The Getaway Man Read online

  “I’ve got my own money,” I said. “Plenty of money.”

  She took the bills back from me. Put her hands behind her back and looked down.

  “I’m sorry, Eddie,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything. I just wanted to buy you a present, like you bought me.”

  I started to say I hadn’t bought that perfume for her, but I stopped … she looked so sad.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll just look around by myself.” I took her by the shoulders and turned her around. “You see if you can find that Christine one,” I told her, and gave her a little smack on the bottom so she’d get moving. I saw Tim do that once with Merleen, when they were in a store, and Merleen had liked it fine.

  From the way she walked off, I guessed Daphne did, too.

  I found four different movies that looked like they might be good from the stuff on the package. When I walked over to the register, Daphne was there. She held up a box for me to see. It said Christine on the cover.

  “I got it!” she said.

  When we got out on the highway, Daphne wanted me to go fast. She opened her purse and took out a videotape. I couldn’t make out the writing on the cover, but the picture was of two girls, without any clothes on.

  “I couldn’t bring this one to the register,” Daphne said. “It would be so embarrassing, I’d just die.”

  When we got back to her apartment, Daphne showed me how to work her VCR, then she went off to change her clothes.

  I was watching one of the movies I found—I didn’t think it would be right to watch Christine until Daphne got back—when I heard her come up behind me.

  “Let’s watch this one, first,” she said in my ear.

  It was the one with the naked girls on the cover. When I turned around from putting the cassette in, Daphne was naked, too.

  Christine turned out to be a pretty scary movie. The car was a demon. A kid owns the car, but the car gets jealous of him and kills him. And even when his friends figure out what the car is, nothing they could do would kill it.

  “Did you like it?” Daphne asked me, when it was over.

  “I guess not.”

  “Why is that?”

  I thought about it for a minute. Then I told her, “I like movies about driving, not about cars.”

  “Well, let’s look at the ones you picked out,” she said.

  After a few days, I could see that the place where I had delivered the car wasn’t going to come up with anything for me to drive out.

  Daphne found me a room in a motel. A really nice one, but it cost a lot. I didn’t say anything about the price, because I’d already told Daphne I had money, and I didn’t want to look like I had just been making myself big.

  It was when I was staying in the motel that Daphne got me my portable unit. I always carry it with me now, whenever I’m going to be away. It’s a TV and VCR all in one. The screen isn’t all that big, but I only watch by myself, so it doesn’t matter if I have to sit close.

  I usually went over to Daphne’s in the afternoon. Then I’d come back to the motel real early in the morning, before it got light.

  After a while, I got used to sleeping in the daytime.

  Daphne’s place was perfect for watching movies, but she didn’t like them all that much. What I would do was read in the TV guide about a movie that looked like it could be good, and then I’d watch it for a little bit. To see if I wanted to tape it, like she showed me. Even with all the channels Daphne got, it was pretty slow work.

  Back in my room, I had that VCR that Daphne bought me, so I could watch the stuff I had taped at her place.

  There were a lot of video stores in that city. I spent time in some of them, just looking. Other kinds of stores get all annoyed if you spend a long time doing that, but the video places didn’t care.

  One store had a guy working there that knew a lot. I could tell, because people were always asking him questions. I didn’t understand a lot of what he said, but I could tell he knew what he was talking about from the way everybody listened to him.

  Even though it wasn’t all that bright inside the store, he always wore sunglasses. And a red T-shirt with a black vest. His head was shaved, but I knew he wasn’t a skinhead—his tattoos were all wrong.

  I waited until he was alone, and I went up to him.

  “Do you have any movies about driving?” I asked him.

  “Car chases? We’ve got them all, my man. From the classics to the contemporaries. Bullitt to Ronin. Are you looking for any particular director?”

  “Not chases,” I said. “Movies about driving.”

  “There’s all kinds of driving,” he said. “Grand Prix was amazing. The original, I mean, not Driven. That was a Stallone remake. Bor-ring! If you want to stay with the classics, there’s always Duel. That was a made-for-TV, but we have it in stock. Did you know Spielberg helmed that one? Brilliant. You know the Bandit series? As in Smokey and the … ? Burt Reynolds is a comic genius. It wasn’t recognized at the time, but you look at Striptease or Boogie Nights, and you can see that somebody on the Holy Coast knew it all along. And there’s a lot of cult stuff, too, like Death Race 2000. Everybody thinks Carradine, but Stallone was in that one, too, before he caught fire. Then you’ve got truck driving, crime—”

  “Crime,” I said. “You have any of those?”

  Some of the movies he sold me were pretty good ones. But none of them were what I wanted.

  One night, Daphne said she wanted to go shopping. I didn’t say anything—I didn’t think she was asking me.

  “You have to come, too, Eddie,” she said. “Only you can’t go in the store with me, okay?”

  “I guess.”

  “Eddie, don’t you understand what I’m telling you? I need you to be outside. With the motor running, so I can jump in and you can take off, fast.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “You know.”

  “That won’t work,” I said. “If anyone follows you out to the sidewalk, they’ll get the license number. And they’d have a real good description of you. The way you’re dressed up and all, people will notice you. And remember you, too.”

