The Getaway

4

The time lock on the bank's vault was set for eightfifty. Slightly more than ten minutes later, Rudy and Jackson had cleared it of cash-dollar bills and coins excepted-and several thick packages of negotiable securities.

The banker lay sprawled on the floor, half-dead from Rudy's pistol-whipping. Stumbling over his unconscious body, Rudy gave him a savage kick in the face, turned half-crazed eyes upon the kid. The fear had filled him now, the furious outraged fear of a cornered rat. It would simmer down in time, solidify into the murderous trigger-quick wiliness which had guided him in and out of so many tight places. Which forced him to survive long after the withered inner man had cried out for the peace of death. Now, however, there was nothing but the raging fear, and he had to strike out at something. At anything.

"You hear anything out there?" He jerked his head toward the street."Well, did you?"

"Hear anything? W-what…"

"The bombs, you long-eared jerk! Any commotion."

"Huh-uh. But I don't guess we could, could we, Rudy? I mean, there in the vault we-N-no! D-don't!"

The kid strangled on a scream. He tried to claw the gun from his belt. Then he toppled forward, clutching at his half-disemboweled abdomen; at the guts which Torrento had mockingly credited him with having.

Rudy giggled. He made a sound that was strangely akin to a sob. Then he wiped his knife on a blotter, returned it to his pocket and picked up the two briefcases.

He carried them to the bank door, set them down again. He turned and looked meditatively at the bank's three employees. They were scattered about the lobby floor, their mouths sealed with tape, their wrists and ankles bound with more tape. They looked at him, their eyes rolling to show the whites, and Rudy hesitantly fingered his knife.

They'd have him tabbed for the robbery, for killing the kid. And if things broke wrong, Doc would doubtless manage to tag him with the guard's death. Trust Doc to keep himself in the clear, him and his smart little sneak of a wife! But anyway, these yokels could finger him-pick his wedge-shaped map out of a million mug shots. So as long as he couldn't be fried or have his neck popped but once anyhow, why not

He took the knife out again. He went from employee to employee, slashing the bonds of their ankles, kicking and cursing and yanking them to their feet.

Shoving them ahead of him, he herded them back inside the vault. He swung the door shut on them, gave the knob a few spins.

There'd been no point in killing them. He'd been seen coming into the joint, and he was a cinch to be seen leaving. There was a hell of a racket outside and it was growing by the second, and even in here you could get a whiff of smoke. But still, someone, a lot of someones, would see him leave. The best he could hope for was that none of 'em would try to do anything about it.

None of 'em did. Doc had figured right. They had too much else to be interested in to pay any attention to him. And after all, what was so funny about a guy coming out of a bank during banking hours?

The side street was jammed with people, surging back toward the walks occasionally when the winddriven smoke threatened to envelop them. Sparks showered upward from the burning hay. A gas tank exploded, sending a speckled fountain of fire into the air. The crowd roared, jamming back into the intersection, and the people in the intersection tried to push forward. Several men in red helmets were scurrying about, shouting and gesturing futilely. Other redhelmeted men were lunging up the street, dragging a two-wheel hose cart behind them. The bell in the courthouse cupola tolled steadily.

Rudy loaded the briefcases into the car. He made a U-turn, honking for a couple of yokels to get out of the way, and headed out of town.

A block away, Doc stepped down from the walk to the street and climbed in with him. They rode on, Rudy grinning meanly to himself as he noted the careless caution with which Doc handled his coat. McCoy asked him how they had made out.

"Two hundred in bonds. Maybe a hundred and forty in cash."

"A hundred and forty?" Doc's eyes flicked at him. "I see. Must've been a lot of ones and silver."

"So maybe there's more, dammit! You think I figured it up on an addin' machine?"

"Now, Rudy," Doc said soothingly, "no offense. How did it go with the youngster?"

"What d'you mean, how'd it go? How'd you plan it to go?"

"Of course. Too bad," Doc said vaguely. "I always feel bad when something like that is necessary."

Rudy snorted. He jammed a cigarette into his mouth, put his left hand in his jacket pocket, ostensibly seeking a match. It came out with a heavy automatic which he leveled across his lap.

"Get rid of the rifle, Doc. Toss it out in the ditch."

"Might as well." Doc didn't appear to notice the automatic. "Doesn't look like we're going to need it."

He lifted the rifle, muzzle first, and dropped it out the window. Rudy let out another snort.

"Doesn't look like we're gonna need it!" he mocked. "Well, you ain't going to need that rod in your jacket either, Doc, so-_don 't move for it!_ Just take the jacket off and toss it in the back seat."

"Listen, Rudy…"

"Do it!"

Doc did it. Rudy made him lean forward, then backward, swiftly scanning his trousers. He nodded, gave Doc permission to light a cigarette. Doc turned a little in the seat, eyes sorrowful beneath the brim of his hat.

