by Jim Thompson
If he could have looked ahead a few hours—but he could not, fortunately. It would have been much to bear, in his mood, to see the boy acclaimed, however briefly, as brave, bold, brilliant and, in sum, a national hero.
Which is just what happened.
Doc McCoy had a fairly good map of the United States in his mind, surprisingly detailed, and as up-to-date as he could keep it. So, leaving the train, he inquired about a remembered landmark—although it was ten years since he had been in the area. And learning that it was still in existence, he and Carol taxied out to the place.
It was some five miles out on the highway, a family-style roadhouse set down amidst several acres of picnic grounds. They had lunch inside the establishment; then, taking several bottles of beer with them, they located a secluded picnic table and settled down for the brief wait until nightfall.
They could not get a car before then; at any rate, it would not be wise to attempt it. And the way they intended to get it made night travel advisable. A hot car was always cooler at night—providing, of course, that its loss was unreported. People weren’t so alert. There was a sharp reduction in the risk of raising some yokel who knew the owner.
“And there’s no big hurry,” Doc pointed out. “I’ve got a hunch that our late traveling companion will go right on sleeping, undisturbed, until that ten o’clock stop. Even if they found out the nature of his slumber before then, it wouldn’t matter much. The body has to be posted. That takes time, and it can’t be done in just any hick village. Then there’s the conductor’s story of an old neck injury—along with the conductor’s guilty conscience—to add confusion to the proceedings.” He laughed softly. “If I know anything about human nature, he’ll swear that our friend was alive and in good health at the time we left him.”
Carol nodded, laughing with him. This was the old Doc talking, her Doc. She wanted more of his warming reassurance, and Doc did his best to supply it.
“Of course, we will be suspected of bringing about the gentleman’s death,” he went on. “Sometime tomorrow, say, when the conductor has come clean and it’s definitely determined that the broken neck was inflicted rather than accidental. But who are we, anyway? What good is our description if they don’t have a channel for it? Now, if there was anything to indicate we were bank robbers, we’d be tabbed in five minutes. Just as quickly as a batch of ‘wanted’ cards could be run through the sorter.”
“It’s not going to happen,” Carol said firmly. “So let’s not talk about it.”
“Right,” Doc said. “No point to it at all.”
“But it’s still smart to get off the highway. One more night is as much as we can risk.”
“Well, that may be putting it a little strong. We won’t be tagged with Beynon’s car, and we helped our chances with that long jump north. Let’s just say that the railroad still seems like our best bet.”
Obviously, he continued, they couldn’t go back to the line they’d been on. In fact, any of the due-west routes were a poor risk; unless—and the time element precluded this—they were able to take one across the northern rim of the United States.
“So I’d say we do this. Pull another swingback; get completely away from this east-west travel route. We can push hard tonight, make Tulsa or Oklahoma City by morning, and take a southern route train. We can miss Los Angeles that way. Come into California through the Carriso Gorge, and then straight on into San Diego. We can make it in forty-eight hours if everything goes all right.”
“And it will, Doc.” Carol squeezed his hand. “I know it!”
“Of course it will,” Doc said.
Actually, he was more than a little uneasy about their situation. There was much that he disliked about it. But since it could not be changed, he put the best possible face on it, if he was secretly, perhaps subconsciously, annoyed at the necessity for doing so.
Much of their predicament was Carol’s fault. She should have been absolutely frank with him about Beynon. Failing that—having made that one serious error—she should have kept the bag with her at the Kansas City station. That was little enough to expect of her, wasn’t it? It was simple enough. But she had had to blunder again, again forcing him to plan extemporaneously, which was another way of saying dangerously. And now, instead of being properly apologetic, willing to look the facts in the face, she had to be cajoled and bolstered up.
If I’d known she was going to be like this, he thought—and left the thought at that. He took another drink of the beer, smiling at her, inwardly grinning the wry, pained grin of a man who has bumped his elbow.
