She plopped the white bag on the center of the bar and, in a voice worn by tobacco, whisky and long use into a texture that was like a stage whisper by a baritone, said, “Jolt and water, Nick.”
“The check come?” the bartender asked warily.
“Yes, yes, the check came. The check came. Here you go, you suspicious louse. Hit me with the grandpa today.” She slapped a five-dollar bill on the bar.
As he reached for the bottle the bartender said, motioning toward Sam, “Friend of yours asking after you, Bessie.”
She turned and stared at him and then walked over to him. Up close she gave that curious larger-than-life impression that accomplished actresses know how to project. He saw that her eyes were large and gray and exceptionally lovely.
“My Gawd, a man who stands up. Sit down, old friend, before I die of shock.” She sat on the stool next to him, and studied him, puzzled. “Honest, I got to watch these blackouts. Usually I can come up with a clue. But I draw a big blank. Clue me, Louie.”
The bartender put the shot glass of whisky, a glass of water and her change in front of her.
“Well over a month ago, Bessie. You were out at one of the joints on the shore east of town. With a bald man named Max. You told me this was your favorite spot.”
“It’s going to stop being anybody’s favorite spot if Nick and Whitey keep on being so damn chintzy about money all the time. I remember that Max. So I was with him. It figures. But what the hell were we doing talking to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got a haircut and clean fingernails and a press in your suit, mister. You talk like your folks sent you to college. You could be a doctor or a dentist. Max would talk to bums. Nobody but bums. You gentlemen types made him ugly.”
“So since you recommended the place, I thought I’d stop and get a drink.”
“So you thought you’d stop and get a drink.” She looked at him with a compelling and horrible coquetry.
He gingerly moved his arm to get it away from the pressure of a giant breast and said quickly, “Seen Max around lately?”
“No, thanks. He was in jail. I guess he’s out now. I like my fun. Christ, everybody knows me knows that. I got a little income and I get along. I’m what you call friendly. I’ve seen a lot of people, and I’ve been a lot of places. And I can put up with a lot. Who’s perfect? But let me tell you about that Max Cady. He’s all man. I got to give him that. But he’s mean as a snake. He doesn’t give a damn for anybody in the world but Max Cady. You know what he did to me?” She lowered her voice and her face hardened. “We were in my place. I’m curious about him. You know. You want to know about people. So I’d been asking him and all I get is the brush. So there we are and I fix him a drink and I say, ‘Let’s stop the runaround, Maxie. Fill me in. Brief me. What’s with you? Tell Mama.’ ”
She knocked off the shot, took a sip of water, and yelled at Nick for a refill. “What does he do? He beats up on me. On me! Bessie McGowan. Right in my own place, drinking my liquor, he gets up out of one of my chairs and he thumps me all over the place. And grinning at me all the time. Let me tell you, the way he was going at it, I thought he was going to kill me, honest. And then all the lights went out.
“At dawn I wake up. I was on the floor, and I was a mess. He was gone. I crawled to bed on my hands and knees. When I got up again, I got to a mirror. I had a face on me like a blue basketball. I was so sore all over I couldn’t move without yelping. I got the doc over and told him I fell downstairs. I’ve never yelled cop in my life, but I was close. Three cracked ribs. Forty-three bucks dental. I looked so awful it was a week before I stirred out of the place, and even then I was walking like an old lady. It’s a good thing I’m strong as a horse, mister. That go-round would have killed most women. And you know, I don’t feel exactly right yet. When I read about his trouble, I sent out for a bottle and I drank it all myself. He isn’t a human being. That Max is an animal. All I did was ask questions. All he had to do was say that he wanted me to shut up.”
She drank her second shot, and when she called Nick back he ordered another beer.
“So he’s no friend of yours, Bessie.”
“If I saw him dead in the street, I’d buy drinks for the house.”
“He’s no friend of mine.”
She shrugged. “How do you mean, just seeing us that once?”
