He came alive as if I’d prodded him with a high-voltage cable. “Hell, yes,” he said excitedly, springing up. “But you’ll have to get out of sight. We don’t want to make him any more suspicious than he is now. I’ll tell you. Go up there at the head of the stairs.”
I made it just as the doorbell rang. By peeking around the corner of the landing, I could see them. Charlie was wearing khaki pants and boots and a leather jacket with mud on it, and he looked as if he hadn’t shaved for three days or slept a week. His eyes were red, and there were lines of weariness around his mouth. Charlie was a perfectionist.
He was magnificent. Watching him and listening, I was conscious of thinking what an actor the stage lost when Charlie became a crook. He was being crucified. Nobody kept faith with him. Goodwin was taking advantage of him. He’d bought the lease in good faith, and now Goodwin had found out some oil company wanted it, and his creditors were hounding him, and…He could make you cry.
He said eighty thousand. Goodwin, recovering a little of his business sense now that there was hope, said thirty. They went at it again. Charlie came to a dead standstill at sixty-five thousand, and Goodwin finally had to meet it. Then Charlie said it had to be in cash, and he had to have it within an hour so he could get started back to the well. Goodwin agreed, but said it would take two hours. The bank wouldn’t be open until ten.
Charlie nodded. “All right,” he said wearily. Then he went on, with great bitterness. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing to me. Some big oil company wants to put down a well out there, don’t they? Well, brother, you couldn’t have beat me if we hadn’t lost a bit in that hole last week.”
To calm him, Mrs. Goodwin asked him to come out in the kitchen and have a cup of coffee. I sneaked down the stairs and left as soon as they were out of the room. When I was out in the street I let out a big sigh. I was weak myself.
Back at the motel I started throwing things in the two bags. She’d be here at twelve. I stopped, thinking how it would be now, with nothing to keep us apart. On our way to San Francisco, to hunt down Lachlan, we’d stop off in Reno as we’d planned. We would be married. I looked at my watch. It was only nine-fifteen. Keep your shirt on, I thought; Charlie hasn’t even got the money yet.
At a quarter to eleven Goodwin called. He was almost hysterical with joy. “I’d ask you to come over, if it weren’t that you’re probably worn out too. I’d like for you to see this lease burning up in the fireplace.”
“So it’s all set?” I asked.
“He just left, five minutes ago. Boy, talk about your photo finishes! And, say, Reichert, don’t think I’m going to forget you for all you’ve done.”
No, you probably won’t, pal, I thought, as I hung up—any more than I’ve forgotten you. It’s going to be a little rugged around nine-thirty tonight when nobody gets off that train.
I was all packed. By eleven-thirty I was straining my ears for the sound of tires on the gravel outside. About ten minutes to twelve I heard a car come swinging in. I jumped up and threw the door open. It was somebody else. I sat down again, feeling the impatience mount.
By twelve-thirty I was chain-smoking cigarettes and wearing a path in the shabby rug. God knows she’d never been anywhere on time in her life, but she couldn’t be late today. This was the day we’d been looking forward to for nearly a month. We had to get going.
She didn’t come. It was two o’clock. It was three. I’d long since passed the stage where I could sit still at all. I felt as if all the nerves in my body had worked through and were on the outside of my skin. She was dead. She’d been killed in a wreck. I couldn’t keep Donnelly out of my mind. She wouldn’t listen to me, so he had gone back and found her. He’d killed her. I thought of that ten-gauge shotgun, and shuddered. He was capable of anything. Why hadn’t I made her listen?
No, how did I know where she’d been? She’d said she was going to be in San Antonio, and still that was her voice over the phone from Houston.
How could I even find out what had happened? I had to get back there some way. It wasn’t until then that the whole thing balled up and hit me. I sat down on the bed, feeling the weakness and the sick feeling come up through me. I’d been worried only about her, but what about myself, too? I couldn’t go anywhere. I was trapped. She might be all right, but I was a sitting duck.
