Whom Gods Destroy

by Clifton Adams

  “As long as you're going to keep the keys,” I said, “drive my car around to the back and park it.”

  They stood on the sidewalk, watching me go up the steps into the house. When I reached my room my nerves started screaming again. I lay across the bed, not thinking about anything, too wound-up to sleep, too tired to rest. That back seat in the car, something had to be done about that. The car was rented in Vida's name, and sooner or later somebody would see that blood and would want to have some answers. I went downstairs and out the back door of the rooming house. The car was there where Joel had parked it. I got the back seat out and siphoned some gas out of the tank and soaked it and set it on fire. When it was going good I heard Max and Joel coming around the corner of the house.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Two roomers came out the back door to see what the excitement was about. The fire shot up higher and higher, and then it began to die down. When it was over there was nothing left but some ashes and blackened springs. Now, I thought, maybe I can rest.

  “What do you think you're doin'?” Max demanded angrily.

  “Go to hell,” I said, and they didn't know just what to do about it with the roomers coming out of the house and wanting to know what had started the fire. “Somebody must have left a cigarette back there,” I said. I left Max and Joel and went back into the house.

  I went upstairs and lay down again, trying to think calmly, trying to get the most important things first. I looked out the window again and saw Max in the pickup watching the front of the house. Joel would be around at the back. Then I went downstairs and used the rooming house phone.

  “Vida,” I said, “I want you to listen closely and not ask any questions. Things have gone all to hell, it just blew up in my face, but it still may turn out to be a good thing if we can work it right. The first thing I want is a good recording machine, the finest you can get. Probably a tape recorder would be the best. And I want two microphones, the most sensitive microphones money can buy. And I've got to have some lead wires—get the flat kind that you can lay under carpets so they don't show— and a screwdriver and hammer. Have this stuff delivered to the front door of my rooming house, but not to me. I'm being watched by two of Barney's boys. I don't know how you're going to get this stuff, but you've got to do it and do it fast, or everything's ruined. Everything!”

  “Roy—” Her voice jumped at me, as though she had been holding her breath for a long time. “Roy, what went wrong?”

  “Everything! But it can still be straightened out if you do exactly as I say.”

  Then the fatigue and worn nerves caught up with me. I made it back up the stairs, thinking, There's nothing to do now but wait and see. I lay across the bed and felt the tiredness wash over me like a warm ocean, and I closed my eyes. I was going to rest. Everything was going to be all right. I had a sudden, dark vision then and I could see the truck driver and guard, their eyes wide, their mouths open, the way they had looked at me.

  Forget it! I thought. You have to forget it!

  Finally I went to sleep. About five minutes later I woke up screaming.

  11

  “MR. FOLEY! MR. FOLEY!” Somebody was hammering on the door. I had fallen asleep finally and now the sound came to me as I lay there in a sluggish fog. “Mr. Foley!” It was the landlady—I realized that after a while. My mind jumped headlong into full consciousness.

  I opened the door and she was standing there, vaguely puzzled, a tight-mouthed little woman holding an envelope in her hand. “Mr. Foley, some men are downstairs with a parcel,” she said. “It's addressed to me, but there's a message with it that says it is to be delivered to you. Do you know anything about it?”

  Vida, Vida! I thought. How I love you! “Yes,” I said. “Will you please have the men bring it up to my room?”

  I looked out the window and saw Max talking to one of the two delivery men. Then he went back to the pickup and looked without interest as the men hefted the crated recorder and started toward the house.

  “Is this where it goes?”

  I turned and a big blond kid was standing in the doorway holding a package about the size of a small suitcase. The other deliverymen came in carrying two smaller packages.

  “This is the place,” I said. “Would you mind setting it up for me? I want to be sure it works.”

  “That's our job,” the kid said.

  When they got it all set up it seemed like a hell of a lot of machinery, but it wasn't really as complicated as it looked. The kid turned it on and counted up to ten into the microphone, then he played it back and it sounded fine.

