THREE’S COMPANY
Where were we? I didn’t know — and I was driving. Dick sat beside me. Jack Donohue was in the back seat, alone, calling out rapid instructions without the benefit of a map:
‘After we get through Savannah, take a right onto Route 17. Just below Midway you’ll hit Route 82. Make a right on that and go west to Hinesville. Then southwest to Jesup. We’ll connect up with Route 301 south of Jesup and go down to Folkston. Then over to Jacksonville where we’ll meet up with 95 again. It’s a detour. Takes more time, but they’ll be patrolling the Interstate. They’ll never find us in the backwoods.’
I wasn’t so certain. I thought Antonio Rossi would follow us through the thickets of hell.
After the death of Hymie Gore, we had made our getaway in a wild, roaring dash across the shopping center parking lot. Jack had been at the wheel, and that escape from the crowded lot had been like running an obstacle course, a heart-stopping careen around startled pedestrians, grocery carts, and moving cars. I remember only lights flashing by, outraged faces, screams of protest, squealing brakes, the angry blast of horns, the screech of tires in tight turns.
We made the highway with no signs of pursuit and headed south again. We paused on the verge just north of Savannah and changed places. That’s when I got behind the wheel and Black Jack crawled into the back seat and immediately poured us all drinks.
Dick, I knew, was trying hard to control his tremors. He clutched his plastic tumbler of brandy in both hands, elbows pressed against his ribs. I was not so much shaken as numb. Too many things had happened too quickly. When I had asked Donohue the sequence of events back there in the alley, he had been cold and laconic.
‘I wasted the guy, I think he was one of the clerks from Brandenberg’s. I blew his fucking brains all over the fucking alley. Then I took a look at Hyme. He was still alive, but he had at least three pills in him. He was going; I could tell. So I split.’
‘I saw Rossi kill him,’ I said faintly.
‘Yeah,’ Jack said. ‘Well, that figures.’
‘He was such a sweet man,’ I mourned.
‘Yeah,’ Donohue said, ‘he was okay. Not much between the ears, but he was a good muscle.’
‘Did he have a family?’ Fleming asked.
‘Who the hell knows?’ Black Jack said irritably.
I was about to reproach him for his heartless unconcern — but what was the use? No one would pity a dead Jack Donohue either, or grieve for his wasted life. He knew it and accepted it.
But still, the death of Gore was on his mind — or perhaps it was the implacableness of the enemy who followed. Whatever he felt, alone there in the back seat, he drank heavily. He finished the brandy, lowered the window, and tossed out the empty bottle. He cackled when it smashed to splinters on the highway behind us. Then he started on a quart of vodka, drinking from the bottle.
We drove in silence then. We were south of Savannah before Donohue spoke again. His voice was heavy and dull, the words slurred.
‘The funny thing is …’ he mumbled. ‘You know what the funny thing is? That suitcase Hyme held up in front of him was filled with clothes. The slugs went through it like a hot poker through butter. I got the case right here. I’m feeling the holes, front and back. We got to ditch this case. But if he had been holding a suitcase full of jewelry, it probably would have stopped the slugs or deflected them — you know? It was just bad luck that Hyme had a suitcase full of underwear and shirts. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Luck, I mean.’
Then he was silent again. When I glanced in the rearview mirror, I saw that he had stretched out. His chin was down on his chest. I hoped he was sleeping.
I tried to remember all his instructions, but I got lost. 1 ‘stayed on Route 82, going southwest. Finally, at Waycross, Dick and 1 saw signs pointing to the Okefenokee Swamp Park, and knew we were on the wrong road.
We discussed in low voices whether we should wake up Donohue and see if he could get us back on course. It was then almost 12:30 A.M., I was bone-weary, and I knew Dick’s ankle was bothering him. It seemed foolish to push ourselves over the edge of complete collapse.
We had to drive another thirty miles before we found a motel that was displaying a Vacancy sign. It was another of the fleabag variety, but I couldn’t have cared less. Dick woke up the night clerk and registered for two rooms, paying in advance. Between us we wrestled all the important luggage inside, then supported a stumbling, grumbling Jack Donohue and got him onto a lumpy bed.
Dick said he’d take care of undressing him, and 1 thankfully went off to my very own room. It was, I thought with a shock, the first time I had slept alone in I couldn’t remember how many days. I took my personal luggage in with me, including Project X, and just did manage to take off coat, shoes, wig, sweater, and skirt before I fell on top of the ratty bedspread in bra and pantyhose. I didn’t know which smelled worse, me or that bed. But sleep conquered all.
I woke about 8:00 the next morning because some idiot was emptying trash cans into a dump truck right outside my window, and whistling mightily as he worked. After he left, with a great grinding of gears, I tried to get back to sleep again, but it was no go. So I got up, showered in a stained stall no larger than a vertical coffin, and put on fresh clothes, makeup, and a brushed wig.
Then, feeling reasonably presentable, I ventured outside. A hot, smoky day, the rising sun hidden behind a scrim of white fog. I looked around. Mostly flatland. Some clumps of scrub pine. The earth looked old, baked, worn. And our motel was designed to fit right into that landscape.
The Buick was where we had parked it, and I figured the men were still sleeping. I wandered over to the renting office and found a fat woman sitting behind a desk, filing her nails with a piece of steel as big as a saber. She was about half my height and double my weight, with an enormous purple birthmark that covered one cheek and dripped down onto her neck. But it hadn’t soured her: she was perky enough.
‘Morning, dearie,’ she said cheerily. ‘How you this bright, sunshiny morning?’
I won’t attempt to reproduce the Georgian accent. But that ‘morning’ was more like ‘mawnin’ and the ‘how’ was ‘haow.’ Still there was a softness to her speech, a warm lilt. I liked it.
‘I’d feel a lot better if I could get some coffee,’ I said grumpily.
‘Got it right here,’ she said happily. ‘Thirty-five cents a cup. Doughnuts go for two bits each.’
‘ One coffee,’ I said. ‘Two doughnuts.’
She served me from a ten-quart electric coffeemaker on the end of the checkin desk.
‘We got canned milk,’ she said.
‘Black will be fine.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, grinning slyly. ‘Black is beautiful. Plain, sugared or chock doughnuts?’
‘Plain, please.’
‘Where you folks headin’?’ she asked pleasantly as she filled a plastic container with coffee and wrapped two doughnuts in a paper napkin.
‘South,’I told her.
‘Mostfolks is, this time of year. Miami, Ibet.’
‘Uh … maybe.’
‘Me and the old man plan to get down there one of these days,’ she nattered on. ‘Last year we went to Disney World. Ever been there?’
‘No, I never have.’
‘Don’t miss it,’ she advised me seriously. ‘Just the nicest place. I shook hands with Mickey Mouse. Can you imagine?
Feeling a lot better, I carried my breakfast back to my room. I put coffee and doughnuts on top of the stained maple dresser and pulled up a straight-backed chair. I got out the yellow legal pads and ballpoint pen. Sipping the hot, flavorless coffee, chewing the spongy, flavorless doughnuts, I wrote as fast as I could, trying to bring my manuscript up to date.
I must have worked for at least two hours. I was just describing our arrival at the shopping center motor lodge near Hardeeville, South Carolina, when there was a knock at the door. I peeked through the front windows before I unlocked. I was learning.
