A Ticket to Hell Page 8

  He lay there a moment and stared at Eve. She was easy to look at, in a pleasantly painful way. The terrible desire he’d felt last night washed back over him, and he sweated. The sweat had nothing to do with the heat of the sun against the windows.

  He opened the car door quietly and stepped out. He walked around the car, his shoes crunching on the crust of the creek bed.

  He stared at the rear of the car and caught his breath. It had sunk to the bumper during the night. He broke through the crust with his heel and then stepped quickly back, staring.

  “What’s the matter, Ric?” Eve said. She leaned her head out of the car window.

  “Stay in the car.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Quicksand. This damned river bed is quicksand. Now do what I tell you and stay in the car.”

  “Oh, Ric. What a mess I’ve made.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “About me. It’s all my fault.”

  “What the hell. You didn’t know about the quicksand.”

  “I should have. Everything I touch, that’s what it turns out to be—quicksand.”

  “All very dramatic. Stay in the car and keep still.”

  Her head disappeared. He walked away from the car, looking both ways along the creek. It was deeply eroded between the two levels of the wasteland. As far as he could see there was only the crooked path of the creek, with sage and mesquite growing on both sides all the way to distant ranges that looked like foothills, but were not because their peaks were capped with snow.

  He stood staring at the car. In the creek they were sitting ducks. They were lucky only the left rear wheel had broken through the crust. A heavier car would have been lost by now. Only God knew what would happen when he spun the other wheel.

  He went back to the car, opened the door. Eve had folded the topcoat, replaced it on top of his suitcase. She was carefully refolding the newspaper. She looked up, met his gaze. Faint color touched her cheeks. She looked away. He felt better; he was not the only one with a functioning memory.

  He reached in the back of the seat, opened a compartment. He removed a coiled rope.

  “Thought you’d never been out here,” she said.

  “Friend of mine had. I came prepared.”

  He held the coiled rope, returned to the rear of the car. He secured an end of the rope about the axle just inside the rear tire, made two forward loops of the rope and then tossed it to the front of the car.

  He pulled the rope out under the front bumper and then stood looking around. Behind them, the way they had come, he saw a far plume of dust. Except for a high circling buzzard nothing else moved.

  There was a boulder on the incline but he was afraid to trust it. On the lip of the embankment was a stunted pinon. He walked to it. He was doubtful that it would hold once pressure was applied, but there was nothing else, no other hope. He secured the rope on the pinon and returned to the car.

  He got in, started the engine, let it warm up.

  “You ever prayed?” he said.

  “Yes. Very often lately. I’m Mrs. Martin Kimball, you know.”

  “Yes. I remember.”

  “Can we get out, Ric?”

  “How do I know?”

  “I’ll get out. It’ll be less weight.”

  “All right.”

  She got out, walked to the edge of the creek bed.

  Cautiously he put the car in gear, let the clutch out slowly so the rear wheels turned. The rope slapped against the bottom of the car, the pinon bent down the side of the creek.

  “Ric”

  Eve ran to the car, caught the window. Her face was starkly white.

  “Ric, there are two cars coming down the road from the highway.”

  “Yes. I saw the dust.”

  “I can see the cars, Ric. They’re that near. One of them is a police car. I see the searchlight on its roof. The other is my Cadillac. Martin’s in it. I know.”

  “Stand back. I’m going to try again.”

  He released the clutch, listening to the crackle of the thin crust. The car was inching forward, being pulled by the rope wound on the rear axle.

  “Ric. You’re moving.”

  “Just you pray that tree isn’t uprooted.”

  “They’re coming, Ric. We’re not going to get away.”

  He did not answer. She ran along beside the little car as it was pulled painfully forward on the winding rope. Suddenly it bumped out of the quicksand bed.

  “Ric. I think they see us.”

  Ric jumped out of the car. He ran to the tree, loosened the rope. He did not stop to unwind it from the rear axle.

  “Get in the car,” he yelled at her.

  He could see her Cadillac now. It was ahead of the police cruiser and was speeding as though the bridge was ahead of it.

  He got in the car, stepped on the gas, going at an angle up the incline. “Center of gravity,” he kept saying over and over. “That’s all we’ve got that they haven’t got.”

  The car tilted, shaking like an awkward bug and then bumped over the edge of the embankment. Stones and earth crunched under its rear wheels. The tires spun for a moment and then caught.

  The wailing of horns and sirens speared at them. Ric did not even look over his shoulder. He stepped hard on the gas, bumping over the rocks to the roadway. He saw that the bridge had been washed out a long time. The roadway on this side was full of holes and was eroded away in places.

  They bounced along the roadway.

  “This doesn’t lead anywhere,” Eve cried out.

  There was the crack of gunfire behind them.

  “You want to go back?”

  “Why are they shooting at us?”

  “You said it yourself. Your Martin is a smart boy. He must have laid it on thick. They’ve been searching for us all night. I guess they’re out of patience.”

  “But shooting at us—”

  “You’re a fugitive from the law, baby, whether you are used to the idea or not. You have been, ever since you ran away from that motel last night.”

