The Vengeful Virgin

“Okay, then.”

I was trying to act as natural as possible, and say the things any disinterested party might say.

“Only,” he said. “It’ll be at least a year before she can touch any of the money.”

It was like being struck across the face, hard. My jaw started to drop. I said, “Oh?” fast. It came out as a kind of croak, but I let it go. “How do you mean?” I said.

I was numb all over. It made me dizzy, just sitting there looking at him. Every muscle in my body was like a steel strap, and I was trying hard to recover balance.

“It’s rather involved,” Miraglia said. “And I’m no lawyer, but I can explain it fairly well. It boils down to the fact that when a person dies intestate, the money goes to the next of kin. Meaning, in this case, Shirley. But,” he said. He really laid into that ‘But.’ “The next of kin can’t touch the money for eight to twelve months. Twelve is the real figure. He can’t have any part of it till then. This doesn’t leave Shirley in a very comfortable position, as you see. She has no funds of her own. I presume the attorney, or the judge, or the administrator the judge appoints, will work out something for her. Though the law is emphatic.” He shrugged, and I sat there sort of tuned in on him as if he were a distant radio station with lots of atmospherics.

“That’s tough,” I said.

He said, “As for getting the money Victor left her—” He moved his head slowly from side to side. “At least a year. It has to be published. By that I mean in newspapers throughout the country. A formality, in this case. It’s done because of the law, to give anyone who might contest a chance to step forward. This takes time. The law doesn’t hurry, Ruxton. It grinds exceeding slow.”

By now I had a fair grip on myself. But I was under water all the way. “I’ll be darned,” I said. “I never knew about that.”

I felt dead. Because if we had to run, we would ride the rails, or not go at all.

“All because an intercom didn’t work,” Miraglia said. “ž‘For the sake of a nail, the shoe,’ and so forth.”

“You’re riding me,” I said. “Come off it.”

He looked down, then up at me again. “Maybe it’s my turn to be sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t ride you like this. I just—I don’t know. It troubles me.” The glasses glinted. “It just gnaws at me all the time. I’ve waited ever since he died to say something to you. I had to say something to somebody. I couldn’t let it go.”

I stood up. “Well, you’ve sure said it. I feel plenty bad.”

He didn’t move. He didn’t seem to realize I was on my feet, waiting for him to leave. He had something else on his mind. I had to know what it was. The guy was really beginning to scare me. I sat down again.

“I know you’re anxious to get to the store,” he said, absently. “I suppose you read about Shirley’s next door neighbor?”

Somehow, I spoke. “No. I don’t believe—what’s that?”

He was watching me closely. I sat like a rock. Inside I was flying to pieces.

He tipped his head. “Shirley feels very bad. Everything on top of everything else. Strange you didn’t see it—it was on the front page of this morning’s paper.”

“I haven’t read the paper yet.”

“You take the paper?”

“Sure—I—”

“Get it.”

Already I had remembered balling it up and throwing it in the wastepaper basket. I creaked out of the chair and walked numbly across the room. “I didn’t get it in, yet,” I said. I realized I was doing everything all wrong. I turned and went back to the chair and sat down. “What’s it about, anyway? I’ll read it later.”

“Mrs. Lamphier. I think you met her, fixed her TV set, or something.”

“Oh—her. Sure. I remember her.”

“She’s dead. They hadn’t discovered who she was when the paper went to press. But they know now. She drove into the old Blackland Canal—you know where that is.” He didn’t say it as a question, but we waited for me to answer.

“No. Don’t believe I do.”

“No matter. She apparently got drunk and drove into the canal and drowned. Her husband’s in Alaska. He’s a mining engineer. They’ve called him home.”

“That’s sure tough.”

“Isn’t it?”

“When did it happen?”

“As close as the medical examiner has come, he says probably the same night Victor Spondell died.”

“I see. Well—”

Miraglia stood up suddenly. “You know?” he said. “I feel much better now?”

“Glad.”

“I had to talk to somebody.”

“Know how it is.”

“Old Vic, he was kind of like a father to me. Something like that. I thought a lot of him.”

“I can see that.”

“Yes, well— I won’t take up any more of your time, Ruxton. Better be going.” He glanced at his watch. “Behind time,” he said. “Got the hospital rounds to make yet this morning.” He started toward the door. He glanced at the desk. The newspaper was as big as life, sticking up out of the wastepaper basket, balled and crumpled and shredded. I couldn’t tell whether he saw it or not. In any event, he couldn’t say for sure if it were today’s paper.

“I could at least have fixed some coffee,” I said.

He didn’t reply. He was nearly to the door. I saw his back stiffen. He turned, went over to the desk, stooped above the wastepaper basket and took out the paper.

I stood there. I couldn’t speak. I watched him unfold the mess of shredded leaves and look at the front page. Then he crumpled the paper up again and tossed it into the basket. He turned without looking at me and walked toward the door again.

“What was all that for?” I said.

He stopped and looked at me.

He said, “That was today’s paper, Ruxton. I thought you said you hadn’t seen today’s paper.”

“Today’s? You must be mistaken.”

“Yes. Certainly.”

I went over to the basket. I took the paper and looked at the date. I shook my head. I frowned. It was all stage acting, and lousy, at that. But I did remember not to make much of a to-do about it.

“The maid,” I said. “She was here earlier. I was still in bed. I hardly ever bother reading the paper here. She knows that. She must have thrown it away.”

“Maids can play hell,” Miraglia said. “Well, I’ll be running along. Oh,” he said. “You can read that story about Mrs. Lamphier now. If you like. The front page is rather torn up. But I guess you can make it out.”

I started for the door. He opened the door and went out and closed it softly behind him.

Twelve

When the door had clicked shut I covered my face with both hands and just stood there. I didn’t know whether he was wise to anything. I didn’t know. Everything he did and said could all have been strictly on the up and up, completely natural. On the other hand...

I went over and sat down in the chair.

I was perfectly calm now, as calm as I’d ever been in my life. My mind began to function at a steady pace, and everything it read off to me was very bad. I took it all like a punch-drunk fighter, not even bothering to rock with the blows.

I had to talk with Shirley, and I couldn’t possibly call her on the phone. There was no way of my going out there now. Only I had to see her.

What a crazy thing to do—saying I hadn’t seen the paper. A tiny flaw. Like a mountain.

Nerves? Brass? Miraglia had the stuff. A real honest to God corker. He didn’t give a damn about anything. The way he’d turned and gone after that newspaper had been something to see. How many people would do that? And, if they did, why would they? The average guy would let it go. Even if he suspected the paper might be today’s paper, he would let it go. Unless he was suspicious.

Why was Miraglia suspicious?

I knew I had to see Shirley.

I came out of the chair and started pacing the floor.

The money. A year. We couldn’t wait a year. I couldn’t wait a year. I wouldn’t.

Wouldn’t I? What could I do?

I went into the bedroom, and looked at myself in the minor over the bureau. My face was plenty grim. I was dressed except for my jacket. I grabbed one off a hook in the closet, and got out of there.

I drove to Tampa and got a gun.

Even doing it, I didn’t know why I was doing it. I just wanted a gun. Maybe it was just a way to be doing something. A reason to get out of town for a while, and just let the thoughts drift through my head.

I drove around Tampa, looking. I didn’t want to try the hockshops, because I knew you’d have to sign a purchase slip. After a while, I spotted a run-down antique store, and went in. I told the old lady in charge that I was just looking around, and she let me be. Finally, I found what I wanted. It was a beat-up old P-38. The old gal was at her desk, poring over a ledger. I moved on around, looking, then passed the gun again, lying among some Arabian knives with slim, curved blades. I checked the old lady. She was looking at the ledger. I slipped the P-38 into my pocket, and picked up one of the knives. It looked the best of them.

“Guess I’ll take this,” I told her.

I paid for it and got out of there. Three blocks away, I threw the knife down a storm drain.

In the center of town, I stopped at a sporting goods store, and bought a box of 9mm shells. No questions.

I drove home. On the way, I stopped the car on a country road, loaded the P-38, hoping it was a safe job. Some of these automatics would blow apart in your face, because of sabotage in the Nazi factories during the war. But U.S. factory loads were milder than European, and the gun was built for European, so I took the chance.

I fired several rounds out the car window at a bank of dirt. The action was okay.

I drove back to the apartment. I had the gun, but I didn’t know exactly why. I put it in the glove compartment of the car, and somehow felt better. It had been a lot of trouble to go through, just to find an old automatic. On the other hand, if I needed it, I had it.

All this time, the business Miraglia had told me about not being able to get the money rode in the back of my mind, blossoming like cancer.

As I reached the door to the apartment, I realized the telephone was ringing. By the time I made it inside to the phone, it had ceased.

