The Bitch

by Gil Brewer

  When the cab came, I had the driver take me out to Snell Isle. He kept telling me I’d had a big night, probably? I agreed, finally, and got out about a block from the Halquist place.

  There was no sign of the police. In the east, dawn was breaking very pale and gray, and I knew in another ten minutes it would be damned near daylight. I came along the wall enclosing the Halquist place and checked the gate. It was open. I went on in, running up across the lawn, and there was a light on in Thelma’s room. I cursed that, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I went behind the house to the garage. She was home, all right. Her Lincoln convertible was parked half in and half out of the garage. Morrell had sent her home on her own. I wondered where her car had been out there at the trailer park. There was a good chance he’d only used that park to meet me, not wanting me to know where he lived. It would be easy to check his private number, though.

  I reached the car, let off the emergency brake, slipped it into neutral and started pushing it out along the drive. It rolled easily, but it made one hell of a sound on the gravel. I expected Thelma to come reeling out the front door. But she had probably passed out across her bed, with the light on.

  Well, you can be wrong in a lot of ways. You become too damned sure of yourself the minute things start breaking for you.

  I was coming down across the drive, pushing by the door and steering, when she called to me. “Tate!”

  I started to push harder.

  “No, Tate!”

  She came running along beside me and grabbed my arm. Her eyes were all mixed-up, and she stank of gin and whiskey, but she wasn’t really drunk. Not inside. You could tell that easily.

  “Wait, Tate!”

  I jumped into the car just as it started to roll down the last incline of the drive toward the street, and put on the brakes. The car slid a little and stopped.

  She practically fell all over me. She was wearing a skirt and brassiere and she was in her bare feet. Her hair was all snarled up, and over there in the east, the sky began to redden quickly. Things began to come alive with that sickening rush of morning that can be so bad after a lousy night.

  “My, God, Tate—what happened to you?”

  “Never mind. You got home, I see?”

  “Tate, where are you going? You’ve got to take me with you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t mean like I said—just take me with you—someplace. Help me hide.”

  I looked at her and she was really scared. I couldn’t recall ever having seen a woman so scared. She kept flinging her hands out at me, pleading, and then holding her breasts, pleading. I looked at her and thought how comical real tragic fright can be. She held onto her breasts like that and her voice was blurred a little still from all the drinking she’d done, and her mind wasn’t working so well, but maybe it was more the fright than anything else.

  “It’s Johnny,” she said, swallowing. “He’s crazy—he’s gone out of his head. He phoned. He said you killed his brother, or something. He had Alex—you never met him, I promised Johnny I wouldn’t tell you about Alex, he was supposed to be checking on you—he had Alex go to your apartment or something and he just phoned and said you killed him.”

  “I didn’t. He’s got that wrong.”

  “But that’s not all. He says you ran with the money and he wants that money.” She came up to me and hung over me like that, her face very close to mine. “I don’t care about the money, Tate.” She was crying. “Johnny blames me. He says it’s all my fault that all of this happened. He says I talked him into it.” She was crying, the tears coming out of her eyes like rain, but not sobbing, not letting the crying affect her. She had changed. It could still be her condition from the whiskey. “He’s coming out here, he said. He said he’s going to come and get me and teach me what it’s all about.”

  “Maybe it’s for your own good, Thelma.”

  “Don’t talk that way!”

  “How do you want me to talk? I’ve got to get moving.”

  I reached out and took hold of her shoulders, turning on the car seat, and she pressed up against me, crying very silently, but not trembling or anything.

  “Where’s the money, Thelma?”

  I had said it just to see. You never knew.

  She shook her head, holding her head against me.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I never want to see that damned old money.”

  “You’ll change your mind when you sober up.”

  “Take me with you, Tate. I’ll be good to you.”

  “I don’t doubt that a bit. But I think you’d better run along and go to bed. I want to borrow your car for a while and that’s all. You can do me a big favor by not telling anybody about this, all right?”

  She nodded against me. We stayed that way for a minute. She began to calm down, you could tell by her breathing. What the hell can you do? I pushed her away a little and looked into her eyes.

  “Kiss me, Tate.”

  I kissed her lightly on the lips and she tried to smile, and then she did smile. She was all right, or as all right as she ever would be.

  “Now, go on in and run along to bed,” I told her.

  “Where are you going?”

  “That’s a big secret,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  I started the engine and sat there. I looked at her and made my eyes hard and grinned, not wanting to grin.

  “Remember,” I said. “Don’t tell anybody.”

  “I won’t, I promise.”

  That would be the best I could do.

  I backed out onto the street, straightened the wheel, then glanced in through the gate. She was standing there on the morning lawn, with the red in the sky in the east and it began to rain again, softly. She just stood there holding her skirt up, drying her eyes with the edge of her skirt. As I drove off, she waved at me.

  • • •

  I drove over onto 4th St. North, and when I reached that, I took 38th St. and headed out on Haines Road toward U. S. 19.

  On the main highway I started to open the car up, and was just rolling when I saw the cruiser up there.

  Road block.