“I didn’t. I made that up.”
The gray eyes turned very cold. “I don’t like gags.”
“My name is Sam Bowden.”
“So what’s that got to do with … Did you say Bowden?”
“Maybe he called me the lieutenant.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Bessie, I want you to help me. I don’t know what to expect. He’s going to try to hurt me. Somehow. I want to know if he gave you any clue.”
She kept her voice very low. “He was a funny bugger, Sam. He didn’t have too much to say. He didn’t show you much of his insides. But twice he talked about Lieutenant Bowden. And both times it gave me the cold creepers, right up and down my back. Part the way he looked. He didn’t say anything that made sense, though. One time he said you were an old Army buddy and to show you how much he liked you he was going to kill you six times. He said he was going to make you last. He was drinking and I tried to, you know, kinda laugh it off like telling him he wouldn’t kill anybody for real.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. He just gave me a look and he didn’t say any more that time. Do you know what he meant? How can you kill anybody six times?”
He looked down into his beer glass. “If a man had a wife, three kids and a dog.”
She tried to laugh. “Nobody’d do that.”
“He started with the dog. He poisoned it.”
Her face turned chalky. “Dear sweet Jesus!”
“What else did he say?”
“There was just the one other time he talked about you. He said something like by the time I get around to the lieutenant, I’ll be doing him a favor. He’ll be begging for it. That kind of fits in with the other, doesn’t it?”
“Would you come with me to police headquarters and sign a statement about what you heard him say?”
She looked at him for ten seconds. It seemed a very long time. “You happen to be snuggling up to a girl graduate of Dannemora, dearie.”
“Would you?”
“I’ll tell you what, snooks. Take a letter to J. Edgar. Dear Ed. Me and the boys were just …”
“There’s a girl fifteen, a boy eleven, a boy six.”
“You’re breaking my heart, dearie. In the first place I’ve seen the inside of that place too many times already. In the second place they wouldn’t listen to anything Bessie McGowan says. In the third place it’s a cruel world and I’m sorry if you got problems, but that’s the way the ball bounces.”
“I’ll beg you to—”
“Hey Nick! It turns out I didn’t know this bum after all. How come you let ladies get insulted in this joint?”
“You don’t have to do that,” Sam said.
She got off the stool. “That’s where I am, snooks. Right where I was heading all my life. Right to the place where I don’t have to do anything about anything.”
“Not so loud, Bessie,” Nick said.
She picked up all her change except a dime. She pushed it toward Nick. “Have a ball, lover. I’m finding a better joint.”
She yanked the street door shut behind her. Nick picked up the dime and studied it thoughtfully. “That there is a pistol, friend. How’d you drive her out? Maybe I can use it sometime.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Nick sighed. “Once upon a time she was Miss Indiana. She showed me the clipping. I said I didn’t know it was a state that long ago. She busted me right in the eye with a left hook. Well, come back and see us.”
He walked down to Jaekel Street. Number 211 was a square, three-story frame house painted brown with yellow trim. A window sign announce
d Room for Rent. An old man sat in a rocking chair on the narrow porch, his eyes closed. There were two holes in the screen door, one of them mended. Sam pushed the doorbell and heard it ring in the back of the house. There was a smell of mold and acid and cabbage and soiled bedding. There was a screaming quarrel going on upstairs. He could hear the deep sound of a man’s voice, slow and oddly patient, and then a shrill tirade that would go on for a long time. He could pick out a word here and there. He could look into the hallway and see a narrow dark table with several letters on it and a lamp with a fringed shade.
A gaunt old woman came down the hallway toward him. Her stride was astonishingly heavy. She stood inside the screening and said, “Yay-yuss?”
“Does Mr. Cady live here?”
“Nope.”
“Mr. Max Cady?”
“Nope.”
“But he did live here?”
