Necessity

by Brian Garfield

  Somewhere around dawn they cross the border into Utah. The baby has decided to cry for a while, probably in general protest—going on strike as it were. The racket is piercing and she tries to quiet Ellen but the kid isn’t having a bottle or a pacifier or any gentling at all. Her arms and legs keep windmilling petulantly.

  Doug keeps looking in the big mirror outside his window.

  The baby’s caterwauling subsides at last. Grudgingly the little mouth agrees to pout around the pacifer.

  “Is there something in the mirror?”

  “Came out of an airport road back there. Been behind us half an hour.”

  She leans forward until she can see alongside the trailer through the mirror on her side. As they go into a bend it comes in sight back there—a big station wagon a little way behind, keeping pace.

  “It looks like just one person in it—the driver.”

  “Probably using us for a pace car,” Doug says. “Sometimes they do that. Keeps them awake or keeps them from speeding, I don’t know. Maybe some people just get nervous blazing their own trail. Hell, if it was trouble he’d have caught up by now, I guess.”

  He doesn’t sound confident.

  The station wagon is still dogging them an hour later when they pull off the Interstate for fuel and breakfast. The station wagon doesn’t take the same exit. It goes on down the freeway. From the angle of the truck’s cab it’s impossible to see the driver’s face but that doesn’t matter now.

  She picks up the pad of waybill forms from the jumble of oddments in the open dashboard compartment and finds the stub of a pencil. “Doug—I want you to do me a favor.”

  “To wit?”

  “Give me your address. I want to send you something when the baby and I get home. And I want us to keep in touch.”

  “Sure, you bet. To the latter. But no to the former. I’ll make my profit from Willie Nelson. Don’t send me anything. It’d just cheapen the satisfaction I get from being a good Samaritan.”

  “You’re a silly son of a bitch.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Back on the road before eight o’clock they are barreling west with Salt Lake City another hour or two ahead of them when they come past an entrance ramp in light traffic and Doug, glancing in the mirror, stiffens.

  He glances at her: his expression renders speech unnecessary.

  She studies it in the mirror. It’s three or four cars back. “That’s either the same station wagon again or a twin for it.”

  “I’ll slow down a little. See if it’s the same license plate.”

  “I didn’t think, before.…”

  “I did.”

  He drops the speed and the other cars pull out and overtake the rig but the station wagon hangs back, keeping its distance. “I can’t see the license plate. Too much vibration in the mirror. But then I don’t need to,” he says bleakly. “He’s shadowing us all right.”

  “Could it be an unmarked police car?”

  “Maybe. I doubt it. Whatever that is, it’s not a Utah plate. Wrong color.”

  “Can we lose him?”

  “In this freight train? Not a prayer. You want a wild guess, I’d say it’s one of those shortwave jokers with a police band radio in his car, maybe picked up that twenty-five thousand dollar reward broadcast, saw you and the baby in the truck here and thinks maybe he can earn big money by playing amateur detective. Tell you what—I think I know a way to get rid of him.”

  “How?”

  “Talk to him. Scare him off.” He grins into the mirror. “I can look real mean when I set my mind to it. Here we go.”

  She hasn’t time to protest: he’s already swinging off the highway into the roadside rest area. Picnic tables and trash bins and the middle-high sun blasting all of it.

  Sure enough. Back there the station wagon follows.

  Doug sets the brake. “Man, you ain’t never seen mean yet.”

  “Doug, for Pete’s sake don’t do anything foolish. He may be a trooper. Look—maybe we ought to …”

  “You just leave everything to the iron duke here, lady.”

  Setting his jaw, he punches the door open and jumps down and trots around the nose of the rig and then pauses, hooks his thumbs in his belt, and swaggers toward the station wagon as it pulls in forty feet away. The sun throws reflective shafts painfully from its chrome and glass; she still can’t see the driver.

  There’s one other vehicle in the parking area—a dark blue Mustang, one of the original ones. A very thin old man, having emerged from the restroom, slides into the car. She hears the door chunk shut.

