Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951

Because of Soney by Stewart C. Bailey

Stewart C. Bailey’s “Because of Soney” is one of the eight “first stories” which won special awards in our 1949 contest. It is the story of a hard, lunchroom waitress and a weak college graduate who, if you will pardon the expression, “fall in love.” But beware of the quotation marks: you will find little sweetness and light in this love affair. The same quality of paradox dominates the author’s whole technical approach: here is a tale at once tough and sentimental, at once hardboiled and sofibaked, at once dream-filled and ironic...

Mr. Bailey was graduated in 1948 from Franklin College, Franklin, Indiana, where he majored in journalism. He has taken postgraduate courses at Butler University and the University of Arizona, But his observation of people, the way they thinly and act, what maizes them tick, must have derived chiefly from his newspaper work — he was a reporter for, among other papers, “The Indianapolis Star.” At the present time he is Information Secretary of the Marion County Tuberculosis Association, in Indianapolis, and the man who gravitates to that hind of job must have a heart in his chest, and that heart will show in his work.

I hated having to slug her. But I had to — so I could write this down and you’d know it was all because of Soney. Not me.

The snow’s nearly up to the windows now and no matter how tight I roil them it sifts through. And it’s cold. I just felt Soney’s wrist and it’s like ice, even to my fingers. Her body lies on the back seat, and maybe it’s dead already and maybe it isn’t. It doesn’t, make any difference whether she dies now or an hour from now.

I have to keep feeding the fire all the time because paper burns fast and doesn’t give much heat. And there isn’t much left.

Soney’s dreams are burning. The dreams that were mine too, because Soney made them mine. And the dreams are burning up and will last maybe an hour longer — probably less. Till I can write this down on the stationary Soney cadged from the hotel in Kansas City. And whoever digs us out, please send it on to my friends back home...

It never pays to go into a rat-race like The Triple T. But that night I had to talk to someone. I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer, and after I drank off a few, I started looking around.

In one booth there was a character in a black shirt. With two babes. Both very neat. And the one that sat by herself had on levis and a plaid shirt. Blonde hair that fell to her shoulders and sharp features.

While I watched, the blonde got up and walked past me at the bar to request a number from the groaner. She swaggered when she walked and she exchanged fast conversation with the sleazy people who sat at the tables along her route.

And she bumped me slightly as she passed.

So when she got back to her two friends, I drank off my beer and walked back. She looked up at me with an unfriendly face. It threw me a little off-guard, but I was getting full of beer so I said, “Howdy, friends,” and swept off my hat with a flourish.

The blonde looked me over and moved over to the inside of the booth.

“You wanta sit down?” she said.

“If you want me to.”

“No one’s stopping you,” she said. And then she yelled at a sloppy, pudgy waitress who was passing, “Four beers, Mary.”

And I took my wallet out of my coat pocket and pulled out a ten. And I had someone to talk to.

That’s how I met Soney.

“Do you work for a living?” I said.

“Work?” she said. “What’s that?” Then she lit one of my cigarettes and said to the couple who sat across the table from us, “This character wants to know if I work. Do you call slingin’ hash work?”

She half-turned in the booth and looked me over again. She was looking at the clothes, and my hands that didn’t have black nails like the hands of the man in the black shirt.

“You jerks,” she said. “You jerks that went to college on your old man and then knock down easy jobs. And then slum around. You jerks,” and then she drank off her beer. Chug-a-lug. She was drunk.

After that, the evening didn’t go very good. Soney got nastier and nastier. I bought four more beers and four more beers. But her girl friend told me where they worked — Joe’s Lunch — as we stood out in the winter wind after the tavern closed and Soney was telling me where I could go.

I’d gone in The Triple T that night to find someone to talk to. Because I was new in town, on a new job. I met a drunken blonde and I forgot her — figuring I’d never see her again.

But a week later I was making a call out in the industrial center. It was after five when I left the plant with an order and as I walked to my car I passed a greasy-looking restaurant. Its windows were all steamy and you could barely see the sign that said: Joe’s Lunch.

