Talk Of The Town Part 21

She picked up the phone and dialed. "Exactly the way I told you," I warned.

I held my car close to the receiver. We were in luck. I heard the bartender say, "Yeah. I think he's still here. Just a minute."

He must have put the receiver on the bar directly in front of somebody. Above the jukebox and the ground-swell of bar-room conversation I heard a man say, "I'm glad I'm not in the sum-b.i.t.c.h's shoes when Redfield catches him!"

"h.e.l.lo." It was Talley's mush-mouth drawl. I nodded to her.

"Pearl!" she cried out. I think something's wrong. Miz Crossman phoned out here a few minutes ago-"

"What'd she want?"

"She's tryin" to find Frankie. She said he got a phone call from somebody about half an hour ago and left the house in a big hurry and didn't say where he was goin'. And just after he left, Calhoun came there lookin' for him She don't know what for, but Calhoun acted like it was real serious."

"Oh, Frankie's jest been in another fight, or somethin'."

"No! That ain't all. Frankie called too. He jest this minute hung up. I don't know where he was, but he said he was gettin' out of town. He was so excited I couldn't make out everything he said, but it was something about all h.e.l.l was going to bust loose. He said he found out that man is a private detective workin' for an insurance company. I'm not sure what he meant, but I'm scared, Pearl. T. J.'s scared. We're goin' to get out of here-"

"You stay right where you are," he said coldly. "That's the worst thing you can do-" He apparently realized that he was being listened to by people in the bar, for he went on easily. "Shucks, it ain't nothin'. You jest sit tight. I'll be along."

He hung up.

I dropped the receiver back on its cradle, feeling myself tighten up. We had seven or eight minutes at most. "All right, Trudy. Stand up and turn around."

"d.a.m.n you!" she lashed out. "He'll kill me. You don't know him." she lashed out. "He'll kill me. You don't know him."

"Shut up!" I told her. "I'm trying to get you out of sight before he gets here."

She put her hands behind her willingly then. I began tying them. "Georgia!" I called out. She came in quickly.

"What's Frankie's car? That panel truck?"

"Yes," she said. Then she gave a short laugh that ended in a little choking cry, and put a hand against the doorframe to steady herself. She brushed the other across her face. The strain was beginning to get her.

"Take it easy," I said.

"I'm all right." She took a deep breath. "It was just the truck. The same one that backed into you-when was it? How many years ago?"

I managed to grin at her. "We were young then." Then I jerked my head towards Frankie. "See if the keys are in his pocket. If he tries to kick you, brain him with something."

"The keys are in the switch," she replied. "I've already checked."

"Good girl." I finished off Trudy and hustled Frankie to his feet. "Bring the rest of those strips," I said, and shoved them ahead of me, holding them by the arms. We went out on the porch. After being in the light, I couldn't see at all for a moment or two. Frankie stumbled, stepping off the porch, and almost fell. I caught him. Georgia led the way to the truck. I opened the doors in back and shoved them in. She found the switch and turned on the light. I hurriedly tied their ankles. Frankie lay on his side, the black, mean eyes staring at my face. I was suddenly sick of all of them, sick to the bottom of my heart of the whole tough, cheap, crooked lot. Be a police officer and look at that all your life?

"Watch the road," I warned. "He'll be here any minute."

"Nothing yet," she said.

I slammed the rear doors and we got in and drove down behind the barn. I cut the lights and the engine, and sighed, beat-up and tired and hurting all over. I put out a hand to touch her, and she took it and held it between both of hers, in her lap.

"What are our chances?" she asked calmly.

"I don't know," I replied. "They pulled off a robbery that night and killed a man up in Georgia. Bringing the stuff into another State makes it a Federal case. That, and the felony murder, is what they've been so jittery about."

"Can we prove it?"

"Not yet," I said. "I'm trying to make them lose their heads. I couldn't get anything out of Frankie, but we've still got Pearl and Mrs. Redfield to go." I broke off wearily, aware that if Cynthia Redfield sat tight and didn't panic we had no chance. We had to get her or it was nothing.

"But Kendall?" she asked. "Where was there any connection with him?"

"One of the places they robbed was a jewelry store," I said. "They must have had some of the stuff there in the house that morning, and he saw it. Remember, it wasn't just robbery; they knew they'd killed a man. A felony murder is the same as first degree."

