A Ticket to Hell Page 7

  She ran by him, opened the door of the Porsche and slid into the bucket seat. He walked back to the driver’s side, got in, put the car in gear and stomped on the accelerator.

  The little car bucked slightly and then lunged forward, spewing pebbles. As they hit the highway, Ric glanced back over his shoulder at the motel. He did not see Peggy. She was no longer standing in the window. But just beyond the office, in a rectangle of light from its window stood the tall gray-haired man, silently watching.

  Saul Rehan.

  Whoever in the hell he was.

  “You’ll never be sorry,” she said.

  “I’m already sorry.”

  “Yes. But you’re not through. You don’t know how I can help you.”

  His laugh was as cold as the wind in the windows. “Look, I’m up to my ears in alligators without any help from you. Spare me. I’m going to lose this Porsche in some of the wild country out here until morning. By then you’d better have made up your mind what you’re going to do.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “About what?”

  “Who are you? Where you’re from? Who hurt you? Who made you bitter? Why are you afraid?”

  “We’re only going to be out here overnight. We haven’t time for all that.”

  They raced west beyond the airport. Most of the buildings were dark. The administration building was vaguely lighted, and the tower gave off a blue glow, one of the runways was dotted with red and white signal lights.

  “What’s your name? You can tell me that, can’t you?”

  “Ric.”

  “That’s nice. What else?”

  “Durazo. Ric Durazo.” He said the name coldly and waited.

  After a moment, she said. “Is that name supposed to mean something to me?”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know this back country?”

  “How in hell should I know it?”

  She glanced out the window at the racing darkness that seemed to close down upon them like a star-patched shroud. Her voice was low.

  “You act like you know it.”

  “I was never out here before.”

  “Shouldn’t you stay on the highway?”

  Martin went to the State Police, they’d pick us up on the highway—fast.”

  “You can get lost in this country. Just hopelessly. Even I know better than to get off the highway on these side roads without knowing something about them.”

  “Any time you want to get out—”

  “I’m just trying to help.”

  He drove swiftly, the speedometer needle sitting at sixty. They struck potholes in the narrow road, and the car skittered and wavered. Once it danced on the shoulder, struck it and lurched drunkenly for a moment in the darkness so the headlights rocked crazily against the blackness. Eve cried out.

  “What’s the matter? I thought you’d as soon I killed you as Pretty Boy.”

  “You don’t even know where you’re going and you drive like you can’t wait to get there.”

  “I’m buying distance.”

  “It won’t do you much good if you turn this thing over on its head—not unless you’re strong enough to set it up right again.”

  He laughed coldly. “You promised to help me,” he said sardonically. “Besides, this little car has a low center of gravity. They’re hard to turn over.”

  She did not answer but slid down slightly in the bucket seat and braced her legs against the floorboard.

  “You put a lot of faith in strangers,” he said. He glanced at her legs, the roundness straining against the skirt.

  “Sometimes you have to.”

  “Sometimes you’re a fool to.”

  “You keep threatening me in that veiled way. Either tell me what’s the matter, or admit it. You’re a nice guy even though it would kill you to think so.”

  “I’m no nice guy, I can tell you that.”

  “Maybe you’ve just got a stricter conscience than most people.”

  “Think what you want to.”

  “No. I’d rather have you tell me. As you say, I’ve got to trust you—with my life. I want to. You haven’t been a stranger to me—not since I woke up in your cottage back at the motel.”

  “No, but I’ve wanted to be.”

  “How tough you talk.”

  “We’re strangers, baby, in every way in the world, and don’t you forget it.”

  “Two strangers who sleep side by side in a motel and never meet. Isn’t that a pretty thought? Only we met.”

  “Wires got crossed somewhere. You, born with half a million dollars. My old man ran away and left us, my mother died. I grew up in orphanages until I was old enough for the reformatories.”

  “Oh, Ric. I’m sorry.”

  “The hell with it.”

  She tried to smile. She traced her hand across the Porsche dashboard. “You’re doing all right now.”

  “Am I?”

  He stepped hard on the brakes, reached out and caught her roughly, dragging her against him. The car hopped to a stop, its headlights fixed on the eyes of a wild steer. The horns glittered in the lights.

  Ric pressed on the horn. The sound sprang outward, struck against the steer and scattered into the nothingness on both sides of the road. The steer’s eyes got round and wild. It turned suddenly and leaped like a mountain goat, going along the road and then leaping out of the light into the darkness.

  Ric breathed out. He realized he was still holding Eve against him. She had not moved. He felt the softness of her hair against his face. He pulled his arm from around her.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Afraid you’d burst your head against the windshield.”

  “Are you?”

  “Sorry?” He smiled. “Sure. I said I was.”

  “You should smile more often. You’ve a very nice smile. It lights your face all up. It shows what a nice person you are—under all that bitterness.”

  “All that in a smile. Do you read tea leaves, too?”

  She did not answer. He put the car in gear, but now he moved forward more slowly. He had gone more than a mile when he realized she was still there, lying with her head on his shoulder.

