Free The Getaway Man by Andrew Vachss Page B

started taking
    stuff out of her pocketbook. A woman came over from behind the counter. I
    couldn’t hear what they said to each other but, finally, the woman behind
    the counter rang up all the stuff the girl had. The girl took out a credit
    card.
    The pudgy guy in the suit coat walked past me. He gave me one of
    those “I’ll know you next time” looks, but he didn’t
    say anything.
    I finally found where they sold the perfume. A nice
    older lady with a pearl necklace sold me a tiny little bottle for more than
    fifty bucks, so I knew it was really good stuff.
    She asked me if it
    was for Valentine’s Day. I could tell by the look on her face I should
    say yes, so I did.
    “Then you’ll want it wrapped,” she
    said.
    She put it in a little box that was just the right size. Then she
    wrapped it in shiny silver paper, and put a thin red ribbon all around it, tied
    in a bow.
    B y the time I left, it was the middle of
    the afternoon. I was a little hungry, so I thought I’d look for a place
    where they sold food. I never knew a mall that didn’t have them.
    “Hey,” a woman’s voice said.
    I turned around. It
    was the girl from the store, the one in the black dress.
    “That
    was very chivalrous of you,” she said.
    I didn’t know what
    she meant, but I could tell from the way she said it that it was something
    good.
    “That’s all right,” I said.
    “I’ve been waiting for you. The least I could do is buy my
    rescuer a drink.”
    She took hold of my arm and steered me down the
    corridor. I thought we were going to a bar, but she kept going until we were in
    the parking lot.
    “Where’s your car?” she said.
    “It’s in the shop,” I told her. Which was kind of the
    truth.
    “How did you get here, cab?”
    “That’s right,” I said. Which wasn’t true, but I
    didn’t want her to know I was staying so close by. Or the kind of place I
    was staying in, either.
    “Then we’ll take mine,” she
    said, and started steering my arm again.
    After we walked a little bit,
    she reached in that pocketbook of hers and took out some keys. She had one of
    those things that unlocks your car from a distance. When she pressed on it, I
    heard a chirping sound. I looked in that direction. There was a big Lexus
    sedan, plum-colored, with its lights blinking.
    “That’s
    mine,” she said. “Do you like it?”
    “I never
    drove one,” I told her.
    “Then you should drive this
    one,” she said, and handed me the keys.
    I wanted to explain to
    her that I didn’t mean I wanted to drive that car; I just couldn’t
    say if I liked a car if I’d never driven that kind. But I didn’t
    say anything.
    “ Y ou drive very … carefully,” she
    said, after we’d gone a few blocks.
    “I’m getting
    the feel of it,” I told her. “You have to do that a little bit at a
    time.”
    “Oh. Are you a professional driver?”
    I
    liked the way that sounded in her mouth. “That’s right,” I
    said. “Driving is what I do.”
    “Do you race
    cars?”
    I liked her for saying that. I was afraid she was going to
    think I drove a cab, or something like that.
    “No, not that kind
    of driving,” I said.
    “Well, do you like the car
now
?” she asked me.
    “I still don’t know yet.
    You really can’t tell about a car unless you put it through its
    paces.”
    “Like a horse?”
    “I …
    guess so. I don’t know anything about horses.”
    “Like
    a test drive,” she said. “Only a hard one, yes?”
    “Yeah. That’s it.”
    “All right,” she
    said. “I know where you can do that. Turn left at the next
    light.”
    W e ended up on a farm. Not a farm where people grow
    things, just a place with a lot of land. I know it belonged to someone rich,
    because there was a gate to get in. She pushed a button on a box she had
    clamped to the sun visor, like one of those garage door lifters, and the gate
    opened right up.
    “Is this yours?” I asked her.
    “My father’s.”
    “It’s a big
    place.”
    “Not so