“Doc.” She was looking down at the table, idly scratching at the chipped paint with a fingernail. “Doc,” she raised her eyes. “I’ve changed a lot, haven’t I? You think I have.”
“Oh, well,” Doc began. “After all, it’s been…”
“You seem the same way to me, Doc. Almost like a stranger at times. I mean—well, I don’t mean it as though I was criticizing or blaming you or anything, I’ve seemed to have done something dopey every time I turned around, and you’ve been a damn sight nicer about it than you should have been. But…”
“Now, don’t feel that way.” Doc laid a hand over hers. “We’ve had some bad luck. We’ve never been involved in anything quite like this before.”
“I don’t think that’s the trouble. Not the real trouble. We had our difficulties before, and they didn’t seem to matter. We were so much closer, and—” she hesitated, thoughtfully. “I guess that’s it, isn’t it? We kind of are strangers. We aren’t the same people we were four years ago.”
“Essentially the same,” Doc disagreed. “Let’s say that perhaps we’ve forgotten what those people were like. In toto, I mean. We’ve forgotten their bad times, the occasions when they rubbed each other the wrong way, and remembered only the good.”
“Well—maybe. Yes,” she added. “I suppose that is it.”
“I know it is. Just as soon as we’ve gotten a little reacquainted—have time for something besides running…”
“Doc.” She looked down at the table again, a faint blush spreading over her cheeks. “I think we should, you know, get really acquainted again. I think we’ve just about got to. Very soon. C-can’t we—isn’t there some way we could manage to—be together?”
Doc murmured that he was sure they could. Beneath the table, he pressed her ankle with his, and the silken flesh quivered in response.
He began to feel a lot better about her, about everything. His inherent optimism reasserted itself, smothering his worries, re-creating him in the delightful and irresistible image that had burned so bright in Carol’s memory.
“I know we can’t lay over, stop anywhere,” she said. “But, well, do you suppose we could travel together on the train? Take a stateroom or a bedroom, and…”
Doc said he thought so; he was pretty sure of it (although he wasn’t sure). “We’ll count on it, anyway. I’ll count on it, my dear.”
And Carol blushed and squirmed deliciously.
In the deceptive half-light of dusk, Doc walked down the highway a couple of hundred yards and took cover behind a hedgerow. Carol, meanwhile, took up a position at the edge of the picnic grounds—protected by the thickening shadows of the driveway but within a quick step of the road.
Doc heard two cars stop for her, then speed on again almost before they had stopped. Soon there was a third car, and the opening and slamming of a door. And Doc came out of his place of concealment.
The car stopped for him jerkily; Carol was holding a gun in the driver’s ribs. Doc climbed into the back seat and, putting a gun to the man’s head, ordered him to relinquish the wheel. The man did so, fearfully, too frightened for speech, limbs stiff and numb as he slid over in the seat. With Carol driving, they moved on again.
Naturally, the car was from out-of-state; had it borne local license plates, Carol would never have gotten into it. The owner was a salesman, a man of about thirty-five with a plump well-fed face and a wide good-natured mouth. Doc s
poke to him soothingly, putting him as much at ease as the circumstances would allow.
“We’re sorry to do this,” he apologized. “Believe me, we’ve never done anything like it before. But we ran out of money, and the wife can’t take another night on the road, so—I hope you understand. You’re a married man yourself, I take it.”
The salesman wasn’t. He’d tried the double harness once and it hadn’t worked.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Doc murmured. “Now, I wonder if you could drive us down into Oklahoma? I can get some money there, and…”
“S-sure, I could! Glad to!” The salesman was pitiful in his eagerness. “Naw, I really mean it. I was figuring on taking a fling at Tulsa myself, just for kicks, y’know. I’m not due back in Chicago for three days yet, but I already made all my calls and…”
Doc slugged him with the gun barrel. The man grunted, and slumped forward. Carol gave him a shove, pushed him down on the floor of the car.