  I thought she’d be glad I warned her. I even thought she’d be a little impressed. But her face closed up and her mouth made a straight line. “Never mind,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”

  I was in the room with the TV when Daphne walked in. At first, I thought she wasn’t wearing anything.

  “You know what this is?” she asked me, coming into the light where I could see her better.

  “Yeah. Like strippers wear.”

  “You mean a G-string? No, those are hidden. In the back, so it looks like they’re completely naked. This is a thong. You’re supposed to see a little bit of color around the waist.”

  Daphne walked past me, real slow.

  “See?” she said.

  “It’s black.”

  “How very observant you are, Eddie. Anyway, I thought it would be perfect to wear tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m going to be bad,” she said.

  “I can’t just wait at the curb,” I told her. “There’s no parking there. If I hang around, some security guy’s going to come over and ask me to move.”

  “Just tell him to—”

  “Daphne, if you do something like this, the last thing you want to do is make a fuss, get people to notice you. Just tell me what time you’re going to come out, and I’ll be right there, guaranteed.”

  “Oh! Yes, that’s even better. You act like you’ve done this before, Eddie,” she giggled.

  I wanted to tell her that I was a pro. And that what she was doing was just a stupid crazy game. But I didn’t say anything except, “Not me.”

  Daphne said nine-fifteen. At ten after, I crawled the Lexus along the sidewalk, like I was looking for a place to turn into one of the rows. The parking lot was crowded with cars and clogged with people. When it finally got clear behind me, I stopped and opened the trunk, li
ke I was going to load it up.

  I was behind the car, watching the store, when Daphne came busting out, walking fast, swinging her purse, heels going click-click on the sidewalk. I slammed down the trunk, got behind the wheel, and pulled up right across from her.

  She jumped in the front seat, said “Get going!” through her teeth, like she was afraid somebody would hear her.

  I whipped through the lot, keeping it smooth. “Come on!” Daphne said to me.

  People who don’t know think a car’s not going fast if the engine doesn’t roar and the tires don’t squeal. When we got out to the street, I gave her what she wanted.

  “Look!” she said, when we got inside the gate to her father’s land. She reached in her purse, held up a little scarf.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Eddie, this is a Hermes. Very expensive.”

  “Ah,” I said, like I understood.

  “We made a clean getaway,” she said.

  It made me blue to hear her say it like that.

  Daphne opened her mouth. She held still while I tied the scarf behind her head, like a gag. Then she pulled up her skirt and put one leg over me.

  I didn’t even have to pull that thong thing down. Just moved it over to the side.

  “None of them worked out for you, huh?” the guy in the video store said, when he saw me walk in.

  “They weren’t bad, but—”

  “Oh, I’m hip. The fit is everything. Try me on it again.”

  “Try … ?”

  “Tell me what you want,” he said. “Think about it, then tell me.”

  “I … it has to be about driving. Not about the cars. Not a chase, either. I mean, it’s okay if it has a chase, but.…”

  The guy just looked at me, waiting. He was very patient. I guess because he was an expert, and he was used to people like me not knowing how to say exactly what they wanted.

  “It has to be, maybe, the man’s job,” I told him. “But not like a truck driver. Or a racer. More … special. Like not everyone could do it.”

  “Thunder Road,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Thunder Road. The greatest moonshine movie ever made. Robert Mitchum wants to.… Never mind, you take it, try it out for yourself, then let me know.”

  “Were you in prison?” Daphne asked me one night.

  I had always been afraid Bonnie would ask me a question like that. Or Bonnie’s mother, more likely. But I could tell from Daphne’s face that she wouldn’t think being in prison was a bad thing.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But you’re so young. Was it a long time ago?”

  “Long enough.”

  “Did you have to be in handcuffs a lot?”

  “No. Just when they arrest you. Or when they transport you, like to court for your trial, or to a different lockup.”

  “Did you hate it?”

  “Prison?”

  “Being in handcuffs.”

  “I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t so bad. And it never lasted long.”

  “I wonder what that feels like.”

  “Prison? It doesn’t feel like—”

  “Handcuffs. I have a pair. Very nice ones. They’re lined in velvet. But I was always afraid of them.”

  “I—”

  “Come on, Eddie,” she said.

  It was about six weeks after I first met her that I went over to Daphne’s for the last time.

  “I need the keys,” she said.

  “What?”

  “To my car. I need the keys back.”

  “Okay,” I said. I took them out and handed them to her.

  “Please don’t be mad, Eddie,” she said. That’s when I knew what she was talking about.

  “I’m not,” I told her.

  “You’re not going to stalk me, are you?” she said.

  I just shook my head. It had been bad enough being a fake getaway man; I wasn’t going to be a fake stalker, too.

  Before I left that city, I went by the video store one more time.

  “Well?” the guy said, as soon as I walked in the door.

  “It was a fine one,” I said.