I sat there. I didn’t move from the phone for over an hour. It didn’t ring again. It could have been a lot of people. It might have been Grace. But all I could think was that it had been Shirley, and she’d had to call.

And I hadn’t been here to catch the call.

I got out the telephone directory and checked.

Anthony Miraglia. 1414 Emerald Lane. He had offices in the Medical Building, downtown.

I stared at his name until the letters blurred.

Finally, I just sat there and smoked. I didn’t go near the store all day. I called in once and told Mrs. Noxton I felt ill, and thought I’d hang around the house. There was nothing of importance, she said, so it was okay.

By the time night folded down, I was a caged tiger.

I took the car and drove over to 1414 Emerald Lane, and checked where he lived. It was a twenty-thousand dollar lay-out, small ranch-type. Completely unpretentious. Some lights were lit, and there was a young kid out front, playing with a red wagon under the porch light. A dog cut out of the shadows by the house and chased the car, yapping his head off.

I snarled at him out the window. He snarled back.

He chased me like a maniac for six blocks, yapping every minute of the way, and every yap was like a spike driven into my gut.

I drove home to sit and smoke some more.

It was a little after nine when the phone rang.

“Jack?”

“Shirley—where are you? I’ve been nuts.”

“Yes. It’s all right. I can talk. There’s nobody here.”

“You shouldn’t be talking from the house.”

“It’s all right. How are you?”

“Terrible. What’s with you?”

“Lots.”

“Miragliawas here.”

“I know.”

“How do you know? Did you see him?”

“Yes. He’s been around again.”

“What did he say?”

“I’ll get to it. Have you missed me?”

I started to snap out something. I said, “You know I have.”

“I’ve missed you, awfully. I want to see you so bad, I don’t know what to do. In this house. All alone. Can’t we...?”

“No. Listen, Shirley. He told me something. He said you can’t get the money, that you have to wait a year. I never knew this. It’s the law—the waiting. We can’t touch the money, Shirley.”

“What? Who told you that?”

“Doctor Miraglia.”

“He’s wrong,” she said. “He knows that isn’t so. Why, for goodness’ sake, the money’s already in my name. I went to the bank this morning. I wanted to let you know, but there simply was no way. I didn’t dare call before now, so much has happened.”

I couldn’t speak for a minute. Finally I said, “The money’s in your name?”

“Certainly, Jack. Not a bit of trouble. None at all. They expected me in. There was nothing to it. Victor had signed a trust agreement with the bank. I didn’t know that. I thought there was a will, or something.”

“A trust agreement?”

“Yes. All they did was make out another bankbook, in my name.”

I sat there.

“Jack?”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

“Are you there, Jack?”

“Yeah. Shirley, Miraglia told me it was the law—that if...”

“He must have been talking about a simple will. That’s how that works. Then there’s a whole lot of red tape.”

“What did you say before, about Miraglia knowing you wouldn’t have any trouble?”

“He knew. He knew there was a trust agreement. He told me he’d known, when I saw him after I came home from the bank. He was waiting in the house.”

“In the house? When was this?”

“This morning. Maybe ten-thirty. What’s the matter?”

Miraglia had come directly from her place to my apartment. He had known she already had the money in her name when he was feeding me the guff about not being able to get the money. I knew—this was it.

“Shirley, we’ve got to make a move. I don’t know how much time we have.”

“What do you mean?”

“Miraglia’s wise, he’s wise to something. I don’t know what.” I explained why I’d said that. “He was here spilling a whole bunch of crap, lying his head off. He was feeling me out. And I goofed plenty. I’m positive of that.”

She was silent.

“There’s no doubt about it,” I said. “If we stick, we don’t have a chance. It’s only a matter of time. He’s looking for something, and when he finds it, he’ll light the fuse that will blow us straight to hell.”

“I can’t believe it,” she said. Her voice was flat. “What did we do wrong?”

“You mean what did we do right?”

She spoke loudly. “Stop scaring me, Jack!”

“He’s got a bug up,” I said. “Believe me.”

“Henry’s home,” she said. “He’s with Doctor Miraglia, right now. They went out together. I saw them.”

“Henry who?”

“Lamphier. Mayda’s husband. He flew in from Alaska. He’s all broken up. I talked with him.”

“That does it,” I said. “We’ve got to leave town. We can’t possibly take a chance and stay.” I remembered the money and what time it was. The banks were closed. They opened at nine-thirty the next morning. With my luck, tomorrow would be a bank holiday. I dropped the phone and dove for the newspaper, checking the date. Shirley kept calling to me, her voice crackling over the wire. Tomorrow would have to be all right, we would have to get through the night somehow. I came back to the phone. I felt hollow and scared. I knew if I let go I would just run. “We’ve got to make it through the night,” I said. “You’ll pick up the money in the morning and we’ll take off.”

“Jack, will you please slow down. You’re supposed to be the sane one.”

“I’m not sane. Not anymore. That was somebody else you knew.”

Her voice got tight and frightened. “How do you think it will look, me traipsing into the bank and asking to draw out all that money? Stop being foolish. You can’t be right about these things. Doctor Miraglia wouldn’t hurt a flea. He feels bad about Victor, that’s all. I’m sure...”

“Don’t kid yourself. I’m so right about this, I’m bleeding. Just thank your lucky stars we can get hold of that money. Because if it had been another way, we’d be running broke.” I stood there holding the phone, with this wild feeling inside me. She didn’t say anything. “What have you been doing,” I said. “Why didn’t you get in touch with me?”

“You said not to. But I would have, if I’d been able. The funeral was yesterday. I’ve had a million things to do. It hasn’t been easy.”

The funeral, I’d completely forgotten that there had to be a funeral. It hadn’t entered my mind. Victor Spondell had died and vanished and that was that. Shirley must have gone through plenty. She’d been the one who’d had to face everyone.

“Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“Running away will only make them all the more suspicious. Don’t you see?”

“All the more? Look,” I said. “Please believe this. If we stick around, they’ll nail us down, and we’ll never wriggle out.”

“But how? Why should they? How can they prove anything?”

“All they have to do is add things up. This goddamned Miraglia is the one who can add, and he’ll add for everybody. They don’t need proof. All they have to do is start looking around, asking questions, and putting pieces together. We might have made it if it hadn’t been for Mayda. There’s no use counting the ‘ifs’ now. An autopsy will show she wasn’t drunk. So, that’s count one. Why was she swerving all over the road? The gas station attendant will say he saw the car. They’ll find the truck driver I cut in front of. They’ll find she wasn’t alive when she hit the water. The wound in her back will be checked. They’ll know damned well it wasn’t made by a broken support from the convertible top of her car....”

“But you said all of that was perfect.”

“It was perfect. But not when somebody’s snooping, suspicious and anxious to turn up something.”

“Oh, Jack!’

“Yeah. Cripes. Then there’ll be the unknown person who saw my truck in front of your place that night. If they ask me about that, I’ll have to say I was there on a service call. Maybe somebody saw the truck over by the lake, how do I know?”

I thought of Grace. I wanted to tell her about Grace, but somehow I couldn’t bring it out. I should have told her long before this.

I said, “You beginning to catch on, now?”

She didn’t speak.

“We’re in it,” I said. “We’ve got to run. Running’s the only way out.”

“It makes us guilty.”

“We are guilty. Will you get that through your head?”

“We should never have done it.”

“But we did do it.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment. I knew she must feel the same as myself. Lost and sick and trapped.

I said, “I don’t have a cent, Shirley. We could run, now—but I’d rather take the chance for the money. We may never make it. It all depends on what they turn up tonight—how soon they act; whether or not Miraglia goes to the police with what he has. If we left now, we’d never have anything.”

“We’d have us, Jack.”

“What the hell are we without the money?”

She didn’t answer. She sure as hell knew the answer.

Finally, her voice came across the wire. It was soft, and there was something almost sad in it. “All right.”

“It just hasn’t worked out the way we wanted it to. We could stay and watch them close in, and try to beat them. But we’d never beat them. You know that.”

“Yes, Jack,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

“It’s still got to look as good as we can make it.”

“Don’t you think it’s bad, talking all this while on the phone?”

“Sure, it’s bad. But we can’t see each other. You know that!”

“All right.”

“Here’s what I want you to do. Play it straight. You pack some things tonight. Anything, it doesn’t matter what—just to make it look good. Then write a short note to Miraglia. He’s the only possible person you’d really have any reason for telling anything. Right?”

“Yes.”

“Make it short. You can’t stand living where you are any longer. You want to get away. You’re going on a vacation, for a month. You’ll be back. Never mind where you’re going, anything like that. Mail that to him. Write it tonight, and mail it tomorrow—after we get the money.”

