Chapter 2
The clouded horizon buried the autumn sun and the moonless gloom smothered the Connecticut Hills. Only the headlights of holiday traffic on the Interstate challenged the darkness. Few travelers noticed the rundown motel hidden in the woods off exit 74. Its neon sign had been out of order since the summer. A red GTO with Maine plates was parked before Room # 21. Its door was locked. Inside a kaleidoscope of TV reds, greens, and blue cascaded over the queen-sized bed. A young man and a teenage girl on the mattress watched THE BIONIC WOMAN with opposing levels of interest. Mike Valle tossed the empty beer can into the corner and the skinny brunette in the red dress asked, "When we leaving?"
"After I'm done with my beers." The tattooed mechanic lifted a can of Narragansett from the cooler. "You want one?"
She had barely sipped hers.
"One's my limit." Tammi West grabbed a cigarette from the pack on the night table. She had never been a drinker, although the thirst ran hard in her family. Both sides.
"All the more for me." Mike cracked the can with a beer key and fantasized about a night with Lindsey Wagner. The female lead of the TV show was almost as beautiful as Farah Fawcett, THE BIONIC MAN's real-life wife and # 1 on every males wish list. The girl on the bed offered no competition to either star.
Tammy's shoulder-length hair was a nonspecific brown in contrast the blonde tresses of THE BIONIC MAN's goddess. Her tomboy body was not destined for the centerfold of Playboy. None of this mattered to Mike. Her reputation as his hometown's slut trumped beauty, fame, and fortune. Mike chugged his beer. He was happy to be here and not Kittery, Maine. Away from family and friends with Tammi.
Semi-trailers on the highway sang ‘let's go'. The rising scree of empties signaled this room as their destination for the night. Tammi sat up in the bed.
"You said we were driving straight to New York."
"New York's a hellhole. What's the rush?"
"The more miles between me and Maine the better." The tobacco rasped into her lungs and harvested a cough. Smoking was a new habit. One day old. She hd found the pack in her sister's leather jacket.
"Are you scared of New York?"
"I'm not scared of anything." He had a .38 under his seat of his GTO.
"What about you?" Mike's hand slipped up Tammi's dress. "You afraid of the cops?"
"Yes, and you should be too. You crossed three state lines with a sixteen year-old girl. Somewhere in this country that's against the law." She squirmed out of his grasp and hoped that the danger of transporting a minor might register in his brain.
"Being an outlaw don't scare me." None of his fellow workers at the Kittery Navy had ever accused him of being a deep thinker and he bragged, "I've been to reform school for breaking and entering. Robbing summer cottages was an easy way to get liquor in the winter."
"I'm not looking to break any laws." Her face didn't match the one on the driver's license, which she had stolen from her stepsister. Any stop by the police meant a direct ride back to Kittery, Maine.
"Wild thing, no one's breaking any laws."
The re-run of THE BIONIC MAN paused for a commercial break. Mike hooked a finger into her strands and lowered his face to her hair. The mixture of Breck shampoo and cigarettes was a turn-on and he shut his eyes.
"We're a team. Anyone ever say you're a dead ringer for Faye Dunaway?"
"All the time."
Tammi fought from laughing out loud. The Hollywood actress dated movie stars and she was an underage runaway stuck with a loser.
"That's us. Bonnie and Clyde on the run." Mike unzipped his jeans. "I saw that movie three times. I really liked the scene of them in bed."
"I like the getaway scenes better." Tammi squirmed to the edge of the mattress,.Mike hauled her closer to him. She wasn't getting away.
"I think the hotel scene came first." His left hand flicked open her bra strap. "Bonnie didn't give Clyde a struggle."
She let him fondle her breasts. She wanted out of here. The faster this was over the better.
"You know I could drive your car, while you drink those beers."
"No teenybopper's drivin' my Goat." Mike had worked a winter of double- shifts at the Navy Yard and paid cash for the muscle machine.
"I learned to shift gears from my older sister. She has her license."
Tammi had taken to driving her stepmother's banged-up Cutlass, while the old lady had been asleep. Solo. It had been an automatic. She always brought it back unscratched, but a neighbor had snitched out joy-riding and her stepmother had tanned Tammi's backside with a belt. "You learn anything else?"
The pipe fitter toyed with her nipples.
"Yeah, never take a ride with a stranger."
"That's real funny, because we're not strangers."
"I never met you before." Kittery wasn't a big town.
"That's right, but I know you. Everyone in town does." His right hand mauled her thigh.
"What you hear?" Tammi stiffened with shame.
"Some stories about this and that."
Mike yanked down his pants without getting them farther than mid-thigh. His cock was a flaccid worm. He had drunk too many beers and two Seconals. He rose to his knees and wavered on the mattress.
"They're not true."
"Maybe not, but this afternoon I saw you walking on Tenney Hill Road in that red dress, black leather jacket, and high heel shoes. I told myself, "That's Tammi West." I stopped and asked where you were going and you said, "New York or the highway."
"I don't remember you saying anything about a motel room in the boondocks."
"This was a pit stop for beer and something else. You know what I mean?"
"Men only want one thing from a girl."