  “You can get yourself in a lot of trouble like that,” he said.

  “Trouble?” She laughed briefly and sat straight in the bucket seat. “What’s trouble? I’ve never even heard of it.”

  “If you think you’ve got to pay me for bringing you away from that motel, you can forget it.”

  She exhaled sharply. He glanced toward her, found the lights from the dash pulling chilled shadows in the set planes of her face.

  Her voice matched the bitterness in his.

  “I hadn’t thought about paying,” she said. “But I’ll tell you this. You try to touch me now and I’ll kill you.”

  He grinned at her. “Two strangers who sleep side by side in a motel and never meet.”

  She was staring ahead. He saw her brace herself, grabbing the doorframe and the side of the bucket seat. He reacted by lifting his foot from the gas. She screamed.

  He stepped hard on the brake. The car rolled a few feet and came to a stop on the jagged brink of Stygian darkness. He pulled up hard on the emergency, cut the engine and for some moments they sat there in the eternity of silence and did not speak.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ric opened the car door. He had not realized that he was barely breathing. The headlamps were futile beams poking out into the blackness ahead. He reached behind his seat and found a flashlight. “Be careful,” she said. He stood up and closed the door behind him. He did not answer her. It was cold out of the car, a bitter bone-chilling cold that closed in with the darkness. He snapped on the flashlight and walked to the jagged road edge.

  He played the light down the incline which was covered with rocks and a few small sprigs of dry plants. He lifted the light and saw a broken pillar a few feet across the black space.

  “What is it, Ric?” she said from inside the
car.

  “Bridge washed out. I can see one of the supports.”

  “Is it completely gone?”

  “Yes. Sometimes it happens. A flash flood will take a bridge out.”

  He heard the Porsche door slam and then she was standing beside him, her arms tight across her breasts. She shivered in the cold wind that made an empty sound in the dry creek bed.

  “But there was no sign. There was no warning.”

  “Who ever uses this road? An Indian, maybe, and some of those wild steers.”

  “We could have been killed.”

  “One way is as good as another.”

  “I want to stay alive. I’m stubborn.”

  “Yes. You’re stubborn.”

  He walked away from her, flashing the light along the ground at the side of the road.

  “What will you do?” she said. “Will we turn around and go back?”

  “No. If they are looking for us, they will have roadblocks on the highway by now. Soon they will know that we did not stay on the highway. Then they will search the side roads. It’s no good to stay here.”

  He walked along the road for forty feet. He did not find any ruts. Then he walked down the incline to the river bed.

  She called after him. “I’m cold.”

  “Get back in the car.”

  “I don’t like you to leave me. It’s too dark. I’m scared.”

  “Be glad it’s dark. Martin won’t find you in the dark. Get back in the car before you freeze.”

  She did not speak again. He walked along the hard-packed ground to the river bed.

  He returned to the car and started the engine.

  “I’m going to try the right side,” he said. “The ground is rock-hard. We can cross the creek bed and go up the other side.”

  She did not answer. She moved nearer to him in the bucket seat, kept her hands clenched in her lap.

  He put the car in reverse, moved slowly. He turned it to the right and they side-slipped slightly going down the embankment. He heard her sharp intake of breath, but she did not speak. The car righted itself and they went down the incline. There were stones and broken hunks of pillars near the bridge. The stones and broken supports loomed suddenly in the car lights.

  Still moving the car cautiously forward, he turned to the right. The car moved only its own length when the rear wheels cracked through the crusted earth, bogged down.

  He exhaled slowly. “Oh, fine.”

  “Ric.”

  “If we’re stuck,” he said, “I’m as helpless as you are.”

  He stepped on the accelerator, spun the wheels only once. He could feel them sinking deeper.

  He cut the engine, turned off the lights. The darkness closed down around them, seeming to press through the closed windows.

  He said, “Well, here we are. Looks like a good place to spend the night, eh?”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “That’s what I mean. We can’t do anything until morning. We might as well be comfortable.”

  “I’m cold.”

  He reached behind the front seat, brought out the tailored topcoat he had worn only once since buying it in Manhattan. “Put this over you. It’s all we’ve got.”

  “It gets terribly cold out here before morning.”

  “Try to think of something else.”

  He reached down beside her, touched a control. The seat reclined. “How nice,” she said.

  “Oh, yes. We’re fine.”

  He let his own seat down and lay beside her staring at the darkness beyond his window. Distantly, a coyote wailed. It was a lonely sound and added to the sense of cold in the car.

  He buttoned his coat, turned up the collar. He felt the cold rising from the car floor, moving up his legs.

  “You’ll be cold,” Eve said.

  “Try to get some sleep.” He thrust his hands into his pockets.

  She turned toward him, moved as near as she could. She reached out, touched his arm. “Come closer. At least we can share the coat.”

  Ric rolled on his side. She spread the coat over both of them. Then he remembered the newspaper. He got it from the rear compartment. He unfolded it and spread it out. He pushed it around her legs, across her thighs and put another section across her upper body.

