South of Heaven

by Jim Thompson

  “One more thing, Burwell. You tell the Longs for me that I’m pretty good at joking myself, and I’ll give ’em a sample of it if there’s any more talk about killing or robberies!”

  There was a sharp click as he broke the connection.

  I sorted through my change, found enough to call the Matacora county attorney. He was expecting it, having just received a call from Darrow.

  “Burwell, huh?” he grunted. “What you been drinking, boy? Speak up, dammit! A man ought to lay off the stuff if he can’t handle it.”

  “I’m not drunk!” I said. “I haven’t had a damn thing! All I.…”

  “Well, drink something, then. Get your mind off of gals for a while. That’s your trouble, Burwell. Thinkin’ about gals instead of drinkin’. Worst thing in the world for a man.”

  “Please,” I begged. “If you’ll just listen to me, sir.…”

  “No time, boy. No time. Now sober up and you’ll feel a hell of a lot better in the morning.”

  He hung up.

  So did I. Baffled, frustrated, confused, hardly knowing whether to bawl or laugh.

  I came out of the booth and stood there in the night for a moment, letting the cooling wind wash over my face.

  Darrow had had an answer for everything: about Higby, the Longs, Carol—everything. And all his answers were logical. What he’d said made a hell of a lot more sense than what I’d said. It didn’t actually, but it seemed to.

  How could anyone believe that Longden hadn’t been kidding? That he wasn’t just having some fun with a green kid? How could anyone believe that he’d tell me he was going to commit a robbery if he really intended to do it?

  The fact was, of course, that he’d told me because he’d had to.

  What I’d gotten out of Carol had pointed me toward the truth. Higby’s reaction to my payday hint had just about wrapped it up. All I needed was to think on it a little and I’d be running to the sheriff. So Longden had done the only thing he could do. And I’d walked right into the trap.

  Darrow was smart. If I’d only told him what I suspected and why, the odds were that he would have seen things as I did, and the Longs would have been jailed and Carol would have been free. But instead of just telling him what I’d suspected, I’d told him what Longden had told me, and when Darrow had laughed and teased me about it.…

  Of course, he’d laughed! Who wouldn’t? I should have laughed with him, agreed that it did sound crazy while pointing out just how smart that craziness was. If I’d only done that, behaving reasonably and sensibly instead of losing my temper and shouting and calling him a crook—but I hadn’t done that.

  I’d acted like a fool. I’d acted like one, and he’d treated me like one.

  I winced, remembering; realizing that I’d washed myself up with the only people who could have helped. I could never turn to them again, no matter what happened, no matter what the Longs did. I’d lost Carol for all time, and it was my own damned fault. I felt so low-down miserable and mad at myself that I groaned out loud.

  “Dammit! Dammit to hell, anyway! How stupid can a guy get?”

  “Now, don’t you feel bad about it, Tommy boy.” Longden ambled out of the shadows surrounding the booth. “C’mon and I’ll give you a lift back to camp.”

  24

  The car, Carol’s housecar, was parked behind one of the town’s abandoned buildings. Longden drove cross-lots until he was out of town and had picked up the rutted trail into camp. He kept the lights off, the motor merely purring as it raced. We slid through the night like phantoms, the black car almost invisible, virtually silent.

  “A real good wagon, ain’t she, Tommy, boy?” Longden chuckled proudly. “What do you figure she cost us, huh? Just make a guess.”

  “I don’t give a damn,” I said. “Where’s Carol?”

  “Why, she’s just fine, Tommy, boy. Got some fellas keepin’ an eye on her while I’m out dry-runnin’. Don’t you ever worry about Carol, Tommy. There ain’t no time that we ain’t got someone lookin’ out for her.”

  “How?” I said. “By giving her black eyes? Slapping her around?”

  “Aw, naw. O’ course not. That ain’t hardly ever been necessary. It’s a lot easier an’ nicer just to keep her broke and have her watched. And we don’t always have to do the watchin’; not as long as she knows that someone just might be doin’ it.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “You’re real smart, you are.”

