He suddenly tilted back his head and laughed harshly. “What the hell am I yakking about? Hell, I’m making it sound as if I need you. I need you two like I need a point on my head. I’ve been doing you a favor. Phil, the softie. Well, it goes to show you. You can’t take a couple of farm kids and make show business out of them. I thought I could. So I was wrong. Now I’ll give it to you. You got no talent. Neither of you. People beat their hands together on account of my jokes and on account of you’re both stacked, which is something you were born with. I’m going to pick myself up some real pro gals. A pair that know the score. Any time you want to come crawling back, write me care of Variety and I won’t answer the letter. You can mail it in a hole in the ground and get the same answer. We’ll drive to Brownsville and split the kitty and you can take your clothes. The costumes belong to me, don’t forget. And you can take that contract which I am going to hand to you, and you can pin it on the wall where you can look at it in the middle of the night when a mess of squalling brats wake you up, because, gals, without me, you’re just going no place at all in the entertainment business. I’ve been a sucker, but it’s no skin off. You give me some laughs to remember, and, gals, this is the biggest laugh of all.”
He slammed the car door and went down the road. His walk was jaunty and he was whistling one of Berlin’s oldies as he walked away.
“The poor little guy,” Riki said softly. “Maybe we ought to give him a year. One more year.”
“No, baby. We said it. We did it. We’d never have the guts to do it twice. Leave it lay.”
“But he’s such a sweet little old picked chicken.”
“Sweet and dumb and hopeless, Riki. Ruthie, I mean. Riki and Niki are dead.”
“The Sheppard twins it is.”
“What will happen to him, baby?”
“Who knows? Beer joints. My guess is he’ll pick up some poor kid and make a stripper out of her and ride on that as far as he can. And maybe she’ll never meet a Jimmy Angus. Did you know the little guy was so proud, Ruthie?”
“We shot him right through the heart. Proud of us?”
“I don’t know yet. Wait till I stop bleeding.”
“A knock?”
“I’m off the stuff. Did you see him strut away?”
“A picture to go in my locket.”
“Did you ever hear the one about the midget and the locket?”
“That one is Phil’s.”
“Own up, Sis. For the rest of our lives we’ll probably be using his lines.”
“And remembering the little ferry that couldn’t.”
“Getting a little maudlin, ain’t we?”
“Turn your head. I’m going to cry, just a little.”
“Maybe you better wait until I’m through.”
They sat in the dark car and put their long legs up on the top of the front seat. The night air was soft.
After a long time, Mary Anne began a song, softly, sweetly. Ruthie joined in on the second bar. One of the first songs they had learned.
Their voices were like silver in the night. “I love to tell the story. ’Twill be my theme in glory to tell the old, old story…”
And, fifty yards and nearly thirty years away, Phil Decker heard the sweetness, and he hit his thigh with his fist, again and again.
Chapter Ten
DEL BENNICKE, the tough, stocky fugitive who was calling himself Benson now, counted up and realized he had gone thirty-two hours without sleep. He began to have a somewhat clinical attitude toward himself. It was like being in that stage of drunkenness when you cannot be absolutely certain that you are making sense to others. Fear kept him sleepless, kept him walking on the ends of his nerves, and exhaustion kept him from planning adequately or properly, kept him also from worrying about the quality of his planning.
Somehow, it was going to come out all right. It always had. One minute he would think that. The next instant he would be sweating. One moment he would feel tiredness dragging him down, and then adrenalin would steam through his blood stream, compacting his shoulders, balling his fists, making it hard to take a deep breath.
You used people to get you out of jams. Be fast enough and you could foul up the situation so good you were lost in the crowd.
That little fracas with the guards of the fat politico had set him up, somehow. Made him feel better. The fool kid had practically whammed the gun barrel with the back of his head. The half-spick Texan had done pretty well. Nice dodging, nice backhand slam, and then he’d moved just right, moved low and inside, instead of backing up like a damn amateur and taking the slug in the middle of the face. The guards had given Bennicke a start when they’d steamed down the road. For a minute he had thought they had come for him, and then he saw that they’d been going too fast to look at license plates, were interested only in hogging the ferry and getting across the river.