  I made a U turn, braking hard, and the tires sang like a cage full of parakeets. I hit off on a macadam cut that led back toward town and pretty soon came to a dirt road I remembered might lead me out of this. There was the chance they didn’t have any block set up on this one. The only snag was, it would mean a big waste of time for me.

  The road was in bad condition from what I remembered. It was full of chuck-holes and one of the worst accordion-pleated strips I’d ever driven on. It began to knock hell out of the car, and the rain came down, sifting out of the sky seemingly without movement, just there, for you to drive through and live in. The beautiful red tinge in the east had been snuffed like a dying candle. It was going to be another one of those fine gray days, where the early morning fooled you like this one had. Florida can sometimes do that —though so seldom, that if you’re in the right mood you can enjoy it.

  I stuck to the dirt road, driving as fast as the car would stand. I paralleled the beach highway finally, came out on the macadam strip that runs through the orange grove country before you get to Clearwater. It was really morning now, and I sent up a little prayer for Janet’s safety. I was gambling all the time, taking a chance, and I didn’t like it. There had been a time when I used to say that was one of the big thrills in life—now it wasn’t anything at all. This particular gamble was hell.

  I thought about Sam back there on the floor of our apartment, with his ear hanging by a strip of skin.

  Once through Clearwater, I hit the dirt stretches again, winding along through the country, until I finally took the chance and made the cut toward U. S. 19 again.

  The main highway was wet and there wasn’t much traffic. After a while, I began to relax a little. I opened the car up and there was no sign of any road blocks now.

  • • •

  At seven-thirty by
the dash clock, I turned down the road that led to a fishing camp on the Talutchee River. Past the camp, I took to the dirt again, and finally, where the dirt road ended, secure in against the river and the jungle, was the old homestead where Janet’s mother had returned to live after her husband had died.

  It was really the swamp South, in here. Or the river South, whatever. Janet’s father had made a lot of money and taken them out of here, but something drew the old lady back, finally, from where they had lived in Fort Meyers.

  The house was a two storied, clapboard building, pretty much surrounded by jungle. Fake white columns had been erected on the small front porch, reaching to a small roof that came over the second floor front. The house was white and needed a paint job. The shingles on the roof curled a little in the gray rain. Rain dripped and splashed from huge oaks and cedar, and to the left of the house a giant, spreading banyan seemed to shower a rain of its own. The big leaves would fill with water and dump it one after the other.

  As I got out of the car a few feet from the front porch, I could hear the water coming down from that banyan, much louder than the rest of the rain. Beyond the house, through a screen of small pine and turk’s cap, you could see the freckled surface of the river. Mists still clung to the water, and the mists obscured the bend past the point.

  I went up on the steps and knocked.

  After a time I heard feet shuffling softly along the inside hallway, and the door opened. It was Janet’s mother.

  “Hi,” I said. “Thought I’d tag my wife up here, after all.”

  “Why,” she said. “It’s Tate, isn’t it?”

  “Sure.”

  She started to smile, then put one hand up against the side of her face. Her hair was white, her faintly wrinkled skin pink. Her eyes showed abrupt shock.

  “Son—what’s happened to you?”

  I had forgotten how I looked. I shoved on in through the doorway and closed the door and breathed the cool, old atmosphere of the house.

  “Where’s Janet,” I said. “Never mind me.”

  “Janet?” she said. “Why, Janet’s not here.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “She’s not here?”

  Janet’s mother shook her head. “Whatever made you think that? Isn’t she with you?”

  “No.”

  I moved on through the hall and into the parlor. Janet’s mother always called it the parlor. It was a large room to the left of the hall, with a very high ceiling, domed and with large patches of blue paint flecking off. Straight at the end of the hall, a circular staircase led to the second floor. There was no second floor over the parlor. Sometimes in the very hot months of summer, water dripped from the parlor ceiling—touched with faint grains of paint.

  I found a chair by an ancient Stromberg-Carlson console radio that she had brought “carried” back with her from Fort Meyers. She still talked about what such a fine radio it was. It wailed and shrieked like a drunken clarinet whenever you tuned a station in, and after you captured the elusive station, you fought the static and the whistles as you sat there in the evening and listened to Lowell Thomas. Because her husband had always listened to Lowell Thomas just before supper—so she had to carry that on. This was nothing against Mr. Thomas. It was nothing against anybody. It was just that I was very, very tired and ready to fall down, thinking these things, remembering, and maybe trying to find a single grain of peace among the grains of blue paint that fell lightly now and again to the worn surface of the old Oriental rug.

  “My boy, my boy,” she said, shuffling up to me. “Whatever has happened to you?”

  “You did say Janet wasn’t here, didn’t you.”

  She kept nodding slowly. She wanted to touch my face, so I let her. Her fingers trailed across my jaw and she turned and started to shuffle toward the back of the house. Then she turned and came back again.

  I lay back in the chair and watched her.

  I had been absolutely certain this was where Janet would be. There was no place else she would go of her own accord. I just sat there letting the waves of fear for Janet wash through me, watching the old lady.

  I could really feel the exhaustion creep up on me now.

  It was all a great big wonderful joke on me.

