Ritual (36 page)

‘They parked it
for me!’ Robyn told him. ‘It has to be here somewhere!’

They heard
footsteps running at the top of the ramp. ‘For Christ’s sake, where is it?’
Charlie yelled.

‘There!’ said
Robyn. ‘Look! Over in the corner!
Behind that white car!’

Charlie peered
into the far corner of the parking lot. He could just make out the bronze roof
of Mrs Kemp’s station wagon, parked behind a new white Lincoln Town Car. ‘Come
on!’ he said, and together he and Robyn vaulted over the hoods of three cars to
reach the station wagon.

Robyn fumbled
the keys out of her purse and gave them to Charlie, and he unlocked the door.

The hotel’s
parking-jockeys had wedged the cars in so tightly that he had to bang the door
hard against the BMW parked next to it in order to give them enough space to
squeeze their way into the front seats.

‘How are we
going to get out?’ Robyn asked him, panicking.

Charlie slotted
the key into the ignition, and twisted it. He had seen so many T V movies in
which fugitives tried unsuccessfully to start up their cars just as a murderer
was catching up with them that he was amazed when the engine immediately roared
into life.

‘They’re here!’
said Robyn. Charlie glanced towards the entrance ramp and saw that Henri and M.
Fontenot had reached the parking area, and were dodging their way towards them
between the cars. Henri had his right hand lifted, and Charlie saw the sharp
glint of a nickel-plated handgun.

Charlie tugged
the station wagon’s shift into second, and jammed his bare foot down on the
gas.

The station
wagon bucked forward with a scream of tyres, and hit the Lincoln hard in the
trunk.

Charlie kept
his foot down, hoping to push the Lincoln forward, but somebody had applied the
Lincoln’s parking brake, and all he managed to do was shove it two or three
feet, with a long squeal of protesting rubber.

Henri scrambled
over the B M W, and out of the corner of his eye Charlie saw him aiming his
revolver. He yanked the gearshift into reverse, and the station wagon screeched
backward, so violently that it collided with the parking lot wall. Robyn bent
forward and covered her head with her hands, in the emergency position
recommended by airlines. Charlie yelled, ‘Hold tight!’ and threw the station
wagon into second gear, so that it roared forward and collided with the Lincoln
yet again, a deafening crash that sent the Lincoln front first into a new
Mercedes parked opposite, and the Mercedes into a Thunderbird behind it.

Henri fired,
but the noise of the cars crashing together was so loud that Charlie didn’t
realize they were being shot at until a hole burst through his windshield, the
size of a man’s fist, surrounded by a spiderweb of crazed glass. He backed up
yet again, with the station wagon’s tyres screaming on the polished concrete,
and then stepped on the parking brake, so that the station wagon slewed around,
facing the exit.

Henri leaned
forward, holding his revolver in both hands, and fired at point-blank range.
The bullet thumped through the driver’s door, passed under Charlie’s calves,
and buried itself in the carpet that covered the transmission hump. ‘Go!’
screamed Robyn, and Charlie pressed his foot flat on the floor. The station
wagon shot out of the parking area, skidded sideways at the bottom of the exit
ramp, and then surged up toward the street like an Apollo rocket out of
control.

Charlie
glimpsed Mme Musette’s white distraught face right by the entrance to the
parking lot.

Then the station
wagon flew clear of the sidewalk, hurtling right into the middle of Canal
Street with a crash of ruined suspension, and hitting a taxi on the offside
fender.

Before the taxi
driver could get out of his vehicle, however, Charlie had backed up, stopped,
twisted the wheel violently sideways, and roared northwards on Canal Street in
a cloud of oil and rubber smoke. Slewing the station wagon from side to l side
to avoid slower traffic, glancing quickly in his rear-view mirror to make sure
that he wasn’t being pursued by the police or by Mme Musette, Charlie headed
for Interstate 10, i the quickest route out of New Orleans. I
The
station wagon shuddered and complained as he turned f
eastwards on I-io, but he kept his foot pressed down hard on the floor. Ahead
of them, the sun shone directly in their eyes. Off to their left, Lake
Pontchartrain glittered like an early morning mirage. Smoke poured out of the
back of the station wagon, and the suspension was making a noise like a
bucketful of spanners, but they kept going at eighty m.p.h., and Charlie wasn’t
going to let up for anything.

