Vicky's Secret Read online

  “I did build it, Danny,” Tony says, staring this kid down, “And it will eat that Camaro of your dad’s and crap Chevy parts for the next two weeks.”

  “Big talk,” The kid says, stepping back to give Tony ‘The Stick’ some space that seemed to be shrinking fast. “Let’s run ‘em then?”

  I look at Tony for guidance in this one. That motors only got thirty miles on it and other than riding with Tony in the passenger seat of the Super Sport, I’d never raced here in the Keystone State.

  “No problem, Bobby,” he says smiling. “You think I’d build you a piece of crap that would lose to this guy?”

  “You drive it, Tony,” I said handing over the key.

  Tony slaps me on the back. “No way, Bobby, he says. “You take the Dart and stomp this little turd down, right here in front of his friends.”

  I nodded looking at the black and gray Dodge parked in the fading moonlight, my car. “Okay man,” I said. “I can do this.” Hearing my voice at that moment wasn’t very reassuring.

  “Nice car,” Some chick is whispering in my ear. I turn and it’s Vicky Brocato standing there biting her lip. I just about melted wondering what those lips tasted like. “Mind if I come along?”

  I’m looking at the girl and looking at Tony at the same time, they’re both smiling next to the Dodge. “I kind of figured I’d take Tony along for this one…the first run and all?”

  “No way,” he says raising his hands in the air. “You two have fun, huh?”

  Before I could even agree to haul the girl down the road, she’s in the passenger seat and struggling with the harness. The rich kid in the Camaro is back over by his car talking crap. I open my door and take a seat in my old Dodge.

  “Need some help, Vicky?” I ask, looking into her eyes. I probably shouldn’t have done that right then, I was whipped and you could have led me away without a sound.

  She nodded and raised her hands away from the buckle to let me help. The top three buttons of her blouse are loose and I fumbled getting her strapped in.

  Turning the key in the ignition the 360 roared to life and rumbled in the dark out there behind the airport. UFO is on the radio. The girl reaches over to turn it up. I pull out back and mash the accelerator. The rear end of the Dodge swings around kicking up a cloud of dust and we start to the road.

  “Is it scary?” She asks looking at the backlighting of the instrument panel. I think the idea of a fire extinguisher might have bothered her some?

  I’m lining up on the left side of the road and my pal Tony is standing on the line holding some girls panties I’m sure.

  “No,” I said looking over at the girl. “Just hang on Okay?”

  She nods and I see the high school kid come up alongside through her window. He’s smiling. I really wanted to pop him in the mouth, but Tony was probably right.

  Tony’s in our headlights waving the kid forward to the line. The kid complied and throttled up his daddy’s car. Tony waves me forward and holds up his hands. We’re lined up out here along this county road behind the airport. I can see a few faces standing alongside in what little light the moon offered.

  Tony literally drops his drawers and I get my foot about halfway down to the floor. The smell of paint burning off that new motor is burning our eyes and the old car starts to creak and groan under the strain. I don’t figure the previous owner ever ran it this hard. All I could think of was some metal building being toppled in a strong wind?

  It rains a lot back there and the roads are canted quite steeply with a ditch running along both sides. Tony had already told me to watch this kid. If he got a jump on me he’d come over into my lane and shut me down.

  Smoke from my burning tires is choking in from the open windows and I watch the orange needle on that Stewart-Warner climbing up to red-line. The Camaro is edging out ahead and the Dodge won’t hook up…Nada. The old gal is swinging off the road to the downhill side with those big tires turning for all their worth and we’re going into the ditch.

  I can see about half of the Camaro leading us down the county road. Funny but I see the kid looking back in his side mirror and smiling.

  Finally, the Dodge hooks up to the tired macadam and the girl and I bolt forward like we’re strapped to a small town rocket ship. She yells and reaches for the volume knob. I know the old car is too heavy to wheelie, but I swear the front end is dancing ever so carefully on those front tires. It’s the least the Dodge could do really, as I’d probably burnt a week’s pay off the rear.

