by David Goodis
“Answer me this,” Baylock shouted. “What do we need her for?”
“We don’t need her,” Harbin admitted. “But she needs us.”
“Why?” Baylock wanted to know.
“We’re an organization.” Harbin knew he shouldn’t have said that, but it was said and all he could do was wait for Baylock’s blast.
“Are we?” Baylock shouted. “Jesus Christ, give us credit for half a brain anyway. You walk out of here and say you’re through and now almost a week later you show up again and once more we’re an organization, just like that. I don’t like it handled that way and I won’t see it handled that way. Either it’s black or it’s white. One or the other.”
“I won’t argue,” Harbin said. “If you want to break it up we can break it up here and now. On the other hand we can hold it. And if we hold it, I stick. We all stick. That includes Gladden.”
Dohmer hit his hands against his thighs. “I’m with that.”
“You’re with everything.” Baylock looked Dohmer up and down. He turned his face to Harbin. He started to say something and then his mouth tightened up and he walked to the window and looked out at the rain.
The rain was coming down very hard, pouring off the rooftops in solid sheets of silver water against the black. Baylock stood there looking at the rain and hearing the thud of it and saying, “It sure is a fine night to ride down to Atlantic City.”
Harbin made no reply. He started up the stairs, then stopped and looked at Dohmer, “I’ll do the driving. I hope you got the cards printed.”
Dohmer took out his wallet and extracted a few cards, including an operator’s license, a registration card, and a social security card and handed these to Harbin. He examined them, saw that the alias was neither far-fetched nor too common, then he beckoned to Dohmer and Baylock. The three of them went upstairs and packed their bags. They loaded the emeralds into a ragged suitcase, picked up their baggage and moved slowly out of the Spot and walked through the rain.
The Chevrolet was parked in a nearby one-car garage they had rented from an old couple who didn’t have a car and were out of touch with the world. Dohmer had made the necessary changes so that now the Chevrolet was a darkish orange and had different license plates, a different engine number and looked altogether like a different car.
Harbin drove and Baylock sat beside him. Dohmer was in the back and sound asleep before they hit the Delaware Bridge. There were very few cars on the Bridge. When they had driven halfway across the Bridge, Baylock began to worry.
“Why did we have to paint it orange?” Baylock wanted to know. “Of all the colors we could have used, we had to use orange. Some color for a car. Who paints a car orange?”
“You’re worrying about the law,” Harbin said, “and our worry right now is not the law.”
“Another thing,” Baylock said. “Why in Christ’s name did we have to take the car anyway? Why didn’t we grab a train?”
“And put the emeralds on a train. And being there on a train going eighty miles an hour and not being able to get off if something goes wrong. If you want to make talk, let’s make talk with sense.”
The car reached the New Jersey side of the river and Harbin paid New Jersey twenty cents for the use of the Bridge. In Camden the rain died down a little. Coming onto the Black Horse Pike the rain started again. It grew to become a wide rain with a great deal of Atlantic Ocean wind in it.
Harbin worked the car up to fifty-five and held it there on the wet black road. The rain was seemingly coming straight at the car and he had to bend over a little, getting his eyes closer to the windshield to see where he was going.
Baylock said, “Gladden looked good.”
“What do you mean, she looked good.”
“Her face. She looked good in the face. She had some color.”
“The salt air,” Harbin said. “It’s good for everybody. The salt air and the sun.”
“It wasn’t sunburn,” Baylock sounded emphatic. “And where does salt air affect the eyes? I took one look at her and right away I noticed the eyes.”
“What’s wrong with her eyes?”
“Nothing. Her eyes look great. I never saw her eyes like that before. I guess that’s what happens to the eyes in Atlantic City. They get that real Atlantic City look. She sure was anxious to get back. As if there was something there that she was lonesome for. Like the salt air. And the sunshine.”
“All right,” Harbin said.
“And so,” Baylock said, “the thing I keep asking myself is why we’re going to all this trouble, going down there to Atlantic City to take her away from what she wants.”