I was in my car and had the engine going before I remembered. And like a real, twenty-four carat sap I got out and went back. I did have to eat some place, that’s true, but not in the place Soney worked.

It was she who served me. Brought me the roast beef and potatoes and boiled cabbage. It was Soney in a soiled blue uniform. I knew I’d made a mistake. But I said:

“Hi, Soney. Remember me?”

A smile brightened her sharp-featured face and she said, “Why, sure! Sure, I remember you. You’re the college boy I insulted the other night. In The Triple Т.”

She put down my bread and un-colored margarine and a funny half-crooked smile twisted her mouth.

“I guess I was pretty drunk,” she said. “I guess I ought to apologize to you.” She took a cigarette out of my pack that lay on the counter and lit it. “Say, what is your name anyway?”

“Parker Amhurst,” I said.

“A real fancy name,” she said laughing. “Ain’t there a junior or a second or a third on the end of it? Parker Amhurst, II, sounds even better.”

“You’re right,” I said, “there used tо be a II on the name, but I haven’t used it since 1929. When my father died.”

Soney sneered. “1929, hunh? So I was right. You sure your old man just died? He didn’t decide to jump out the window? How about that, Parker Amhurst, the second?”

I sat there eating, and took it. And I watched the way the light from the unshaded bulb above her head made gold glints in her hair. And I knew right then I’d be taking her stuff for a long time. If I could just be around her and watch her hair under an unshaded light bulb...

She sauntered off through the swinging door in the back, while I finished eating. The cashier was taking my money when Soney came back, wearing a fringed leather jacket over the levis and plaid shirt and boots she had been wearing that first night in The Triple T.

Walking close to me so that we touched, she looked up and said, “You wanta date me?”

“Naturally,” I said. “When?”

“What do you mean when?” she said. “I wanta date, I want it right now. You got your car here?”

“Right outside,” I said, and I took her arm in the fringed leather jacket. And we were off. To The Triple T and to other joints.

Soney lived in a furnished room in the boarding-house area. Alone. She liked it okay, she said. Because it only cost her three dollars a week. Which was too much for a working gal who made fifteen dollars a week and few tips. In 1948. But some mornings she didn’t feel like going to work, she said, and Joe Photopolus who owned Joe’s Lunch didn’t care. She got along — barely. She liked her beer, but there were always guys that would buy that. Like me.

On the walls of her room she had pasted pictures of horses and guys in western clothes. And Soney on horses. And one photochrome from a magazine showing an Arizona ranch with purple mountains in the distance.

I lit cigarettes for us and said, “That picture of the ranch. I wish you’d take it down. It breaks my heart. Being here.”

Soney’s voice had softened. “What’s it like out there, Park — I mean, what’s it really like? Is it like in that picture and like it is in the movies? Is it really so wonderful?”

“Even better than that,” I said. “You can’t take a picture of a western night on the desert or in the canyon with the stars close, like they are. And a camp fire. You can’t photograph magic. Thinking about it makes you want to cry, when you’re here in this jerk town and can’t leave.”

“Why can’t you go back, Park? You make good money, you’ve got a college education. You could go out there if you really wanted to. God, what I wouldn’t do to be able to! But I couldn’t even pay the bus fare.”

“A man can’t make a living out there,” I said, “unless he’s inside looking out. Too many people have the same idea. Labor’s cheap. I’ve got a good job here — with a future. I’d be silly to leave it and go back there to starve. Never again — until I’m in the money. And that will probably be a long time.”

“Money, Park. Money money money. I’ve never been able to do anything I wanted to because of that stuff. Let’s you and I rob a bank and get enough to blow this town. And its smog and its stinking rooms like this. And let’s us go out west and buy a ranch. And horses. Like I’ve always wanted.”

“Sure, honey,” I said, “we’ll get ourselves fifty thousand and buy a ranch. But in Mexico. It’s much better. Land’s cheaper — so’s labor. You could live like a king forever on fifty thousand. Let’s rob a bank. You and I.”

