He was headed northwest on Himes Road when he saw the lights behind him. Steady, unshakeable lights. He stepped down on the accelerator. The speedometer needle inched over and wavered nervously at seventy. The lights behind them didn’t waver, but grew larger.
Bricker half turned on the seat, staring through the rear window. “There they are. They’re back there. They’re following us.”
Steve took the curves in the narrow road with wide swings. He didn’t slow down. The lights behind him inched forward. “Souped up engine,” he remarked to Bricker.
He heard Bricker’s quickened breathing.
He looked at the speedometer needle. It was no good. The car behind them had too much power. They weren’t going to make it. He wondered if the men in the back seat could feel that yet.
There was nothing to do but keep it rolling. He snapped off the headlights. The whole world was plunged into darkness. It was as if they had run off the brink into eternity. Bricker yelled. Blake turned the wheels sharply, listening to the scream of the tires, the rush of the gravel.
He felt the breath tight in his chest. Then the car wheels struck the shallow ruts of the sand road and he exhaled slowly. Behind him the big car roared past into Gulf Park on Himes Road.
The road was rough. He could hear Terravasi swear as they struck the chug holes. Bricker was braced, his short legs thrust against the floorboards.
The miles crawled by them on the sand road. They crossed a railroad track. There was a narrow, asphalt road. Blake turned the car into it. As he reached over to snap on the lights, he saw headlights bounce into the sand road way back at the highway. He didn’t turn on the lights.
He stepped down on the gas again and they picked up speed.
As they wheeled back onto Himes Road, Blake snapped on the lights. The highway was almost deserted at this hour. The black ribbon of the roadway stretched taut and straight north now.
The speedometer needle wavered around seventy again.
They didn’t slow for the intersections. As they started up the slight incline to the Tampa-Clearwater crossing, a tan car whirled into the highway from the Tampa road.
“Radio!” Blake breathed. “They radioed ahead!”
He spun hard on the wheel, pulling into the right turn lane at the very last minute. The tan car just grazed the left front fender. He could hear the squealing of the brakes.
With the gas pedal on the floor, Blake headed the car across the highway and into a side road.
Dickerson was sitting on the edge of the back seat now.
The brakes squealed as Blake turned the car left and headed back to Route 19.
They slid out on the highway. There were no headlights showing in either direction. But they had been on the road only two minutes when Blake saw that the two cars were behind them. They’d been waiting in the darkness.
They could feel the first of the cars inching up on them. It gave you a helpless feeling, Blake thought, to feel that car dragging you back to them, no matter how hard you gave your car the gas.
The headlamps of the souped up car lighted the inside of Bricker’s new automobile. “Terravasi,” Blake ordered. “Get at the left window with Bricker’s gun ready. When they get close enough to try to sideswipe us, you got to get a front tire. God help us if you don’t.”
“I’ll get it,” Terravasi said. “Mr. Arrenhower’s money taught me how to shoot a gun so I never miss.”
A gun cracked behind them. It sounded thin and harmless in the rushing wind. But Blake knew. It wasn’t harmless. Terravasi wasn’t the only goon who’d been taught to use a gun by Arrenhower’s money.
The big car pulled alongside, swerved out and started to cut sharply back in. The idea was to drive Blake off the highway, make his wheels hit the soft shoulders. That was all. That would be it. Blake hung on to the wheel, waiting to hear the gun speak from Terravasi’s fist.
It came suddenly. The gun was loud in the car. But the explosion of the tire at the side sounded like the blast of doom. Blake kept moving. In the rear vision mirror, he saw the car swerve crazily, dancing back and forth on the highway before it went across the shoulders and into the darkness of a ditch.
He saw the tan car skid to a halt.
“They’re going to see if they can save anybody,” Terravasi said. “If they get a chance at us now, we ain’t going to get out of this.”
16
THE TAN CAR was moving again. It had eyes like a deadly beetle in the darkness behind them.