“Yay-yuss. But he don’t no more. I wouldn’t take him back if he wanted. We want no truck with fighting and polices, Marvin and me. No part of it. No, sir. And jail folks. That’s where he was. Jailed. Shut up tight. Come back Friday and got his stuff. I’d had Marvin put it in the cellar. He didn’t want to pay me rent for parking space ahind the house, but I said as how I’d have the law right back on him in a minute and then he paid me and he drove his car off and that’s the last of him.”
“Did he leave a forwarding address?”
“Now that would be downright stupid for a man never got any mail at all, wouldn’t it?”
“Has anybody else come around asking for him?”
“You’re the very first and I surely pray you’re the last on account of Marvin and me, we don’t cotton to folks like that.”
He phoned Dutton the next morning. Dutton said he would see if anybody could get a line on Cady.
Nothing happened on Friday. On Saturday he drove down to Suffern, and on Sunday they visited Nancy and Jamie. He was back at his desk on Monday morning. He had not told Carol about the story he got from Bessie McGowan. He did not want her to know he had gone down into Cady’s area, nor did he wish to alarm her.
Nothing happened on Monday. Or Tuesday.
The phone call from Mr. Menard came through on Wednesday, at ten in the morning on the last day of July, the day when Carol was to have gone down and picked Jamie up in the afternoon and taken him back to Suffern with her. It was his final day of camp.
When he realized who was calling, he felt as though his heart had stopped.
“Mr. Bowden? Jamie’s been hurt, but it’s not serious.”
“How was he hurt?”
“I think you’d better come down here if you can. He’s on his way over to the Aldermont Hospital now, and it will probably be best if you go directly there. I repeat, it’s not serious. He’s not in danger. Sheriff Kantz will want to talk to you sooner or later. I had to … give him what information I had, of course.”
“I’ll leave right away. Have you informed my wife?”
“She left before the call got through. I understand she’s on her way here. I’ll send her over to Aldermont and we could keep the little fellow here with us, if she agrees to that.”
“Tell her I think that would be a good idea. Where’s Nancy?”
“On the way over with her brother and Tommy Kent.”
“Can you please tell me what happened to the boy?”
“He was shot, Mr. Bowden.”
“Shot!”
“It could have been more serious. Much more serious. It’s on the inside of his upper left arm, about three inches above the elbow. It made an ugly gash. He lost blood, and, naturally, it scared him.”
“I would think so. I’ll make it as quickly as I can.”
“Young Kent can give you the rest of the story at the hospital. Don’t drive too fast, Mr. Bowden.”
Nine
CAROL HAD BEEN AT THE HOSPITAL for nearly an hour when Sam arrived at one-thirty. She and Nancy were in the semi-private room with Jamie when Sam walked in. Sam kissed her. She looked completely under control, but he felt the trembling of her mouth as he kissed her. Nancy had a subdued, troubled look. Jamie’s face against the pillow was just pale enough under the tan to give him a greenish look. His left arm was bandaged, and he looked proud and excited.
“Hey, I didn’t make a sound when they sewed it up, and I got six stitches.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Sort of, but not bad. Gosh, I can’t wait to tell the kids at home. A real bullet. It hit my arm and went through the shed next to the mess hall, right in one side and out the other—zowie—and when they find it I can have it after the sheriff is through with it. I’d like it on one of those little wooden things under glass in my room.”
“Who did it?”
“Heck, who knows? That man, I guess. That Cady. A lot of the kids didn’t even hear any shot. I didn’t. I wish I’d heard it. He was a long way away, up on Shadow Hill someplace, the sheriff thinks.”
Sam began to understand the picture. “Tell me about it, Jamie, from the beginning.”
Jamie looked uncomfortable. “Well, I goofed up. I snitched Mr. Menard’s shaving bomb and I was going to let Davey Johnstone have it right in the chops and then I was going to sneak it back. But I got caught. So I got ten days of doing pots, and this was the last day. Everybody hates pots. You got to use steel wool. I got ten whole days because it was sort of like stealing, even though it really wasn’t. So you do the pots out by the shed. There’s a faucet there, and, oh, this was about nine-thirty and I was doing the breakfast pots and I was nearly done almost.