The bus had gone through twenty minutes ago, and there wouldn’t be another one in either direction until eleven o’clock tonight. And by nine-thirty Goodwin would know he had been taken.
It was about as near to complete panic as I’d ever been. For a few minutes I couldn’t think at all. The only thing my mind could get hold of was that I was the sucker, the fall guy, the one they’d thrown to the wolves. They’d gone off and left me. No, I tried to tell myself, she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t have left me stranded like this. But that meant, then, that something had happened to her.
I tried to calm down. I was in danger enough, without losing my head completely. There’d be the westbound train through at nine. But what good would that do me? Goodwin would probably already be at the station, waiting to meet the eastbound. Or if he wasn’t, at least a dozen people would see me get on it. As soon as they told him, he’d know the truth, and police would be waiting for me at some station up the line before I got to El Paso. Even if there were a bus through, the same thing would happen.
Time went on in its slow crawl around the rim of my watch. There was no hope now that she was coming. It was four-fifteen. I watched the small oblong of yellow sunlight from the window creep up the wall as the sun went down. It was like sitting in a cell. I shuddered.
I couldn’t just sit there and wait for them. I’d have to snake a run for it some way. Maybe I could hitch a ride if I got out on the highway. Then I thought of it—that freight, the one I’d put Donnelly on. It would be along, westbound, a little after seven.
But I had to get away and get on it without being seen. The only way to do it was just to fade, and let them wonder afterward when I’d left and which way I’d gone. The only trouble, however, was that there was no way out of here except the drive and archway in front. The cabins and garages were joined in a solid wall all the way around. I’d have to leave the bags. No, there was a way to do it. The bathroom had a small window that looked out onto the open prairie to the east.
I sweated out another hour and a half until it was dark. I looked carefully around the harsh little cubicle to be sure I hadn’t left anything that would identify me. The only things were the .22 rifle and the rest of the sand boxes. I put on the topcoat, carried the bags into the bathroom, and cut the lights.
I opened the window and then waited while my eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Two or three cabins up the line there was light pouring from a window, and I could hear a radio playing. When I could see a little in the faint light from the stars, I eased out the window feet first, and then lifted the bags out. I closed the window very gently and slipped away, angling a little to my right to stay clear of the highway.
It was slow going, dodging the clumps of mesquite and prickly pears, but I was in the clear and nobody had seen me leave. After about two hundred yards I swung toward the highway again. It was frosty and still, and in the cold starlight I could see the fog of my breath. I waited beside the road until no cars were in sight, then hurried across and into the desert on the other side.
It was about a half mile to the tracks. The suitcases were heavy, and I stopped once or twice to catch my breath. I tried not to think about Cathy. Every time I saw her I saw Donnelly swinging that murderous shotgun and I’d feel sick. I thought of Charlie and Bolton, safe in El Paso with $65,000 in their pockets, laughing probably, while I struggled through the cactus to catch a freight that might get me out of town before the whole thing caved in on me. Rage would come boiling up and take me by the throat. I’d done the job, and now they’d run out on me.
It didn’t make sense. Sure, they didn’t care what happened to me, but didn’t they have br
ains enough to know I’d talk if the police caught me? Talk? I’d scream. I’d sing like a nightingale. But then, what difference would it make to them? They’d be gone, and you can do a lot of traveling with sixty-five thousand dollars.
I set the bags down for a minute and thought about it very coldly. If I didn’t get caught, they were going to need a railroad ticket a lot longer than that.
When I hit the old work train, I swung around the end of it. I walked up to it about where I’d boosted Donnelly onto the freight, and ducked in between two cars. I set the bags down and flipped the cigarette lighter to look at my watch. It should be along in about a half hour.
Eight
It was a night that would never end. I sat on the suitcases in a dusty boxcar that rattled through cold darkness and then jolted and screeched to interminable stops every thirty or forty miles. When I couldn’t stand the cold any longer I’d get up and walk back and forth, swinging my arms and blowing on my hands. I ran out of cigarettes. I tried to keep the worry about Cathy from driving me crazy. The terrible part of it was that maybe I’d never know what happened. I had to run, and I couldn’t look back or wait.
