by Jack Finney
I moved quickly, straight ahead, for the Mill Street exit on the other side, trying as hard as I could to look casual: a man taking a short cut through the post office. Anyone looking at me could see I was soaked, and I knew my feet were leaving wet prints on the stone floor. I'd been sobbing for breath, but through the twenty-odd steps across the width of the Reno post office, I kept my breathing shallow and silent, though the blood seemed to stop in my head from the effort.
The three or four people in a short line at the stamp window didn't glance at me. And when I pushed open the doors and stepped onto the stone stairs, the scene was a normal one. I walked quickly down to the walk, along the line of parked cars, glancing into them, and at the first one with a blanket in the back, a sedan, I opened the door, got in, pulled the door closed, lay down on the floor, pulled the blanket over me, and lay motionless. What happened now wasn't up to me but to Fate.
Twice someone went by the car. Twice a car passed, the second one moving very fast, and I was certain it was a patrol car. Under the blanket I stripped naked. Then I took my soaked handkerchief from my pants pocket, rolled it up, with my socks, in my shorts, and shoved the bundle down out of sight behind the back-seat cushion. Taking my shirt, I squeezed the water from the tails, cuffs, and collar; then, as well as I could, I smoothed collar and cuffs flat between my hands. I wrung out my pants pockets, waistband, and cuffs. With a blanket corner I wiped my shoes hard, then rammed a wad of blanket into each shoe, twisting the heavy cloth, soaking up and wiping out all the water I could; then I set the shoes on the back seat, in a patch of sunlight. All the time I was listening for approaching steps.
Now, shirt over one arm, pants over the other, I began waving them slowly through the hot, dry air. My arms got tired, then they began to ache and get numb, but I never stopped. The air in Reno is brittle-dry; you almost never visibly sweat even on the hottest days. In ten minutes, fifteen perhaps, my shirt and pants were — not dry, but — no longer dripping. Then I put them on, and my shoes. I ran my comb through my hair, then got out of the car as though it were mine.
I walked fast, but not obviously hurrying, half a block to Center Street, then turned south, half a block, to the public library, and even in that time I could feel my clothes drying on my skin. I walked into the library. A high-school girl was talking in low tones to the woman at the desk; an elderly man sat at a table copying from a book. I crossed the room silently to the shelf stacks at the back and disappeared among them. At the very end of a shelf, in the darkest corner I could find, I snatched a book from the shelves, opened it, and then stood there, staring at the print.
In twenty minutes, the library around me quiet and peaceful, my clothes were dry, or dry enough. At the pockets and waist my pants still felt cool on my skin, and my shirttails were bunched up and damp. But everywhere else my clothes were dry again, or looked it, even my shoes; and I walked on out of the library and took a bus part way and part way walked back toward our room and Tina.
Thirty minutes later I saw the cab Tina had gone off to find pull up at the curb, and I picked up her suitcase and walked out to it. I was wearing a clean shirt, shorts, and socks, but the same pants and shoes; I didn't have any others. In the cab as we pulled away Tina handed me the new hat and cheap jacket she'd bought, and I put them on. Drive us to Sparks, will you, please? I said to the driver, and he nodded. Tina murmured to me, There's one leaving in twenty-five minutes, and I knew what she meant. While I waited in the room, she'd gone out to buy the clothes and to phone Sparks, the nearest town, to find out when the next bus for anywhere at all was leaving. Then she'd found a cab and come back for me. Now, sitting back in the cab, we smiled at each other, each trying to look optimistic.
At first she'd wanted me to stay in the room and hide while she brought food in each day. But she'd finally realized too that that was only slow death; that in a day or two days or three days the cops would reach that particular boardinghouse and that would be the end. The only realistic hope was getting out of Reno and away, right now, before there was time, we hoped, for all escapes to be blocked off. I'd had to accept Tina going along; she simply would not listen to or even discuss anything else. She had to know, she said — she had to — that I'd gotten away.