‘Where are we
going?’ Robyn wanted to know.’

Charlie checked
his rear-view mirror again. The last thing he wanted was to be stopped by the
Louisiana Highway Patrol. If Mme Musette had been telling the truth, and the
Celestines really were thick with every law-enforcement agency between here and
Connecticut, they would find themselves back at the Church of the Angels on
Elegance Street before they knew it.

‘We’re getting
the hell out of New Orleans,’ said Charlie. ‘Then we’re going to make our way
to Acadia. But we have to get rid of this car. Every cracker-barrel deputy
between here and Bogalusa is going to be on the look out for a bronze station
wagon with Connecticut plates and smoke coming out of the tailpipe. We won’t
stand a chance.’

‘We can’t buy a
new car,’ said Robyn.

‘How much money
do you have?’ Charlie asked.

Robyn checked
her purse. ‘About one hundred fifteen dollars, that’s all.’

‘And credit
cards?’

‘Sure.
Visa, American Express, Mastercharge.
But we can’t use
credit cards, can we – not for buying a car? The FBI
are
bound to have circulated our charge-card numbers. They’ll jump on us straight
away.’

Charlie checked
his mirror. There was nobody behind them, not for miles, but they were blowing
out so much smoke that they were bound to attract attention before long.

‘We could
always liberate a car,’ said Robyn.

‘You mean steal
it?’

‘I saw it in an
Elliott Gould movie. It’s easy. All you have to do is drive along until you come
across a car-dealer, then stop. I’ll do the rest. Make it a Cadillac dealer, if
you can.’

Charlie said,
‘If you think I’m going to steal a car, you’re out of your mind.’

‘For God’s
sake,’ Robyn retaliated. ‘You’re already wanted for homicide in the first
degree, as well as kidnap and grand theft auto. What difference is one more
stolen car going to make? It’s the farm for you, whatever.’

‘Yes, damn
it,
and you too.’

They crossed
the north-eastern corner of Lake Pontchartrain, and then Charlie turned off
Interstate 10 on to

Route 11. They
limped
stnokily into the outskirts of a town called Slidell,
and Charlie steered the station wagon off the road and parked it on a dusty
patch under the shade of some overhanging oaks. He climbed out, tugging his
sweaty shirt away from his back, and said, ‘I almost feel like putting a bullet
through its hood, so that it doesn’t suffer.’

Robyn said,
‘There’s a Chevrolet dealer down there, look, two blocks away.’

‘And I’m
supposed to walk up to him, without any shoes, and persuade him that I want to
buy a car?’

‘Charlie, for
Christ’s sake,
stop
being so defeatist! We’ll buy you
some shoes at Woolworth’s.

Then we’ll go
get the Chevrolet.’

They went into
Woolworth’s and Charlie bought himself a pair of grey leather casuals with a
silver chain across them, which was about the most tasteful pair of shoes he
could find. Then together they walked into the corner lot of Gramercy
Chevrolet, under lines of fluttering bunting, to the small concrete office
where Dean Gramercy himself sat in his shirtsleeves behind a bare desk, smoking
a bright green cigar and talking on the telephone. There was a citation on the
wall from the Slidell Chamber of Commerce, and a Vargas calendar. Dean Gramercy
was stubby and big-bellied and ginger like a hog.

‘Be with you
folks right away,’ he told them, covering the mouthpiece for a moment. ‘That’s
right, Wally. You bring those spares over by Monday. Then we can talk about
price. But I gotta see them first. You know me, Wally. I pay
good
but I like to see what I’m paying for.’

Dean Gramercy
hung up, and extended his hand to Charlie as if he were his favourite cousin
come visiting. ‘Good of you to drop by,’ he beamed. ‘If it’s a quality
automobile you’re after, you’ve come to the c’rect location.’

‘We were looking
for a late-model sedan,’ said Charlie tentatively.

‘Well, now,
I’ve got maybe a dozen that would fit the bill.

But there’s one
special that I know you’re going to love. You come down to the lot and take a
look.’

Obediently, they
followed Dean Gramercy to the front of the lot. With a flourish, he showed them
a silver
Caprice Classic with a silver vinyl roof.

‘Now you just
take a look at this baby,’ he enthused. ‘Genuine ‘85 model, fully loaded, 5.7
litre gasoline
engine
, only 9,000 miles, one owner who
was so careful she didn’t even take off the plastic seat-covers.’

