The Bitch (11 page)

I went over to Sam and stripped off his trenchcoat and put it on and belted it and pulled the collar up. That was the way he wore it in nasty weather, and the last time I’d looked out the window it had been raining again.

I found his hat and fixed the crown and put that on.

Then I went and had a look at myself in the mirror.

I looked like Tate Morgan wearing Sam Morgan’s hat and trenchcoat. I turned and slumped back against the sink.

The hell with it. There was no other way. No other way at all.

I went into the living room, stepped up to the door, snapped my fingers, opened the door and walked into the hall.

A cop was at the opposite end of the hall, sitting on the window sill. I waved to him.

“Minute,” I said, motioning him to stay where he was.

I turned and walked briskly toward the corner of the hall and around to the self-service elevator. I could feel his eyes on my back and I tried to walk as much like Sam as I could, which wasn’t too hard, him being my brother. It was something. I wanted to run. I knew that cop would stop me—either with a hail, or with a slug.

He didn’t.

The elevator was just around the corner of the hall, out of his sight. I had to make him think I’d gone down on it.

I reached inside the open elevator door and pushed the button to close the door. When the door was just about shut, I flipped the button for the first floor and jerked my hand out.

She went down.

I ran to the end of the hall and opened the window as softly as I could, leading out onto the fire escape. Across the way, the building top was empty. I had figured on that, because with Sam in the apartment with me, they wouldn’t need a man up there. Only with Sam out, they would send one quick.

I heard that cop yell back there. He must have looked into the apartment to check on me. His feet pounded down the hall. I got out on the fire-escape and closed the window and went up to the roof-top.

It was pouring down rain. I was soaked before I made the roof. But I knew exactly what I had to do now, and it wasn’t easy. I had seen them do it in the movies, and it looked easy there, all right. But not now. Not in the rain. Besides, this roof wasn’t a flat roof.

The fire-escape that went to the roof was purely for the fire-department, in case of fire. So they could get up there and pound holes in the roof.

The place had a low slant, just like a house. The roof was cement tile, though, which wasn’t too slippery. I had to jump to the building alongside this one.

On the roof, I crabbed to the far edge and looked at the building. I heard that cop yell again. The roof was maybe four feet away. It looked like four hundred and my stomach kind of shifted up my back.

I jumped.

I landed on my feet a good yard beyond the edge of the parapet on the opposite roof. I had really jumped. But I didn’t stop to think about it. I ran hard across the roof to the door that led down into the building. It was locked. I backed off and slammed it with my shoulder and nothing happened, only my shoulder was hurt badly. I lifted my foot and gave the door everything I had with my heel just opposite the handle and the door popped open and whipped back against the wall.

On the stairs leading down, I kept going fast until I began to get dizzy. It wasn’t from running down the stairs; it was just a gathering-up of everything I’d been through. I needed sleep and food and I wasn’t going to get either for some time.

On the first floor of the building, I turned into the hall that led to the side alley.

It was wet in the alley, water running in a stream toward the front of the apartment buildings. I turned to the rear of the alley, and stuck to the shadows again, running through the rain toward the far street at the end of the block. I couldn’t see any cops down there. They must have all been at the front of the building.

I knew an alarm would be going out right now.

• • •

I had to have transportation—a car. I couldn’t return for the Chevvy. I thought of Thelma. The Chevvy wasn’t her car. She drove a Lincoln. It must have been one of Morrell’s cars. Anyway, I couldn’t reach her, the shape she was in—and there was the chance she was still at Morrell’s, though I didn’t think so. Halquist would put up too much of a fuss. Halquist would be really fussing about now, even if he were sleeping.

So, thinking of Halquist, I went into an all-night drugstore. The guy on duty was too sleepy to notice much, except that I headed for the phone booth. I called a cab.

Waiting out front for the cab was the longest wait I’d ever had. I couldn’t allow myself to think. There were too many things to consider and all I wanted was to find Janet.

When the cab came, I had the driver take me out to Snell Isle. He kept telling me I’d had a big night, probably? I agreed, finally, and got out about a block from the Halquist place.

