Chapter Eleven
“Well? What did you find out?” Pat looked up from her soda.
“Everything’s arranged. Stay put here another fifteen minutes or so and we’ll be on our way.” He needed time to reach New York. Somebody there might have an idea.
“Fifteen minutes! What on earth can one do in a drugstore for fifteen minutes? Whom did you talk to?”
“Now take it easy, Miss Patricia. I talked to your father’s place and they’re sending a car over. Your father himself wasn’t there yet. Some delay in New York. Then I talked to the police again and they said that with the description I gave them it shouldn’t take more than a few hours to straighten this whole thing out. They don’t think it was anything criminal. Perhaps a prank.”
“I don’t care what it was. The whole thing is a nuisance and as far as I’m concerned there’ll be hell to pay before I get through!” She got up, mean and edgy. “I’m calling a cab,” she said. “Pay the man for his lousy soda and then wait here for the car they’re sending. I’m not waiting any longer.” She started to walk off.
“Wait! If you call a cab now, you’ll probably wait longer than it takes for the car to get here. Besides, and I’m sorry about this, Miss Patricia, I don’t think we have enough money for the cab. It’s another fifty-mile drive, you know. The car they’re sending was right here in town, at a garage.”
“You know, Benny, I’d say you’re acting mighty queer about this. Once I get to the house I can pay the cab ten times over, you know, and any more trouble out of you is going to cost you plenty once I tell Father about this.” She fixed him with her gray, unloving eyes, and Benny thought how easily he could reach out and choke that skinny neck of hers.
“Will you wait just one second till I check again? You can wait that long, can’t you, for chrissakes?”
She looked at him with surprise and was hardly able to speak. “Tapkow,” she managed to say, “that’ll mean your job,” and she walked to the telephone booth.
He didn’t stop her. He let her go and went outside. The yellow convertible was across the street, standing there waiting for him, and that was going to be the way out. He looked back into the drugstore. She was still phoning. He was hoping she was phoning a cab company and nothing else. But either way, he was ready.
When she came out he walked up to her. “They brought the car,” he said. “A mechanic brought it over and it’s across the street.”
“Oh?”
“Call the cab company and tell them not to come.”
“To hell with the cab company. Let’s get going.” She followed him out of the door and to the car. “When did Daddy get this one?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Benny started the motor.
“You know something, Tapkow? Those manners of yours aren’t going to interfere with your job much longer. I’ll see to it that this is your last official act with us.”
He didn’t answer. He kept his eyes on the traffic and worked his way to the less crowded side streets.
“Don’t you hear me? I’m talking to you, Tapkow!”
Her voice was nasty.
“Seeing how it is, kid, you can stop calling me Tapkow. It’s either Benny, if you want, or Mr. Tapkow. Take your pick.”
“Why, you insolent bastard! Do you think firing you is all my father can do to you? I’ll make it my personal business-”
“Why don’t you shut up?”
She gasped. Then her face turned a dark red. It made her gray eyes look flat and pale, like a fish’s eyes. “Stop this car, you insolent sonofabitch. Stop this instant or I’ll yell for help!”
He kept driving. The knuckles of his hands stood out white where he clutched the steering wheel.
“I said stop!”
He stopped. He yanked at the emergency brake and left the motor running. Then he took off his chauffeur’s cap, tossed it in the street, and turned to face her. “Now you listen to me.”
Her livid face came close and she screamed, “Get out of this car! Get out or I’ll-”
Benny clapped his hand over her mouth, making her head jolt against the back of the seat. She tried to jump up but he grabbed her bare arm and yanked her over to his side. “Another yelp out of you and you’ll regret it. Listen close now, Pat, because I’ve taken all I’m going to take. You yell, sister, and I break your teeth. The pretty ones in front. And nothing’s going to happen to me afterward, so you might as well sit still, keep your mouth shut, and stay out of my hair. That clear?” He gave her arm a sharp yank that made her gasp.
She didn’t move then. He started driving again and hit the highway south.
After a while he turned to look at her, wondering what next. She wasn’t the kind to huddle back and stay under. Any moment now she was coming up to make like her old man.
“Tell me, Tapkow-I beg your pardon, I mean Mr. Tapkow-do you have a wife?”
He didn’t know what to make of it. Her voice had been normal enough, just a trace of that metallic edge in it.
“No,” he said.
“I see.”
She waited, hoping he’d ask her why she had asked. But he just drove south, toward the Pendleton place, to keep her from suspecting and to give himself time to think. And he needed time for that call to New York. Perhaps they knew how to reach Alverato.
“I asked because in that case I would have been sure you’re a wife beater.”
He ignored her.
“Tell me, Mr. Tapkow, do you always beat your women?” She moved closer, looking at him with a show of interest. “Do you enjoy beating women?”
“No,” he said.”
“Then why do you?”
He turned his head and said, “I didn’t beat you. I told you to shut up. Then you did shut up and that was that.”
“I see. And that was that Aren’t you going to tell me again?” She was needling him now.
“No. Next time I do what I warned you about.”
For a moment she didn’t say a thing. Then she said, “You know, Tapkow-uh, Benny-you turned out to be quite something else than a boot-licker… Well, aren’t you pleased?”
He hadn’t been following her.
“You dislike me a great deal, don’t you?”
This time he turned and looked at her. It hadn’t occurred to him. As a part of his deal she was everything. As a person she had no importance to him.
“You’re talking through your hat,” he said and turned to the road again.
“I have a talent for making people take note of me, Benny. Or wouldn’t you think so?”
“Jump in a lake.”
She had her arm on the back of the seat now and he could feel his sleeve brushing her blouse now and then.
“Insolent bastards like you don’t hold up very long, Benny Because it’s an act. What would you do if I jumped out of the car?”
He tensed, thinking for a moment that she might “I’d stop you,” he said.
“Aren’t you sweet. So you are taking note.”
“Just don’t jump,” he said, and moved to be clear of her.
“What if I told you I’m starving, that I’m starving to death? What would you do then?”
“I’d get you something to eat, for chrissakes. Now shut up, will you?”
She rolled away from him, lying slouched in the seat. There was a smile on her face, one side of her mouth up and crooked.
“Where are you going, Benny? To the place?”
“Yeah, to the place.”