“Suppose he comes around?”

“Stall him. Don’t tell him you’re leaving, for God’s sake. Just be nice to him. That’s all.”

“What about Henry Lamphier?”

“Nothing about him. You don’t owe him anything.”

“Just a wife, that’s all.”

I ignored that. I was thinking fast, and everything seemed to be working out fine in my mind. “You get to the bank the first thing in the morning. Let’s say, quarter to ten. It opens at nine-thirty. Ask for two hundred thousand, cash.”

“But, Jack!”

“Not a bank draft. It’s got to be cash. You’ll have to take a small overnight case, or a small suitcase—something, because it’ll be quite a wad. Now, I know it’s a hell of a thing. But you’ve got to get bills of small enough denominations so we won’t be stuck with any of them.”

“But, Jack—”

“We can’t take a chance on a bank draft. This is the one chance we’ve got to take. They’ll frown on releasing that much dough. But they’ll have to give it to you. If they pry—and they might—make some remark about having a good investment, if you feel you can bring it off right. They’ll say something, as sure as hell. But they’ve got to give you that money as long as it’s in your name. You figure you can’t say anything that’ll sound right, don’t say anything. Just give them the fish eye.”

“Why not take all the money?”

“How much is there?” I heard the catch in my voice.

“In cash, there’s three hundred, forty-six thousand dollars, and seventeen cents. Exactly. There’s more in...”

“Never mind. We can’t.” I swallowed hard. “It’s too much of a risk. They’d still have to give it to you, but they might pull something screwy.” I paused a minute. “Christ,” I said. “Three hundred thousand.”

“It’s just money,” she said.

“Yeah. Well, I don’t like the idea of taking it all. It makes me wary. It’s bad enough the way it is.”

“I can’t see why,” she said.

I ignored her again. “Then we’ll take off,” I said. “I’ll work the rest of it out. We’ll have to get rid of my car and get another. You take a taxi downtown.”

“Then what?”

“Wait a minute.” I tried to think, I was confused. All I could think of was that money. I could see it in my mind’s eye, as clear as anything. I could actually see the bills themselves, in neat, crisp bundles. Stacked together. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. It was crazy.

“Jack? What should I do then?”

“All right,” I said. “You do this. You leave the bank, and take the alley beside the bank. Walk through to First Avenue North. Turn East, and walk to the corner of Seventh Street. Got that?”

“Yes, sure. Alley—down First to Seventh. All right.”

“I’ll be there. Don’t look for my car. I’ll have a different car, by then. I’ll be parked in front of the drugstore on the corner. If I’m not there, you wait in front of the drugstore.”

“Where will we go?”

“We aren’t going anywhere, Shirley. Not for a long time. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow. I’m working something out.”

“But, Jack.”

“It’s all right, I tell you. All we’ve got to do is have enough luck to get through to maybe ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Jack, I’ve been watching out the window. I’ve got the house lights off. A car keeps going up and down the street. I know it’s the same car, because it’s yellow—a yellow hardtop. It keeps going up and down.”

Grace. As sure as hell. I would have to tell Shirley about Grace, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it now.

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“I want to see you,” she said.

“In the morning.”

“I want to see you so bad, I can’t think. I’m in love with you, remember?”

“Yeah, honey—buck up, now.”

“I’d better hang up, you mean. Harry Lamphier just turned in his drive. He’s parking. Doctor Miraglia isn’t with him, now.”

“Then, with luck, we’ve got tonight.”

“What?”

“They aren’t going to do anything yet tonight. They haven’t found what they’re after. It’s going to take them a little time. Maybe they haven’t gone to the cops yet. Everything’s circumstantial. It can burn us, but they don’t have any real proof yet. So they won’t move in. I’ve been trying to figure anything solid they could base suspicions on. It’s close, because if it’s turned over to the law, they can make an arrest on suspicion alone. But we’re still all right, I think.”

“I’d better hang up. Let’s not take chances.”

“You got everything straight?”

“Yes. Jack—he’s coming over here.”

“Okay. I’m with you. Chin up.”

“Here comes that yellow car again.”

Thirteen

Doom. You recognize Doom easily. It’s a feeling and a taste, and it’s black, and it’s very heavy. It comes down over your head, and wraps tentacles around you, and sinks long dirty fingernails into your heart. It has a stink like burning garbage. Doom.

I sat up all night with the lights on. Waiting.

At seven-thirty in the morning, I was in Tampa again, making a trade for another car. I had to write a check, and I had to use my name. But it would slow them down a fraction, if they moved today, and that fraction was all I needed. It was an oxidized gray Ford sedan, hundreds of which were on the highways.

I was blocks away before I remembered the gun I’d left in the glove compartment of the other car. I had to have the gun; the same old obsession. I drove back, told the guy on the used car lot I’d forgotten some things in the car.

“Okay,” he said.

The glove compartment was empty. I went over to him. He was a beer-eyed, seedy-looking bird, wearing a suit that had been pressed with the dirt in it.

“Bet I know what you’re after,” he said.

“Then hand it over.”

“Uh-uh.”

“How come?”

“I bought your car. It was a deal, right?”

“But for cripes’ sake. I left some personal stuff in the car. That certainly doesn’t go with the deal.”

“Make me see it your way.”

“It’s a shame this is a busy street.”

“Isn’t it?”

“How much?”

“Twenty bucks.”

“You’re a real son of a bitch.”

“All how you look at it. Twenty bucks is twenty bucks.”

By now there was nothing to do but pay him and take the gun. I should never have come back. I should never have gone to him when I found the gun missing. I should have let it go. On the other hand, if I let it go now, he would crow all the more. I paid him and took the gun and left the place. I put the gun and the box of ammunition in the glove compartment of the Ford.

I drove back home, trying to keep from thinking. I was so scared I could hardly drive.

It was nine-thirty when I turned into the alley behind the apartment building. Cutting it almost too close. But I had to pick up some clothes I’d packed in a bag, and phone Mrs. Noxton at the store. That would be ticklish, and I wished I hadn’t put it off until now. I kept looking at my watch, checking the time, thinking: What’s she doing? Did she make it all right downtown, alone, without being seen? Is anybody there with her? Will she be able to get away? Will she lose her nerve?

And I kept trying not to think something else that had occurred to me during the night. It kept coming back to me, hitting harder every time. What was Miraglia’s real interest? I couldn’t believe he was playing beagle just out of fondness for Victor Spondell. There had to be something else. Had he figured to latch onto some of the money, too? Then something struck me.

Suppose Shirley and Miraglia were together on something, trying to screw me? Set me up for a patsy. Sure. It was crazy thinking. But you think that way just the same, because you don’t really know. You never know till you’ve got that money in your hands.

I parked the car by the garage in the alley, and walked on around to the rear entrance. Inside, a hall led straight on through to the front entrance, and Miraglia was holding the door open for a cop.

“Since his car’s not in the garage,” Miraglia said, “He’s not here.” His glasses glinted and gleamed as he talked mildly. The uniformed cop said nothing. Miraglia said, “Let’s go on up, all right?”

Two men in plain clothes came in the front door behind the harness cop. I was in shadow behind the stair alcove. Miraglia said something I didn’t quite catch.

One of the men in plain clothes said, “Well, we’ve got a warrant, anyway.”

The other man chuckled.

I didn’t wait for anything else.

Coming out of the other end of the alley, I drove past on the street bisecting my street, and looked down toward the apartment house. Two police cruisers were parked out front. It had been that close. I could hardly breathe. Another harness bull stood outside by the cruisers.

I kept going.

I drove downtown somehow, without smashing into anybody, and parked across the street from the bank. On the way down, I thought I’d glimpsed Grace’s car, and I remembered what Shirley’d said last night, seeing a yellow car running up and down her street.

This was it. They were on it, and we were running behind time.

Maybe they already had Shirley.

It was ten to ten. I had missed Shirley going into the bank. If she had gone into the bank.

I was numb all over. They were in my apartment now. Then I remembered something, and it was as if the world tipped on its axis and sent me spinning off into black space. I remembered making lists of things, on paper, with a pencil, adding everything up to find a flaw.

I remembered doing this twice.

I remembered flushing the paper down the toilet once. What had I done with the other paper?

I forced myself to stay calm. I lit a cigarette and fidgeted. Men and women filed in and out of the brass-trimmed glass bank doors. A uniformed guard lounged outside, looking up at the sky, scratched his chin, then went inside again. Traffic clogged the street. I was so damned worried I began talking to myself. It shouldn’t take her this long, if she was in there.

All sorts of crazy things came to mind. Among them was the picture in my mind of a faceless man named Henry Lamphier, disturbed over the loss of his wife. He should be happy. They never were though. Another five minutes and I would have to go inside the bank and check. Then I saw her.

