by John Farris
“Like that.”
I sat back, thinking about Macy Barr. Things were going bad for him. Once he had been absolute, a ruthless tyrant in a tiny rich empire, who would roll up his sleeves and use his own hands on those it was necessary to impress with his power. Now he was beginning to feel his years. Maybe Maxine would get him. Maybe it would be the Treasury boys finding chinks in the legitimate front constructed over the years by a squad of expensive lawyers. At any rate, somebody would get him, because once his kind of luck began to sour he was finished.
I had a different life now. I didn’t want to step back into his. I didn’t want to die along with him. But it wasn’t my choice to make. I felt helpless. Resentment heated my throat. Each passing mile shoved me deeper into the web from which I might not escape. After this job there would be others. Macy would find a reason to keep me around. I swallowed grimly. I’d kill him myself before I’d let that happen.
Rudy pushed the big Pontiac hard along the wide highway, hitting better than ninety, slowing as little as possible for the clusters of towns that were little more than winking traffic lights, darkened buildings, bright angles of neon. Outside of Port Wentworth the highway widened by two lanes illuminated by tall curved posts tipped with dazzling bluish lights. We were in an industrial suburb. Long blocks of warehouses with small windows stretched along the roadway behind chain-link fencing. Half a mile ahead red warning beacons winked atop huge silver globes in a chemical storage yard.
My eyelids were heavy and I thought about closing my eyes to rest them. Instead I reached for a cigarette. If I had closed my eyes, my face would have been shot off in another minute.
A hundred yards ahead a car spurted onto the highway and stopped directly in the path of the speeding Pontiac. In the second it took Rudy to whip out a curse and put his foot to the brake we had traveled a third of that distance. I glanced at the speedometer. We were going 105 miles an hour. Try to stop a car going that fast in two hundred feet. Rudy knew it, too, and I heard him groan helplessly as we skidded toward the other car. It was a black Ford, I saw now. I saw something else, too, as Rudy wrestled with the wheel, trying to ease the Pontiac to the other side of the highway. The tires were screaming. I ducked below the dash an instant before the right side of the windshield was blasted out with a shotgun aimed from the Ford.
Rudy yelled and I felt the car lurch as it shot across the corrugated safety zone. I barely straightened up, and had no time to grab the wheel, as the heavy car plunged down an embankment. In the space of a heartbeat, the Pontiac hit, throwing me against the dash. I saw one of the concrete lamp posts rush toward us, then veer to one side. We hadn’t slowed down much. There was a hideous shrieking sound of torn metal as the post was sideswiped. The car rocked, the back end starting to swing around as we slammed through a board fence. Something hit my head. The seat seemed to tip sharply and throw me out. I had no sensation of hitting the concrete pavement inside the fence.
Through a hot black fog I heard a vague roaring. I moved a hand and an arm and touched my face. Lights swished by my eyes, appearing and receding in the fog. I hurt everywhere. The thought of the Ford and the shotgun put me on my feet. There was blood on the back of my hand. I didn’t know where it had come from. I shut my eyes tightly, opened them, steadied my swaying body.
Twenty-five yards behind me the Pontiac — what was left of it — was burning at the base of one of the storage tanks. I didn’t have time to worry about that, or about Rudy. The Ford was parked on the highway at the edge of the embankment we had driven down and a man stood beside the open door, raising a rifle to his shoulder. I could see him well. He was wearing some kind of pale blue hat with a light-colored band.
I tried to run but fell and rolled away as a sharp cracking sound jumped the distance between us and a rifle bullet screamed off the concrete where he had corrected for me. He was good and quick. With the car burning behind me I was better than a target hung on a wall. I got up and took a couple of steps and he shot again. He was low. The slug hit the heel of my shoe and knocked me down. I knew he wouldn’t miss again. Rudy was yelling, but I was too busy to listen.
I had my own gun but the short barrel made it useless from that distance. A boxcar parked a hundred feet away on a siding offered cover. I started to crawl desperately that way, looking back over my shoulder at him. My throat was dried up tight. The only thing that was in my mind was the pale blue hat and a vision of Elaine running along the beach.
