“You may dial that, sir. The number is-”
“You dial it.”
“Do you wish-”
“Just dial it!”
“Yes, sir,” she said, unruffled. There were clicks and pops in Richards’s ear. Blood had darkened his shirt to a dirty purple color. He looked away from it. It made him feel ill.
“Rockland Newsie,” a voice said in Richards’s ear. “Free-Vee Tabloid Number 6943.
”
“This is Ben Richards.”
There was a long silence. Then: “Look, maggot, I like a joke as well as the next guy, but this has been a long, hard d-”
“Shut up. You’re going to get confirmation of this in ten minutes at the outside. You can get it now if you’ve got a police-band radio.”
“I . . . just a second. ” There was the dunk of a dropping phone on the other end, and a faint wailing sound. When the phone was picked up, the voice was hard and businesslike, with an undercurrent of excitement.
“Where are you, fella? Half the cops in eastern Maine just went through Rockland . . .
at about a hundred and ten.”
Richards craned his neck at the sign over the store. “A place called Gilly’s Town Line Store & Airstop on U.S. 1. You know it?”
“Yeah. Just-”
“Listen to me, maggot. I didn’t call to give you my life story. Get some photogs out 411
here. Quick. And get this on the air. Red Newsbreak Top. I’ve got a hostage. Her name is Amelia Williams. From-” He looked at her.
“Falmouth,” she said miserably.
“From Falmouth. Safe conduct or I’ll kill her.”
“Jesus, I smell the Pulitzer Prize!”
“No, you just shit your pants, that’s all,” Richards said. He felt lightheaded. “You get the word out. I want the State Pigs to find out everyone knows I’m not alone. Three of them at a roadblock tried to blow us up.”
“What happened to the cops!”
“I killed them.”
“All three? Hot damn!” The voice, pulled away from the phone, yelled distantly:
“Dicky, open the national cable!”
“I’m going to kill her if they shoot,” Richards said, simultaneously trying to inject sincerity into his voice and to remember all the old gangster movies he had seen on tee-vee as a kid. “If they want to save the girl, they better let me through. ”
“When-”
Richards hung up and hopped clumsily out of the booth. “Help me.”
She put an arm around him, grimacing at the blood. “See what you’re getting yourself into?”
“Yes.”
“This is madness. You’re going to be killed.”
“Drive north,” he mumbled. “Just drive north.”
He slid into the car, breathing hard. The world insisted on going in and out. High, atonal music jangled in his ears. She pulled out and onto the road. His blood had smeared on her smart green and black-striped blouse. The old man, Gilly, cracked the screen door open and poked out a very old Polaroid camera. He clicked the shutter, pulled the tape, and waited. His face was painted with horror and excitement and delight.
In the distance, rising and converging, sirens.
Minus 040 and COUNTING
They traveled five miles before people began running out onto their lawns to watch them pass. Many had cameras and Richards relaxed.
“They were shooting at the aircaps at that roadblock,” she said quietly. “It was a mistake. That’s what it was. A mistake.”
“If that maggot was aiming for an aircap when he put out the windshield, there must have been a sight on that pistol three feet high.”
“It was a mistake! ”
412
They were entering the residential district of what Richards assumed was Rockland.
Summer homes. Dirt roads leading down to beachfront cottages. Breeze Inn. Private Road. Just Me’n Patty. Keep Out. Elizabeth’s Rest. Trespassers Will Be Shot. Cloud-Hi.
5000 Volts. Set-A-Spell. Guard Dogs on Patrol.
Unhealthy eyes and avid faces peering at them from behind trees, like Cheshire cats.
The blare of battery-powered Free-Vees came through the shattered windshield.
A crazy, weird air of carnival about everything.
“These people,” Richards said, “only want to see someone bleed. The more the better.
They would just as soon it was both of us. Can you believe that?”
“No. ”
“Then I salute you. ”
An older man with silvery barbershop hair, wearing madras shorts that came down over his knees, ran out to the edge of the road. He was carrying a huge camera with a cobra-like telephoto lens. He began snapping pictures wildly, bending and dipping. His legs were fish-belly white. Richards burst into a sudden bray of laughter that made Amelia jump.