She came out of the bank. She wore an aqua dress, and she looked terrific. It really packed a wallop, how I hadn’t seen her in days. She filled that dress. Her auburn hair shone in the bright sunlight. The pallor of her face was somehow strange in this bronzed country. She belonged in a bedroom, naked, on a bed.

I had to get going. I thought of signaling her, but suddenly I couldn’t see anything except the bag she carried. I knew what was in that bag. It was shiny white leather. A rectangular-shaped small suitcase, with brass clasps. And all the feeling I’d had at seeing her suddenly changed and focused on that bag.

She didn’t spot me.

I flung open the door and waved. I called her name, but not loudly. I couldn’t shout at her. It would only draw attention. I got back under the wheel.

She turned and walked down the street along the front of the bank. When she reached the alley, she hesitated again. She changed hands with the bag, looked up and down the street. Abruptly, she turned down the alley, and even from across the street, through traffic, I heard the sharp clack-clack-clack of her heels, echoing.

I drove down the street to Seventh, turned left over toward First, and parked at the curb by the drugstore. Looking up along the sidewalk, I saw her come out of the alley and start down toward me. By now, I was soaking with sweat. I wanted to leap out of the car and run up the street to her.

We didn’t have time for anything. The only break was the law didn’t know what car I was driving. As if that would matter, unless we got out of here fast.

I watched her slim legs scissor along toward me.

“Jack?”

I snapped around in the seat. It was Grace. She had on a thin white sweater, with nothing underneath, and tight black shorts. She was big-bodied and her thighs plumped out under the tight rims of the shorts.

“Jack? What are you doing?”

She was on the sidewalk at the opposite side of the car. She opened the door and slid in across the seat and slammed the door. She pushed up close to me, her leg pressed against me, watching me.

“Grace—get out.”

“No.”

“I’ll throw you out.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

I looked up the street. Shirley had seen me. She’d seen Grace get into the car as sure as hell. She had slowed her stride and I saw the frown on her face.

“Jack, you’re acting awfully damned funny.”

“Get out.”

I didn’t know what to do.

“I’m not going to get out. I’ve been following you. I was waiting at your place and I saw you drive in behind the apartments with this car. What are you doing, Jack?”

I said, “You want me to wring your stupid neck?”

She put one hand over her mouth. “Jack,” she said. “Were those policemen looking for you? Were they? I saw some policemen going inside.”

I smelled the gin. This early in the morning and all full of gin.

I looked back up the street. Shirley was crossing the street toward the car. She hesitated halfway across, looking at me, with her face pinched up.

“Who’s that?” Grace said.

Shirley did an about-face, and started back up the street. She really swung it hard. Clack-clack-clack.

“Shirley!” I called.

She stopped.

“Shirley—come on.”

She turned and started walking back toward the car. I had my eyes on that bag in her hand. My stomach was tight up, and aching with tension. I whirled and caught hold of Grace with both hands, and sank my fingers in, and shoved my face up close to hers.

“I’ll kill you, Grace, I swear it—I’ll kill you if you don’t get out—now!”

She saw something in my face.

She began to cry. Her face pudged up and she burst into tears, with her mouth wailing. Just like her. She got out of the car like lightning and slammed the door.

“Jack?” Shirley said from my side. Like ice.

Her face had that look women get. Like you’re dead a long time and smell pretty bad, and they want to make sure they don’t step on you.

“Come around and get in,” I said.

She started around the front of the car.

“Who the hell are you, darling?” Grace said to her. She stood there spraddle-legged, with her breasts stuck out, bawling.

Shirley tried to get past her. I reached over and flung the goddamned door open. Shirley started for the door.

“No, you don’t!” Grace said, and grabbed for Shirley.

People were stopping on the sidewalk.

Shirley turned and looked at Grace. Grace said something I didn’t get, but from the expression on a woman pedestrian’s face, I could tell it was something real filthy.

Shirley hit her smack in the face with the white bag.

It was all I needed. Two dames fighting. At a time like this. I slid across the seat. “Get in, Shirley!”

Grace came at her, claws out. Shirley turned and jumped into the car. I started the engine and took off. Grace was standing back there on the street, yelling bloody murder. She started running after the car, then stopped, right in the middle of the street. Horns blared.

I kept watching in the rear-view mirror. Grace turned and ran to the sidewalk, and off in the opposite direction.

We drove along. “Who was that?”

“Nobody. Forget it. A nutty girl I knew once.”

I looked at her. She was sitting very straight and prim, with her skirt pulled down over her knees, knees together, looking out of the windshield. The white leather bag was between us on the seat, I let my hand touch it and the back of my neck got cold.

“Everything go all right?” I said.

I didn’t want to scare her yet. She didn’t say anything.

I turned and said, “She’s a damned fool woman who refuses to leave me alone.” My voice rose. “She just happened along on the street. I couldn’t get rid of her.” I began to shout. “Good Christ, Shirley. I didn’t want her around, I knew her once a long time ago. Long before I met you. She won’t let me be!”

My ears rang. She didn’t say a word.

“Shirley,” I said, keeping it down. “I’m sorry she was there. I couldn’t help it. I did everything I could to get rid of her.”

“That is not what I meant,” Shirley said.

We drove along. She didn’t speak.

“Shirley, for Christ’s sake. Shirley?”

She said nothing.

I wanted to stop the car and tear open the shiny white leather bag and look at what was inside.

“Shirley?”

Nothing.

“Did it go all right, Shirley?”

She just sat there.

I slowed down and tried to drive very carefully. “Shirley?” I said. “It’s like this.” So I told her all about Grace; everything about her. It was something I should have done at the beginning, and let that be a lesson to me. I laid it on the line and dropped it in her lap. “She’s screwy. There was nothing I could do. What would you have me do?”

She had nothing to say. I stopped the car and turned to look at her.

“Shirley.” My voice was tight. “Did you or did you not get the money?”

“What if I didn’t?”

“Did you get it!”

She didn’t look at me. I grabbed the bag and started opening it. The clamps were stuck. I tore at them.

“There’s a key,” she said.

“Where is it?”

“I have it.”

“Well, give it to me!”

“Here.” She fished around in a small blue purse, and handed me a flat metal key. My hands were soaking wet and shaking. I couldn’t get it in the lock, then I did, and the bag popped open and money tumbled all over the seat between us. It was stacked neatly and it was all in paper-banded packets.

“Jesus H. Christ.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You made it,” I said, staring at the money.

“Yes. That’s obvious, isn’t it.”

“How much?”

“All of it. Three hundred and forty...”

“I told you not to take all of it!”

“I wanted it all.”

I stared at her. Well, what the hell did it matter now? She looked at me that way and said, “Was she nice in bed, Jack?”

“Who?”

“That girl? Was she hot? A good lay? Did she really love it up?”

“Cut it out.”

“I’m merely asking. I’m serious. She looked as if she could really bounce a bed.”

“Shirley, cut it out!”

“Don’t shout, darling. People will hear you. It’s embarrassing. It may not be to you, but it is to me.”

She turned and looked at the windshield.

I packed the money lovingly back into the shiny white leather bag, and snapped the lid shut.

All three hundred thousand dollars of it.

The key was in my hand. Make a gesture, I thought. Go ahead. I looked at the key. It was a hard thing to do.

“Here,” I said. “You keep this.”

She took the key daintily, without a word, and put it in her purse, and faced front. I reached out and touched her arm. It was like touching a stovepipe.

“Shirley,” I said. “Honey. Please. Don’t—”

She watched the windshield.

I started the car and drove away, then remembered.

“Where are your bags?”

“At the Greyhound bus terminal. I checked them. I couldn’t possibly carry everything.”

“We’ll pick them up.”

I drove over there. She gave me the check. I felt frightened to leave her in the car alone with the money. What else could I do? Carry it with me? I went on in and got her bags, four of them, and put them in the back seat of the Ford. She hadn’t moved a muscle. We drove away.

“I didn’t think you went for blondes,” she said. “I thought brunettes were your dish.”

“Cut it out, Shirley.”

“Did she like to do it with her clothes on or off?”

“Stop it.”

Her tone was flat. “You treated her awfully, Jack, really, you did. She was crying. She must have felt very bad. Is that any way to treat a girl?”

I clamped my lips tight.

“Jack.”

I gripped the steering wheel, thinking about those cops back at the apartment.

“Was she as good as I am?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “I really want to know, Jack. Honestly. Tell me, just between us—was she better?”

I gnawed the inside of my cheek.