From somewhere another rifle was fired, two shots, a second apart, and one window of the Ford splintered. The gunman looked at it, looked away from me in confusion, the rifle resting on his forearm, butt against his side. A third shot sent him sprawling inside his car. The automobile was in motion before he pulled the door shut and tires screeched as the driver threw the Ford into a tight turn in the middle of the highway. There was a distant sound of sirens.
I turned and saw Rudy crouched behind the burning car, holding a carbine. “Get out of there, Rudy!” I yelled at him.
He backed away from the Pontiac and one leg buckled. If the car was going to blow up, it would have done so before, but the heat from the flames was apt to set off the storage tank above it. I limped toward him, feeling the heat against my face. He was sitting on the concrete with the carbine between his knees, his face full of pain. I took him under the arms and lifted him, sliding him away, toward the boxcar.
“Thanks,” Rudy said, coughing wildly. “Something with the... leg. Be all right, I suppose.”
Big red trucks were roaring through a gate nearby, trailing slack hose. I picked up the rifle and my revolver and threw them into the boxcar. I started back toward the wrecked automobile. Rudy stopped me for a second. His face was streaked with dirt and dripping perspiration and blood. His eyes were frightened behind the dirty lenses of his glasses.
“Now you see?” he choked. “Now you see why you had to come back, Pete?”
Chapter Four
Macy Barr’s home was on a small island thirty miles south of Castile. The island was about three hundred yards from shore, accessible by an old causeway barely wide enough for one car. At the island end of the causeway was a small house of weathered coquina, and an eight-foot gate consisting of heavy fence wire woven inside an iron frame. I hit the horn and turned off the headlights as Rudy instructed. A big spotlight on the building brightened the inside of the rented automobile.
A man carrying a submachine gun came out of the gatehouse and opened the gate. I drove through, followed a winding drive up an incline to the house and parked near a large garage. Rudy was nursing his head with an ice pack and didn’t say anything.
We unloaded charred suitcases and went inside. It was a nice house, two floors and various levels, a cross between modern and Mediterranean, built to take advantage of every stray breeze. We left the luggage in the spacious foyer, and Rudy, after looking at his watch, showed me to Macy Barr’s room. The effort of every step marked his face.
Macy wore an old faded bathrobe over a heavy frame that had gone to fat. He needed a haircut and a shave. He sat in an old armchair as shabby as he was and watched me with soft burning eyes. Then he looked at Rudy leaning against a wall behind me.
“What happened to you?” he said. Every breath he took made a faint husking noise in his throat.
“We were bushwhacked outside of Port Wentworth,” I said. “Two or maybe three in on it. One to phone ahead. They used a shotgun and then they used a rifle. The Pontiac cracked up and fire gutted it. Rudy hauled a carbine from under the dash and ran them off. The Wentworth cops let us go when they checked the registration. They told us to keep our family fights down south so their citizens don’t get hurt.”
Macy cleared his throat thoughtfully. His eyes burned like dying coals. There were ugly smears of darkened skin under the eyes. “You hurt?” He meant both of us.
“I lost some skin when I went out of the car. Contusions everywhere. Rudy got burned some, pulled a muscle in his leg. We were lucky.”
“Nerves shot to hell,” Rudy said through his teeth.
“Who were they?” Macy sat stiffly in the chair, not moving a finger.
“I don’t know. Neither does Rudy. I got a look at one of them, the lad with the rifle. A chunky bastard wearing a sky-blue hat. I’ll know him again when I see him.”
Macy moved then, looked at his thumbs. His lips folded together loosely, pinched down at the corners. His chest heaved a couple of times beneath the old robe. I wondered why he still wore the thing. They were putting better material in sugar sacks these days. I heard Rudy coughing delicately, as if every cough cost him pain.
“You go on to bed,” Macy told Rudy. “Better get a hot bath.” Rudy went out. “You want a drink, Pete?”
“God, yes.”
He waved me to a small bar. I chose a bottle. “Give me some whisky,” he said.
“What you want in it?” I said.
“I don’t want nothing in it!” he said peevishly.