And then Soney wanted to know about Mexico. So I told her about the border towns I’d been in. Nogales and Jaurez and Tiajuana. And the time I went down to Acapulco. And Monterey. The bright sun. The tacos. The little ninos who tag along behind you, and how you feel funny because they make you feel so important. And how they really talk like they do in “Gordo” — pronounced “Gortho.”

“Let’s rob a bank, darling,” she said, and kissed me...

When I checked with the office the next day, just before noon, there was a number for me to call. It was The Triple T — so I asked for Soney. She wanted me to come on over quick; she had big news.

She was seated by herself in a booth and she wasn’t wearing her levis. She had on a dress and she looked swell. She had a package on the seat beside her and as soon as I sat down and ordered, she had it open. It was a slate-gray uniform.

“See that, Park,” she said. “I’m an elevator operator now.” Then she smiled — big. “In the Plaza Trust, no less. Plush, hunh?”

I didn’t know what to say. She seemed so pleased with herself. And just because of landing a job as an elevator operator. Maybe thirty bucks a week. It made me swallow. Then I said:

“Congratulations. You should look neat in that uniform. Really neat.”

Her mouth twisted in that crooked, wry smile she had, and she said, “You fool. You stupid fool! You really think I’m simple, don’t you? You really think a punk job like that seems like big stuff to me? Well, it doesn’t! I think it stinks.”

“But—” I didn’t know what to say.

“Get smart, honey,” she said. “This is it. It’s our chance to really do it. To work our plan.”

Then I was really confused. “What plan?” I said.

“To rob a bank, silly,” she said. “Listen!”

Like a fool — like the stupid fool she called me — I did. I sat there and listened while she told me how we were going to do it. How we were going to Mexico and live like kings. Knowing she was no good and no good for me. Knowing it was all crazy — yet I sat there and listened. And the darndest part was, she made it sound plausible.

Two days later I fumbled a big deal. Intentionally. I lost my temper and told a purchasing agent where he could go. He called up the boss and read me off, and that was that. I was fired.

Oh, I made it sound good. I pleaded and protested that I’d been feeling sick, and promised that it would never happen again. But that was that. I was fired. And our plan had started.

On the top floor of the Plaza Trust there’s a suite of offices. They’re occupied by the Briney Armored Car Service. Up there they handle big sums of cold cash. Cold cash in small bills that aren’t marked.

The next day I walked over to the Plaza Trust. I rode up on the elevator Soney was running, but I didn’t speak to her or even look at her. She didn’t look at me. There were other people on the car.

I asked the personnel manager at the Briney Armored Car Service for a job. There was one open — as a guard. Soney had promised that. She’d known it even before she took the elevator job. From dating one of the Briney employees.

The personnel man couldn’t understand why I wanted that kind of job — when I’d been making twice as much. I gave him a long story about how I got fired. About being in the infantry and how I missed the excitement — handling guns. That stuff.

He swallowed it, I guess. Anyway, I filled out a couple miles of forms.

Three days later I got a call to report for work. I figured the references had done it. Plenty of influential people had known my father, and known me — a little. At least they recognized my name.

I was given a uniform and a gun. A side arm. And Soney’s plan was beginning to work.

A reasonable amount of time had to pass. Two months, at least. They were hard. Soney wouldn’t let anybody see us together.

I couldn’t go to her place any more, or even to The Triple T. People might remember. And I couldn’t call her at her rooming house because the phone was in the hall and there was always the chance she’d be overheard.

So to perfect our plans for the big day, I’d drive out to the end of the bus line and park on a darkened street, and Soney would ride out to the end of the line and walk two blocks to the car. And we’d change the location of the meeting place every night or so, just in case.

Then one night she got in the car and I handed her the bottle I’d been drinking from — to give myself guts — and I said, “Tomorrow’s it.”

She didn’t even take a drink, she was so excited.

