Lady Afraid (6 page)

Her son was on her shoulder now. Her hands held his chubby warm legs. She carried him that way to the car and put him inside and got in with him.

“Well go for a ride,” she told him. “Won’t that be fun, cowboy?”

Jonnie laughed delightedly and crowded close to her. His round delicious face was near hers and his breath was a sweet warmth on her cheek. Suddenly she kissed him…. And then, in a moment, he kissed her back. It was a funny little thump of a kiss, like a puppy butting its head at her.

Now her tears came; she could not keep them back, did not wish to do so. She bent her head and her arms went convulsively about her son, holding him close.

Later Sarah drove through the still streets with the boy, drove in the silvered moonlight and in the shining pools of water. Jonnie wanted to steer. He sat on her lap, and she let him play at running the car. “You’re a good driver, honey,” she said.

The boy wriggled closer to her and confided, “I like you, Sarah.”

Now seemed like the time for doing a thing that she had to do. And so she said, “Jonnie… I am your mother.”

He lay very still against her for a while.
He does not know what the word mother means.
She drove silently, her heart bound with pain and taking fewer breaths than she needed.

“Mother?” the little boy said unexpectedly.

Much later, when she trusted herself to speak, she told him, “That’s right, big fellow. Mother. You can call me that. Or Sarah, if you wish. Whichever you like better.”

She was verging on hysteria, she suddenly realized; she wanted that much for him to call her mother again. But he did not. He pounded the steering wheel excitedly with his small hands, yelping like a little Indian, wanting to go faster.

Driving a trifle more swiftly to please him, she asked, “Would you like to go with me, Jonnie? Take a little trip?”

“Could I?”

“You bet. We’d have fun, fellow. We’ll do all the things you want to do.”

“I’d like that,” he said joyfully.

Later Sarah swung the car in to the curb before her apartment building. The boy was now asleep on her lap. The swift cycles of his two-and-a-half-year-old life were new and amazing to her. He leaped, he played, he wanted this, he wanted that, he slept—all as fast as leaves drop in the fall of the year. Of this and many things about her son she would have the joy of learning.

Jonnie whimpered a bit when she lifted him from the car. He was still baby enough for that. She was glad. She did not want to be robbed entirely of his babyhood.
This alone
, she thought,
is worth all the horror the old man gave me.
She carried Jonnie into the building and rode upward in the elevator. It was a self-service elevator. There was no doorman on duty at the entrance of the apartment house at night. She had thought of that.

Sarah bore her son proudly along the fourth-floor hall to her apartment door and worked the lock with her key. She entered and closed the door. She snapped on the lights. She took Jonnie into the bedroom and placed him on the bed carefully so as not to awaken him.

And she touched the sleeping boy’s cheek with the gentlest of kisses. His smile, returned in sleep, was as satisfied as a small flower in the sun.

The electric clock whispering on the chest of drawers read ten-thirty and her train left at midnight. But the train was made up in Miami, she knew. Since she had a compartment, it would be available perhaps as much as an hour ahead of departure time. She could leave the apartment now. There was no good reason why she should not board the train at once, and probably she should do so.

Sarah lifted the suitcases she had packed and swung with them into the living room. And then something happened.

It was the kitchen door. It began to move slowly and—unbelievably, when it was half open—a man came through. A dark man in a seersucker suit, thin through the shoulders but with a heavy stomach which he carried as if it troubled him with its weight.

The man, the stranger, walked toward Sarah. His right hand drifted out and made patting motions in the air.

“Don’t try anything wild, Mrs. Lineyack,” he said. “You just didn’t get away with it, is all.”

I
T WAS VERY QUIET
in the living room except that the man kept coming toward Sarah and his feet brushed the carpet in a series of harsh sounds like crusty bread being cut. His shoes were lemon yellow with sharp-pointed toes.

“In a deal like this you got to plan it careful,” the man continued. “That was where you fell down, Mrs. Lineyack. You weren’t careful enough.”

Sarah began breathing again. She had been stunned. This was like an explosion, a sheet of flame in her face, having this strange man appear.

“Where—where did you come from?” she gasped.

