April Evil

by John D. MacDonald

  “Full house,” Marty said miserably. “Queens full of threes.”

  This was no longer a dream. This was nightmare. As Stauch started to pull the pot in, Dil reached over quickly and took his two checks.

  “What’s up?” Stauch asked, his voice much sharper.

  “I just thought I’d consolidate these into one,” Dil said. The room which had grown very still became noisy again as Marty started to deal a new hand.

  “Sure. You do that,” Stauch said.

  Dil made out the check for thirty-five hundred. He made it out all except the date. As casually as he could, he said, “Jim, I’ll have to transfer more cash into this account. You mind if I date this a week ahead?”

  Again the room was still. After a few moments Stauch said, “That’ll be okay, Dil.”

  Dil wrote another check for two hundred worth of chips. He played automatically. He won about a hundred and fifty dollars. At the end of the evening he cashed up and got his check for two hundred back and found that he was out three hundred and fifty of the five hundred he had started with, plus the thirty-five hundred check. Thirty-eight hundred and fifty dollars loser. In the history of the game others had lost more in one evening, but not a great deal more. Dil had never lost more than four hundred before. When the game broke up the others told him, a little too jovially, that he’d had one of those nights.

  That heavy loss had changed his whole idea of himself. He had always been an optimistic man. Nothing had ever worked out very well for him, but he had never ceased to feel that sooner or later he would hit something that would pay off very well. The optimism was seriously shaken. He could not think beyond the thirty-five hundred dollar check. He knew he could not meet it. He knew he had no way of meeting it. He told himself that good old Jim Stauch would understand, and give him a break. Stauch would tear the check up and say, “You pay me when you get the chance, Dil.”

  But it wasn’t going to be that way. He had the uneasy feeling that Jim Stauch knew the exact state of his finances, and had known even as the checks were being written that there was no money behind them.

  He phoned Jim the day before the check could be presented for payment. “Jim? Dil Parks. Jim, I want to talk about that check.”

  “What check, Dil?”

  “The check I gave you when we played poker.”

  “Oh, that check. What do you want to say about it?”

  “I’d appreciate it, Jim, if you’d give me one more week on that. You know I’m good for it.… Jim, are you still there?”

  “I’m still here. You want another week.”

  “That’s right, Jim.”

  “Then I guess that’s the way it has to be. One more week, Dil. I’ll hold it for another week if that’s the way you want it.”

  He had had odd thoughts during the week, thoughts that were not like him. After all, it was a gambling debt. Could Stauch force collection? Maybe it was time to go away. Just get in the car and go. He sat at his desk and he could hear his heart thump. Too much weight. Bad load on the heart. Too much drinking. Things weren’t supposed to end this way. Not a fat man of almost forty sitting at a desk and listening to his own heart. He wished he could stop thinking that it was some kind of end, some sort of finish. Things would go on as always. They had to go on. Things just didn’t stop. A check was a piece of paper. A piece of paper couldn’t put an end to all the golden dreams. Lennie was no good. She didn’t understand how things could be. She got impatient if you tried to talk about money and cutting down.

  He sat at his desk waiting for Jim Stauch. Stauch hadn’t wanted to talk about the check over the phone. He said he’d stop by. Dil wanted to get up and leave. Stauch would wait around and then leave. But that wasn’t the way.

  When he looked up, Stauch was standing in the doorway. It wasn’t the genial talkative Jim Stauch of the poker table, of the fish fry, of the Elks Club. This was a Mr. Stauch with an unsmiling face.

  “Come right on in and sit down, Jim,” Dil said heartily.

  Stauch came in and sat down. He put his hat on the corner of the desk. He bit the end of a cigar and spat the shred of tobacco into a corner in the general direction of the waste basket.

  “You can’t cover that check.” It was statement, not question.

  “I can, but it’s a matter of time.”

  “I put checks in that pot. If you’d won you’d have cleared them the next morning. They were as good as cash. I won them back and tore them up, but they were as good as cash. I guess you know that.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “If you’d had the guts to put an IOU in the pot, it would have been up to me as to whether I wanted to gamble on accepting them. In effect those checks of yours were IOU’s. But I didn’t know that. I thought they were as good as my checks.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Jim.”

  “I don’t give a damn whether you’re glad or sorry. I don’t like to be taken. I gamble for money. You lied your way into that pot and you lost. If you’d won, I’d never have known the difference. You’re a born liar, Parks. You’re incompetent. You aren’t worth a God damn.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  “I’ll talk to you any way I feel like talking to you because I bought you. I bought you for thirty-five hundred bucks. Until I get that money, I own you. When do I get it?”

  “I told you it’s just a matter …”

  “Of time. Maybe years. Sure. All right, Parks. How much is the mortgage on your home?”

  “Around twenty-two thousand.”

  “You can’t borrow any more on it. I checked this automobile agency. You haven’t got much equity in it, and the franchise isn’t worth much. How about jewelry? Your wife got much?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s going to have to be the house. It’s on good land. It ought to go for about thirty-five thousand.”

  “More than that.”

