A Century of Noir

by Max Allan Collins

  “Certainly,” I said, “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my friends.”

  I smiled. A real easy one. Only the old man knew what it meant.

  “You’ll take the Jeep. Our aged friend here will check you out on it.”

  “I don’t need checking out.”

  “Good, good. I’m expecting a whole lot of you, Mr. Mayor.”

  There wasn’t a sound in the entire room. Outside the wind blew gently and whispered across the eaves. Carol shuddered gently then was still.

  “Here’s where we turn off,” she said. “The road only goes down a few hundred feet then we’ll have to walk.”

  I stopped the Jeep without turning and looked at her. The sun had washed her face with the first red light of morning and in its glow she looked tired. Tired and sorry. She hadn’t spoken since we left the cabin and there was a peculiar apathy in her voice.

  “Or do we?” she asked suddenly.

  For some reason she smiled wanly and there was a wetness in her eyes that threw back the sun.

  Then she turned her head and her smile grew a little twisted. “I guess we don’t. I . . . can’t blame you.”

  “You’re scrambled, kid,” I said.

  “Why should you?”

  “Why?” I shoved the straw kady back on my head and pawed the dirt out of my eyes. “Let’s say I could go through with this out of common decency. My love for my fellow man.”

  “That’s a lot of love. We take the money back and all get killed. It would be more sensible if you let me take it back while you went on.”

  “You’d still get bumped.”

  “But they’d be caught. It’s something.” She dropped her eyes when they got too wet. “This is none of your affair.”

  “It could be, sugar. It sure could be.”

  “What?” Her voice was tight in her chest.

  “You forgot the other angle. There’s a perfect crime involved.” I let my grin stretch out into a short laugh. “I could bump you, take the cabbage and let the boys kill the others. I could put your body in the car with the other two and it’ll all look legit. I could stash the dough for a year then come back and pick it up when all is cooled down. The law gets the boys, blames the deal on them, they cook and that’s that.”

  “Would you?”

  “I gave it some thought.”

  Carol looked at the road where we had stopped. There was a puzzle written in the set of her face and I saw her shoulders tighten and her fingers go white around each other.

  “Would you?” she asked again.

  I nodded. “I would.”

  But I didn’t move. I sat there lazy-like, still grinning, hoping nothing was showing, wondering if she had the normal intuitive quality a woman was supposed to have, trying to figure what I’d do if she had.

  Her face came back to mine slowly. “But will you?”

  “No,” I said, “I’ll go back with you.”

  “Why?” Her eyes weren’t wet any longer. They were curious now.

  “Does there have to be a reason?”

  “There are too many reasons why you shouldn’t go back. You can only die back there.”

  “Maybe the future holds nothing better anyway,” I told her quietly. “Maybe I already died someplace else and once more won’t make any difference anyway.”

  “But that isn’t why.”

  “No,” I admitted. “It’s you. I’m doing it for you. Something stupid has hold of me and when I look at you, I start to go fuzzy. I know it’s you and the Mayor all the way but right now I feel like being noble and I don’t feel like talking about it. Just take it for what it’s worth. I’m going back with you.”

  “What then?”

  “We’ll think about it when it happens.”

  “Rich . . .”

  Up ahead there was a speck in the sky.

  “Rich.” She touched my arm lightly. “Rich . . .”

  I caught myself quickly reaching out for her hand.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Forget it. We’ll make out all right.”

  I started the Jeep up, snatched it into gear and started straight down the road. Carol grabbed my sleeve and pulled. “We can’t . . . Rich, we have to go back down the road! We can’t go over the cliff side!”

  When I pulled my arm free, I pointed into the sun. “Plane up there. They could be looking for us. We drag the police in now there’ll be trouble.” Down toward the south a haze was rising into the morning sky. “Dust cloud. They’re coming this way.”

  “What will we do?”

  “We get out of here. The dust is coming from more than one car and I don’t think the police will like the set of our plans.”