"This doesn't make sense, Rudy. Not if it's what I think it is."

"That's what it is. Exactly what you'd figured for me."

"You're wrong, Rudy. I shouldn't have to tell you that. How would I get by at Golie's without you? They're your relatives, and if Carol and I pulled in there by ourselves…"

"They'd probably give you a gold watch," Rudy said sourly. "Don't kid me, Doc. You think I'm stupid or something?"

"In this case, yes. Perhaps we might get along as well without you, but…"

"As well? You'd be a hell of a lot better off, and you know it!"

"I don't agree with you, but let it go. You'll need us, Rudy. Carol and me."

"Huh-uh. Just a different car, and some other duds. Yeah, and your share of the take. That's all."

Doc hesitated, looked through the windshield. He glanced at the speedometer. "Too fast, Rudy. We're liable to pick up a cop."

"You mean we're ahead of schedule," Rudy grinned. "That's what you mean, ain't it?"

"Give Carol the signal, at least. She'll think there's trouble if you don't. Might even lam out on us."

"Not on you." Rudy's laugh was enviously angry. "She'll know you was going to bump me, and…"

"No, Rudy. How…"

"… and she'll figure you got caught in a snarl, so she'll move right on in and try to get you out of it."

Doc didn't argue the point. In fact, he ceased to argue at all. He simply shrugged, turned around in the seat and was silent.

Coming so quickly, his apparent resignation bothered Rudy. Not because he was afraid Doc had a fast one up his sleeve. Obviously he couldn't have. The feeling came from something else-the irksome, deeply rooted need to justify himself.

"Look, Doc," he blurted irritably. "I wasn't burned over what you was going to do to me. You'd've been a sap to do anything else, and I'd be a sap to do anything else. So what's there to cry about?"

"I didn't realize I was crying."

"And you got no right to," Rudy said doggedly. "Look. A hundred and forty in cash. Maybe a hundred and twenty-five out of the bonds. Call it a quarter of a million all together. That ain't no dough in a three-way split-not when it's the last you're going to get and you got to hole up with The King all your life. He doesn't put out anything without cash on the line, and plenty of it."

"Exactly." Doc smiled witheringly. "So it would be an excellent idea not to simply live up your cash, wouldn't it? To use it in such a way that you'd be sure of a generous income as long as you lived."

"How you mean?" Rudy waited. "Like startin' a tamale parlor, huh?" he jeered. "Or maybe a gambling casino?" He waited again. "You're goin' to run competition with The King?"

Doc laughed softly. The laugh of an adult at a small child's antics. "Really, Rudy. In your case, I'd suggest a circus. You could be your own clown."

Rudy scowled and licked his lips uncertainly. He started to speak, stopped himself. He cleared his throat and made another attempt.

"Uh, what'd you have in mind, Doc? Dope, maybe? Smuggling? I figured them things was sewed up, but-ah, to hell with you, Doc! I'm holding aces and you're trying to buy out with hot air."

"Fine. So why don't we let it go at that?" Doc said easily.

Rudy's foot eased up on the gas. Two emotions warred within him: ingrained suspicion and inherent terror of being in want. Doc was conning him-or was he? Would a smoothie like Doc go out on a limb unless he saw a better one to grab? And-and what did a guy do when he ran out of dough, and he couldn't take it away from someone else?

"You ain't got a thing, Doc," he mumbled. "You got something, what you got to lose by telling me about it?"

"Very little-but what would you have to gain? Take such a simple matter as Mexico's foreign policy, its relations, I should say, on a global basis, as compared to those of its Latin-American neighbors. The situation isn't going to change any. Or if it does, it will be to a still more favorable position. It's tied directly to the monetary market-the foreign exchange rate, to use the more popular term-and with inflationary tendencies being what they are, and with gold staked at thirty-five dollars an ounce, the potential for the right kind of operator is…"

Doc let his voice trail away. "Never mind, Rudy," he said pleasantly. "It seems simple enough to me, but I didn't really expect you to understand. It's something that's confused a great many highly intelligent people, men who were very successful in their own particular professions."

"Like double-talk maybe?" Rudy scoffed. But he said it rather feebly. There were certain words, phrases, that rang a bell in his mind. Foreign exchange- inflationary tendencies-monetary market. The terms were identified with news stories which he invariably skipped over, but he guessed they probably meant heavy sugar to a lot of people.

"Like double-talk," Doc was saying. "Yes, that's exactly the way it would sound to you. And I can't say that I blame you a bit. It would probably sound the same way to me if I hadn't spent most of my last four-year stretch reading up on it."

"Well…"

"No, it's no use, Rudy," Doc said firmly. "I wish I could. It's a good deal-and a perfectly legitimate one-and you'd have been just the right man to hold down one end of it. But I can't make it any clearer than I have, so there's nothing more to be said."