“How’d I get in, you mean?” The man stood close to her now and she saw that his seersucker suit was untidy. The suit was soiled in a few spots and his necktie knot was gnarled and vaguely greasy-looking; he must be one of those men who never untied his ties.

“Get in? That was easy, Mrs. Lineyack,” he told her. “The janitor’s got a key to all the apartments. How else would I get in?”

Sarah stiffened. “Mr. Cline wouldn’t let anyone into my apartment!”

Mr. Cline was the building superintendent. Janitor.

“Wouldn’t he? That’s only what you think, Mrs. Lineyack.” The man stared at her. “A deal like you pulled? And the janitor wouldn’t let me in? Don’t be silly.”

Then his hand came toward her, reaching for her arm. Sarah jerked away, wrenched back from the man’s hand as from a snake; the hand, unsuccessful in its purpose, remained poised in mid-air, the man scowling.

“Hey, now! You can make it easy or you can make it hard,” he said.

Sarah had dropped the suitcases she was carrying and they were on the floor close to and on either side of her legs. She felt trapped between them. Trapped, charged with terror. She began to retreat, putting one foot behind the other stiffly.

The man’s eyes watched her.

“Like I say, Mrs. Lineyack, make it easy or make it tough for yourself,” he told her. “Want to scream? Go ahead. Sure, you can scream. Then all your neighbors will see a cop dragging you out of here. I could even slap the cuffs on you, you know.”

“You’re—the police?”

“Good God! Would I be here if I wasn’t?”

“But—”

“But how did I happen to be here?” His thin mouth twisted. “Lady, you weren’t so clever. You just didn’t get away with it. That’s all.” Then he jerked a thumb at the door. “I got no time to kill, Mrs. Lineyack. Let’s get going.”

Sarah took a frantic step away from him. She clutched at her scattered composure, trying to take a sane plan out of the shocked, frightened, bunched herd that her thoughts had become.

“Am I under arrest?”

He shrugged. “Wouldn’t you think so?”

“Then I’m going to make a telephone call!” Sarah gasped.

A thing that was ugly spread over the man’s face. “You think you are? And who would you call?”

“My attorney!”

“Oh! Lawyer, huh?… I thought maybe you had a boyfriend.”

“No, I—”

“What, no boyfriend?” He was getting nasty. “A babe as pretty as you, Mrs. Lineyack, and you don’t have some fellow you can call on in a little emergency like this? What’s wrong with the men around this town?”

“I’ve a right to telephone my lawyer!” Sarah said tensely.

The man’s head gave a sharp negative jerk. “Afraid you don’t know the law, Mrs. Lineyack. The law sets a time we can hold you before you can call anybody.” Again his hand stabbed toward the door. “You heard me say let’s get going, didn’t you? That’s what you’d better do. Right now.”

Sarah wheeled toward the bedroom. But the man jumped forward, his hands clamping on her wrists. He wrenched her arms together, crossing them. His strength was hard and animal-like and he hurt her.

“What’re you trying to pull?”

“I want to tell my son good-by!”

“Yeah? Skip it. You got other worries now, Mrs. Lineyack. You forget the kid.”

Sarah struggled against his hard hands, gasping, “Let me see Jonnie again! Please! Oh, dear God, let me say good-by to Jonnie.”

His old eyes were sardonic, unsympathetic. “I ain’t God,” he said. “And I don’t like the way you’re acting, lady. Am I going to have to slap bracelets on you?”

“You’re a beast! A cruel beast!”

“Yeah, and you’re in a jam, lady.”

The will to resist fell out of Sarah then, and she turned and stumbled to the door. The man stayed beside her, a hand on her arm. They went into the hall and he yanked her to a brief stop while he pulled the door shut behind them.

“The kid will be okay. We’ll send a matron up here for him,” he said. He pushed her toward the elevator.

No more was said until they were on the street. Then the man pointed at Sarah’s automobile, demanding, “That the car you used, eh?”

“Yes,” Sarah admitted dully

“We’ll take it. I’ll drive. You’re doing fine now, Mrs. Lineyack.”

He was not a good driver. He let the motor labor to death twice before he thought of releasing the hand brake, and afterward he handled the turns awkwardly. He did not roll the windows down, and soon the inside of the coupe was sour with the odor of old cigar smoke that came from him.