  “You think they know where we are?”

  “I doubt it. They’re just starting to fan out.” I edged closer to the sheer rise of rock on my left and rode the hardpan, trying hard not to fly a dirt flag behind us.

  Overhead, the plane came toward us, banked and headed back to the dust cloud. I tried to remember back through time and distance to where we turned off and when I thought I had it, stepped the Jeep up to beat the dust cloud to the intersection. I could be wrong, but I wasn’t taking chances.

  Carol licked the alkali from her lips and shouted, “What will we tell them, Rich?”

  I had that one figured out too. “They don’t know me, remember? So I picked you up. You were walking back the highway and I picked you up. You don’t know where you came from or where the others are. Just give them that, no more.”

  “All right, Rich.”

  The plane spotted us first. It came down low, an old Army L-5 and I waved at the uniformed trooper in the rear seat. He looked at us hard, tapped the pilot and they both stared quickly before they pulled up and around for another pass. This time I gave them the okay sign and jerked my thumb at Carol.

  That was all they needed. The L-5 pulled up, throttled back and started a glide ahead of us. It came down on the highway, stopped and I pulled up beside it. The trooper was out, his hand on the gun in his holster, taking big strides our way.

  “You all right, Miss LaFont?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “Who’re you?”

  I didn’t have to answer. Carol did it for me. “He gave me a ride. I . . . got away from them and reached the highway.”

  “Glad to help,” I said. “I heard the news.”

  “Where are they, Miss LaFont?”

  Carol shook her head. The tears that went with it were real. “I don’t know!” Her face went into her hands to muffle the sobbing.

  I fanned myself with the straw kady. It was pretty dirty now. I said, “Lady told me she got away someplace in the hills. Must’ve walked ten miles across the brush fields before I picked her up. I can take you back and show you.”

  “Never mind. We can pick up her trail if she came across the brush. You can track a mouse in that sand.”

  Behind the plane the dust took shape, a brown plume like a cock’s tail following the six cars driving abreast. They came up and disgorged the hunters, avid men with guns in their hands and identical expressions on their faces. They were all angry men. They were all intent and serious. They all had a touch of lust too. Blood lust.

  The big guy in front ran to the Jeep and half lifted Carol out of the seat. “Honey, honey,” he crooned to her, “you okay, baby?”

  “I’m all right, Harold.”

  “You take it easy baby. I’ll take care of you now. You just take it easy.”

  The trooper raised a finger to his hat brim. “Pardon me, Mr. Mayor, we better start backtracking Miss LaFont while her tracks are fresh. This feller here . . .” he nodded toward me, “picked her up about ten miles back coming across the brush.”

  “You can’t miss it,” I said. “There’s a dead dog by the side of the road just where she came on.”

  The trooper gave me a funny look. “Dog? No dogs out here, feller. Must be a coyote. Where you from, boy?”

  I didn’t answer the questio
n. I said, “A dog, officer. A black Scotty. Somebody probably tossed him from their car. He’s got a collar on.”

  The trooper squinted his apology and nodded, then turned back to the Mayor. “Excuse me, sir, but do you want to stay with Miss LaFont or go with the posse?”

  For the first time I had a good look at the big guy, and saw all the parts of him I didn’t like. He was too big and too good-looking. He reeked of maleness and you could almost feel the destiny that rode his shoulders. He looked at the trooper quickly and you could see the momentary flash of lust and blood scent in his mouth and nostrils. Then something else followed just as briefly that I couldn’t quite identify, but immediately hated.

  He took Carol’s hand in his and the other went around her waist. “Go ahead, officer. I’ll be sure that Carol is all right then I’ll follow you. Take my car along with you. We’ll stay with the Jeep here.”

  “Yes, sir.” The trooper saluted again, waved the pack of cars off the road and let the L-5 get back into the blue. It circled once, then paralleled the highway behind us. The rest piled back into the cars, the trooper in the first one, and went by with their wheels throwing up dust from the shoulder.