  “If we wait a year, maybe. We’ll ask forty and take thirty-five. After you pay me my thirty-five hundred and pay the real estate cut of seventeen fifty, you’ll have about eight clear. You can put that out as a down payment on a place that’ll fit your income better than the house you have now does. There’s only two of you. If you’re smart you’ll pick out some little place you can pick up for about nine or ten thousand. It’ll cut your living expenses.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’m the most serious man you ever met, Parks.”

  “I can’t get rid of the house. What will I tell Lenora?”

  “Tell her you lost it in a poker game. You should have told her already. Didn’t you have guts enough to tell her?”

  “I don’t think you can force me to sell my house to collect on a gambling debt.”

  Stauch leaned back. “I was waiting for that. This isn’t a gambling debt. It’s a bad check. I can sue you and take your house if I have to. But I don’t like suits. I can do a hell of a lot of things to you, Parks. I can get this crummy franchise lifted. I can get the bank to bear down on you. I’ve got weight in this town, and I don’t like to use it unless I have to.”

  “But there’s my uncle. He …”

  “He’s a rich man. I know that. And he doesn’t think you’re worth a damn.”

  “He’s an old man.”

  “And he probably won’t leave you a dime. I’m not interested in contingencies. I want cash. Pick up that phone and call any real estate agent you want. I want to hear you list that house, Parks.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now.”

  “Can’t you give me a week?”

  “Why? Why should I?”

  “Why don’t you let me give you another check? For a little more? It would be just as good as the one you have. I mean, the money would still be there, in the house, for a bigger check. I could make it for thirty-six hundred. Thirty-seven?”

  “Make it a nice round four thousand, Parks.”

  “Five hundred dollars for another week?”

  “I’ll
give you a break. I’ll make it two weeks. Two weeks from today.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Not as much as thirty-five hundred you don’t have. Write it out. No, damn it. How stupid do you think I am? Don’t write it on the agency account.”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Dil said humbly.

  He wrote a check for four thousand on his personal account, dating it two weeks ahead. Stauch gave him the old check. Stauch turned in the doorway and said, “If you didn’t have the money you should have stayed away from that game, Parks.”

  Long after he had gone, Dil tore up the old check. Two weeks. What could he do in two weeks? He thought of the old man and the money the old man kept in the big safe. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all. What good was that money to the old man? But there wasn’t any way to get the money.

  There had been a chance, once. Long ago. That time Uncle Paul had sent him up to New York with cash and with the long list of things to buy. He had met the woman on the train. She had just acquired a Florida divorce. She was going to New York to look for work, she said.

  Four days later he had awakened at noon in a third rate hotel room, with a monstrous clattering crashing hangover, soiled, wrinkled clothing, no luggage, and sixty-five cents in his pocket. The fourteen hundred dollars was gone, and the woman was gone, and there was an inch of bourbon left in a bottle. Uncle Paul had wired the money to come home on. But that was the end of it. The end of meager trust.

  He remembered the black despair of that hotel room. But he had bounced back. He had forgotten it. The golden years were coming. Soon after that he had found Lenora, the girl to share the golden years. But somehow things had not worked out. Too many years had gone by. Life with the golden girl was an armed truce. He was heavy, and his head ached, and his heart pounded, and the lunch eaten hours before was an indigestible heaviness in his stomach. For the first time in his life he wondered what it would be like to die by your own hand.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ronnie had retrieved coat, hat and suitcase, and stood on the proper corner at the proper time. There was a light at the corner, and a vacant cab stand. A gray Buick swung in toward the curb and the driver tapped the horn ring lightly, three times. Ronnie had opened the suitcase in the men’s room at the station. The topcoat hung over his arm, covering his hand. He held a short-barreled Colt .38 in the concealed hand, a Detective Special. His other hand gun, a .357 Magnum, was still in the suitcase. Neither gun had ever killed. He had a proper license for both of them.

  As with other guns in the past, once they had been used, he would dispose of them. No casual toss into shallow water. No quick throw into heavy brush. He would strip the gun down into its component parts. He would malform the barrel with a heavy sledge. He would bury the parts separately with as much care as though he were disposing of the body itself.

  Ace opened the door and Ronnie got into the car and pulled the door shut. “Greetings,” he said.

  “You look sharp,” said the Ace.

  “I’m a tourist. A nice sharp tourist. How’s Mullin?”

  “Jumpy. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Are you jumpy too, Ace?”

  “I don’t much like working with him. And I don’t like working with you. But this one smells fat.”

  “I have no opinion about working with you. We have different specialties.”

  “Thank God for that. You give me the God damn creeps, kid. What are you doing in a deal like this?”

  “A change of pace.”

  “It better be a change. Just wave the gun. Don’t use it.”

  “I was told Mullin was running this.”

  “He is. But I want it to be smooth.”

  “Where’s the pad? Out of town?”

  “Not far from here. Nice place. Mullin brought a woman.”

  “Is that bright?”

  “She’s all right. Name of Sally Leon. She’ll be no trouble.”

  “So you don’t like working with me, Ace.”

  “No.”

  Ronnie shrugged and left it at that. He had long since gotten accustomed to the attitude of those who had heard rumors about him. They could understand reasons for death. Woman trouble. Or a cross. Or a quick profit. But they couldn’t understand the executioner. Or feel comfortable with him.

