Cape Fear (14 page)

Though the connection was clear, Sievers had a sound of remoteness, of lack of interest.

“Heart attack? That’s too bad.”

“It makes it pretty awkward for me, Sievers.”

“I can see how it would.”

“Who shall I contact for the same … kind of service?”

“I don’t think there’s anybody else to go to.”

“What do I do?”

“It might be set up some other place. Some people might be sent in. It would cost more and it would take some time.”

“Can you help me with it?”

“I’m pretty well snowed under out here. And … frankly, I’m on a different basis here, Bowden. I mean that was a personal arrangement. I can’t do anything officially. Not along that sort of line. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“I did what I could. You had a bad break.”

“Maybe I can find somebody on my own.”

“I don’t think you can. And it would be a bad risk. You might better just … get your people out of the way.”

“I … I see.”

“Sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

It was a most unsatisfactory conversation. And it meant the end of a possible line of defense. They would have to fall back to another defensive position.

He talked it over on Monday night with Carol. She took it more calmly than he had anticipated.

“I know that it makes a certain kind of sense,” she said, “but we will be so dispersed. Nance and Jamie down at camp. Bucky and me off God knows where. It leaves only you and that frightens me, darling. What good will any of us be if something should happen to you?”

“I’m going to be the most devout coward you ever heard of, honey. I’ll take a room at the New Essex House and I won’t go out after dark, and I won’t open the door unless I know damn well for sure who has knocked.”

“And then suppose nothing happens? When do we come back? When do we know it’s over?”

“I don’t think he’s going to be very patient when he gets out. I think he’ll make a move and I think he’ll make it at me, and I’m going to make certain it will be unsuccessful, and if he does, then we’ll have the evidence that will send him back for a long time.”

“Oh, yes. For a year, or three years, and then we can have such a fine time planning just what we’ll do when they let him out again. It will be just like this month has been. Full of nervous smiles and bad jokes.”

“It will work out.”

“Please forgive me for asking you if it would be possible
for you to stop saying that to me. It makes me feel as if you’re patting me on the head. We hope it will work out. We very truly much hope so. But there aren’t any written guarantees, are there, darling?”

“No. We can only do everything we can. And along that line, you will be charmed to learn that tomorrow I am becoming a dashing and dangerous figure, with the help of Captain Dutton.”

“What do you mean?”

“He is arranging the permit for me. He wasn’t as reluctant as I expected him to be. At lunchtime I go pick up a very ugly and efficient device manufactured by Smith and Wesson. And when the harness is properly fitted, it will hang right here. It will nestle in a thing called a spring-clip holster. Nobody can snatch it away, but when I reach for it properly it will, Dutton claims, jump right into my hand. Then all I’ll need will be a case of gin, a great big willing blonde and a shabby little private office.”

She looked at him in a level way. “So many gay little jokes. And such a wide, glassy, self-conscious smile.”

“What the hell do you want me to do? Clench my teeth and look steely-eyed? Of course I’m self-conscious about it! It isn’t exactly my line, you know. I’m scared of Cady. I’m scared the way a kid having a nightmare is scared. The thought of him makes my hands sweat and makes my belly feel hollow. I’m so scared I’m going to wear that gun and tomorrow night I’m going to take so many cartridges up on the hill that by the time I’m through I’m going to be able to draw and fire and hit what I aim at. I’m going to feel like a little boy playing cops and robbers. I’m going to feel self-conscious. And so I’ll make my forlorn little quips out of
pure nervousness. But it’s going to be a lot more comfortable to be a target that can shoot back.”

He stopped his pacing and looked at her and saw the quiet tears rolling down her cheeks. He sat beside her and took her in his arms and kissed the salty eyes.

“I shouldn’t bellow at you,” he murmured.

“I … shouldn’t have said what I did. I just got tired … of the frantic gaiety we coat everything with. It’s gotten to be a nervous habit, but I guess it’s the way we are.” She smiled wanly at him. “And I couldn’t stand a ponderous, humorless husband. I … I’m glad you’re getting the gun. I’ll feel better, really.”

“Me, my gun, and my asinine chatter.”

