The Empty Trap

by John D. MacDonald

  His disgust with his job was like a sickness. He had become more irritable with the staff. They responded by becoming slightly slack in their work. Only an expert could have seen the tiny changes. A smear of grease on the stainless hood over the main range. A spot on linen. A noisy bushing in an electric motor.

  “Some place far away,” he said. “An island in the south seas. Swim in the surf. Live on cocoanuts.”

  It was Sylvia who said, quite casually, “Of course we could manage it if we took off with enough money, enough of Harry’s lovely money.”

  They were sitting then, on opposite sides of a small table. Her words seemed to hang in the air for a long time. They looked at each other and looked uneasily away. Her laugh was nervous. “That is an idea we’d better drop,” she said. “And fast.”

  But the idea stayed with him, and grew. It was stolen money. What harm to take it from a thief. He found many pretexts to go to the Copper Casino. It was completely staffed by Charlie’s people, with the exception of the food handlers and bartenders. Lloyd soon saw that he would have no more chance of acquiring any of that money than would an outsider. Charlie had thought of every possible protection against a stickup.

  Yet the idea persisted. When he finally saw how he could take money, it was ridiculously simple. Winners felt uneasy about having cash on their persons, or in their rooms. They put it in the hotel safe, a stout modern box in the office behind the reservation desk. As he put a thick envelope away one evening, he wondered why he had not thought of the guests’ money. The head cashier, Mrs. Boyer, had one key to the safe and he had the other. They were the only two keys, and they had to be used simultaneously. Harry had a complete set of two keys locked away somewhere. When Mrs. Boyer went off duty, she turned her key over to Harmon, or whatever other person was on night desk duty. Lloyd never let his key out of his possession. It was a nuisance to have to come down to use the key, but it seemed safer. When the safe was unlocked, the door hung open. It was designed that way as a precaution against leaving it accidentally unlocked. He had heard of taking an imprint of a key and getting another made, but he did not know how to go about getting such an imprint, or where to go to get a key made. When he was with Mrs. Boyer, she would hand her key over and he would work both of them, give hers back to her. When the house was full and play was heavy, there was often a good deal of money in the safe. He tried to think of the easiest way to manage it. It would not take a great deal of tension to keep the door closed. If it remained closed it would look as though it were locked.

  When, in April, Harry went on a three day visit to Los Angeles, Lloyd explained his idea to Sylvia. She was very nervous about it. They had talked about it enough times so that it was not difficult to talk, and at times the talk seemed academic—it seemed to be talk of something that would never occur.

  “Would he contact the police?” he asked. “It isn’t his money.”

  “Never. He wouldn’t yell cop. He’d make the losses good. And then he’d send people after us.”

  “They’d never find us. Not if there’s enough money.”

  “There’ll have to be enough. Will your idea work?”

  “I think so.”

  “You’ll have to rehearse it. You’ll have to actually go through with it once without taking the money.”

  “I know.”

  She clung to him. “I’m scared, Lloyd. I’m terribly frightened.”

  “What else can we do? What else is there in the world for us to do?” he asked, his voice dull.

  The rehearsal worked perfectly. When he had a chance to tell her she said she had decided she couldn’t go through with it. In May Harry became more brutal with her. And Harry complained to Lloyd about bad service in the hotel. Things were moving toward the inevitable showdown. On the first of May Harry left for two weeks on a business trip to New Orleans, Miami and San Juan. They held each other tightly in the grey of a long dawn and said it would have to happen now. They told each other it was what they had to do. She said she would pack. He packed what he would need. He managed to get their suitcases into the back end of the Pontiac without being observed.

  They coordinated it carefully. The best time seemed to be early morning, right after Mrs. Boyer came on. He came down carrying the empty blue canvas bag. He went through into his own office. His own secretary was at work. He said good morning to her, and spent the next five minutes looking over departmental reports. He did not see or understand a figure he looked at.

