Wild

by Brewer, Gil

  “Wanted to ask a favor of you. If you’d answer the one question.”

  “I know her well enough.”

  “May as well tell you,” I said. “I know you kept her on your schooner last night—that you tried to help her. I’ve just left her.”

  He reached up and took the pipe from his mouth. He frowned with that same tired expression, moved down two steps, and stood there looking at me. He turned and glanced back at the house door, then at me again.

  “She all right?”

  “You think a lot of her.”

  “Maybe.”

  “She’s okay.”

  He said nothing.

  “Don’t you want to know where she is?”

  He gave with the eyebrow lift again. Now it was as if he tried to hold himself up with the eyebrows. “What use asking?” he said. “You choose to tell me, you will.”

  “Are you in love with her?” I watched him closely.

  He stared at me, put the pipe in his mouth again, and sat down on the steps, and stared at his hands. He did not speak.

  I looked at him, debating. I had to trust someone. Her safety was important in a way beyond these offenses of murder and robbery, in a way I didn’t quite understand as yet. It was a selfish and personal importance. At the same time, if her husband or some confederate did discover her, that importance might be nullified. There was no doubt in my mind as to the desperation somebody was experiencing at this moment. Your hundred thousand dollars had slipped through somebody’s fingers, and they were more than troubled.

  I had the strange feeling of being close to some sort of revelation.

  Maybe an opiate dream induced by the yellow H-bombs.

  I said, “You’ve accepted the way I’ve been probing around pretty decently. It’s not always that way.”

  He moved his fingers in a gesture of unconcern.

  “I’m on a strange kind of case,” I said.

  “I know about it,” he said. “I wish I could help you. It doesn’t seem as if I’m even suspect. I sort of wish I were. I seem to be standing in the middle of everything. It’s the story of my life. I’m involved in everything, yet I’m only a bystander. It has a strange twist of humor, if you regard it from the proper angle.”

  “I imagine so,” I said. “You have any stray thoughts? Bystanders sometimes see things.”

  He looked at me. “I’m loaded with stray thoughts,” he said. “Stray thoughts and alcohol. That’s about the extent of it, I’m afraid. You’re in a jam, aren’t you? I mean, with the city police—the sheriff’s department. It’s a crazy sort of thing, isn’t it? I mean, you can’t ring up the usual case against possible suspects, because motivations don’t necessarily jibe.”

  “There’s always motivation for murder,” I said

  “Well, I don’t know of anyone who’s messed up in this who wouldn’t have reason to kill somebody else concerned. Me included,” he said. “And not alone for that money.” He rolled up eyes upward. “That is one hell of a lot of money.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  He looked at me and shook his head. “It’s all on television,” he said. “The whole business. You, the police, the bodies, the bank robbery. The works. Christ, they’re troubled about you. Really, you know? I don’t see how you stand a chance. How the hell you’ve eluded them so far is beyond me. They’re after you, chum.”

  “You could turn me in.”

  “I’m a bystander, remember?” He coughed lightly. “I don’t turn people in.”

  I said, “Listen, I’m going to tell you something, that’s why I’m here.” I told him where she was and asked him to keep it to himself. He didn’t say anything. “I wanted to tell somebody. She’s registered under the name Helen Spencer.”

  “Thanks for the trust. You probably shouldn’t have told anyone. Since it’s me, you haven’t any worries. I guess Carl flipped his stupid lid.”

  “Did Ivor tell you about this Vince Gamba?”

  He nodded. “Pretty broken up about that.”

  I said, “Somebody called her at the Carol. They threatened her. They said they were calling for Carl. How would anyone know she was there?”

  “You’ve got me. I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “You don’t seem concerned.”

  “I’m a—”

  “You’re a bystander, remember—yeah.” I began to wish I hadn’t told him. “You’re not a bystander where she’s concerned. Don’t kid me.”

  “Yes, I am. Whether I like it or not.”

  I looked up and saw Asa Crafford coming down the inside hall, walking fast. She must have heard our voices.