"Same thing you gave up to the football team after the Saco High game." Mike tugged off Tammi's bra.
"That story is a lie." She pushed him away with a strength born from a long- held anger. "I went to the Fort McClury with the quarterback, Brad. His friends showed up. Luckily a police cruiser entered the parking lot. The football players drove off. I walked home. Nothing happened."
"Really, well, I heard you did them all and same as this summer at that rich kid's party in York. That a lie too? You make friendly like that and we'll be leaving soon."
"So you want to meet up with that girl from the party?" Tammi couldn't deny the truth, but no one ever listened to her side of the story. She wished he shut up. He didn't.
"Yes, I do."
"We do it, you think you can get back in the car and drive like the devil to New York?"
"You put it that way and I'm Satan's chauffeur." Mike pried apart her legs.
"Then I'm yours." Tammi shut her eyes expecting a rough entry, except the pipe-fitter passed out onto the bed with a snort. She tapped his face lightly twice and once hard before slithering from under him to whisper, "Sorry Clyde, but Bonnie's moving on to better things."
Cars were on the highway. Half of them in the direction of New York. Neither the police nor her stepmother stood a chance of finding her there and come the summer a Greyhound bus would take her to California, Florida, or New Orleans, where Tammi West disappeared forever.
The teenager crept into the bathroom and gently shut the door. She put on her bra and panties, then pulled down the hem of stepsister's red dress. At least Mike hadn't ripped anything.
Tammi stood before the mirror. A quick smear of lipstick and rouge added a couple of years to her face, not that many drivers cared about the age of a teenage hitchhiker. She slinked into the bedroom and grabbed her stepsister's black leather jacket off the floor. The young girl picked up her high heels, plucked $80 from Mike's wallet, then tiptoed to the front door.
The click of the lock was too loud.
"Where you goin'?" The pipefitter demanded through a firefight of blinks.
"Out for some air." Tammi yanked at the door.
"I didn't blow off my mom's turkey for you to split on me." Mike leapt out of the bed and seized her wrist.
"I'm not splitting. I'm just going out for a smoke."
"Then why was your hand in my pants?" Mike kicked his jeans against the wall.
"I'm looking for cigarettes."
"Bullshit. The cigarettes are on the night table." Mike's fingernails painfully pierced her skin. "You're a little thief."
"No, I'm not." She tried to twist free, but Mike wasn't that drunk. "Let me go." "Not until you give me back what you took."
The naked pipe-fitter slapped Tammi's face. The back of her head slammed against the wall and the teenager shook off the stars swimming in her eyes.
"You bitch. I'm gonna teach you."
"You're not teaching me nothing."
Tammi West was no man's punching bag and she swung her high heels with all her might. The stilettos cracked into Mike's skull and his eyes fluttered like a slot machine twirling round and round to skip the cherries. A second shot dropped him to the floor. She grabbed her bag and cigarettes, then darted out of the room across the parking lot into the woods. The underbrush snatched at her legs and she lost her balance in the cold damp grass. The teenager tumbled down the embankment to the Interstate and lost a shoe in the tumble.
Tammi scrambled to her feet on the breakdown lane. The oncoming headlights overwhelmed her vision. Her stepmother had cut out scores of newspaper articles about runaway girls mutilated by highway weirdos. The local police had conducted yearly seminars warning the girls in her high school the dangers of hitchhiking. Never to the boys. She had no choice. She stuck out her thumb.
A supercharged V-8 engine roared in the motel parking lot. Someone had to stop for her and she didn't care, if her ride was a homicidal maniac as long as she was gone before the GTO got here.
A big white Olds lumbered past by a hundred feet to stop in the breakdown lane. Tammi hobbled on one shoe to the passenger door and jumped inside.
"Go, mister, go."
"Go where?" The long-haired driver examined her, as if she were a danger to herself and him.
"Anywhere, but here." Tammi slammed shut the door.
"You want me take you home?"
"Not home. Anywhere, but there too. Go." Tammi prayed that the driver in the suede jacket wasn't a stoner like most of the heads in her high school. She needed a car jockey like in THE DUKES OF HAZZARD. Someone not afraid of fast.
"Okay, I'm going already." The hippie pulled into traffic at a less than urgent speed. "A girl your age shouldn't be out here this time of night."
"I'm 18." The young driver didn't look like a pervert, but Tammi moved closer to the door.
"More like 17."
"17 or 18, I'm old enough to be here or anywhere else as long as it isn't where I was." Tammi rubbed the bruise on her face. "Where you headed, Mister?"
"New York."
"Same as me?" She couldn't believe her luck.
"You have family there?"
"I have no family there, which is why I'm going there." Tammi bit her lower lip and glanced over her shoulder. A hundred headlights filled the highway. Only one of them mattered to her.
"Shit."
The red GTO roared up to the Olds with the horn blowing.
"Who's that?"
"Mistah, I swear to God this guy will kill me, if you stop." Tammi clasped her hands together in a frantic plea. "Go faster."
"You think this piece of shit can outrun a Goat?" The driver looked over at GTO. The Olds 88 had a Rocket V-8. The GTO had a turbocharged 455. The Olds wasn't as fast as the GTO, but it outweighed the muscle car by at least five- hundred pounds. Screams through the passenger window contorted the slick-haired motörhead's face. His words lost on the wind.