"But why would he go there?" she insisted.

I don't know," I said.

Well, I thought defiantly, I don't really. It's just a guess.

And maybe I was still wrong about the whole thing. There was the time element. Langston was apparently killed at a few minutes past four in the morning. Weaverton was nearly a hundred miles. If they'd entered the first place shortly after twelve, when the lights went out and the police converged on the fire, they still had only four hours. They might have been able to get away with the safes and drive back in that length of time, but they couldn't have opened them. That would take hours. And disposing of them in a river somewhere would take more time. So what had Langston seen?

Well, they'd cleaned out a jewelry store, and everything wasn't kept in a safe at night. There'd have been watches, and silver. . . .

"I hear a car coming," she said.

Headlights flashed briefly across the trees beside the barn, and died. A car door slammed. Pearl was here.

17

"Stay here," I whispered.

I eased out of the truck and around the corner of the barn. It was too dark to see him, but I heard his footsteps as he hurried across the front porch. He wouldn't waste any time looking for the others. The car's being gone would be evidence enough they'd run out. I hurried across the yard and reached a position by the side window as he came into the room. I couldn't see him; he was off to my left somewhere. Then I heard the sound and recognized it, and excitement ran along my nerves. It was the faint, metallic rattle of the k.n.o.b of the safe as he spun it through the combination.

He could be after money so he could run; or my hunch might be right and there was something in it he wanted to get rid of and hide somewhere else. I waited tensely; I had to be sure it was open before I went in. Then the telephone rang. It rang again. He paid no attention to it. I heard the click of the handle as he swung open the door of the safe. Slipping round in front, I eased the screen door open, and stepped into the hall. The telephone shrilled once more in the silence, covering any sound I might have made.

He was kneeling before the opened safe with his back to me, wearing another of those garish shirts, the cowboy hat pushed onto the back of his head. On the floor beside him was one of the metal drawers from the safe. It held two chamois bags, one of them very small.

"Turn around, Pearl," I said. "And get away from the front of that safe."

He whirled and stood up. After the first gasp of surprise, there was no confusion or fear in his face. The blue eyes were calculating and more than a little cold as they looked at me and then moved slightly, estimating the distance to the desk drawer.

"There's no gun in it," I said. I crossed over in front of him. The telephone started to ring once more, but cut off in the middle of it. Whoever it was had hung up. Silence seemed to roar in my ears. I thought of the shotgun going off in that loft, and the obscene foaming of acid, and whispered filth on a telephone. For an instant I wanted to get my hands on him now that we were alone and beat him into something unrecognizable, but I pushed it wearily aside. What good would it do? What good had it done last time?

I jerked my head. "Move over. Away from that safe."

He took a step to his right, towards the jukebox, the china-blue eyes watching me carefully. He knew I had a gun. I lifted the two chamois bags to the desk and worked the drawstrings loose. One of them was filled with engagement rings in all sizes of stones, and the smaller one held perhaps a child's handful of unset diamonds. I didn't know whether they were expensive stones or not. Another drawer in the desk held several dozen men's and women's wrist-watches, wrapped in tissue paper. Apparently he had destroyed the gift cases as being too bulky to store. The last compartment I slid open was stacked with bundles of currency sorted by denomination and held together with rubber bands. Several thousand dollars, I guessed. You wondered how many times he'd counted it.

I stood up. He regarded me with a conspiratorial, but simple-minded expression on the fat baby face. "You know, I bet you an' me could work out a d.i.c.ker."

"Yes?" I asked. This should be interesting to hear.

"Why, sh.o.r.e. Them po-lice has got you treed like a c.o.o.n in a holler snag. You just ain't goin' to get out of here, and when they catch you, that Redfield's goin' to pistol-whup you to death. But suppose I was to take you out in my truck?" There was a pause, precisely timed, and then he added, "Even give you a whole pocketful of that money to take along."

"Why?" I asked.

This was the second level, I thought-Talley the trader. It lay somewhere between the low-comedy yokel with a face like a lewd baby, and the real Talley, the coldblooded and deadly hoodlum. Pearl was an apt name for him; pearls were built up in layers. Or maybe there wasn't any actual Talley at all; if you stripped off all the succeeding layers, at the bottom there wouldn't be anything but an elemental force, a sort of disembodied and symbolic act of devouring. No wonder he was good at mimicry and spoke in dialects; he wasn't sure who he was himself.

