1960 - Come Easy, Go Easy

by James Hadley Chase

  Muttering, Roy got to his feet.

  “These truckers are driving me nuts. I’ll be back.”

  I closed my eyes and dozed off.

  The sun had shifted to the back of the lunch room when a movement close to me brought me awake.

  Lola was bending over me.

  “Who was it who shot you?”

  “Two gunmen,” I said. She had to bend close to hear me. “I’ve never seen them before.”

  “Did they open the safe?”

  I looked at her. I scarcely recognised her. There was a scraped, bony look on her face that made her seem ten years older. I could see tiny sweat beads along her upper lip. Her face was chalk white.

  “I don’t know.”

  And lying there, feeling this odd floating sensation inside me, I didn’t care.

  “Did they mention the safe?” Her voice was shaking.

  “No.”

  “It’s shut. It doesn’t look as if they tampered with it.” I could see her breasts under her overall rising and falling in her agitation. “I must know! Suppose they’ve taken the money! I must know if it has gone!”

  I thought of Eddy. He was a professional. If he had found the safe, he would have opened it. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of safes could open that sardine can.

  “They could have taken it,” I said.

  This effort at talking was making me feel bad. I began to float away into darkness again.

  “I must know! Tell me how to open the safe!”

  Her white tense face hung over me. I could smell the sweat of fear from her. I could feel the frustrated greed coming out of her like the sound waves from a radio set.

  The darkness closed up around me.

  From a long way off, I heard her saying, “I must know! Pull yourself together! Tell me how to open it!”

  The voice, the room and the sunshine coming through the window were suddenly no longer there.

  II

  For the next three days I hung between life and death. I knew it, and I didn’t care.

  I wouldn’t have lasted a day if it hadn’t been for Roy. He scarcely left my side, and when I developed a fever, he sat over me with an ice bag and kept right by me until the fever broke.

  There was a time, when the fever was at its height, that, as I lay burning and in pain, I suddenly saw Carl Jenson in the room.

  He had the same bewildered expression on his face that I had seen when he had caught me before the open safe. I tried to speak to him, but the words didn’t come. After a while, he went away. I didn’t see him again. That was when I nearly died. Later, Roy told me he had given me up, then the fever broke and I began to get better.

  It wasn’t until the seventh day that I was able to talk about Eddy and the Mexican.

  “They cleared out the till,” Roy told me, “and they took the gas money and most of the food.”

  I wondered about the safe. I wondered if Eddy had found it and had opened it, but I didn’t mention it to Roy.

  “It seems to me you’re going to pull out of this now,” he went on. He looked thin and tired, and there were dark smudges under his eyes that told of loss of sleep. “It was a near thing. You are lucky.”

  “You saved my life, Roy,” I said. “Well, that makes the score even. Thanks.”

  “What did you expect me to do—let you croak?” He grinned. “It’s been pretty rugged, keeping the place going and nursing you, but now I reckon I can catch up on some sleep.”

  I had been out of action for eight days and nights. During that time, Lola hadn’t been near me. I wondered if she had made any headway with Roy during that time.

  “How are you and Lola making out?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “I scarcely see her. I’ve been too busy looking after you.” It was too glib, he didn’t look at me. I knew he was lying.

  “I’ve warned you, Roy. She’s dangerous.”

  “She isn’t cutting any ice with me, and she never will,” he said. There was a long pause while we looked at each other. Then abruptly he asked, “What really happened to Jenson?”

  I wouldn’t have told him unless I was sure she had made an impression on him. I was desperate enough to try to scare him off her by telling him the truth.

  “She murdered him, and I was fool enough to bury him.”

  I saw his eyes go suddenly blank the way they always went when he heard something he didn’t want to hear.

  “She murdered her first husband too,” I went on. “She’s a killer, Roy, so watch out.”

  “Do you realise what you are saying?” he asked, leaning forward, his face tight and hard.

  “I know what I’m saying: I’m warning you.”

  He stood up.

  “I don’t want to hear any more of this. Can’t you see it puts me on a spot?”

  “You’ve got to be warned, Roy. You don’t know her the way I know her.”

  He moved to the door.

  “I guess I’d better get back to work. I’ll be in again. You take it easy.”

  Without looking at me, he went away.

  Well, he knew now. He would be on his guard. She wouldn’t fool him as easily as she had fooled Jenson and me.

  But I didn’t know I was already too late with my warning. I found that out the following night.

  Roy had moved his bed into the sitting room to give me more room.

  He had told me if I wanted anything to call him, but if it wasn’t urgent he would be glad to get some sleep. That was understandable. I said I would be all right and for him not to worry about me.

  Since I had told him about Jenson’s death, I knew it wasn’t the same between us, and I knew it could never be the same with us again. It was in the atmosphere rather than in his attitude. He had always been poker faced, and now he was even more so.

  Neither of us mentioned Lola. From time to time I saw her from the window, moving from the lunch room to the bungalow. She continued to keep away from me.

  It was on the following night that I realised my warning had come too late.

