I’m Fixin’ To Play Dead (Part 33)
Louise kept standing in that bathroom door, frozen by indecision. I knew I couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Across the road, some people at the Texaco Station were pointing and looking directly at me, and about that time a big guy emerged from around the corner of the BP Station poking at the screen of his cell phone, and I knew for sure he was calling the law.
I reached into the trunk of Red’s taxi, while I kept an eye on the men’s bathroom door in case he decided to stick his murdering head out, grabbed the handle of my old suitcase full of cash and swung it up over the side rail of the bed of Leon’s old truck. There was a pink canvas bag underneath it. I figured it had to be Louise’s, so I grabbed it next and tossed it on the back with the money bag.
It must have been the sight of her pink bag that got Louise moving. Suddenly she darted over next to the truck and me. “Quick! get in and let’s go!” I told her.
“He’ll catch up with us and kill us!” she hissed.
“No he won’t,” I said. “Watch this!” I walked over to the passenger side of the taxi, took aim with my pistol at the front tire and fired. After the loud boom of the shot echoed across the way, the tire hissed out air and shrunk down to the rim. Moving to my right, I repeated the procedure and deflated the rear tire.
The big guy on his cell phone turned and ran around the corner. Across the road people were diving for cover. I looked at Louise and asked, “You feel better now?”
“I dang sure do,” she replied as she jumped into the passenger seat of the truck.
I knew it was past time to move. People were probably already calling 911 and describing myself and the truck. I jumped behind the wheel and started backing the truck up when I noticed the men’s bathroom door crack open. Still moving I fired a round high up into the very top of the door and it closed back real quick.
I punished the old truck when we made our exit from the BP Station. Pushing the accelerator to the floor it turned sideways as we entered the road. Fighting the wheel, I straightened it out, turned right, took the freeway entrance ramp heading north and hit the expressway doing 70.
After a moment I asked Louise if she was alright. “I am now. I can’t believe what you done back there. That redheaded son-of-a-gun has been describing how he was going to ravish me then kill me ever since we left Biloxi. I had done give up and accepted my fate, then here you come out of the middle of nowhere! How did you get hold of Leon’s truck?”
“He gave me the keys. I got to yawl’s room a little after you and Red had gone and he was still alive.”
“Oh Lord, I thought he was dead when we left!”
“Well, I’m sorry to report that he was indeed dead when I left. How did you hook up with Red?”
“I woke up a while before Leon did. He had been paying more attention to that old suitcase than he had me, and I was curious to know what was in it. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I opened it up and saw all that cash, stacks and stacks of it! So I took a bundle and was going to go down and do me some gambling, but when I opened the room door Red crashed in and knocked me down.”
“I guess that’s my fault,” I told her. “I wrote Leon’s room number down on a piece of paper and left it on the bedside stand before I went to sleep.”
We were almost to the next exit when Louise startled me by saying, “You ought to get off here. If you stay on the expressway then the law will be catching up with us pretty soon. I guarantee you that them people back there have called the cops and given them a description of this truck, and it ain’t hard to spot.”
“Okay,” I said as I merged into the exit lane, “what then?”
“Cross the expressway and go back and get off where we got on. Everybody saw us take the north bound ramp and they’ll be looking for us up that way—not down the other way. When we get back down there and get off we’ll be on the opposite side of the expressway from where the action took place. We can take a right there on Highway 84 and head west over to Highway 43 North.
“Then after a few more switches we can go all the way to Montgomery on two-lane roads, and won’t nobody be looking for us that way like they will be fixing to on the interstate.