The desperate hours, a novel
Page 3
Robish burst in from the den as Cindy's step faltered at the sun-porch door. She turned, slowly, catching sight of Robish then, the big man planted in the center of the room, and, dismissing him instinctively, she faced Glenn Griffin, who had not moved a muscle.
"That's better, redhead," the tall young man said, grinning. "Now you're being real sensible." As his eyes flicked over her, the grin faded.
Cindy did not wilt, or go slack, or in any way indicate that she was terrified. She moved her feet one small inch farther apart and glared. "What do you want?"
"Spitfire, too." Surprise colored his tone. "Not sensible hke your old lady." Without taking his gaze from the girl, Glenn said, "Robish, get back to the window. The old guy's going to be pulling in any minute."
"I need a gun," Robish said.
"Get back there," Glenn Griffin told him, still not glancing at him, dismissing him.
"You think you can "
"Now."
Robish stayed only a second longer; then he turned about and disappeared into the gathering shadows of the den.
"Sit down, redhead," Glenn said, his voice hushed a httle. "Sit down and let me explain the facts of life. With that hair, you might feel like getting real brave. You can do that, just about any time you feel like it. You might even get away with it, not get hurt at all. But that's not saying what'll happen to the old lady ... or the kid brother ... or the father. We're waiting for him now, see, so take off your coat and sit right down in that chair."
Without in any sense suggesting that she was following an order—without, in fact, removing her coat as commanded but glancing at Eleanor with a hint of a reassuring smile that failed to come off—Cindy crossed to a chair and sat down. She even lighted a cigarette, steadily, returning the young man's arrogance by simply ignoring his presence.
"How long have these animals been here. Mother?" she asked.
Glenn laughed, a short explosive snort of sound, derisive and ugly.
"I've lost track of time," Eleanor said. "Some time after noon. Cindy . . ." She had meant to voice a warning, but she stopped herself. "There's another one in the kitchen."
"In other words," said Cindy, blowing smoke, "the house is crawling with them."
Eleanor was watching Glenn Griffin's face at that moment, and she felt a tightening of her own terror; a hand clenched her heart. The young man's face, a faint unhealthy jaundiced pallor at all times, went icy white, colorless, and the flesh around his even white teeth drew back into a stiff grin. He seemed to stand there undecided for a long time, perhaps half a minute; then, soundlessly, he turned and, in that graceful feline glide of his, he walked into the hall and through the dining room toward the muffled chatter of the radio in the kitchen.
There he remained until the sound for which Eleanor's nerves had been tensed reached her.
"Griffin!" Robish barked from the den.
Glenn Griffin materialized again. "No lights now, not a word out of either of you. Got that?"
Eleanor nodded dumbly.
"Got that, redhead?"
Cindy had her eyes fixed on the wall beyond Glenn Griffin's poised body as he stood in the hall doorway. She seemed to look through him as though he were glass, or simply not present at all. Eleanor longed to put out a hand. This couldn't be. This was no time for Cindy's stubborn temper.
"He's trying to open the garage," Robish said. "You want me to grab him now?"
"Not with all those cars going by," Glenn said. "He'll come in." He lifted his voice. "You watching, Hank?"
"He's not coming in this way," the other's voice called from the kitchen.
Again Eleanor felt the scream gathering like some terrible inhuman force in her chest. She listened to the familiar footsteps, brisk and energetic even after a hard day: up the two steps, across the tiled sun porch. This time Glenn did not waste time: he pointed the gun directly at the door, directly at Dan HiUiard.
First, Dan saw his wife—a statue, pale, haggard. He stopped short. The room was filled with the fading blue-gray twilight. Then he saw Cindy, sitting straight, smoking, her small face angry and defiant. At once, he thought of Charles Wright: had Cindy announced something to Ellie? Only then, because there was the faintest sort of shadow movement from the direction of the hall, did Dan see Glenn Griffin. And the pointed gun.