  We go roaring down the left lane of that old road and I go ahead and stand on the accelerator. We’re up alongside and Tony was right, the nose of the kid’s car is creeping toward the broken yellow line. I manage to slide us past without trading any paint and get out ahead. It took that old Dodge a bit to realize what I wanted, but once she figured it out she was a racehorse. The speedo is going through 80 and I just start to see a hint of red in my rearview. The red that I’m seeing is the rear fender of the kids Camaro. It looks like we’re going to pull it off?

  I make the line first and get off the gas. My face hurts, I’m smiling so hard. The girl is screaming in the seat next to me. We pull off the road and roll to a stop just before the stop sign. The kid slows and rolls on through without even looking over to acknowledge that I’d beat him. I figure it was that last part of it that had him feeling bad, the way he’d been running his mouth and all. I was starting to figure out that he and Tony didn’t get along too well.

  Vicky leaned over and kissed my cheek. For the win I guess? The warm heat of embarrassment welled up in my face and I was glad for the darkness at this end of the road where she couldn’t see it.

  “Wasn’t so scary, huh?” I asked looking back to make sure that no one was rolling out behind us.

  “That was soooo cool,” she says with this big smile plastered across her beautiful face. I couldn’t argue, it was my first time too and the car’s for that matter. We idled down to the intersection and turned back for the parking lot where our friends were waiting.

  ♦

  So the reception was kind of what I expected. Everyone is high-fiving Tony and I. Tony’s latest build was a success. The old Dodge performed as expected. Someone handed us a cold beer walking back, the victors.

  That girl Vicky was stuck to me from then on. I didn’t care really. We kind of knew each other from school, she seemed to dig cars and like I said, she was beautiful.

  Tony’s walking up and he reaches around my shoulders and hugs me like a proud father would his kid on graduation day or something? He nods his head to the red El Camino and we start in that direction.

  One thing that I forgot to tell you about Tony Barcelona, the kid had a handle on the suburban drug trade out in our area. Now, don’t take that the wrong way, Tony was working two jobs and going to school, so he wasn’t the loser that you’d expect. Raised in a good home, good education, that type of thing.

  He wasn’t a street thug peddling rock cocaine downtown after sunset or some shit like that. Tony had some gig to make Coke and Crank readily available out here on the weekend. You know, should anyone want any?

  Said he made more on a good weekend than he did working two part time jobs all week. With school and his interest in hotrod cars, he needed a steady supply of sawbucks to keep it in balance. Not to mention, Tony could dip into the product now and then, when he felt like it.

  Tony opens his door and climbs in, puts his key in the ignition. I open the door and the girl slides in, I climb in behind. Iron Maiden comes to life in the stereo. Tony reaches up to turn it down some, the girl turns it back up.

  “This my friends,” Tony says with a big proud smile, “Calls for a celebration. What do you say?”

  The girl shook her head in agreement. I don’t know if she knew about Tony ‘The Stick’s’ side gig or not?

  I got out and got three beers from the cooler in the back, took me maybe forty-five seconds or so. When I get back in, Tony is cutting lines on the cassette case,
“Ladies first?”

  Taking a ten spot out of my pocket, I roll it tight and hand it to the girl sitting between us. Tony steadies the case for her and the girl hits it. I watch those delicious lines disappear into thin air and I’m licking my lips in anticipation.

  Vicky leans her head back in the darkened cab and closes her eyes for a minute. Maiden is blasting through the speakers. I can barely hear Tony talking.

  “A victory lap, my friend,” he says, handing the cassette box across the front seat. Tony smiled. “Thanks for getting rid of that punk kid by the way.”

  “No problem,” I said. “You deserve the thanks Tony. You built the thing and its badass.”

  The rest of the night, the three of us hung together. Mostly we just sat there in the dark cab of Tony’s El Camino, talking, laughing. When the others started to peel away and make their way home or somewhere else for the night, Tony opened his door and got out.