“I suppose we all have our points,” she said, “You called her Grace. Grace is such a nice name. It has a certain fillip to it, don’t you think? I mean, it’s—well, bold, you might say, but not too bold. There’s a certain feeling of mystery—”

“Please, Shirley. You’ve ragged me enough.”

“It’s just that I’m interested. It’s a wonder you never mentioned her to me. She has a beautiful body. She didn’t wear falsies, either. Of course, neither do I. But hers were a little bigger, I think. But, then.”

I waited. She didn’t speak for a moment. I drove toward the outskirts of town. I had wanted everything to run smoothly between us. It wasn’t going to be that way. I didn’t know how to tell her we were really running now because we had to run.

Only I had the money.

I’d thought “I”—not we.

She said something. Then she said, “Oh, darling.” Then she said, “Please...” It came out as a kind of sob. She moved across the seat and I slowed the car, wondering, What now?

She shoved the white bag on the floor and put her arms around me.

“I believe you,” she said. “I believe you.”

She kissed the side of my face, with her arms around my neck, purring to herself the way she did, and half-kneeling on the seat. “Don’t you see how it was?” she said. “I just couldn’t stand it. That’s all. I love you, Jack—I love you.” She kissed me on the mouth, and hugged me some more. “I couldn’t stand it. I love you so much—so much.”

I got a look at her eyes and they were mad for a second. I mean mad, not angry. Then that went away.

“I believed you right away,” she said. “But the thought of sharing you with something like that—with anyone—it would be too much.”

“You never shared me.”

“I know, Jack. I’m sorry. Can’t you see?”

“I guess.”

“Don’t try to make me feel worse, now.”

“I’m not.”

“I wanted to hurt you—to make you feel as bad as I felt.” She leaned in tightly against me, kissing me, and purring. I nearly drove the car off the street. “All right, now?” she said. There was something husky in her tone.

“Yeah. I couldn’t do anything with her, Shirley.”

“I understand.”

“We can talk sensibly now?”

“Yes.” She knelt there on the seat with her arms around me, her eyes shining. Her hair was tumbled down around one side of her face. “You’re my man,” she said. “And I love you.”

I patted her thigh.

“I got the money without any trouble at all,” she said. “Isn’t it really better getting it all, instead of leaving some behind? We’ll never come back for it. Don’t you see?”

“It was the chance itself,” I said. “I wasn’t sure you could bring it off. It doesn’t matter now.”

She sank back on the seat, watching me, smiling with a kind of secretiveness. She looked a million. Ten million. I felt really good all of a sudden.

“Shirley?”

“Yes?”

I told her about Miraglia and the police at my apartment, and how we had to run for sure, now. How there was no other way out.

Fourteen

She said a lot of things, and carried on some, but I finally got her calmed down. She was scared. But so was I.

What scared me was the thought of losing that money.

Boiled down, nothing else mattered. That much money was worth being scared about, and it was worth taking chances for. I could have spent my whole life in the store and never managed to gouge even a small part of what we had out of sales.

“You knew this all the time, and you let me act like I did,” she said. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

She really meant it.

“Listen,” I said. “We’re not going to have time to talk now. First off, it’ll take them a little time to find out about this car....”

“That girl saw it.”

“I know, I know. Don’t you think I realize that? It can’t be helped. I was planning to trade it off for still another. We can’t do it, now. If we steal one, that won’t help.”

“What will we do? Where will we go?”

“Easy, now. Keep hold of yourself. There’s only us, you know? We can’t take a bus, a train, or a plane. They’ll be watching them. They’ll sure as hell set up road blocks before long. They’ve probably already contacted the bank. They’re at your place. They’re looking for us right now. The one chance we have got is this car, until they find out about it.”

“Yes, Jack.”

I headed across town toward the junkyard district.

“They’ll have the license number before the day’s out. But there are a lot of cars exactly like this one on the highways, everywhere. I’m going to swipe a plate off a wrecked car in a junkyard, then we’ll scram.”

“Where?”

“Not far. We’ll take back roads, head north maybe fifty or seventy miles, and rent a place. Anything. A cabin someplace. Then when everything cools down, we’ll take off. The big mistake would be to try and make it now. We’d never make it, Shirley.”

She just looked at me.

I made it to a junkyard I knew of, where it was self-service. I parked down the street, told her to lie on the seat, out of sight. Then I went over to the yard, and told the man I was looking for an old Stromberg carburetor to fix up a hot rod I was building for my kid. He said to have a look around.

“I’ll need pliers and a screw driver.”

He grumbled, and loaned me the tools.

I found a plate for this year, got that off the car it was on, and slid it under my shirt and belt, at my back. Then I located a carb, and tore it off fast.

“You’ll need a kit,” he said. “This is all shot to hell.”

“I know it.”

“I sell kits.”

“Well, I figured...”

“It’s no good without you fix it, pal.”

“Okay. I’ll take the kit, then.”

I paid for the stuff, and went back to the car. She was lying on the seat, looking like a scared rabbit.

I was beginning to feel fine. We had a good chance.

We drove out of town, taking the back routes, and stopped the first chance so I could change the plates. Shirley sat in the car, tuning the radio. She’d been quiet ever since we left town, and that bothered me a little. I buried the plate that was on the car. Then I heard her call.

“Jack. Hurry!”

Well, I went over there, and it was on the radio. She picked up the tail end of a news flash, but even at that, it was pretty explicit.

They were holding Henry Lamphier in a jail cell for his own protection. He had sworn to kill us both. The police were having a bad time with him. We were suspected of murdering both Victor Spondell and Mayda Lamphier, and they had it all straight down the line, even though they claimed they weren’t positive. They theorized Mayda Lamphier had somehow surprised us in the act of letting Victor die, and we’d had to do away with her. They uncovered everything. The pad with the list of stuff at my place, Miraglia’s name, everybody’s name, all the gimmicks. It added up. I don’t know, maybe there was something inevitable about it, because they’d even dug up the bloody blanket.

A young cop got credit for that. He had put himself in what he figured was my place, since the Medical Examiner had claimed there would have been a lot of blood, and we had probably wrapped Mayda in something.

He walked away from the spot by the canal, down the road, and turned off where he thought we might have buried whatever it was, and dug up the bloody blanket.

They had checked with the bank at three minutes to ten. So they’d missed Shirley by maybe seconds.

There was nothing on the car as yet.

We were “love killers.” We had held “wild orgies” under the very eyes of the pitiful dying man. We were “sex-crazed thieves and lustful murderers.” We were “passion-bold.” I could see all the fact crime writers streaming toward the house that they called the “love nest death house,” and stuff like that.

Behind it all was Anthony Miraglia. He told the police something had made him suspicious. He berated himself for not acting sooner. He had discovered the original condenser I’d taken out of the intercom unit under Victor Spondell’s eyes, claiming it was bad. I remembered leaving it on the windowsill. I’d had to take it out with Victor watching.

He had taken the condenser home to his boy, who was interested in building radio kits. Then he looked at it, checked it, and found it flawless. From there on out, one thing had led to another, Doctor Miraglia told them. “Victor Spondell was a strong man, and I admired his courage in view of the fact that he knew he would die. He was my friend.”

They said we would never get away.

Something began to go out of me. I had to keep looking at that white bag with the money in it, to reassure myself. It helped.

“It looks bad, Jack.”

“Looks and is are two different things,” I said. “Keep your chin up, Shirley.”

We stopped off in Tampa, got some sandwiches and cokes, and took off.

By late afternoon we had rented a cabin on a river, in the woods. We were “newlyweds.” The nearest store and gas station stood at a country intersection about a mile away, called Wilke’s Corners.

The cabin was an old place, but pretty well kept up. There were three rooms. A small kitchen, a bedroom, and a living room. The furniture was beat.

The cabin was on a small hill. You could look out the front windows and see the dirt road winding down through pine trees, away from the river. On the other side, you could see the river, and you could hear it, pulsing darkly against the shore. There were cypresses and vines along the river, and the water was black.

We’d had to ask about a place. I asked in a bar attached to the grocery store at Wilke’s Corners. A farmer said he had a place, and we rented it sight unseen.

Shirley had waited in the car. But she was still talking about how the man’s face looked when I paid him the rent for the first two weeks.

“Well,” she said, standing in the living room. “We’re here.”

“Yeah. It’s not bad.”

She moved toward me. “It’s wonderful, Jack. We’re married. We’re newlyweds. I like it that way.”

“Sure. So do I.”

“Kiss me.”

I kissed her. I had wanted to bring in the stuff from the car. I didn’t get to it right then. I was worried about all they’d said over the radio. I was worried about the guy we’d had to rent the cabin from. I was worried and scared about everything, but nothing seemed to bother Shirley from the moment she entered that cabin door.

