“Got you,” I said.
“Lady,” Jim Bob said, “you don’t have to come back if you don’t want to. But if you come, I want you to be cooperative, and I don’t want you worrying about snagging your panty hose or such. We’ll be humping right along, I figure, and we don’t need no slackers.”
“I assure you, Mr. Jim Bob,” Ann almost whistled through her teeth, “I’m not a slacker.”
“I didn’t actually figure you for one,” Jim Bob said.
“Jim Bob likes to ingratiate himself with his clients,” Russel said. “Make ‘em feel trusted and warm.”
“My business ain’t public relations-unless I’m lying for a good reason,” Jim Bob said. “But I don’t lie to my employers. It’s not the way it’s done.”
Ann got up and started out of the hotel restaurant without saying a word. I stood and took out my wallet.
“Nah,” Jim Bob said. “You folks just had pie and coffee. I’ll get it and the tip. Go on and catch up with her. And, Dane, tell her she’s right, three hundred a day is high. But I’m the best there is, and by God, I don’t normally pay my own expenses.”
· · ·
On the way home Ann turned the radio on too loud and sat on the far side of the car with her arms crossed, and after a while she turned the radio off and drummed her fingers on the dash. Jordan was in the backseat looking puzzled. Ever since we had picked him up at the day school he had known something was going on, but he didn’t know exactly what.
“Mommy, you mad at Daddy?”
“Just a little,” she said.
“Don’t be mad at Daddy. ”
“It’ll pass,” she said.
God, I hoped so.
When we got home, we made arrangements for the Fergusons to keep Jordan. They had kids and we kept them sometimes, and we were actually owed a couple of overnight sleeps, which was the big thing with Jordan and their boys lately. Sometimes Jordan had to call us at bedtime and be reassured, but all in all he didn’t mind. And by the next day, we would practically have to pry the kids apart to get Jordan to go home.
Ann took Jordan to their house while I sat watching TV, but really listening for the phone. Wanting it to ring. Wanting to get on with things.
Nothing happened.
Ann came back and we finally went to bed about ten and made love, which wasn’t too good because she was still mad at me. Or mad at Jim Bob really, but I was handy. She said something about, “I’ll make that goddamn bastard think snag my panty hose” a couple of times before we gave it up for the night and she rolled into my arms and I held my hand between her legs and buried my nose in the fragrance of her hair. And just as I was drifting into sleep, the phone rang.
I got to it without turning over the nightstand and groped it off the hook and coughed something into it.
“Get on up here,” Jim Bob said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Coming.”
“You awake?”
“About half-ass.”
“Well be whole-ass by the time you get here, got me?”
I said something and lay back down. Ann rolled over and put her arm around my chest. “Jim Bob?”
“Yeah. We’ve got to go meet him.”
“Does that mean we don’t have time for a quickie?”
“He didn’t say anything about a time limit,” I said.
Our lovemaking was rushed, but Ann wasn’t mad anymore, and it was better than when we had spent more time. I knew why.
We were both scared.
22
Jim Bob and Russel met us out in the parking lot.
“We’ll take the Red Bitch,” Jim Bob said.
Ann and I got in the back and Russel got in front with Jim Bob. It occurred to me that if Russel and Jim Bob were pulling our legs, they might be taking us out to the river bottoms to dispose of us. It could be that way. Russel and Jim Bob had been friends for a long time, and I hadn’t any idea what Russel had really said to him on the phone. I wished I had thought of that before now. I looked at Ann, and as the lights from stores and buildings slanted across her face and made her fine profile show there in the car, I got the feeling the same thoughts had occurred to her. I figured that if that was the case, her last words to me would be, “I told you so.”
We drove on out of town and as we did I looked over the Red Bitch real good. The upholstery was red and on the dash in upraised blue-silver letters was JIM BOB. The steering wheel was covered with a tacky, false cheeta skin and an emerald-colored suicide knob the size of a doorknob was fastened to that. Jim Bob liked to drive with his left hand on the knob and his right hand across the back rest. I could see a little of his face in the rearview mirror. He looked happy as a drunk.
“How are we going to dig him up?” I asked. It had occurred to me that I hadn’t seen any shovels, and that was making me even more nervous.
“Got some shovels and stuff in the trunk there. All manner of tools. Damn near everything’s back there in the trunk but another car.”
“Maybe we could use another,” Russel said. “This ain’t exactly one to be sneaking around in.”
“Who’s sneaking, goddamnit. We’re driving. Ain’t no crime in driving. Hell, I have a pickup, but I didn’t bring it.”
“No joke,” Russel said.
Jim Bob looked over at Russel and grinned. “Want to see me lose this cop?”
Russel grinned back. “I thought you were losing your touch. I noticed him when we left the Holiday Inn. They switched cars on us.”
Neither Ann nor I had looked back to see the car that was supposed to be following us, but it was tempting.
“Are you sure it’s a cop behind us?” I said.
“Oh yeah,” Jim Bob said.
“Can’t he just pull us over?”
“What for, driving a red Caddy? That ain’t no crime.”
“Perhaps this one ought to be,” Ann said.
Jim Bob laughed. “Lady, I like you, I really do.”
“If we run, won’t the cops be laying for us?” I said.
“Well, we ain’t gonna just run, we’re gonna lose him legal like. But before I do, could you folks tell me where the hell this graveyard is?”
“The other direction,” Russel said.
“Figures,” Jim Bob said, and he took a left in the Safeway parking lot just in front of a big tractor trailer rig. The car that was tailing us went by. Or I assume it was the one. When I got the chance to look, I saw a sporty blue Plymouth slow down and fall over to the left-turn lane. But the traffic was thick and he couldn’t make the left.
Jim Bob got back on the highway by rushing out front of a yellow Volkswagen that honked its horn and flashed its lights. It whipped around on the left and came even with Jim Bob. A husky college boy on the right-hand side rolled down his window and flipped Jim Bob the bird and yelled something.
Jim Bob waved at him friendly like, put his foot to the floor and the Red Bitch jumped forward. Jim Bob whipped in front of the Volkswagen again, went around another car and made the right lane. We went fast like that for two blocks, then Jim Bob took a right, then a left, then a right and a left again.
