She poured herself another glass of bubbly, feeling giddy now, the reality of the change that was coming finally sinking in. She offered some of the champagne to Keith, but he was having too much fun with the phone, spreading the news to everyone he could think of. He’d been trying since they left town to reach Aunt Lee, and had just now gotten through to her. Kate snuggled next to him with her coat off, pressing her ear close to his so she could listen in.
“No, Sis’, it’s true,” Keith said into the handset. “I’ve got the ticket right here in my hand.”
Lee said, “Oh my God, Keith, that’s fantastic. How much did you win?”
“Are you sitting down? Ten million big ones. Can you believe it? I’ve been playing the same damn numbers for years.”
Lee said, “God love us, I can’t even imagine. Where are you now?”
“In a limo on our way to Toronto. I want to get this thing squared away before I wake up and find out I dreamt it.”
Lee chuckled. “Where’s Katie?”
Keith gave his daughter a ten million dollar smile. “Right here beside me. We’ll be staying at the Royal York tonight—splurge a little—but we’ll see you in the morning, soon as we’re through at the lottery office.”
“Okay, sweetheart. You tell that driver to take his time.”
“Ten-four, kid. See you tomorrow.”
Keith cradled the receiver, folded the ticket into his wallet and tucked the wallet back inside his new overcoat. “I think your aunt wet her pants,” he said to Kate.
“I still can’t believe it myself,” Kate said, her expression turning somber. “I wish Mom was…”
“Me too, sweetie. Me too.”
Before anything more could be said the glass partition hummed open and Bernie adjusted his rearview, allowing eye contact with Keith. “If you don’t mind me asking,” he said, “but winning the lottery—me and the boys at the garage, that’s practically all we talk about, what we’d do with a purse like that. You thought about it yet?”
Keith said, “I haven’t been able to think about anything else.”
“Any ideas?”
“Well, first thing, I’m going to buy my mother a condo in Florida. Right on the beach. Get her out of that seniors’ slum. She’s eighty-six, but still sharp as a tack. Then I’m going to look after my gang. I’ve got two brothers and a sister, worked hard all their lives. There’s more than enough for all of us.”
Bernie undid his seatbelt and shifted, glancing over his shoulder at Keith. “I hear you, but you’re missing my point. I’m talking about you. What are you gonna do for yourself? You know, with the big money?” He looked back at the road, easing the limo into a long curve.
Keith said, “Well, after Christmas, I thought I’d take my little girl here on a trip,” and winked at Kate. “Someplace warm.”
Kate gave a little squeal. “Oh, Dad, could we? I know just the place. I saw it on
Lifestyles
the other night. Harbor Island in the Bahamas. Tom Hanks vacations there sometimes. It’s a tiny island with a mile-long beach of pink sand, and a hotel—Tingum Village, I think it’s called—where a neat old gal named Ma Ruby makes the best cheeseburgers in the world. According to Hanks. They showed him taking a huge bite out of one.”
Bernie said, “She write his order down?” and Keith laughed.
“Harbor Island it is, then,” Keith said.
Bernie said, “Okay, that’s short term, but I’m talking about the long haul.” He glanced back at them again. “What are you gonna
do
?”
Keith looked at Kate, and when he spoke it was more to her than to the driver. “My wife and I honeymooned in the South Pacific,” he said. “We both loved to fish, so we chartered a nice forty-footer and spent the entire two weeks on the water.” He gave Kate a warm smile. “It was heaven. So I think that’s what I’d like to do. Get a boat, maybe a cozy little beach house someplace—”
Kate’s shrieking voice cut off Keith’s words.
“Oh God—
look out
.”
An oncoming tandem oil tanker rose out of the December mist like a chrome behemoth, its star-sharp running lights seeming to fade back into the enormity of the thing. In that first instant, as Keith’s eyes fixed on the rig, he failed to comprehend Kate’s alarm. But with his next frantic eyeblink he saw what was coming.
The trailing tank materialized out of the swirling fog, jackknifing into the limo’s lane as it surged inevitably forward, propelling the tonnage ahead of it. The limo was close enough now for its occupants to make out the driver’s arms, frantically jockeying the wheel. Kate saw the glowing ember of a cigarette wobble at mouth-level for a beat, then shear away in a cascade of sparks.
“Black ice,” Bernie said, his voice as dead as he soon would be.