  She has the baby in her arms; she thrusts the door open with her foot, climbs down into the shade and peers toward the station wagon, curious to see what sort of creature would have followed them this many hours.

  Doug marches toward the station wagon with the plunging no-nonsense stride of a man who’s had enough and now intends for the guy to come out of the car and explain himself.

  The Mustang backs up out of its slot and goes away up the ramp toward the Interstate.

  Now the station wagon door opens, fanning a bright swath of sunlight across the pavement, and the driver comes straight out as if on wheels.

  He doesn’t even look at Doug. He’s looking straight at her and the baby.

  He has a rifle in his hand.

  Doug begins to speak. The rifle lifts and turns and, with hardly an effort to take aim, barks once.

  Doug spins around and falls.

  The muzzle of the rifle turns toward her.

  It’s Bert.

  71 With the baby in her arms she stares at him in utter disbelief. He’s shot Doug. Just there. Like—like that. Like a paper target …

  She wants to scream. Nothing comes from her throat but a hot gust of silent pain.

  There is an onrushing blast of sound: an approaching bus on the Interstate.

  She sees its reflection in the window of the station wagon’s open door. The sound makes Bert hesitate and for a little while they both stand frozen as if in some crazy tableau.

  Running through her mind is the most ridiculously unimportant question:

  How the hell did he find us?

  God knows. What does it matter? Could have been anything.

  That fat cop with the mustache, or maybe the trooper in khaki—phoning in a report, looking to collect $25,000; the report relayed to Bert; a fix on the truck, its license plate numbers, the highway it was traveling; a quick charter jet flight to that airport they passed early this morning—then just wait by the side of the road in the rented station wagon until the truck came along …

  The bus slams by with a heavy whoosh. Bert is holding the rifle straight down alongside his leg so the people on the bus won’t see it.

  Now he lifts the weapon into sight and begins to walk forward. Not hurrying.

  “All right now Madeleine. Give me the child. That’s a good girl. Just take it easy and everything’s going to be fine.”

  He talks to her the way you might talk to an insane person; he contrives to sound quietly confident and calm but the extra edge on the rasp of his voice betrays the throbbing depth of his rage.

  She feels her eyelids flicker. Sensations carom through her flesh, contradicting one another. This is like one of those suffocating dreams in which you try to run but your muscles are imprisoned and nothing will move.

  Walking toward her he holds his body twisted slightly to one side because he’s using both hands on the rifle, one of them extended in front of him.

  All we’ve been through—to come to this?

  He says, “There were a million cops waiting for the plane.” For a moment she doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

  Involuntarily she steps back. Her rump strikes some part of the cab. She’s trapped here against the truck.

  He says, “Was it you that tipped them? I figured it probably was you. They got the shipment.”

  A truck goes by; the rifle drops out of sight again. In the wake of the noise Bert says,
“They got the Jamaican pilot and Jack Sertic and Phil Quirini. Got George Talmy, too. They didn’t get me. I had a friend in uniform who owed me an obligation. He got me out of there. They never identified me. I’ve always been a little too quick on my feet for those assholes.”

  His eyes seem a trifle too intense, too bright. Is he on something? Some of his own drugs, to hype him up?

  Why doesn’t a car appear? Why doesn’t somebody come?

  “Nobody’s going to get hurt.” He’s still talking in that same tight little voice. “Everything’s fine.”

  Behind him Doug is twitching on the ground, crawling around in a slow circle like a half-crushed beetle.

  “Madeleine. You listening to me?”

  She has no voice.

  “Bitch—you’re dead!”

  Bert does something to the rifle. The metal clacks shut: the sound intensifies the pitch of her alarm and in her mind she’s shrieking obscenities at him: Get away you cocksucker—leave us alone—you fucking son of a bitch—GET AWAY FROM MY CHILD!

  He comes on, relentless, moving like a mechanism, oblivious to her rage.

