Little Tramp (Prologue Crime)

by Gil Brewer

  She didn’t speak.

  “Honey,” he called. “What you think about your father?”

  “I hate him!” she said.

  They were her first words in over three hours. Her face did not change expression and once again Doll went over to her and spoke and was ignored.

  “See?” Kryder said, turning back to Gary. “One-track mind. Quite a kid. She hates her old man, and you’re the goat, Dunn. Money makes her jump, and she makes you jump—or at least she did.”

  The room fell silent for a time. Gary mused and got nowhere. There was a muddled desperation in him now, slowed with tiredness, and he knew that it wouldn’t be long before he’d have to take whatever chance came his way. He looked at Arlene, and wondered what in hell she was thinking? Her face held that curious rigidity, her eyes bemused.

  Rising, he wandered through the bedroom to the bathroom and rinsed his face with cold water, trying to rid himself of lethargy. It helped a little. His jaw, forehead, and eye showed evil bruises.

  Returning through the bedroom, he paused beside the bureau, listening. Dim light reflected on a fleck of metal jammed between the wall and the back of the bureau, behind the small mirror. He drew it out, abruptly experienced a rise of spirits. His keys. Arlene had hidden them there. The familiar weight was pleasant.

  He dropped them into his pocket and immediately lost his sense of elation. No telling what that kid might do if she noticed the keys had vanished, but he had to take the chance.

  It was still quiet in the other room. He went through the doorway and glanced toward Doll. Nobody said anything. He went over and sat on the couch again, thinking about the car key.

  Doll walked over to the porch door. He watched the sleepy movements of her body and thought back, then refused to think at all.

  “It’s morning,” Doll said softly. “The sun’s coming up.”

  FOURTEEN

  MORNING on Tarpon Lake was a slow interim of dissipating mists as fingers of sunlight probed the trees, the thick moss, the dark waters. The sun caressed the rough sides of cabins, warmed the ground until it steamed, and mosquitoes, drowsy at the break of day, slowly wound themselves up again, recharged their motors, and sought blood.

  Somewhere a bird sang. A fish jumped. A man stretched. A woman yawned, pleaded half-heartedly, remained on her back moments longer than intended—later yawned again.

  On Tarpon Lake a dead body lay submerged in darkness, hidden in a septic tank. A shred of bright printed cloth showed between the cement lid of the tank and the green grass.

  On Tarpon Lake, death squatted musingly, bathing his tired feet in the chill dark waters—waiting, untouched by anything like impatience.

  On Tarpon Lake morning progressed for some slowly, for others like a streak of light drawn across the sky.

  On Tarpon Lake a toilet refused to flush in cabin Number Nine, the one down at the end—the last one before you reached the swamp. The quiet cabin, except for those times when a man’s harsh voice talked and laughed, echoing out across the water. The cabin with the Ford parked in close against the weathered sides, and green sedan up on the dirt rode, in by the palmettoes. The cabin where the pale, drawn face of a young girl sometimes flashed tight up against the front porch window, eyes like marbles, hands like wands, red-tipped—waiting.

  Death moved on his haunches, turned glittering, diamond-like eyes, stared longingly at cabin Number Nine, and sighed.

  It was nearly noon. Time evaporated splendidly.

  Death had no lids on his eyes.

  “It’s a pity we have to wait,” Kryder said. “It’s killing me—the waiting.”

  Gary saw him pause for effect, but nobody tumbled.

  “Thing is,” Kryder went on, pacing the living-room floor. “I wanted her old man to be sure and have that money ready. You hurry them, they can slip up. That’s a lot of money,” he said, looking out the front porch door at the lake. For a moment, his voice ceased and he stared out there into the brightening noon. He rubbed his eyes, then turned quickly back toward them. He was scowling, as if he’d seen something. “What was I—Oh, yes—a lot of money, even for Frank Harper. No halfway measures, you know?” He stopped, looking at Gary on the studio couch. “Too bad we couldn’t’ve made it last night, eh? Would have been all over by now.”

