Death's Sweet Song (3 page)

“I'm saying the job will be done my way or not at all.”

“All right, all right! I'll get the information you want. I don't know how I'll do it, but I'll do it. Now is everything all right?”

“Everything is just fine,” Sheldon said pleasantly. “Now let's have another look at that sketch. Did you notice what kind of safe it is?” .

“All I know is that it's big and looks plenty rugged.”

“Get me the make and model and it won't be so rugged. Now tell me about this factory again; I want to hear everything there is to know about it.”

I already knew what factory it was, because there was only one factory in Creston, and that was the one that made boxes. It was owned by a tough old Bohunk named Max Provo, and I had worked there one summer after getting out of the Army. I had sweated off fourteen pounds in the place for a lousy fifty bucks a week. I'd never thought of it before now, but it was a wonder the place hadn't been robbed long ago, considering how it was run.

Old
Provo
was the kind of penny-pinching gaffer who never put out a dollar if he didn't absolutely have to. Long ago he had figured out that writing checks cost money. A hundred pay checks, costing about ten cents each, meant that he would have to pay out ten dollars every two weeks for nothing. Twenty dollars every month, two hundred and forty every year. Not for a man like
Provo
. He paid in cash.

And did he have the cash brought out in an armored car? Not
Provo
; that kind of foolishness cost money. He picked up the cash himself and made the bank furnish armed guards, free of charge. And he picked the cash up the day before payday and made the office force come in an hour early the next morning in order to get the payroll ready by noon. That was
Provo
's idea of good business, squeezing that extra hour's work out of the office force.

Well, by God! I thought. At that moment I was remembering the long hours and low wages and bad working conditions, and I was almost ready to go back to my cabin and forget that I had heard anything. Let them take the cheap bastard. Let them take him good; it was none of my business, anyway.

I don't know—if I had walked off right then, maybe that's just the way it would have happened.

But I didn't walk off. I heard Sheldon saying: “Now about the watchman; what kind of routine does he follow?”

The other man laughed shortly. “His routine is to sit in the garage arid read Western magazines. He's about sixty years old, he's got a gimpy leg, and on top of that he's half deaf. You could probably blow the safe with him right there in the garage, and he'd never even know about it.”

I got the unpleasant feeling that Sheldon was not amused. “He'll have to be taken care of,” he said flatly, “but that shouldn't be any trouble. Now look. Here's a list of things I want you to do. Today's the seventh, isn't it? Yes, the seventh. Paula and I will leave this place first thing in the morning, and we'll come back on the fourteenth. I'll pick up the things I need and we'll take care of that safe the night of the fourteenth. That's right, isn't it?”

The other man must have nodded. “All right,” Sheldon said, “that's all there is to it. We'll come back to this same place. It's a lousy place, but there's one thing about it—it isn't crowded with tourists who might recognize me. The farmer that runs the place is too stupid to guess anything. He'll think we're just returning from our vacation.”

The other man sounded amused. “It's funny, in a way. Joe Hooper used to work at this factory.”

“Who's Joe Hooper?”

“The guy that owns this fly trap you're stayin' in.”

The meeting was about to break up. Paula Sheldon began complaining about the heat and somebody opened the window, but not until I was well back in the shadows.

Stupid farmer! I thought. Well, by God, we'll see about that! You're going to look pretty silly, Sheldon, when you tackle that safe with a roomful of deputy sheriffs looking on!

I got back to my cabin just in time. I saw the lights go out in Number 2, then the door opened and a man came down the steps. He came right in front of my cabin, whistling softly through his teeth, and suddenly I had him pegged. His name was Bunt Manley. He was a thickset bull of a man, wearing a flapping sport shirt and a wide-brimmed straw sombrero. He walked around the far side of the station, and after a while I heard a car pull off toward Creston.

Well, I thought, the picture is beginning to fall in place. I didn't know Bunt Manley very well, but I knew that he had recently served a year and a day in
Leavenworth
for some dealings in moonshine whisky, and that was probably where he had met Sheldon.

I lay across the bed again and pieced the thing together as well as I could. It was possible that the robbery had been Sheldon's idea in the first place, but it didn't seem likely to me. Probably Manley had spotted the box factory as a soft touch and had got in touch with Sheldon, who seemed to consider himself an expert on safes.

Looking at it objectively, I had to admit that they were . working it very nicely. Almost every man in Creston had worked in the box factory at one time or other, and probably Bunt Manley had too. So he would know the place, and there would be no special reason to suspect that he had a hand in the robbery. Sheldon, of course, was just a man on a vacation. You couldn't arrest a man and his wife for spending the night in a tourist court.

It was a nice setup, with one exception. I knew about it.

Tomorrow, I thought, the Sheriff will know about it. Comes the night of the fourteenth and we'll see who's the stupid farmer, Mr. Sheldon!

I couldn't sleep. This new excitement had me alive to my fingertips and I was up pacing the floor all over again. What a hell of a thing this is! I thought. Planning a robbery right here in one of my own cabins—a thirty-thousand-dollar robbery! The thought of so much money stunned me. Thirty thousand dollars, just for one night's work!

Of course, there was going to be a monkey wrench in Sheldon's machinery, and I was going to throw it. But the idea that the thing
 
could
 
be done, if it weren't for me, just about knocked the breath out of me. All that money!

Hooper, I thought, what could you do with that much money? Think of it!

I didn't dare think of it. Sure, I was looking for a break, an angle to grab hold of, but this business of pulling a robbery was too much of a gamble. No, sir, a thing like this just wasn't in my line.

