The lug-nuts tightened to my satisfaction, I drove the van down to the wide, shallow end of the trap and got out.
Most of the struts were completely gone, but I could see the splintered butt ends of a few, still sticking out of the tar. The canvas “road” lay at the bottom of the cut, crumpled and ripped and twisted. It looked like a shed snakeskin.
I walked up to the deep end and here was Dolan’s Cadillac.
The front end was utterly trashed. The hood had accordioned upward in a jagged fan shave. The engine compartment was a jumble of metal and rubber and hoses, all of it covered with sand and dirt that had avalanched down in the wake of the impact. There was a hissing sound and I could hear fluids running and dripping down there someplace. The chilly alcohol aroma of antifreeze was pungent in the air.
I had been worried about the windshield. There was always a chance that it could have broken inward, allowing Dolan space enough to wriggle up and out. But I hadn’t been too worried; I told you that Dolan’s cars were built to the sorts of specifications required by tinpot dictators and despotic military leaders. The glass was not supposed to break, and it had not.
The Caddy’s rear window was even tougher because its area was smaller. Dolan couldn’t break it – not in the time I was going to give him, certainly – and he would not dare try to shoot it out. Shooting at bullet-proof glass from close up is another form of Russian roulette. The slug would leave only a small white fleck on the glass and then ricochet back into the car.
I’m sure he could have found an out, given world enough and time, but I was here now, and I would give him neither.
I kicked a shower of dirt across the Cadillac’s roof.
The response was immediate.
“We need some help, please. We’re stuck in here.”
Dolan’s voice. He sounded unhurt and eerily calm. But I sensed the fear underneath, held rigidly in check, and I came as close to feeling sorry for him right then as it was possible for me to come. I could imagine him sitting in the back seat of his telescoped Cadillac, one of his men injured and moaning, probably pinned by the engine block, the other either dead or unconscious.
I imagined it and felt a jittery moment of what I can only term sympathetic claustrophobia. Push the window-buttons – nothing. Try the doors, even though you can see they’re going to clunk to a full stop long before you could squeeze through.
Then I stopped trying to imagine, because he was the one who had bought this, wasn’t he? Yes. He had bought his own ticket and paid a full fare.
“Who’s there?”
“Me,” I said, “but I’m not the help you’re looking for, Dolan.”
I kicked another fan of grit and pebbles across the gray Cadillac’s roof. The screamer started doing his thing again as the second bunch of pebbles rattled across the roof.
“My legs! Jim, my legs!”
Dolan’s voice was suddenly wary. The man outside, the man on top, knew his name. Which meant this was an extremely dangerous situation.
“Jimmy, I can see the bones in my legs!”
“Shut up,” Dolan said coldly. It was eerie to hear their voices drifting up like that. I suppose I could have climbed down onto the Cadillac’s back deck and looked in the rear window, but I would not have seen much, even with my face pressed right against it. The glass was polarized, as I may already have told you. I didn’t want to see him, anyway. I knew what he looked like. What would I want to see him for? To find out if he was wearing his Rolex and his designer jeans?
“Who are you, buddy?” he asked.
“I’m nobody,” I said. “Just a nobody who had a good reason to put you where you are right now.”
And with an eerie, frightening suddenness, Dolan said: “Is your name Robinson?”
I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. He had made the connection that fast, winnowing through all the half-remembered names and faces and coming up with exactly the right one. Had I thought him an animal, with the instincts of an animal? I hadn’t known the half of it, and it was really just as well I had not, or I never would have had the guts to do what I had done.