“I never know when I’ll need it. I might have to dust somebody, some jiving motherfucker.” I let the words hang, sink in, and at the same time took the cartridges from the clip, one by one. I watched Willy from the corner of my eye. The atmosphere was full of threat. He might jump me now that he saw the unloaded gun. It would confess his guilt. It would also be a massacre. I had an elbow on the doorlatch. As he moved, I’d slide out and bring the .32 from my hip pocket. I could almost smell his fear.
“Fuck it,” I said, throwing the unloaded Browning in the glove compartment and slamming it closed. My hidden right hand was on the revolver. “Why’d you put the finger on us?” I asked.
Willy jerked, backed toward the other door, ready to leap out. “Man, what’re you saying?”
“I know why, cocksucker. To save your funky ass.”
“Man, you’re nuts!”
Thoughts and sensations gusted through me, none waiting long enough to be formed. It was important that this scene be a morality play, have meaning. It had to be justice and I had to make it so. Yet there was nothing to say. I pulled the revolver, quickly jammed it against his kneecap and pulled the trigger, the butt snapping back against my hand and the sound in the closed space smacking against my eardrums. The bullet smashed through bone and cartilage and somehow ricocheted up through the window, leaving a hole and tiny cracks as it flew into the night.
Willy screamed, grabbed his knee in both hands, and doubled forward, his face smacking into the steering wheel.
“Rat!” I said. My stomach was queasy, but I forced everything but rage from my mind. It is easier to kill in fury than coldbloodedly.
“Please, Max, please!” he cried, eyes white in the darkness.
Leaping from the car, I rushed around the rear, opened the driver’s door and dragged him out by his jacket. He tried to stand, but his shattered kneecap gave away and he crumpled to the road. He chanted, “Oh Jesus … Oh Jesus,” over and over, as if the void would hear.
The windless night was icy chill. Silence and emptiness were absolute. The headlight beams shone out toward infinity. We might as well have been the only living beings in existence. Momentarily, I started to kill him out of hand, but remembered the confession. If the police could make him talk, so could I. Their lever was freedom; mine was life itself.
I leaned into the car and doused the headlights. Moonglow was enough to give shape and shadow, though colors were reduced to black and silver.
Willy struggled to a sitting position while I was turned, his fractured leg extended to the side in an unnatural curve. He held the sitting posture by a hand spread on the asphalt for a brace. Whimpers beseeching mercy came from his mouth, and garbled protests of his innocence.
“I know you did it,” I said. “And you’re going to die unless you tell me why … unless you give me a reason not to kill you.”
“Max! Max! I didn’t … I love you like my brother. I’m weak … but I ain’t a rat.”
The lies enraged me so I was dizzy with it. My eye caught on the splayed hand he was using for a brace. It was pressed wide and flat. I shot through it—flash, hole, and then the scream as he flopped outstretched, rolling around. I thought the movement was purely from pain, but suddenly he was crawling under the automobile, trying to hide. It was ludicrous—and horrible.
I began to laugh in frenzy. Murder, too, can have comical aspects. I was transcending life by destroying it. I was God the Judge and Executioner. “Peekaboo, I see you,” I said to the formless shadow.
“Sweet mother of Jesus, help me. I didn’t, Max … I didn’t.”
“Yes you did, Willy boy. Tell the truth.”
“I swear on my mother I didn’t.”
“Don’t treat Mom like that. Tell me, make me understand. I want to understand, so I can forgive you. It was because of your boys, and Selma, wasn’t it? You didn’t want to hurt me but you owed them a responsibility.”
“No, Max … not me!”
I pulled the trigger, the explosion drowning his words. I fired the bullet into the ground deliberately. “Tell the truth.”
Willy’s answer was sobs, not tears but the long moans of an animal in agony.
“Are you sorry?”
“I’m sorry, Max! I’m sorry.”
“You told them what I told you in the garage, right?”
“Yes … yes.”
I shot him three times, each one bringing a gasp. In the blackness there was no telling where the bullets went in. He was motionless.
