Dead and Gone - Andrew Vachss [100]
But once we made it past them, it was easy. We dropped down flat on the carpet in the hall until they were finished. As soon as they walked back down the corridor together, we made our move. I loided the door to the big cheese’s office—it was nothing but a doorknob lock, no deadbolt—and we went inside.
I picked that room because I’d been in there before. That’s how I knew there was no deadbolt. And what was right outside the window. A parking lot. A parking lot outside the walls around the hospital where they kept us.
I opened the window, moving real slow against it squeaking, but it didn’t make a sound. The office was right on the first floor, and we dropped down easy. Then I pulled the window back closed.
The parking lot was almost empty—just a few scattered cars, and not a Cadillac in the bunch. The big shots wouldn’t be showing up for hours.
I didn’t know how to hotwire a car then. And even if I had known, it would have been a dumb risk.
I had nine dollars in singles. Lune didn’t have anything. I didn’t know where we were, but I could see it was out in the country someplace.
We could have tried hitchhiking, but it was too close to the nuthouse. And if a cop cruised by …
So we walked, following the road but staying in the darkness of the shoulder. I was looking for a place where we could hole up before it got daylight when Lune spotted a diner a few hundred yards ahead.
I told him to let me do the talking if we had to go inside. First I checked the parking lot. Most of the cars had New York plates. Some of the big trucks had a whole bunch of them, from different states. I couldn’t figure out why that would be, but I knew they locked the backs of those semis.
I tried door handles, one after another. If I hadn’t believed God hated me personally, I probably would have prayed. A big new Ford station wagon called to me. The back door opened. “Come on!” I whispered to Lune. We climbed inside. There was some stuff there, but it wasn’t crowded. “He could spot us here. We got to get all the way in the back,” I said to Lune, putting my hand over his mouth when he opened it to ask a question.
In the space behind the rear seat, there was nothing but a pair of suitcases. “All right,” I told Lune. “We’re going to just lie down here. If the guy comes out and gets in the front seat and drives away, we go wherever he’s going, got it? But if he opens up this back part, Lune—brother, listen now—we got to run, all right? Just fucking blast outa here before the guy knows what’s happening. See the woods over there? Right across from us? All right, that’s where we head for. I don’t think he’ll even chase us. Maybe figure it was a joke or something.”
“I can’t—”
“Lune, you have to! Look, if he opens up this part, I’ll try and kick him or something. Give you a little time to get going. Remember how you fought when Hunsaker …? Remember that? It’s like that now, too. We got to do it, or we’re fucked.”
He didn’t say anything, but he was breathing real hard. And real loud.
“Okay?” I asked him.
He just nodded.
I don’t know how much time passed before we heard the front door open. Lune squeezed my hand tight. We felt the weight of the driver as he plopped into his seat, even back where we were. Then we heard the blessed sound of the engine rumbling into life.
When the station wagon pulled out onto the highway, Lune let go of my hand.
It was just coming daylight when the driver slowed down. I couldn’t tell if he was getting gas or what, so I snuck a quick look up. It was another diner. We heard the front door open, then slam shut.
When we climbed out of the back of that station wagon, we saw that the diner the guy had stopped at was in the Bronx.
“We’re okay now,” I promised Lune.
Lune stayed with me for almost three weeks. I knew better than to go back to where they’d grabbed me before. I knew some other things, too. Like places where kids our age could make some money. But shining shoes was out—if you took