There was no sign of the police. In the east, dawn was breaking very pale and gray, and I knew in another ten minutes it would be damned near daylight. I came along the wall enclosing the Halquist place and checked the gate. It was open. I went on in, running up across the lawn, and there was a light on in Thelma’s room. I cursed that, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I went behind the house to the garage. She was home, all right. Her Lincoln convertible was parked half in and half out of the garage. Morrell had sent her home on her own. I wondered where her car had been out there at the trailer park. There was a good chance he’d only used that park to meet me, not wanting me to know where he lived. It would be easy to check his private number, though.

I reached the car, let off the emergency brake, slipped it into neutral and started pushing it out along the drive. It rolled easily, but it made one hell of a sound on the gravel. I expected Thelma to come reeling out the front door. But she had probably passed out across her bed, with the light on.

Well, you can be wrong in a lot of ways. You become too damned sure of yourself the minute things start breaking for you.

I was coming down across the drive, pushing by the door and steering, when she called to me. “Tate!”

I started to push harder.

“No, Tate!”

She came running along beside me and grabbed my arm. Her eyes were all mixed-up, and she stank of gin and whiskey, but she wasn’t really drunk. Not inside. You could tell that easily.

“Wait, Tate!”

I jumped into the car just as it started to roll down the last incline of the drive toward the street, and put on the brakes. The car slid a little and stopped.

She practically fell all over me. She was wearing a skirt and brassiere and she was in her bare feet. Her hair was all snarled up, and over there in the east, the sky began to redden quickly. Things began to come alive with that sickening rush of morning that can be so bad after a lousy night.

“My, God, Tate—what happened to you?”

“Never mind. You got home, I see?”

“Tate, where are you going? You’ve got to take me with you.”

“I can’t.”

“I don’t care. I don’t mean like I said—just take me with you—someplace. Help me hide.”

I looked at her and she was really scared. I couldn’t recall ever having seen a woman so scared. She kept flinging her hands out at me, pleading, and then holding her breasts, pleading. I looked at her and thought how comical real tragic fright can be. She held onto her breasts like that and her voice was blurred a little still from all the drinking she’d done, and her mind wasn’t working so well, but maybe it was more the fright than anything else.

“It’s Johnny,” she said, swallowing. “He’s crazy—he’s gone out of his head. He phoned. He said you killed his brother, or something. He had Alex—you never met him, I promised Johnny I wouldn’t tell you about Alex, he was supposed to be checking on you—he had Alex go to your apartment or something and he just phoned and said you killed him.”

“I didn’t. He’s got that wrong.”

“But that’s not all. He says you ran with the money and he wants that money.” She came up to me and hung over me like that, her face very close to mine. “I don’t care about the money, Tate.” She was crying. “Johnny blames me. He says it’s all my fault that all of this happened. He says I talked him into it.” She was crying, the tears coming out of her eyes like rain, but not sobbing, not letting the crying affect her. She had changed. It could still be her condition from the whiskey. “He’s coming out here, he said. He said he’s going to come and get me and teach me what it’s all about.”

“Maybe it’s for your own good, Thelma.”

“Don’t talk that way!”

“How do you want me to talk? I’ve got to get moving.”

I reached out and took hold of her shoulders, turning on the car seat, and she pressed up against me, crying very silently, but not trembling or anything.

“Where’s the money, Thelma?”

I had said it just to see. You never knew.

She shook her head, holding her head against me.

“I don’t care,” she said. “I never want to see that damned old money.”

“You’ll change your mind when you sober up.”

“Take me with you, Tate. I’ll be good to you.”

“I don’t doubt that a bit. But I think you’d better run along and go to bed. I want to borrow your car for a while and that’s all. You can do me a big favor by not telling anybody about this, all right?”

She nodded against me. We stayed that way for a minute. She began to calm down, you could tell by her breathing. What the hell can you do? I pushed her away a little and looked into her eyes.

“Kiss me, Tate.”

I kissed her lightly on the lips and she tried to smile, and then she did smile. She was all right, or as all right as she ever would be.

“Now, go on in and run along to bed,” I told her.