I leaped in the car and eased it forward. When I looked back there was no body. For an awful moment I thought he’d disappeared, or had managed to get off the road into the desert. Then I realized he was still beneath the automobile, clutching at something for refuge. I shot forward, slammed into reverse and spun back, reaching for the headlights. He lay in their beams, trying to crawl away. There was one bullet left in the small revolver. I got out of the car, pressed the muzzle to his head, and blew his skull apart. He died without a whimper, shook for a few seconds and stopped.
I dragged him by the feet (his upper body was too gory) several hundred yards from the road. The desert rolled slightly, hard dry earth with rocks and dry brush. The body left no trail. It was thirty miles to the nearest house. In a few months or years someone would stumble on the skeleton. By then my own fate would have been decided, and I’d probably be as dead as Willy.
My last gesture before leaving was to piss on his body. It was the sacrament a stool pigeon deserved.
5
DAWN in San Diego, misty rain polishing the streets and the sky gray with misery. I abandoned the automobile at the airport. Whenever it was found the authorities would believe I’d fled by airplane—or so I hoped.
A block from the hotel I got out of the taxi and telephoned ahead, waking Allison. She hadn’t been out of the room since arriving, but she thought it was safe: the bellhop had tried to flirt with her late in the evening when she sent for a sandwich. “I don’t think he’d have been so relaxed if they were waiting for you,” she said. “And he’d have to know.”
“You’re getting pretty perceptive, baby.”
Minutes later, after letting me in, she threw her arms around my neck, her eyes wet. “I’ve been worried sick.”
Her emotion washed over me without arousing a response. The horror of the last murder, the imprint of the human head coming apart, was too vivid in memory for anything else to penetrate.
Allison saw the coldness and stepped back. “What’s wrong? Did I do something?”
The simple and sincere question touched a chord that tears and hugs missed. With a lump in my throat, I shook my head. “No, you’re beautiful. It’s just … things on my mind and no time. Go back to bed.”
“You’d better get some sleep, too.”
“I’m too keyed up.”
Unable to rest, I spent the day pacing the hotel suite, fighting off the sensation that this was sanctuary. It was merely respite and the moment the situation crystallized I had to move. Moving now would be useless, for I had no plan. I spent hours staring from the window, watching people and vehicles moving despondently through the wetness nine stories below. Neither newspapers nor television news mentioned Allison in describing the manhunt, but I was certain that they knew I was accompanied by a woman. A federal fugitive warrant charging unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for murder had been filed, which brought in the FBI. Nothing unexpected.
In odd moments when I wasn’t trying to think of what to do, or when I wasn’t thinking of something specific, recollection of the carnage instantly filled the vacuum. I understood why men seek oblivion in alcohol. I saw Jerry writhing in the mud of his blood, the policeman’s eyes, Willy’s head bouncing on the desert, sightless eyes flashing in the moonlight. The images were sharper than when they happened, for then my sensibilities had been blunted by fear and rage. There was no remorse. I tried to feel that and couldn’t. But I felt the kind of nausea one feels seeing the butcher slice the hog’s throat.
By nightfall, still bothered by the images, still unable to decide what to do next, I was cursing inwardly. Allison’s feelings were hurt by my withdrawal. She was also under the strain of being hunted, and nothing in her background had prepared her for it. Her romantic fantasies were fraying at the edges.
When we went to bed early, for now I was drained of energy, I also had the need for touch and warmth and reached for her. She whimpered and we made love. Afterward, her head resting on my chest, her leg wrapped around mine, her finger dawdled with the hair on my stomach.
“What would happen if you gave yourself up?” she asked.
“If I got to jail alive they’d give me due process of law, and after a few years of getting fat on the row I’d get cyanide socked to me.”
“How can they prove it was you? You wore a mask.”
“Oh, they’ll get witnesses. Aaron might turn over if they offer him his life. Maybe Carol wants revenge. Maybe even Mary. What about her kids? They can testify to that trip. Even you might be on the witness stand. If they can’t do it any other way, they might use perjury. They do that too.”