She said, “There’s nobody here, but us.”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody to see us, or watch us.”

“That’s right.”

“Just us. All alone. The way it should be.”

I held her tightly. It was good this way. You could hear the river and the wind in the pines and it was getting on toward the first part of twilight. Some of the worry fell away from me. The place was warm with our coming. We stood there in the middle of the living room, holding each other, amid the old smells of wood and old fires, and the air was close, but maybe that helped. It was different. There was a kind of freedom in it, and this freedom slowly worked on you, and all the bad fell away.

“We don’t have to hurry, or anything,” she said. “We can take our time, and do anything we want.” She said it in a close whisper, and there was strong excitement behind the words.

I rubbed my hands up and down her body, feeling the shape of her, and pulling her against me. I kissed her lips and her face, and we stood there holding it like that.

She pressed her hands against my chest, and tipped her head up to me, her lips parted, her eyes shining big and round. “Jack.” she said. “Do you really know how much I love you?”

I kissed her on the mouth and she moaned softly.

“Jack?” Her eyes had the devil in them now. “Let’s just take off all our clothes and be naked together. Not a stitch.”

“Hadn’t we better get the stuff in from the car?”

I kept thinking of that money out there in the car.

“It can wait.” She was already starting to unbutton her dress between her breasts, watching me. She paused. “Are you sorry about anything, Jack? I mean, about what we’ve done?”

“No.”

“Neither am I.”

We moved into the bedroom. I yanked the spread back and looked at the bed. It was made up and it looked clean. I saw no bugs or insects in the room. The guy I’d rented the cabin from said he kept it for fishermen mostly, but that it was always ready to be rented to anyone who wanted it.

“Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a fireplace in the living room. Why not start a fire, and be real cozy?”

“It’s pretty warm for a fire.”

“It’ll be chilly tonight.”

I looked at her and grinned. “I’ll bet.”

She pouted. “Please. I’d like a fire. We could have a fire, and close all the windows and doors, and be cozy in the firelight.”

“Now?”

She breathed it. “Yes. Now. It’ll be better. I promise. We don’t have to hurry.”

I went on outside. I started looking for wood, but somehow I ended up over by the car. I took her bags inside, and then came back and got the shiny white leather suitcase. I got that chill on the back of my neck again. I took it inside. She was in the bedroom. I set the suitcase on a chair, and stood there staring at it.

She came out of the bedroom, carrying a big pile of blankets.

“You get the wood?”

“I will.

She frowned as she saw me staring at the money bag.

“Come on, Jack.”

I went out. I didn’t even ask her what the blankets were for. I got some wood together, mostly pine, so it would burn easily, and went back inside again. I was beginning to feel tired. We were remote from everything, and I couldn’t fasten on to what we had done. We were just here, that’s all.

Then I’d think of that money. The chill.

She had the blankets spread all around the floor in front of the fireplace. I dumped the wood in a box, and set the fire with some old newspapers underneath the wood. It caught quickly, and the room became a chimera of fire and shadow. It changed the cabin. She was right. It was good.

She still had her clothes on, with some of the buttons of her dress undone, the round thrust of her breasts showing.

“We forgot to get anything in to eat.”

“There are some cans in the kitchen,” she said. “Not much, but it’ll do. Don’t you think?”

“Sure.”

She moved into my arms, and it started. We didn’t get our clothes off right then, either. It was as if she wanted to devour me. I’d never seen anything like it. She was wild. It got me, and we were both swept up in it, a kind of orgy of flesh. And, like always, the pallor of her body seemed to make it stronger somehow. She moaned. She didn’t hold back. I saw that she had been holding back the other times. She talked wildly, yelled, and writhed like the flames of hell.

“I won’t worry about that Grace anymore,” she said once. Then another time, “This! This is for the money. For the money. This!”

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

It was dark and the fire had died down to red embers before we rested much. Then we just lay there and she had been right about everything. It was good with the fire. The cabin was warm, and it smelled of her perfume, mingled with burning pine.

“You’re a mess,” I said.

“You made me that way.”

Her aqua dress was all roped up around her middle, and her hair was snarled, and she just lay there, like some glorious whore, glorifying her whoring, happy as hell.

I went over and put some more wood on the fire.

When I turned around, she was naked, lying there on the blankets.

“Get the money, Jack.”

I didn’t say anything. I turned like a hound on the scent. I got the money bag and brought it back.

“Where’s your purse?”

“Over there on the table.”

I got the key from her purse and unlocked the white leather bag.

“Pour it out,” she said. “Here.” She slapped the blanket between us.

I opened the white bag and turned it upside down. The money fell there on the blanket between us, piling up and piling up. I threw the small suitcase across the room, and knelt looking at it.

“It kind of makes you crazy,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”

“Undress,” she said. “Like me. Take your shirt off.”

I undressed all the way to make her happy, then we lay there, and looked at the money. The firelight was high now, and the flames danced across the ceiling and played like thin wicked fingers across the pile of money.

“Let’s take all the paper bands off,” she said. “It’ll look like more. Jesus, Jack—just look at it, will you?”

I felt a little crazy, right then. I couldn’t help it. Over three hundred thousand dollars, and all mine.

Right there on the floor. I could touch it, and run my hands through it.

“Fun,” she said.

“Yeah.” My throat was dry.

I looked at her. Her breasts stood out and she sort of sprawled around, stripping the paper bands off packets of the money. There were all denominations. Tens. Twenties. Fifties. Hundreds. There were lots more hundreds than anything else. I helped her. She was a lot steadier than I was. I was sweating to beat the band, stripping those packets.

Then we had this pile of money on the blanket. I couldn’t say anything. I knew I would have yelled, or something.

“Just think,” she said. “It was all mine. Only now it’s ours. I mean, if I hadn’t met you, Jack, I’d still be back there feeding Victor his oxygen and secretly burning up inside.”

“But it’s not that way, so don’t think of it.”

Shirley knelt by the money. She reached into it with both fists and tossed it into the air, and watched it flutter down.

“Think of all the things we can do,” she said.

“I am.”

I lay there, watching her. She was beautiful, Christ, they didn’t come any more beautiful than Shirley Angela. Kneeling there with that big pile of money, and the firelight playing across her body, breasts, hip and thigh, her flesh sheened a little with perspiration from the heat so it mirrored the flames—there was never anything like it.

She saw the way I looked at her and laughed happily. She stood up, swaying her hips and shoulders in the firelight, then went into a little dance, playing her body against the fire and the shadows.

She came by me and I tripped her. I grabbed her and kissed her and she was hot all over.

“Jack,” she said. “I’m so happy. I love you so!”

“Prove it.”

She eyed me. “With pleasure!”

We rolled around in that money, loving it up, like a couple of swine, and this time there was nothing slow about anything. It was like that time on the kitchen floor, at her house. Only it was better. It was the best.

After a while, we went into the kitchen, and opened a couple cans of stuff. We ate that, and I made some coffee.

“We’ll have to get some groceries,” I said.

“How long do you think we’ll be here?”

“I don’t know.” And I didn’t, then.

Fifteen

Next day it was the same.

About noon, it was, we packed the money away in the suitcase. We were out of cigarettes, so I said I’d drive over to Wilke’s Corners.

“Be careful.”

“Don’t worry.”

I went over and bought groceries, and cigarettes, and two bottles of whisky. Everything went smoothly. I listened to the car radio, but I didn’t get anything about us. It was almost too quiet.

When I got back, Shirley had found a radio under the bed and she was listening to it in the living room. She was wearing a red housecoat, and that was all.

“Hi,” I said.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look at me.

“Hey, there,” I said.

She looked up at me and smiled hesitantly. I went into the kitchen and put the stuff away, and poured a drink.

“You want a drink?” I said.

“No.”

I didn’t like the way she said that. She was acting strange.

Then she said. “Did it go all right?”

“It went perfect.”

“That’s good.”

“No questions, nothing. I didn’t talk to anybody but the grocery clerk, and the guy over at the bar. There was nobody in the bar.”

“Oh.”

“Something the matter?”

“Oh, no.”

I drank the drink. I had another. Then another. I felt it right away, and it felt good, so I had another. I went in and sat down in a chair across from where she was on the couch. She flipped the radio off and looked at me. We watched each other.

“Happy?” she said.

“Sure. You?”

She looked at her lap, then at me, then she nodded.

“Isn’t much to do around here,” I said.

She turned her head away.

“You know what I mean,” I said quickly. “Only we can’t take off. It’s a shame, in a way. All that dough, and no place to spend it. Wouldn’t you like to spend it?”

“Anything you like is all right with me.”

“Yeah, but doesn’t it stir you up?”

“Not particularly. I’ve been awfully happy here, Jack.”