  Gary was barely listening to him. Somehow he had to talk with both Arlene and Doll, and he didn’t see how he was going to manage. As the hours passed, Kryder was becoming more and more keyed up, and for some time hadn’t let them out of sight, even as far as the kitchen. Gary knew what he was going to do. There had been one time, just before daylight, when he’d nearly had the man—but not quite. Kryder had whirled in time to see the look in Gary’s eyes, the tensed muscles readying for trouble. He’d shown nothing in his expression, but since then Kryder’s gaze had been more watchful.

  “Funny about the radio,” Kryder said. “You’d think they’d still have it on the news.”

  “You asked him not to,” Gary said.

  “Yeah. You’d think they’d go ahead anyway, though. Wish I could see a paper. Wonder what they’re saying now?”

  “Probably nothing. Harper wants Arlene back.”

  Kryder glanced at the girl, who was slumped in the rattan chair, watching him with those dead eyes. “A pity,” he said.

  Arlene rose and went into the kitchen. Kryder waited in the center of the room and she returned carrying a bottle. She went to the chair, sat down, and began drinking from the neck of the bottle, taking short sips quickly. Her eyes were steady.

  “Better take it easy,” Doll whispered to her.

  “Shut up,” Arlene said.

  They waited.

  It was no longer a patient promise that something good would happen to free them. Gary watched Kryder with increasing anxiety now, and with every moment despair increased like a disease in his blood.

  Doll came over and sat beside him on the couch and for one moment when Kryder stepped out to the porch, Gary turned to her.

  “You’ve got to tell Arlene,” he whispered. “We’re going to make a run for it. It’s the only way. All three of us. He’s going to call Harper, and after he calls he wants me to call. If we wait that long, it’s all over—we’ve got to make it when he’s at the phone. It’s the only chance. We’ve got to be ready on the front porch.”

  Kryder came back into the room.

  “Secrets?”

  “Yes,” Gary said.

  “Well, let’s not have any more of that.”

  Gary took Doll’s hand, squeezed it, and felt the returned pressure of her warm fingers. He wanted to hold her close and tell her all about the chances of their not making it, and of how much he loved her for being just as she was. But there was no chance to tell her anything and the moments stretched out as they sat there, with Kryder pacing and Arlene solemnly tipping her bottle. Color was returning to Arlene’s cheeks and her eyes were no longer glassy.

  Gary didn’t like to think what was on her mind.

  Kryder thought he was making them suffer with waiting. He was mistaken. Somehow they were going to reach that car. They had to. He knew he could never get out to the car, get the gun, and do anything. By then, Kryder might kill any one of them. But if all three of them made a run for it, maybe they could make it together. They had to make it. And somehow Arlene had to be told, as soon as possible.

  He wasn’t sure when Kryder would call Harper. And if Kryder had him call first—then what?

  He didn’t.

  It was a little after dusk when Kryder checked the time and grinned across the room at Gary. “This is it,” he said. “I’m going to report in. This is where I clear myself, see? Then you’ll phone and that’s it.”

  “Fine.”

  They were all knocked out from going without sleep, but he felt a renewal of energy now. Doll was still at his side and he was sweating now, because there’d been no chance to warn Arlene about their plan. He didn’t even know if Doll went for it. It didn’t matter. It
had to work; it was their only out.

  Doll rose and walked over to Arlene.

  “Honey,” she said. “You’ve had enough of that.”

  She had her back to them, standing in front of Arlene as she took the bottle from the girl’s hands. Arlene was looking up at Doll.

  “Let her be,” Kryder said.

  Gary stood up and walked over by the porch door, stepped outside and leaned against the door frame, holding the screen door open. The air outside and inside was humid and hot and far out in the darkening sky a plane winged toward Tampa.

  “Gary,” Doll said. “Help me walk her a little, will you? She’s plastered.”

  He didn’t know what to do or say. If Arlene were drunk, what could they do? He looked quickly at Kryder, but the man was concerned with what he was going to say over the phone.

  “Bring her out on the porch,” Gary said. “Let her stand here—there’s a little breeze.”

