I got into the cab and stretched out across the seat, my heart thumping. Again, time seemed to stretch out. I lay there listening for the engine and the sound didn’t come and didn’t come and didn’t come.
They turned off. He caught wind of you at the last moment anyway . . . or something looked hinky, either to him or to one of his men . . . and they turned off.
I lay on the seat, my back throbbing in long, slow waves, my eyes squinched tightly shut as if that would somehow help me hear better.
Was that an engine?
No — just the wind, now blowing hard enough to drive an occasional sheet of sand against the side of the van.
Not coming. Turned off or turned back.
Just the wind.
Turned off or turned b —
No, it was not just the wind. It was a motor, the sound of it was swelling, and a few seconds later a vehicle — one single vehicle — rushed past me.
I sat up and grabbed the wheel — I had to grab something — and stared out through the windshield, my eyes bulging, my tongue caught between my teeth.
The gray Cadillac floated down the hill toward the flat stretch, doing fifty or maybe a little more. The brake lights never went on. Not even at the end. They never saw it; never had so much as the slightest idea.
What happened was this: all at once the Cadillac seemed to be driving through the road instead of on it. This illusion was so persuasive that I felt a moment of confused vertigo even though I had created the illusion myself. Dolan’s Cadillac was hubcap-deep in Route 71, and then it was up to the door-panels. A bizarre thought occurred to me: if the GM company made luxury submarines, this is what they would look like going down.
I could hear thin snapping sounds as the struts supporting the canvas broke under the car. I could hear the sound of canvas rippling and ripping.
All of it happened in only three seconds, but they are three seconds I will remember my whole life.
I had an impression of the Cadillac now running with only its roof and the top two or three inches of the polarized windows visible, and then there was a big toneless thud and the sound of breaking glass and crimping metal. A large puff of dust rose in the air and the wind pulled it apart.
I wanted to go down there — wanted to go down right away — but first I had to put the detour to rights. I didn’t want us to be interrupted.
I got out of the van, went around to the back, and pulled the tire back out. I put it on the wheel and tightened the six lug-nuts as fast as I could, using only my fingers. I could do a more thorough job later; in the meantime I only needed to back the van down to the place where the detour diverged from Highway 71.
I jacked the bumper down and hurried back to the cab of the van at a limping run. I paused there for a moment, listening, head cocked.
I could hear the wind.
And from the long, rectangular hole in the road, the sound of someone shouting . . . or maybe screaming.
Grinning, I got back in the van.
I backed rapidly down the road, the van swinging drunkenly back and forth. I got out, opened the back doors, and put out the traffic cones again. I kept my ear cocked for approaching traffic, but the wind had gotten too strong to make that very worthwhile. By the time I heard an approaching vehicle, it would be practically on top of me.
I started down into the ditch, tripped, landed on my prat, and slid to the bottom. I pushed away the sand-colored piece of canvas and dragged the big detour sign up to the top. I set it up again, then went back to the van and slammed the rear doors closed. I had no intention of trying to set the arrow sign up again.
I drove back over the next rise, stopped in my old place just out of sight of the detour, got out, and tightened the lug-nuts on the van’s back wheel, using the tire-iron this time. The shouting had stopped, but there was no longer any question about the screaming; it was much louder.
I took my time tightening the nuts. I wasn’t worried that they were going to get out and either attack me or run away into the desert, because they couldn’t get out. The trap had worked perfectly. The Cadillac was now sitting squarely on its wheels at the far end of the excavation, with less than four inches of clearance on either side. The three men inside couldn’t open their doors wide enough to do more than stick out a foot, if that. They couldn’t open their windows because they were power-drive and the battery would be so much squashed plastic and metal and acid somewhere in the wreck of the engine.
The driver and the man in the shotgun seat might also be squashed in the wreckage, but this did not concern me; I knew that someone was still alive in there, just as I knew that Dolan always rode in back and wore his seatbelt as good citizens are supposed to do.
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.