“I was just standing there, sort of looking at the last one, and bam! I thought some joker had gone in the shed and hit it with something to scare me. Then my arm felt all hot and funny. I looked down and there was blood squirting out of it, squirting all over. I yelled as loud as I could and ran for Mr. Menard’s cottage and other kids saw all the blood and they were running and yelling too, and they put a tourniquet on it. And then it all of a sudden started to hurt something terrible. And I cried, but not very much. By then Tommy went and got Nancy and then the sheriff came and we all rode over here in the sheriff’s car about maybe a hundred miles an hour with the siren going. Boy, I wish I could do that again when my darn arm wasn’t hurting.”
Sam turned to Carol. “What happens now?”
“Dr. Beattie said he’d like to have him stay here overnight, and he should be all right to travel tomorrow. He gave him some whole blood.”
“There’s going to be a scar,” Jamie said fervently. “A real bullet scar. Will it hurt when it’s going to rain?”
“I think you have to have the bullet in there, son.”
“Anyway, no other kid I know has a bullet scar.”
A smiling nurse came in and said, “Time for this wounded veteran to have his pink pill and a long nap.”
“Heck, I don’t need any nap.”
“When can we see him again, Nurse?” Carol asked.
“At five, Mrs. Bowden.”
They walked to the stairs and went down to the hospital lobby. Carol, her face ghastly, turned toward Sam and said in a voice so low Nancy couldn’t overhear, barely moving her bloodless lips, “Now what? Now what? When does he kill one of them?”
“Please, honey.”
“Daddy, Sheriff Kantz is coming with Tommy,” Nancy said.
“Take your mother over to that couch and sit there with her, Nancy, please.”
The sheriff was a rangy man who wore boots and tan riding pants and a khaki shirt. He had an outdoor look about him, a gun belt, a wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He shook hands slowly, almost thoughtfully. His voice was nasal, with a tired sound about it.
“Guess we can talk over in that corner, Mr. Bowden. Sure, you sit in, Tommy.”
They pulled three chairs closer together. “I’ll tell you my end, Mr. Bowden, and then I’d like to ask you a couple questions. First off it looks like the range was about seven hundred yards. And down hill. Take a good rifle and a good scope an
d a knowledgeable man and it isn’t a tough shot at all. I imagine if the wind wasn’t cutting up too much, I could put nearly every shot in a circle about half again as big as a pie plate. If it were deer season, I’d have maybe a different idea about this. Your boy’s arm was close to his side. The wind was a little gusty from the south. The boy was facing east. So it looks like one of those gusts drifted that slug over a few inches. Nobody was trying to scare the boy. They made a pretty good try at killing him. If he’d put his slug say two and a half inches further to his right, that boy would have been dead before he could fall all the way down.”
Sam swallowed hard and said, “You don’t have to—”
“I’m talking facts, Mr. Bowden. I’m not talking to see how much I can get you upset. And I wouldn’t talk to your wife like this. If he’d hit the boy the way he wanted to, we’d have had us a real bad time trying to figure where the bullet came from. But he missed and he put two holes in the shack and that gave us a line of sight. It couldn’t be direct, because the way the slug will drop, especially after going through a three-quarter-inch board. It put us on a line up the side of a knoll the kids call Shady Hill. There’s a lot of back roads up in there and I know for a fact that there are plenty of places you can look down right into that camp. I’ve got a deputy named Ronnie Gideon I left working on it, and he’s a good boy and he knows the woods and he can read track, and he’ll find where the man with the gun was when he took aim. We were too late for any road block because we didn’t know what to look for. I understand you can tell us who to look for, Mr. Bowden.”
Cape Fear Page 13