“Do you really think I’d turn against you?” She was angry.
“You wouldn’t want to … but you’ve never spent a single night in jail, so there’s no way to say what you’d do after three months, especially if they offered you immunity on one hand and five years in prison on the other.”
“Would you surrender if they agreed not to give you the death penalty?”
“I could’ve done that before I started shooting.” I chucked her under the chin. “I’d accept probation. That’s all.” Suicide crossed my mind—surrender never.
“But they’ll get you, won’t they?”
“Yeah, most likely … but they won’t get you. I don’t think they know who you are. I’m sending you home to Kentucky in a few days. You’re going to forget you ever saw L.A. If the heat should find you, don’t say a fucking thing, not one word. Do what I said before, keep asking for a lawyer. Don’t even try to lie. You don’t have to prove a thing. They have to prove you helped me, and that you knew.”
“Why can’t I come with you?”
“Because I’m going to get caught. Anyway, I don’t even know where I’m going.”
“If you get away will you send for me?”
“Sure, baby.” I sugarcoated the lie by gently cupping a bare breast and then kissing the nipple.
“Are we going across the border?”
“At Tijuana! They’ll be using my picture for wallpaper there.”
“I’m trying to help. I want to help.”
“Shhh. Go to sleep.”
“I really …”
“Shhh.”
She was quiet, closed her eyes. Perhaps she slept. I knew my only chance was to escape the continent, reach somewhere still unclaimed by computers. My destination had to be thousands of miles farther than Mexico. How to get wherever I was going was another question. That was what gnawed at me. Still without a plan, I fell into a dreamless sleep.
Allison wakened me, her eyes wide, cheeks pale, mouth quivering with emotion. “They found the man in the desert,” she said. The abhorrence in her voice had physical impact. My stomach sagged. I started to ask “What man?” as a reflexive lie to collect my thoughts.
Instead I asked, “Where’d you hear the news?”
“On television. It’s over now.”
“When was it?”
“They found him yesterday—but they didn’t know who he was right away.”
It was unbelievable. Nobody would wander from the highway at such a desolate spot—not so soon. Six months was more reasonable than six hours.
Allison sensed my thoughts, or wanted to add to the horror: “The buzzards …”
The picture came instantly vivid—the usually solitary scavenger birds gathering from miles, soaring in circles. They flocked that way when something big had died, a cow or a horse. A motorist’s curiosity had been aroused.
Allison had moved away from me. Despite my confusion as I digested the revelation, I could feel her loathing toward me. “What else did the news say?”
“That you killed him to get revenge on his wife.”
“His wife!” Another revelation, the lightning realization that it was Selma, not Willy, who’d told the police. I saw it now. Willy had gone back in the house, had been gone for several minutes, and he’d confided in his wife, probably in response to her querulous questions. When he was taken in for the nalline testing, it was Selma who’d gone and bargained. “But he confessed,” I muttered. It was no balm to conscience. I’d forced the confession, a false confession.
“What are you?” Allison whispered huskily. “My God!”
“Dummy up and get off my back,” I said. “I’ve gotta think.”
“You must kill without feeling anything, like an animal. You’d just done that when you …”
“Shut the fuck up, bitch … And get the fuck outta here.” Her accusations were meaningless as the flapping wings of a captured dove. When she started to say something else, I snarled a curse and stood up, raising a hand threateningly. She cowered and kept quiet, then slipped from the room.
Beyond the window the storm had broken and the city was again in the sun, though wind danced with cloud remnants and pools glistened on flat rooftops. The crystalline beauty increased my desperation and rage. Gone were my friends, one wrongly by my own hand. Allison was no longer to be trusted. Behind was the wasteland; ahead lay oblivion. Riotous imagination conjured images of the hunters closing on me, lurking behind automobiles, creeping down the hallway to the suite. The image hypnotized, and if I wallowed in fear too long I’d be unable to act. I felt helpless and lonely.
