She smiled and put her hand on my face. Until I saw that relieved smile, I had no idea of how frightened she must have been when she shook me awake. “No, honey,” she said. “Not that I can see. That’s why they call it an ultimatum.”
2
We put her suitcase in the Chevrolet. If we stopped Oswald (and weren’t arrested), we could get her Beetle later and she could drive it back to Jodie, where it would look normal and at home in her driveway. If things didn’t go well—if we failed, or succeeded only to find ourselves on the hook for Lee’s murder—we’d simply have to run for it. We could run faster, farther, and more anonymously in a V-8 Chevy than in a Volkswagen Beetle.
She saw the gun when I put it into the inside pocket of my sport coat and said, “No. Outside pocket.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Where I can get at it if you all at once get tired and decide to take a nap.”
We went down the walk, Sadie hitching her purse over her shoulder. Rain had been forecast, but it looked to me as if the prognosticators would have to take a penalty card on that one. The sky was clearing.
Before Sadie could get in on the passenger side, a voice from behind me spoke up. “That your girlfriend, mister?”
I turned. It was the jump-rope girl with the acne. Only it wasn’t acne, it wasn’t rubella, and I didn’t have to ask why she wasn’t in school. She had chicken pox. “Yes, she is.”
“She’s purty. Except for the”—she made agiksound that was, in a grotesque way, sort of charming—“on her face.”
Sadie smiled. My appreciation for her sheer guts continued to go up… and it never went down. “What’s your name, honey?”
“Sadie,” the jump-rope girl said. “Sadie Van Owen. What’s yours?”
“Well, you’re not going to believe this, but my name’s Sadie, too.”
The kid eyed her with a mistrustful cynicism that was all Mercedes Street Riot Grrrl. “No, it’s not!”
“It really is. Sadie Dunhill.” She turned to me. “That’s quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say, George?”
I wouldn’t, actually, and I didn’t have time to discuss it. “Need to ask you something, Miss Sadie Van Owen. You know where the buses stop on Winscott Road, don’t you?”
“Sure.” She rolled her eyes as if to askhow dumb do you think I am?“Say, have you two had the chicken pox?”
Sadie nodded.
“Me, too,” I said, “so we’re okay on that score. Do you know which bus goes into downtown Dallas?”
“The Number Three.”
“And how often does the Three run?”
“I think every half hour, but it might be every fifteen minutes. Why you want the bus when you got a car? When you gottwocars?”
I could tell by Big Sadie’s expression that she was wondering the same thing. “I’ve got my reasons. And by the way, my old man drives a submarine.”
Sadie Van Owen cracked a huge smile. “You know that one?”
“Known it for years,” I said. “Get in, Sadie. We need to roll.”
I checked my new watch. It was twenty minutes to nine.
3
“Tell me why you’re interested in the buses,” Sadie said.
“First tell me how you found me.”
“When I got to Eden Fallows and you were gone, I burned the note as you asked, then checked with the old guy next door.”