Stepping in to help the old doll when he’d seen her sick in the car had been a good gag. It had given him a chance to get next to some strangers, get a good look at them. It had given him the opening with the Mooney girl. And that might shape up just right. The job was to get to San Antone. Somehow it would work out. It had to work out. He took a workmanlike satisfaction in the instinctive way he had picked the right place to drop when he saw the flicker of the revolver about to be used. The two flits had raced down the river bank. The funny-looking little guy had raced away from his twin blondes to hide behind a tree. And that Mooney was all right. He’d seen her drift quickly between two cars, moving the way people who have seen trouble before learn how to move.
When Bennicke had heard and understood enough of Texas’ conversation with the fat politico to know the situation was over the hump, he had stood up and watched with mild interest the way the eager guard was disciplined. There are a lot of ways to do a thing like that. Bennicke admired their way. They split with the butts and ripped with the sights, and that man was never going to be entirely whole again. It was going to leave him just a little unsure of himself. His manhood would leak out through the ripped face and he would never again be the sort of man you could trust, if he ever had been. It made Bennicke remember the limey officer in Rangoon. One of those apple-cheeked public-school boys. And if the liquor deal was going to run right, they had to get his co-operation. Shike was running the show, and so he’d had the limey kid beaten up three times on dark streets for no reason at all, apparently, before they ever contacted him. When they finally made the offer, the limey kid took it, because the beatings had soured him just enough, had given him a different slant on the wide world. A judicious mauling at the right time could do a lot to promote a future deal.
Bennicke saw the sick woman transferred to the second sedan. The young couple got in with her and away they went.
He sauntered down and talked with Texas for a little while. It was easy to see what had made Texas jump. The little silver-haired piece had given him just the right kind of look. But Texas didn’t seem to want to chat, and Bennicke gave him the needle a little about his gook blood, but it didn’t take.
And then he saw the truck topple off the planks on the far side. It brought back all the fear. He knew he might be stuck in this damn place until daylight. And daylight would be murder—or punishment for murder. This afternoon the Mexico City papers had probably been loaded with it. God, what a play they’d give it! One of their little tight-pants bullfighters who wouldn’t be wagging his cape in the Plaza México any more. The aficionados would want to see the murderer slowly flayed and broiled and basted with engine oil.
His hands were sweating. He ignored the way Mooney was looking at him and he turned away and climbed the bank and went as far away from other people as he could get and still stay in the shade, though with the slant of the sun, the shade wasn’t as essential as it had been. The way that red ball was dropping, it was going to be night before you knew it.
Bennicke wondered if he was going to be sick. Just one break when you need it, and some featherhead drops his truck into the Río C
onchos.
He crossed his legs and sat like a small muscular Buddha, flexing his fingers, trying to think of something quick and smart and bright. Something out of the bag of tricks. But the bag hung empty.
He watched sourly as Mooney came up the bank. The climb stretched the skirt of the yellow dress tightly, outlining her straight, thick, muscular thighs. Built for it, all right. All slut, and not to his taste, which ran to the restless, leaner, inbred wives of the roaming rich. He saw the pattern of them, of the two of them, as clearly as though he had already spent months with her. She would be the kind to slop around her apartment with tangled hair and crumby robe and busted slippers. Her cooking would come out of cans. And every now and again she would start whining and complaining and he would have to bounce her a little, the heel of the hand against the side of the face, to straighten her out. It made him feel tired to think of what the next few months would be like, even if he could get across the river.
She sat beside him with a heavy sigh. “Nice break, eh, Benson?”
“Thanks. I wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t told me.”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Good for you.”