“Well, I am, too.”

We didn’t speak for a time.

“You hungry?” I said.

“Not right now.”

I was feeling the whisky good. I went into the kitchen and had another.

“Sure you don’t want a drink?”

She hesitated. “Maybe just a little one.”

I poured her a little one and took it in to her, and watched her sip at it. She watched me over the rim of the glass. I started back to the chair, and my gaze got stuck on that white leather bag with the money in it.

I got that chill.

I turned and went outside.

“Where you going?”

“Be right back.”

I went to the car. In the back of my mind there was always that threat, that they knew, and they were trying to find us. I had it all worked out, how as soon as I figured things had cooled down, we’d get out of here, get another car—steal one—and take a plane somewhere. Somewhere in the Southwest, maybe. And from there we would fly to Europe. I’d have to get papers rigged, but I knew I could do that. I could do anything with that money.

Only right now, there was the threat hanging over my head. I opened the glove compartment, and took out the P-38, and the shells. I loaded the gun, and put the shells back in the glove compartment. I took the gun inside and laid it on the mantel over the fireplace. I felt better.

“What’s that for? I didn’t know you had a gun.”

I had a good edge.

“I just feel better with it in here. Bought it the other day. You never know.”

“I don’t like guns around, Jack.”

“Well, it won’t bite you.”

I went over and stood in front of her. One of her breasts was bare outside the red housecoat. I don’t know. We’d been at it and at it, and she was terrific, but there was that money. And the getting away. And the knowing they were out there someplace, looking.

“You’re pretty, you know it?” I said.

“Am I?”

“Yeah. There’s nobody I’d rather be with.”

“Am I really pretty?”

She opened the housecoat and lay back on the couch.

She kept at me and kept at me, all day long. It was like some kind of marathon. And after a while you can wear anything pretty thin. It might have been different if we were in that big hotel down in Rio. But somehow, here, you were always listening. There would be the pulsing of the river, and the sound of the pines, and you would try to listen above that. Straining. Just a little bit.

But she was at me every minute.

Middle of the night.

“Tell me you love me.”

I told her a few times. I started to go to sleep, telling her, mumbling and drifting off. I came awake fast, with a yell. She was kneeling there beside me, beating me with both fists, her face all wrung up, shouting it at me.

“Tell me you love me! Tell me you love me!”

I took her in my arms. “Would I be here if I didn’t love you?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“We didn’t do anything tonight. We just came to bed.”

“Well, for cripes’ sake.”

“I mean it.”

“Okay.”

“Jack?”

“Yeah.”

She rolled over, with her back to me. “Nothing.”

I lay there staring at the dark. You could hear the river pulsing, and the trees moaning. The fire had died down in the other room. There was a lingering acrid odor of stale pine smoke.

“Shirley?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Shirley, what was it? What did you want to say?”

“Nothing. I told you. Nothing.”

I lay there. She didn’t move. Neither did I.

“Come on,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

She didn’t answer.

I thought after a while she went to sleep. I finally slid quietly out of bed and went into the kitchen. I didn’t turn on any lights. I got the bottle, and took a long drink. I carried the bottle into the other room, and sat down on the floor, on a blanket, and pulled down the white leather bag. I opened it; looked at the money.

Every time. The same thing.

I took a drink and looked at the money.

I sat there until the bottle was empty. I was drunk as all hell. I sat there staring at the money. I grabbed the bills in my hands and crunched them together in wads. They were crisp.

I got up and staggered over to the fireplace and put a log on the irons. It flamed up. I came back and sat with the money, looking at it, counting it.

I got that crazy feeling again.

Maybe we’d never get away. Maybe we’d be stuck here forever, or maybe they would get us. And we would never have a chance to spend any of it, live the high life, what I had wanted ever since I could remember.

I was really crocked.

Right now, the way things were, with the law alerted, the two of us could never make it.

But maybe I could make it alone.

I looked at the money. I guess that was the first time I had really thought about killing Shirley Angela.

Only I knew I could never kill her.

I just thought about it. How it would be. But I knew I couldn’t ever kill anybody. I knew that. Big brave me.

“Jack?”

I looked up. Shirley stood there watching me in the firelight. She was naked. I thought how it would be and knew it was crazy and that I could never do it. She swam around in my vision.

“You’re drunk, Jack.”

“So what?”

“Well, I’d like a drink, too. You might at least offer me one.”

“Okay, okay.” I got up and lurched out into the kitchen, found the other bottle of whisky. “Little one?”

“No. A big one.”

I poured her half a water glass full, splashed some water on top of it, and took it in to her. I drank another long one out of the bottle. It socked me hard. I sat down with the money. The whole room was going.

I heard a noise and looked up.

“You still here?” I said.

“Yes. I’m still here. Pour me another.” She handed me the empty glass.

“Well,” I said. “An old toper, eh?”

“No.”

I poured her another big one and she took it and drank it. I looked at the money and heard a crash. I looked up. She had thrown the glass into the fireplace. She stood there grinning at the fireplace.

“Watch it,” I said, “You’re getting plastered.”

She turned and looked at me, and her eyes were glazed a little.

“Jack, let’s go to bed.”

“I don’t want to go to bed. The hell with it.”

“Not even with me?”

“Not right now. Jesus Christ, lay off, will you?”

“I just asked you to come to bed.”

“I want to sit here.”

I looked up at her. She was glaring at me. She was mad as hell. I thought, The hell with it, then.

“What I wanted to tell you,” she said. Her voice was flat and level. “When you went out to the store. I saw a car.”

“Good for you. Good eyes. Take care of ’em. Precious possession. You’ll never know when you need a good pair of eyes. Saw a car—what kind of car?”

“A yellow hardtop.” She came closer. “Jack, I swear it was the same car I saw going up and down past the house the other night. The one I told you about.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

None of it was coming through very well. I fought to clear my head, but it only became worse.

“Jack?”

“Yeah? What now?”

“Who is it owns a yellow car? You know somebody who owns a yellow hardtop. I think it’s a Buick. Who?” She paused and I tried to hold my head up, but I couldn’t seem to do it. The hell with it. I was stoned.

“It’s that Grace, isn’t it,” she said. “She owns a yellow hardtop Buick, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah. How’d you guess?”

“Now I know why you took so long at the store.” I twisted my head up at her, trying to see her. It frightened me deep inside someplace, but I couldn’t seem to do anything about it. She blurred and I said, “You’re crazy as hell,” and everything went away, and I came to, still trying to see her, still trying to say something, only it was daylight.

“Shirley?”

I felt panic. My head was bad. I came to my feet, running, calling her name.

“Shirley. What was that about a yellow car?”

She wasn’t in the bedroom.

I ran back across the living room, jumped the pile of money, then damned near fell over the bottles. They were on the floor and they were both empty. The last one had been nearly full, I remembered that. I knew I hadn’t drunk it all.

She must have.

And right then I remembered something she’d said a long time ago, it seemed like years. “When I drink, it makes me go out of my head.”

I went outside. It was misty and chill with morning, but the sun was coming up over there, a yellow ball. I could feel the faint warmth of the sun.

“Shirley!”

Nothing. She wasn’t around. The car was there.

I ran on around the outside of the cabin, and down along the riverbank.

“Shirley?”

There was no sound except the dark purling of the water and the slow wind in the pines. High in the pines. I thought I saw something. I moved on down along the riverbank, calling her name, feeling the panic.

She had said something about a yellow car. Only what? There was one yellow car. Grace’s.

“Shirley?”

She didn’t answer. I kept moving along the riverbank.

Then I remembered, all right. She had said she’d seen a yellow hardtop Buick when I was over at Wilke’s Corners.

And she had said something about knowing it was Grace.

It couldn’t have been.

But I wouldn’t put anything past Grace.

If it had been Grace, then we had to get out of here. We had to leave right away.

I turned and looked back toward the cabin. Smoke was coming out of the chimney.

“Shirley?”

She didn’t answer.

I started back toward the cabin. I don’t know what made me run, but I did. I ran back along the riverbank, my feet sliding in the grass and mud. You could hear the black water pulsing against the banks. No other sound. Just my breathing and my feet pounding.

“Shirley?”

The cabin door was open.

I went up on the porch and inside.

She was in front of the fireplace, naked, and she was very drunk. You could see that right away. She didn’t stagger, but she was wild-eyed drunk.

The fire was the biggest we’d had, the flames leaping savagely up the chimney. The whole fireplace was a blazing sheet of white flame.

“Shirley?”

“Yes, Jack?”

She stood there in front of the fireplace. I looked over at the shiny white leather suitcase, at the pile of money.

The money wasn’t there. I looked around. The money wasn’t in sight anywhere. She must have put it in the suitcase.