  He noticed Arlene’s eyes and he knew she wasn’t plastered.

  Somehow Doll had conveyed the message, he felt certain. He watched Doll come across the room with the bare-legged girl. Arlene’s head hung and her hair slung against her breasts.

  Kryder sat on the studio couch, dragged the phone to his side, and grinned at Gary as Doll took Arlene onto the porch. Gary grinned back and sat in a straight chair beside the screen door.

  He leaned back comfortably, waiting, hardly able to get his breath now. Panic fought inside him and he was sweating from every pore, his head dizzy. They had eaten nothing all day long, and he knew Kryder must feel as ill as he did himself.

  “Here goes,” Kryder said. His hand was shaking as he started dialing. He held the phone to his ear, staring at Gary. Gary heard the click of a lifted receiver.

  “Hello?” Kryder said. “Yes, Mr. Harper—that’s right.”

  Gary began to move slowly to his feet.

  “Gary?” Doll said in a matter-of-fact tone, loudly enough so Kryder could hear her easily without becoming suspicious. “Help me with her, will you?”

  Gary motioned with his head toward Doll, looking at Kryder. Kryder nodded over his listening, his eyes impatient.

  It was now.

  Gary knew Kryder wouldn’t cut the phone call; he couldn’t drop the phone sharply without a reasonable explanation. He didn’t wait to hear what the man was talking about. He moved quickly out toward the porch steps.

  The wall between the door and window shielded the porch steps from view and Doll and Arlene already were halfway down the steps.

  The night out there was already quite dark.

  “She all right?” Gary said loudly.

  “Just give me a hand,” Doll said. “I think she’s going to be sick.”

  He stepped down toward them.

  “Run!” he whispered and leaped for the ground.

  They ran stumbling through the darkness, around the side of the cabin toward the car. Gary felt his heart whacking

  against his chest, his head singing with blood. Arlene gasped and laughed brokenly as she ran. With each step a kind of wild shout came from her throat. Gary tried to close his mind to fear during that run which seemed a mile, and when they reached the car, he flung the door open and dodged under the wheel.

  Doll and Arlene leaped in and he prayed quickly and the engine turned and caught. Immediately, he ripped it into gear and gunned it, cramping the wheels away from the cabin, back toward the dirt road.

  He heard the shot. The windshield spattered in a spider web of tracing lines.

  He heard Kryder shout and as they struck the rutted dirt of the road, he saw the man’s dark shadow running after them, and he pressed the gas pedal to the floor and held it there.

  “Oh, God!” Arlene yelled. “Make it go!”

  He cramped himself over the wheel and another shot blasted behind them in the darkness. He turned the lights on and they flashed on the road. The car bounded in the ruts. He could barely hold it. He heard Arlene shouting above the savage whine of the still revving engine, but paid no attention to what she said.

  They came around a high curve in the road and the car kept gaining speed. It suddenly was a loose, wild thing in his hands and it was then that splaying headlights flashed in the rear-view mirror.

  “He’s following,” Doll said.

  “The road,” Arlene shouted. “The turn—you missed the turn to the main road!”

  Gary had seen it as they rolled past, the sudden expanse of dirt at the turn, and he knew he couldn’t make it.

  “I can’t turn back now.”

  “Where does this road lead?” Doll asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He wrestled with the wheel, fought the car in the deep ruts. The road climbed up along the edge of an orange grove on a sloping hill and Gary caught a glimpse of the lake down there, shining in the night. Stars were out, leaping giddily in the smashed windshield, and again the headlights from the pursuing car flashed blindly in the mirror. Gary grabbed the mirror, flipped it up out of the way.

  “He’s gaining,” Doll said.

  “I’m giving it everything it’s got.”

  The road swooped up into the orange grove and for a time they raced between flickering shadows of trees. Then the road gave way over the brow of a hill, slanting down toward the lake again, through the pine woods, and the rear end of the car slewed on suddenly smooth road covered with brown pine needles. And Gary heard the sound of the other car.

  “I borrowed a car to come out here,” Doll said. “I’ll bet he’s got it. It was parked in the palmettoes, just up past his. It’s an Olds—fast as hell.”