“I take all three. And gladly.”

“Now, then. Back to scheduling. We leave early Friday morning. We find a place for you and Bucky. We stay there Friday night. Saturday we see the birthday girl. I stay with you Saturday night at the place we find, and Sunday I drive back into town and—”

“Why don’t we take both cars, dear? When we go to camp we can leave the MG at the place where I’m going to stay, and then on Sunday you can drive it back to the city when you check into the hotel.”

“Good deal.”

“I’m going to hate being away from you.”

“You are not alone.”

He wore the short-barreled revolver home on Tuesday night. The harness chafed him, and he realized it would be a long time before he could become accustomed to it. He
had worn it when he went back to the office, feeling vastly foolish, and suspecting that everyone who glanced at him on the street saw the suspicious bulge under his left arm.

He stood inspection while Carol circled him. Finally she said, “I know it’s there so I can see the sort of lump it makes, but actually, darling, I guess you’re the type. You’re thin and you like your jackets cut loosely anyway.”

“So this dish saunters in and I can see right away nobody ever has to tell her the time of day. She makes a production out of sitting down and crossing her gorgeous legs, and then she dives down into a pocketbook as big as a phone booth for midgets and comes up with a wad of green stuff that would gag a hippo. Then she leans over and starts counting out hundred-dollar bills on the corner of my desk. I was so busy counting with her I didn’t even take time to look down the front of her dress.”

Carol struck a faintly bawdy pose and said, out of the corner of her mouth, “What did the floozy want, baby?”

“Ah, after all the production, it was routine. She wanted me to kill a guy.”

“You gonna do it?”

“Tomorrow. After lunch. The joker needs killing. You see, tootsie, I got this mission. I go around killing the bad guys. The guys that got connections so the law can’t touch them, see. I’m cleaning out the filth, see. I eliminate ’em, like those knight guys used to get rid of the dragons they had hanging around with blazing halitosis. I get paid for it and the big blondes are always grateful. Real grateful.”

“And that leer, my friend, is almost too convincing.”

“Trudge up the hill after a while and watch me show off after I get used to this thing. Dutton says don’t aim it. Point
it as naturally as you point your finger. Where’s the Buck? I don’t want him galloping into the line of fire.”

“Liz Turner took a whole swarm of kids to the County Fair.”

“A brave and noble lady.”

He went up to the range with three boxes of shells, and a piece of sheeting and some twine. He tied the sheeting around a tree thick enough to simulate a man’s torso. He penciled a crude heart on the left side of the chest. At first he was discouragingly slow, awkward and inaccurate. The weapon had a flat, gutty bark, much more authoritative than the snapping of the twenty-two. He fired a couple of dozen rounds for accuracy, and then went back to the routine of drawing and firing, improving doggedly.

Carol came up the hill and said, “You sound like a South American revolution, darling.”

“This is trickier than I thought.”

“Should you be so close?”

“It’s a measured twenty feet, honey. This thing isn’t designed for potting at long range. I don’t know as I’m ready to show off, but I’ll try.” He loosened the riddled sheet and turned it around to the fresh side and refastened it.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a heart.”

“It’s too small and it should be more in the middle.”

“Stop bossing the job. Okay. I’m in position. And I’m half turned away from it. Hands at my sides. Casual and relaxed. When you happen to feel like it, yell ‘go.’ ”

“Go!”

He caught the grip cleanly, found the trigger as he wheeled, and emptied the cylinder. He put five black holes
in the target, the first one in the abdominal area, one at the waist, and three fairly well centered in the chest.

“Wow!” she said, genuinely awed. “Did one miss?”

“No. You keep the hammer on an empty chamber. You fire the first one double action.”

She looked slightly pale and her throat worked as she swallowed. “Maybe my imagination is a little too vivid, darling. But it seems … so horribly functional.”

“It’s completely functional. It’s designed to be used on people. It’s designed for maximum speed and maximum killing power for its size. There’s nothing pretty about it, or romantic about it.”

He broke the gun and ejected the cases and reloaded. “Want to try it?”

“I don’t think so. I think I’d rather not.”