He couldn't understand me. "Don't you want to get away?"

"No," I said. I doubt there's any way I can explain it to you, but all I want is to see you in jail."

"Shucks. Ain't no hard feelin's."

I see. Trying to drive a woman insane or wreck her health is just routine business strategy?"

"Oh, I didn't reckon she'd go real nutty or anything. I jest figured if she got a bellyful of the place she'd sell out cheap. You know how it is, you gotta be on your toes in real estate."

"What about trying to kill me with a shotgun?"

He grinned slyly. "h.e.l.l, you can't prove n.o.body tried to kill you. You're still alive."

I realized I was up against unanswerable logic. There was no harm done, because he'd missed. Why be churlish about it?

"Which one of you killed Langston?" I asked.

"Why, I don't know nothin' about that," he said innocently. "Look, let's talk over this d.i.c.ker a little more."

"Knock it off, Pearl," I said. "I know what you people did that night, and the proof's right there in front of you. I've already got Frankie. All I've got to do now is call the F.B.I. They'll be glad to get their hands on you."

He was looking at something over the door. I whirled. Cynthia Redfield was standing just inside it. She was wearing a dark blue dress and sandals, and was carrying a flat bag in her left hand and holding a short-barreled .38 in the other. It was a corny pose, and might have been ridiculous if it had been anybody else, but wasn't ridiculous on her at all. I knew she was deadly enough to mean it.

She came on into the room. "Turn around, Mr. Chatham," she ordered. I turned, raging at myself, and scared. I heard her walk up until she was about three feet behind me, and then she said, "Now, take off your jacket and toss it over there on that sofa."

She couldn't miss. I did as she said. "Now, get over there and stand by Pearl." I walked over and stood by the safe, facing her.

She stared coolly at Pearl, and said, "I thought you might walk right into it, so I parked up by the road. I tried to head you off in town, but they said you'd just got a phone call and left. Then I tried to get Frankie, and found out he'd also disappeared. Didn't it occur to any of you that Chatham was doing it, trying to panic you?"

I glanced sideways at Pearl and saw he was watching her nervously. For some reason he didn't appear as happy as he should be at this change in the picture. "Well, it was Trudy that called-"

"It doesn't matter," she said crisply. I don't have much time." She stopped to give him a taunting smile, and went on, I see you have the safe open. That's nice, isn't it? We can have an accounting now, after all these months."

Pearl said nothing, and it began to dawn on me at last that I wasn't the only one being threatened by that gun.

"Come on, Pearl," she taunted. "Tell me again how much was in those safes when you and Frankie opened them. Remember, all the paper money in one burned up when the torch set it on fire. And the other had only about two thousand dollars' worth of cheap junk in it. Remember, Pearl?"

He swallowed uneasily.

She walked to the desk, motioning for us to move back. Setting her handbag on it, she poked her finger into the openings of the two chamois bags. A few engagement rings spilled out on the desk.

"You got to listen-" Pearl began.

She cut him off coldly. "How did you get Frankie to lie about it, and cheat him out of his share at the same time? More blackmail, Pearl?"

"Listen, you got it all wrong," he explained earnestly. I had to keep it so none of it wouldn't git sold till it was safe. I was goin' to tell you. Honest. You don't reckon I'd cheat my own kin-?"

"Shut up, you filthy pig!" she lashed at him. "In the end, you got it all, didn't you. You always do. By lying, and blackmail, and extortion. You couldn't leave us alone, could you? All we wanted to do was break into just one of those stores to get enough money to go away together, but you had to force your way into it and make a production of it. Kill a man and burn up part of a town so you could carry off the safes. You're never satisfied, are you? You couldn't even leave that woman alone so she'd sell out and go away so the thing would quiet down and be forgotten. Not you, you dirty pig! You had to go to work on her so you could buy the place for nothing. So you made her too stubborn to sell, and you didn't even have sense enough to leave this man alone so he'd stay out of it. And then you let him make a fool of you. Well, I can still get out, Pearl, and I'm going to. And I'm going to take everything that's in that safe. I'd have killed you long ago if I could have thought of a way to get it open."

She could get away with it, if she got back home before she was missed. With both of us dead and the jewelry gone there'd be no evidence of any kind and nothing to point to her. Then I remembered Georgia Langston. Cynthia apparently didn't know she was here. She'd be safe if she stayed out of sight.

