Burke had pushed the guard ahead of him toward the tellers’ cages, prodding him in the back with his gun. “Okay, girls, I want it all,” he said quietly. “You get cute and Dad here gets it right in the spine. Got that clear?”
A man at one of the desks said, “Do as he tells you, Jennie. You too, Ann.” He stared at Earl’s gun, his eyes big and frightened behind rimless glasses. “We’re all going to do just what you want. There’s no reason for you to hurt anybody.”
“Fine,” Earl said. “That’s just fine. Now keep quiet.”
Burke had taken the guard’s gun and pushed the old man into a corner. Now he was stuffing bundles of cash into a long linen bag he had pulled from the pocket of his overcoat.
“How much longer?” Earl said, risking a glance at the front door.
“Rush it up, sister,” Burke said, stepping to the second cage.
Ingram swallowed the dryness in his throat, forcing the bitter taste of fear deep into his stomach. It was going to work, it was going to work—the thought sounded in his mind like a breathless prayer.
“All right,” Burke said, backing toward the front door. “Let’s go.”
Without taking his eyes from the men at the desks, Earl stepped over the wooden railing and joined Burke. He said, “Okay, everybody stay put for a while. Just think how lucky you are.” He nodded at Ingram, as Burke pulled open the door and went quickly down the steps of the bank to the dark sidewalk. Earl started after him, but before Ingram could move, a powerful voice shouted an order.
“Hold it there! Get your hands up!” The command came from behind a car that was parked across the street about fifty feet from the entrance to the bank.
Burke swore in bitter, despairing confusion and dropped to his knees, the gun in his hand swinging up toward the parked car. As he fired, one of the women tellers began to scream softly and terribly, her voice breaking into convulsive, senseless tremors. Ingram couldn’t force himself to move; he stared out the door, helpless with fear, the tray trembling giddily in his hand. Burke was sighting along the barrel of his gun when an orange flame seared the darkness behind the parked car. The report of the shot went banging down the street as Burke rolled over backwards, shouting senseless words in a high, raging voice. Earl tried to lift him to his feet, but Burke struggled to a sitting position and fired three wild shots into the shadows behind the parked car. Another orange flash appeared against the darkness. Earl staggered as if he had been struck by a two-by-four; his knees buckled when he stumbled into the side of the building and his head rolled on his shoulders in pain. Burke sat cross-legged on the wet sidewalk, a sagging, heaving buddha, one hand supporting his weight, and the other pointing his gun in an awkward, straight-armed gesture at the parked car.
It was only then that Ingram’s paralysis broke; he screamed convulsively and threw the tray of coffee and sandwiches to the floor.
The men who had been at the desk were lying on the floor. One of them raised his head and shouted at him, “Get down, you fool! You want to be killed!”
“No, no,” Ingram cried wildly. He leaped over the wooden railing and ran to the rear of the bank, fighting down a hysterical compulsion to laugh… They didn’t know he was part of the job. They still thought he was the delivery boy.
The switchboard operator was backed against a wall with her hands over her mouth. Another shot sounded outside and she jerked as if an electric shock had gone through her body. She began to moan in fear, staring at Ingram with wild, frantic eyes.
“Lie down flat,” he shouted at her. “You’re all right.”
She didn’t seem to hear him; she stood trembling against the wall, a shrill, keening moan forcing itself through her compulsively locked hands.
Ingram ran to the side door and twisted the key in the lock. Pulling open the door he plunged into the darkness, fear like a mad animal at his heels. The sound of another shot brought him to a skidding stop. He had to get away from the firing, he thought wildly. To his right was a haven of darkness, the side street stretching away to safety. To his left was Main Street, its wet pavement gleaming colorfully under the light from the traffic signal at the intersection. Rain was coming down again, driven like hard pellets through the swaying black trees. He needed an overcoat; they’d catch him trying to run away in the waiter’s jacket. And he needed something hot to drink. His thoughts were broken into crazy splinters by fear. Forget about something to drink… run and hide. That was the only thing that mattered. Find a place to hide.