  Around midnight, Roy shut up the lunch room and turned off the light. I had seen Lola go to the bungalow a few minutes after eleven o’clock. The lights were out in the bungalow by the time Roy came into the cabin.

  He opened my bedroom door silently and stood there, listening.

  I had turned off my light some time ago. I made no sound

  “Are you awake, Chet?”

  His whisper was so soft I scarcely heard it

  I stayed motionless, not saying anything. Then I heard the door shut softly.

  I waited, hoping that what I knew was going to happen wouldn’t happen, but of course it did

  For a few tense minutes I lay looking out of the window, then I saw Roy come out of the shadows. He walked quickly across to the bungalow, paused to look back at the cabin, then he opened the front door and went in.

  I might have known he couldn’t have resisted her for those eight days and nights when she could have worked on him uninterrupted.

  I didn’t blame him. I knew her technique. I had been kidding myself all along that Roy was indifferent to women, and Roy had been kidding himself too.

  I felt helpless and pretty bad: jealousy didn’t come into it, but fear did.

  Once she had her claws in Roy, she would persuade him to open the safe. Then she would murder him. I was sure of that. I had warned her he wouldn’t let her have the money once he got his hands on it. She would murder him, and then she would murder me. She would then hide the money and send for the fat sheriff. How she would explain what I was doing in pyjamas with a bullet wound in my chest I couldn’t imagine, but she had had eight days to dream up a story and I was pretty sure, by now, she had one ready. I had given Roy a description of Eddy and the fat Mexican. He had certainly passed the descriptions on to Lola. She might even claim that these two had murdered Roy and me while she was in Wentworth There were any number of angles she could use.

  I lay there, enduring the
nagging pain in my chest, while I watched the bungalow and schemed.

  It was a little after two o’clock when I saw him come out. He closed the front door, then walked over to the cabin. He came in silently.

  I reached for the light switch, and as he eased open my door I turned on the light.

  He stood, startled, in the doorway, staring at me. He had on a singlet, a pair of trousers, and his feet were bare.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said. “I just looked in to see if you were okay.”

  “Come in. I want to talk to you.”

  His eyes shifted.

  “It’s after two. I want to get some sleep.”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  He came in and sat down, away from me, and lit a cigarette.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “She’s thrown a hook into you, hasn’t she?”

  He blew a cloud of smoke that half screened his face, then he said, his voice harsh, “You’re pretty sick, Chet. You don’t want to work yourself up. Suppose we talk about this tomorrow? You need your sleep—so do I.”

  “I may be sick, but if you don’t watch out, you’re going to be a damn sight more than sick— you’re going to be dead. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “No woman will ever hook me,” he said, his face now deadpan.

  “Are you trying to kid me or yourself?”

  He didn’t like that

  “Okay, if you must know, I took what she threw at me, but there are no strings to it—I’ll take care of that.”

  “Did she ask you to open the safe?”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Safe? What safe?”

  “Jenson’s safe.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair as he stared at me.

  “What about Jenson’s safe?”

  “Did she ask you to open it?”

  I saw by the puzzled expression on his face that she hadn’t. I began to breathe more freely. At least, this time, I wasn’t going to be too late to warn him.

  “She’s never mentioned a safe.”

  “She will, and she will ask you to open it.”

  He made an exasperated movement with his hands.

  “What the hell is this about? What are you getting at?”

  “There’s something in that safe she wants,” I said, “and when she wants something as badly as she wants this thing in the safe she will stop at nothing to get it, and I mean nothing. She shot her husband to get it. She tried to blackmail me into getting it, and now you arrive. Someone else who can open the safe, and she’s starting to soften you up so if you open it she can take you by surprise and murder you. It sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? It isn’t! She’ll murder you as she murdered her first husband, as she murdered Jenson and very nearly murdered me. I’m telling you—don’t open that safe!”

  By now the effort of talking had taken so much out of me I was sweating, and the pain in my chest was making me short of breath. I watched him in despair, for there was no change of expression, just the deadpan look, and the eyes that had gone a shade darker.

  “You sound crazy in the head,” he said. “What is it she wants so badly?”

  I wasn’t going to tell him it was over a hundred thousand dollars in hard cash. I wasn’t that much of a fool.

  “I told you the cops suspected she had murdered her first husband,” I said. “She did murder him. Before he married her, Jenson made her sign a confession and it is in the safe. I’ve seen it.

  Until the safe is open and she can destroy the confession, she’s jail bait, and she knows it.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, frowning.

  “Are you dreaming all this or is it true?”

  “She shot Jenson and she would have shot me only I got the safe door shut before she could pull the trigger. She knew I was the only one here who could open the safe and that saved my life. Now she has you in her sights. Don’t open that safe, Roy.”

  “This doesn’t add up,” he said. “If she was going to murder you, how come you went to bed with her?”

  I was ready for that one. It was the obvious question he was bound to ask.

  “She couldn’t do a thing to me so long as that safe remained shut. We lived here together and alone for five weeks before I touched her. I did it only because, like with you, she threw herself at me. She came into this room one night, and that was it.”