“How much?” she said. “Tell me.”

“More than we figured — nearly one hundred thousand. The L. Stacey Manufacturing Co. payroll. Enough to live like Aga Khan for the rest of our lives. In Mexico.”

And then Soney laughed. That brittle, bitter laugh she had when she was paying someone off. “That’s good,” she said, “that’s wonderful. I worked for that Stacey one time. For forty-five cents an hour. That’s wonderful — I only wish there weren’t such a thing as insurance.”

“Come off it,” I said. “You’ll have the rest of your life to gloat if you do your job right. Right now, we have to plan. The timing has to be split-second. Or it won’t work. And you’ll be a number for the next ten years instead of a queen on a ranch.”

So we talked for an hour, and it was set. When I went home I couldn’t sleep and three goof pills didn’t help.

The success of the whole plan hinged on one weakness in the Briney organization. A desire to save money on personnel.

Whenever money was transferred from truck to building, or vice versa, two men were always in sight of the money. Except — early in the morning when payrolls were taken from the vault to the truck.

That was where the Briney executives had slipped up. Figuring there was more danger from robbery on the street early in the morning, they had two men of the regular three-man crew go down to guard the truck and the building entrance. And one man was trusted to take the money down in the elevator alone.

They figured there was no place he could hide it and no way he could get out of the building with it. But he’s timed very carefully. If he isn’t down on the sidewalk in ninety seconds flat, the man in the truck covers the building entrance from the truck porthole, and the other guard sounds the alarm. And the police are there in thirty seconds, guarding all exits and ready to search the building.

I was the guard who carried the money. Over ninety thousand bucks in small bills. Not marked.

At exactly six thirty-five the vault keeper handed me the money in two canvas bags, and I signed for it. At six thirty-six the other two guards left for the elevator. At six thirty-eight the vault keeper looked up from his watch and told me to start down. And Soney and I had exactly ninety seconds to pull off our plan.

Picking up the two bags, I walked out through the door and down the hall to the elevators. Around the turn in the hall — praying there wouldn’t be two elevators at the top, to save me from making the only move that could ruin my whole life. There were only three elevators and they were supposed to be synchronized, but this morning Soney had to have hers at the top whether it was on schedule or not.

But luck — and I didn’t know then whether it was good or bad — was with us. Only one set of doors were open. Soney’s. But a lighted car wasn’t there. Just the dark shaft showing through the door.

It was working. I threw the bags on top of Soney’s elevator. When she heard the thump she brought her elevator up from the floor below, slammed the doors shut, and scooted for the bottom.

I counted to twenty-five — then drew my gun and fired at the stairway. And started running and firing and yelling at the top of my voice to sound the alarm. It was done — and there was no getting out of it any more.

As I ran down the stairs, emptying my gun into the walls, I slugged myself on the chin as hard as I could with my left hand, and I slipped. Tumbled half a flight and knocked myself out.

When I came to, the building burglar alarm was still ringing and one of the guards who had preceded me down the elevator was throwing water on me and a couple of cops were looking at me with shrewd, distrustful eyes.

The cop who wore a lieutenant’s bars said roughly, “Okay, that’s enough. He’s coming around.” Then he helped me up on my feet, and said, “All right, bud. Let’s hear it. What happened? Some guy slugged you and ducked down the stairs, I know. And he moved so fast, even carrying those heavy bags, that a bullet wouldn’t catch up with him.”

“That’s right,” I said — and: “Give me a cigarette.” My head was bleeding slightly, and it throbbed, and I was scared. Plenty scared. Soney could have already crossed us up by acting nervous.

“Yeah?” the lieutenant said. “The crooks don’t hold up you Briney guys. They know you’re all too well trained and too gooda shots. You musta had a buddy. You give him the dough and let him get a good head start, and then you start blasting and yelling.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You might as well tell us right now,” he said. “We’ll have your buddy in a coupla minutes and he’ll tell us. There ain’t no way he can get out of the building. We’ll get him if we have to go through every room and broom closet in the joint. And that’s what we’re doing right now.”

