Eve's Men by Newton Thornburg Page B

some sort of disclaimer: a wink, a smile, anything that might give the lie to what he’d just heard. But all Charley could do was shake his head and force out a few words of his own, no less terrible than Eve’s.
    “It’s true, Brian. The girl popped the door open, and all I had a grip on was this goddamn thing.” Still carrying the robe at that point, he tossed it onto one of the beds. “She slipped out of it somehow and took off running across the freeway. A north-bound car hit her.”
    “Oh Jesus, no.” Brian turned visibly pale. “No, this is too much.”
    Charley agreed. “It sure as hell is.”
    “Well, how is she?” Brian asked. “Did you check on her?”
    Charley looked over at Eve, who had dropped into a wingback chair across the room, in front of the drapes. Since it had been her decision, he decided to let her explain it.
    “It happened just this side of Fillmore. So I took the exit there and crossed back over the freeway, to get on the northbound lanes, where she’d been hit. But there was too much traffic. By the time we reached the other side, the police were already on the scene—you know how they patrol the freeway. So we came on home.”
    “ So you came on home .” Brian sagged onto the edge of the nearest bed.
    “She could be dead, for all we know,” Charley said. “And no ID, a Jane Doe.”
    Eve’s eyes had filled. “Oh, they’ll find out soon enough, won’t they? I mean, who she is.”
    “You bet they will.” Charley went between the beds and picked up the phone, a move that galvanized his brother.
    Lunging across the bed, Brian depressed the cradle switch before Charley could punch in the number. “Not just yet, okay?” he said, taking the phone away, placing it back on the cradle.
    Charley felt confusion more than anger. “Well, we’ve got to call the police, Brian,” he said. “We can’t just leave it this way.”
    Getting up, Brian put his hand on Charley’s shoulder and gently guided him out from between the beds, away from the phone, “Just a little while, okay, man?” he said. “Before we call, we’ve got to think this thing through.”
    Charley looked at him in disbelief. “Think what through? I told you she didn’t have any ID. The police have to know who she is. Her brother has to be told what happened.”
    “I know that. All I’m asking for is a little time.”
    “It’s all going to come out in the end anyway. So why wait?”
    Brian looked as if he were teetering between rage and tears. “ Why? You want to know why, Charley? Because I didn’t give the goddamn girl so much as an aspirin, that’s why. Yet I’ll be the one they blame, you know that, don’t you? I’m the one who’ll have to take the fall for it. The fucking media will see to that. This is just too neat to pass up. They’ll say it’s just like with Kim Sanders—that I gave Belinda her drugs the same as Kim. And when I’m tried for the bulldozing, I won’t have a leg to stand on. I’ll already be Doctor Death or something like that. Something real cute like that.”
    Charley sat back on one of the beds, his head in his hands. He was feeling so exhausted, so hungover still, that he could barely think, let alone speak. But he knew he couldn’t just leave things the way they were. “You’re forgetting, Brian—Eve and I were driving the girl. We left the scene of an accident, and that’s a felony. The longer we wait, the harder it will go for us.”
    “No way,” Brian said. “As far as I’m concerned, you and Eve are totally out of the picture. All you were trying to do was help me, and I won’t let you suffer because of that. So it was only me and Belinda in the pickup, not you two. I promise—you’re both out of it.”
    Charley was not convinced. “Well, you might promise, but reality has a way of muscling in. People on the freeway must have seen us. At the very least, they saw two people—two heads , anyway—when we drove off and left her.”
    Brian gave a bleak