  I felt cold sweat on my face now and I was having trouble in breathing.

  Roy, seeing the state I was in, came over to me.

  “Hey! You’ve got to quiet down. Don’t you understand how bad you are? Quit getting yourself excited—relax!”

  I caught hold of his wrist.

  “If you open that safe, Roy, she’ll kill both of us! I’m warning you! If you open that safe we’re both sunk!”

  “Take it easy, fella. She hasn’t even asked me to open the safe.”

  I had shot my bolt. I dropped back on the pillow. I couldn’t make any more effort. I had warned him. I could only hope I had beaten her this time.

  He stayed with me until I had drifted off into a heavy sleep.

  When I woke the next morning the clock by the bed told me it was twenty to ten. I had had a long sleep and I felt better, a little stronger, but not strong enough to get up.

  Later, Roy came in and shaved me. He was quiet, and neither of us mentioned the safe, but I knew it was big in both our minds.

  The day dragged by. I was content to lie by the window and watch the activity going on outside. Both Lola and Roy slaved. The lunch room was busy during the lunch hour and again at night.

  Finally, around ten o’clock, the traffic died away and Roy found time to bring me a bowl of soup.

  “It’s been some day,” he said, leaning against the wall. “I’ll be glad when you are up and about again.”

  “I’ll be about,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He stroked his nose, his black eyes watching me. “While we were having supper, she asked me if I could open a Lawrence safe.”

  I slopped a little of the soup. “She did?”

  “Yeah. I said I couldn’t say until I had seen it.”

  My heart was thumping now. “What did she say?”

  “A trucker came in and broke it up. We didn’t get around to it again.”

  “So long as that safe remains shut, you’re okay and so am I. I’m not kidding, Roy.”

  “Okay, so you’re not kidding. If it’s all this bad, how about lending me Jensen’s gun—the one he shot hawks with?”

  “She’s got it.”

  That jolted him. His eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened.

  “She took it,” I went on. “She told me she had got rid of it, but I know different.”

  “Well, she hasn’t asked me to open the safe yet.”

  “She will.” We left it like that.

  Nothing happened for four days. According to Roy, Lola didn’t mention the safe to him again. I made slow progress, but I still wasn’t strong enough to get out of bed. I was more easy in my mind for Roy didn’t go to the bungalow. At least, I seemed to have thrown a scare into him.

  But on the fifth night, I woke around three o’clock in the morning and, looking out of the window, I saw a light on in the sitting room of the bungalow. That gave me a hell of a jolt. I called out to Roy, but got no answer. He was over there with her and with the safe!

  I was tempted to get out of bed and go over there, but I knew I would never have made it, so I lay there, my heart hammering, waiting and watching.

  It wasn’t until after four o’clock that the light snapped off and I saw Roy come out of the bungalow and cross to the cabin.

  As I heard him come in, I called to him.

  “Don’t put on the light,” he said at the door. “She’ll see it.”

  I peered in the direction of his voice. It was too dark to see him.

  “What happened?”

  “She showed me the safe, and she asked me to open it,” he said. “I told her
it was an old type and I couldn’t open it.”

  I drew in a deep breath of relief.

  “Then what happened?”

  “She said there must be a way of opening it. She wanted me to blast it open. I said it was too dangerous. I told her dynamite wasn’t in my line.”

  “Did she believe you?”

  “Why not? I made it sound pretty convincing.”

  “Did she say why she wanted it open?”

  “Yeah.” There was a pause, then he went on, “She said there was money in the safe. If I opened it, we would share it” Another long pause, then he asked, “Is there any money in the safe, Chet?”

  I knew it would be fatal to tell him the truth.

  “Three hundred dollars,” I lied. “Jenson kept it there against an emergency. She’s not after that; she’s after the confession.”

  “She said there was a lot of money there.”

  “She’s lying. It was a bait to make you open the safe.”

  “Yeah... well, she’ll be disappointed.”

  The following morning, while Roy was supervising the unloading of gas into our tanks, and I was watching him through the window, I heard my bedroom door creak open

  Lola came in. She closed the door and leaned against it

  It jolted me to see how she had changed.

  She had lost weight. Her face was drawn and granite hard. There were dark smudges under her eyes, and she looked ten years older.

  She stared at me.

  “Tell me how to open the safe,” she said. Her voice was harsh and unsteady. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll call the police and you’ll go back to Farnworth.”

  But she couldn’t blackmail me now. I held all the aces.

  “Go ahead and call them,” I said. “You won’t get the money, and I’ll tell them where to find your husband. Don’t kid yourself they won’t believe my word against yours. I’m not the only one with a reputation for violence. When I tell them about Frank Finney, you’re going to be in a hell of a jam.”

  If I had hit her across her face the effect of my words couldn’t have been more startling.

  She reared back. I heard her breath hiss out through her clenched teeth. Her face sagged. The fear that jumped into her eyes was ugly to see.

  “What do you know about Frank?” she demanded, glaring at me.