by Gil Brewer
Bill wandered off.
I stepped onto the hall floor and Stewart moved along beside me. The funny thing was, nobody knew where that money was. It had to be with Janet. But where was Janet?
“All right, Morgan,” Morrell said. His voice was tired. “You’ve done a lot of things since I last saw you, eh?”
“Have it your way.”
“You killed my brother, Morgan.”
I shook my head. Janet’s mother gasped. I turned to her and said, “Just don’t listen to anything he says. Someday you’ll find out the truth, I hope.”
“What’ll we do with him, now?” Stewart said.
“Wait,” Morrell said, holding up his hand. “Why did you go and kill my brother, Morgan?”
“You won’t believe anything I say, so why ask me? For the record, I didn’t. I found him dead in my apartment when I got there.” Then I wished I hadn’t said that. It would point to Janet, if he started thinking. Morrell didn’t have quite the line on this thing that I did, but he would arrive in time.
Morrell kept watching me. Then he sighed. “Alex talked his way into this. He should have kept out of it. Something was due to happen to him sooner or later. I’m half inclined to believe you didn’t kill him, Morgan. Somehow you don’t come off in my mind as a killer. Maybe I’m wrong. I was plenty hot about that a few hours ago, but I’ve had time to think about it a lot, coming up here. I’m not forgetting it—but at the same time, I’m letting it lay for a while, until I think some more. I don’t know quite what I want to do about it.”
“How did you know I was up here?”
“Well, that’s one of those things. Thelma told us, about an hour and a half ago.”
“Thelma?” This got me a little, because there was no possible way she could know about where I had come.
Morrell nodded. “Little Thelma. She doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going. What with her old man, and me—I had her really scared. I had a notion she might have got to you, Morgan.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Late this afternoon, she found a letter in her driveway. It was written by your wife, addressed to her mother, right here—it said your wife was coming up here. It looked to me as if you dropped it, Morgan. Thelma got to thinking and she couldn’t stand believing you had lied to her. She figured you did have the money, and you had gone up to meet Janet here. And that’s what I figured. Thelma told me how you took her car, and all. Don’t you know she can’t keep anything under her hat, Morgan? That letter was pretty soggy, but readable, anyway.”
So that was it. Somehow I had dropped that damned letter when I was pushing Thelma’s car out of the drive.
Morrell brought the letter and envelope, still damp, from his pocket and handed them to me. The paper was wadded. The ink had run. But you could read what Janet had written.
“So,” Morrell said. “I want to know where the money is, Morgan. I’m not giving up on that. Not now. And, of course, there’s a little something to settle about the death of my brother. I still don’t quite know what I want to do.”
I didn’t say anything. Bill came back from his circuit of the house.
“Not a sign of her, Johnny. She hasn’t been here.”
“Uh-huh.” He turned to Janet’s mother. “Grandma, you going to tell us what we want to know?”
She had been standing there, just listening, her hands clasped at her waist. The place still showed lividly on her pink cheek where Morrell had slapped her. I felt sorry for her, I wished I could do something for her. I wasn’t even able to help myself. She still wore the same gray dress with the ruffles that she’d had on this morning when I came in. The old clock in the hallway read a quarter to eight now, so I’d had quite a sleep.
Janet’s mother watched Morrell now, and shook her white head with a slow kind of helplessness.
“We’d better tie her up,” Morrell said. “We can’t let her run around loose.”
“Come off it,” I said. “What can she do? Let her alone. She hasn’t got anything you want. She’s not going to try to do anything.”
“I won’t do anything,” Janet’s mother said. “Not unless I can think of something to do. Then, by swow, I reckon I will!”
Morrell did not smile. He glanced at me. “All right,” he said. “The hell with it. What can she do?”
“Tate,” she said. “What have you done? Where’s my little girl? Where is she, Tate?”
“She’s all right,” I said.
“Ah-hah,” Morrell said.
“Okay. I was just reassuring her.”
“Let’s get out to the car,” Morrell said.
Janet’s mother tried to come toward me. Bill stepped in her path and touched her arm lightly. “I wouldn’t,” he said. “Why don’t you just go in there and sit and listen to your radio? Take it easy. All right?”
She watched him.
Morrell tapped my arm and motioned toward the door.
“Wait’ll I get my coat,” I said.
“Go with him while he gets his coat, Stewart,” Morrell said.
Steward and I walked on into the parlor. He looked at the ceiling and I saw my coat hanging over the back of a chair, spread out to dry. I grabbed my coat off the chair, thinking about that gun. There was no weight to the coat, the gun wasn’t there. The old lady had taken it out, as sure as hell.
“Wait,” Stewart said.
He came over and took the coat from me and bounced it up and down and handed it back to me. He grinned and nodded toward the hallway.
We went out there and I shrugged into the coat. I didn’t bother about Sam’s hat. Janet’s mother was still by the wall, with all that disrupted patience showing in her eyes. Lots of fight, too. Only no way to fight, and she knew it, and that was sad, in a way.
“Let’s go.”
Janet’s mother tried to say something. I patted her arm as we moved past her and on through the front door.
