Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

minute after we rolled onto ground again the LTD began to slow for a stoplight. I could hear the heater fan running up front but felt nothing but cold around me still. When the car came to its stop, I drew a breath and made my move.
    I jumped up and wrapped my left hand around the man’s forehead, pulling his head back. I placed the closed knife against his throat so he’d feel metal and said, “Pull over.” I could see his eyes in the rear view mirror, half opened, the eyes of a man well past drunk.
    “What the fuck?”
    “Pull the car over.”
    “Who the fuck … ?”
    I flipped open the blade with my thumb. It clicked loudly. I pressed the four inches of serrated metal against his throat. Even though it was a bluff, we were clearly well across the line now.
    “Pull over.”
    “Where?”
    “Turn left onto Long Beach. Beside those bushes and trees. Start too fast or stop too sudden and you cut your own throat, got it?”
    He turned left on Long Beach, then pulled the LTD over under an ash tree. The man with the limp did everything slowly, more out of drunkenness than caution.
    He shifted into park, one gear at a time. His clothes reeked of cigarettes and sweet whiskey.
    “Kill the motor and the lights,” I said.
    He turned the key and the engine cut off. Then he switched off the lights.
    We sat there together in the dark. I looked to make sure there were no other cars around. I could see the night sky clearly through the windows. It looked as cold as a pile of coal ash.
    “I don’t have any money.”
    “I don’t want money,” I told him. “Move over into the passenger seat. Now.”
    “What?”
    “Just do it, now.”
    “Why?”
    I said nothing more. Our eyes met in the rear view mirror. There was a moment of cognition when I looked into the calm eye at the center of his drunken storm. Somewhere in there was a sober man. He waited, as if debating something in his head, then said, “Okay,” and climbed over the console into the passenger seat. He moved clumsily. I kept my hand on his forehead and the knife to his throat, moving behind him. Once he was in the passenger seat, I pressed his head against the headrest, my left hand clamped tight on his forehead.
    “If you want the car, take it.”
    “I don’t want your car,” I told him. “Remove your belt.”
    He tried to look at me out of the corner of his eyes, but I was directly behind him, out of his peripheral vision.
    “Who are you … ?”
    “Just remove your belt.”
    He reached down and undid his belt and slowly pulled it off.
    “Hand it back to me.”
    He held it up. I took it. I held the knife against his throat with my right hand and made a loop out of the belt with my left. Then I tossed the loop over his head and around the headrest till it made a noose around his throat. I pulled it tight. He gagged but I didn’t loosen it. I made a hole in the belt with the knife, then closed the knife and clipped it back in my right hip pocket. I used the new hole to fasten the belt buckle. I quickly double-checked my work. His head was pressed even harder against the headrest. His body seemed pulled rigid, as if slouching would lynch him.
    I reached around and searched through his overcoat pockets. I found a blackjack and stiletto. In a shoulder holster was a 9mm Taurus semiautomatic.
    “You carry a lot of tools, don’t you?” I said into his ear. “Can’t decide if that’s the sign of a craftsman or a hack.”
    He said nothing. I could tell he was sobering up fast.
    “You like hurting people?” I said.
    “It pays the rent.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing slowly. It looked like his neck was a snake swallowing an egg whole.
    “What do you want with me?”
    I removed the Taurus by the butt, holding it between my thumb and forefinger. I removed a handkerchief from the pocket of my denim jacket and used it as a glove as I removed the clip and the chambered shell from the gun. I emptied the clip and placed the bullets into my jacket pocket, then wiped down everything I had touched, including the clip and the gun. Then I placed everything on the handkerchief, tied its corners together, and tossed the bundle out the window and into the roadside scrub outside. The bundle landed noisily in a patch of overgrown winter grass.
    “Lift your feet up onto the seat and place them beside each other, ankles touching.”
    He hesitated, straining to breathe. Finally he lifted his feet one at a time. His knees came to his chin. He