  “Betty.”

  “Yes, Mr. Wescott.”

  “I’d like you to go get hold of Tony Arco and check liquor stores against this inventory list. Don’t bother with back bar stock. Just the cases. It shouldn’t take over an hour.”

  When she had gone, he took a deep breath. He took an envelope out of his desk drawer, went out into the other office where Mrs. Boyer worked alone and said, “Let me take your key, please.”

  As usual, she handed him the whole key ring, first separating the safe key from the group. He went to the safe. His back was to her. He opened the door, put his envelope inside, and then, as he closed the door, inserted the rubber window wedge he had purchased in the village and shaved down with a razor to the proper thickness. It was out of sight when the door was closed, and made sufficient tension to hold it closed. He made a mock of turning the locks, took her keys back to her. As he handed them to her he said, “I sent Betty off on something that will take at least an hour, Mrs. Boyer.” She looked up at him inquiringly, face and expression like that of an aged and truculent pug dog. “Would you do me a favor and go find Foster and give this to him?” This was a report from the heating contractor recommending the installation of another blower in one of the longer airconditioning ducts. Foster, head of maintenance, had been waiting for the report for days.

  “Of course, Mr. Wescott,” she said, getting out of her chair. “Do you know where he might be. I know he won’t be in that little office of his.”

  “Try the roof deck first. There’s something wrong with the fountain again.”

  He knew Foster would be on the roof. That would give him five to seven minutes. He had timed it. As soon as she had gone, he raced into his office, snatched the blue bag, dropped it on the floor beside the safe. He pulled the door open, picked up the wedge when it fell. He scooped out the thick stack of envelopes in the big drawer used for guest valuables. Two big double handfuls filled the blue bag. He zipped it shut, closed the safe door, replacing the wedge, carried the bag into his office and put it out of sight on the floor behind his desk. He was breathing hard. He had worked just inside an open door, not quite in view of the lobby. The two desk men were ten steps away from the open door, and came in often during the day. Two girl cashiers were on the front this time of day, and either of them could have stepped, in. The main switchboard was fifteen feet from the open door. It was a calculated risk. When he dropped the bag beside his desk he checked the sweep second hand of his watch and saw that it had taken just forty seconds.

  He sat behind his desk and saw Mrs. Boyer return. He went out and asked for her key again. “Sorry. I should have put both of these in at the same time. How is the fountain coming?”

  “Between cuss words, I would guess from what he said it will be working before noon.”

  “Good.” He retrieved the rubber wedge and this time he relocked the safe. When he gave her the key, he said, “Tell Betty I’ve gone into the village on some errands.”

  Guests who checked valuables were informed they could be retrieved between the hours of nine and eleven, unless they were checking out. Mrs. Boyer said, “Suppose I have to get into the safe, Mr. Wescott?”

  “Stall them along,” he said, smiling. “I won’t be long.”

  He walked out of the hotel, slowly, trying to look casual. His legs trembled. He got into the car, and as he turned around, he looked once at the hotel, looked at it for the last time, and then drove down the road. The blue MG was parked in the supermarket lot. Sylvia stood waiting in a
patch of shade. She walked out and got into the car beside him, yanked the door shut. He drove away.

  She looked tautly ahead. Her face looked white and shiny.

  “Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “I have no idea. Enough, though.”

  “My God, I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared.”

  “Easy, honey. Take deep breaths. Harry is away. This is how it will work. By noon they’ll just be annoyed with me. They won’t start to get upset until midafternoon. Even then, they won’t tie us together. There won’t be any panic until tonight, and I don’t think they’ll get into that safe until tomorrow.”

  “I think I’ll be scared all the rest of my life. You don’t know what they’re capable of. You don’t know what they can do.”

  “Nothing they can do can be worse than staying there. We’ll cross at Juarez some time tomorrow. It’s further, but it’s safer. We’ll push it hard tonight. After we’re over, you’ll cheer up.”