Almost at the same instant I thought I heard a faint sound like the sc.r.a.pe of a shoe in the hall, and involuntarily looked towards the door. A slender hand had come around the edge of the frame, groping for the light switch just inside. But Pearl was facing that way too. He stared, too obviously, and Cynthia Redfield started to turn. Then the exploring fingers touched the switch and the lights went off.

She pulled the trigger through sheer reflex, but I was already diving towards the floor. Pearl hit me and we crashed down together. I kicked him off me and rolled, aiming for the spot where Cynthia Redfield had been standing. I missed her and swung my arms. One hand brushed the cloth of her skirt. The gun crashed again. I lunged at her and missed completely. Then Pearl slammed into me. We fell against a wall and he had me pinned under him. I heard a collision in the hallway, somebody cried out, and the screen door slammed. She was gone; I'd never catch her out there in the night.

Pearl had a knee in my chest and was swinging like a madman. A fist caught me just above the ear and rocked my head back against the wall. He had the range now and hit me again. One arm was pinned under me and I couldn't get any weight behind the other when I landed on him. A fist crashed against the side of my jaw. It rocked me, and I realized that one or two more like it would knock me out. I put everything into one last heave, and came up, toppling him into the darkness beside me. We rolled, locked together and straining, and hit the legs of the flimsy card table. It collapsed, dumping magazines and books on us. I thought I heard a car somewhere, but it was impossible to be sure above the hoa.r.s.e sound of our breathing.

We threshed through the wreckage of the card table and the slithering and unstable carpeting of magazines. I found his throat with my left hand and swung with the right. Pain went up my arm, but he grunted. I swung it again and felt him go limp. I pushed myself away and collapsed, too weak to get up. Somewhere behind me a match flared, and then the lights came on. I pushed myself to a sitting position and turned. Kelly Redfield was standing just inside the door.

He was a good ten feet away. There was nothing I could do but sit and stare at him. His face was pale and intensely still, and the eyes deadly. There was no gun in his hand, but the short khaki jacket was open in front and I could see one in the shoulder holster under his left arm. He said nothing. There was no sound in the room except that of my breathing. His right hand came up and pulled the gun away from the spring clip that held it.

"All right, Chatham," he said. His voice was so tight there was no expression in it whatever.

Then I saw his eyes flick away from my face for the first time as they glanced towards the open safe and the desk beside it. Something held them. I turned involuntarily and looked. On the desk one of the chamois bags was still pulled open and light glittered on the stones in the rings. And beside it was the maroon leather of Cynthia Redfield's handbag.

He pulled his eyes away from it and tried to do it anyway. He raised the gun and c.o.c.ked it. Sweat stood out on his face like beads of glycerin. Then the muzzle wavered, and he let his arm fall to his side. He was motionless for what seemed like a long time, and at last he raised the gun and put it back in the holster. He walked over to the desk and stood with his back to me as he picked up the phone.

I let my head drop on my forearms, braced across my knees, and closed my eyes. I was shaking all over, and limp.

I heard him dialing. "Redfield," he said. "Call off the search for Chatham. But send somebody to pick up Frankie Crossman-"

"Frankie's out here," I said without looking up.

He gave no indication he had heard me, other than to change his orders. "Send Mitch.e.l.l out here. Pearl Talley's place. To pick up Frankie Crossman and Talley for suspicion of murder."

He paused, as if he had been interrupted, and then said savagely, "No, that's not all! "No, that's not all! G.o.ddammit, I'll tell you when I'm through-" G.o.ddammit, I'll tell you when I'm through-"

I looked up then. He reached slowly over and picked up the purse with his free hand, and tilted its contents out onto the desk. For an instant he stared down, stony-eyed, at the little acc.u.mulation of feminine articles, the tiny wadded handkerchief, comb, lipstick, mirror, and paper tissues, and then he probed through it with his finger and pushed something to one side and looked at it. It was an ignition key.

"And tell Mitch.e.l.l to bring enough men to search the area," he said curtly. "One of them got away on foot."

I looked away. Georgia Langston was standing in the doorway with tears swimming in her eyes. I pushed myself erect some way, grabbed my jacket, and went out into the hall and reached for her. She came to me with a little cry.