  “But we haven’t done anything that gives them the right to shoot at us.”

  “According to Martin we have. I’d say we’re wanted for assault with attempt to murder.”

  “Attempted murder.” She shook her head.

  “That’s what Martin said he’d charge us with, and it looks like that’s what he’s done.”

  The rope was wound around the axle now and was slapping against the underside of the car.

  Ric slowed, looking over his shoulder. They were out of range of the police guns. He saw that the men back there were scurrying around on the far bank trying to find a place where they could cross the creek.

  He stopped the car, got out and unwound the rope. When he got back in the car he saw that the cars were moving slowly to the left side of the bridge structure.

  “They’ve found a place to cross,” he said. “Looks like the cops know more about the quicksand than I do.”

  “It’s no good,” she said.

  “Now what are you talking about?” He put the car in gear. They moved forward again. He kept his hands on the wheel and stared ahead for deep washouts.

  “Let’s go back. The more we run, the worse it will be.”

  “You go back if you want to. I’ve got to stay free of the cops, that’s all I’m thinking about. But you’ll be safe with them. You want to get out?”

  “No.” She tried to smile. “I’m with you.”

  His mouth pulled into a grin. He handed her the rope. “Okay. Put this in that compartment back there. A boy’s best friend is his rope. They may need it later to hang us with.”

  She took the rope, turned on her knees on the bucket seat. He glanced at the trim lines of her hips, felt the sudden pounding of his heart.

  She stayed like that, staring at something. He turned, looked over the seat. She was still holding the rope. She had opened the wrong compartment.

  His voice rasped at h
er. “Not that one, damn it. The other one.”

  He reached back, slapped the compartment lid closed. Meekly she opened the other compartment, put the rope away and turned around in the seat.

  “All that money,” she whispered. “Stacks of it.”

  “A quarter of a million dollars,” he told her. His voice was hard. “I told you in the beginning—keep away from me.”

  “Yes.” She whispered it. “Yes. You told me.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next few minutes were stretched long and taut. Ten minutes seemed more like ten hours. Ric saw that Eve was sitting there, drawn tense, thinking a hundred things and waiting for him to make some explanation. The hell with her. She’d fouled him up enough.

  He glanced back down the flat road. At first he saw nothing down there. The police car and the Caddy were down in the creek bed, but unless they hit a quicksand area as he had, they’d be coming up the other side any minute. After that it would be a matter of outrunning them on a road chewed out and eroded—or at least outlasting them in a country that the cops would know and that he did not know at all.

  He let his gaze touch the mountain ranges that lay in the distance, maybe a hundred miles away. In this atmosphere distances didn’t mean much. He decided he’d feel better driving through mountain trails. He’d have a chance of losing them, and he thought bitterly, the same chance of losing himself. Unless they had extra gas he could stay longer in this country because he would get at least twice the mileage of the police cars.

  He searched ahead for a cut-off road that might point even in the general direction of the foothills. He was no longer looking for a hard-surfaced road. He’d learned that much by now. If there was a trail at all, he would gamble on it. This car would cross the desert trails better than the bigger ones.

  He looked at the speedometer. They were going less than thirty miles an hour. But if he speeded up they bounced crazily against the roof and sides.

  He checked the rear-view mirror. The two cars had found a rise and were coming up out of the creek bed. You just have to know the country, he thought. He saw that the police did.

  Then he saw something else. The Caddy stuck to the road, and had to slow as he had, but the police car stayed just off the road and was soon racing through a cloud of dust that obscured the Caddy.

  “The hell with this,” Ric said aloud. “If they can do it, I can.”

  He saw the faint outlines of tire tracks to his right ahead. He whipped the car off the roadway and stepped hard on the gas. He heard the tires crackling over the dry alkali crusts.

  He drove silently, checking the smoking dust cloud behind him and the foothills ahead. They drove for some minutes, but the country had not changed, the foothills were no nearer.

  The police car and the Caddy had left the roadway now, following the same faint tracks he’d followed.

  “Ric.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Look. Behind the cars, back there coming toward us.”

  He turned and stared out his window. The wind against his head was hot and dry, clogged with dust. He felt his lips drying out, and he remembered what they’d told him: never get suckered into that waste country without water. The hell with it. It was no good remembering that. His first lesson had been not to get fouled up with a woman, and he’d disregarded that. Everything else that happened was just in order. He had been a damned fool to leave that motel with Kimball’s wife. But for the hell of it, he didn’t see how he could have done anything else.

  “You see it?” Eve said.

  “No. What?”

  “Above the dust.”

  He lifted his gaze, stared into the stark pale sky. There was a shadow, and then he saw it was not a shadow. It was a helicopter. It was bearing in on them like a listing bird, windmill grinding.

  He turned back, watching the country ahead of them. The land rose gently, and the patches of sage and brush were more sparse. They were crossing an outcropping of stones and they shook inside the car.

  “Sure,” he said. There was no astonishment. “Cops use them.”

