There was a long silence as the truck roared on, then Davis asked, “You married?”
“Me? No.”
“I guessed that. You wouldn’t be on a trip like this if you were. You know something? A guy can find a good woman or a bad woman… I guess I had no luck.”
Johnny didn’t say anything.
“You’re lucky not to have kids,” Davis went on. “I’ve got a girl. Sex is all she thinks about and her mother doesn’t give a goddamn.” Davis thumped his head so violently Johnny winced. “What can you do? If I took a strap to her, the cops would arrive. There ain’t a thing a father can do if his daughter has the hots.”
Johnny thought of Melanie. What was happening to her? Had Massino…? He flinched and forced the thought from his mind.
“Getting hot.” Davis said and wiped his face with the back of his hand. “This is a hell of a haul.” He kept the shuddering truck at seventy miles an hour. They were now out of the farming country and coming to the swamp land. “This I hate,” Davis said. “Snakes, jungle… you watch it. We’ll get by. After a while, we’ll come to the real country… the south!”
Watching this big man as he crouched over the driving wheel, seeing the glazed expression in his eyes, Johnny knew something bad was about to happen.
“You’re driving too fast!” he shouted. “Cut it down!”
“You call this fast?” Davis turned his head to look at Johnny who felt a chill go up his spine. The small eyes with their scar tissue were turning sightless. “The greatest… like me! He’ll come back!”
“Watch the road!” Johnny shouted. “Joe!”
Davis grinned stupidly, then took his hands off the steering wheel and began to beat his head. Johnny made a grab at the wheel but he was too late. The truck roared off the freeway and with screaming tyres, it ploughed into the jungle.
Thrown against the cabin door, Johnny felt the door give and felt himself falling. He landed on his back in a thick flowering bush that broke his fall, then he rolled to the ground.
He lay stunned, listening to the truck ploughing through the thicket, then came the sound of a grinding crash as the truck hit a tree. As he struggled upright, the gas tank of the truck exploded and the truck went up in a roaring sheet of flame.
Johnny started towards the blaze, then saw it was hopeless. His sense of self-preservation asserted itself. Within minutes a prowl car would arrive. It would be fatal if the cops found him. They would question him, search him, and the moment they found he had a gun and three hundred ten dollar bills stuffed into his pockets, he would be cooked.
He started down a narrow path that led into the jungle, aware that his right ankle hurt. He forced himself along, limping now and frightened that he had suffered an injury that might develop into something bad.
He hadn’t gone more than five hundred yards when he heard the wail of a siren. He broke into a limping run, stumbled and fell flat.
Hell! he thought. I’ve hurt my goddamn self! He scrambled to his feet and set off again, but this time he was in bad pain and was dragging his leg. After a hundred yards or so, with cold sweat running down his face, he could go no further. He looked around. To his right was a big clump of tangled undergrowth. He forced his way to it, then collapsed on the damp ground. Sure that anyone coming down the path couldn’t see him, he stretched out his aching leg and prepared to wait.
What Johnny couldn’t know was that this. accident had saved his life. Had Davis delivered him to Jacksonville, Johnny would have walked into the trap Ernie and Toni had set up.
He didn’t know, and he cursed his luck as he lay in the undergrowth feeling his leg slowly stiffening. He had been lying there for the past four hours.
The police, the ambulance and the break-down truck had come and gone. The jungle was cool, and Johnny, badly shaken, was content to lie there and wait. He suffered. His ankle was swelling and when he looked at it, he saw with alarm it looked red and angry. Had he broken it? Maybe it was just a bad sprain. The thoughts of putting his weight on it made him flinch.
Later, he became thirsty. He looked at his watch. The time was now 13.05. He would have to make an effort to get to the freeway. With any luck he would pick up a ride. He had to get to Jackson!
He crawled out of the thicket and on to the path. He could smell the burned-out truck and the undergrowth that had gone up with it. On the path, he forced himself up on one leg, then gently he put a little of his weight on his damaged ankle. Pain raved up from the ankle into his head.
Jesus! he thought. I’m in goddamn trouble! He sank down, feeling sweat break out on his face and a light feeling of faintness that frightened him.
He had better wait, he thought. He had better get back into the undergrowth. Maybe later, he would be able to use his leg.
He began to crawl back towards the undergrowth when he saw the snake.
The thick-bodied Cottonmouth was coiled within eight feet of him. It raised its olive green head and its forked tongue darted.
Johnny turned cold, the pain in his ankle forgotten. He had a horror of snakes. He lay there, motionless, not even blinking, watching the snake. Apart from its darting tongue, it too remained motionless.
Minutes dragged by. Johnny thought of his gun. Should he try to shoot the snake? Then he thought of the danger. Someone might hear the sound of the shot and come to investigate. Maybe the snake would go away if he waited long enough. Would it attack him? It could be harmless. He had no knowledge of snakes and wasn’t to know that a Cottonmouth was lethal.
Then slowly the snake began to uncoil while Johnny watched it with horror. The snake slid into the undergrowth where Johnny had been hiding. With the back of his hand, Johnny wiped away the sweat streaming down his face. Had that green nightmare been in the thicket with him?
He had to get out of here!
The sun was now penetrating the over-hanging trees. What wouldn’t he have given for a drink? The jungle could be swarming with snakes! Again he hoisted himself on one leg. He began hopping down the path towards the freeway. He had only taken four hops when he lost balance. The whole weight of his body came down on his injured ankle. He heard himself cry out as pain raved through him, then he fell, his head thumping - down on a tree root and blackness swept over him.
“If they’re coming they should have been here by now,” Ernie said. He had just finished a can of pork and beans and he released a gentle belch.
He and Toni were sitting in a ditch that gave them a direct view of the small clapboard house where Fuselli lived. Their car was out of sight behind a clump of trees, a quarter of a mile further down the dirt road.
“So okay… so what?” Toni was slightly drunk. To bolster up his nerve, he had been hitting the bottle.
“I’m going into town to call the boss.” Ernie said. “He’ll be wondering what we’re doing. We’ve been sitting in this goddamn ditch for eight hours.”
“So what?” Toni repeated. “They could have had a blow-out. You stick here, Ernie. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar.” He reached for a can of stewed steak. “They could show any minute.”
Ernie got to his feet.
“I’m going. You stay here.”
“The hell with that!” Toni wasn’t too drunk to realize that on his own if Johnny showed up, he could be in trouble. “You stick right here! Let’s give them a couple of hours, then we both go down town.”
“Shut up!” Ernie snarled. “You stick here.” Climbing out of the ditch, he walked down the road to where the car was hidden.
Twenty minutes later, he was talking to Massino. He explained the situation.
“Right now, boss, we’re staked out, out of sight, in front of Fuselli’s pad, but it’s eight hours now. They should have been here four hours back. Toni reckons they could have had a blow-out or something. I don’t know. What do I do?”
“Could be Toni’s right,” Massino said. “Stick around, Ernie, if they don’t show by eight o’clock tomorrow, come on back.”
“Anything you say, boss,” Ernie said, thinking of the discomfort of spending a night in the ditch.
Massino slammed down the receiver, then turned to Andy who