  “That is nice,” she said. “It’s fine.”

  He spread the remaining papers across his own legs.

  “The closer we are together,” she said, “the warmer.”

  He slid his arm under her head and she burrowed against his throat. He smelled the faint warm fragrance of her hair. He remembered Anne’s hair and the way he had buried his face in it, the way he had dreamed about the scent of it, even after he had heard she was lost to him.

  “I wore braces,” she said. “I was lonely, and I thought I was terribly homely. I guess I wasn’t—terribly homely, I mean. I was just homely, and it made it worse because I was lonely.”

  “You changed.”

  “Yes. But I think it was too late. I never had any friends. Not even other girls. Father was afraid of all of them. He always told me they wanted something—none of them were good enough. Nobody was ever lonelier than I was.”

  His voice was low. “You should try a prison sometime.”

  “Were you ever in prison, Ric?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It made you bitter.”

  “No. I was already bitter.”

  “Were you guilty?”

  “Of what?”

  “Whatever they sent you to prison for?”

  “It doesn’t matter, but I wasn’t. You see, by then I didn’t have to be guilty of anything. I had a bad rep. I was guilty unless I could prove I was innocent. I couldn’t prove that.” He laughed suddenly. “The story of my life.”

  “I want to hear it.”

  “Well, I don’t want to tell it.”

  “But if you weren’t guilty—”

  “I told you, it didn’t matter. The funny thing was that I was really trying to be honest—and that was when the roof fell in.”

  “Was she pretty, Ric?”

  “Who?”

  “The girl you loved. The one you lost when you were sent to jail.”

  “Is it that plain?”

  “You’re hurt, Ric. That’s plain.”

  “She was pretty. I loved her. I was crazy about her. I was nuts about her. I thought about her all day, every day. I loved her truly. I didn’t look at anybody else. I didn’t know anybody else existed.”

  “And she married somebody else?”

  “Sure. You see, there was this judge. You see, she was with me the night I was arrested. She didn’t have anything to do with what I was arrested for any more than I did. But the cops—the lousy, stinking—well, so she was mixed up in it. She had to report to this judge. Every two weeks. God knows, he was old enough to be her father.”

  “She married him?”

  “Why not? Hell, that was five years ago. I got over it. Look at me. I’m fine now.”

  “Oh, Ric. I am so sorry.”

  “Forget it. Go to sleep. It wasn’t her fault. Hell, she was all mixed up. The guy was fine to her—and I was up for five years.”

  She tried to talk but he would not say anything else. The silence and the cold wind beat against the car so that it rocked slightly in the river bed. Under the coat and the papers they were warm as long as they pressed close together. They lay on the cold seats with their legs pressed hard against each other. Her head was on his shoulder and her hair spread across his throat. He closed his eyes and tried to forget the way her hair lay across his throat and the pressure of her breasts on his chest.

  She lay quietly and did not move except to breathe. Her body stirred faintly against him when she breathed and her breath was warm against his throat. He felt the excitement building in him, felt himself grow hard against her warm thighs. He tried to put her out of his mind and think of nothing, the wa
y he’d had to force himself to think of nothing a hundred other lonely times. But it would not work. It was no good now because it was too late.

  Her hand lay against his belt buckle. He could feel the heat of her hand through his clothing. He covered her hand with his left hand, pushed her hand down until she was covering him and her hand closed on him. He heard her sharp intake of breath. For an instant she pressed closer, breathless, and her hand tightened on him. Suddenly she pulled away, turning on the seat with her face away from him.

  She was out from under his coat, with only the newspapers to cover her. He heard the newspapers crinkle. She burrowed against the seat.

  He said, voice flat, “You better come back under the coat. It’s all right. I never make the same mistake but once in a lifetime.”

  He heard her ragged breathing for a moment, then she moved back near him, but not touching him. He spread the coat over her.

  He stared into the darkness. All the chill of the night had congealed in the pit of his stomach. He tried to think of Anne, tried to remember her. Except that she was so lovely you ached looking at her, he could no longer see her in his mind. He closed his eyes tightly trying to see her, but it was no good. He could only smell Eve’s hair. He had to get her out of his mind, too. Damn her. Why hadn’t she stayed in Los Solanos? Why hadn’t she stayed in California?

  His mouth pulled bitterly. The hell of it was, he was too honest with himself. He could see her face in the darkness, see the needing and the hunger and the unfulfilled wanting. It was pleasant having her beside him in the darkness. He admitted it was better than loneliness.

  It was like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer.

  He thought about Martin Kimball and Peggy Davis and the character named Saul Rehan. He tried to place Rehan someplace in his past, but he could not.

  The first faint cracks of daylight touched at his eyes. The light was painful and he closed his eyes to escape it.

  And that was when he fell asleep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The heat of the morning sun burned through the window and wakened Ric. He had no idea what time it was. It was not long after daybreak and yet the car would soon become an oven unless they rolled down a window.