“I’ll wait,” I said. “The guy slugged me and ran down the stairway. That’s all. I’m not so simple I think I could get away with something like you say. Neither can the guy get away — I know that.”

“Okay, buddy, okay,” the cop said, “that’s the way it was until we find out different. Now what did this robber look like?”

“It happened pretty fast,” I said, “but he had on a gray topcoat, and a brown hat — I think. He was big — bigger than I am — and he was carrying a Luger. It looked like that to me — and I’ve seen a lot of Lugers.”

“Check with the elevator operators,” the lieutenant said to the sergeant who was with him. “See if they remember anybody like that come up in the elevator.”

Then we went up to the office of the Briney Armored Car Service, and all the wheels were there. Half dressed — as if they’d just been called out of bed.

The personnel manager had an accusing look on his face. After all, I’d only been there a little over two months, and so was good cause for suspicion. J. B. Smith, the general manager, bustled up to me, all oily and solicitous about whether I’d been hurt.

I had to go over my story for every executive in the place and they wrote down the description and everything, like I said it happened.

And then the sergeant came back. He had Soney with him. I felt myself begin to sweat — but that was the way she had it planned. To back up my story on the description.

“His story checks, lieutenant,” the sergeant bellowed. “This young lady claims she took a man answering that description up to the tenth floor this morning.”

“What time?” the lieutenant asked Soney.

“Right after I come on at six,” Soney answered. “I kinda wondered where he was goin’ that early in the mornin’, but it happens now and then. Someone can’t sleep. I knew I’d never seen him before, but we get new tenants in here all the time. So I didn’t think too much about it.” She was plenty cool.

Then they took both our names and addresses, and made us wait until the entire building had been searched by what must have been the whole police force. And that was that.

They couldn’t figure how the robber got out. Or — if I had pulled something off with a confederate — where the money could have been hidden.

But they didn’t have a thing to go on, so finally they let Soney go back to work, and the personnel manager told me to take the rest of the day off and to go see the company doctor about my head.

As I walked over to the doctor’s office, I did some heavy thinking. I knew the whole detective force would be checking on Soney and me, and I prayed no one would remember seeing me with her.

The part of the job that was over was the easy part. I realized now that it had been practically fool-proof. With a girl of Soney’s nerve and determination helping — and planning.

The really dangerous part was ahead. And there were plenty of things that could happen to bust the whole deal wide open.

First and foremost, the money had to be taken off the top of Soney’s elevator — but quick. Plenty of time the maintenance men carried things up or down by standing on top of the elevators. That’s what had given Soney the idea in the first place. She’d seen it done in other buildings.

Or something could go wrong with one of the elevators, and someone would be in the shaft. If that money was spotted on her car, it wouldn’t take too long for them to link us up together. They’d have something to go on. And bingo.

Getting that money out of the building was going to be tough. At first, I’d said it couldn’t even be done. But Soney had an elaborate plan which sounded like it might work. But elaborate plans are hard to handle.

It was going to be hard because we’d both be followed and watched constantly. We definitely could not be seen talking together. So there wouldn’t be any chance to talk things over again. Or change our plans, if anything went wrong.

I stayed in my apartment all day, and nothing I swallowed seemed to help. Six o’clock finally came, and I went out to dinner. The icy wind felt good.

There was a man waiting in a car down the street and he was still with me when I parked. After dinner I drove downtown and ducked into a parking space I’d had reserved for two weeks. And used every day for just this one time.

While the cop was looking for a place to park, I bought a ticket and walked into the theatre across from the lot. And went straight into the manager’s office. Soney had set that up. She knew the manager and the exact time he went to dinner every night. The door to the men’s room was right next door to the manager’s office, and if the usher didn’t take too careful a look, he’d be sure to tell the cop I’d gone there.

