “To get shot? Do you know?”
I didn't answer. I leaned down and cleaned her face as gently as I could.
“How close did it come?” she asked. “The bullet?”
“Annie, that wasn't a bullet.” I kept my voice gentle. “It was a whole lot of bullets. She was firing a Thompson. When you see it in daylight, you're going to find your car is very badly damaged. It's going to need a lot of work.”
“It got us home, didn't it?” she smiled. “Didn't it do fine? My Mercury is the best car I've ever had.”
I held the cloth under the faucet and watched the red swirl into the drain.
“You're a hell of a driver,” I said. “I won't ask where you learned to drive like that.”
I looked through the medicine cabinet for a can of antiseptic powder and some sticking plasters. Three straight cuts ran across the skin of her temple into her wet-darkened hair. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, or at least slowed down.
“I don't think this will scar,” I said. “I'm not a doctor. Maybe we should wake one up.”
“It doesn't matter,” she said. “I already have a scar. Look.”
She turned her head, and showed me the thin line, pale against the amber brow. She laughed, the breathless silver screen laugh that always got to me.
“It's from when I was very little, only two years old. In a car, of course. My mother was driving.”
“I want you to stay with me, Annie. At least until this is over. It's going to get harder now.”
“I can't stay with you.”
“You'll be safe here. I can't let you be by yourself.”
“Things are different now.”
“How can things be different?” I asked. “We've barely even started. We're still getting used to each other.”
She didn’t look at me anymore. A single tear started at the corner of her eye and I watched it run down her cheek. She didn't wipe it away. I wanted to kiss it, and I also wanted to gather her to me. I did neither.