“Side road, Doc?” She spoke over her shoulder.
Back on the train, the boy in the cowboy suit napped, dined and resumed his wanderings. After a longer absence than usual, he returned to his mother, shouting brassily that he had just killed a robber man. “I did so, too!” he screamed, as she laughed indulgently. “I told him to stick ’em up an’ he didn’t so I poked him an’ he fell over dead, an’ the money he stole fell out of his pocket an’ I got it! I got it right here!” He pulled a thick sheaf of bills from his blouse, waved them about excitedly. Across the aisle, a man reached out and took it from him; frowned, startled, as he read the imprint on the paper banding. The Bank of Beacon City! Why, that was the place that had been robbed yesterday morning! He jumped up and went in search of the conductor.
Doc frisked the salesman, taking his wallet and all other identification. Then, with the whispering of the car’s radio fading behind him, he dragged the man down the ditch to the culvert and placed the gun muzzle inside his mouth. He triggered the gun twice. He shoved it back into his belt, began squeezing the now faceless body into the culvert.
“Doc!” Carol’s voice came to him urgently. “Doc!”
“Be right with you,” he called back easily. “Just as soon as I…”
The car’s starter whirred. The motor coughed, caught and roared. Doc hastily clambered up the side of the ditch, yanked open the door and climbed in.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Can’t I leave you for two minutes without…”
Then he broke off, listened incredulously to the newscaster’s staccato voice:
“…The man has been positively identified as Doc (Carter) McCoy, notorious bank robber and criminal mastermind. Police are certain that the woman with him is his wife, Carol. Their descriptions follow…”
10
Rudy Torrento and the Clintons started for California the morning after his arrival at their place. He was running a slight temperature, feeling worse than he had the day before. And Clinton suggested anxiously that they take it very easy for a day or so. But Rudy, fearful that Doc and Carol might get away from him, wouldn’t hear of it. They were going to make California in three days, see? Three days and nights of steady driving. He himself would take a turn at the wheel if he had to, and if he did have to, they’d wish that he hadn’t.
Then, late that evening, he heard the news about Doc and Carol; knew immediately that there was no longer any need for hurry. For certainly they would not be able to. The way things looked to him, he could probably roller-skate his way to California—and Golie’s tourist court—and get there ahead of them.
So he informed the Clintons amiably that he had changed his mind. He’d decided to take Clinty-boy’s advice after all, because what the hell was the use of having a doctor if you didn’t listen to him? Anyway, they’d take it easy like Clint said, just take their time and get a little fun out of the trip; and they’d start in right now by turning in at a good motel.
They took connecting cabins, but only for the sake of appearances. They used only one of them, the three of them sleeping crosswise and partly disrobed in one bed, with Fran Clinton in the middle.
“Now we won’t be getting lost from each other,” Rudy explained, grinning. “Clint won’t have to worry about me sneakin’ off to the police, and reporting him for practicing medicine without a license.”
Mrs. Clinton smirked lewdly. Rudy winked at her husband. “It’s okay with you, ain’t it, Clint? You’ve got no objections?”
“Why, no. No, of course not,” Clinton said hastily. “It’s, uh, very sensible.” And he winced as his wife laughed openly.
He did not know how to object. In his inherent delicacy and decency, he could not admit that there was anything to object to. He heard them that night—and subsequent nights of their leisurely journey westward. But he kept his back turned and his eyes closed, feeling no shame or anger but only an increasing sickness of soul.
Just inside the border of California, they stopped for a picnic lunch at a roadside tourist park. Afterward, while Rudy dozed in the car and Fran Clinton thumbed through a movie magazine, her husband wandered off among the trees.
He did not return. When they found him, he was lying face down in a pool of blood, one of his small hands still gripping the razor blade with which he had cut his throat.
Rudy dropped down to the ground at his side. Clutching himself, he began to rock back and forth, groaning and gasping with what Mrs. Clinton mistook for a paroxysm of laughter. She could hardly be blamed for her error. She had never seen Rudy grief-stricken; the Piehead, overwhelmed by sorrow or laughter, appeared much the same.