  Twenty feet between them now; no more. He’s got no need even to aim the thing at this short a range.

  With an awful dread she feels shuddering paroxysms of her own hatred; she feels hysteria cresting in her. It all erupts and a howl detonates from her as if from the throat of some wild rabid animal and it’s as if she has nothing to do with it, or with the terrible conflagration in her. She’s lost control: she feels her lungs suck for air and she watches her enemy swim in the blood-red haze of her vision—and in one sudden bright abject moment of exhausted clarity she knows she has lost.

  Come on then, you bastard. Kill me.

  … Why doesn’t he shoot?

  Then she knows. Of course.

  Of course!

  “Wait!”

  The force of her own explosive voice startles her. She holds the baby up in front of her.

  He stops in his tracks: he scowls. “Jesus, Madeleine. Even you can’t be that insane. You honestly think you can use your own child for a shield?”

  Quickly she shifts Ellen’s weight into one arm, freeing the other. She knows what she’s doing now. God knows where the knowledge sprang from.

  “Back up,” she shouts. I need just a little more space. Just another second’s worth of time.

  She’s holding Ellen almost at arm’s length in one hand now and Ellen begins to wail.

  She tightens her grip on the flailing baby’s tiny jump suit.

  “If you drop that child so help me …”

  Oh Jesus. Bert isn’t going to do it. He’s calling her bluff.

  He’s starting toward her again.

  There isn’t enough time. Oh Goddamn you black-hearted bastard.

  No more hysteria. Come on—come on …

  She jabs the free left hand into the open cab behind her. Her fist closes around the stock, slides up to the trigger guard, hauls the shotgun out into view.

  She brings it down across the baby’s tummy and grips the forestock in that hand and, pinning the baby against the crook of her elbow with the shotgun itself, levels it at him. “So help me God, Bert, I’ll leave your brains all over this parking lot.”

  Bert gapes at her: at the shotgun, then at her face.

  She’s sweating as if in a steam bath. Doug’s words from last night bat around in her head: “Safety catch is on. It’s okay, no danger.”

  She has no idea on earth where the safety catch is. And she doesn’t dare look down at the shotgun in an effort to find it. Any sign of hesitation or uncertainty and he’ll be all over her in an instant.

  The baby is yelling powerfully now; too much racket to make herself heard. She gestures with her chin and now she steps away from the truck, beginning to walk toward Bert.

  He stands his ground, squinting, trying to think his way through this.

  She makes soft shushing noises and the baby gradually stops shouting.

  There’s a lever right on top, just next to her thumb. She can feel it. It’s bent to one side. Could that be the safety?

  Try it.

  She’s watching Bert. His frown is a little puzzled. She feels the tab of the metal lever click slightly when it moves an inch to the other side.

  “Get in the car,” she says. “Drive away.”

  He crouches and sets the rifle on the ground and stands up again, holding his empty palms out to her. Now he smiles—she remembers the chill of that smile—and he resumes his calm approach as if it had never been interrupted.

  “Should have shot me when I had the rifle,” he says. “At least you could have rationalized that as self-defense. Now I’m unarmed. You won’t do it.”

  The smile has settled on his face like a death’s head rictus.

  He’s going to walk right up and take the shotgun away from her.

  He believes she’s bluffing.

  He knows about her and guns.

  He knows she’s not going to shoot him.

  She watches him come forward.

  He’s three paces away, nearly in jumping distance, when she says very quietly, “It’s not me I’m protecting, you see. It’s the baby.”

  She depresses the muzzle of the shotgun by leaning her whole torso forward and points the damn thing in the vicinity of his knees and pulls the trigger.

  72 She picks up the discarded rifle and tosses it into the station wagon. She’s still shaking. Her arm throbs from the blow of the shotgun’s recoil and her ears are ringing and the baby is at it again, doing her loudest, and she can’t think of anything sensible to say to the kid except this:

  “You’re right. Screaming is the only possible proper response to all this.”