  He nodded like I was making good sense. I was glad he didn’t ask me to explain. I had tried to work it out in my head, what I was going to say, before I went there, but I kept getting stuck. The guys who ran moonshine, they were real drivers. It was like … I don’t know, a contest, maybe. If they got through, they got paid. If they didn’t make it, they went to jail. But they weren’t bad men, and they always had people pulling for them. Not because they wanted the money, but because it was their own people.

  For those men, driving the moonshine, that was their job. Even the cops who chased them respected them, if they were good at it.

  “I knew it!” he said. “I’m on your wavelength, now. I’ve been holding this one for you. Moonshine Highway. The perfect vehicle for Kyle MacLachlan—remember him from Twin Peaks? This one’s a minor classic. Underrated and understated. Very noir.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  I held out my hand for him to shake. I could see from his face he wasn’t used to that, but he nodded like he always did, and gave me a good grip.

  When I got back to where I was living, it was like the time with Daphne had just gone past without me realizing it. Like it never happened.

  I had the portable TV and VCR to remind me that I’d been with her. But when I tried to think about that time, it was like trying to read a book through a Coke bottle.

  I called Bonnie. Her mother said she was married.

  “That was … quick,” I said.

  “It was to Kenny, her old boyfriend,” Bonnie’s mother said. “They’d been engaged once, but Bonnie had broken it off. Kenny’s in the military. He came home on leave, so they had to act fast if she was going to go back to the base with him.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry, Eddie,” she said. “Bonnie tried to call you, but you were out of town on that job. She thought you would have been back a long time ago.”

  “I got held over.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t have mattered, Eddie. I wouldn’t want you to think that.”

  “I don’t think that,” I told her.

  Sometimes, we have to wait around for a few days before we do a job. So we can be close when the time comes. Laying in the cut, J.C. calls it.

  Once, when we were alone, J.C. told me there was another reason. Nobody gets told the whole plan until we’re all together. After that, nobody leaves, so there’s no chance of anybody talking.

  This one time, there were four of us in on it. Gus always works with J.C. He’s an old guy; older than J.C. “Gus was in the war. Not that desert vacation,” he told me. “The real one. In the fucking jungle.”

  Gus looks all soft, flabby even, on his face. His hair is rust-colored, thin on top, but he combs it over from the side and you can’t really tell unless he turns a certain way. Most of the time, he wears a cap.

  “Gus can make things go boom,” J.C. said, the first time he introduced us.

  “Virgil was studying on how to do that,” I said. “So we could blow this safe we were going to—”

  “Virgil was an amateur,” J.C. said. “Just like that dumb cowboy brother of his. Gus is an artist.”

  I didn’t say anything. I don’t like it when J.C. says things about Tim or Virgil, but I never let him see how I feel. I’m trying to be a professional.

  “Guys like that, they never think about anything longer than tomorrow,” J.C. said. He was watching my face. I wondered if J.C. could read my mind, like Gus is always saying he can. “Their idea of planning a job is figuring out which way to turn at the first corner. Cowboys, they never last.”

  “It wasn’t Tim’s fault,” I said. I wished I could have stayed quiet, but I felt like a chicken was pecking at my nerves.

  “He didn’t plan it out,” J.C. said, like a preacher from the Bible. Not like you couldn’t argue with him; like you couldn’t argue w
ith the truth.

  I wondered how J.C. ended up in prison himself, being that he could plan so perfect and all, but I never asked him.

  I know Virgil would have.

  Besides Gus, on this job we had another guy. Kaiser. His work was muscle. This was the first job I had ever been on with him.

  He was a biker, or something like that. It was hard to tell from his tattoos; he had so many they got all smudged together, especially on his arms.

  Kaiser was always looking at his own arms, like he wanted to make sure they were still there.

  J.C. was going over everything with us again. He always says, you can’t stick to the plan if you don’t know the plan.

  “Speaking of plans, what do we need a wheelman for?” Kaiser said. “This isn’t no bank we’re doing.”

  “You never know,” J.C. said. “You never know when you’re going to need a getaway man. And a driver like Eddie, that’s the best insurance you can buy.”

  “Driving’s driving,” Kaiser said. “I got a dozen brothers who can haul ass.”

  “Driving’s not the same as sticking,” J.C. told him. “No matter what happens, Eddie will always be there when we come out.”

  “Fuck, he’ll be the only one there, way out in the boonies in the middle of the night.”

  “I know what this is all about,” J.C. laughed at him. “For a Nazi, you’re a real little Jew, huh? Forget it, pal. It’s equal shares all around, like I said it was going to be.”

  “Equal? You’re taking half off the top before we split anything.”

  “That’s for the planning,” J.C. said. “The other half’s for the execution. You know how it’s done. Your work, it takes a couple-few hours. But the setup, my piece, I’ve been working on it for months, already.”

  “What do you have to say, Gus?” Kaiser asked him.

  “Me?” G us told him. “I don’t have anything to say. You didn’t want to come in on this with us, the time to say so was before you got told all about it.”

  “I’m not saying anything like that,” Kaiser said. “I just don’t see why this kid should get a full cut just for being a limo service.”

  “You don’t have to see,” Gus said.

  “No hard feelings, right?” Kaiser said to me, later.