I thought of Bolton. And I thought of Charlie.
Maybe it was the anger that kept me from freezing.
Just at dawn we slowed for the yards at El Paso. I tossed the two bags out and jumped. After I’d picked them up I hurried out of the yards. Nobody saw me. There was an all-night cafe open on the second street. I went in, ordered some coffee, and bought a package of cigarettes. I called a cab.
“Bus station,” I said when it came. The sun was coming up now. Maybe the bus and railroad stations were being watched, but I had to take a chance on it. There was no other way. I’d already thrown away the steel-rimmed glasses, which helped a little, and I was dressed differently than I had been in Wyecross. There weren’t many people around this early in the morning. I shot a quick glance around, ready to ease out, but there wasn’t anybody who looked like a plain-clothes cop. I checked the bags and went into the washroom to clean up a little and beat some of the dust out of my topcoat. I counted the money I had left. It was less than two hundred dollars. I had to get to Reno. Manners would give me a job, dealing dice. And Reno would be far enough away.
There would be a westbound bus leaving in an hour and ten minutes. I’d better not hang around the bus station, though, in case they were shaking it down now and then. I went out in the street and thought of Bolton and Charlie again and felt the rage take hold of me. There wouldn’t be a chance they’d still be here, but I went into a drugstore telephone booth and started calling the hotels.
After I’d called three I gave up. Even if they were here they wouldn’t be registered under their own names. The thing to do was forget them until I got out of this jam. I tried to. It wasn’t much good.
It was too early to get a shave. I went into a hotel coffee shop to try to eat a little breakfast before bus time. I’ve got to quit looking behind me, I thought. The way I was acting was enough to make a cop suspicious even if he’d never heard of me.
The waitress at this end of the counter was slow getting to me because she was working on an order a bellboy was waiting for. I started to get up to go out to the newsstand for a paper while I was waiting. Maybe there’d be something about it in the papers. Then I looked back at the waitress for some reason I couldn’t figure out. What was it? I saw it then. It was the order. It was the two halves of a Persian melon and a big silver pot of coffee.
What if the odds were a thousand to one against it? I didn’t even stop to think. I followed the boy across the lobby and into the elevator. When he got out on the fourth floor I went in the other direction, pretending to be looking for a number, until he was halfway down the corridor. I turned then and watched him. He knocked at a door and in a minute it opened and he went in. I walked past it and looked at the number, and went on around the corner. When I heard him come out and get into the elevator again I went back.
It was dangerous. It was a stupid thing to do. We were all wanted by the police now, and the surest way in the world to bring them down on us was to start a brawl. But there wasn’t room in my mind for thought. I knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” someone asked.
“Room Service,” I said. “I forgot...” I let it trail off.
The door opened a crack. I saw the baby-blue eyes and the pink jowls, and I shoved, hard. Charlie was still off balance when I got in through the door and I put a hand in his face and pushed. He shot back into the table the boy had set up. The whole thing crashed down.
I kicked the door shut and swung at Bolton. He made an agonized sucking noise as the fist slammed into his stomach, but he was tougher than Charlie. He dropped the cup of coffee he was holding and belted me. I shook my head groggily as I slammed back into the door. Charlie was trying to get up, tangled in a white tablecloth with his hand in the melon. Bolton hit me again and I went down. He was a terrific right-handed puncher. I saw the foot coming for my face and grabbed at it. I got an arm around the other leg and heaved, straining with all the strength I had left. He came down on top of me.
Somewhere in all the wildness I could hear Charlie crying in an outraged and quivering voice. “Mike! What is the meaning of all this stupid violence?” I rolled and got Bolton off me, and when he started to get up I hit him. The shock numbed my hand. I hit him again. Blood trickled out of his mouth. He swayed dizzily and fell backward onto the floor. He wasn’t knocked out, but all he could do was keep picking at the rug, trying to get a handhold on something to pull himself up. I was wild, and almost as groggy as he was. I stood up. Charlie was still trying to say something. I pushed him and he fell over Bolton.