  But she hadn’t. She had stayed in panic. Her love-making had been conditioned by her tension and her fear. Only after they had gotten to Talascatan did she begin to seem a little more like herself. One hundred and ten thousand dollars seemed like a great deal of money. But when you thought that it was only sixty percent of what Charlie had stolen from the two Texans, it did not seem like so very much. All of her life had been cruel and hard, but it had not killed a tenderness in her, a capacity for love which she denied having. They could make some kind of a life, and try to make it good.

  “You,” she said, as they walked back in the velvety night from Talascatan to the motel, “You are what I never had and what I wanted and couldn’t let myself know I wanted it. A three drugstore man. A man who grew up on shady streets. A man with some boy left in him. We won’t make it, Lloyd, if we loaf for the rest of our life. I want to work. I want us to work on something together.”

  “Like?”

  “We’ll loaf for a while, then maybe we can start something. A little place where you can eat and have a clean room and a drink. No staff. Just maybe a couple of local servants. Nothing so big anybody will ever hear of it. Just a little place in a hidden corner of the world.”

  “Kids?”

  “We’ve never talked about that, have we? Remember when I told you not to worry? I didn’t tell you why. I guess you should know, and maybe it will be important to you and you will feel cheated, but I couldn’t tell you before. I’ve had two abortions. The first one cost sixty dollars and the place was filthy and I felt fine in a week. The second one cost fifteen hundred and the little sanitarium was immaculate, and it nearly killed me, and it fixed me so there won’t be any. Are you terribly sorry?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I always thought I’d like kids around. If I have to have them around, somebody will be able to spare some kids to the reech Americano.”

  “You’re nice, Lloyd. Now I think we’re going to have a long and happy life, and I’m going to try to stop being afraid, really.”

  “Long and happy,” he said, and stopped on the shoulder of the dark road and kissed her, and they went on, hand in hand, swinging their clasped hands. That was the night Tulsa, Benny and Valerez waited. So her life was short indeed, and as unpretty as a short life can be made.

  6

  His legs began to feel chilled. He sat up and saw that the shadow of one of the western rocks lay across them. He sat up and scratched his beard and stretched until his shoulders creaked. He had been far away, and had thought a long time, and had remembered many things vividly. Perhaps there could never be a single explicit answer to the question of why it had happened. Infatuation, the feeling of being trapped, pity, sexual auto-hypnosis, perhaps all had conjoined to provide him with a rationalization. It served him at the time, and carried him along through a series of acts he would once have thought impossible even to contemplate.

  As he dressed slowly, he thought of what all the people he had known would think of him. Even though Harry wouldn’t call in the police, he could not keep it from the staff. The staff would know, and then it would become known throughout the special world of the big resort hotels. “You remember, Wescott? Real tall guy. Good operator. Young. Know what the son of a bitch did? Ran off with the owner’s wife and a couple of hundred grand. It was all hushed up. Isn’t that a hell of a thing?”

  And they would talk about it on the late desk shifts and in the linen rooms and behind the bars. And shrug and say it goes to show you can’t ever really figure people out.

  There would be talk too, in another world, in a shadowy world of hotel rooms, race tracks, private rooms in road houses, back rooms in bars. They would talk about it from another angle. “You know what happened to Harry? He married that Sylvia, the one that was married to Frenchy. He had this kid running his big new hotel. So the kid takes off with Sylvia and a big chunk of the take. How far did they get? How the hell should I know how far they got? Are you stupid or something? The only thing I know is one thing, pal. The word isn’t out. Nobody at all is looking for that pair. So you figure it out your own way.”