He felt his breath hold, and before anyone could move or speak, although he felt Eleanor straining half out of her chair, he had the whole picture straight and clear. He recalled the news reports on the radio in the car less than fifteen minutes before; he realized he had been a fool for not comprehending as soon as he saw the gray sedan through the windows of the garage. But such a far-fetched thought would not have occurred to him. However, he wasted no time now in bewilderment or amazement or rebellion at the situation as it stood.
Eleanor saw the unnatural redness mounting her husband's craggy face, spreading violent under the tilted hat. Dan's mind, she knew, worked slowly but thoroughly, wasting no time on suppositions, moving straight ahead, but with caution, into whatever faced him. And she wondered, relaxing only a Uttle,
why she had dreaded this moment more than any other of the day. Before Dan spoke, she knew that his would be the first meaningful words that met Glenn Griffin all day.
"I suggest you put the gun away, Griffin," Dan said, "If you fire it, you'll have the whole neighborhood down on you in less than three minutes. The Wallings next door are home, and they'd hear the shot, even with the woods in between. If they didn't, someone driving by would."
The only sound in the dusky room was something between a whimper of hysteria and gasp of relief and gratitude from Eleanor. Dan felt a movement from the direction of the den, but he did not shift his eyes from Glenn Griffin's.
"You try something, mister, you all get it," a heavy, dull voice said from the den, "You dumb, mister?"
"No," Glenn Griffin said, very slowly. "He's not dumb at all, Robish," The odd grin was flickering into place. "He's a smart boy, smarter than we figured, maybe." There was an edge of warning in his quiet tone.
Then, repeating his daughter's words—as Eleanor, knowing them both so well, might have expected—Dan demanded: "What do you want?"
This time Glenn Griffin was not taken by surprise. "I don't want anybody to get hurt. What do you want, Pop?"
Dan crossed then, despite the gun, toward his wife; he placed a hand—large and freckled and tender—on her shoulder and simply let it rest there, relaxed. "That's what I want, too."
Glenn let go with a laugh at that; he dropped the arm holding the gun. "Now you talk sense. So I'm going to talk sense, too,"
The room was deep in shadow now, and Dan listened in silence, feeling the shudders subsiding in Eleanor's shoulder. He didn't increase the pressure of his hand.
Glenn, striding in that slender cathke manner of his up and down the room, spoke in the unemotional manner of one who has known for months, perhaps years, exactly what he wants to say. Dan listened while the helplessness of his position seeped into him like some mysterious benumbing drug.
All they wanted—the three of them—was a safe place to stay till about midnight, at the latest two or three in the morning. They had some money coming, a lot of money, and when it arrived, they would go. It was as simple as that. In the meantime, life in the Milliard house was to go on normally. In every way.
"Just like normal, see. You got it straight, folks?"
He spoke like an actor who had rehearsed his words many times. He moved around the room and his brows lifted and his face worked as though some invisible camera were on him, as though he were carefully but arrogantly trying in his behavior to live up to some picture of himself that he carried in his mind. Dan recorded all this, for whatever good it might do, his own mind noting everything in that indirect but almost infallible way he had of judging people. Dan reached one inevitable, stone-hard conclusion: these were not idle threats. This boy would kill one or all of them if anything went wrong. Once Dan had accepted this, fully, he ac
ted upon it, but he could feel his legs shaking now, his body frozen and numb with helplessness.
"We'll do whatever you say, Griffin," Dan said in a fiat voice. "Only "
"Yeah?"
"Griffin, what if I could get you the money you want? Right away, I mean. Tonight. Before midnight? Would you leave then?"
"You couldn't do it, Pop. I had a look at your bankbooks. You just don't have it."
"That sounds like a deal to me," Robish said from the darkness of the den. "We could get the hell out of here."
Dan noted also the urgency behind the invisible man's tone. "Maybe I could raise it. Somehow. What then. Griffin?"
"We're sticking," Glenn said.
"Yeah," the voice from the other room muttered sourly. "Sticking to wait for that babe. You'd risk our necks just to see that dame again."
Having unexpectedly created the breach, Dan stepped into it. "If this woman, whoever she is, knows where to come, how do you know the poUce won't be following her? It's as much to my advantage as yours now to avoid the poHce."