  “I’m moving on,” I said.

  He’d caught the movement of my eye. “Yeah. Good luck.”

  I walked over to the car. As I backed out of the drive, Asa Crafford flourished onto the porch. Elk turned and stared at her, then down at his hands again. She watched me get the Ford in motion as I went down the street.

  It had begun to rain. It was the same vertical mist of yesterday. The streets were mirrored and slippery.

  My windshield shattered. Something smacked into the back of the seat beside my shoulder. Dust puffed. The car slid out of control for a moment.

  It took me a full three seconds before I realized I’d been shot at.

  Then I saw the maroon Olds.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I STOOD on the loud pedal.

  The Olds roared at me from a side street curb where it had been parked. He’d probably been waiting for me to appear at the Crafford house. I couldn’t see the driver’s face behind the wheel. He had the engine wide open.

  The Ford began to wind up. I had no gun. I was sure the driver of the other car was the imported heavy who had bolixed up my skull. He had a .45 automatic that I knew of. There was no telling what extra artillery he carried.

  A dirt street joined the street I was on. The intersection was a mass of pot-holes. I took the turn in a wallow of mud and bottoming springs. I braked, turned at the next right, opened the engine wide again. It was a hump-backed asphalt road, gleaming like ice in the misting rain. The Ford seemed to hit lightly along the surface, the wheel like a thin piece of wire in my hands. The tires sizzled like bacon frying.

  The windshield was fouled with dust and rain. It formed an opaque mass in front of my eyes. The wipers refused to operate, or I didn’t know how to work the switch. I glanced in the rear-view mirror. The Olds was perceptibly gaining. The droning whine of the powerful engine creased the roar of the Ford.

  A broad stretch of brick pavement veered diagonally off to the right into what I knew was a sedate residential section, constructed along the old nineteen-twenty boom-period scheme of roads. The landscape was jungle. Trees dropped low over the bricks. The streets in here were a jumble of hairpin turns, small circles—a labyrinthian maze.

  I headed in there. The Olds, following, slid viciously across the brick, straightened. I knew I had to get away from that car, that man, or die. There was no other answer.

  The guy was out to get me one way or another. There would be no more bargaining now.

  I drove through an unhoused area, starting around a broad circle. The circle of ground was covered only with grass and a few large water oaks.

  He began firing at me again.

  I was a good target. There was nothing I could do. We were at opposite sides of the circle, which composed an area slightly larger than an average city block. There were no streets leading off the circle. I hunched down as far as I could, then realized that if he hit the metal of the door with one of those slugs, it would tear through into me as if it weren’t even there.

  I glanced over toward him. Two slugs ripped through the car to the rear of the front seat. At the same instant, he savagely turned the Olds up over the curbing. He came powering directly at me across the stretch of browned grass between the trees.

  Another car approached me from the opposite direction. I passed it and met the street where I had turned onto the circle. It was then I realiz
ed I was lost in here.

  At one time I’d known this crazy-house of streets. No more. If I didn’t get out of here, I might inadvertently trap myself on a dead-end.

  To top it off, the windshield was nearly blind. I worked nervously with the wiper switch. Nothing happened. It wasn’t raining hard enough to erase the contamination of slime on the glass. I put my head out the side window, trying to see ahead. It wasn’t much better. I couldn’t control the car well at speed.

  I hit a straight flat street and pressed the accelerator down again. He was back there, sliding in a shriek of rubber on a turn. The Olds straightened and flew at me as if shot out of a gun. I was finished unless I pulled a trick out of the hat.

  I wondered if any of the old wooded section down by the bay was left.

  I swerved right, the left wheels up over the curb, lurching through a long, slow curve. The pavement bricks were so slick I couldn’t get back on the street. The car was on the edge of going completely out of control. I knew if I touched the brakes I was done. I held it, and gradually crept back toward the street, the wheels lurched and sang across bricks. Some of these streets were deadends. If I happened to be on one of them, he would have me.