I looked around. Their bags were all packed, standing by the door with their folded overcoats on them. In another few minutes they’d have been gone. Mexico City or Acapulco, I thought. I pulled a leg off the wreckage of the table and said, “All right, we’re going to have a meeting. We’re going to elect a new sucker.”
I didn’t get what it was at first. The next time around, I did. It was a knock at the door. I don’t know why I opened it, unless I was still a little punchy. My head cleared then, very fast. It was Cathy. She was just standing there, white-faced, and when she looked at me she didn’t say anything at all. She didn’t have to. When I looked beyond her I knew I had waited too long.
There were two of them and they were wearing white frontier-style hats and gun holsters, and one of them was holding her by the arm.
They came on in, pushing her ahead of them. They looked around, and then at each other, and grinned. “Well, this is a cozy little group,” the tall one with the pale eyes said. “Looks like His Royal Highness, Prince Charlie, and the one with the bent face must be Judd Bolton, alias Major Ballantine.”
He swung his eyes around to me. “Drop it, friend.” He meant the table leg. I dropped it. I couldn’t say anything.
“All right, boys, on your feet,” he said to Charlie and Bolton. “Shake ‘em down, Jim.”
The other cop came over behind us and patted us under the arms and down the sides. “They’re clean, Shandy.”
Charlie made a try at the outraged taxpayer. “I demand to know the meaning of this. And who is this young lady? I’ve never—”
Cathy turned on all of us, her eyes blazing with contempt. “You stupid, blundering idiots!”
Bolton lashed at her. “Why, you little fool! Why’d you bring ‘em here?”
“All right, all right. Simmer down, boys and girls,” the one called Shandy said. He was a great kidder, but none of it ever got as far as his eyes. “Keep an eye on ‘em, Jim, while I go through the suitcases.”
I collapsed into a chair and tried to light a cigarette. My hands were shaking. The whole thing was just a nightmare, and maybe I’d wake up in a minute.
Shandy had all the suitcases open and clothes scattered around on the floor. He grunted and came up with two big Manila envelopes. He took them over to the bed and emptie
d them. It was the money. There was a lot of it. “Let’s see that list, Jim,” he said.
The short cop passed it to him, and he sat down on the side of the bed with it. “If everybody was as sharp as that banker, we’d get these birds out of circulation,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “Hmmm. Here we are.” He lifted a bill out of the welter of currency and set it aside. There was terrible silence as he went on. “And here’s another one. Numbers match, all right.”
He looked across at Charlie and gave him that cold grin. “You should have stayed out of the sticks, Charlie, my boy. Looks like the wise guy slept in the hoosier’s barn.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Charlie said.
“They never do,” Shandy said. He turned to the other cop. “I better call in, Jim. Just keep ‘em happy, and don’t let ‘em sell you anything.”
He got up and walked over to the telephone on a table in the corner. He picked it up, with his back to us, and turned, watching over his shoulder. “Police Headquarters,” he said. “Boy, what a bunch of sad-looking wise guys!” Then he chuckled. “No, I wasn’t talking to you, Operator. Extension Two-seven, please.” He tapped a foot on the floor and whistled softly. “Hello, Sarge? Say, if you’re interested in buying some stock in a sausage mine or a Pepsi-Cola well, I think we can fix it up for you…What? Yeah…Yeah. All four of ‘em. It’s Charlie, all right. And Ballantine. We even got the girl. She was asking for ‘em at the desk. Yeah, the same one the motel man in Wyecross described. Redhead. The Caddy was parked right out in front of the hotel.”
Well, if it meant anything now, I thought with weary bitterness, that explained how they’d got her. She’d come by for me, after all. Just about ten hours late—after the roof had fallen in.
This was the end of everything. They had us dead to rights. Goodwin could identify the three of us without any possibility of doubt, and they had the money with the serial numbers. We didn’t have a prayer. Cathy was the only one who might beat it, with a good lawyer—if she kept her mouth shut.
Nothing In Her Way Page 7