  The old lady wore a gray dress with a ruffle of white lace at the throat and cuffs and a gold locket around her throat. On her feet were heavy, worn carpet slippers. When she walked, she shuffled heavily on the fine old hardwood floors, across the rugs.

  ‘Tate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is Janet?”

  “She’s all right,” I said. “I just made a mistake, is all. Everybody’s entitled to a mistake, not so?”

  “Tate, have you been drinking again? Janet said—”

  “No. Nothing like it. I haven’t been at the bottle for over two years.”

  “I see. Then what happened to you?”

  “You mean my face.”

  “What’s left of it.”

  “I had a little argument with a guy.”

  “I see.” She nodded. “Tate, you look terrible, terribly tired. I reckon you had better go upstairs and lie down.”

  “I’m hungry, too.”

  “I’ll fetch you something.”

  She bustled and hustled, standing still. She clasped her hands and then unclasped them, and looked this way and that way and at me again. She tisked and she tusked.

  What the hell? I’d be no good to myself or anybody else unless I got some rest and some food inside me. I was literally shot. I was a wreck.

  I tried to get up out of the chair and it was like scaling a cliff. I finally made it and stood there swaying. I was sore all over, aching. My head had turned into a dark, throbbing tunnel of remote aches and pains.

  Then I was sitting at the dining room table eating soup. After that it was a plate of beef and gravy, and my head kept falling down almost into the plate. Finally I drank the glass of brandy that was in front of me and the next thing I knew, I was lying across a comfortable bed upstairs and Janet’s mother was covering me with a quilt.

  “Now, you sleep, son,” she said. “Everything will be all right.”

  Her pink face smiled down at me and I was asleep before she left the room.

  • • •

  I came awake conscious of the darkness. I looked over at the window and saw the sky out there, a star, then two stars, then nothing again. Clouds scudding across the moon-washed sky, and suddenly I realized I hadn’t just awakened naturally. Something had pulled me up out of sleep. I felt ill. My head throbbed and I was hot, and my stomach was sour. I lay there staring at the window, sorting out the shreds of what was left, where I was, what I had done, what I had to do, and then I knew what had rapped me up out of the deep black pit of sleep. It was a man’s voice, talking monotonously downstairs.

  I was half across the room, dragging the quilt with me almost at the instant of hearing. I tried to walk softly, opened the door and moved into the hall. I was still fully dressed. Almost immediately, I began to feel better with the movement. There was a stiffness to my face, but that was all.

  “No,” Janet’s mother said. Her voice quavered a little. “I don’t know what you mean, what you men want. I don’t know.”

  “Yes—you know,” Johnny Morrell said. “Don’t kid me.”

  I came along the upstairs landing.

  “Come on,” Morrell said. “He’s here someplace. His car’s right outside in the yard. He’s carrying a big sack with him—a canvas bag. Now, where’s that sack? Where’s he? Upstairs? Where’s your daughter? You’ve got them hid someplace around here, old girl.”

  “No,” Janet’s mother said softly.

  Sam’s trenchcoat was downstairs with my gun in the pocket, where Sam had put it. Sam’s gun wasn’t in my belt, I had no idea where it was.

  Caught up in self-blame, I stood there and cursed myself. I’d come here searching for Janet. Janet was the only thing left in my world and I couldn’t find her. I had to find her.
Everything else took on a shadowed, meaningless cast in the confusion of time and action.

  Morrell was down there and somebody was with him. Somehow they had trailed me here. How, I didn’t know—and didn’t care. They were here and that was enough, only how was I to deal with them?

  I couldn’t just leave the place by the back way and know that fine old lady would be left alone with them. There was no telling what they would do to her, because from the sound of Morrell’s voice there was no doubt in my mind that he believed I’d come here with the money. The money was all that meant anything to him—the money, and me, maybe, too.

  He thought I had killed his brother….

  “He upstairs?” Morrell said.

  She didn’t answer him.

  There was a loud slap.

  “Jesus, Johnny!” Stewart said. “You have to do that?”

  “He didn’t hurt me,” Janet’s mother said. “He’s not enough of a man to hurt me.”

  “No?” Johnny Morrell said. “I’ll show you, old girl—I’ll show you.”

  I started down the stairs.

  “Look,” the man called Bill said.

  They were in the hall. Janet’s mother stood a little away from them now and her gaze was on Morrell. They looked the same as they had last night; a little more tired, maybe, a bit more harassed, but otherwise the same. Morrell’s white suit was pretty well messed up.

  He turned and saw me on the stairs and Stewart ran across the hall with a gun in his hand.

  “Bring him down,” Morrell said lazily.

  “Oh, boy!” Stewart said. “Oh, boyoboyoboy!” He came up the stairs toward me and held the gun on me, grinning. “Have I got something for you!” he said. “Get down there.”

  I moved on down the stairs, trying not to look at Stewart. His face was bumped and bruised and there was a long scar across his forehead from that broom handle. I knew his head must be a field of lumps.

  “Bill,” Morrell said. “Check for Morgan’s wife.” He turned to Janet’s mother. “She here?”

  She shook her head.

  “Like I thought,” Morrell said. “She wouldn’t tell the truth, anyway. “Go ahead, Bill—check for signs of her. Comb the place.”