I gave him some whisky. He held it as somebody else might hold a rare flower. He drank it slowly. In between sips I could hear the breath in his throat.
I mixed one for myself. There wasn’t any ice so I did without. I sat on his bed and looked at him sullenly.
“I’m glad you’re back, Pete,” he said. I didn’t say a word. “Sorry you ran into trouble on the way down.”
“Maybe you got some idea who planned it,” I said.
“No. I ain’t had any trouble like that.” He tapped his long fingernails against the glass. It was good crystal that must have cost two hundred for the set. Tapping it produced a clear lingering sound. “So you’re not happy,” he said. “I can’t help it.”
“Let me tell you how happy I am,” I said, getting up. “Six years ago I walked out on you because I was sick of you and your whole rotten business. I tried to forget you. I met a nice girl who didn’t know what a fix was, who didn’t know men were murdered every day in this country because guys like you can pull strings. I love her as I never loved anybody before. I used the money you paid me because I earned that money and I built a little business and bought a home against the day I’d be married, and tried to behave like a normal, everyday kind of guy. It was hard because at first I was acting. Then I began to feel that it was coming out all right, that the old life hadn’t scarred me too deep.”
I paused for breath. I didn’t take my eyes off him. The muscles of my jaw were tight. “I was beginning to feel happy. You know what that is, to be happy? To me it meant those little things like spending a lazy day on some shady canal with a fishing rod or chinning with the customers in my store for hours on end. These things gave me a satisfaction I had never known before. When things go right for you it’s like nothing ever was wrong or ever can be. Then Rudy showed up and all the good things fell apart. I had to come back with him. You had it fixed so I’d have no choice. You knew any other way I would have told you to cram it. You knew a beating wouldn’t have changed my mind. So you took the filthiest hook you could find to bring me back.”
“Why don’t you sit down?” he said wearily.
“I’m not quite through. I come back and what do I find? Not Macy. Not the old Macy. You used to be a pretty hard guy. You used to be as tough as any of the thugs you had working under you. There wasn’t any one of them could make you back down. Now you’re fat and out of shape and you sit in that chair feeling sorry for yourself when you should be back in town running things as if you meant it.”
A little fire colored his cheeks. “You think I’m soft? I can take care of you any day, big shot. I give away a lot of years but I can handle you and anybody else!”
“Get out of that chair and prove it!”
He started to get up, then his expression became thoughtful and a little sheepish, and he slumped back. “Aw, what the hell we talkin’ about?” he said. “We a couple of kids that we got to show how goddam tough we are? Sit down, you bastard. I knew you when you were in grammar school. Don’t try to impress me. I said sit down!”
I sat on the edge of the bed, holding the glass tightly.
“You gonna do a job for me or are you gonna sit around and pout?”
“I’m going to do a job,” I said, “because I can’t do anything else.”
“I don’t care what your goddam reasons are!” he snapped. Then, more calmly, he said, “All right. We work on that basis. You don’t like it but you do it because Macy says you do it. So naturally you don’t like Macy. But I don’t want nothin’ half-ass.”
“You’ll get your dollar’s worth,” I said.
“I always did, with you,” Macy said grudgingly. “Okay. Rudy tell you what I want? Put up that damn glass before you bust it.”
I put up the glass. He was still giving orders with every breath, but they didn’t have the old cocksure ring of authority.
“You been getting letters with the same message,” I said. “Somebody’s sore at you for burning out a tailor’s shop twenty-five years ago and killing a few people. He’s getting even by hunting down your old gang and knifing them. You’re on the list but he’s saving you until you’ve had time to think about it.”
Macy nodded morosely. “There’s an envelope in the middle drawer of that desk over there. Get it, will you, Pete?”
The envelope contained all the clippings Macy had received. I read one of them about the fire. The tailor’s name was Kennedy. He had a wife and two children. Nobody knew how the fire started. One of the children somehow survived, was in the hospital with serious burns. The child’s name wasn’t given.
Macy told me to keep the envelope. “What happened to the other kid?” I asked him.