"What about that?" This time Robish emerged, planting himself at the far end of the room, his hulk of body bleak and hard in threatened mutiny. "The guy talks sense, Griffin. Hell, you can pick up a woman anywheres."
A flicker of bewilderment passed over the hard, young features of Glenn Griffin's face. He glanced from Dan to Robish. Then he whirled to Robish, the movement a dancer-shadow in the room. "I'm running the show, Robish. I thought we had that straight. We're staying, see, till Helen gets here. She's too smart to let the cops get on her tail. And she's got the kind of dough I got to have. And I got to have it here, see. Right in this town."
"You got no right to take these chances just so you can get a copper knocked off. What do I care somebody broke your goddamned jaw? That was a long time ago, anyway, and if this guy here can raise the dough "
"No!" The word crackled. "You heard me, both of you." Slowly Glenn stepped toward Dan. "You, Hilliard, you lay off. I don't need no ideas from you. I got my own, and I got them all worked out and they been working fine."
"Ain't worth it," Robish snorted.
"I say it is, Robish. Where'd you be if it wasn't for me?" He spoke with his back to Robish, his eyes on Dan. "You'd be sitting down to that stew again, that's what, with a gun on you, and a guard breathing down your neck again. This way, we got the guns, and that's the way it's going to be." He was rubbing his cheek, feeling the hard ridge of tissue that now protected the mended bone. "And you, HiUiard, you're going to 29
talk when I ask you something or when I tell you to talk. Otherwise, you're going to keep your trap closed. You love this woman of yours, you're going to play ball. Like you say, pal, it's as much your advantage as mine to keep any coppers away from here. Any red lights show in front of this joint, it's not going to be pretty."
Mrs. Kathleen Webb was smiling happily at her husband across a red-checkered tablecloth and what was left of a very thick steak. He was talking as he ate, and the ripple of excitement reached across the restaurant table.
"She left Pittsburgh at approximately four o'clock this afternoon. That much is for certain. Driving south on U.S. 19. Less than an hour later, she was spotted on U.S. 40, heading west. West, hear? That's us. That's here. I told you they were homing pigeons. She's sailing along now in her nice maroon two-door job, and they're holed up somewhere here thinking how smart they were to get her out of town so she could backtrack to them without being watched. Smart? Not so damned." He shoved the platter back and worked a napkin over his chin. "Every town she goes through, I reckon there's going to be a pair of eyes on her, clocking that maroon job like it was in a race. But nobody's going to bother her. Oh no, oh no. Along about Greenfield, they'll put a real tag on her and she'll breeze in here tonight some time and lead us right to the hole. State troopers, FBI, all of us." He clutched the napkin into a knot. "Just like that."
"Jess," his wife said gently, with a faint wonder in her face, "you want to kill that man, dont you?"
Jesse didn't answer that at once. He knew the truth, the blank and absolute fact: yes. But suddenly it seemed important
to explain and justify this feeling, although everything he said toward this purpose was also the truth: "Look, I don't know what makes people go bad. I grew up in a neighborhood that was worse than the GrifRn boys' if it comes to that. So did the Mayor. And I don't know about all these here psychological things you're always reading about nowadays. I reckon they've got something, too. All I know is that as long's a guy like Glenn Griffin is running around free and safe, and with a gun in his hand to boot—well, it's not free or safe for the rest of us, any of us. It's like that, hear? That's the way it is." He leaned across the table. "That's why you're going to sleep on a cot in my office tonight. Or at a hotel. Which do you reckon?"
"I'll take the jail. I hate hotels and we can't afford them, and I'd like to be near you."
Jesse smiled again, taking her hand on the table; she cast an embarrassed glance around the restaurant. But Jesse held onto her hand, and she watched a scowl replace the smile on his narrow face.
She had no way of knowing that his mind had, by an accidental association of images and fears, pounced upon a picture that was true in its general outline if not in detail. Jesse Webb was imagining Glenn Griffin with that gun pointed at frightened and innocent people, and no one knew better than Jesse Webb that Glenn Griffin was capable of using it.