  It wasn’t any compliment the way I meant it, but it was the truth. When it came to thinking up new angles in crime, the Longs—particularly, Longie—were in a class by themselves. The setup of the gang itself was unlike that of any other gang.

  Back in the beginning, before they’d had a gang, the Longs had gotten themselves so well-known that it was just about impossible for them to conceal their identity. So they no longer made much of an effort to. Instead, they made sure that no member of the gang was ever recognized or caught.

  Most gang bosses stayed safely in the background, sometimes taking no part in a job except for the planning. But the Longs were out in front every step of the way, keeping their gang members in the background. And no one ever knew how many were in the gang, because it wasn’t always apparent who was in it.

  A member of the gang might be in the place being robbed disguised as a workman. Or he might turn out to be a “customer” or a passerby. The Longs only pulled big jobs, ones upward of fifty thousand dollars. It would always be a bank job or the payroll of a big factory, or something of the kind. A place with a lot of people around. One of those people, almost any one of ’em, might belong to the gang. And he’d have you dead at the first wrong move you made.

  It had been a hell of a long time since anyone had made a move against the gang during a holdup. For all anyone knew, they might have given up their hidden-man technique, but no one took the only way of finding out. You don’t have to convince people very often when you do it by killing.

  The Long brothers had gone to prison several times. They could afford to; just as quickly as they were in and out. But the gang remained on the outside, every man of them. Tremendously loyal to the brothers, raising huge sums of money for them; functioning like a well-oiled machine through their years of working together.

  And now, at last, the Longs had blundered. It wouldn’t help Carol, but they had made one heck of a mistake in tackling the robbery of the pipeline payroll.

  “Yeah, Tommy, boy?” The car was slowing, coming to a stop. “Yeah?” Longden turned in the seat and grinned at me. “Got somethin’ troubling you?”

  “You’re going to have something troubling you,” I said. “You and everyone in your gang is.”

  “Gang? What makes you think we got a gang, Tommy?”

  “Because I’m not stupid. There’s six hundred men in camp—six hundred! And they’re not the sort to sit and twiddle their thumbs while someone walks off with their pay. It’ll take a dozen armed men to handle ’em, and they won’t have any gravy train doing it!”

  “Well, now, gee whiz, by ding!” he drawled. “You seen right through me, Tommy, boy. But what about this trouble we’re supposed to get into? Where’s that supposed to come in?”

  I said the trouble was going to be in the getaway, and he raised his brows, putting on as though he was puzzled. He said he’d thought they had everything planned pretty perfect, but maybe he’d better run through it from the beginning.

  “We got this car, now, a car that can just about stand up on its hind legs and turn handsprings. And we got me drivin’ it, comes getaway time. And you see how I drive, Tommy, boy; how I learn the area so well around a job that I can drive it in the dark with the lights off. I always do that, y’know, Tommy. I do it even when I don’t have to, because a fella just never knows when havin’ to is. He might have to, without knowin’ that he does, y’know? But mainly it’s a test. It’s a way of making sure that I’ve got the whole area laid out in my mind, every little twist and turn and bump. The only way. If I can drive i
t in the dark.…”

  “I get your point,” I said. “Go on.”

  “Well, then, there’s Carol. We kept her out of things her whole life, sent her away to school and all an’ treated her fine, just savin’ her for something special like this. So no one has ever big-eyed her. No one knows that she ain’t just what she appears to be, a hustler makin’ a pipeline. She’s been there all along, and now everyone’s used to her. An’ no one ever figures that she’s totin’ guns and ammunition, an’.…”

  “Go on,” I said. “Get to something I don’t know. You pull the robbery, and then what?”

  “Why, we just take off, that’s what. Just like we always do.”

  “But there’s a big difference this time. This time you’ll all be exposed. The law will be looking for all of you, instead of just you and your brothers. When you’re caught, there’ll be no one on the outside to work for you and raise money.”

  He nodded solemnly. Too solemnly to mean it. “Yeah, Tommy. But you said we’d have trouble gettin’ away.”