“Does the demonstration make you feel any better?”

She nodded. “It does, Sam. It really does. But it’s funny to think of you … I mean.…”

“I know just what you mean. Lovable, mild old Sam. Dutton knows it too. And he very carefully made his point, in a roundabout way. He told me the armed forces had a lot of trouble in World War Two and in Korea with boys who would not fire their weapons. They are not certain of the basic cause. Something to do with civilization, Christian upbringing, respect for the life and dignity of the individual. He said that they get them on the cops. They’ll get a rugged kid with good reflexes who does just fine on the target range. And then he’ll get in a tight spot. He’ll do exactly as he’s been taught, right up to the point of aiming, and with his finger on the trigger. And he will stop right there, and if it is the wrong situation, they’ll have a dead cop. I
don’t know about myself. I can really kill hell out of that tree, lips drawn back in a killer’s sneer. But if it was flesh and blood? I don’t know.
I don’t really know
. If I’d had any combat I would know. I think I could. I’ve got to make this so automatic with me that pulling the trigger is a part of the total action, and not a separate piece at the end. Then if I can start, I can go through it all the way. I hope.”

She tilted her head and studied him. “There isn’t much pretense about you, Sam. I mean you take such long, cold looks at yourself.”

“If you mean I don’t consider myself a dashing figure, you’re right. I am a sedentary, forty-year-old office worker, with a mortgage, a family and an insurance program. I am suited to this new aroma of violence and menace in the same way that George Gobel would feel at home as a Golden Gloves contestant in the heavyweight classification. It is a triteness to say that life makes curious and unexpected demands on you. I’m trying to face this one, but, my Indian maiden, there’s something about it that makes me feel like a white mouse in a snake pit.”

She came up to him and held his wrists. “And I tell you, you are not a white mouse. You are as brave as any man. You have warmth and strength. You know how to love and be loved. This is a great and rare art. You are my man, and I wouldn’t want you changed in any way.”

He kissed her and then stood holding her in his arms. He looked down over her shoulder, and the dark gleam of the sun in his right hand looked incongruous. He was holding his wrist canted so that the weapon would not touch her pale-blue blouse. And beyond the gun he could see the white target and the penciled heart and five black holes.

ON FRIDAY THEY LEFT EARLY
and drove south-east toward the pleasant little vacation villages in the lake area. Bucky seemed willing to accept the idea that Carol wanted a vacation from doing all the housework and he could come along too. It was, they told him, the next best thing to going away to camp.

They drove slowly and took side roads and arrived at the town of Suffern, ninety miles from Harper, at lunchtime. They had a good lunch in the quiet dining room of a lakeside inn called The West Wind. It was an old-fashioned frame building, with the tall and awkward dignity of the Victorian period. A busy little cricket of a man showed them two third-floor rooms on the lakeside with connecting bath. The weekly rate was reasonable and the rooms, with maple furniture and rag rugs, were clean and cheery. The rate included breakfasts and dinners, the use of the tiny
beach, the hotel rowboats when available, the English croquet court, and the two tennis courts.

Yes, there were other children in the hotel, and they had never made it a policy to exclude children, but no pets, please. Even the oblique mention of Marilyn visibly saddened Bucky. It was not at all necessary, Sam decided, to use a different name. It would be theatrical, ludicrous and unnecessary. Carol said she would write directly to the office and, as an additional precaution, use envelopes not marked with the return address of The West Wind.

After Carol and Bucky had unpacked and changed, they went for a walk through the village, and then came back and waited until the croquet court was free. Carol was grimly accurate, and took high glee in whacking Sam’s ball off into the hinterlands whenever she could get near enough to hit it. Sam teamed up with Bucky, but she still won readily.

That night, after they were in the big double bed, Carol said, “I’m going to be terribly extravagant and buy a tennis racket. I’m terribly flabby. I need to tighten up.”

“Flabby? Flabby? Where? Here? Or possibly here?”

“
Stop
it, you darn fool.”

“Do you think you’ll be happy here?”

“Not happy, darling. But as contented as I could be anywhere away from you.” Suddenly she giggled.