He seemed indifferent. “I don’t know. I haven’t looked into this thing. That’s your job.”
“You worry about anything at all these days?” I said bitingly. He looked at me with a flash of anger in his eyes but didn’t speak.
“What chance that Stan Maxine’s behind this?” I said.
“No chance. He wouldn’t be so cute. Stan don’t know how to be subtle-like. It ain’t his way of doing things.”
“I hear he’s got fat and happy lately. You should have killed him a dozen years ago. I should have killed him. I never killed anybody in my life, not counting the war, but if I had to choose somebody it would be Maxine.”
Macy smiled slightly. “You ain’t changed so much,” he said in a low thick voice. “You’re older, but your face don’t show it. You got a girl now.”
I nodded.
He looked up at me eagerly. “A real beauty? I know she must be. I’ll bet she’s a smart one, too, and knows how to talk, and things like that. She knows about you?”
“No, I never told her.” I cut it short. “What about Maxine?”
“Maxine?”
“Why don’t you stand up to him now, before he gets too hard to handle. Boot his tail back where it belongs.”
“I’m afraid to try,” he said, watching me almost ashamedly. “I’m afraid to find out I’m not strong enough any more. Sometimes it’s better just to hang on, Pete.”
He got up then and went to the window. One of his pockets was bulky with a gun. He pulled the blinds open and looked out at the moon shining on the dark sea.
“I’ll be working alone,” I said. “I’ll need a car.” He nodded. “How many men have you got around?”
“Three. Rudy and two other boys, Reavis and Taggart. Top guns. Taggart’s not around right now. I sent him to Tampa yesterday. He should pull in before long.”
“Not enough to carry your coffin.”
His shoulders flexed. “Nobody’s going to kill me, Pete. Not while I’m here. Your room’s in the west wing, just off the patio, if you want to go on to bed.” He spoke tiredly, dismissing me. I picked up the envelope with the newspaper clippings and went downstairs.
Chapter Five
I unpacked most of the clothes from the suitcase, then threw it and the ruined stuff away. My other suit wasn’t bad and I decided I could still wear i
t.
I turned down the covers on the bed but felt no need for sleep. It was going on a quarter of three. I washed my face carefully in warm water, left the room. There were French doors at the end of the hall and, beyond, a small patio and terrace surrounded by a low rock wall. I went out there. It was a hot night, the air not moving at all. My clothes smelled of smoke and sweat. I walked down the long sloping terrace to the bay beach, stood there and listened to the rippling of water against the sand.
Then I took off trousers and shirt, looked back toward the house. There was no moon at the moment, few lights in the windows. I took off my shoes and socks and the sand was smooth against my feet. Then I removed my damp underwear and stood naked at the edge of the water for a few moments before wading thigh-deep and swimming slowly. Muscles relaxed as I eased over on my back and floated. The scraped places on my arms stung and throbbed. Once I heard a plopping splash nearby, and thought of fish.
When I had cooled enough I swam back to the beach and waded in. I sat in the sand for a while, drying slowly in the humid air. The first time I heard the sound behind me I ignored it. When I heard it again — the sound of someone walking stealthily toward me in the sand — I rolled on my belly, gathered my legs beneath me and dived at an indistinct figure five feet away. We went down. There was a muffled sound of surprise that I didn’t make. My hand slid along a smooth curved thigh, touched rounded breasts and full nipples. I was holding a woman as naked as I was, and holding her damned tight, the weight of my body pinning her to the sand. She was rigid, apparently too shocked to struggle. I backed away from her fast and she sat up. I couldn’t see her well, but I knew she was beautifully proportioned, and I had an idea that her hair was blonde. She cried out again, reached toward her breasts with protective hands.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You shouldn’t have come up behind me like that.”
For a few seconds she didn’t speak. She sat in the sand, legs crossed at the ankles. “It’s... all right,” she said in a strained voice. “I’m sorry I... startled you.” Her hands came away from her breasts slowly and dropped to her knees. She sat very still, apparently looking toward me. I hadn’t held her long, but long enough for her to be perfectly aware I wasn’t dressed either. Not that it made any difference, in the dark.