“What-”
“He’s still got the lens cover on,” Richards said. “He’s still got-” But laughter overcame him.
Cars crowded the shoulders as they topped a long, slowly rising hill and began to descend toward the clustered town of Rockland itself. Perhaps it had once been a picturesque seacoast fishing village, full of Window Homer men in yellow rainslickers who went out in small boats to trap the wily lobster. If so, it was long gone. There was a huge shopping center on either side of the road. A main street strip of honky-tonks, bars, and AutoSlot emporiums. There were neat middle-class homes overlooking the main drag from the heights, and a growing slum looking up from the rancid edge of the water. The sea at the horizon was yet unchanged. It glittered blue and ageless, full of dancing points and nets of light in the late afternoon sun.
They began the descent, and there were two police cars parked across the road. The blue lights flick-flick-flicked jaggedly, crazy and out of sync with each other. Parked at an angle on the left embankment was an armored car with a short, stubby cannon barrel tracking them.
“You’re done,” she said softly, almost regretfully. “Do I have to die, too?”
“Stop fifty yards from the roadblock and do your stuff,” Richards said. He slid down in the seat. A nervous tic stitched his face.
She stopped and opened the car door, but did not lean out. The air was dead silent. A hush falls over the crowd, Richards thought ironically.
“I’m scared,” she said. “Please. I’m so scared.”
“They won’t shoot you,” he said. “There are too many people. You can’t kill hostages unless no one is watching. Those are the rules of the game.”
413
She looked at him for a moment, and he suddenly wished they could have a cup of coffee together. He would listen carefully to her conversation and stir real cream into his hot drink-her treat, of course. Then they could discuss the possibilities of social inequity, the way your socks always fall down when you’re wearing rubber boots, and the importance of being earnest.
“Go on, Mrs. Williams,” he said with soft, tense mockery. “The eyes of the world are upon you. ”
She leaned out.
Six police cars and another armored van had pulled up thirty feet behind them, blocking their retreat.
He thought: Now the only way out is straight up to heaven.
Minus 039 and COUNTING
“My name is Amelia Williams. Benjamin Richards is holding me hostage. If you don’t give us safe conduct, he says he’ll kill me.”
Silence for a moment so complete that Richards could hear the faraway honk of some distant yacht’s air horn.
Then, asexual, blaring, amplified: “WE WANT TO TALK TO BEN RICHARDS.”
“No,” Richards said swiftly.
“He says he won’t.”
“COME OUT OF THE CAR, MADAM.”
“He’ll kill me!” she cried wildly. “Don’t you listen? Some men almost killed us back there! He says you don’t care who you kill. My God, is he right?”
A hoarse voice in the crowd yelled “Let her through!”
“COME OUT OF THE CAR OR WE’LL SHOOT.”
“Let her through! Let her through! ” The crowd had taken up the chant like eager fans at a killball match.
“COME OUT-”
The crowd drowned it out. From somewhere, a rock flew. A police car windshield starred into a matrix of cracks.
There was suddenly a rev of motors, and the two cruisers began to pull apart, opening a narrow slot of pavement. The crowd cheered happily and then fell silent, waiting for the next act.
“ALL CIVILIANS LEAVE THE AREA,” the bullhorn chanted. “THERE MAY BE
SHOOTING. ALL CIVILIANS LEAVE THE AREA OR YOU MAY BE CHARGED
WITH OBSTRUCTION AND UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY. THE PENALTY FOR
OBSTRUCTION AND UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY IS TEN YEARS IN THE STATE
PENITENTIARY OR A FINE OF TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS OR BOTH. CLEAR
414
THE AREA. CLEAR THE AREA.”
“Yeah, so no one’ll see you shoot the girl!” a hysterical voice yelled. “Screw all pigs!”
The crowd didn’t move. A yellow and black newsie-mobile had pulled up with a flashy screech. Two men jumped out and began setting up a camera.
Two cops rushed over and there was a short, savage scuffle for the possession of the camera. Then one of the cops yanked it free, picked it up by the tripod, and smashed it on the road. One of the newsmen tried to reach the cop that had done it and was clubbed.