  “Will that microphone work from four or five feet away?” I said.

  The kid was connecting the two mikes. “Sure.” He turned it on again and adjusted the input control and stood back and counted. When he played it back it was almost as good as it had been before.

  That was all there was to it. They went out and I stood there looking at it, thinking. This is your last chance. And it sure as hell better work! Time was everything now. My watch said twelve o'clock and I knew that Seaward would know about the hijacking by now. And Mefford and Cox were still sitting with that liquor—if I was lucky—wondering what had happened to me, probably.

  I disconnected the recorder and began making splices with the flat lead wire. Then, in front of the couch, I cut a small slit in the carpet and slipped the lead wire into it. I pulled the lead wire under the carpet to the far side of the room, and then I fixed the microphone the same way. The recorder itself had to go in the closet. A squat mahogany table that served as a coffee table went over the hole in the carpet. I ran the microphone wires up the legs of the table, on the inside, and then made a bracket of nails on the under side of the table to hold the microphones. There was only one place where the wires showed when I got through and that was on the bare space of floor between the carpet and the closet door. I fixed that by getting a dirty shirt out of the closet and throwing it on the floor. Then I messed the room up even more than usual so the shirt wouldn't look out of place. I piled odds and ends of clothing on the bed and on the other chair in the room, which left only one place to sit—on the couch. Right in front of the microphones.

  I heard the telephone ring downstairs and I stood there listening to-the hammering in my chest. “Mr. Foley!” It was the landlady.

  When I picked up the phone, Barney said, “It's settled, Foley. It happens tomorrow.”

  He sounded so grim I guessed that he had found out about the hijacking. But not all about it.

  Now came the tough part. I had to get him in the room or the plan was no good at all. I said, “I've been doing some thinking. I've decided that five thousand isn't a big enough stake to leave town on.”

  He didn't like that. “We'll talk about it later,” he said coldly. “Max and Joel will bring you out to my place and we'll go over it.”

  “I've had enough of your place,” I said. “I'm not taking another going-over if I can help it.”

  “You can't help it, Foley,” he said dryly. “Max and Joel can drag you out of that room any time I give the word.”

  “Not without a hell of a racket.”

  He thought about that. He could get me out, all right, but that might not be the best way.

  “All right,” he said evenly. “There's a roadhouse across the river; we can settle it there.”

  “Like hell. There's a place on the corner of First and Main. If you want to do business, I'll talk to you there.”

  “Someday,” he said softly, “you're going to learn who gives the orders, Foley. But it's going to be too late then.”

  “I'm ready to do business. I'm just not going to take any more beatings from your hoodlums.”

  “All right,” he said finally, and my arm ached from squeezing the receiver. “I'll come to your place.”

  He hung up and I stood there with my breath whistling between my teeth. I hadn't suggested that he come here, so there was no reason for him to suspect anything. There were
some things that I could expect, though. A gun, probably, and Max and Joel. But that didn't bother me. All I wanted was to get him in the room. Then the sonofabitch would soon find out who could give orders.

  Less than an hour had passed when I heard the steps on the stairs. I went to the closet and turned on the recorder. Then I opened the door before he had a chance to knock and Barney stood there smiling an iron-hard, humorless smile. I was struck completely dumb for a moment, too stunned to move or make a sound. Barney wasn't alone. And he didn't have Max and Joel with him, as I expected. The man beside him looked grim and uncomfortable—it was Paul Keating.

  I must have stood there for a full ten seconds without making a move. Then the impact of the thing hit me like _a bullet. Not even in my wildest imaginings had I expected to get Barney Seaward and Paul Keating together. It was perfect.

  I stepped to one side and Barney came into the room, watching me closely. Keating hesitated, then followed him in and closed the door. Only then did I remember the tape recorder that was grinding away in the closet, recording nothing.