But where? If he only knew where ... If only he didn't have to sit now and wait, with that picture coming back at him in different forms . . .
As Dan Milliard stared at the gun held so casually in the hand of the young man and as his mind shied from the pictures of destruction inherent in the very fact of that gun's presence in his house, he was caught in a sickening helplessness. If the police came, it would be tragic; if they did not come, it might be worse.
"The kid's coming up the drive on his bike," Robish reported from the den.
"If you'll let me talk to him," Dan said quickly, "I could explain it and . . ."
"Shut up," Glenn Griffin said softly.
Dan could hear the sound of the single tire skidding on the gravel of the driveway. "But with the lights off like this, the boy will be scared to death. You can't . . ."
Glenn Griffin took two swift silent strides and jabbed the gun point with bruising force into Dan's ribs. Dan gasped for breath, and his hand closed down on Eleanor's shoulder.
Regardless of this, he heard quite distinctly the few short carefree steps on the back porch, the back door opening, the small cry of astonishment and sudden fear. He stiffened. As though his own insane and suicidal impulse had communicated itself through the gun against him, that point once again rammed itself with force into his ribs.
There was a brief and one-sided scuffle in the kitchen; it continued through the dining room, with Ralphie's voice mingled incoherently in it.
Then Ralphie was standing in the hall, held in the grip of a young man whom Dan had not seen before but whom he recognized immediately as Glenn Griffin's brother.
"Let go!" Ralphie said, twisting himself out of the short man's grasp.
"Hank." Glenn switched the gun idly so that it was directed at the hall. "Turn on the hall light, pull the Winds in the dining room and get back to the kitchen." As he spoke he stepped into the hall, out of view of the front windows.
Anyone going home from work on the street outside could see the Hilliards in their living room, facing the hall. They could not see the small straight figure of the boy in the hall,
outrage and not fear written on his play-streaked face. Nor could they see Glenn Griffin beside the boy.
"What's that guy doing in our kitchen?" Ralphie demanded.
"It's all right, Ralphie," Dan said quickly, but not moving despite the impulse that quivered along his legs. He saw then the alert flash of comprehension and terror leap to the boy's face as the eyes fell on the black metallic gleam in Glenn's hand. "I'll explain it to you, Ralphie."
With startling suddenness, the boy whirled, leaped to the front door, turned the knob and tugged.
"Take it easy now, kid," Glenn said in a single breath.
Still tugging, Ralphie began to cry. Then, almost as quickly as he had moved the first time, he gave up on the locked door. It appeared that he was going to turn to face them, but what he did was so abrupt and ridiculous that even Glenn seemed startled into inaction. Ralphie darted into the living room, passed Dan even as his father's hand went out, and reached the unlocked sun-porch door.
"Ralphie!" Eleanor screamed, but not loudly because her throat closed with terror.
Dan was after the boy, but before he could reach him, there was another movement, from the direction of the den, and the man Robish, cursing, grabbed Ralphie.
Glenn flipped off the lights almost as soon as Robish appeared in the living room.
What followed was pantomime and dumb show, in semi-darkness, with the big man twisting Ralphie about, the enormous hands spinning him, then slipping down to his shoulders and shaking the small body. Dan heard behind him the metal-and-cloth swish of the front window curtains as Glenn drew them shut. All he saw was his son's head snapping up and down against his chest and the heavy shoulders of the man half-turned away from him.
It was enough. Dan forgot the gun behind him. He forgot Glenn Griffin completely. In that blank moment of wildness 33
he took two more steps, felt the lights come up on the room, saw the tear-filled incredulous eyes of the boy and the enormous hate-twisted, frustrated face of the man looming over the boy. Even as he reached for the man's shoulder, Dan knew it was madness that drove him, but he was helpless in the grip of jungle instinct.
Eleanor watched the pantomime in horror, torn between the impulse to leap at the man herself, clawing the flesh from the bone of that ugly, brutal face, and the knowledge that she must somehow dam up and control the same rage that she saw naked and terrible in her husband's whole body.