A few people were coming down Main Street toward the bank, but their progress was slow and cautious; the sound of the last shot had driven them all into alleys and doorways.
Something moved in the darkness near the curb, and a gasp of terror tightened his throat. He turned to run into the safety of the side street, but then he heard a metallic clicking coming from one of the parked cars. Ingram crept forward slowly, stepping off the sidewalk onto the sodden plot of grass that bordered the street.
“Earl?” he whispered frantically. “Earl? You there, Earl?” It had to be Earl; he must have stumbled around here after getting shot…
“Goddam!” The voice was just a few feet from him, tight with pain and fury.
Another shot exploded in front of the bank, and a man shouted an order in a huge, powerful voice.
“Ingram?” Earl cried softly. “Ingram! Come here.”
“Where?”
“Here, you fool.”
Ingram crept swiftly toward the angry whisper and found Earl kneeling in the gutter, supporting his weight against the side of the car and pulling impotently at the door handle with his good hand. “Go around the other side,” he whispered, the words coming in painful little gasps. “You got to drive. I’m hit. Move, damn you.”
Ingram crouched low and ran to the driver’s side, prodded by the anger in Earl’s voice. He wasn’t thinking any more; his mind was a vacuum, empty of everything, empty even of fear.
Sliding into the car he opened the opposite door and hauled Earl in beside him, tugging frantically at his awkward, pain-cramped body. Earl cursed weakly and Ingram saw the sweat standing out on lips and forehead.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said foolishly.
“Shut up! Shut up!” Earl bent forward and shoved the key into the ignition. “The starter’s on the left. Let’s go.” Ingram fumbled around beside the steering post and Earl said, “On the floor! On the floor!”
The motor caught with a swelling throb of power. Ingram tramped on the gas, and the car shot out from the curb like something blown from a cannon.
“Easy, damn it,” Earl yelled at him. Ingram was fighting the spinning wheel, trying desperately to keep the car in the street. “Feed it slow.” Earl twisted around, breathing harshly and stared out the rear window. “Make the first left. Then give it everything.” In spite of the pain and weakness, his voice cracked like a whip. “You want to live, Sambo, you make this crate move.”
“What happened? What went wrong?”
“Never mind that now. You just drive. Left here—left, you fool.” Ingram hurled the car into the turn without checking his speed; the tires screamed hideously as they clawed into the wet pavement, and Earl grabbed the yawing wheel with his good hand. “Hit the gas now,” he yelled. “Give it everything.”
The rain was coming harder now, flailing at the side of the car and driving through the fog lights in thick crystal streaks. They swept through a slum area, and up a swerving incline that brought them onto a straight stretch of road.
“Let her out,” Earl cried. “Pound it. We got to get to Novak.”
“I can’t drive any faster. I’m doing sixty now.”
“Faster, I’m telling you.”
“I can’t.”
“You afraid of getting a ticket?” Earl’s foot came down hard on Ingram’s, pushing the accelerator flat against the floorboards. The car leaped ahead like an angry animal into the walls of rainwater, the motor snarling under the full load of power.
/> “You’re crazy!” Ingram shouted the words over the roar of the engine. The car swayed wildly as the tires spun and hissed on the slick surface of the road. “We’ll kill ourselves.”
“So will the sheriff if he catches us,” Earl said. “Drive, damn you. We got to get to Novak.” He leaned forward and rubbed the mist from the windshield with the sleeve of his coat. “I’ll tell you when to stop,” he said. There was no pain in his shoulder. He was weak from shock and loss of blood, but the pain wouldn’t start for a while yet… Why hadn’t he dropped the sheriff, he wondered. He had seen his tall black figure behind the parked car. One shot would have settled him for good. But he hadn’t even tried. And he hadn’t tried to pick up the money. It was lying right next to Burke’s hand, thousands and thousands of dollars stuffed into a long linen bag. Why hadn’t he grabbed it?
He shouted suddenly, “Slow down. Here he is.”