  “I thought we were going to talk alone,” I said. “I didn't expect Big Prairie's county attorney to be with you.” I had to get names on the tape and establish identities.

  “Keating thinks I'm making a mistake,” Barney said dryly. “He doesn't think you're to be trusted, Foley.”

  “Maybe he's right,” I said. Then I realized that the recorder wasn't doing a damn bit of good because we were too far away from the microphone. I went over to the bed and motioned to the couch, the only other place in the room to sit down.

  They wouldn't sit down. They stood there in the center of the room, each of them nursing his own special kind of hatred. Keating would like to see me dead. Seaward-there was no way of knowing what he was thinking.

  Barney looked at me, then he glanced at Keating with that same hard smile. I realized then that he had his own reason for wanting Keating in on this. Barney was an ambitious man—more ambitious than I had realized until now. Maybe one day he would be wholesaling for all the bootleggers in Oklahoma. After he had made Keating governor of the state. Even now he knew too much about the county attorney for Keating to dare refuse him anything. On top of bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution, Seaward had already made him a party to one murder-Marty Paycheck's—and was preparing to make him a party to one murder more. You couldn't refuse a man anything after you had joined with him in crimes like that, and Seaward knew it better than anybody.

  I sat there looking at Barney Seaward with a new kind of respect until I realized that all that power could be mine.

  But it didn't mean a thing if I didn't get it on the tape.

  “Did you bring the money, Seaward?” I said.

  He lost his smile. “Don't push me, Foley. I've lost a truck of liquor and a driver and a guard this morning, and before long somebody's going to get hurt and hurt bad. It could be you, Foley.”

  “I told you what my price was. If you want me to kill Sid, you'll have to pay for it.” Keating winced. Suddenly his knees seemed to give away and he dropped to the couch and lit a cigarette, his hands shaking. I looked at him and said, “Keating, you can pay half of it, you're in it as deep as Seaward here.” That got their names on the tape. “Now that I think of it,” I went on, “I wouldn't have it any other way. If there's an investigation, I want the county attorney on my side. If it ever comes before a grand jury, I want Keating to be in a position to throw up every smoke screen he can think of. And you can think of them, Keating. You thought of them all right when Mary Paycheck was killed.”

  Barney laughed, in that abrupt, completely humorless way of his.

  “The punk's got a head on his shoulders,” Barney said.

  I said, “Don't call me that again, Barney!”

  It startled him. “Maybe,” he said softly, “I'd better call Max and Joel in and show you again who gives the orders.”

  “And maybe I'll raise so much hell,” I said, “that it'll be heard all the way to the State Crime Bureau in Oklahoma City!”

  I could see kill behind those cool eyes of his, but he kept a strong hand on his emotions. First things first with Barney. “All right,” he said, as though he had completely forgotten everything but the business at hand. “Ten thousand dollars. But you'll get it after the job, Foley, not in advance.”

  If I had said twenty thousand, it would have been the same thing. He would promise it and I would never see it.

  “And you'll do it the way I tell you,” Barney said. “Tomorrow morning I'll send Sid to Ardmore to make some collections for me. He's going to have an accident on the way. A bad one. Do you know the highway between here and Ardmore, Foley?”

  “Not very well.”

  “About thirty miles west of Big Prairie the highway is straight and the land is flat for the most part. Traffic moves fast out there. There's an arroyo there—a place called Little River—the bed is dry most of the year, but it's deep. It would be a long, hard fall in a car. Especially a convertible like Sid's.”

  “What kind of a bridge is it?” I said.

  “The bridge is concrete, but the approaches are two-by-six railing. It wouldn't take much to shove a speeding car through them. West of the bridge there is a section line road, and beyond that there is a service station. Their business is whisky, but you can buy gas, too, if you want it, or you get a bent fender straightened or a new paint job or even a new license plate. A man by the name of Carter runs the place. He has a couple of trucks that he rents sometimes to friends.”