Watching through the crack of the door, I saw the detective come in and look around. He spoke to the usher and then he walked into the men’s room and came out and stood looking around. Then he walked in and took a seat where he could see all the exits. Except the main entrance — but he could see anybody coming down the aisle.

Only I didn’t have to come down the aisle. I ducked out of the manager’s office and out of the entrance. I couldn’t help running to the corner.

I walked five blocks to the corner of Ohio and East, and there it was. The blue Plymouth that Soney had rented the day before. The keys were in the glove compartment, and I took off.

It was exactly seven fifty-nine. In two minutes I had to drive up the alley behind the Plaza Trust. I did.

Meanwhile Soney had been busy. According to our plans, she was to shake her shadow by six o’clock. She’d pulled the old powder-room gag.

During the day she’d had to get down to the basement and snafu the lock on the freight elevator. So she could get in through the alley.

When she got in the building, she had to walk up twelve flights, unlock her elevator, move it down to the eleventh floor, walk back up, remove the money from the top of the elevator, then go down and move the elevator back up.

This all had to be done without a cleaning woman seeing her, or the night watchman who ran the one elevator at night. Or anybody else who might be working late.

After she got the money, she had to carry it down the hall to an office that had windows overlooking the alley. She’d got the key by dating a man who worked in the office, swiping his keys, having one made the next day, and then giving them back — saying she’d found them in her apartment.

She was waiting by the open window in the dark office above the alley when I flashed the car lights three times. Almost immediately, I saw a dark shape coming slowly down the back side of the building. It was the two money bags on a rope.

I drove to the country, put the money in a wooden box in a hole we’d dug two weeks before in a lonely cornfield, and covered it up. I put the Plymouth back where I’d found it, walked to my car, and drove home.

Soney had to spend the night in that office because the night watchman came on at seven and he usually parked by the stairway to the basement, where she had to go to get out by the freight elevator. But the cops are rather used to a gal like Soney not coming home to sleep.

Then all we had to do was wait. Wait wait wait. And drink to keep from getting too fidgety, and hope you wouldn’t get drunk and spill it all some night.

And for me it was dream about Soney and I wished I could see her. Soney and Mexico and a ranch forever.

The police never could understand how the robber got out of the building, and they had me over to headquarters several times. But they just didn’t have a thing. Not a thing.

Briney Armored Service kept me on. Maybe to keep an eye on me. But they changed their system. Figured it was better to have four men do the work of three, they said.

I was really worried sick for about a month. And then I began to realize that we’d really pulled it off. Just like Soney said we would. And then I began to wonder how she was spending her nights and whether the money was still in the hole. Because Soney was not the kind of girl you feel too sure about.

One night I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I drove out to the place I’d stashed the money. And it was gone. There was a hole, but no box, no dough.

The earth around the hole was fresh — plenty fresh. And there were car tracks.

It could have been somebody else who found it. But probably not. I figured fast — and took a gamble.

Pouring the coal on my heap, I raced to the U-Drive-It garage. The same one the car had come from before, on that big night. Instead of heading for Soney’s house.

I was right, and all kinds of luck were with me. By pushing it I’d beaten her there. I was standing behind the entrance out of sight when I saw her yellow head in a car that pulled in and stopped with a jerk of brakes.

Soney could think fast.

“Honey,” she said, breathlessly and very low, when I rushed up to grab her, wanting to kill her. “Honey, I’ve been trying to call you—” She must have known by my face that I’d been out to the money and found it gone.

“Make it good,” I said.

“Park, honey, I think they know. They’ve been questioning me for hours. Somebody told about seeing us together in The Triple T. It was the other waitress, I think.”

I knew she was lying, but it scared me because I’d been wondering if something like that wouldn’t happen. Maybe it would’ve, sooner or later. Anyway, I let her tell me that. And I guess she was afraid to change her story because of what she saw in my face. Maybe I’m to blame for the blunder.

“Get my bags,” she said, giving me the key to the trunk. The biggest bag was plenty heavy and I knew what was in it. The future in Mexico. With a girl who was a fourflusher.