“Take the chip off your shoulder,” she said. She edged a bit closer and lowered her voice. “I’ve been thinking about your… troubles. You said you won’t have a car and you’ll have to get across the river the hard way. That little car isn’t yours, huh?”
He gave her a long, hard look. “What are you dreaming up?”
“I’ve got the keys to the Buick. I’m supposed to take it across the river. But I can get somebody else to do it, I think.”
“What have you got on your mind?”
She edged a little closer. “This guy I’m with. His name is Darby Garon. He’s up there sleeping. See him?”
Bennicke looked up the hill, saw the man against a tree on the far side, chin on his chest. “So?”
“I don’t know whether to say it because I don’t know what you’ll go for, Benson.”
He saw, on her face, the excitement born of larceny. He knew he wasn’t getting any ideas. Maybe she’d have a decent idea.
“I’m just a young fella trying to get along.”
“If you get stuffy and tell him about it, I’ll say you made it up.”
“Keep talking.”
“Look, I’m sick of the guy. And he’s in a sling. He can’t raise hell about anything. He’s got a good job and a wife and kids in Houston. He wouldn’t dare try to make trouble for me, no matter what I do. When the ferry comes back, all the cars will move down two places, right?”
“If it ever comes back.”
“When you have to move your little car down, you can make out like it won’t start. You can look under the hood and fool around, and then roll it over out of the way. The ditch is wide and shallow where you’re parked. You can make it look good.”
He nodded, narrowing his eyes. “I can do that,” he said softly, testing the idea. It was obvious, and it wasn’t bad.
“It will be dark then. I can get Darby off, away from the others. I can do that when it’s nearly our turn to get across. And you follow us. Can you… knock him out without making any noise?”
“That isn’t hard.”
“He’s got the car keys in his pocket, and his wallet is locked in the glove compartment. I think he’s got about three or four hundred dollars left. I want all of that. You get his tourist card and the car papers. They’re in the wallet. We tie him up or something, and go across on the ferry, and go right on across the bridge. We can drive right through to San Antone and put the car in a lot somewhere and go to my place.”
“I don’t look like him. I can’t use his card.”
“If you have to sneak out of the country, I think it’s safer than trying any other way. My card will be O.K., and the car papers will be O.K. I can keep their eyes off you, sugar. And we can sprinkle a few pesos around. It will be late and they’ll be tired. On the American side they’ll go through the baggage, but they don’t ask for any papers. You just have to make a declaration.”
He stared down at his knuckles, thinking it over. It wasn’t at all bad. And yet he didn’t feel as if, in his state of exhaustion, he should trust his own judgment too much. It was good in one way. It would be a safer way of getting to Matamoros. The final decision could be made there, as to whether to risk crossing as Darby Garon. He remembered that they made you sign the tourist card when you surrendered it. He’d have a chance to scrawl Garon’s signature a few practice times. It wouldn’t have to be perfect.
“What can he do?” she asked softly.
“He can’t do a damn thing about it.”
“He won’t even report the car stolen. He can’t afford to.”
“Let me think about it.”
She moved closer again, so close that her breasts pressed against his upper arm. She increased the pressure slowly. “There any other arguments I can use, Del, honey?”
A twist of the wind brought the musky-ripe scent of her swirling full against his face. Desire superimposed itself on weariness, a knife with an oiled blade twisting slowly in his loins.
“Don’t try to kid me,” he said harshly. “Don’t try to make me think you got other reasons. You want that four hundred bucks, and I’m just a way of getting it.”
She moved away quickly. Anger flickered and faded. She grinned. “Is that bad?”
“What was wrong with my way?”
“This gets you across the river for sure. And we don’t have to meet at that Rancho Grande, and I make sure he doesn’t get funny and try to keep all that stuff he bought me.”
“And I promised to be a ticket for the rent and the food and the liquor.”
“O.K., we understand each other, Del.”
“It might work.”
“I took a chance, you know. Talking like this to you.”
