Gone South (18 page)

He looked. The front of the man’s white shirt was twitching, as if his heart were about to beat through his chest. Dan stared at it, transfixed, and then he reached down to touch it.

“Mr. Murtaugh! Mr. Murtaugh, you all right?”

Dan straightened up. Another man was out there in the dark. Both Dan and Susan had the eerie sensation that they recognized the voice’s deep, snarly resonance, but neither one of them could place it. A dog began to yap again, and on the pavement Flint gave a muffled half-groan, half-curse.

Susan switched the light off. “You’d better hit it. Gettin’ kind of crowded around here.”

Dan hurried to the station wagon and Susan followed him, and so neither of them saw the slim, pale third arm push free from Flint Murtaugh’s shirt and flail angrily in the air. Dan got behind the wheel, started the engine, and turned on the headlights. Susan reached in and grasped his shoulder. “Good luck,” she said over the engine’s rumbling.

“Thanks for everythin’.”

“I did love you,” she told him.

“I know you did.” He put his hand over hers and squeezed it. “Take care of Chad.”

“I will. And you take care of yourself.”

“So long,” Dan said, and he put the station wagon in reverse and backed away past the bounty hunter. Flint pulled himself up to his knees, pain stabbing through his lower back and his right wrist surely sprained. Clint’s arm was thrashing around, the hand clenched in a fighting fist. Through a dreamlike haze Flint watched the fifteen-thousand-dollar skin twist the station wagon around and drive across the parking lot. Flint tried to summon up a yell, but a hoarse rasp emerged: “Eisley! He’s comin’ at you!”

In another moment Dan had to stomp on the brake. He feared he must be losing his mind, because right there in front of the station wagon stood a big-bellied, pompadour-haired Elvis Presley, a beat-up black Cadillac behind him blocking the road. Elvis — a credible impersonator for sure — was holding on to a squirming little bulldog. “Where’s Mr. Murtaugh?” Elvis shouted in that husky Memphis drawl. “What’cha done to him?”

Dan had seen everything now. He hit the gas pedal again, taking the station wagon up over the curb onto the park’s grass. The rear tires fishtailed and threw up clods of earth. Elvis scrambled out of the way, bellowing for Mr. Murtaugh.

Flint had gotten to his feet and was hobbling in the direction of the Cadillac. His left shoe hit something that clattered and rolled away: the can of Mace. “Eisley, stop him!” he hollered as he paused to retrieve the spray can, the bruised muscles of his back stiffening. “Don’t let him get — awwwww,
shit!”
He’d seen the station wagon maneuvering around the Caddy, and he watched with helpless fury as it bumped over the curb again onto the road, something underneath the vehicle banging with a noise like a dropped washtub. Then the skin was picking up speed and at the park’s entrance turned right with a shriek of flayed rubber onto the street.

“Mr. Murtaugh!” Pelvis cried out with relief as Flint reached him. “Thank the Lord! I thought that killer had done —”

“Shut up and get in the car!” Flint shouted. “Move your fat ass!” Flint flung himself behind the wheel, started the engine, and as he jammed down on the gas pedal Pelvis managed to heave his bulk and Mama into the passenger side. Flint got the Cadillac turned around with a neck-twisting spin in the parking lot, the single headlight’s beam grazing past the woman who stood beside her car. He had an instant to see that her son had reached out for her and their hands were clasped. Then Flint, his face a perfect picture of hellacious rage, took the Cadillac roaring out of Basile Park in pursuit.

“I thought sure he’d done killed you!” Pelvis hollered over the hot wind whipping through the car. His frozen pompadour was immobile. Mama had slipped from his grasp and was wildly bounding from backseat to front and back again, her high-pitched barks like hot nails being driven into the base of Flint’s skull. Clint’s arm was still thrashing, angry as a stomped cobra. Pelvis shouted, “You see that fella try to run me down? If I’d’ve been a step slower, I’d be lookin’ like a big ol’ waffle ’bout now! But I foxed him, ’cause when I jigged to one side he jagged to the other and I just kept on jiggin’. You saw it, didn’t you? When that fella tried to run me —”

Flint pressed his right fist against Pelvis’s lips. Mama seized Flint’s sleeve between her teeth, her eyes wide and wet and a guttural growl rumbling in her throat. “I swear to Jesus,” Flint seethed, “if you don’t shut that mouth I’m puttin’ you out right here!”

“It’s shut.” Pelvis caught Mama and pulled her against him. Reluctantly, she let go of Flint’s sleeve. Flint returned both hands to the steering wheel, the speedometer’s needle trembling toward sixty. He saw the station wagon’s taillights a quarter-mile ahead.