  The road ceased. Curbs beveled into the rutted grass. I drove straight on through the opening where the street had been planned, no chance for hesitation, trusting to the memory of possible lovers’ lanes. This had always been necking country in the old days, and it didn’t look much changed. The wheels struck a battering bump. The windshield wipers began working, smearing at the murky mess on the glass, helping a little bit.

  I drove through woods, turning toward the bayside. As a rule, car paths led out from parking areas on the bay in all directions. I kept it wide open. White-blue waters of the bay flashed between trees.

  A car parked up ahead suddenly leaped into gear, slid in a tire-biting turn, and shot toward me, rocking. A guy and his gal. As we passed, I saw her face, the gaping red mouth, the wide eyes, as she struggled to pull down her skirt. They’d figured I was copper. The guy hunched low over the wheel, really driving. He didn’t look my way.

  I watched the rear-view mirror as much as I dared. I saw the Olds slamming between trees. The two cars approached each other. The guy and his gal were going like hell now. The Olds broke and pulled off the lane among thicker trees, avoiding collision.

  I bounced lurching into a beaten clearing beside the bay, saw another cut-off leading through thickly growing vines. I took it, the tires grinding through deep ruts.

  In another instant I burst out on brick pavement, sliding sidewards. I straightened out against the far curb, took the next left, and a half minute later came out on smooth asphalt. It was Twenty-Second Avenue, which would lead me straight to Forty-Ninth, and on to Pine Park.

  There was no sign of the Olds. I’d lost him.

  The Ford made like a baby jet. We went.

  I crossed through most of town without trouble. Still on Forty-Ninth. I began to relax, and then I saw the police cruiser. It rolled slowly toward me. They were taking their time, looking. They could have checked the U-Rent-It spots. It could well be that they knew what I was driving because I’d had to give my right name when I rented the Ford.

  I turned fast into an alley, cut the engine beside an old red cement house, and lay low on the seat.

  Cracking the door, I looked out. They slowly drove past. I waited. They were gone. I stuck my head up and saw the cruiser parked directly across the street opposite the mouth of the alley. White smoke powdered from the exhaust. They had me.

  I started out of the car, casing the alley for a run. Then I saw they had stopped for the corner red light.

  Two cops sat in the cruiser, batting the breeze. I climbed back under the wheel. If they turned their heads, they would see me. They would be checking every blue Ford sedan in the city.

  They drove off.

  I sat there. My shirt stuck to my back with perspiration. My palms were slick on the wheel rim. There was a fine trembling all through me. I was getting old and crochety and all used up. I felt lousy.

  I drove on toward Pine Park. The overalled, tobacco-spitting fat man with the crowbar was still there beside the road, probing in his drainage ditch. He waved. Maybe he would always be there.

  I parked in the same spot as yesterday, overlooking the lake and the trailer, and walked down toward the cement block house.

  It was still. Wind breathed in treetops, and the mist had thinned. More and more I sensed the spot I was on. They would be looking for me everywhere. There was no safe place to be.

  The door of the cement block house was open.

  I jammed my hands in my pockets, scowled at the whole rotten business. I stood there staring at the shackles and chains. My hand touched something in my pocket. I felt as if somebody had stuck a hatpin into the back of my neck. I saw myself going to Elk Crafford, telling him where Ivor Hendrix was.

  I was the worst kind of fool. It was a wonder I was able to remember my name.

  I took the brass key out of my pocket. I had found it on the deck of Crafford’s schooner, the Carol. If it happened to fit the padlock on those chains, I had possibly thrown her to the dogs. I had completely forgotten about the key. Of course, it wouldn’t fit.

  I grabbed up the padlock, the chains rattling. The brass key slid into the slot like you’d stick your finger in butter, and it turned those tumblers quicker than Florene could turn a trick at the old Parsienne Sphinx. Florene had been fast. She was a piker compared to this key. I stood up, holding the key, thinking how crazy the comparison was. I felt crazy. You have to be crazy to be as stupid as I’d been.