So she began to laugh—with him, she thought. And Rudy came abruptly out of his fit and slugged her in the stomach. He beat her black and blue; everywhere but in her face. Except that he needed her, he would have beaten her to death. Then he made her carry the body into the bushes and cover it over with rocks.
She never again gave him reason to beat her. On the contrary, no one could have been more worshipful or watchful of his whims. Yet hardly a day passed after their arrival at Golie’s that he did not pound and pummel her at least once. Because she annoyed him with her groveling. Because he was restless. Because he was very worried about Doc.
“Come on, boy,” he would mumble fiercely, sitting hunched in front of the radio. “You can do it, Doc! You done it before, an’ you can do it again!”
He seldom mentioned Carol in these injunctions; seldom thought of her. She would be with Doc, and as long as he was safe, so was she. Rudy couldn’t see them as splitting up, getting fed up to the point of wanting to split. Like ’em or not, those two were really nuts about each other. And Rudy was sure that nothing short of prison or death could break them up. Just in case, though…
Rudy grinned evilly, considering the impossible possibility of a falling out between Carol and Doc. It couldn’t happen, but if it did, it wouldn’t change a thing.
Carol needed Doc; she’d never been on the run before, and she’d never make it without him. And because she wouldn’t, Doc couldn’t split with her or let her split with him. She’d be too apt to rattle the cup on him. Buy herself a deal at his expense.
They were tied together, bound together inextricably. And Rudy roared with crazy laughter when he thought what would happen if either attempted any untying. That would be something to see, one of them trying to get the jump on the other. Hell, it would be like trying to do something with your right hand without letting the left know about it.
They were still very hot news. Rudy himself was mentioned frequently, but the focus was mainly on Carol and Doc.
They’d been seen in New York, Florida, and New Orleans. They’d boarded a train for Canada, a plane for South America, a ship for the Straits Settlements. It was mostly nut stuff, Rudy guessed, the kind of hooroosh that always sprang up around a big name or a big kill. But not all of it.
Doc had friends everywhere. The really slick rumor-planting—the stuff that got more than a second look from the cops—would be
their work, done to repay an old favor or simply to give a hand to a brother in need. One of their stunts even had Rudy going for a while.
Two stiffs were found in a burned-down house in Washington, D.C. They were charred beyond recognition, but of a size with Carol and Doc, and the woman’s almost melted ring bore the inscription D. to C. As a clinching bit of evidence, the fire-blackened refrigerator was found to contain several packets of small bills, all banded with Bank of Beacon City tape.
The police were sure they had found the remains of Carol and Doc. So, almost, was Rudy. Then some eager beaver of a lab hound had managed to raise a latent print on the man’s corpse, establishing him indisputably as an underworld in-and-outer who had acquired a bad name for reliability. And with this much to go on, the police hunted out the printing shop where the bank bands had been obtained. Aside from admitting that they had been made from his stock and type, the owner denied all knowledge of them. He was of the opinion, however, that the bands had been turned out during a burglary of his shop—said burglary having been duly reported to the police several days before.
So the hoax was exposed, if not the hoaxers. No one seemed interested in learning their identity. No one seemed to care who the woman had been. Rudy wondered about her in his weirdly oblique way, and was sullenly envious of Doc. The in-and-outer had been a bum, a no-good with neither the physical attractiveness nor the cash to attract a lady friend. So, apparently, Doc’s friends had arbitrarily provided him with one. Just any dame that met certain specifications. They weren’t sore at her, as they were with the man. It was a hundred to one that they didn’t even know her. They’d snatched her and bumped her simply to help Doc.
Rudy was forced to admit that he had no such good friends. Even little Max Vonderscheid would never kill anyone to help him. Not that he cared; if a double-crosser like Doc had friends, then he could do without ’em. But just the same…