  The county left a couple of garbage cans in the lot where we parked. Tony and a couple of the older guys started policing the area for discarded beer cans and other trash left behind—like I told you—Tony Barcelona was a standup guy.

  After maybe twenty minutes of cleaning up, Tony walks over and reaches out his hand. “Hey, Bobby,” he says. “Thanks again man, it made my day seeing that old car thundering down the strip, dude.”

  I shook my head agreeing. “Yeah, man, we’ll do it again, huh?”

  The girl, Vicky, is walking back brushing the dirt from her hands and there’s really no one left out there, any of our friends, whoever she rode out with?

  “Need a ride home,” I ask, hoping that she’ll say yes. After hanging out through the night, I was beginning to like having her around.

  She laughs. “Yeah…it kind of looks that way, huh?”

  I opened the door for her to get in. She kissed my cheek before she took a seat in the dark interior of the old car. That warm heat of embarrassment was back in my face again. I came to know that feeling well over time.

  Vicky Brocato lived in an apartment that she shared with two other girls not far from campus and I was glad. There wouldn’t be an irate old man waiting at the front door when I pulled in with his daughter at well past three in the morning.

  I watched as she unlocked the door and got inside safely. Man, I was really starting to like the girl.

  The schools dorms were just around the corner and I went easy on the throttle getting into the parking lot. I didn’t want a bunch of pissed off kids giving me shit as I walked in and called it a night. I was way too wound up for sleep, so I watched TV for a couple of hours before I turned in. The sun was breaking through scattered clouds when I closed my eyes thinking about the car and the girl.

  ♦

  Looking back now, that was fun summer for me and Tony Barcelona and Vicky Brocato. The three of us did everything together it seemed.

  With no school, Tony worked full time at an engine shop. Vicky got a job in sales at some department store. Her parents kept her up and she didn’t need to work, but a few hours fought away boredom.

  Me I got on full time with a design firm in town as a draftsman. Keep in mind that this was when all the prints and drawings were done by hand. The job paid well and I ditched the nightshift gig at the Shop & Rob. Man, I didn’t lose sleep over that one. Right before school let out, I picked up a part time gig at the auto parts store downtown for some extra cash.

  Like I said, it was great summer until Vicky and I got a look at that tall blonde walking along a deserted road after dark.

  Vicky was working on getting her license. Both Tony and I were trying to help. Tony’s sister agreed to let her barrow a suitable car for the driving test. We couldn’t have Vicky driving some DMV instructor around town in either of our cars with headers rumbling underneath. It would have driven them both crazy.

  So one Friday night, Vicky and I decide to drive up through the hills. We hadn’t been drinking and I agreed to let her drive and get a little practice. A light summer shower had come though earlier and the roads were still wet in spots, but I didn’t think that would matter much with her behind the wheel? That old Dart was about as sure-footed as they came and I never gave it a second thought.

  We said our good-byes and started out down the county road behind the airport. I think that by summer, everyone out there was used to seeing us together.

  The girl reaches over to turn up the radio and I turn it down to a manageable level. I’m starting to feel like I’m turning into my old man sitting there.

  “Come on, Bobby,” she says. “I like this song.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say watching her as she drove. A waning moon held over the low mountains to the south and she looked so perfect behind the wheel of that old Dodge. “Keep your eyes on the road, huh?”

  She was a good driver. Tony agreed and the two of us were trying to help with finding some little car that would get her around town. Vicky wanted us to build up a fire-breather, but Tony and I agreed we’d take it one day at a time. Kind of see how she did before we jumped in whole hog?

  We round up over this hill with a slow curving right down to a stop sign that we both know will be waiting for us at the bottom. We’d driven up here along these roads before and knew this part of the county like the back of our hands. That’s probably why we chose to go off up through there that night?