  It was clear enough, but not as clear as I wanted it for the tape.

  I said, “Let's see if I've got it. First, I go to this service station and rent a truck. You'll have to arrange that end of it. Then I go to the crossroads west of the bridge and I wait until I see that red convertible of Sid's. Then I pull out, force him through the railings and into the arroyo. After that, I take the truck back to the service station where they straighten out any dents that might be in it, paint it, change license plates, and I get in my own car and come back to Big Prairie. What will I do about passing traffic? I can't just drive away as if nothing happened.”

  “Tell them you're going for a doctor,” Seaward said. “Let them see your license plate—it won't make any difference. Thirty minutes after you get the truck back to the service station it will be a different truck. Nobody will ever recognize it.”

  “What about the highway patrol?”

  “By the time they get there, it will be over.” He looked at Keating. “Have you got anything to add, Paul?”

  Keating looked ten years older than he had when he first walked into the room. “That bridge is within a few hundred feet of the county line. If anything happens in the next county, I won't be able to help you.”

  “It will happen just the way I said,” Barney said, looking at me. “Won't it, Foley?”

  I thought of the recorder, all the words going on tape. I thought of Lola—I'd like to see her face when she first heard this recording!

  “It's going to be just exactly the way you said, Barney,” I said. “You don't have to worry about that.”

  After they left, I played the tape all the way through, from beginning to end. It was all there, the complete plan for a murder. I could hardly breathe as I sat there listening to Barney's voice, ragged with nerves. The only thing missing was the murder itself. That was up to me.

  It didn't worry me at all that I was in it as much as Keating and Seaward, because I wasn't bluffing this time. The power that I held was staggering.

  Even as I thought about it I heard the heavy tramp of shoes on the stairs. The knock on my door startled me and for a moment I felt my insides go loose and I thought hopelessly: It's happened! Something's happened and the bottom has fallen out of everything!

  “Mr. Foley!” It was the landlady's voice, harsh and indignant.

  There was another heavy-fisted knock, a knock that meant business. “Open that door, Foley!” A man's voice this time.


  “What is it?” I said.

  “It's the police,” the landlady said, sounding outraged now.

  I couldn't move. I couldn't get my mind to working as the pounding on the door got more insistent. I watched the door give under the weight of heavy shoulders, then the lock snapped and a piece of the door facing splintered and flew across the room as the door came open.

  A big plain-clothes cop came into the room with a gun in his hand. “Shake him down,” he said, and his partner got behind me and patted me.

  “What the hell is this!” I said.

  “Get him downstairs,” the first cop said flatly, and the two of them got me handcuffed and hustled me out of the room.

  “What the hell do you think you're doing!” I was almost yelling by now.

  The first cop slammed a sledgehammer fist into the small of my back, and I almost went to my knees. “That's just a sample, Foley,” he said. “If you want some more, just try hollering again.”

  They half dragged me out of the house and all the roomers crowded onto the front porch, staring wide-eyed. I saw Joel come around from the back of the rooming house where he had been standing watch on me, and Max standing undecided beside the pickup. The two cops were shoving me into their car when Max came forward and said: “What is this?”

  “Just stay out of it, buddy. Move away and you won't get hurt.”

  He got me into the back seat and then got in beside me, the gun still pointed at my middle. The first cop got behind the wheel. We left Max standing there, his mouth open, looking worried.

  I said, “I don't know what this is all about, but I know one thing. You're going to get your rump warped when Barney Seaward finds out about this!”

  “Jesus,” the driving cop said wearily. “Everybody works for Seaward, if you listen to what they say.”

  I felt like hell. My beard was coming out and I was sweaty and dirty and numb for want of sleep. Then I remembered that recorder in my closet, and that tape. If somebody found that....

  They didn't give me time to worry about it. We went straight through the middle of town and then pulled into a parking lot behind the courthouse.