“That Celine girl would’ve paid,” Buddie said with a whine in his voice. “She’d gotta have made millions bein’ with Jonnie-X, Ma. A million bucks we coulda had.”
“You think she got a million dollars in less than a month?” Arlene shook her head in disbelief. “And you left a flash drive on his body with those videos I made.”
“No, I didn’t . . . I mean, so what? That chick would’ve found it. Then she would’ve had to pay up.”
Arlene gave me a tormented look, as if I cared. “‘So what,’ he says. ‘The chick would have found it.’ See what I have to put up with? He can run a backhoe, but his brain is full of mush.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Though it’s probably genetic.”
She must not have heard that. She stared at Buddie. “Police could be on their way here as we speak. You’ve got to get rid of them. Immediately. Do it fast.”
“Hole’s ready,” he said. “I’m good to go.”
“Then go. Get it done and get back here. I’ll start cleaning up. Maybe we’ll get out of this mess you’ve made.”
Buddie untied the rope around Lucy’s waist and lifted her as if she were a doll stuffed with feathers. She struggled, but this was Bambi vs. Godzilla. He carried her out the back door.
Arlene gave me a dead look. “Good riddance to both of you. You have been the worst thing possible.”
“Too bad. Expect the police—soon.”
“They won’t find anything.”
“Cars buried out in the desert. They’ll find ’em.”
“I had Buddie put down one septic. If anyone wants to know what he buried out there, he’ll dig it up. The smell will knock them down. That’ll keep them away.”
“How many cars?” I asked.
“Thirteen so far. No, fourteen. We put that Hogan guy down yesterday night. You’ll be number fifteen.”
“You bury people in their cars?”
“Of course. Buddie puts them behind the wheel, in the trunk, whatever he feels like. It hardly matters. You’ll see.”
“Why are you doing this? Killing people?”
“That’s a silly damn question. For retirement, of course. This place is perfect for that, but it’s a horrible place to live. I’m not going to stay here forever.”
“How did you pick your victims?”
“As if that’ll matter to you in another hour or two.”
“Or to you, so tell me.”
She shrugged. “Room four is wired for sound and there’s two tiny little cameras way up high in the corners hooked up to a monitor in our back room. Some guy comes in alone, got a fat wallet or we see a money belt, find out he’s got a lot of cash, no one knows he’s here, I roofie him, Buddie packs the guy in his car and runs him out back, puts him in the ground.”
“Alive.”
Arlene shrugged again. “No one’s complained yet. You’re the first.”
“You’re insane. Both of you.”
“Least of my worries.”
Buddie came back inside, untied the rope around my waist, got me under the knees and the back of the neck like a forklift, folded me almost double, picked me up like a sack of grain, not even a grunt, and hauled me out the door into the night. It was an uncanny feeling, like being four years old again.
The Caddy was parked at the end of the building. The trunk was open. He dropped me in, banged the lid down, and the world went dark as hades.
I was half on top of Lucy, half on the lockbox. It dug into my ribs. Lucy was crying softly. The engine turned over, caught, and the car bumped over the uneven ground, bouncing us around as it headed out into the desert.
We were crammed in awkwardly. I worked the lockbox off to one side. The trunk was so cramped I could barely roll over. The effort made my head throb. “Did they open the lockbox?” I asked Lucy, keeping my voice down. “Did they get your gun?”
“I don’t know. He practically tossed me in here.”
She moved around, grunting. Then she said, “It’s open. Got hats and wigs and other stuff in here. And that knife.”
“Where is it? The knife?”
“Right here.”
“Open it. See if you can cut these straps on my wrists.”
I heard the click as the knife opened. “Careful,” I said.
She groped around, got hold of my forearms. She fumbled around, clumsy with her wrists held together, and I felt the knife slice into the pad of my left thumb. “That’s me you’re cutting,” I said.
“Sorry.”
She felt for the strap, kept sawing away, then the strap came loose. I took the knife from her and cut the strap from around her wrists, then pulled my legs up, cut the strap binding my ankles. I gave her the knife. “Get your ankles loose, then fold the knife up and give it to me.”
The jouncing continued, getting rougher.
“No gun in the lockbox?” I asked.
“I couldn’t feel one.”
“Try again. They’re going to bury this car with us in it, and everything we had. Keeping our guns would be stupid.”
“Like they’re geniuses.”
“He wouldn’t think of it, but she would. Feel around.”
We came up with a jack handle, clothing, shoes, no gun, no flashlights, then the bouncing stopped. A door opened, the Caddy gave a lurch as Bigfoot got out, then the door slammed shut.
“Let’s see if we can fold the rear seat down,” I said. “Maybe there’s a catch or lever here in the trunk.”
I felt around on the left side, Lucy worked on the right. Then the backhoe’s diesel fired up. Seconds later a grinding rasp of metal on metal came from the back bumper as the Cadillac was shoved from behind. The front end tilted down, rocks ground harshly along the undercarriage, metal scraped against rock, then the Caddy leveled out again. Finally it quit moving, tilted up a few degrees in front.
“We’ve got to find a latch, something.”
“He’s gonna bury us, Mort.”
“Don’t give up. Find a latch.”
I scrabbled all around that left side, didn’t feel anything. How did the engineers who designed these things expect people stuck in the trunk to get the fuck out?
“There’s