  “Is this a bank?” Ronnie asked.

  “Hell no! Where have you been? Nobody messes with banks any more. It’s too federal. Just punks try it. It doesn’t work any more. It isn’t professional.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Mullin can brief you. Here we are, anyhow. There isn’t time to go into it.”

  They went into the kitchen. The woman sat at the kitchen table reading a magazine. Ronnie had slipped the revolver into his side pocket. It had been a precaution. He did not like getting into strange cars. Something could have gone sour. Somebody could have tipped the Ace. But it was still all set. So the gun could be put aside until the right time came.

  The woman looked up. Ace said, “Sal, this is Ronnie.”

  Ronnie nodded. He liked the way she looked. He liked big blonde women. This one had no arrogance. She seemed quiet and humble and acquiescent. She acted beat down.

  He knew why when Mullin came out into the kitchen. The man looked lean, mean and jumpy. He needed a shave. “Hello, kid. We’ve been waiting. Come on in the other room. You’re due for a briefing.”

  They went into the big living room. Ronnie sat beside Ace on the couch. Mullin paced back and forth and outlined the proposition. Ronnie listened and found himself liking it. It sounded safe. It sounded profitable. He’d been told to use his own judgment.

  “How many in the house again?”

  “The old man. A chunky colored boy about forty-five. A punk about twenty-five or six, and his wife about twenty-two or three.”

  “So why did you need me?”

  “I asked for a gun. Ace is on the box. You have to think about the car too. Two can be risky. I’m too hot to contact local talent. I need somebody recommended. I want to figure it all so it will go smooth. Like silk and cream. No pain and no strain. And no shooting unless it has to be that way. You understand that?”

  “I understand it.”

  “What did you bring?”

  “A Detective Special and a Magnum.”

  “I’ve got a Luger and six clips. Ace has got nothing. Ace, you want the Magnum?”

  “I’ve never carried one in my life. I’m not starting here.”

  “You saw the layout, Ace. Tell him.”

  “High stone fence around a half acre of land. Phone lines come in over the fence from the west. Big iron gate in the front. Usually it’s closed, and probably locked. The first-story windows on the stone house are barred. I got a glance at the garage. Two car deal and it looks like the jig lives over it. It is set into the northwest corner of the area. The house is about in the middle.”

  “Burglar alarms?”

  “Maybe. We don’t know yet. We’ve got to make sure of that, Harry says.”

  “How do we do that?”

  Mullin spoke up. “The Ace has checked on the punk. He’s the only one who leaves the place. He goes to town about every other afternoon. He sponges drinks, does a little bowling. Ace knows him by sight. You make the contact with him. You and Sal. Buy him drinks. Tell him he’s a great guy. You know the routine. He stayed home today. Tomorrow, Thursday, he’ll probably go into town. He drives an old tan Chev. You’ll get what you can out of him. If you load him right, maybe he’ll take the pair of you back to the house. That would be the best, but maybe it won’t be necessary.”

  “Fine,” Ronnie said. “I go back to the house, maybe wearing a sign that says thief?”

  “Don’t sweat. They won’t check you too close. When we go in for the score we go in wearing masks. The Ace picked them up today at the five and dime. Ape masks. Good ones. Two bucks apiece. They’ll be so busy with looking at the ape faces, they won’t see anything else. Sal stays in
the car. She gives us the horn if anything goes sour outside. Go get the map, Ace.”

  The big man brought the map back. He unfolded it and the three of them knelt on the floor. It was a decorative map of Flamingo, in color, with pictures of palm trees and orange trees.

  “Here,” said Mullin, “is where we are. There’s the Tomlin house. If everything goes all right tomorrow, we can set it for five o’clock on Friday. There won’t be any deliveries to the house after that time. It will be the best time to do it. If it goes right, we can be out of there by five-thirty. Here’s the route I marked. Ace said the streets are okay. Five miles east of here we run into the Tamiami Trail. Route 41. We can follow that right up to Tampa. We’ll try to get a motel as near the city as we can. There’s a lot of vacancies right now. Sticking to the speed limit, it should take us about an hour and a half to get to Tampa. We make the split right there, and we split up right there. You can leave by train or plane or whatever you think you want to do.”

  “It sounds all right,” Ronnie said. “If it’s one-tenth the money you think is in there, it still sounds all right.”

  “It better be more than a tenth. I need more than a tenth. Here’s the routine when we go in. We round up the four of them. You keep a gun on them while the Ace takes a look at the box. He has some stuff to work with. If it looks too rough, we’ll have to persuade the old guy. Roughing up the girl will probably do it. Once we get it open, we have to keep them quiet. Tomorrow try to find out if there’s any place in the house where we can lock them up. We could use an hour. Ace will have the plates dirtied up. I’m going to have to ditch the car, so watch prints. And watch prints in the house here, too. Once the time is set, we’ll give the house a good cleaning.”

  They talked some more. Ace brought in three cans of beer. Ronnie sat in a deep chair and sipped the beer. He reminded himself to wipe the beer can clean before throwing it out. It wouldn’t make much difference if the others forgot that little detail.