“Where’s the money?” I said.

“I burned it.”

“You what!”

“In the fireplace,” she said. She turned and pointed at the flames. “In there, Jack. I burned the money. See it? It’s burning right now....” I went straight out of my head. I ran to the fire and sprawled across the hearth. I heard myself cursing, and above the cursing I heard the way she laughed. It was something terrible to hear. Then she didn’t laugh anymore.

I lay there on my belly, with my face thrust into the flames, scrabbling with my hands. The fire seared my hands and wrists and arms, but I kept snatching and scraping at the flames.

There were a few loose bills strewn around the hearth. But you could see all the rest of them in there, curling and seething and shriveling in the white flames. Crisping and roaring up the chimney flue. The chimney roared and shook, and it was a kind of wild laughter, too.

The heat drove me back. It became more intense.

I turned in a crouch.

“Don’t Jack. Don’t come near me.”

She stood across the room, facing the fire and me, and she had the P-38 in her hand.

I heard myself say it, but it didn’t really sound like me at all. “What are you trying to do?”

There was no expression in her voice, and none at all on her face.

“You don’t love me,” she said. “I know that now. If I’d only known it before, this would never have happened. You don’t love me. You love the money.”

“You’re drunk—you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“You’ve always loved only the money, and you can’t have the money. Don’t you know that? That’s how it works, Jack. See?”

“Put down that gun, Shirley.”

“No.”

I looked at my hands. They were burned badly, and beginning to pain. I was clutching two or three one hundred dollar bills.

“You may as well throw them into the fire with the rest of it,” she said. “They’re not going to do you any good. You’ll never be able to spend them.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re coming after us, Jack.”

I stood up very slowly, watching her. Her eyes shone, glistening in the fierce light from the fireplace.

“It’s the whisky, Shirley. You’ve done this because you’re drunk.”

“Maybe. I told you about that, but you kept offering it to me. I warned you. But I was going to do this anyway.” She paused. “It came over the radio, Jack. I was right. That woman of yours was here. She followed us—she ran back and got her car and followed us, when we left town that day. Jack—she’s been hanging around outside, hiding ever since we got here. Isn’t that rich?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“On the radio, while I was burning the money. While you were outside. She told the police, and they’re on the way here right now. They didn’t say where we were, but they know. We can’t get away.”

“They can’t know.”

“She told them. Want to know what she said? She told them the truth, what I suspected, Jack. God, and I loved you—I love you, Jack. I believed in you. She told them you had done this because you loved her. She said you pleaded with her to stay with you, and that you told her you were working a deal where you’d have a lot of money, so you and she could go away together. But when she realized what you had done, she couldn’t bear knowing.” She took a step toward me. “So she told them. Isn’t that just too rich for words, though?”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Yes. I do believe it, Jack. I’ve had tiny doubts about you all along. Now I know. You never loved me. It was a way to get money, that’s all.”

She breathed deeply, and her breasts rose and fell. I saw the way her belly worked. She didn’t move that gun, either, and she was just as beautiful as ever, the way she stood there.

“Jack. I’ve a confession, I want you to know. I had never had a man before. All that was talk. I did it to impress you, because you were the kind of guy you were. I had to be like you—your type, so you’d like me. See?” She took another step toward me. She looked like a savage. “But, I loved you. There’s that for you to remember. I really did love you—with every bit of me.”

“This is all a lot of—”

“No, Jack. I’m going to kill you. Then I’m going to take my own life, too. Because, that’s how I want it. I’ll have that much, anyway. I won’t go back there and face them, have them look at me with dirty eyes and hear them talk. They’ll never know how cheap and false and empty all this was. I’ll have that.”

“Shirley, listen to me. You’re wrought up. You’re thinking all wrong. You’ve got to listen to me. We can get away, if we leave right now. We’d have each other.”

“Don’t lie to me! No!”

“Shirley, please.”

“Jack, Victor was right. You’re a son of a bitch. That’s all you are. Not a good son of a bitch. A bad son of a bitch. You didn’t even take my word on anything. A girl named Veronica Lewis told the police you had her check on Victor’s bank account. Was she another hot number, Jack?”

I dropped the bills from my hands. They fluttered to the floor at my feet, on the blankets. My hands burned horribly now and the pain seethed up my arms. I had to reach her, somehow. Maybe I could jump her and get that gun away from her. Because she was mad!

“There’s lots more,” she said. “But why talk about it?”

“Shirley. Honey.”

“It’s a suicide pact,” she said. “That’s what it will seem. I’ve left a note outside, tacked to the door,explaining it. The note is a lie. Like everything else is a lie, since I met you. I told them we burned the money together, because we couldn’t have it, and nobody else would. I told them it was a symbol of our love. Isn’t that rich, Jack? A symbol of our love. But they’ll never know what that really means—how it means emptiness and nothingness. We knew we couldn’t escape the law. So we burned the money and killed ourselves. We would be together. We would never return to be sullied by the world.”

I stared at her. Then I leaped at her.

She fired. She fired the gun four times, and she hit me three out of the four. I never reached her. I stumbled with the pain in my legs and my side, and sprawled across the blankets. The pain was bad.

“Shirley!”

I was bleeding. I lay there and watched the bleeding and the pain was much worse than I thought pain would ever be. I hadn’t thought pain came so swiftly. But it did. It came in blinding white sheets, in hot waves, up and down my body.

I tried to move toward her. I couldn’t move. I was too weak and there was too much pain. I lay there looking at her through the reddish film that seemed to spread all through me and I knew that I would die.

She stood looking at me, holding the gun.

Then she stepped softly toward me and knelt on the blankets. Her face was hell to see. She reached out and touched my head, then snatched her hand away. All I could do was look at her. I kept trying to say her name.

“Goodbye, Jack. You son of a bitch.”

She thought I was dead.

She put the muzzle of that gun to her head and pulled the trigger. For a long moment she just sat there with half of her head torn away. I heard myself scream. It didn’t do any good. I couldn’t move.

She fell over on me, bleeding and dead.

Somehow I finally got her off me.

Sixteen

I lay there and watched the fire die down, waiting to die myself. I knew that by the time all the flames were gone, I would be gone.

There was no pain now.

I had to look across Shirley’s body to see the fire. It leaped across her bare back, and up out of her hair, seething, and it looked as if she were breathing.

She wasn’t breathing. She was dead.

It was quiet. As the fire died and died, I gradually came to hear the river again, pulsing endlessly against the banks, and there was the sound of the wind high in the pines. The day became brighter and brighter outside. The sun yellowed the room. And with the sun, the fire died still more, and finally it was nothing but embers.

But I was still all right. Not even bleeding. I was full of lead. My side was ripped open. My left leg was broken. But I was still alive.

I didn’t want to be alive.

Then I heard them.

They called the cabin.

“Ruxton! Come out with your hands above, your head.”

I couldn’t answer them. I could see the gun, still in her hand. It was about two yards away. I tried to reach it, but I couldn’t. I tried to crawl to the gun, because then I could kill myself. It was ironic. They would fix me up, if they got to me—fix me up for their kill.

I kept trying to reach the gun. But I couldn’t make it.

“Ruxton. We’re coming, in!”

I shouted at them. “No! No!”

But it was just a sound in my head, it never came from my throat, nothing came past my lips but a whisper.

And then I knew that this was why I had never been able to make it, in all the years of trying, and this was what it had been coming to. Even when I went and took this beautiful gamble. It was simple. Some can make it, others can’t. It was that simple.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk.

I waited.

They finally came across the porch. The door was open. They looked in and saw us lying there. They thought I was dead, too, at first.

An officer of the State Highway Patrol came in. I saw Doctor Miraglia out on the porch. Then a woman screamed, and ran into the room.

“Get her out!” somebody said.

It was Grace. She screamed again, and stood there looking down at me.

They led her back out again, fighting with her every inch of the way.

“Well, Ruxton,” Miraglia said. “It’s all over, isn’t it?”

I just looked at him.

I couldn’t figure what they were trying to prove. They all knew what had happened. I even told them the whole story, from the beginning. There was no use holding out. But they kept insisting there must be a trial. It seemed so damned stupid.

They kept me in the hospital, under guard.

Grace came to see me. Don’t misunderstand. She didn’t come to visit me. She came to see me—to stare at me.

She would get a chair and just sit there, staring at me, until they asked her to leave. Every day she did that.

“I’ll be there at the end, too, Jack.”

She said that every day. She was very nice, because they wouldn’t let her stay otherwise. There was nothing I could do.

Yes, that’s how it was. Grace, she was always burning. Then Shirley and I began burning. And then the money burned. And now there was time to burn.

Then, after there was no more time, they would burn me.

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