The bill paid, they got up from the table. Lucky slipped his arm through hers and, their flanks together, they walked toward the exit. The pianist was playing a rhythmic rendition of the September Song. The pre-theater crowds were out now, Jeanne-Marie knew, filling the Black Flamingo and the other cocktail places, and the street as well. Once on the street, Lucky could probably make good his escape.
They went by the hat-check booth now, and out across a carpeted hallway, to a French door which led, up a little flight of stairs, to the street. A doorman swung the French doors out.
"Stop!" someone cried behind them.
Acting on instinct, the doorman slammed the French doors. Lucky whirled and swung his right fist brutally at a man running up behind them. Jeanne-Marie screamed as the man fell heavily. Then, incredibly, Lucky did have a gun in his hand. He pointed it at the doorman and said something and magically the doors swung open. Still holding Jeanne-Marie's arm and all but dragging her, Lucky sprinted up the short flight of stairs to the street. Footsteps pounded up after them as Lucky waved down a cab.
Jeanne-Marie tried to pull herself away from him, but his fingers dug into her upper arm painfully. "I'm not playing now," he said, his voice brutal. "Maybe it was a more subtle line than you thought, baby, but I'm not playing now. You're still my passport and you're going on being my passport till I tell you different."
He threw open the rear door of the cab and heaved Jeanne-Marie inside. She fell against the leather upholstery and heard the driver say:
"Hey, what the hell is this?"
Voices shouted outside the cab. Feet pounded across the sidewalk. "I don't want no part of this!" the driver shouted. It was almost a wail.
Lucky waved the gun and said in a quiet voice which still must have thundered in the driver's ear. "Start driving and start driving fast."