Again Blake cut the lights of his car. It was a dangerous thing to do along this unlighted roadway. If a state patrolman came along, he was going to stop them. Blake smiled grimly. What was wrong with having an armed patrolman with you when the tan car overtook you?
The red and green neon lights of the Empty Plate shone in the darkness at the left side of the road a couple of miles ahead.
Blake said, “All right, Dickerson, pay off. Five grand to Bricker over there. He can stuff it in his mouth. It’ll keep his teeth from chattering. I’ll take the five grand, too. I don’t care about the money. But why should I let you keep it?”
He heard Dickerson stirring on the back seat. Bricker took the money that Dickerson handed him, nervously counted it, stuffed it in his wallet.
Dickerson’s hand touched Blake’s shoulder. Blake reached back, took the flat fold of bills, pushed them in his trouser pocket.
“Here’s the Empty Plate,” Blake said. “Here’s what you do. I’m going to pull around the side. My car is a 1946 Plymouth coupe. Keep away from it. The other car will be Dave’s. Dave will be sitting in it. I’ll tell you which one. You get in Dave’s car and tell him I said to get back to Jacksonville. They’re not going to be looking for you in Dave’s car. If you move fast enough, you’ll make it. They’ll still be looking for this car.”
Terravasi laughed with satisfaction. “Thank God I ain’t going to be in this car when them Arrenhower boys catch up with it. If any of those boys in that other car were killed — ” He let that go unfinished, sat there shaking his head.
Blake braked the car suddenly. It spun off the road and across the gravel approach to the highway drive-in, The Empty Plate. At the side of the building he could see his Plymouth. He had driven it to Jacksonville Friday and had taken the Silver Meteor back to Gulf City. Trying to fool a man who couldn’t be fooled. Trying to play it smart. Delaying, while someone killed the woman he loved. He could feel the anguish burn in his dry throat. It won’t be long, Stella. It won’t be long.
He slid into the parking place beside the blue Buick. Dave and his driver waved at him. “Get that engine started,” Blake said. “Get ready to get out of here. You got two hot passengers for Jacksonville.”
Dickerson and Terravasi Were already scrambling out of Bricker’s car. Dave had the engine started. He was reversing out of the parking place as the two men leaped into the rear seat. He made a sharp turn and headed north on Route 19.
Blake started to slide out from under the wheel.
Bricker’s voice was a scream. “Where you going?”
“This is a hot car,” Blake replied. “I’m getting out of here. I’m heading back to Gulf City in my Plymouth. I don’t think they’ll be looking for it either. You see they’re pretty upset about the car that was wrecked back there. Whatever goons are in that tan car are going to have just one thing in mind — finding this car of yours, Bricker, and getting revenge on the people in it.”
Bricker yelled. “Yeah. But what about me? What am I going to do?”
Blake stood there. He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he answered. “But I think you’d better run. Get that new car of yours moving, Bricker. You might outrun ’em. You might. Anyway, looks to me like that’s the only chance you got left. Run, Bricker! Run for your life!”
• • •
It seemed a long way back to Gulf City. The road was dark. There were desolate stretches where there was no sign of life. Slash pines stood tall and thin against the starless sky. The c
ountry was flat, unchanging, saw grass and palmettos and then a thicket of jack oaks.
More than anything else, Blake despised the loneliness inside the small car. He thought about Sammy. He wished for her. At least, if she were along, she could talk and he wouldn’t be prey to the thoughts that hounded him in the thick dark.
Bix Glintner, the face of him, the curly, carefully brushed hair. The way he walked. Bix Glintner moved out there in front of him. He didn’t want to think about Bix Glintner. It would be better to be completely dead, Blake told himself, then you wouldn’t think at all. You wouldn’t think about a snotty, muscled kid chasing after your wife every time she left her apartment. “She didn’t want him,” he could hear Sammy Anderson’s voice saying, “Stella didn’t want Bix. There was something wrong about it. Something unwholesome.”
Blake found that he had shoved the gas pedal to the floor.