Rudy was not a fast thinker-if the weird processes of his mind could be called thinking. But when he made a decision, he made it fast. Abruptly he dropped the gun into his pocket and said, "All right, Doc. I'm not buying just yet, but I'll take an option."

Doc nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak.

"I'm keeping your gun," Rudy went on. "I'm taking any iron that Carol has when she shows. We stop at night, you two get tied up. We stop for grub or something during the day, one of you stays with me. Either one of you tries anything, that'll be it. Know what I mean? Okay?"

"I know exactly what you mean," Doc purred, "and naturally it's okay."

They crossed a bridge over a small creek. Immediately on the other side, Rudy turned the car straight down the road's embankment, then down the bank of the creek. The wheels bounced high in the air; the steering wheel jerked and spun in his hands. Rudy fought it around to his left, heading the car up the rocky bed of the stream with its shallow trickles of water. A couple of hundred yards farther on, beneath a cloaking arbor of trees, he brought it to a stop.

Doc took a handkerchief from his pocket, mopped at his forehead. He said mildly that he was afraid his neck was broken.

Rudy laughed. Doc got out of the car and removed his hat, continuing the mopping process as Rudy climbed out.

"You kill me, y'know, Doc?" Rudy was still snorting over the joke. "You really slay me sometimes. I…"

"So what's wrong with that?" Doc said. And as Rudy burst into renewed laughter, he took a gun from his hat and fired.

"Got him right through the heart," Doc told Carol. "One of those very rare instances where a man actually died laughing."

"Just so he died." Carol grimaced. "That's one character! could never feel easy around. I always had a feeling that he was just about ready to jump at me from the one side I wasn't watching."

"Alas, poor Rudy," Doc murmured. "But how have you been, my dear-to move from the ridiculous to the sublime?"

"We-el-" Carol slanted a sultry glance at him. "I think I'll be a lot better tomorrow. You know. After I get a good night's sleep."

"Tut, tut," said Doc. "I see you're still a very wicked young woman."

They had driven through Beacon City, commenting wonderingly on the smoke, looking curiously at the milling throngs; and now they were far down the highway on the other side of town. Doc was driving, since Carol had driven all night. She sat sidewise in the seat, facing him, her legs curled under her.

Their eyes kept meeting. They kept smiling at each other. Doc patted one of her small round flanks, and she held his hand for a moment, gripping it almost fiercely.

"What are you worried about, Doc?"

"Worried?"

"I can always tell. Is it Golie's? You think that if Rudy isn't with us…"

Doc shook his head. "No trouble there. I wouldn't say I was worried about anything. Just puzzled in a troubled sort of way about our friend Beynon."

"Oh," said Carol. "Oh, yeah."

Beynon was an attorney, the chairman of the pardon and parole board. Doc's pardon had been bought from him, and there was still fifteen thousand dollars due on the purchase price. He owned a tiny ranch up in the far corner of the state. A bachelor, he lived on it when he was not occupied with some legal case or his official duties. They were going there now.

"Doc-" Carol was staring through the windshield. "Let's make a switch. Head right into Mexico from here."

"We couldn't do it, baby. It's too obvious. We're too close."

"But you haven't been connected with the job. With any kind of break at all, it'll be days before you are."

"That doesn't help much. Not when the job's this big and this close to the border. They'll have road blocks up fifty miles this side of El Paso. Everyone'll get a shakedown. Anyone trying to cross over had better be strictly clean and able to prove it, or he's in the soup."

"Well-but the other way, Doc. Beynon is miles off of our route, and if you think he may be up to something, why-why…"

"Skip him?" Doc gave her a thoughtful look. "Is that what you were going to suggest, Carol?"

"Why not? What could he do about it?"

Doc smiled wryly, almost irritated with her. Leave Beynon holding the sack for his fifteen thousand? A man with his connections who knew as much about them as he did? It was too preposterous to discuss. They were due at his ranch just as quickly as they could get there from Beacon City, and they had damned well better not daily along the way.

"What could he do?" Carol repeated stubbornly. "Why pay him off, if he's going to make trouble anyway?"

"I don't know that he is. If he's planning to, however, and if I can't talk him out of it-" Doc left the sentence unfinished, his shrewd eyes thoughtful behind the obscuring sunglasses.

Beynon hadn't run according to form. What he had done was completely out of character, and having acted in such a way, he must have a motive which did not appear on the surface.

Doc stroked his jaw, shook his head absently.

"How did he add up to you, Carol?" he asked. "I mean, aside from the fact that he's an ambitious man with plenty of uses for money. Did he do or say anything that would indicate why he would go for a deal like this one?"

Carol didn't answer him. Doc was about to repeat the question when he saw that she was asleep.