“Where are you going?”

“That’s a big secret,” I said.

“Oh?”

I started the engine and sat there. I looked at her and made my eyes hard and grinned, not wanting to grin.

“Remember,” I said. “Don’t tell anybody.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

That would be the best I could do.

I backed out onto the street, straightened the wheel, then glanced in through the gate. She was standing there on the morning lawn, with the red in the sky in the east and it began to rain again, softly. She just stood there holding her skirt up, drying her eyes with the edge of her skirt. As I drove off, she waved at me.

• • •

I drove over onto 4th St. North, and when I reached that, I took 38th St. and headed out on Haines Road toward U. S. 19.

On the main highway I started to open the car up, and was just rolling when I saw the cruiser up there.

Road block.

I made a U turn, braking hard, and the tires sang like a cage full of parakeets. I hit off on a macadam cut that led back toward town and pretty soon came to a dirt road I remembered might lead me out of this. There was the chance they didn’t have any block set up on this one. The only snag was, it would mean a big waste of time for me.

The road was in bad condition from what I remembered. It was full of chuck-holes and one of the worst accordion-pleated strips I’d ever driven on. It began to knock hell out of the car, and the rain came down, sifting out of the sky seemingly without movement, just there, for you to drive through and live in. The beautiful red tinge in the east had been snuffed like a dying candle. It was going to be another one of those fine gray days, where the early morning fooled you like this one had. Florida can sometimes do that —though so seldom, that if you’re in the right mood you can enjoy it.

I stuck to the dirt road, driving as fast as the car would stand. I paralleled the beach highway finally, came out on the macadam strip that runs through the orange grove country before you get to Clearwater. It was really morning now, and I sent up a little prayer for Janet’s safety. I was gambling all the time, taking a chance, and I didn’t like it. There had been a time when I used to say that was one of the big thrills in life—now it wasn’t anything at all. This particular gamble was hell.

I thought about Sam back there on the floor of our apartment, with his ear hanging by a strip of skin.

Once through Clearwater, I hit the dirt stretches again, winding along through the country, until I finally took the chance and made the cut toward U. S. 19 again.

The main highway was wet and there wasn’t much traffic. After a while, I began to relax a little. I opened the car up and there was no sign of any road blocks now.

• • •

At seven-thirty by the dash clock, I turned down the road that led to a fishing camp on the Talutchee River. Past the camp, I took to the dirt again, and finally, where the dirt road ended, secure in against the river and the jungle, was the old homestead where Janet’s mother had returned to live after her husband had died.

It was really the swamp South, in here. Or the river South, whatever. Janet’s father had made a lot of money and taken them out of here, but something drew the old lady back, finally, from where they had lived in Fort Meyers.

The house was a two storied, clapboard building, pretty much surrounded by jungle. Fake white columns had been erected on the small front porch, reaching to a small roof that came over the second floor front. The house was white and needed a paint job. The shingles on the roof curled a little in the gray rain. Rain dripped and splashed from huge oaks and cedar, and to the left of the house a giant, spreading banyan seemed to shower a rain of its own. The big leaves would fill with water and dump it one after the other.

As I got out of the car a few feet from the front porch, I could hear the water coming down from that banyan, much louder than the rest of the rain. Beyond the house, through a screen of small pine and turk’s cap, you could see the freckled surface of the river. Mists still clung to the water, and the mists obscured the bend past the point.

I went up on the steps and knocked.

After a time I heard feet shuffling softly along the inside hallway, and the door opened. It was Janet’s mother.

“Hi,” I said. “Thought I’d tag my wife up here, after all.”

“Why,” she said. “It’s Tate, isn’t it?”

“Sure.”

She started to smile, then put one hand up against the side of her face. Her hair was white, her faintly wrinkled skin pink. Her eyes showed abrupt shock.

“Son—what’s happened to you?”

I had forgotten how I looked. I shoved on in through the doorway and closed the door and breathed the cool, old atmosphere of the house.

“Where’s Janet,” I said. “Never mind me.”

“Janet?” she said. “Why, Janet’s not here.”