In his panic he tramped too hard on the brake pedal and the limo became weightless, spinning to its doom in a series of wild donuts. Kate heard her father scream, a sound somehow more chilling than the impending collision, and she reached out for him in the strobing dark. Then a neatly wrapped gift—a steam iron for her aunt Lee—struck her on the forehead, mercifully stunning her.
The limo entered the closing jaws of the tanker trunk-first and bounced off one of its tires. It twirled once, went momentarily airborne, then plowed down the long slope of the ditch into a rock cut, staving in the front end and popping the trunk. Festive packages flew out and littered the ditch. Steam hissed from the crumpled radiator; it also issued from Bernie’s skull where he lay face-down on the buckled hood.
The rig left the road on the opposite side and surged up the embankment, the cab turning turtle onto the tanker and becoming an instant inferno. The driver managed to open his door, but the liquid flames found him quickly, transforming him into a human torch. He hit the ditch on his back, rose briefly to his knees then tumbled face-first into the snow, which in the heat of the conflagration around him began to melt so quickly it boiled.
The night resumed its glacial stillness, marred only by the crackle of flames.
––––––––
HEADING SOUTH ON Highway 69, trailing the Whipples by a bare five minutes, Marty Small grumbled to himself in the drafty cab of his van. The damned thing was so rust-eaten his ankles sometimes got wet from the roadshit that splashed up through the floor boards. He’d pinched a nice set of rubber mats from a 4-Runner the week before, but some other son of a bitch had stolen them from
him
not two days later.
His trip north had been a total washout. Not only had he picked up barely enough fenceable merchandise to cover his rent—a couple well-used DVD players, a plastic grocery bag full of pennies so goddam heavy it had sprung a leak, leaving a Hansel and Gretel trail of coppers all the way to his van, a couple handfuls of cheap costume jewelry—he’d almost got himself shot in the process. Sonofawhore comes out of nowhere in his pajama bottoms, plinking away at Marty with what sounded like a .22 target pistol. One of the slugs grazed his right ear, flaying out a neat little trough, and Marty guessed he’d hear the whine of that hot little sucker ’til he was sixty. The place had been a peach, too. Set out all by itself on a rural road, no vehicles in the driveway and—even more promising at the time—no response to the five minutes Marty spent leaning on the doorbell, practicing the line he’d use should someone appear: “I hope you’ll excuse the late hour, friend, but did a little guy about this tall come by here earlier selling chocolate-coated almonds for a school trip? See, he’s my son and he hasn’t come home yet…” He’d gone in through a basement window—unlocked—and started stuffing a pillowcase full of quality shit that would have made the whole fucked-over trip worthwhile. He’d been working with the crowbar on a fancy set of locked cabinets when the tubby prick came around the corner from the staircase howling, “My records,” and started blasting away with the .22.
Fucking records. Marty caught a glimpse of them before hauling his empty-handed ass back out through the window into the hip-deep snow of the nearby woods: precise rows of individually sleeved 78s. Good for nothing but maybe skeet shooting.
Marty cursed. His ear ached, his feet were frozen stiff, and when he caught up to Ziggy, the numbnuts who’d convinced him to head north in the first place—“Go up to Sudbury, man. I was there two weeks ago and scored big. Half of ’em don’t lock shit and they’re so fuckin’ country a guy’s neighbor helped me load the guy’s entire rec-room into my truck”—he was gonna kill the bum.
Orange light flared in the near distance, a high pulsing corona that lit up the low cloud cover.
“What the…?”
Marty rounded a curve and was confronted by a glimpse of hell, dense black smoke roiling out of spiraling flames. Looked like a goddam double-decker oil tanker. The heat was so intense that as he rolled up on it, even through the closed window, he started to sweat. He let out a gasp when he spotted the driver’s cremated remains lying twisted in the ditch, which had begun to run with snowmelt.
Marty accelerated past the holocaust and saw the limo marooned in the ditch, rear deck canted up, chrome flashing back in the glare of the van’s single headlight. He pulled onto the shoulder and got out, following the beam of a balky flashlight he’d boosted from an usher at a Toronto multiplex. After checking for oncoming vehicles and seeing none, he started down the slope, following the deep ruts left by the limo.