Harbin couldn’t form a reply. He had his mind completely on the road and the fight he had to make against this attack of northeaster wind and rain.
“All this trouble,” Baylock suddenly whined. “And all this risk.”
“Quit harping on the risk.” Harbin was annoyed. “There’s no risk. Why don’t you rest your head back and take a nap?”
“Who can sleep in this weather? Look at this God damn weather.”
“It’ll let down.” Harbin knew the storm wouldn’t let down. It was getting worse, there was more rain, heavier wind, and now he had to keep the car down to forty, and even at that speed he had difficulty hanging on to it.
“I’ll make book,” Baylock said, “we’re the only car tonight on the Black Horse Pike.”
“That’s a safe bet.”
“Even the cats,” Baylock whined, “stay home on a night like this.”
Harbin was about to say something, but just then the car hit a chughole in the road and there was a nasty sound as the rear springs strained to keep themselves alive. The car went down and up and down again, and Harbin waited for it to fall apart. It went on riding through the northeaster. The headlights found a road sign that said Atlantic City was forty-five miles away. Then the road sign was past them and in front of them was the black and the booming storm. Harbin had an odd feeling they were a thousand miles away from Atlantic City and a thousand miles away from anywhere. He tried to convince himself the Black Horse Pike was a real thing and in daylight it was just another concrete road. But ahead of him now it looked unreal, like a path arranged for unreal travel, its glimmer unreal, black of it unreal with the wet wild thickness all around it.
Baylock’s voice came to him, the whine of it cutting through all the clashing noise of the storm. “I know for sure now,” Baylock said, “we made a big mistake. We were crazy to start this. I can’t tell you how sorry I am we started it. And while we still got the chance we got, we better junk off this road.”
“We’ll get there.” Harbin knew it was a stupid thing to say. It signified he was trying to reassure himself, as well as Baylock.
And Baylock said, “You’re always the brains and we’re always the goats. But now I’m wondering after all how much brains you really got. This party who trailed you, maybe he’s the big brains. So let’s see how his brains would work. Enough brains to find the Spot. Enough to keep checking on us. Here’s a maybe for you. Maybe he trailed Dohmer, too. Maybe he trailed Dohmer to the garage and watched Dohmer painting the car.”
“You sound like you’re from nowhere. Drop it.”
“It just can’t be dropped. You grab hold of high voltage, you can’t let go. This party, like you claim, is after the emeralds, not us. That fits. But here’s another thing. If he loses us, he loses the emeralds. So now we’ve got to think of it the way he would think of it. Even though he ain’t with the law, he can still give the law enough inside dope to make sure we don’t break away.”
“You tell me how he could manage that.”
“Why should I have to tell you? You ought to know yourself. You’re an expert on everything. And even a dumbbell can figure what the man does. He puts in a call to the station house, and he’s anonymous, and he makes a few statements about an orange Chevrolet. Says it’s a dark orange and has a lot of fancy chrome. Says nothing about the emeralds or the haul, just says
it’s a stolen car.”
“Come out of the trees.”
“You’re in the trees. You’re trying to dodge away from it but you know, just like I do.” Baylock’s voice had climbed so that it was no longer a whine, but somewhere near a screech. “You and your brain. You and your obligations. This skinny girl who needs Atlantic City. Who likes the color orange. You and your girl Gladden.”
Harbin took the car up to forty. Then past forty. And then he took it up to fifty, and then to sixty. He felt the tremor of the car as he pushed it to seventy miles an hour through the bedlam of northeaster force and water. He heard every loud noise in the world blending to become one big banging noise, and through it he heard the wail of Baylock, thought Baylock was begging him to slow down, then listened hard, knew the wail meant something else.
“I told you,” Baylock shrieked and wailed. “You see? I told you.”
Baylock’s fingers tapped the rear-view mirror, Baylock’s hand shaking, his fingers on the mirror showing Harbin the two little spheres of bright yellow in the black mirror.