Sarah rode numbly, as distantly from him as she could crowd on the seat. The man repelled her, but this seemed a minor matter. What I must do, she thought wildly, is get order out of this chaos, take a stand, pick an attitude for myself. She must take from confusion something to cling to while clubbing away the worst of discouragement.

Slowly the car made its way. Such puddles of water as it passed through—the driver avoided some with what seemed a rather puzzling display of fear of trivialities—were negotiated with long sobbings. The sky now stood less than a fourth skullcapped by clouds, but no moonlight spilled down, although the stars were pin-pointed against the blackness beyond palm tops like clenched upheld fists. But only in half the sky.

The man spoke sourly.

“I’m taking you to the new precinct station. It’s out in the suburb a ways.”

Sarah was silent. She needed silence. Her effort, the grasping for composure, seemed to be paying a slight dividend in calm. She had always supposed that she possessed slightly more than the usual amount of self-sufficiency, but for a while back there the bottom had gone out of everything. Her thinking had frozen. But now the barrier broke and her mind sprang into action—too jerkily, though; one thought chased another in headlong fashion. The worst was on her. That was sure. Ivan Spellman Lineyack, her father-in-law, would personally, and with his attorneys, strive to crucify her. But she knew she could face the old man’s vindictiveness far easier than the loss of the boy. She was Jonnie’s mother. She would fight for her son. The old man’s vengeance would be a grim thing, and she would need everything she could gather against it. She would need her friends. Thinking of those on whom she could call for support, she listed a number—Mr. Collins, owner of the yard, would stand by her. And others. Oh, many. And Captain Most, too. The latter stood specially in her thoughts. Captain Most, a strong man, would be an asset. And such was her opinion of the man that it did not occur to her that Most might not want to involve himself….

Unexpectedly the driver wheeled the car to the curb, stopped it. He began pulling gadgets on the instrument panel, waiting in each case to learn what happened—until finally, when he had drawn the choke, he seemed to have succeeded. He held the choke out until the engine flooded and died.

“You wait here awhile, Mrs. Lineyack.” His words had an evil sound. “The engine’s flooded. But you wait, and later it’ll start for you.”

Sarah stared. She was confused. And inexplicably frightened.

“You’re not a policeman!”

He knocked the door open on his side. He got out. “Figure it out for yourself, Mrs. Lineyack.” He slammed the door.

Another automobile was overtaking them. This second car had been following them, Sarah suddenly knew. She hadn’t realized this before.

Facing the oncoming machine, plastered by its headlights, the man shot up an arm, jerked it down. The horn of the other car grunted briefly in response. The man hesitated, then turned back and yanked the door open and leaned in again to address Sarah. “You’re not the crybaby sort, Mrs. Lineyack,” he said. “I’m kind of glad of that. It don’t make me feel so bad about doing this to you.”

He was, Sarah understood numbly, showing the first and only true emotion he had displayed.

The man slammed the door and ran to the other car. It had stopped. Sarah could hear him splattering through a puddle of water, and the only thing she could think of was a triviality:
He’s getting those shiny yellow shoes wet.
Nothing else made sense.

The man dived into the other machine and it left at once. It chased away after the fast-moving milky smear its headlights made.

S
ARAH MADE AN INSTINCTIVE
move. She switched on the headlights. She stared after the other machine. But she was not able to distinguish the license numerals, not even whether it was a Florida plate. Thwarted, she turned off the lights again, just as the fugitive car took a turn and was gone.

The need for action came at her and, hard-driven by it, she turned the ignition switch and jammed a thumb against the starter button. But the engine groaned and groaned and stayed dead. She threw open the door and leaped out on the pavement. For lack of a plan, she found herself making false starts, first ahead on the street, then back to the car, and then toward one of the houses, before she drew more to composure.

This seemed to be a residential area, middle-class, staid. The houses were all dark, no lighted windows anywhere.

Sarah stumbled toward the nearest residence. But it came into her mind—not a bit too soon, either, because she was racing up a cement walk to a porch—that the police must not know of this. Not yet. She stopped cold. Perhaps she might still take her son away. That hope, wild and primitive, transcended all else, even the black mystery of what had happened. Sarah wheeled and ran back to the rented automobile.