  Doug looks up at her with dulled eyes. She says, “I can’t lift you. You’re going to have to help me.”

  He struggles to get his legs under him. There’s blood high on the chest of his shirt. Maybe with luck it’s high enough to have missed the lung. He says, as if apologizing, “Doesn’t hurt too bad. Deep wounds usually don’t.”

  “I’ll get you some help.”

  Over there near the truck Bert is bellowing at her but she gives him no more than a glance, hiking the baby up firmly in one arm while she gives Doug the other and helps him to his feet and assists his stumbling progress toward the station wagon. She gets him into the back seat, tosses Bert’s suitcase on the floor to make room, and helps Doug lie down on the seat.

  Then she looks in the ignition. No keys.

  Just like Bert. So methodical he put the keys in his pocket, even way out here—even with all that on his mind.

  She gets out of the car, baby in one hand and shotgun in the other, and walks toward the truck. She detours wide around Bert, ignoring his pleas and threats, and reaches up into the cab to take the keys out. Then she closes the driver’s door and goes around to close the passenger door and only then does she look down at the man she once lived with.

  “Give me the car keys.”

  He broods up at her. The constriction of his voice betrays the effort with which he is attempting to keep pain at bay. “How about getting me an ambulance?”

  “You’ll live. Strip your shirt off. Use it for a tourniquet. Sooner or later somebody’ll stop and give you a hand.”

  “CB radio—the truck.”

  “I don’t know how to use it.”

  “Jesus God almighty you fucking bitch, get me some help. You’ve smashed my fucking kneecap, you know that? God knows if I’ll ever walk straight again.”

  She’s very calm. “Throw me the keys, Bert, or I’ll shoot the other knee.” She works the pump action of the shotgun, one-handed, tossing the empty paper cartridge out and seating the next one. Aren’t you glad you taught the little woman how to shoot skeet, you great macho gun handler?

  She points it at his knee. The one that isn’t shredded. “The keys.”

  He bends his head back in an arching spasm of agony. Unmoved, chilled, she taps his knee—the goo
d one—with the muzzle of the shotgun.

  He cries out. She watches him dig clumsily in a trouser pocket. With a vestige of defiance he throws the keys away and then his head sags against the pavement.

  She picks up the keys. He lies panting with his eyes half shut and unfocused. She hesitates—but there’s nothing left to say to him. She walks away.

  “Madeleine …” A husky croak. “For the love of God …”

  She settles the baby in the station wagon and shuts the door and starts the air conditioning. Then she twists around. “Doug?”

  “Still here.” Lying on his side, fetal, he tries to smile.

  “My fault. I used you. I’ll try to make it up.…”

  “You shoot the son of a bitch?”

  “In the knee. He’ll survive I’m sure. I just don’t figure to make it easy for him.”

  “That’s all right. Long as we whupped him.”

  “Where’s the nearest hospital?”

  “No idea. Don’t worry about me. No real harm ever comes to the iron duke.”

  73 It’s another hot one in Van Nuys and she’s been sitting in this damn car altogether too long but on Ellen’s account let’s not take chances. It’s wise to check everything out.

  That limo’s been sitting over there in front of the air freight depot for twenty minutes with the guy reading the magazine at the wheel and maybe his chauffeur’s uniform is a fake.

  There’s nobody else hanging around looking like surveillance. But you can’t afford to be lax. Bert may be in the jail ward, betrayed by the confessions of his former employees, but he may still have people looking for his kid. And this is a risky place to be, a risky thing to do: suppose they’ve traced the Cessna to the field where they rented it in Plattsburgh? Suppose they’ve found some connection between there and here? Suppose the pestilential Graeme Goldsmith has found some way to trace you in this direction?

  They wheel a crate outside on a hand truck. The chauffeur gets out and opens the deck; the two workmen lift the crate into the trunk. The chauffeur talks briefly with them and gets back into the limousine; she watches him drive away while the workmen go back into the depot.