  I turned and ran for the car.

  Savage noises reached from up on the knoll beyond the lake. They were animalistic, nightmarish. I ran on past the trailer. The trash pit where they had burned things was cleaned out. There was no sign of the suitcase. I moved fast up past the lake through wet knee-high brown grass. Reaching the slope of the knoll, I entered thick pine woods. The sounds coming from in there would make violent death an anemic dream.

  I stopped. My insides lifted sickeningly.

  It was the hound. Out of sight, out of mind. Vince Gamba’s dog. Snarling, it gripped a human hand in its teeth. It yanked ferociously at an arm, tearing it from a freshly scarred hole gouged in the soft earth.

  The animal’s eyes were a red frenzy. White fangs sank deep into the stiff claw of hand. The dog’s body was braced as it yanked and viciously whipped its head. The arm came free. The beast growled in its throat, lashed its head. The arm flew off into the grass. The hound dove into the pit, its blood singing with ancestral cravings on distant moonlit plains. The teeth ripped into a man’s ankle, bare and paper-white above a dirty tennis shoe.

  I yelled at the hound, ran at him, trying to scare him off.

  It whirled, stood braced, head down, eyes up, jaws open, and emitted a crazed whine.

  I ran at it again. It stood ground.

  The hound had dug the earth free revealing the muddy corpse of the man I’d found shackled in the cement block house. The body lay in a crumpled, awkward position, smeared with wet dirt.

  We faced each other across the corpse.

  “Go home, boy!”

  It was then I saw the scar; a raised, bloody, festering welt on the dead man’s abdomen.

  This was Barton Yonkers. Somebody had killed him for four hundred thousand grand. That same somebody could put me right beside him. Everything had turned into a crumbling house of paper cards.

  The hound did not move. I ran at it again, shouting. It stood ground, the wild light in its eyes unchanged.

  I turned, looking around in the grass for a length of limb, something to go after the hound with.

  I continued to stand in a twisted position, staring.

  Steifer and Vagas walked toward me. They were about fifteen feet away. Steifer held a gun in his hand.

  “Stand still,” he said.

  I straightened slowly. I felt something go out
of me, like life, maybe, or hope. Something else took it place. It was a kind of raw and violent despair.

  TWENTY-THREE

  RUDY VAGAS wore a yellow oilsilk slicker. His eyes grinned, but the rest of his face was a dead thing to see. Steifer had on a black raincoat. The two of them moved closer. They looked at the body in the muddy grave. They looked at the mute hound. Then they looked at me.

  Steifer wagged his gun and wiped his face with his free hand.

  “We’ve been trying to locate you,” he said.

  “I’ve been kind of busy.”

  They stared at the body.

  “This dog found it,” I said. “Nasty, isn’t it?”

  “I’d say it was crazy,” Vagas said. “Must we stand around here?”

  The hound made no sound. It seemed to be waiting now, interest in the corpse gone. I only had half listened to what Vagas said. I knew I had to get back to the Vista Groves Hotel, where Ivor Hendrix waited. I felt the tight drawstrings of desperation. I couldn’t breathe right. I felt blocked.

  “Must have been a surprise,” Steifer said. His voice was like the taste of alum. “Having that little old hound-dog dig up the body like this.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “We have a warrant for your arrest, Baron,” Vagas said. “Don’t make things worse for yourself, and worse for us.”

  “What conditions?”

  “Material witness. Witholding evidence. Aiding and abetting. Conspiring with criminals. Breaking and entering. Disturbing the scene of a crime. You name it.” He let his eyes go narrow. “Suspicion of homicide.”

  My throat was dry. When I spoke, my voice cracked.

  “You know better than that.”

  “Do we?”

  “I just came out here in line with….”

  “So did we. When the medical examiner gets here, along with Sheriff Silverman, and Haddock—and the lab crew, the newspaper crew—we’ll have a real party.”