‘Sounds
perfect,’ said Robyn. ‘Do you mind if we take it for a drive?’

‘Well, sure
thing. All I have to do is turn the key in the office door.
Not
that there’s anything to steal, apart from my calendar.’
He snorted in
amusement, and waddled off to lock up.

Charlie said,
‘I’m sweating. Do you think we can pull this off?’

Robyn said,
‘Easy. When I say go, just make sure that you go.’

Dean Gramercy
came back, and opened the Chevrolet’s passenger doors so that Charlie and Robyn
could climb in. Then he settled himself in the driver’s seat, adjusting the
steering wheel so that it didn’t press into his belly, and started up the
engine. They drove sedately down the sun-gilded street between the overhanging
live oaks, and all the time Dean Gramercy puffed affably at his cigar and
rattled on about the pleasures of living in Slidell and what a desahrable
hickle this was, and how they couldn’t do better anywhere for Chevrolets than
good old Gramercy, and what’s more he was going to throw in a Toshiba microwave
oven as a fall bonus.

Eventually,
just north of Slidell, he pulled the car over to the side of the road and said
to Charlie, ‘You want to drive her back? Just slide over.’

He climbed out
of the car. Charlie slid over behind the wheel and re-adjusted it while Dean
Gramercy walked around the front. He was just about to take hold of the
passenger door handle when Robyn shouted out,

‘Lock the
doors! And go]’

Charlie flicked
the central locking switch, shifted the car into gear, and kicked his foot down
on the gas. The Caprice roared forward, leaving Dean Gramercy with his mouth
open and his hand just about to curl round a door handle that wasn’t there any
more. The car’s tail snaked a little as Charlie accelerated around a long
curving bend. Then they were out on the open highway, heading northward into St
Tammany County, with the sunlight flashing through the trees and the day dusty
and bright.

‘Wow,’ breathed
Charlie softly.

‘What did I
tell you?’ Robyn laughed. ‘You drive like Bullitt.’

Charlie checked
his rear-view mirror,
then
turned around in his seat
to make absolutely certain that they weren’t being followed. ‘Anything’s
possible, isn’t it, if you’ve got the nerve?’

‘You’ve found
that out.’ Robyn smiled and squeezed his arm. ‘So believe me, if you can
liberate a late-model Chevrolet, you can liberate your son, too.’

Charlie slowed
the car and kissed her. ‘I do believe I’m beginning to love you more than a man
should.’

‘Nobody ever
loved anybody more than they should.’ Charlie said, ‘I located Acadia on the
map.

It’s
way over to the west, in St Landry County, between
Normand and Lebeau, right in the middle of Cajun country. If we keep to the
side roads, we should be able to make it there without too much danger of being
picked up by the police. You know what I should have done, don’t you? I should
have taken the licence plates off Mrs Kemp’s station wagon, and changed them
over.’

‘You’re getting
to sound like a professional car thief,’ Robyn teased him.

They drove
throughout the morning through the flat Delta countryside, under a pale bronze
sky, heading westwards, in the general direction of Baton Rouge and Lafayette.
At times they could easily have believed that they had the whole of Louisiana
to themselves. They saw no highway patrol cars, no helicopters, nothing.
Just shining bayous and girder bridges and water oaks, and
glistening muddy banks thick with black-shelled mussels.
They kept the
Chevrolet’s air conditioning turned off to save gas, and drove with the windows
open. The air flowed in humid, smelling of vegetation and slow-moving water.

They stopped
for wheat Po-boys and shrimp-on-a-stick at a breezeblock roadside restaurant
called Fruge’s All-Day. There were cheap sunglasses for sale on a card, and
they each bought a pair. They sat on the Chevrolet’s hood eating their shrimp
and watching the clouds slowly come apart at the seams. A Cajun music station
played ‘Laisser les Amis Danser’.

‘Well,’ said
Charlie, when they had finished eating, and wiped their hands on their paper
napkins,

‘I guess we’d
better be moving along. Acadia’s a good fifty miles.’

‘I hope we can
find someplace to stay the night,’ said Robyn. ‘I could use a shower and a
change of clothes.’

‘We’re going to
need somewhere to stay for two days. The Last Supper isn’t till Friday.’