somewhere behind the big, liquid eyes was something that terrified him. “Well, what do you think, Jeff? Can I kill her now?”
He stood in silence for a few seconds, then turned and began to walk back the way he had come, through the tall alfalfa that whipped against his knees. He heard her yell after him, “You didn’t answer, Jeff. Can I?”
He kept walking, staring straight ahead at his car and at the immense empty landscape beyond it. He raised his head without looking back. “Yes!” In a moment, he heard the loud report of the gun again. A moment later he heard the whisper of Carrie’s light, graceful footsteps as she trotted through the alfalfa to catch up with him.
They drove on, the black Trans Am moving across vast, flat plains divided into squares of green or brown or gold so enormous that they were best discerned from the window of an airliner passing miles above.
After a few minutes, she said, “Somewhere dead ahead is a town whose luck is about to change.”
Jeff glanced at her, and she was holding the gun again, smiling. For the first time, he was really afraid of her. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck rising. He looked ahead at the road. She had him now. He was completely under her control. No matter what insane whim she had, she would find a way to make him go along with her, to say, “Yes, sure. It’s okay with me.” And one day, she was going to feel the urge to get rid of him too. Maybe she would decide she wanted to see a man die while he was having sex with her. Or she would decide he just wasn’t any fun anymore and have a few more seconds of amusement pushing him off a high place and watching him fall. He turned his head to look at her again.
She was staring at him, watching his face closely, and he felt as though she were reading his mind. “What’s the matter, Jeffy? Getting to be a bit of a pussy?”
“No,” he said. He kept his eyes on the road for a few seconds, then gave in to the urge to look at her. She was still staring at him, and she was holding the big .45 pistol again.
“What are you doing?”
She raised the gun and aimed it at his face, then said, “
“Cut it out. That could go off.”
“
“Carrie, that’s enough.”
“
He was overcome with a rage that was partly fear, partly shame at letting her bully him, and partly anger at her for murdering the couple in the Corvette. He swung his right arm to backhand her face. She bent down, both hands coming together over her bleeding nose. The gun was in her lap, and he snatched it. Part of him thought that all he was going to do with it was take it away from her, but part of him knew that wasn’t going to be enough. He fired it into the side of her head.
Instantly the inside of the car was coated with a film of tiny blood droplets. He could barely see out the windshield. His hands, his arms, his face were speckled with back-spatter. Carrie’s head lolled against the broken side window, and he could see the stream of blood already draining onto the upholstery and the rug. “Oh my God,” he said. He tried to clear the windshield with his hand, but the blood only smeared.
She seemed bigger and more frightening dead than she had been alive. What was he going to do with her? He couldn’t stop in the middle of this empty landscape and dig a grave. People would see him from ten miles away. And he had to get as far as he could from the two dead people in the Corvette before he did anything—a couple hundred miles, if he could. With his right arm he pushed her body so it was crammed onto the floor space in front of the passenger seat. He was in terrible trouble now. He would have to try to drive to a place where there was a ditch or a river, and dump her out. Then he would clean his car. He would have to strip off these clothes, wash himself, and put on clean ones.
Even looking innocent might not be enough. People had seen him with her. If she was found dead, the girlfriend she’d been with in the diner could describe him to the police. And Roger, the ex-boyfriend. He would just love to be able to show the cops all the places in his house where Jefferson Davis Falkins had left his fingerprints.
Jeff drove faster, staring out the clear space on the left side of the windshield. He would have to pass every car he saw before they could get a clear view of him and his car windows. If anybody saw blood, they’d call the police. It would have to be night before he stopped, and the right sort of place, where there was cover and there were no people.
He looked ahead and drove still faster. As long as he kept the car moving fast, he would still be alive.
36
KAPAK DROVE the rental car to the office of his lawyer, Gerald Ospinsky. When he opened the door, the receptionist looked up and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Kapak. He’s in the conference room waiting for you.” It was as though nothing had happened, as though this were his thousandth time here and there would be two thousand more.
Kapak smiled. “Thank you.” He walked through the big oak door into the back corridor, past the offices of the partners to the conference room.
Ospinsky saw him and stood, but remained a bit bent over, like a man who was expecting a blast of wind to blow his papers away, and he would have to slap them down and hold them. He looked, as always, pale and worried. “Hello, Mr. Kapak. Sit down.”
He shut the conference room door and moved to sit down across from Kapak.
“Well, Gerald” said Kapak, “is everything ready?”
Ospinsky’s eyes roamed the table. “Yes. I believe so. Yes.” He pointed. “First, here are the checks for your signature. Your accountants made them out according to your instructions. A hundred thousand to each of your closest … assistants and the managers of each of your clubs. Fifty thousand for each of the assistant managers, talent bookers, chefs, et cetera. Twenty-five thousand to each of the waiters, dishwashers, busboys, bouncers, and dancers.” Ospinsky paused. “I have to say, if what you’re trying to do is buy their love, then—”
“I’m not that stupid. I’m trying to make it go where I want now so the government can’t confiscate it later.” Kapak picked up one of the pens on the table and began to sign the checks in the stack quickly, moving them to another pile as he went. “And a hundred thousand to you. I hope you saw it. Oh, here it is.” He signed it and pushed it across the table to him.
“Yes. I thank you for that, but I don’t think it would be appropriate for—”
“Yours isn’t a present. It’s a retainer so you’ll still answer the phone on the first ring.”
“Well, okay. I’ll have to have you sign a standard agreement.”
“Put it at the bottom of the pile, and I’ll get to it in a minute.”
Ospinsky said, “I should bring up another slight problem. Or maybe it’s intentional. You’re transferring ownership of these assets but ignoring a few major ones. For instance, there are three liquor licenses. The going rate for a license this month seems to begin just north of two hundred thousand dollars. You can sell yours at auction or through a broker, or—”
“They go with the clubs. Each club goes with everything that’s attached to it—land, license, building, sound equipment, security systems, whatever.”
“That said, I have the transfer papers all ready, as you requested. My assistant, Harriet, is a notary, and I can sign as witness.” He went to the door and called, “Harriet? Would you mind helping us out for a while?”
The signing went on for forty minutes, with Kapak moving from one pile of papers to the next, and Harriet and Ospinsky following to notarize, countersign, and fold papers into envelopes.
At the end of an hour, Ospinsky smiled faintly, his eyes still terrified, as though he were in the presence of a dangerous madman. “That’s it, I believe. As soon as these are mailed, you’re a pauper.”
“Homeless, but not quite a pauper,” said Kapak.
“I certainly hope you’ve made the right decision.”
“It’s not as bad as that. I’ll be carrying half a million in cash.”
Ospinsky’s eyes nearly shut as he made his pained grimace. “In legal terms, I believe these bonuses and transfers are your best bet for avoiding confiscation. There’s never been a claim the money wasn’t yours.”
“Good. Now let’s pack up the letters and I’ll mail them on the way.”
“You don’t have to do that. I can have my staff do it later.”
