At a stop light he rolled down the window and called to a group of black teenagers. He asked where he could locate a man named Donnie Blue, and the teenagers told Chemo to go blow himself. “Shit,” he said, stomping on the accelerator.
Maggie asked, “Was it a shark that did it?”
“Do I look like Jacques Cousteau? I don’t know what the hell it was—some big fish. The subject is closed.”
By now Maggie was reasonably confident that he wasn’t going to kill her. He would have done it already, most conveniently during the scuffle back at the Plaza. Instead he had grabbed her waist and hustled her down the fire exit, taking four steps at a time. Considering the mayhem on the ninth floor, it was a miracle they got out of the place without being stopped. The lobby was full of uniformed cops waiting for elevators, but nobody looked twice at the Fun Couple of the Year.
As Chemo drove, Maggie said, “What about your face?”
“Look who’s talking.”
“Really, what happened?”
Chemo said, “You always this shy with strangers? Jesus H. Christ.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Professional curiosity, I guess. Besides, you promised to tell me.”
“Do the words none of your fucking business mean anything?”
From behind the bandages a chilly voice said, “You don’t have to be crude. Swearing doesn’t impress me.”
Chemo found the street corner where he had purchased the rusty Colt .38 and the dead bullets, but there was no sign of Donnie Blue. Every inquiry was met by open derision, and Chemo’s hopes for a refund began to fade.
As he circled the neighborhood Maggie said, “You’re so quiet.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m thinking I was seriously gypped by your doctor pal.” Chemo didn’t want to admit that he had agreed to murder two people in exchange for a discount on minor plastic surgery.
“If I had known about this dead girl—”
“Vicky Barletta.”
“Right,” Chemo said. “If I had known that, I would have jacked my price. Jacked it way the hell up.”
“And who could blame you,” Maggie said.
“Graveline never told me he killed a girl.”
They were heading out the highway toward LaGuardia. Maggie assumed there were travel plans.
She said, “Rudy’s a very wealthy man.”
“Sure, he’s a doctor.”
“I can ruin him. That’s why he wanted me dead.”
“Sure, you’re a witness,” Chemo said.
Something dismissive in his tone alarmed her once again. She said, “Killing me won’t solve anything now.”
Chemo’s forehead crinkled where an eyebrow should have been. “It won’t?”
Maggie shook her head from side to side in dramatic emphasis. “I made my own tape. A videotape, at a place in Manhattan. Everything’s on it, everything I saw that day.”
Chemo wasn’t as rattled as she thought he might be; in fact, his mouth curled into a dry smile. His lips looked like two pink snails crawling up a sidewalk. “A video,” he mused.
Maggie teased it along, “You have any idea what that bastard would pay for it?”
“Yes,” Chemo said. “Yes, I think I do.”
At the airport, Maggie told Chemo she had to make a phone call. To eavesdrop he squeezed inside the same booth, his chin digging into the top of her head. She dialed the number of Dr. Leonard Leaper and informed the service that she had to leave town for a while, but that the doctor should not be concerned.
“I already told him I was a witness in a murder,” Maggie explained to Chemo. “If what happened at the hotel turns up in the newspapers, he’ll think I was kidnapped.”
“But you were,” Chemo pointed out.
“Oh, not really.”
“Yes, really.” Chemo didn’t care for her casual attitude; just who did she take him for?
Maggie said, “Know what I think? I think we could be partners.”
They got on line at the Pan Am counter, surrounded by a typical Miami-bound contingent—old geezers with tubas for sinuses; shiny young hustlers in thin gold chains; huge hollow-eyed families that looked like they’d staggered out of a Sally Struthers telethon. Chemo and Maggie fit right in.
He told her, “I only got one plane ticket.”