  “Why don’t we stop, Ric?”

  “I told you. You can get out any time you want.”

  “It’s only going to make it worse. I was afraid of Martin. I admit that. All I could think was to run. But they’re going to stop us. The longer we run, the worse it will be. You can see that. They’ll search your car.”

  “They’d search it anyway, if they stopped me.”

  She was watching the helicopter. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you, Ric. You tried to warn me. I was a fool. But we’re not going to get away from them. Even if you outrun the police cars, the helicopter can follow us.”

  He did not answer. They raced between a scrubby stand of pinon. The heat rose out of the earth, rode into the car on the wind. The trail twisted between the rise of a small range of hills. Beyond these hills, the earth was swollen and broken by higher ranges and over the tops of these, jagged peaks glistened bare and snow-stained.

  The trail wound upward into the foothills. He had to slow for boulders, stands of fir, outcroppings of slate.

  “I don’t see the cars any more,” Eve said. She was twisted on the seat, staring out the back window. “The ‘copter is closer now, though. I can see two men in it.”

  The churning sound of the helicopter engine filled the car, drowning the sound of the Porsche motor. He did not glance upward. There was no need for that. He could watch the elongated shadow of the helicopter leaping and lunging across the rocks and up the sheer sides of the hills ahead of them.

  He did not slow down. Eve was holding on to both sides of the seat and she was watching the twisted trail ahead. They were ascending deeper into the hills now. They struck a flat plateau and the trail was gone, lost on the slate surface.

  The Porsche slid and twisted. The helicopter shadow hovered above them, the sound of its engine reverberating from the sides of the hills so the whole silent land was filled with it.

  Ahead, Ric saw two boulders, sand-blasted like two pillars between close-set hills. He whipped the car between the boulders and took his foot off the gas. Ahead was the twisted bed of a dry canyon. The sides of it rose sheer and gray, less than thirty feet apart.

  The shadow of the helicopter hesitated and then lunged upward and was lost. Ric laughed, an angered bitter sound of satisfaction.

  The rocky canyon bed made talk impossible. Ric put his head out the car window, glanced upward. The helicopter had been forced to pull away, to climb the ranges and return.

  He glanced around the canyon. Ahead was a rock shelf to the right in the canyon wall. He pulled the car upward, climbing the incline. He drove as close against the rock wall as possible, killed the engine.

  He laughed, a cold, harsh sound. “This ought to give them a fit for a little while. We don’t even cast a shadow.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  They sat there in the shadow under the shelf. For a few moments it was quiet. He watched a dust devil race along the canyon floor. Then he heard the faint whimpering sound of the helicopter.

  “They’re circling around up there,” he said. “They’re trying to find us.”

  He sat there, waiting. The sound of the ‘copter was loud. He saw its shadow slithering along the wall on the other side of the canyon. Then the sound was gone and the shadow was jerked out of the canyon.

  “They think we’ve turned around,” he said.

  “They’re giving us credit for good sense.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Do you hear the cars?”

  “I don’t think we will. We lost the trail somewhere back there. If they come in, it’ll be on foot.”

  He got out of the car, closing the door softly. Whispers of sounds were picked up and hurled along these walls. He walked to the edge of the shelf, staying back so that he cast no shadow beyond its rim. The helicopter was nowhere that he could see.

  He shook his head. There was nothing enviable about this position.
It was good for only a little while. That whirlybird could check this canyon and these foothills in a few hours. They could pinpoint the Porsche somewhere in this area, even if they could no longer see it, and they could lead the police in by radio.

  “If we could last until dark,” he said aloud, “we could beat the ‘copter.”

  He knew she’d heard him but she did not answer. He glanced over his shoulder. She was sitting as he had left her.

  He walked back to the car. He saw that she had opened the rear compartment again. The green of the money winked at him. His jaw tightened.

  “What’s the matter? You never saw money before?”

  She turned, staring at him. “Not like this.”

  “Thought you boasted about how rich you were.”

  “I have money.”

  “Enough so some guy tried to kill you for it.”

  “I keep my money in banks, Mr. Durazo.”

  “Well, that’s where you and I are different.”

  She looked at her hands. “Yes. We are different. You take your money out of banks, don’t you, Mr. Durazo?”

  His eyes chilled. He opened the door, sat down with his legs outside the car. There was silence. He strained, listening for the helicopter.

  “Think what you want.”

  “What should I think?”

  “Nothing. You never asked to see my social register status when you jumped in this car.”

  “Oh, no. I thought I was clever. I thought you were good. All I could think was I had to run away from Martin and that you would help me. Oh, fine. Run away from a killer— with a thief and jailbird.”

  He gripped the steering wheel.

  After a moment she said, “Where did you get this money?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “You told me you were in jail. Why don’t you tell me why you’re afraid to talk to the police. Is it because you’ve stolen this money?”

  “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have to worry about talking to the police.”

  “Did you steal this money?”

  “What difference does it make? I’ve got it, haven’t I? We can’t all inherit our fortunes, Mrs. Kimball. Some of us have to work for them.”