"I can't read lips, but your boyfriend doesn't seem too happy about you skipping out on Thanksgiving dinner."
"He's not my boyfriend."
"He's no stranger either."
"Watch out," Tammi shrieked a warning.
The GTO's veered within an inch of driver's side and the hippie steered the Olds 88 clear of a sideswipe.
"This will knock the fight out of that asshole." The hippie reached under the seat to come up with a tire iron.
"Mister, don't stop. I'm serious about him killing me." Tammi begged the driver.
"No one's killing anyone tonight." The hippie juked the steering wheel to the left and the GTO avoided sideswiping the Olds 88. "My father always says a car is the most dangerous weapon in America, especially when the driver doesn't give a shit about his car."
"Mister, he has a gun."
The pistol pointed straight at them.
The long-haired driver slammed on the brakes and the GTO nosed ahead of the Olds. A flash of fire spurted inside the muscle car. No bullet cracked the windows and the hippie dropped the tire iron on the floor.
"You're right. We're not stopping." He clenched the steering wheel with both hands.
"What are you going to do?" She locked her fingers together not to God, but to the driver of the 88.
"Not give him a second chance to kill us." The hippie checked the road ahead and behind of the two cars. The Interstate was strangely empty. "Hold on."
The Olds swung behind the GTO and the driver stepped on the accelerator. The solid steel bumper rear-ended the muscle car and the GTO fishtailed off the highway into a copse of saplings. Tammi clapped her hands with delight. The driver pushed the Olds over 100 mph.
"Keep an eye out for the GTO." The hippie didn't break a smile.
"I don't see it." Tammi's heart beat a long drum roll in her chest.
"Good."
A road sign announced an exit a half-mile ahead. The Olds reached the off-ramp in twenty seconds and swept up the exit onto a country road.
"This isn't the highway to New York."
"We're taking the back roads to avoid your friend. It'll add an hour or more, but better than having someone shoot at us again. That okay by you, Cinderella?"
"Whatcha mean, Cinderella?"
"You're wearing a party dress with one shoe, so I think___"
"Mister, this ain't no pumpkin truck and I'm no Cinderella, but I do have a drunk stepmother and a wicked stepsister at home," Tammi snapped, and then apologized, "Sorry, mister. It's been one of those nights."
"I hope they don't happen all the time." He slowed the Olds down to a safe speed.
"Enough." She rubbed her face, nearly on the verge of tears. "You have matches, mister?"
"There might be a pack by your feet. They're not mine, so I have no idea how long they've been there."
"Old is better than none." Tammi lit a cigarette and smoked in silence, waiting for the hippie to say something. It didn't take him long.
"When I was your age, I never hit a woman." He studied the rising bruise on her cheek.
"Guys hit girls and worse all the time."
"This isn't just about the guy with the GTO. Care to tell me about it?"
"No." she sighed a cloud of smoke, then shrugged with adolescent apathy.
The driver shook his head.
"Jack Kerouac in ON THE ROAD wrote that the worst thing about hitchhiking was having to prove to the driver that it wasn't a mistake."
"You want a story, I'll tell you a story. At the Turkey Day pep rally this football jock bragged about how he and his team fucked me and cheerleaders called me a ‘slut'. I fought with the head cheerleader and won. The dean of discipline sided with the goody-two-shoes and I got suspended for two weeks. At home my stepmother and I got into a shouting match. I ran away. That guy in the GTO gave me a ride. He was wrong about my enjoying a cheap weekend in a dirty hotel and I fought him off and ran to the highway. You stopped and off we went. End of story."
Tammi's cigarette trembled in her fingers
"Fucked up Thanksgiving Day."
"You got that right, mister, one more thing. A favor."
"Such as?" The hippie cracked his window to vent the smoke. The cold air felt cold.
"No more questions." Tammi tugged the miniskirt over her knees.
"Sure, if you do me one." The driver shrugged his answer. He had heard enough.
"What?" She expected the worse. "Stop calling me mister."
"You have a problem with ‘mister'? What's wrong with that?" Tammi called every ‘mister' over twenty-one that to prevent their thinking that they were her age, because juvenile fantasies died long deaths in men.
"Mister makes me feel a thousand years old. I'm only twenty-four. You're not Cinderella and I'm not Mister. The name's Sean."
"Mine's Tammi. Now if you don't mind, I'd like to catch some sleep, Sean?"
Tammi laid her head against the cold glass. Maybe the hippie was a killer, but at this point dead sounded better than alive.
"I'll wake you in New York."
"Thanks, Sean." Tammi shut her eyes.
A few minutes later she fell asleep and the Olds 88 cruised along the dark country back roads at the legal limit of 55 MPH.
The hippie turned the radio dial without finding a station. He shut off the staticand glanced over to the girl on the front seat. She should have been home in bed, but her business was none of his and he stepped on the gas.
Ten seconds later the Olds disappeared into the shadowless night. A dog barked at its passing and then the hound went back to sleep. New York was less than a hundred miles away.