The first thing he noticed was the sprung trunk and the litter of gifts. Premium stuff, judging by the wrapping paper. When he reached the limo itself, he tried without success to peer in through the tinted windows. He moved next to the driver’s door and gave the handle a tug—jammed—then in the jittery flashbeam saw the driver out on the hood, obviously dead.
“Seat belt, Gulliver,” Marty said, transfixed by the spectacle of the guy’s shattered skull, wafting steam in the frosty air. In the bob of the flashbeam something glistened whitely in there. The guy’s brains, Marty guessed, swallowing dryly. One thing for sure, he’d never eat oatmeal again.
He backtracked to the rear passenger door and yanked it open. An old guy flopped out backwards into the churned-up snow, face a mask of blood, and Marty took a quick step back from him. He aimed the flashlight into the car’s interior, but the cheap thing chose that moment to quit on him. Marty whacked it with the side of his fist, producing only a brief, fading flicker.
“Piece of shit.”
He gave his eyes a moment to adjust—the pig roast up the road was throwing off a pretty fair glow—then set the flashlight on the roof and started to drag the old guy out by the lapels. As the man’s body cleared the limo his wallet slid out of his overcoat and came to rest under his chin. Marty snapped it up, leaning it toward the firelight, thumbing through the thick sheath of C-notes. He grinned and made the wallet disappear.
From inside the limo came a moan of pain and Marty turned to run, his balls springing up inside him like startled squirrels. Then he caught himself and crept closer, trying to get a look inside. It sounded like a girl.
“You okay in there?”
No answer.
He picked up the flashlight, gave it another swat and was rewarded with a steady beam. He aimed it into the car and saw the girl’s face, pale with shock, a single runner of blood coursing from an inch-long gash near the hairline. She was jammed in there pretty good, trapped between her seat and the one in front on her, with what looked like a jeezly-big yellow bird squashed up against her chest.
“Please…” the girl said.
Marty scanned the interior with the flashlight, picking out the scattered heaps of Christmas loot, then returned the beam to the girl’s face.
“Okay, sweetheart, listen,” he said in his most sincere tone. He started digging the gifts out of the car, stacking them on the snowdrift behind him, saying, “I’ll just get all this shit off you, then call for help. This baby’s got a cell phone, right?”
“My father…”
Marty said, “Hang on,” and left her, trekking back to the trunk, gathering up whatever he could find that wasn’t obviously ruined. It took about five minutes and as many trips to load all the stuff in the van, Marty’s instincts tingling with every plodding step. He’d been lucky so far, the storm keeping traffic off the road, but man, it was time to book.
He made one last run to the limo, turning the flashlight on the girl again, but she was either passed out now or dead. He couldn’t see a purse, and after a quick look for a cell phone tramped around to the hood and rolled the driver onto his side, trying not to focus on that split-cantaloupe head. He found the man’s wallet in his hip pocket, forty bucks in there and a couple credit cards. Marty couldn’t believe how heavy the guy was for the size of him. Dead weight.
On his way back to the van he wrestled the old guy out of his overcoat and draped it over his own shoulders like a lord. He climbed into the van that way and got the hell out of there.
* * *
Marty Small floored it leaving the scene of the accident, a peeling whine coming from the rear tires as the van roared away. The harsh combination of sounds roused Kate from unconsciousness into a haze of disorientation and pain. She reached out in the dark, a grunt coming from deep in her chest as she tried to move and found she couldn’t. There was a dense, oily smell of something burning, and for a panicky instant Kate believed she was trapped in a fire. But there were no flames; only the smell and the dark and the brutal cold, pellets of snow whipping in through the open door. Every inch of her shivered.
She tried to take stock. Her head hurt where the package had struck her, a dull concussive throb, and her chest was painfully constricted, making it difficult to take even a shallow breath. Her right wrist joined the chorus of misery, its voice the clearest, and when Kate held it up in the dark she could just make out its unnatural angle.
Broken.
She put it back down, afraid her sudden nausea at the sight of it would end in vomiting. And the way she was trapped in here—Big Bird’s feathery head wedged under her chin, forcing her head back—it was a fair bet that if she started throwing up she would choke to death.
She turned her head as much as she could, trying to find her father. At first she couldn’t see him at all, only the gaping door and the snow beyond it, a blanket of dull luminescence against the black of the night; then she craned a little more and saw him, just his shoulders and head, lit faintly by the blazing rig. His coat was gone and the falling snow had begun to cover his face.