Paul Kavanagh - Not Comin' Home to You

“Something?”

“Sounds as though you got a flat.”

“Don’t hear a thing.”

“Maybe it’s more feeling it than hearing it, being that I’m on this side. Feels like the right rear.”

“Damn if I notice it. Course, softly sprung as this car is, you just don’t get that much of the feel of the road surface.”

“Do you suppose we better stop? I can change it for you in a minute.”

“Service area coming up in four, five miles. They’ll do it.”

Damn the service area, he thought. He said, “I could change it for you myself, save you a couple of bucks.”

“Oh, as soon give them the money as Uncle Sam. Those boys’ll make better use of it. Besides, they can get the bolts on tighter. You know, I think that tire just might feel a bit soft, now that you called my attention to it.”

He waited a moment, then uncoupled his seat belt and turned slightly toward the driver. The buzzer hummed accusingly and a light flashed on and off on the dashboard.

“Something in my pocket,” he explained.

“Go ahead. I’ve got to have somebody disconnect those damned things one of these days. Keep forgetting to get around to it. Not the seat belts. I don’t mind a seat belt or anything else that might save my life, but I hate like hell to have an automobile talk back to me.”

The length of pipe was snug in his back pocket. He got it out and held it so that his body shielded it from view. He took a few breaths, seeing the whole process first in his mind, picturing all of it. The car was sitting pretty at eighty miles an hour and the nearest other car in sight was way ahead of them, but the driver had a handgun in his armpit, so if he was going to do it at all he had better get it right the first time around.

He moved both hands at once, the left catching hold of the wheel, the right whipping the piece of pipe up and around and down. He hit the driver just over the ear. For an instant the man’s hands tightened their grip on the wheel. Then they went slack.

He kicked the driver’s foot off the accelerator, replaced it with his own and kept the car steady at speed. The man was limp beside him. He put down the piece of pipe and tilted the rear-view mirror so that he could make out what the hell was going on behind and alongside him. When his opening came he eased his way over to the right-hand lane and slowed down. He pulled off on the ramp to the service area and braked in a remote section of the restaurant lot. The engine shuddered softly and died when he reached across and turned the switch. There wasn’t another car within fifty yards of him.

The gun was a revolver, with bullets in five of the six chambers. When he unlocked the glove compartment to put the gun inside he found a box of shells two-thirds full. He didn’t bother removing the shoulder holster from the man.

And what about the man, anyway? Put him in the back seat and he’d look to be sleeping, but he could come to without his knowing it, and there he’d be, in back of Jimmie John and with the advantage. Trunk would be a safe place for him, but the prospect of lugging an unconscious man out of the car and stuffing him into the trunk didn’t appeal. All that he needed was one sharp-eyed son of a bitch and it was all up.

He walked around the car, opened the door on the driver’s side, shoved the man across to the other side of the car. He got in and drew the door shut and studied the man. The trouble was that he just plain didn’t look like a sleeping passenger. He looked like a corpse.

He was alive enough, though. Breathing slowly, but sure as hell breathing. Jimmie John got the seat belt around him and fastened it. After all, the man said he didn’t mind a seat belt or anything else that might save his life. Wouldn’t want to hit a bump and send him through the windshield.

He turned the key in the ignition and checked the gas gauge. No problem there — half a tank left, so the old boy didn’t have to look good close up, just from a distance. He considered for a moment, then hit on the idea of fastening the shoulder belt across his chest. And that did it. When he started the car and pulled back onto the highway, his passenger looked hale and hearty. Taking a nap, maybe, but as healthy as you could reasonably want a man to be.

He drove along, listening to the speed singing in his veins. From time to time he played with various gadgets, repositioning the six-way power seats, cutting off the tape deck and punching in the FM radio, working a switch to make the power antenna go up and down. Oh, it was a fine car, a beautiful car. He felt a special harmony with it. Like himself, the engine had a ton of power in reserve. Even the front-wheel drive seemed indefinably metaphoric of his own approach to life. Instead of the rear end pushing the front along, the front end dug in and ran.

The man beside him stirred once as they came up on the first Dallas exits. A little tap on the head put him back to sleep again.

When he was well clear of the last of the Fort Worth suburbs, he took the first exit and headed north on 281 through Mineral Wells. “You’re just not very interesting company,” he said aloud to the unconscious man beside him. “’Fraid it’s time we parted company and went our separate ways.”

He turned onto a county road and put another ten miles on the odometer, turning onto a smaller road whenever an intersection gave him a choice. The countryside was flat and empty, a few pecan groves but mostly the endless stretch of grazing land. On a two-lane gravel track in the middle of nothing much he pulled over and cut the engine. He unhooked the shoulder belt and made a careful search of the man’s pockets.

Walker P. Ferris. That was the name on the license and all the credit cards. Walker P. Ferris of Balch Springs, Texas, wherever the hell that was. Well, old Walker wouldn’t have too much walking to do, at least being left in his home state. He’d be up and around within the hour, and even a road like this one would have someone drive down it sooner or later. If the driver turned out to be a judge of character on the order of Walker P. Ferris himself, good at taking the measure of a man in a single glance, then old Walker would have nothing to worry about.

Except—

Except, damn it all, he liked this car. He could leave old Walker at the side of the road and figure on eighteen or twenty hours before the balloon went up, which would be plenty of time to drive where he was going, and then he could leave the car somewhere and let them find it and give it back to old Walker P. Ferris.

He got out of the car and looked at it. Even prettier outside than in. A shame to dump it, now or later.

And hadn’t old Walker spelled it all out in the first place? A man had to take chances. What was life if it wasn’t taking chances? Who the hell wanted to pump gas for eighty bucks a week?

He started the engine and ran the car a couple of hundred yards off the road. It was no jeep, but the pasture wasn’t that much rougher than the road had been and he didn’t feel any rocks snapping at the underside. He undressed Walker P. Ferris and stowed his clothes in the trunk. No point leaving signposts as to just who old Walker might be.

He dragged Walker out of the car and spread him out on the grass. He took the length of pipe and struck twice, full strength, just above the bridge of the nose. He felt bone give way with the second blow. He listened for breathing, felt for a pulse. Nothing. No evidence that old Walker was living, but damned if he seemed any different now that he was dead. He hit him once more in the same place for insurance and wiped the pipe in the grass before returning it to his hip pocket.

Not that he particularly needed that piece of pipe. He had himself a revolver now, and even a shoulder rig to wear it in, if he wanted to go to the trouble of wearing a jacket over it. Seemed as though it would be easier to stick it down under his belt or something like that, but he had all the time in the world to worry over that.