He gave her his jack-o’-lantern smile. “You take no chances. Not you. There’s always a guy to hide behind.”
“Once there wasn’t. That’s why I have to be careful.”
“Do time for it?”
“Sixty days, but it could have been a one to five. I told Garon I worked in a phone office. That’s a large laugh. Anyway, the time I got caught, I was working with a… friend. And he went out a window and they didn’t get him, and there I was with more damn rolls of coins than you ever saw before. I bet there was eighty rolls of nickels. You should have seen me crying and yelling and saying I didn’t know a darn thing about it.”
Bennicke pursed his lips. “I don’t like that. Those guys have a nasty habit of coming around and checking all the time, just for the laughs.”
“Nuts. That was two years ago and it was over in El Paso. Besides ,you said it was just Mexican trouble.”
He made his shrug casual. “They might get real stuffy and try to get me extradited. But I doubt it.”
“You could be bad news, Benson. I have a hunch.”
“Then follow your hunch. Stop snowing in my face. Go and leave me alone.”
She hit his knee gently with her fist. “It isn’t much of a hunch.”
He looked across the river. “There comes the answer to the Buick problem, anyway. Some guy is rowing her across.”
Betty Mooney stood up. She smiled down at him. “Don’t go away. I’ll go give her the keys back.”
Betty Mooney went down the bank. She gave Bennicke an oblique look, back over her shoulder. He saw that her knowledge of his eyes on her altered her walk a bit, put more of an arch in her back, made her slacken the thigh and hip muscles of the supporting leg with each step to increase the tilt and swing of the hefty hips. Watching her walk, he decided that the stay in San Antone might not be too expensive after all. She had slyness enough, but no real guts. There was a narrow line between amateur and pro. She could be broken down and put on the road. He’d made the same cool decision before, many times, and he had yet to be wrong. And once the yelping was over and they got used to it, their very abjectness
made him feel bigger and stronger.
He knuckled his thigh. The damn tiredness was making him cross bridges before he came to them. The thing was to get out of this country. Maybe the brazen way was best. Brass it out. Take the Cad across the bridge. He fingered the reassuring bulge of the sweat-damp money belt. Money was your friend. Money and quickness and the bag of tricks.
He straightened out his tough bowed legs and leaned back, fingers laced against the harsh short hair at the back of his head. The sky was deepening. Once there was a color like that. When and where? A damn long time ago. Color of a shirt long ago in New Jersey, worn with a white tie. Hell, that’s when I was pearl-diving in that stinking kitchen of that summer hotel. Just a kid. What was her name, now? Dora? No, Dorine. Grabbed a swim early in the morning off the hotel dock and there she was. Red suit. Cute as a bug. A guest. She figured me as a guest too, and I had sense enough not to talk too much. Dated her for later, and bought that dark blue shirt in town. A real sharp kid. What was I? Seventeen, I guess. About that. Somehow they got wise. Her daddy and the manager were waiting when I tried to sneak her back to the hotel. Manager cracked me across the puss and fired me on the spot. Nose bled on the white tie. Daddy dragged Dorine inside and she was crying. Had to pack and get out right then. That manager saw me off the grounds. Fooled them all, though. Stashed the suitcase in the brush down the road and sneaked back. Got gasoline out of the tool shed. Poured it all over that big son-of-a-bitch of an automobile her daddy had. A Pierce Arrow. Tossed the match and ran like hell. God, what a whoompf!
Wonder what would have happened if they hadn’t caught us sneaking back. Never even tried to touch Dorine. Thought she was an angel or something. Know better now. Talk about turning points. Been roaming ever since. Had to make time for a few days and get out of the state. Wonder where Dorine is now. Home and kids. Big eyes she had. Brown. Cute little mouth. Never even touched her. Never even…
The hand on his shoulder brought him awake with a start. The sky was black overhead, star-spangled.
“Sugar, your nerves are shot,” Betty Mooney said, laughter in her voice.
The Damned Page 11