But it was a pile of money, more money than I had ever had at one time, and it was hard getting my mind on anything else. Across the way the lights were still on in Number 2. The door was open now and I could see Sheldon working over some papers at the table. I didn't see the blonde.

Then I did see her. She was outside, sitting on the bottom step of the cabin, and the slant of light from the doorway just fell across the top of that platinum hair. I sat on the edge of the bed for a long while, just watching her, and it was then that I realized that she had hardly been out of my mind from the first moment I'd seen her. All afternoon she had moved back and forth through my consciousness. Even tonight, when I'd been with Beth, she had been in my brain.

Well, I thought, you might as well forget her, Hooper, because in just one more week she's going to be in jail, along with Sheldon and Manley. I wondered what Sheldon was doing there at the table—probably going over those sketches that Manley had made of the factory.

As I watched, the blonde stood up and stretched, and then she called, “How much longer are you going to be, Karl?”

“Not long,” Sheldon said. “Why don't you go to bed?”

“I can't sleep with the lights on. Besides, it's too hot.”

Sheldon said something else and his wife stood there for a moment, smoothing down her hair. Then she turned and started walking out toward the highway—not going anywhere, just walking to kill time while her husband got caught up on his homework. If I had a wife like that, I thought, I wouldn't be fooling with paperwork this time of night; you could bet on that!

But when you're a professional safecracker, I guess you have to work odd hours. I turned around and watched the blonde go past my door, and then I went to the door and watched her walk as far as the station. She didn't do anything. She just stood there and looked at the empty highway, and you could almost tell how bored she was by the way she stood. I lit a cigarette and told myself it was time to get some sleep.

I didn't budge.

As long as she was where I could see her, I couldn't take my eyes off her. After a while she moved around to the other side of the station, making a wide, lazy circle on her way back to the cabin. I went to the icebox to get myself a beer, and when I got back to the door she was standing right there at the bottom step.

She laughed softly, and just the sound of her voice was enough to shake me.

“I saw your cigarette,” she said. “The heat keeping you awake too, Mr. Hooper?”

For a moment it was pretty awkward. I couldn't think of anything to say. She had known all along that I had been watching her and it didn't seem to bother her a bit.

Then a cloud slid from under the moon and there was sudden light in front of my cabin. I saw that she was smiling. “Is that beer you're drinking?” she asked.

“There's more in the icebox, if you'd like one.”

“I think that would be fine,” she said softly, still smiling.

I had a fast pulse as I went for the beer. I kept reminding myself that it was all probably very innocent, that she was just bored and wanted to talk. Still, that was the way things got started.

I didn't have any definite plans; I'd just take her the beer and see where we went from there, if anywhere. When I stepped out of the kitchen I saw that she was no longer outside by the steps.

She was there in my room.

Well, I thought, that's laying it on the line where you can't miss it! She was standing there with an unlighted cigarette in her fingers, and I must have set the beer down somewhere because I didn't have it when I stepped over and held a match for her. For a moment neither of us did anything. We just stood there looking at each other getting the situation down pat. Then I grabbed for her.

She slipped out of my arms like a greased cat. “Are you always so impulsive, Mr. Hooper?”

“That's the way I am, I guess. And the name's Joe.”

“And I'm Paula.” She smiled. “Now do I get that beer?”

That was when I began to burn. I felt like the guy who had the wallet pulled away from him just as he was about to pick it up. But I got the beer. I found the can on the kitchen table and gave it to her.

“Now you're mad,” she said, still smiling.

I said nothing.

She drank some of the beer and put the can down. “Does it always have to mean the same thing,” she asked, “when a girl steps into a man's room?”

“Am I making a beef?”

“No. But you're mad; it shows all over.”

I was mad, all right, but not nearly so much as I had been at first. Nothing had really changed. She hadn't turned indignant or tried to slap me, so I knew that nothing had changed but the timing. And I could change my timing. For a Paula Sheldon I could change a lot of things.

“All right,” I said, “maybe I'm mad, but I'll get over it. Do you want another beer?”

“No, I'd rather talk.”

“All right. What do we talk about?”

Still smiling, she hit me with it. “Let's talk about what you heard at our window tonight.”

I couldn't have been more stunned if she had fired a pistol in my face. I stood like a post as she stepped around the bed, looked once through the window to make sure that her husband was still busy with his paperwork, then pulled the shade. She wasn't smiling now. She meant business.

“How much did you hear, Joe?” she said.

I shrugged as if to say I didn't know what she was talking about.

“You heard enough,” she said. “I was on the bed when Karl and Manley were talking. You couldn't see me, but I could see you through the gap between the window shade and the facing.”

There was nothing I could say to that. She had seen me. What got me was why she hadn't yelled at the time, giving Manley and Sheldon a warning.

She knew what I was thinking.

“You're wondering why I kept quiet about it,” she said. “I did it because this job has to go through. There can't be any backing out, because Karl has to have the money. Do you have any idea how many strings have to be pulled to get a man out of prison? It took almost ten thousand dollars to get Karl a parole, and now the string pullers want to be paid, or they'll send him back faster than they got him out. If he's lucky.”

I hardly heard what she was saying. She had moved closer, pressing against me, and then those white arms crawled around my neck and she turned her face up to me.

“Do you understand, Joe?”

The only thing I understood was the excitement that took hold of me when she touched me, as the softness of her seemed to melt against me, as I tried to capture that red mouth that kept slipping from one side to the other.

“Joe, do you understand what you must do?”