There was no light at all out there, but metal gleamed in the darkness, and I saw the Lincoln parked in the yard, a dark shape. And nearly up against the front porch, was another car—an Olds. This was Morrell’s car.
“Bill,” Morrell said. “You drive Thelma’s car. We’ll take the other.”
Bill looked at me with those eyes of his, a little grimly, or what was supposed to have been grim. Then he padded down the front porch steps and went over to the Lincoln.
We got into the Olds. Morrell drove. I sat in the rear seat with Stewart and we cut out of there fast.
CHAPTER 18
Morrell drove fast. Nobody spoke for some time. We came onto the main highway and moved through the night with the engine close to wide open, behind the winking red tail-light of the Lincoln up ahead. The rain lessened as we drove, but it was coming down steadily and it looked as if it would rain all night.
The sleep seemed to have done me little good. I was in the midst of a confused exhaustion. In the back of my mind, I knew Janet would contact me somehow, but if I could only know that she was all right.
And then something else struck me. There was that chance that Morrell had found Janet and the money. Maybe he was taking me someplace, planning something for me, only because of the death of Alex Morrell, his brother. I didn’t like to think that way, but I knew I had to face every possibility.
It was sweet—all the way.
I wanted to find Janet—I had to find her. And how could I do anything now that I was in Morrell’s hands? Trying to get away from him now would be next to impossible. I knew that, and yet I couldn’t keep my mind from scheming every angle, and failing dismally at each. I thought of leaping from the car.
And how they would turn around, come back and pick up my broken body.
I thought of trying to jump Stewart and maybe get his gun—it would take Morrell a little time to stop the car. Only I knew it wouldn’t work.
I thought of lots of ways. None of them were any good.
Morrell’s voice was quiet and contained.
“Morg
an, it can go hard with you now. You got away from us once. That won’t happen again. You see, I know you know where that money is. Your denying it doesn’t help. Anything to say?”
I didn’t answer him.
“We’re going to find out this time,” Morrell said. “My God, why do you make us do this?”
“I’m not making you do anything.”
“Did you mention my name to your brother, Morgan?”
“No.”
“The story’s in the papers. Did you know that? All about everything. Your wisest move would be to run—only why haven’t you run?”
I didn’t answer that, either.
“Where’s your wife, Morgan?”
I listened carefully to his voice. It didn’t tell me anything. And I wasn’t going to tell them anything, either. If they did have Janet someplace, then that was that. If somebody else had her, or if she was on her own, then they didn’t know about her—and that, too, was that.
I couldn’t forget the possibility that Morrell might have found Janet and the money and was only doing this because of his brother.
“I hate to keep harping,” Morrell said.
“Look,” I said. “It’s true. I had the money. I looked at it—took it out of the money-bag. It looks beautiful. It’s a hell of a lot of dough. But I put it back in the bag and I left the bag someplace. Now, I’m telling you the truth. I’m not going to tell you where I left it, because it no longer matters. But when I came back for it, it was gone. So I’m in the same boat you are.”
“You believe that, Stewart?” Morrell asked.
“I don’t believe anything this guy says. It’s only natural he’d keep on trying to cover. Wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Morrell said. “I really don’t know. It’s a lot of money, true—but he has imagination, hasn’t he?”
Stewart did not laugh. The car was very silent save for the sound of the racing engine.
“What’ll we do?” Stewart said.
“Well,” Morrell said. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that, and it’s a problem. You guys aren’t any match for Morgan—not even the state he’s in right now.”
“He got in a lucky punch—using that damned broom, like I told you. I slipped and cracked my head on the floor. I’m a match for Morgan alone—any day.”
“You talk real tough,” Morrell said. “But you’re not so tough. None of us are. This isn’t our racket. Of course, we can get tough. But I don’t want to kill him—I just want to make him talk.”
“I can think of some good ways,” Stewart said.
“Bet you can.”
I looked out the side window of the car at the rushing night and the rain. They were trying to work the psychological gimmick on me now, trying to scare me, and it was no use. The scare part of me was worn out from overuse—they should have reckoned about that. I just didn’t want to get killed. And that was a laugh. It struck me really funny, that did. Because it was the paramount thing in my mind—to reach Janet before I died, and somehow—anyhow—explain to her about everything.
Explain.
What was there left to explain?
And that was a laugh, too.
“You thinking about things, Morgan?”
“Yeah.”
• • •
On the Gulf beaches beyond Clearwater, they drew up and parked with their front wheels nosing the hard-packed sand. You could smell the salt and hear the water coming in out there. Far out a beacon blinked and blinked through the steadied fall of crystal rain. Windy Australian pines tossed behind us at the ground line above the beaches, and the air was colder here.
The two cars were parked close together and nobody had spoken for about a half an hour. I had asked a couple questions of Morrell, but they were pulling the silent treatment.
Then I thought how I had to take the chance about it being just the money. We were sitting there, not talking. I hit the door handle hard and went out running.
Bill came out of the Lincoln at a dead run. I dodged him.
“Stop him,” Morrell said, not loudly.