“It’s nothing.” Harbin lessened his pressure on the accelerator. The two glowing spheres became just a bit larger, and he gave the car more gas. Again there was a wail, but almost instantly he knew it wasn’t Baylock’s wail. It was mechanical. He listened to it, studied it, and knew it was a police siren and it came from back there where the headlights sent their gleam into his rear-view mirror.
“Wake Dohmer,” he shouted. He looked at the speedometer. The car was holding seventy. He heard Dohmer grumbling, coming out of sleep, and then the clash between Dohmer’s voice and Baylock’s voice. From the corner of his eye he saw Baylock opening the glove compartment, reaching in deep to open another compartment that had been built by Dohmer for the concealment of revolvers. He saw the flash of the gun barrels as Baylock took them out. Dohmer in the back seat was bumping around like a big animal, twisting to look through the rear window.
“Put the guns back,” Harbin said.
Baylock was checking the guns, making sure they held slugs. “Quit kidding yourself.” Baylock hefted the guns.
“Put them back,” Harbin said. “We’ve never used them before and we won’t need to use them now.”
“You better be damn certain about that.”
“I am. Put them back.”
“For God’s sake,” Dohmer shouted. “Go faster, will you? For God’s sake, what in God’s name is happening here? Why don’t you go faster? What are you slowing down for?”
The car was down to sixty. It kept slowing down and the two dots of light in the rear-view mirror became larger. Harbin turned his face a little toward Baylock.
“I want you to put the guns back,” Harbin said.
The siren wail of the police car came biting through the northeaster, getting the fire of its drastic sound into Harbin’s head, burning there in his head as he kept telling Baylock to put the guns back and close the contrived compartment.
Baylock said, “I know we need guns.”
“You start with guns and you’re dead.”
“We’re using the guns.”
Harbin had the car down to forty miles an hour. “I won’t tell you again,” he said, “put them back.”
“You sure you want me to do that?”
“I couldn’t be more sure,” Harbin said.
He saw the flash again as the guns went back into the glove compartment, Baylock’s arm deep in there getting the guns into the space on the side, and he heard the click as the side panel closed. Now he could no longer hear the police siren. From back there they could see he had slowed down and would be waiting for them to come up. The Chevrolet faded from thirty down to twenty, down to fifteen, and then it stopped altogether at the side of the road.
Harbin wondered whether it would be a good thing at this point to light a cigarette. In front of him the rain washed down across the wearily sliding windshield wipers, more rain washed down and through the black beyond that, and more rain beyond that. He put a cigarette in his mouth and leaned his head back as he lit the cigarette. Now he could hear the engine of the police car coming up, and there was the floating wide swath of its headlights making bright white designs on the ceiling of the Chevrolet. There was something else he heard, and when he saw it happening it was already too late, he couldn’t stop Baylock now, he couldn’t close the glove compartment to catch Baylock’s hand. Baylock already had the gun and was holding it close to his side as the police car pulled up alongside the Chevrolet, and Harbin twisted his head to stare at Dohmer. He saw Dohmer nodding slowly and knew that Baylock had maneuvered it quickly and nicely and Dohmer had the other gun.
“Don’t use them,” Harbin said. “I’m begging you not to use them.”
He didn’t have time to say anything else. A big man wearing a hooded raincoat had stepped out of the police car, the spotlight of the police car shooting past Harbin’s face and giving enough light to brighten up the entire area and display the other two police faces in the official car.
Harbin lowered the window and let some smoke come out of his mouth. He saw the big shiny face of the big policeman, very shiny and weird in the mixture of light and rain.
“What’s the big hurry?” the policeman said. “You know what you were hitting?”
“Seventy.”
“That’s twenty too much,” the policeman said. “License and owner’s card.”
Harbin took the cards from his wallet and gave them to the policeman. The policeman was studying the cards but made no move to pull out his book.
“We people in Jersey want to stay alive,” the policeman said. “You drivers from Pennsylvania come over here and try to kill us.”
“You see what kind of a night it is,” Harbin argued. “We only wanted to get out of this weather.”