  Thick trees are keeping much of that silver moon light from reaching the road here under the canopy. The Dodge’s headlights did a fair job of keeping to the road and lighting our way.

  Just over the crest, I see a woman walking in the lane that we are in. What in the hell she was doing out there that night I’ll never know?

  I’m sure that Vicky sees her, but I don’t know. Neither of us had time to react to this unexpected obstacle along the darkened road.

  I couldn’t have seen her a full second, no more than two before she was up and over the hood and going out the back door. This gal was beautiful walking alone out there under a dark canopy of Pennsylvania hardwoods. In only that second, I could see that she was tall and thin, maybe late forties, fifty. Her skin was milk white like the flowered dress that ended well above her knee and she had on a pair of black pumps. Curly blonde hair formed ringlets along her temples near the most brilliant blue eyes I’d ever seen.

  How in the hell I could notice all of this in that second that she stood in the white arc of the Dodge’s headlights—I can’t say for sure—but I knew that this gal was beautiful. Way too beautiful to be up here alone on this forgotten back road.

  I had driven this road fifty times in the six months I had lived there and knew full well that it was absent of any houses for miles. We had not passed any cars since leaving the highway forty-five minutes earlier.

  The road after the hill made a gentle curve to the right and drifted more or less straight to the bottom. Neither of us noticed any reflection from a disabled auto along the road up or down and if this gal—out for a moonlight walk under the forest canopy—had broken down, she was walking away from town and farther into the darkness that prevailed?

  “What the…?” Vicky started to yell, just before the tall gal went over the windshield and into the darkness behind. That yell turned to an all-out scream by the time we hit.

  I turn looking through the back window as the woman rolls off and onto the pavement behind. Vicky is already standing on the brakes and I hear myself telling her to stop.

  Running back to where the woman lay, I hear Vicky idling along looking for a wide spot to turn the Dodge around.

  This gal has no pulse as I hold her wrist and feel along her neck. I lean closer and there isn’t a hint of breath on my face. Her perfume is the most wonderful smell that I have ever noticed and her skin is soft and warm. Headlights from the Dodge reveal blood running from the woman’s painted red lips and from across the pleasant white skin of her long neck down into the collar of her dress.

  “Is she dead?” Vicky asks dropping down next to me along the road. She’
s close enough that I can feel a shiver go through her and it goes through me also.

  I swallow a lump the size of my car and give my answer. “Yeah, I think so. She’s not breathing?”

  We can’t leave her in the road or just put her in the back seat. The nearest pay phone is maybe six or seven miles away—this was well before everyone carried a cell phone—at a little country market. One of us will have to stay with her in the case that anyone should come along and find her lying there. Vicky doesn’t have a license, but I figure the law would understand if she got pulled over. Like I’ve said the girl was natural behind the wheel.

  So this is where the story kind of goes south for the two of us kids out along that forgotten road. We drag this gal off to the side, in the case that anyone else should happen up this way and Vicky starts going through her clutch looking for identification.

  “Holy crap, Bobby,” she says, popping the clasp holding the ladies wallet together, “Look at this?”

  Vicky removes two banded stacks of $100 bills, before she simply dumped the contents on the asphalt. There are maybe two grand in loose bills, a 9 millimeter pistol—with an additional loaded magazine—and maybe three or four grams of Coke?

  This chick has at least four driver’s licenses in a flip out window. The pictures are her, no doubt, but the hair color and style are different in each, Alicia Hamilton is a brunette, Alexis Simms is a redhead, Angel Iscovich has dirty brown hair and Tiffany Marzano is the blonde.

  “Well Tiffany,” Vicky asks. “What is a pretty girl like you doing out here alone and with a gun and over twenty grand?”

  I was wondering just about the same thing, only it was leaning more toward why such a hot old Betty would be walking up here in the first place. This gal surely had a BMW or Mercedes at her disposal?

  “Go ahead Vicky,” I finally said. “Run to the store down on the highway and call the authorities.”