And there in the darkness before him moved the lovely blonde face of Stella. Never had there been a woman so beautiful before. There was the goodness in her that kept her clean and shining looking. And then there was the sadness, the unhappiness, that had done something to her gray eyes. It had made them gentle and kindly and deep in a way that disturbed you. A way that you never forgot. “I’ll never forget you, Stella,” Blake said aloud in the car. “I’ll never get you out of my mind.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. The loneliness made him sick at his stomach. The need for her. The terrible knowledge that she was dead and gone from him. He could go on breathing and living. But he could never see her eyes again.
At the city limits, he slowed the car and drove at twenty-five miles an hour across town. He knew that he couldn’t drive all the way to the apartment house. He drove along Third Street and parked the car in an alley. He had to move quietly. He had to move in on Bix Glintner in silence. Now, at last, he had him where he wanted him. He wasn’t going to let anything frighten him away.
Be patient, Bix, he thought bitterly. Be patient. I’m on my way. The noose is ready, Bix. It won’t be very much longer now.
17
BLAKE WALKED up the alley to Third Street. A car passed. Blake stood in the shadows waiting. As he walked south along Third, he thought about Glintner. The handsome kid. The movie star type. He shook his head. He couldn’t see Stella falling for something like that. Now, maybe a starved old woman, like Grueter. He laughed grimly. Sure, that’s why Grueter didn’t suspect anything although she saw Glintner visit Stella.
He remembered that Glintner lived on the ground floor of the apartment house. It should have been easy for Glintner to get up to the fifth floor and Stella’s apartment unnoticed — unnoticed by anyone except nosey Miss Grueter, who could believe no wrong about the pretty boy, anyhow. And, his heart thudded, Glintner could have gone out that window, leaped to the fire escape. He was young enough. Agile enough. Maybe he’d been scared enough. Blake’s steps hurried.
At Fifth Avenue, he turned toward the apartment house. He saw that there was a police cruiser parked with its lights off, half a block away. He entered the foyer of the building and searched the mail boxes. He saw that his own name had been removed from the fifth floor apartment. God, how those apartment owners must have hated Stella for dying violently on their property! He found the letter box and apartment number he sought. Bixby Glintner, Garage Attendant, 18-A.
He went around the stairs. The corridor was dimly lighted. He moved slowly to the rear of the building. At the door of 18-A, Blake hesitated. There was no light under the door. He listened with his ear against the door facing. There was no sound from within. He tried the knob.
As he’d expected, Glintner’s door was securely bolted. He stood beside it a moment, listening. There was no sound in the corridor. He grasped the knob with both hands and pulled it toward him. He drove his knee against it just under the lock and thrust away sharply at the same time. The third time, he heard the lock snap and part of the wood splintered from the door panel.
He stepped in and closed the door after him. The door would no longer stay shut. He propped a chair against it.
The windows were tightly closed. This was a two room apartment. Either Glintner was out or he cared nothing for fresh air. Blake pulled the Venetian blinds tightly closed and snapped on the light. Without knowing what he was looking for, Blake began a systematic search of Glintner’s room.
He was rewarded almost at once.
In a top dresser drawer, there were dozens of pornographic pamphlets, the half-dollar, poorly printed stories about the Minister’s Wife, My Day in the Country and My City Cousin. Then there were more cheaply made comic booklets of famous comic strip characters in the nude. What a boy, Blake thought, what a wonderful, upstanding type!
In the next small drawer, Blake found a small packet of letters. These were tied together. When he opened them, Blake found that most of them were addressed to women. And when he read them, he found out why. Glintner had stolen them. Blake had been a private snitch long enough to know about blackmailers. They were from men and Blake supposed the women were all married.
One large envelope fell out. It bore a Tampa postmark, from Sunday. All thumbs, Blake opened the envelope. The note was brief and to the point. That scrawling handwriting, Blake thought. He had seen it somewhere before. But he was too excited at the moment to remember where.