Pacing the room, I shook off the moribund mood, brought my thoughts back to pragmatic thoughts of what to do and what the situation was, on how to make the odds better that I’d live a little longer.
The body would tell them I’d been in the desert, and San Diego was a logical place to search for me. Soon they’d find the automobile, and though they’d speculate that I’d flown out of town, they’d be diligent in checking motels and hotels. They might be in the lobby now.
Mexico was out of the question. There’d be someone at the border stations doing nothing else but watching for me. Highways east crossed the desert, highways so empty that an automobile stood out like a cockroach on a porcelain bathtub. West was the Pacific Ocean. The only way to go was north along the coast toward Los Angeles, which would have me going back toward where I’d fled from, running in circles. I disliked it but had no choice. The highway along the coast had towns every few miles, and beach houses between them. It was heavily traveled. The evening rush hour was the time to leave.
What about Allison? She was in the bathroom. I could hear the shower running. Her attitude was understandable. The veil had been torn from her eyes. She’d created an image of me instead of seeing the truth. It wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t confided in her, but I hadn’t lied and deceived her either. The buzzards eating Willy had rudely given her a new perspective. Now she saw me as an unmitigated monster.
My attitude toward her had changed the moment hers toward me had changed. Was she a threat? Was she thinking of doing the “decent” thing? Suddenly, as if a knife was plunged through my brain, I saw that in the background of my speculations I was considering another murder. Revulsion came up. Killing her if she was really against me was a matter of survival, but to kill her because she might be against me was a madman’s action. To do that would be to lose respect for myself in my own eyes. She wasn’t overjoyed about murder, but I couldn’t expect her to reach my view where killing was easy.
Danger or not, ally or captive, she was a handicap—and she had to go with me. I couldn’t leave her behind. How long could I keep someone untrustworthy near me?
I began preparations to leave the hotel.
Speeding up the coast highway through orange dusk and heavy traffic, the thought came that my whole life wa
s spent either being locked in a tiny cell or rushing headlong to nowhere.
Allison refused to speak except in monosyllables, so the ride was silent. It was just as well, for I had nothing to say that she could possibly understand—or accept. What sustained me in my own eyes could be understood only by another criminal. She did notice that I was watching her closely when we walked out to the car. She knew she was as much a captive as an accomplice.
By 9:00 P.M. the car was speeding through Santa Ana. Downtown Los Angeles was fifteen minutes away. The hourly bulletin on the manhunt changed. The search was now concentrated in San Diego and Tijuana, and the Mexican authorities were cooperating. No mention was made of the abandoned car, but it was unnecessary. I knew they’d found it. I grinned, knowing I’d made the right move at the right moment and could call my enemies fools. Allison understood my smile.
“They can make a thousand goofs,” she said. “You can’t make one.”
“I thought you wanted me to get away.”
She shrugged apathetically, curled her legs beneath her, rested her head on the doorframe and closed her eyes.
Energized by forty grains of benzedrine, I was alert, keyed up. We swung through the interchange ramps and turned east toward U.S. 66. By dawn, if nothing went wrong, we’d be out of California. As long as I closed my mind to anything but driving and the sensation of speed and power I felt actually good, full of a drug-induced glow. I didn’t think of destination. Speed and distance were all that mattered now. If I got a thousand miles from California I could look at the chessboard and make a decision.
Dawn, Flagstaff, Arizona, and the need for gas all arrived about the same time. The sky was overcast. The desert’s flamboyant colors were dulled to pewter. It was cold as a refrigerator. Nipping tendrils of icy air seeped through cracks and struggled with the heater.
Allison was still silent, arms folded across her chest, and hands tucked into armpits. Her face was puffed from the uncomfortable sleep. A crease of red was along her right cheek from the door-frame. Her clothes—stretch pants and rough sweater, chosen for hard wear—still looked presentable. I wanted her to put on makeup. The way she looked might arouse curious glances somewhere along the line.
No Beast So Fierce Page 27