“Call that an excuse? That’s all the more reason to stay inside the speed limit. And you were doing something else, too. Crossing over that white line. You were way over on the wrong side of the road.”
“The wind kept pushing me over.”
“The wind had nothing to do with it,” the policeman said. “If you’re a careful driver and obey the law you don’t have to worry about the wind.” He turned to the other policemen. “I told you he’d blame it on the storm.”
“Well,” Harbin sighed, “I know I’ve seen better weather than this.”
“You going down the shore?”
Harbin nodded.
The policeman said, “You want nice weather, you won’t find it in Atlantic City. Not for the next day or so, anyway. And I tell you I wouldn’t want to be down there tonight. When that ocean gets it from the northeast, there’s no worse place to be.”
He handed the cards back to Harbin and Harbin put them in the wallet. The book had not appeared and Harbin told himself it was all right, it was over, and what remained wouldn’t be important.
“Now you be careful,” the policeman warned. “Unless you’re inclined to be a lunatic you won’t do more than forty miles an hour. Go into a skid on this road and you’ll wind up in a grave.”
“I’ll remember that, officer.”
The policeman turned to get back into the official car, and just then one of the other cops steered the spotlight so it would swish its wide glow into the Chevrolet, and the big policeman kept turning his eyes automatically to follow the path of the spotlight. The glow went riding past Harbin’s head into the rear of the Chevrolet. Harbin pivoted his head, saw the glow catching Dohmer in the back seat, the revolver in Dohmer’s hand in the middle of the glow. Then, as the big policeman let out a grunt and went for his own revolver, Dohmer raised the gun and pointed it at the big shiny face.
“No, don’t, don’t, don’t,” Harbin pleaded, but he heard the explosion of Dohmer’s gun as the policeman went for his own gun. On the other side of the car Baylock already had the door open and was leaping out. Harbin tried to move and couldn’t understand why it was impossible to move. He stared at the big policeman.
T
he face of the big policeman was completely destroyed, split wide open by the bullet and now sinking under the path of the spotlight. Harbin saw convulsive movement in the police car, sensed his own body moving, the backward rush as he threw himself toward the door that Baylock had opened. Falling out of the car, going backwards, he saw Dohmer leaping away toward a vague mass that was bush fringing the muddy ditch that fringed the road. He heard the crash of more bullets, heard the yelling of the policemen as they circled their car and came running toward the bush. They were running toward Dohmer and shooting at him as he sought to get inside the bush. Dohmer was more clumsy now than he had ever been before. He had managed to get past the ditch, but now he tripped with the bush coming up in front of him, got up and tripped again and fell into the bush and became entangled there. Then Dohmer knew he was due to be hit and he let out a scream, and right after that he was hit. He squirmed, his hands mixed with the bush. His body was an arc as he threw his shoulders far back. The policemen ran in close to him and shot him again as he twisted to give them his face and his stomach. They shot their bullets into his stomach. He screamed at the policemen. He screamed at the rain and the raining sky. He began to fall, but he was too clumsy to merely fall. He stumbled as he fell, and while stumbling he lifted his revolver and fired one and two and three shots at the policemen. One of the policemen died instantly, his heart pierced. The other policeman began to sob and let out a choking, gurgling noise as he clutched at his chest. Dohmer’s body collided with him and they both went to the ground. The policeman pulled himself up and away from the corpse of Dohmer and crawled on his hands and knees toward the ditch, then rolled into the ditch.
Harbin, crouching at the side of the Chevrolet, waited for the policeman to climb out of the ditch. But all Harbin could see was the quiet legs of the policeman, coming from the top of the ditch. Then there was sound from another section of the bush, and Harbin turned to see Baylock emerging from the bush, Baylock following the line of bush toward the legs of the policeman. Harbin called to Baylock, and Baylock stopped, turned quickly, looked at him, then moved on toward the policeman. Now the legs were moving, the policeman was trying to pull himself from the muddy water. Baylock, his arm extended with the revolver at the end of the arm, walked up to the policeman, stared at him, aimed the revolver at him.