He read the note:
I HAVE NO INTENTION OF SEEING YOU. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN ANYTHING YOU HAVE TO SAY. IF WHAT YOU HINT IS TRUE, YOU’D BETTER FORGET IT IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE.
It was unsigned!
Glintner was trying to blackmail some man. Who?
Blake began to sweat. The whole thing was right there in the forepart of his mind, all the answer and yet it needed one more piece to be complete. His belly was empty. His hands trembled. Still holding the letter, he turned around. And then he saw the leg protruding from the far side of the bed.
Woodenly, Blake walked over and looked down.
It was Bix Glintner. The blackmailer. And he was as dead as he was ever going to be. Somebody had battered the top of his head in.
Blake moved the bed and knelt beside Glintner. One of his arms was twisted up under him. Blake turned him slightly. There was something clutched tightly in Glintner’s hand. It was a small brown package, securely tied, as though ready for mailing.
Blake stood up. His hands shaking, he ripped the cord and brown wrapping paper away. He tore the cover off the box and there it was — Stella’s missing shoe!
He would have known it anywhere. He had sat beside her when he had found her dead and wondered what had happened to that shoe. And here it was! Glintner had been in that apartment. Blake remembered the smudge on the window sill. Glintner had gone out of that window!
But Glintner had not been the only one there. This shoe proved it. Just as that letter proved it. Glintner must have gotten into the apartment before the murderer came. It had to be that way. Glintner must have been hiding in the bedroom while Stella was being beaten to death in the living room. And Glintner had stolen the shoe, meaning to trade on it for blackmail, meaning to get rich, because he had seen the man who had killed Stella!
Blake looked down at the shoe twisted in his hand. Then he looked again at the scrawling handwriting. And then his laughter was almost a sob. It was as though the dead Glintner had spoken. He had given Blake the name he sought. The name of a killer.
18
BLAKE SAT down on a straight chair in the murderer’s darkened bedroom. His ripped hands were bleeding. The pain was nothing beside the agony that ate at his guts. He let the blood drip on the floor. Once he shoved his hand in his coat pocket, closing his fingers over Stella’s shoe.
It seemed hours that he sat there. He let his mind go back over all of it, chewing at it, looking for holes. And knowing there were none. He had his man this time. And he had him dead to rights. He heard movement in the hall and he stiffened on the chair.
He heard Arrenhower’s arrogant voice. “Goodnight, Al.
It was a good show, wasn’t it?”
“I guess so, boss. I don’t go for them dame skin shows though, the way you do.”
Arrenhower laughed. “Still brooding over the one that got away, eh, Al. Well, when the boys find him, I’ll give him to you first. How’s that, Al?”
“Thanks, boss. Well, goodnight. Sorry you missed the first part of the show. The comedian was okay.”
“I don’t care for comedians, Al. I don’t like men. I like pretty women. I like the late shows. The strippers. Anyway, I had a little business early in the evening.”
The business of killing the blackmailer, Bix Glintner? Blake asked silently inside the darkened room.
He heard the door open. A shaft of light spilled in. For a moment Arrenhower stood there, framed in the light. You could kill him now, Blake thought, and maybe escape. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He was Arrenhower’s executioner. What happened to Blake afterward didn’t matter.
Arrenhower closed the bedroom door, snapped on the light. For a moment, he stared, awestruck, at Blake sitting across the room. He started to heel about, grabbing for the doorknob. Blake spoke evenly. “Don’t do it,” he said. “I’ll kill you before White can get in here to you anyway. Either way, Arrenhower, you’re going to get it. You’ve been boasting what a man you are, let’s see you take it like a man.”
Coldly, Arrenhower turned and faced him. “How did you get in here?”
Blake smiled icily. “I got out once, remember? Well, I got back in the same way. It’s easy if you know how, Arrenhower.” He held up his ribboned, bloody hands that he’d torn on the barbed wire. “And if you don’t care what happens to you. You see, Arrenhower, I don’t care. I haven’t cared about anything since you killed Stella.”
Mourn the Hangman Page 13