  The sound of it was something between a moaning whine and a hiss and it wasn’t far behind them now.

  “Do something!” Arlene screamed.

  Gary realized Doll was fighting with the girl. Arlene screamed again and he caught sight of kicking bare legs and thrashing arms. Panic brushed against his shoulder with the wind as the road twisted along an embankment above the lake. He heard the roar of the other car and suddenly he felt it nudge the rear end of the Ford.

  He fought the wheel till the car straightened.

  He held on and there was nothing to do now but drive. He knew Kryder couldn’t handle a gun now, not at this speed. They were hitting near ninety, and abruptly white headlights glared beside him, cutting toward him.

  The impact was as light as a feather. A short scrape.

  The car leaped, the wheel came alive in his hands. The other car crashed solidly against them and Gary suddenly felt the wheel loose in his hands and he heard Doll scream and they rolled crazily amid flying pieces of glass and the ruptured sound of tearing steel—-down the embankment toward the dark waters of the lake.

  FIFTEEN

  HE LAY still in the mud and water. He stared at the star-studded sky, disbelieving consciousness. He could see the Ford from the corner of his eye, nose down in the lake off the embankment. It was very quiet, not even the sound of a cricket split the night.

  He turned over and began to crawl up the embankment.

  He knew Arlene was dead. He was certain he would never see Doll again. He turned his thoughts to Kryder, wondering where the man was, what had happened.

  He realized they had crashed through bushes, remembered how they had gradually slowed the fall of the car, finally arrested it altogether. He felt no broken bones and was about to call out for Doll when he saw the shadow of the man, then made out the pale face of Kryder, sliding toward him down the embankment.

  He came to his knees. Up on the road was the other car, leaning slightly askew on the edge of the bank.

  “Dunn!”

  Gary looked up and started scrabbling toward Kryder. He wanted to reach the man, somehow, to get at him with his hands. He wanted to kill him, the word was a sound in his mind as he cleared to the fact that Doll must be dead and Kryder had caused it.

  “All right, Dunn—you fool!”

  He fought up the bank, then saw the flash of the revolver in Kryder’s
fist. Kryder slid down a few more steps, gouging his feet into the mud. Gary climbed with a kind of crazed frenzy, knowing he couldn’t beat that gun, but needing to try—needing very much to try. Then he saw Kryder slip as he fired the first shot.

  He heard another shot. Kryder straightened and yelled something, turning the revolver to Gary’s left. It fired again and two more shots came from nearby. Kryder doubled over, his feet feeling clumsily for a hold. Then he caved forward and began rolling, somersaulting. He pitched headlong past Gary and rolled on down the embankment to splash heavily into the lake, one leg doubled grotesquely in the mud.

  “Gary—Gary?”

  It was Doll’s voice from up on the bank. At the same time he was looking at Arlene, moving toward him along the embankment from the Ford, the automatic in her hand. Her face was white and she looked nearly naked as she moved along, the blouse torn almost completely away and the skirt twisted in flapping tatters about bare legs. Dark blood covered her left arm. One side of her face was torn badly.

  “Get up on the road,” Arlene said.

  Gary was already moving up toward where he’d heard Doll’s voice. He scrambled upward, pulling at saplings, using bushes to stand against and shove off. He made the road, searched the ground.

  “Over here, Gary—I can see you.”

  He moved toward the voice. He found her, knelt beside her. She was sitting up, staring down over the embankment at Arlene.

  “Doll—are you hurt bad?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He tried to see her better in the dim light from the stars. She was alive. That was all he could tell. He was very thankful for that. He saw blood on her dress, long dark stains.

  “I was thrown clear just as we rolled the first time,” Doll said wearily. “I saw the car strike down there.”

  Arlene came up over the brink of the bank, holding the gun. Her face was a bad thing to see, the blood staining her throat, her left arm dangling at her side.

  “Arlene?”

  “Get in the car,” Arlene said, gesturing toward the gray sedan with the gun. “Hurry up.”