  Ten miles, I thought. I should have made it further. If I was lucky, they’d look for the dog and keep right on going.

  Maybe it was the way Carol looked at me. Maybe it was the drawn expression and the way her eyes seemed to slant up at the corners. The Mayor stopped his soft talk and his lips hardened into a tight line.

  His voice was a soft hiss. “What is it, Carol?”

  “Harold . . .”

  “Tell me.”

  “We had to get rid of them. They would have spoiled it.”

  “We?” He watched me with a careful disdain for a moment, then: “Who are you, feller?”

  “A victim, buster. Part of the we she mentioned.”

  “Go on.”

  It was better letting her tell it. I could watch his face then and make a play of getting out of the Jeep. When she got to the part about the money, that look came back on his face and stayed long enough for me to see the greed that was there.

  When she finished, he forced the excitement from his face and pounded a fat fist into his palm. “Good heavens, Carol, you can’t expect us to let you go through with a thing like that! You can’t jeopardize your life by going back there!”

  “What else can she do?” I put in.

  “Do? I’ll show you what we’ll do! We’ll go back to that cabin and shoot them out of there like they deserve. We’ll kill every one of those thieving skunks. . . .”

  “And the Sheriff, and the deputy, and the old man,” I said.

  Carol’s face was white. Chalk-white. “You can’t, Harold.”

  His tongue made a pass across his lips. “We have to. There are some things that must be done.”

  “Like being governor?”

  He knew the greed had shown then. He knew I saw what was in his mind, the AP and UPI headlines. Mayor recovers stolen millions. Leads fight on thieves’den. In subheads they’d tell about the three who died with the thieves in line of civic duty.

  “You’re talking out of turn, mister.” His grimace had a snarl in it.

  He started to burn when I turned on the grin. “I don’t think so. My hide’s wrapped up in this mess too. You figure a way to pull it off and get the kid’s dad out whole? You have an angle to snake out all three maybe?”

  “Somebody is bound to get hurt. I could be myself, too.”

  “Harold . . .”

  “Yes, Carol?”

  “You can’t do it. I won’t let you.” She had trouble getting the words out. She was looking at this guy she had never seen before and what she saw shook her bad. “You said you loved me, Harold . . .”

  “I do, sugar. You know I do.” He paused and sucked in his breath. “But I’m still the Mayor, honey. We can’t let a thing like this happen.”

  “It means my father’s life.”

  “And yours if you go back.”

  Slowly, very slowly, Carol turned her face to me. She smiled gently and I winked her a kiss and told myself that I was a sucker, a real, prime, first-class sucker who went up the pipe for a broad when the odds you were bucking were rigged from the very start.

  The Mayor said, “I’m sorry, Carol,” and this time all the hardness was there in his voice. It spelled out what he was going to do and he didn’t have to say anything more to make it clear. “You two can wait here for the posse. I’ll go in after that money and they can meet me there.” He paused and looked at her as he would a pawn he willingly lost to gain a better position. “And Carol . . . I’m sorry. Truly sorry.”

  “So am I,” I said.

  “What?”

  I grinned again. All the teeth this time. Then I splashed him. He turned blood all over and his jaw hung at a crazy angle and even before the dust had settled the flies were drifting down on his face. My knuckles went puffy before I could rub them but it was worth it. I picked him up, dumped him in the back of the Jeep and nodded for Carol to get aboard.

  Almost out of sight down the highway was the thin brown plume. There was still time if we hurried but we’d have to make it fast. I spun the Jeep around, geared it up and floorboarded it to the cut off. This time I wasn’t bothered about being followed and could make better time along the curves and switchbacks of the trail.

  Carol was shouting for me to slow down and I braked the Jeep to a crawl. “The next turn and we can go down the ravine. Don’t pass it!”

  “How long will it take?” I shouted back.

  “A half hour to reach the car.” She leaned closer, squinting into the wind. “Can we do it?”

