Brett Halliday - Win Some, Lose Some

Two men and a woman stopped beside the pickup. One of the men said, “There’s a handle on the hitch jack. When the ball and the socket come together, you snap the top half over and hook on the chains. Snap in the electric. I want to do it in one pass if I can, get out of here fast.”

The woman said nervously, “Are you really sure Canada is in there? I think we ought to check, break in.”

“Too many people still awake. Didn’t I see him? If that wasn’t Canada, what was he doing tied to the bed?”

“Laundry or something?” the other male voice suggested.

“I saw him breathing, I tell you.”

Inside the baited trailer, Shayne heard a truck go by, brake, and come back. Frieda was sleeping. She awakened instantly at his touch.

The driver of the pickup either had a good eye or he was getting good directions; he made the hitch in one move. Somebody spoke sharply. It sounded to Shayne like the voice that had shouted commands at Canada over the bullhorn.

Frieda was on her feet, the gun in her hand. “Take them now?” she whispered. Shayne shook his head. This time he was armed, but he wanted if possible to do it without shooting. There were too many people sleeping around them. Rourke would follow when they moved out. If they were too badly outnumbered, he could call for help on the van’s phone.

They got away with a jerk. The wide road had been ditched with a succession of shallow speed bumps. They took the first of these too fast, and the jolt caused the big payloader tire to waver out from the wall. Shayne wedged it back. On his first inspection, he had noticed a two-way phone system in the little kitchen. Usually these things were designed so only one end had a talk button. The other end never stopped transmitting. Using his flashlight, he found the instrument and turned up the volume.

“Stop bitching,” a voice said, and another voice answered, too faint to be heard.

The first voice: “Oh, that went beautiful. Smooth as silk. Show these country slobs a couple of ounces of real H and they go out of their skulls. A little confusion right now is all to the good. Muddy the waters, you know? The thing of it is, we’re completely anonymous.”

“I’ll sell you my share right now for sixty thousand.”

“If I had sixty thousand, I’d take you up on that, boy. I think Larry would like to set a record, don’t you? Help the image. All this extra trouble, we ought to revise the numbers. How does a million and a quarter sound?” After a moment: “Well, hell, a straight million. It’s easier to take in.”

“Will everybody please keep quiet for a minute?”

It was a woman’s voice.

The long wait under the trailer had made Greco sluggish. They had to be back in their rented car by the time the pickup and the thieves’ trailer pulled out of the park. He was trying to think ahead to their next move.

And then he had a truly sensational idea, the best idea so far. Explosion and fire! Earlier he had ripped off somebody’s gas can to have something to carry. Now he ran back to get it. Nick wanted to know what he was doing.

“Tell you in a minute.”

Pam, sitting between the two men in the cab of the pickup, had a different kind of pressure coming at her from opposite sides. That strength and certainty of Downey’s, she was beginning to see, masked a kind of obtuseness. What made people take the police exam in the first place? Whatever it was, Downey had it in excess. In that threesome, he was the man of experience. When he spoke, everything about his tone and manner declared that he knew what he was talking about. Events frequently proved that he didn’t. It never fazed him a bit. His ego was iron-bound. He wanted more than compliance, he wanted admiration.

As he drove, his hand dropped to its usual place on the inside of her thigh. Perhaps he had forgotten Werner. Perhaps this was merely an announcement of how things were going to be from then on. It was impossible to tell what Werner was thinking.

Downey had decided to drive to the truck stop where they had left Werner’s car, and put Canada into that for the rest of the journey. It wouldn’t be easy, maneuvering that dead weight between vehicles, but when they got to Miami Heights they could off-load in the garage with the door down. The trailer wouldn’t be seen entering their driveway. They could sort out the cars afterward.

The great field was between crops at the moment. A certain amount of vegetable litter had been left lying around, but absolutely nothing was growing in the poisoned soil. Nick was carrying his shoes. They moved at a pace between a walk and a shambling run. There had been clouds earlier. Now there were stars, and it seemed to Greco that whenever he looked up he saw a meteor. On the way in, they had aimed at the lights of the camp. Now there was nothing but stars, and even they didn’t seem to want to hold still.

Nick was swearing a steady stream. Every time he stepped on something sharp, he hated Greco more. He thought it had been stupid to leave the car so far away. That trailer would haul-ass out in a minute, and if they weren’t in their own car by then, they couldn’t hope to overtake it. It was Greco’s fault, but they would both be blamed.

“DeLuca won’t listen to alibis. He’ll cut off our balls.”

“Or give us a medal, one.”

The gas can kept banging against Greco’s leg, and he was tempted to throw it away. But he hung onto it. They still had a way to go when the pickup and trailer combination came under the lighted sign.

“We won’t make it,” Nick gasped.

“Oh, yes, we will,” Greco said grimly.

Taking his partner’s arm, he ran with him until they went out of step and he had to let go. But the ground was smoother here, and all of a sudden they were on the road. The pickup began its turn, and Greco pulled Nick down so they wouldn’t be seen in the headlights. Another undignified move, and Greco, with his mouth full of dirt, was hoping it might be the last.

He ran ahead, slammed the lifted hood of the car, and was back on pavement by the time Nick hobbled up. The trailer’s hind end, lit up like a Macy’s window, dwindled away. Another camping vehicle, this one a van-a Dodge, Greco thought-came out of the park.

“What are we getting into here, a shoot-out?” Nick demanded. “Three people is already too many.”

“Hell with them,” Greco said, having to smile. “No shooting. Were going to set the mother on fire.”

“How, throw matches?”

“Why do you think I lugged this Goddamn can? There’s gas sloshing around in there.”

Dazed as he was, Nick took a moment to see it. “You mean give them a cocktail.”

“That’s just what I mean. They won’t even know what happened. DeLuca will love it.”

He was shifting up fast, getting all the acceleration out of the car that it was willing to give them. They had a bottle of rum in the back seat. Nick pissed it out the window as they went. When the bottle was empty, he gave Greco a nod. Greco stopped to let him pour. Without a funnel, he spilled quite a bit. When Greco was unable to find a rag, Nick contributed a sock, which he soaked in gas and twisted up tight to make a wick.

Shayne, in the kitchen of the moving trailer, listened closely to the conversation in the cab. The driver continued to boast of how well he had read the scene at the hot plant. He was the one who had insisted they shouldn’t give up. And did they know why? Because he knew the criminal mentality.

The woman was needling him more and more openly. He wasn’t getting it yet.

“Mike.”

Frieda gestured urgently from the doorway. Shayne jumped to join her.

She had tilted the slats when she looked to be sure that Rourke, in the van, had followed them out. The van was an eighth of a mile back, ambling along at a comfortable forty-five, the minimum on this road. Now Shayne saw a black sedan beginning to pull out to pass them.