I wondered how far we'd get. We drove three blocks, four, then turned south to Route 40 to Sparks, some two or three miles away. On Fourth Street, my lips close to her ear, I lied to Tina. I'll make it, I said; I tried to sound eager and convincing. The town's full of people coming and going; the cops haven't found me yet; I'm going to make it okay. Now, I want you to get out at the next stop light. I'll phone you, Tina, tonight or tomorrow, soon as I'm okay. I can travel faster without you.
She was just shaking her head, slowly and steadily. Nothing I was saying had any bite. I didn't believe it and neither did she; we both knew. At Fourth and Evans — we'd met on this corner only last night — the cab swerved sharply in to the curb, the driver leaning on his horn, and stopped so fast we shot forward, bumping into the front seat.
Tina made a grab for the door handle, but I stopped her, holding her wrists; they'd shoot at us for all I knew, and in any case they'd catch us before we'd run fifty yards. I was tired of running, tired of it all, and I pulled her back on the seat. Then we sat waiting through the nine or ten seconds it took the patrol car to back out of the side street the cabdriver had seen it in, then swing sharply and shoot up beside us, braking hard.
I had my hands raised, fingers spread, palms facing the door, as the cops drew alongside, and I stayed that way, not moving a muscle as they piled out of their car, moving fast but warily, guns out and their eyes on me, cold and deadly. Easy, I said, as they stopped at I my window — I had Tina sheltered with my body as well as I could — I'm not moving till you tell me.
The one cop nodded and opened the door with his free hand. Okay, out; and keep the hands up. I got out slowly, remembering the last time I'd done this, when it hadn't mattered, when I'd been just a college boy caught in a prank. You, too, miss, the cop said politely enough. Then he said to the cabby, Nice work, Eddie.
The cabdriver shrugged modestly. A cinch, he said. I spotted him right away, maybe ten minutes after the call came through. He nodded at the loud-speaker on his dashboard, and I knew what had happened. Most Reno cabs are radio-dispatched, carrying a phone and receiver; probably every cabby in town had been watching for me, and it didn't much matter which one Tina had picked. If he hadn't seen the patrol car, he'd have phoned for one, probably using a code.
Casually and carelessly, standing there on the street as Tina got out, I said to the cops, You don't have to bother with her; she wasn't in on it and doesn't know a thing about it. I looked at her contemptuously. I don't even know her last name; picked her up at the Cal-Neva bar this morning.
The cops didn't even answer that. One of them frisked me, fast but thoroughly, then nodded at the patrol car. Inside, both of you. You in the front seat, he said to me. You in the back, he said to Tina. Thanks, Eddie.
Any time. The cabby grinned, then put his car in gear and pulled away.
I think I'm like a lot of people who've spent a little time in Reno and get to thinking they know the town, when all they really know are a few blocks in the heart of it. There's an old-looking red-brick building a block from the Mapes, the city hall, and I'd always supposed the police station was somewhere inside it. The building has a quiet, old-fashioned, small-town look, and I suppose I'd had a vague picture of a chief of police sitting in a dusty room inside it, feet up on a roll-top desk, a plump and placid elderly man in shirt sleeves, smoking a pipe, and with maybe a nickel-plated badge on his suspenders.
We drove south to Second Street, slowed, swung left. I was startled and sat up in my seat — this wasn't the way to the police station! We drove on, out of the business and gambling district, and in maybe a minute bumped over an iron bridge I'd never seen before in my life. Then, just ahead, I saw it: a massive, soaring, smooth-planed, stone building rising four or five st
ories into the air. On the top, high above the street, I saw a tall steel-mesh fence, enclosing a square of roof, and guessed that the roof was a prisoners' exercise space. This was the Reno police station: official, impersonal, coldly modern; and now I was scared in my bones, and I knew we were in the hands of a smart and deadly efficient police force.
We went up the wide stone steps, walking fast, my cop carrying the suitcase, past heavy bronze-and-glass doors, into a tall, cool corridor. Ahead at the left, behind a low polished wood enclosure, was a switchboard, the subdued buzzer sounding regularly, the tiny lights flashing. We paused there, waiting, till the girl turned; then my cop said quietly, Page the boss, will you? She nodded, glancing at us with professional disinterest, and we turned away and into a corridor of pebble-glassed doors. My cop opened one of the doors, motioning us with his head to walk in past him. Loud-speakers — a girl's quiet voice — began sounding in the corridor. The door closed behind us, and I couldn't make out what she was saying, but I knew it concerned us.