  He walked slowly back to the hut. There would be other people talking, too. His brother and his wife. His parents in the trailer in Bradenton. Sad talk. Speculation. He knew they would go to the police. He could see them talking to the police—or to Harry. And he would see Harry’s spread hands, the wide-eyed look of complete innocence. “How the hell should I know where your son went, Mr. Wescott? I was away. I come back and I find he’s walked out. I did a hell of a lot for that boy, and he took off without even giving notice. What’s that? They traced him as far as the Mexican border? Then maybe you better look down there instead of asking me questions. I’m a busy man.”

  He thought of his own people and tried to feel sadness and regret. He could, but the emotion was muted. They were far away. They mourned a man who was dead. That was a sad thing and it could not be helped. They could take no pleasure in the man who the son and brother had become. They would not even be able to recognize him. There could be no talk between them, nothing in common. The boy part of the man died in a Mexican motel. The Lloyd Wescott of other years, the efficient, smiling host was like somebody he had once known, and not known very well. They could never understand or condone what this man planned to do. One turned the other cheek. Revenge was barbaric. Murder was unthinkable.

  He began to be able to work harder and longer. One high school summer he had worked on a road gang, pick and shovel work. But the hours had been shorter, the breaks more frequent. He had never done manual labor this difficult. The men and boys he worked with seemed tireless. He knew he would never again think of a Mexican as a man dozing, leaning on a wall, sombrero tipped over his eyes. He could not yet do as much as they did, but he could take pride in being harder and stronger and more tireless than ever before in his life. He slept when dark came, and got up in greyness when the chickens were making the first sleepy sounds of awakening. His hands grew hard. He gained weight very slowly. His muscles were like ropes under hide that was nearly as dark as that of anyone in the settlement. He knew that soon he would be able to leave.

  Then he became sick. They were working on one of the farthest hillsides, chopping out the tough growth, dragging it into the valley. He worked in a place protected from the wind, stripped to the waist. The cold driving rain came almost without warning, drenching all of them. They found shelter and, after the hour-long rain had passed, began to work again. He felt curiously lightheaded. When they headed for the huts, he knew he was sick. He could not eat. He lay under all the covering they could spare, and he could not get warm. He shivered violently. They gave him remedies. After a time he became so hot he could not stand it under the blankets. Later he slept. When he awakened he knew it was the middle of the night. One of the boys was whining in his sleep. Armando and Concha slept in the other room. Isabella and the boys slept on the pallets in this room. They were rolled up and put out of the way during the daytime. He had
never been so cold. His shivering was like a continual shudder, and there was a painful chattering of his broken teeth. He lay fully dressed under the coverings, hugging himself. In spite of the faint red glow of the charcoal, he could see the plume of his breath in the moonlight that came through the smoke hole in the thatch. Others would sleep in coldness this night that he might be warmed.

  He lay with his eyes squeezed shut, trying to control the shivering, and gave a start when he felt a light touch on his shoulder. He could make out Isabella on her knees, leaning over him.

  “You are very cold,” she whispered.

  “I am all right.”

  “No. It is not right.” She moved away into the shadows and when she came back he felt her spread more covering over him.

  “That is yours. You will freeze, Isabella.”

  She did not answer him. She pulled up the corner of his bedding and wiggled quickly under and flattened herself against him and held him in a strong warmth.

  “You should not do this.” It was difficult to talk clearly, he was so cold.

  “Agh! I did it before, many times, when we thought in the night the life would go out of your body. I felt that I held it there, and it could not go out of your cold body if I held it very tightly. And you see, it did not.”

  “This is a different kind of sickness. You will get it from me.”

  “No. I am never sick.”

  Still he shivered. She made a small sound of exasperation and held him the tighter, entwining his legs, rubbing his back with her hand, pulling his head down into the warm place between her throat and shoulder. Yet still he was cold. She released him, fumbled with the front of his shirt and opened it to the waist. She did something to her own night garment. Then she held him as before, and their bodies, bare from throat to waist, were pressed tightly and warmly together, and he could feel the round firm breasts against him.

  “Now,” she said. “Now be warm, pobrecito, pobrecito, muñeco mio.”