I started down the beach.
Morrell gunned the Olds out across the sands and the headlights glared brightly all around me. I started to turn toward the line of pines and then realized how useless it all was.
I quit running and turned and faced the oncoming car.
He stopped the Olds lightly.
Bill was bringing the Lincoln up behind the Olds.
Morrell got out and walked over to me. Stewart was with him and Bill stood by the Lincoln, looking out over the water.
“We wanted to see if you’d do that,” Morrell said. “Now everybody knows how everybody feels about everything.”
I waited.
“Get the rope,” Morrell said. “Bill!”
Bill went up to the Olds and got the key out of the ignition and went back and opened the trunk. He was whistling softly to himself.
“Well?” Morrell said, looking at me, standing there in the bright wash of lights from the Olds. “Got anything to say?”
I looked out across the water.
“Morgan?”
The beacon was flashing out there. The gentle rains fell down and down, freckling the surface of the slow, oily, black Gulf. The water palmed the beachline, rustling like leaves, then receding, then coming up again, pushing a small thin line of white foam along with it. High up in the pines along the groundline the wind drew fitfully, but none of the wind was on the water.
“Morgan?”
I heard Bill walk up to Morrell and they were silent. I knew they were looking at me. The lights from the cars were very bright and white on the beach and the sands looked white in the night and the rain came down very gently, flowing out of the sky like soft silk. There was the strong urgent need for something other than this emptiness I faced. Because I wasn’t going to tell them, not if they did kill me. I had made up my mind about that. If I told them Janet had that money, they would find her.
I knew they would find her.
It was hellishly hopeless. I tried to think of some way to lie my way out of this one, but there was no way.
There was only a great nothing.
I turned and looked at Morrell.
“I’m not going to tell you anything,” I said. “So it won’t do you any good—whatever fool thing you’ve planned.”
Morrell sucked a deep breath, glanced down, then up.
Bill held a coil of rope.
Stewart moved uneasily and looked out across the Gulf.
The wind drew through the pines.
“I wish you would,” Morrell said. “Morgan, listen to me—will you please listen? I’m as serious as I’ve ever been in my life. I’m never going to be this serious again. There’s all that money—I want it. It’s that simple. I’ve got to have it for a lot of reasons. It’s not just money to me—it’s maybe even you might say life. So you can understand that, can’t you?”
“Yes. I understand. But it’s no go.”
He cursed. He just stood there and cursed, working himself up to something he really didn’t want to do. He was just a guy. Only it didn’t do any good about that.
“All right,” Morrell said. “Tie his feet.”
Nobody moved.
“Tie his feet,” Morrell said softly.
I turned on Bill as he advanced. “Nobody’s tying anything,” I said.
Bill kept coming. I stepped toward him and I heard and saw Stewart move at me from the side and behind and his arm came out with his gun. I tried to stop him, get my arm up, but the trenchcoat stopped that and for one flash I thought of how Sam had been wearing this trenchcoat when I fought with him and he hadn’t any chance—then the gun slammed into my head.
I lay there on the sand and my feet were tied. I started to sit up. A foot came out and jammed at the side of my head, shoving me back flat.
I looked up. Morrell was looking down at me, the headlights glaring on his white suit.
“Well?” h
e said.
I didn’t speak.
He turned sharply away. I heard the car door slam and tried to sit up. I got to my knees, my feet tight together, bound with the rope. I saw the rope snaking out down toward the cars.
Morrell gunned the engine of the Olds and for a moment I thought he was going to run me down. He came nearly straight at me. Somehow I was on my feet, hopping with that rope around my ankles, frantically trying to get out of his way.
The Olds swept past me in an angry leap across the sands.
“Take it, then, Morgan!” Morrell yelled as he roared by behind the wheel.
Instantly I knew what they’d done. But it was too late for anything.
The fiendish slam of the shock knocked me flat on my back and there wasn’t even a second’s repose before I was sliding wildly off across the sands, gaining speed, the sand already hot, then burning through my clothes. I whirled around and around on the end of the strong towline attached to the rear bumper of the Olds. He kept gunning the engine faster and faster and I was blind and insane now, screaming with the crazy burning that scalded me from head to toe.
He seemed to be going maybe seventy or eighty when he began to swing the wheel. I fought with everything I had to sit up, because you fight for something at a time like that. I felt the horrible wrench and swoop as I swung in toward the groundline, saw the bank coming at me, then the line straightened and I began to go the other way, down toward the Gulf waters, every inch of me searing, my lungs and eyes filled with sand and he swung again and I whipped into the water at eighty or ninety miles an hour. All he’d had to do was swing the wheel a little, but I rode hard and wide and the water was like striking cement, skimming out across it, then yanked brutally back. Then nothing….
I came to again, still dragging on the sands. My arms were wrenched back over my head and first I was on my face, then my back, and I no longer cared whether I lived or died or anything as I vomited my life out across the sands and the rope began to jerk and snap at my legs, the sockets cracking, and then it stopped and it didn’t change a thing, it was the same as if I were spinning along and then there wasn’t anything at all again.