We left town in a hurry — out U. S. 40. Without my clothes. Without saying anything to the Briney Armored Car Service. Without Soney saying anything to the Plaza Trust.

It was stupid. And we hadn’t planned it that way. In another month — a safe time — we could have both changed jobs. And then moved to other towns. Different ones. And then met later, on the way to the border.

But I guess Soney was just a chippy, who’d never had a chance to learn to play square. And so the whole carefully-planned deal was queered that night. That quick.

It was beginning to snow as we left town, and Soney shivered and said, “Park, I’m gonna get a fur coat in the first big city we hit tomorrow morning.” And then she talked and talked about all the things she was going to buy with the money, until she finally went to sleep. And I barreled the car west. I stopped in Kansas City and she bought a dyed muskrat that looked like mink, after I talked her out of the real thing.

We hit Oklahoma that day about noon. I was getting worried. I figured four hours was long enough for Briney and the Plaza Trust and the police to get together and start to add.

The police back home had my license number and the description of my car, and pretty soon so would the police in Oklahoma. And Texas, if we got that far.

So just outside of Tulsa I turned off into a country road and drove the car over into a gully.

“Get out,” I told Soney, “and get the bags out.” I pushed the car until gravity took it and it crashed down — way down — where nobody would see it for a long time.

Maybe months — because it was beginning to snow pretty hard. And I’d heard on the radio that a blizzard was coming. So maybe it would even be covered up and not discovered until spring.

It was nearly two miles to the city bus line, and we were nearly frozen before we made it. In Tulsa I bought a good used car. Paid for in fairly small bills from the suitcase.

And I made Soney go to a beauty shop way off on a side street and get herself changed into a brunette.

And we were off. Into the blizzard. The radio was warning people to stay at home. But that didn’t mean anything to Soney and me. We had to move.

I had been planning to head from Tulsa down to Dallas and Fort Worth and through San Antone into Laredo and across the border there. But then Soney said:

“Really, Park, I wasn’t trying to run out last night. It was true. They were suspicious. You’ve got to believe me. Mexico, the ranch, won’t mean anything if you don’t.”

And I believed her and got panicky. Thinking the police would be more apt to figure us for the direct route, I took off cross-country for the panhandle. Figuring to cut down towards El Paso through New Mexico. We could buy horses and cross the border in Arizona. I knew that country a little.

Night came, and then midnight, and then we were in the panhandle. And then we were in the northern tip of New Mexico. And there was a road-block ahead. The sweat broke out on my forehead and my hands.

“This may be it,” I said to Soney, as we approached. “We should have had the radio on. There might have been news.”

“Relax,” she said. I looked at her face in the cold blizzard light, and it had that funny crooked smile. Her eyes were as cold as the snow that swirled through the darkness. And in her new black hair she looked like somebody I’d never seen — and never wanted to see.

“Relax,” she said. “There’s only one cop. There’s two of us and I got this. I’ll take care of you.”

And she eased her hand out of the new fur coat. Long enough to let me see a gun.

But I couldn’t say anything more because the patrolman was waving at us to stop. He had a shotgun crooked in his arm, but that doesn’t always mean anything on a lonely stretch of road like that one.

I rolled the window down.

He seemed friendly. Young and pink-faced from the cold.

“Where you folks headed?” he asked cheerily. “Pretty bad up ahead. Can’t get through, I’m afraid. Better turn back.”

“Can’t we get through at all, officer?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “We’re in a pretty big hurry. I’m due at a meeting in Santa Fe.”

“Sorry,” the pink-faced patrolman said. “It’s plain suicide up ahead. Drifts ten feet high some places. You’ll have to back up till you can turn around. And you’d better hurry.”

I started to protest, when Soney said, “Look, copper, the man said we’re in a hurry. Get out of the way.”

The cop opened his mouth in surprise — and Soney fired. Right in his mouth. Through the pocket in her new fur coat. From the hip. And the cop’s face had a hole in it, and he fell over backwards into the snow. And in thirty seconds the blizzard had covered the red stain on the snow.