We were in a large, neutrally painted room, Venetian blinds at the windows, furnished with four desks and swivel chairs, each desk having a straight-backed chair beside it; everything looked well taken care of and expensive. Two of the desks were occupied by men in plain clothes. One was the pleasant-looking man who'd arrested Brick. The other was bigger and younger, with the kind of ordinary, unmemorable face you might see anywhere, except for his eyes: They held the calmly ruthless, not-quite-blank stare of the professional policeman. The two men didn't seem to be doing anything. They just looked at us.
Nodding at me, my cop said, At Fourth and Evans, in a cab. Eddie Quatrell's cab, by the way; he flagged us. Heading for Sparks with a suitcase. He set the suitcase on the floor, by one of the desks. Then, nodding at Tina, he said, She was with him.
Thanks, Dave. The little grandfather smiled pleasantly. You page the boss? The cop nodded. Okay, the little detective said, dismissing him, and both cops left the room. After a moment, while Tina and I just stood there at the door, the little man looked up at us and said, pleasantly but absently, as though he hadn't yet gotten around to thinking about us, Sit down; might take a few minutes for him to get here.
We took the chairs beside their desks, Tina at the older man's, I at the other. Then we waited; once the younger one said, glancing up at me, Fourth and Evans? and I nodded.
After a moment I looked over at Tina and smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring way. She smiled back, but her eyes looked sick.
The door opened and a tall, thin, wide-shouldered man stepped in, carrying a manila folder in one hand. His face was very lean, cutting in sharply below the cheekbones, his brown hair crisp and thick, his complexion sandy; he was thirty-five, maybe, or younger, his eyes amused — the most knowing and quietly dangerous-looking man I'd ever seen in my life. He was beautifully dressed, his tan single-breasted suit tailor-made and expensive. He looked highly paid; he looked unruffled and calm, as though nothing could disturb him; he looked able to handle anything. He was smiling pleasantly, and as though he had known since eight o'clock this morning that exactly this would be happening now.
For several ticks of a clock he stood there looking at us contemplatively, soundlessly slapping his cardboard folder against his leg. Then he nodded at the suitcase on the floor beside him. Is the money in there? I shook my head. We'll search it, you know. Is the money in there?
No, just clothes. Look if you want.
He nodded, knowing it was true; he seemed to waste no motion. Then he beckoned with his head, turning back to the door. The two detectives stood; so did Tina and I; and we all followed him out into the hall, walked down it, turned a corner, then followed the back of that beautifully pressed suit through a metal door and down a flight of concrete stairs.
We were in a big well-lighted garage, the outer doors closed. Beside one wall stood our car and trailer. There was a policeman's motorcycle in the room, nothing else. At one and the same time that car and trailer looked sickeningly familiar and — in that setting — very strange. There they stood, silent and dust-coated, their every line imprinted on my brain, yet looking now utterly different under the electric glare.
You did a good job, the tall man said quietly, gesturing at the trailer; his voice was approving, complimentary. We had these in here and processed in less than an hour after they were picked up. But the only fingerprints we found were the former owner's and his wife's; we knew that by noon the next day. And there weren't any other prints, and not a shred or scrap of anything else, not even a cigarette butt; no clues. The front plate — he opened his folder and glanced at a paper inside it — belonged to a sixty-five-year-old farmer; he'd reported it lost. The rear plate belonged to a man killed in a highway accident two weeks ago. Probably the plate was lost in the accident, right where you found it. Good job, he repeated, nodding his head. We spent half the night working over that rig, and it told us nothing. Walk around it, he said to me. Look it over.
I did what he said, walked clear around the trailer and car, staring at the familiar strangeness of it, my mind numb, wondering what was happening to us. Then I stood, back where I'd been, gazing at the tall man with the calm, amused eyes.