  “That’s the trouble. In having to get away. All of you, I mean. You’ll all have to leave the country or get caught.”

  “So what’s the problem? This here car’ll carry a dozen men as easy as apples, an’ we’re sittin’ right on the doorstep of Mexico.”

  He nodded again, eyes twinkling. Looking as solemn as all get-out. I said he knew damned well what I meant, so why pretend that he didn’t?

  “Now, Tommy, boy,” he drawled. “Now, that ain’t nice, Tommy. Here you are practically a member of the family and you’ve sort of taken on the job of reportin’ us to the sheriff an’.…Why would I joke a fine, upstanding, young fella like you?”

  “Forget it. To hell with you,” I said.

  “Tell you what I’ll do, Tommy. You square me away on what this problem is, an’ I’ll let you see Carol. You can be alone with her for, oh, three or four hours. Okay?”

  “Knock it off,” I said. “You wouldn’t dare let me go near her. If she knew I was still here and intended to stay, you wouldn’t be able to kill me like you’ve threatened. And that threat is the only hold you have over us.”

  He said it made him feel plumb bad to hear me talk that way. Danged if it didn’t sound just like I didn’t trust him or somethin’.

  “C’mon an’ tell me, Tommy, boy,” he wheedled. “What have you got to lose, anyway? I figure you got somethin’ plenty important to say, an’ I’m willing to pay the price to hear it!”

  “Well.…” I hesitated, studying him. Certain that he was lying but hoping that he wasn’t. Wanting to see Carol so bad that I would have believed anything.

  “I’m tellin’ the God’s truth, Tommy.” He held up a hand as though swearing. “You just show me where the problem is, an’ I’ll let you see Carol.”

  I said, yeah, sure he would. Maybe he’d let me start to see her, but I’d get killed on the way. He pointed out casually that he’d hardly go through all that trouble when he could kill me right then and there if he wanted to.

  “Not that I do want to, Tommy, boy. I would if I had to, but it ain’t somethin’ I’m anxious for. The sheriff knows you’re stickin’ here, no matter what, so if he should come lookin’ for you.…” He spread his hands expressively. “Now c’mon an’ tell me, boy. You do me a favor, an’ I’ll do you one.”

  I told him what the problem was.

  He waited, watching me interestedly. “Yeah, Tommy?”

  “What do you mean, yeah?” I said. “That’s it.”

  “What’s it?”

  “What I just told you, dammit!”

  “Yeah? Maybe you better spell it out for me.”

  “But…! All right,” I said. “It’s a big payroll. One heck of a pile of money. But it isn’t much when it has to be your last job. It’s not nearly enough for a dozen men who have to spend the rest of their lives in a foreign country.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Of course, it isn’t. You’d need twice that much, anyway!”

  “Yeah?”

  “To hell with you!” I said. “I’ve told you about umpteen times already, and you just sit there saying, yeah! You’re not deaf, are you? Well? What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

  “Just lonesome, Tommy. Just dyin’ for amusin’ company. Y’ know, this is a plumb hard life I lead, boy. Workin’ day and night, you might say, doin’ the same thing over and over. So when a real amusin’ fella like you comes along.…What’s the matter, Tommy? You ain’t sore at me just because I can’t see where the problem is?”

  I gritted my teeth. I said, all right, I’d go through it one more time.

  “You Longs and your men have to live in Mexico the rest of your lives. You can’t operate down there and you can’t come back here. All right then. The men will be paid for two weeks’ work, plus overtime. Some draw very big pay, some middling, some—most of ’em—bottom scale. Averaging them all up, it figures out to, well.…”

  “Call it a little better than a hundred a piece, Tommy. Maybe sixty-five, seventy thousand for the lot. So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem,” I said slowly, like I was talking to a four-year-old kid. “The problem is that it’s not enough money. You need a minimum of twice that much! Now, do you finally understand that? Have you finally got it through your thick skull?”

  “We-el.…” He scratched his head. “Well, I understand that part, Tommy. I can see that, all right. But there’s one leetle thing I don’t understand.”