  My fingers were crossed when I said it. “I think so. It’ll be close, but we might just do it.”

  “What about Harold?”

  “We’ll leave him here. He’ll come around. That posse won’t have too much trouble tailing us in this dirt and our boy here will put them on the cabin right off.”

  She reached out and laid her hand on mine. It was warm and soft with a little burning place in the middle of her palm. Her thumb ran back and forth across my wrist lightly and all of a sudden a whole minute was yanked out of eternity and given to us for our own.

  “Rich . . . we don’t have much time any more . . . do we?”

  “We can hurry. . . .”

  “I mean . . . for us, Rich. There’s only one answer if we go back.”

  “Perhaps. Why?”

  Her smile was a beautiful thing. “I’m just finding out. . . certain things.”

  “I knew them right along,” I said.

  “Harold . . .”

  “Greedy. Ambitious. Mean. He’ll spoil anything to get what he wants.”

  “I thought he wanted me.”

  “He did for a while, kid. But just now he saw a little more he could have and he took his choice.”

  “Why are you so perceptive?”

  My face felt tight and all I said was, “I’ve been around, kid.”

  “Rich . . .”

  “What?”

  She leaned toward me. I knew what she was going to say and I didn’t let her. I could taste the dust through the wet of her mouth and feel the life and fire of her as she pressed against me. Everything inside me seemed to turn over suddenly. Then I pushed her away before it could get worse.

  There were tears in her eyes, the path of one etching its way down her cheek. She frowned through them, watching me closely, her hand squeezing mine even tighter.

  “There’s something about you, Rich . . .”

  “Don’t look at it.”

  “We’re only going back to die, aren’t we?”

  “Not you, kitten.”

  For a second it was like it was with the old man. For an instant she saw that one thing, but before she could hold it long enough it passed and left only the trace of a puzzle, barely long enough to get a glimmer of understanding.

  But somehow it was enough. There was that change in her eyes and
the taut way she held herself. The shadow of bewilderment was obscured in a moment of reality.

  “Why are you doing it, Rich?”

  “You’ll never know,” I said.

  She brushed back her hair with one hand and looked past me into the ravine. “And when it’s over?”

  “I’ll be gone. One way or another.”

  “And then there’ll be no more.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Rich . . .”

  “Don’t say it, kitten. Look at it and squeeze it with your hand, but don’t say it.”

  “I love you, Rich.”

  “I told you, don’t say it. It’s because of the trouble. It’s now, that’s all. Maybe it will be gone tomorrow.”

  “Maybe there’ll be no tomorrow.”

  “It always comes,” I said. “I hate it too, but tomorrow always comes.”

  In the back the Mayor moaned softly. I said, “Let’s get to it,” and spun the wheel of the Jeep.

  The road went down a quarter of a mile before the rock slide wiped it out. I used the tarp ropes to snag the Mayor to the seat backs and waved Carol out. Overhead the sun was tracing its arc through the sky too fast, too fast. By my watch we had only two hours more to go and if there was anything in the way we’d be too late.

  Had I been alone I never would have made it, but Carol knew the path and could pick it up even when there was nothing to mark it. We skirted the stream in the belly of the gorge, climbed to the shoulder that was gouged and ripped by the roll of the dead Olds and tore open the metal corpse.

  Both bodies were inside, huddled together like kids asleep in the same bed. But here there was a difference. Both of them wore their rods over their pajamas. They were better off the way they were. I took a quick look at Carol and there was nothing about her that was soft or afraid. She took the satchels I handed her, tossed them to the ground and helped me out of the wreck. I closed the door against the buzzards and waved her to go ahead, then picked up the bags and followed her.

  The Mayor was awake when we got back. He was awake and mad but hurting too hard to set up a fuss. His eyes were little things that wanted to rip into me, and when they turned on Carol the hatred was there too. They saw the bags and the governorship going up in smoke at the same time and something like a sob caught in his throat.