Next morning — tucking the folder under one arm, he walked to the garage doors, stooped for the handle, then raised the doors; they rolled to the ceiling, and the late-afternoon daylight slanted into the room — next morning, one of our traffic men opened the garage doors and walked past the rig, between the trailer and wall. Walk around it again, he said to me.
Again I walked past the front of the car, then along the length of car and trailer beside the garage wall; this time the tall man followed, and so did the others. Near the rear of the trailer I stopped in my tracks. The white daylight slanted across the smooth, dust-filmed side of the trailer. Sharp and plain now, printed in the dust in awkward capitals under a film of newer dust, was “Bob Streik, Salt Lak—” The tail of the “k” trailed sharply back to the end of the trailer in a yard-long curve.
The tall man beside me nodded as though I'd asked a question. Yeah, he said, who is Bob Streik, of Salt Lake City? The Salt Lake police chief found him in the phone book while we held the line: Robert Streik, an address and a phone number. We waited while the chief called him on the local phone; we could hear them talking. Streik is a businessman, an insurance salesman; he was just finishing breakfast, about to leave his house. He knew nothing about you, your trailer, or why his name should be written on the side of it. The tall man in tan smiled at me. But his son did; Robert Streik, Junior, nine years old. He was there, and we talked to him.
The tall man leaned comfortably back against the garage wall, hands shoved into his pockets, manila folder under one arm. You did well, he said to me once again. You lay back there in that trailer, one of you driving; who would ever look at the outfit, who'd remember it? Nobody. And you left it for us, and it didn't tell us a thing. Nine o'clock one evening you sat at a stop light in Salt Lake, people passing in front of the car; maybe some of them glanced at the driver, maybe not. If they did, so what? He nodded approvingly. You thought of everything people might see or do, and you thought right. About adults. That's what you thought about, naturally — adults and what they might do. So don't blame yourself. Who could expect you to figure what a nine-year-old kid would do?
This Streik kid, coming home from the movies, passed in front of your car and looked up at the driver. He was interested, envious. He's been pestering his father to buy a trailer, thinks it would be wonderful to have one. On the sidewalk, a yard from the side of your trailer, he stopped to look it over and saw the film of dust you'd picked up. So what did he do? What any nine-year-old might do; he wrote in the dust with his finger. The tall man smiled. He tells us he almost wrote, ‘Wash me,’ but didn't. He wrote his name, and was working on ‘Salt Lake’ when the light changed and your friend Brick started up and drove on.
The tall man pushed himself erect from the wall without taking his hands from his pockets
. Then, motioning with his head for me to walk on ahead of him, he said, The kid got a free trip to Reno out of that. The same day. By plane. With his mother. Harold's Club footed the bill. We stopped by the open garage doors, Tina and the other cops beside us. Then the boy saw the sights, walking up and down the streets here, two hours in the morning, then lunch and a nap. Two hours in the afternoon, and another hour at night before he went to bed. He was in every gambling casino — the man smiled — by special police permission: more than any Reno kid can say, or any other kid for that matter. And pretty soon — eventually — he saw the man who'd been driving the trailer rig the night he wrote his name on the side of it. The tall man grinned. You were there at the time.
For several seconds the man in the tan suit stood watching me. Then he opened his folder and pointed. Standing at his elbow, I looked at the sheaf of flimsy white paper his finger rested on; there were four or five sheets stapled together, carbon copies of a long list of names and addresses. I had this list on my desk by noon the day after the robbery. Every man at every hotel, rooming house, guest ranch, or motel. He turned the list face down in his folder, exposing another underneath. This was shorter, one page and part of another, in single-spaced typing. By four o'clock we'd eliminated all but these: sixty-four names.
I stared at the list; black pencil lines were drawn through a lot of the names.
By ten this morning half those names were eliminated. He handed me the list. Look it over; you'll find your name and Brick's.
They popped out at me: my name and the address of our boardinghouse; Brick's name and the name of a guest ranch just out of town on Route 40. Then I looked for, and found, “Guy Cruikshank, Y.M.C.A.,” and “Jerome Weiner, ” with a street number and address.
