I said, “My name doesn’t matter. But you know what happens now, don’t you?”
The screamer began again – great bubbling, liquid bellows.
“Get me outta here, Jimmy! Get me outta here! For the luvva Jaysus! My legs’re broke!”
“Shut up,” Dolan said. And then, to me: “I can’t hear you, man, the way he’s screaming.”
I got down on my hands and knees and leaned over. “I said you know what h…”
I suddenly had an image of the wolf dressed up as Gramma telling Red Riding Hood, All the better to hear you with, my dear… come a little closer. I recoiled, and just in time. The revolver went off four times. The shots were loud where I was; they must have been deafening in the car. Four black eyes opened in the roof of Dolan’s Cadillac, and I felt something split the air an inch from my forehead.
“Did I get you, cocksucker?” Dolan asked.
“No,” I said.
The screamer had become the weeper. He was in the front seat. I saw his hands, as pale as the hands of a drowned man, slapping weakly at the windshield, and the slumped body next to him. Jimmy had to get him out, he was bleeding, the pain was bad, the pain was terrible, the pain was more than he could take, for the luvva Jaysus he was sorry, heartily sorry for his sins, but this was more than…
There was another pair of loud reports. The man in the front seat stopped screaming. The hands dropped away from the windshield.
“There,” Dolan said in a voice that was almost reflective. “He ain’t hurting any more and we can hear what we say to each other.”
I said nothing. I felt suddenly dazed and unreal. He had killed a man just now. Killed him. The feeling that I had underestimated him in spite of all my precautions and was lucky to be alive recurred.
“I want to make you a proposal,” Dolan said.
I continued to hold my peace.
“My friend?”
…and to hold it some more.
“Hey! You!” His voice trembled minutely. “If you’re still up there, talk to me! What can that hurt?”
“I’m here,” I said. “I was just thinking you fired six times. I was thinking you may wish you’d saved one for yourself before long. But maybe there’s eight in the clip, or you have reloads.”
Now it was his turn to fall silent. Then:
“What are you planning?”
“I think you’ve already guessed,” I said. “I have spent the last thirty-six hours digging the world’s longest grave, and now I’m going to bury you in your fucking Cadillac.”
The fear in his voice was still reined in. I wanted that rein to snap.
“You want to hear my proposition first?”
“I’ll listen. In a few seconds. First I have to get something.”
I walked back to the van and got my shovel.
When I got back he was saying “Robinson? Robinson? Robinson?” like a man speaking into a dead phone.
“I’m here,” I said. “You talk. I’ll listen. And when you’re finished I may make a counter-proposal.”
When he spoke, he sounded more cheerful. If I was talking counterproposals, I was talking deal. And if I was talking deal, he was already halfway to being out.
“I’m offering you a million dollars to let me out of here. But, just as important…”
I tossed a shovelful of gritty till down on the rear deck of the Cadillac. Pebbles bounced and rattled off the small rear window. Dirt sifted into the line of the trunk-lid.
“What are you doing?” His voice was sharp with alarm.
“Idle hands do the devil’s work,” I said. “I thought I’d keep mine busy while I listened.”
I dug into the dirt again and threw in another shovelful.
Now Dolan spoke faster, his voice more urgent.
“A million dollars and my personal guarantee that no one will ever touch you… not me, not my men, not anyone else’s men.”
My hands didn’t hurt any more. It was amazing. I shoveled steadily, and in no more than five minutes, the Cadillac’s rear deck was drifted deep in dirt. Putting it in, even by hand, was certainly easier than taking it out.