“You want me to shut up,” Pelvis said with an air of wounded dignity, “all you have to do is ask me kindly. No need to jump down my throat jus’ ’cause I was tellin’ you how I stared Death square in the face and —”

“Eisley.”
Tears of frustration sprang to Flint’s eyes, which utterly amazed him; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d shed a tear. His nerves were jangling like fire alarms, and he felt a hair away from a rubber room. The speedometer’s needle was passing sixty-five, the Cadillac’s aged frame starting to shudder. But they were gaining on the station wagon, and in another few seconds they’d be right up on its rear fender.

Dan had the gas pedal pressed to the floor, but he couldn’t kick any more power out of the engine. The thing was making an unearthly metallic roar as if on the verge of blowing its cylinders. He saw in his rearview mirror the one-eyed Cadillac speeding up on his tail, and he braced for collision. There was a blinking caution light ahead, marking an intersection. Dan had no time to think about it; he twisted the wheel violently to the left. As the station wagon sluggishly obeyed, its worn tires skidding across the pavement, the Cadillac hit him, a grazing blow from behind, and sparks shot between their crumpled fenders. Then, as Dan fought the wheel to keep from sliding over the curb into somebody’s front yard, the Cadillac zoomed past the intersection.

“Hold on!” Flint shouted, his foot jamming the brake pedal. The Eldorado was heavy, and would not slow down without screaming, smoking protest from the tires. Pelvis clung to Mama, who was trying her damnedest to jump into the backseat. Flint reversed to the intersection, the bitter smoke of burned rubber swirling through the windows, and turned left onto a winding street bordered by brick homes with manicured lawns and hon-est-to-God white picket fences. He sped after Lambert, but there was no sign of the station wagon’s taillights. Other streets veered off on either side, and it became clear after a few seconds that Lambert had turned onto one of them.

“I’ll find you, you bastard!” Flint said between clenched teeth, and he whipped the car to the right at the next street. It, too, was dark.

“He’s done gone,” Pelvis said.

“Shut up! Hear me? Just shut your mouth!”

“Statin’ a fact,” Pelvis said.

Flint took the Cadillac roaring to the next intersection and turned left. His palms were wet on the wheel, sweat clinging to his face. Clint’s hand came up and stroked his chin, and Flint cuffed his brother aside. Flint took the next right, the tires squealing. He was in a mazelike residential area, the streets going in all directions. Anger throbbed like drumbeats at his temples, pain lancing his lower back. He tasted panic like cold copper in his mouth. Then he turned right onto another street and his heart kicked.

Three blocks away was a pair of red taillights.

Flint hit the accelerator so hard the Cadillac leapt forward like a scalded dog. He roared up behind Lambert’s car, intending to swerve around him and cut him off. But in the next instant Flint’s triumph shriveled into terror. The Cadillac’s headlight revealed the car was not a rust-eaten old station wagon but a new Chevrolet Caprice. Across its fast-approaching rear end was silver lettering that spelled out
ALEXANDRIA POLICE.

Flint stood on the brake pedal. A thousand cries for God, Jesus, and Mother Mary rang like crazy bells in his brain. As the Cadillac’s tires left a quarter-inch of black rubber on the pavement, the prowl car’s driver punched it and the Caprice shot forward to avoid the crash. The Caddy slewed to one side before it stopped, the engine rattled and died, and the police cruiser’s bubble lights started spinning. It backed up, halting a couple of feet from Flint’s busted bumper. A spotlight on the driver’s side swiveled around and glared into Flint’s face like an angry Cyclopean eye.

“Well,” Pelvis drawled, “now we’ve done shit and stepped in it.”

Over nearer the intersection with the flashing caution light, Dan started the station wagon’s engine and backed out of the driveway he’d pulled into. He eased onto the street, his headlights still off. The black Cadillac had sped past about two minutes before, and Dan had expected it to come flying back at any second. As the saying went, it was time to git while the gittin’ was good. He switched on his lights and at the caution signal took a left toward Interstate 49 and the route south. There were no cars ahead of him, nor any in his rearview mirror. But it was going to be a long night, and a long drive yet before he could rest. He breathed a good-bye to Alexandria, and a good riddance to the bounty hunters.