As Ingram drove his foot against the brake he saw the red taillights of a car shining ahead of them through the rain and darkness. He was thrown forward by the skidding, wrenching stop, but the steering wheel kept him from smashing into the windshield. Earl had nothing to hold onto and only his instinctively outflung arm saved him from a split skull; his forehead struck his wrist instead of the dashboard, and the blow merely stunned him for an instant. He straightened slowly, feeling that he might be sick; the pain in his shoulder was starting now, spreading nauseatingly into his stomach and loins. A bullet never hurt much at first. That was the only good thing about getting shot up. His thoughts drifted. It was funny, damned funny…
“Get out,” he said to Ingram. “Tell him the job went wrong. Then come back here and give me a hand.” He found a reserve of strength and said harshly, “Go on, move.”
Ingram climbed out and ran through the driving rain to Novak’s car, his feet slipping on the treacherous surface of the road. Novak cranked the window down and stared at him, his wide, hard features softened by the faint light from the dashboard.
“What’s the matter?” he yelled over the drumming rain; he could see the haggard fear in Ingram’s face.
“We got caught,” Ingram said, gripping the door with desperate, grateful fingers. “Burke’s shot and killed. And Earl’s got a bullet in him. He’s hurt bad. We got to get out of here. They’re coming after us.”
“How about the money, for Christ’s sake?”
“We didn’t get nothing. It all went wrong. We’re lucky to be alive. I’ll get Earl. He can’t make it alone.”
“Yeah,” Novak said, staring at him with narrowing eyes. “You do that.”
Ingram ran back to the station wagon and jerked open Earl’s door. “Come on,” he said. “We got to hurry.”
“Pull me toward you,” Earl said. He ground his teeth together, and his voice came out thin and cold and hard. “Pull me, Sambo. I got to get my feet under me. I can walk okay.”
“Sure, sure,” Ingram said. “Try your damnedest. We got to make it fast.”
But as he took hold of Earl’s lapels, the sudden accelerating roar of Novak’s car sounded through the rain-drumming silence. The noise froze him; he stared at Earl’s sweat-blistered face, unable to move or think, conscious of nothing but the giddy fear flowing through his body. Earl twisted away from him, cursing as he rubbed the steam from the windshield. Ingram ran down the road shouting, “Wait, please wait, Mr. Novak,” in a shrill, imploring voice. But finally he stopped, his breath coming in long, shuddering sobs.
The taillights of Novak’s car became smaller and smaller, until they were tiny crimson dots that bobbed up and down on the horizon and then disappeared altogether into the darkness.
Ingram felt the cold rain driving into his face, and the wind molding the waiter’s jacket tight against his wet body. He began to shiver; he was chilled to the bone, and the wind cut his cheeks like a whip made of ice.
He went slowly back to the car, hugging his body with his arms. Earl stared at him, his eyes flat and expressionless.
“He ran out on us,” Ingram said helplessly. “Left us here.”
They stared at each other through the rain and darkness, enveloped in a silence that was as lonely and menacing as the night itself.
“All right, get in,” Earl said in a weary, bitter voice. “We got to keep moving. Just you and me, Sambo. Just you and me now.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEY DROVE STEADILY for half an hour, burrowing deeper and deeper into a black countryside, following the narrow muddy roads that twisted like the coils of a net through the woods and meadows of the broad valley. Earl told Ingram where and when to turn without qualifying or explaining his orders. Outside of these clipped instructions, he paid no attention to him; he had rolled his window down, and was watching for the landmarks that were occasionally revealed by the crazily bouncing headlights of the car. He had remembered the lonely farmhouse he had seen while driving around these back roads, and he was trying to find his way back to it. Someone lived there, he knew; there had been smoke coming from the chimney. But they weren’t young people. Otherwise there would probably be a look of paint and fresh curtains about the place, and the doors of the barn would have been rehung and closed against the weather. Old people, probably waiting to die on their worn-out patch of land. Or just an old man all by himself…
It was what he needed for tonight, a place to go to ground. The rain would wash away the tracks of the car, and he would have a breathing spell in which to think and make his plans. They wouldn’t catch him tonight…
He wasn’t afraid, and he wasn’t even angry any more; he would pay off Novak someday, but dwelling on the ways and means was a luxury he couldn’t afford now. Everything had gone smash, and he accepted this calmly; they just hadn’t figured on the sheriff… Now his job was to stay alive, to stay free. He had been wounded and hunted before, and he had made out all right; he’d lick this, too.