I looked foolishly at the smoking, smouldering hole in Soney’s new coat. She had the gun out of her pocket and pointed at me.

“Get movin’! Or do you wanta urp first.”

I did and just got my head out the window in time. Then I drove off into the blizzard, still unable to speak. With Soney holding a gun on me.

Within ten minutes we ran into a drift and the car stalled and wouldn’t move either way. Even though Soney did have a gun.

She put the gun away and said, “Now what do we do?”

“You name it,” I said, “it was your idea.” And I kept thinking of that young pink-faced cop with the hole in his face, and I had to get out of the car again.

The blizzard was getting worse. You couldn’t see ten feet now in any direction, and there was nothing but snow and more snow. And darkness.

“Well, don’t stand there. Do something,” Soney said. She was out of the car standing beside me.

“What is there to do?” I asked. “And you’d better get rid of this gun, in case help does come. Just in case,” I said.

“Don’t be funny,” she said, and then turned the gun on me. “Look for some wood. We’ll build a fire.”

That sounded sensible, and I looked around, but you couldn’t see anything but snow and darkness. No trees, no fence posts, nothing.

We both walked away from the car a little way to look for something that might burn. But it was no use.

When we came back to the car, I grabbed her when she wasn’t looking and wrenched the gun away from her and threw it as far away as I could. Out into the darkness into some deep drift.

But I really didn’t think anybody would come and find it on her. It was too much to hope for.

Without a word we both got back into the car and settled down to wait. I tried to keep the engine running so we could have some heat. Pretty soon it stalled. I started it again. And then it stalled and wouldn’t start at all.

The fine powdery snow of the blizzard was beginning to sift into the car. Through cracks you couldn’t see. It covered us, and before long we were numb.

And though I hated the look and the touch of her, we huddled together and tried to keep warm.

Then I had an idea. How to put off death for a while. Without a word to her I got out of the car, and digging down through the snow, I pried off a hub cap with my knife.

“Get in the back seat,” I ordered Soney, “we’ll start a fire on the floor.”

“With what?” she sneered.

“With this,” I said, starting on the upholstery with my knife.

We started a little fire in the hub cap and huddled over it. The smoke was terrible and in two minutes our eyes were burning and we were both coughing — but the heat was good.

Two hours of that. Opening the door occasionally to dear the smoke out.

Then all the upholstery was gone. And when I felt myself get numb and I knew the dreams were just dreams, I began to want only one thing. To let people know how it all came to happen. How it was because of Soney and not me. How I never would have done it without Soney.

I especially wanted my friends to know that it had been Soney who killed that pink-faced cop. Not me.

And there was only one way to do it. Write it. And to do that I had to have some more fire. Just fire enough until I finish.

Without a word I got out of the car into the howling wind and snow.

I don’t know how long it took me to struggle around to the trunk compartment and get out the heavy suitcase. Maybe half an hour.

When I got back in the car, Soney looked like she was asleep.

I’d burned maybe five thousand dollars worth of Soney’s dreams of a ranch, and life as the movies say it is, when the heat brought her around. Or maybe it was the smoke. The coughing.

When she got her breath, she took one look at the bills burning in the hub cap and she let out a scream:

“Why, you stupid fool — what are you doing? Give that to me — give it to me! You can’t burn my money!”

Soney lunged at me and buried her teeth in my neck and gouged at me with her long red fingernails. She knocked over the hub cap with its little fire, and the bills fell from my hand and showered around us like the snow outside.

Because Soney saw her dreams going up in smoke. The dreams she’d had since she was a little kid in Gary. All her have-nothing life of slinging hash and hitchhiking and drinking beer in places like The Triple T.

So I had to slug her. And then I put her on the back seat out of my way.

Soney died there from the cold as I fed her dreams into the fire in the hub cap. Crouched over it, trying to keep alive long enough to write this.

So you’d know it was because of Soney, and not me.