Flint, still stunned by the sudden turn of events, was watching the red and blue lights spin around. “Eisley, you’re a jinx,” he said hoarsely. “That’s what you are. A jinx.” Two policemen were getting out of the car. Flint pushed the can of Mace under his seat. Clint’s arm resisted him, but he forced it inside his shirt and buttoned his coat. The two officers both had young, rawboned faces, and they didn’t appear happy. Before they reached the Cadillac, Flint dug his wallet out and pressed his left arm over his chest to pin Clint down. “Keep your mouth zipped,” he told Pelvis. “I’ll do all the talkin’.”

The policeman who walked up on Flint’s side of the car had a fresh crew cut and a jaw that looked as if it could chop wood. He shone a flashlight into Flint’s eyes. “You near ’bout broke our necks, you know that? Look what you did to my cap.” He held up a crushed and formless thing.

“I’m awful sorry, sir.” Flint’s voice was a masterpiece of studied remorse. “I’m not from around here, and I’m lost. I guess I panicked, ’cause I couldn’t find my way out.”

“Uh-huh. You had to be goin’ at least sixty. Sign back there says fifteen miles an hour. This is a residential zone.”

“I didn’t see the sign.”

“Well, you seen the
houses,
didn’t you? You seen our car in front of you. Seems to me you’re either drunk, crazy, or mighty stupid.” He shifted the light, and its beam fell upon Pelvis. “Lordy, Walt! Look what we’ve got here!”

“How you fellas doin?” Pelvis asked, grinning. In his arms Mama had begun a low, menacing growl.

“I bet this’ll be a real interestin’ story,” the policeman with the light said. “Let’s see a driver’s license. Your ID, too, Mr. Presley sir.”

Flint fumbled to remove the license from his eelskin wallet and hold Clint immobile at the same time. His wrist was still hurting like hell. Eisley produced a battered wallet that had the face of Elvis on it in brightly colored Indian beads. “I never did believe he was dead, did you, Randy?” Walt said with undisguised mirth. He was taller than his partner and not quite as husky. “I always knew it was a wax body in that coffin!”

“Yeah, we might get ourselves on Gerrado Riviera for this,” Randy said. “This is better’n seein’ green men from Mars, ain’t it? Call the tag in.” Walt walked around back to write it down and then returned to the cruiser. Randy inspected the licenses under the light. “Flint Murtaugh. From Monroe, huh? What’re you doin’ here in the middle of the night?”

“Uh … well, I’m …” Flint’s mind went blank. He tried to pull up something, anything. “I’m … that is to say …”

“Officer, sir?” Pelvis spoke up, and Flint winced. “We’re tryin’ to find the Holiday Inn. I believe we must’ve took the wrong turn.”

The light settled on Pelvis’s face. “The Holiday Inn’s over toward the interstate. The sign’s lit up; it’s hard to miss.”

“I reckon we did, though.”

Randy spent a moment examining Pelvis’s license. Clint gave a twitch under Flint’s shirt, and Flint felt sweat dripping from his armpits. “Pelvis Eisley,” Randy said. “That can’t be your born name.”

“No sir, but it’s my legal name.”

“What’s your born name?”

“Uh … well, sir, I go by the name that’s written down right —”

“Pelvis ain’t a name, it’s a bone. What name did your mama and daddy give you? Or was you hatched?”

Flint didn’t care for the nasty edge in the policeman’s voice. “Hey, I don’t think there’s any call to be —”

“Hush up. I’ll come back to you, don’t you worry about it. I asked for your born name, sir.”

“Cecil,” came the quiet reply. “Cecil Eisley.”

“Cecil.” Randy slurred the name, making it sound like something that had crawled out from under a swamp log. “You dress like that all the time, Cecil?”

“Yes sir,” Pelvis answered in all honesty. In his lap Mama continued her low growling.

“Well, you’re ’bout the damnedest sight I ever laid eyes on. You mind tellin’ me what you’re in costume for?”

“Listen, Officer,” Flint said. He was terrified Pelvis was going to start blabbering about being a bounty hunter, or about the fact that Lambert was somewhere close by. “I was the one drivin’, not him.”

“Mr. Murtaugh?” Randy leaned his head nearer, and Flint had the startling thought that he’d seen the policeman’s face before, when its thin-lipped mouth was twisted into a cruel grin and the garish midway lights threw shadows into the deep-set eye sockets. “When I want you to speak, I’ll ask you a question. Hear me?”

His was the face of a thousand others who had come to the freak show to leer and laugh, to fondle their girlfriends in front of the stage and spit tobacco on Flint’s polished shoes. Flint felt a hard nut of disgust in his throat. Clint lurched under his shirt, but luckily Flint had a firm grip and the policeman didn’t see. “There’s no reason to be rude,” Flint said.