To survive had become his goal, to live from minute to minute, hour to hour. His needs were basic and simple, a doctor, money, another car. I’ll get them, he thought, as he stared at the wet, black countryside. I’ll lick this thing. Get back to Lory. He was sustained by the essential simplicity of his problem. In other defeats he had been confused and infuriated by the complexity of his needs, and the anonymity of his enemies. He never knew what he wanted or who stood in his way of getting it. But now everything was coldly, transparently clear.
“Turn left here,” he cried; there was an exultant lift to his voice as he saw the crossroad. This was where he had met the old hound dog.
“Where we heading?” Ingram said, fighting the bouncing, sliding car.
“Just another hundred yards or so,” Earl said. “It’s a place we can stay for the night.”
Ingram drove on until the headlights picked out a rotting wooden gate that hung crookedly on rusty hinges. The entrance was partially blocked by a tall ragged hedge of lilac that grew along the fence line, but he saw a lane twisting back to an old stone farmhouse, and a single yellow light shining palely from a first-floor window.
Ingram pulled the gate open, drove the car beyond it and climbed out again to push the gate back into place.
“I got to get out of these clothes,” he muttered, as they approached the farmhouse, with the car plunging and plowing through the thick mud plastering the lane. “I got to get warm.”
Earl saw his lips were trembling. Couldn’t take a little cold… none of them could… “Without this rain we wouldn’t have a chance, Sambo. Remember that.”
“I just said I got to get warm.”
“I heard you. Now listen; you go up and knock on the door. Tell whoever answers that we need a place to sleep for the night. I’ll be right behind you, don’t forget.”
Ingram braked to a sliding stop in the muddy yard in front of the farmhouse. When he cut off the motor the sound of the rain became intensified; they could hear it hammering metallically on the roof of the car, and pounding with a muted but heavier effect on the soft, sodden earth. “Don’t forge
t one other thing,” Ingram said, looking at Earl. “We’re both in the same mess. I got a right to decide how to get out of it. Just remember that.”
Earl shifted his position, and removed the gun from the pocket of his overcoat. “You see this?” he said, watching Ingram steadily. “It means you don’t have any rights at all. Get this straight now; we aren’t partners in this deal. We don’t vote on things. You got a chance just as long as you jump when I tell you. You got that, Sambo?”
Ingram saw the dashboard light flickering along the blue barrel of the gun. “I got it,” he said, looking up into Earl’s dangerous eyes. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Start moving.”
Ingram climbed out and went quickly up a flight of sagging wooden steps to the porch of the farmhouse. Earl came around the car holding the gun in his overcoat pocket, and stepping carefully to avoid the deep cold puddles of water in the yard.
There was no sound for a few seconds after Ingram knocked but then they heard a shuffle of footsteps within the house. The door opened very slowly and a bar of widening yellow light fell across the rotting boards of the porch. A frail, gray-haired woman in a black shawl peered up at them, her birdlike eyes shining behind small, rimless glasses. One hand held the shawl tightly about her throat, while the other brushed ineffectually at erratic wisps of gray hair that fluttered in the cold wind. She wore black rubber boots, and a number of old shapeless sweaters, but the meagerness of her body seemed to be accentuated rather than concealed by the layers of bulky clothing. She took a step forward, peering up into Ingram’s face with an air of excitement and surprise. “You’ve come back, eh? Crawling back with your tail between your legs, like I said you would.” She began to laugh then, tilting her head to one side in a gesture of flirtatious derision; her manner was scornful and complacent at once, as if she were rebuking a child who had ignored her advice and gotten himself into trouble. “And who’s your friend? Who’s your fine friend?”
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