  “What’s that?” I said. “What don’t you understand?”

  “What the problem is.…”

  …He was still whooping with laughter as I slammed out of the car and started walking toward camp.

  25

  As I’ve said, that took place at the end of my first afternoon on the dope gang. And two nights later, as I’ve said, Four Trey and I had our talk and patched things up between us.

  We’d gone out on the prairie to talk, and I remained there a while after he’d sauntered back to his tent. It was nice there. The wind came to me across hundreds of miles of unobstructed prairie, so clean and sweet smelling. After inhaling dope fumes all day, I couldn’t get enough of it.

  The sun went down, and dusky-dark came on. I pushed myself up from the grass and went back to my tent. I started thinking about Carol again—or still, I should say, because I never really stopped thinking about her. I sat on the edge of my bunk, the nighttime glooms settling over me, wishing that I was to hell and gone from here and that Carol was with me.

  The tent was noisy. It always was at this time of evening, but with payday right on top of us—the day after tomorrow—it was worse than ever. Everyone seemed to be grabassing or talking at the top of his lungs. Everyone was full of piss and high spirits, planning on how he was going to poop off his dough.

  A stiff threw a handful of orange peelings at me. I jumped up, ready to poke him one. Then decided to let it go as he laughed and waved to me. He wanted to know if I’d be dealing blackjack again. I said, “What do you think?” And he laughed again and said he was all set to pin my ears back.

  I took off my shoes and lay down on the bunk, turning my back so that everyone would know I wanted to be left alone. The guys nearest me took the hint and moved their racket up toward the front of the tent, and I went back to thinking about Carol.

  There was only one thing to do, as I saw it. Since no one would help me, no one would get her away from the Longs, I’d have to do it myself.

  How, I didn’t know. I didn’t have the faintest idea. If I could get to see her, to talk to her, there was a good chance of getting her safely away. We could just fade out into the prairie, and if you really wanted to lose yourself in that prairie, you were just as good as lost. Why, hell, you could get lost mighty easy without wanting to, and people could look forever without finding you.

  We could escape on foot or, with luck, we could make it in the car. Get to someplace where the law knew their business, instead of being like Darrow, and we�
�d have a happy ol’ time together from then on out. Anyway, I was pretty sure we’d be all right, once I got to her. But how in heck was I going to do that?

  How could I get to see her with the Longs watching all the time?

  The way I figured, I’d never get but one chance. If I tried and ran into them that would wrap it up and put a button on it. I’d disappear, and no one would ever know but what I’d just decided to take off.

  Maybe there’d be some tall wondering about it; some questions asked. But no one could prove anything, and I’d still be dead. So.…

  Above the racket of the tent, I heard the sudden roar of a flatbed. Then another and another. From outside there was a rising clamor of voices, with Higby’s crisp peremptory voice rising above them.

  I rolled over on my bunk and sat up. Higby threw back the flap of the tent and looked in; hard of face, cold eyes sweeping from one man to another.

  “All right.” He began to point, singling out one man after another and gesturing them curtly outside. “All right, swarm out of here! Move, goddammit! Leave your bags and grab your rags!”

  They got up uncertainly, wonderingly. There was a rumble of complaint, of questions: What the hell was up, anyway? Higby said to swarm out and find out.

  “You back there!” he pointed. “What the frig are you waiting on? And you and you and you! By Christ, if I have to tell you again…!”

  His eyes rested on me, my burned and puffy face. They passed over me, and he turned and went back through the flap.

  Grumbling and cursing, the men poured out of the tent. I put on my shoes and moved up front. Stood looking out into the night.

  Men were loading up on the flatbeds. As fast as one was loaded, it pulled away from camp, motor roaring, and headed up-line. In all there were four of them—four truckloads of men.

  Seated side by side on the last truck were the Long brothers.

  “Got out of it, huh, Tommy?” It was Wingy Warfield. “Well, you ought to, pal, you ought to. Bad enough to burn a man’s face off without working his ass off.”