The Crossroads (17 page)

He followed her into the vault and got the box. She showed him where to take it. It was just as Sylvia had explained it to him. A hushed place, narrow aisle between the cubicles, soft dark-green rug. You couldn’t see down the aisle from either the front desk or the vault. Somebody had to be coming or leaving to catch you.

He sat in the small booth and lit a cigarette. He missed his watch badly. Get one as soon as they were free and clear with the money. Get a damn good one, one of those things about the same size and thickness as a silver dollar. Solid gold with a solid gold wrist band. Initials on the back.

Stay in here a long time. Get her used to it. Half to three quarters of an hour every time at least. Come here three times a week. And sit. He inspected the safety deposit box curiously. It would hold plenty of cash. Funny, a girl like that thinking of a deal like this.

He heard somebody pass his booth, breathing asthmatically, shut themselves in a booth, clunk their box on the small counter. Sounds carry pretty well in here. Too damn well. Be careful not to give the old guy a chance to yell. He clicked open the dispatch case. The padded piece of pipe was wrapped in a dirty piece of toweling. He transferred it to the safety deposit box. Good place for it.

How the hell long have I been here? God, she’s a good piece. Break your back if she tried. But there’s thousands as good. And they drop right out of the trees if you have the money. Get across the border and ditch her. Get it steady and get a lot of it all the way down. Remember what Roagen was telling you that time? About if you had the right contacts, and the girl didn’t have anybody who’d make a big stink with the government, and if she was young and stacked, and you had the contacts down there, you could sell them for a good price, to guys who knew how to keep them in line. Take their identifications away from them. Blondes were easier to unload. Roagen said if you ever checked it out to find out how many broads between twenty-two and thirty disappeared without a trace every year, in Mexico and Cuba and the islands, it would curl your hair tight. Maybe Roagen had been piling it on with a shovel. But he said it was an international kind of thing. They run them down through the S.A. circuit, maybe a couple of years. By the time they’re beat down, they get shipped out to the Orient or the Middle East, and work a crib in Cairo or Calcutta or Shanghai or one of those places. By then they wouldn’t come home if they could.

Roagen had the contacts all right. He explained the whole deal that night. He’d been working for some pretty big guys in Nevada and L.A. He said somebody’d spot some cute crazy kid and bird-dog her for one of the big shots. She’d get maybe a year of minks and ringside tables, then they’d start passing her down the line. When she began to get in everybody’s hair, somebody would take her on a little vacation to Mexico. Roagen said he’d done it a few times. They never came back. Depending
on condition, they were worth from five hundred to twenty-five hundred bucks. They gave you a couple of pills to stick into a drink. By the time they woke up they had new friends, and they were a long holler from any Mexican cops, even if you could get one to listen.

Sylvia wasn’t any blonde, but she was going to turn into one. From what she said, her own family didn’t know where she was and didn’t give a damn. And after this deal, the Droveks wouldn’t give a damn either. If you could make the right contact, she maybe would bring a good price. And, as far as her ever getting back to the States and shooting off her mouth about who slugged Papa, it would be just as effective as killing her.

How long have I been here now?

Roagen always had a lot of things working for him. He didn’t overlook a thing. I’ve got to play this like Roagen. Go over it in my mind so many times that when it comes along it will be automatic. Maybe she’s planning how to cross me up. Can’t tell what she’s thinking. Don’t give her a chance.

When he left he was surprised to find that only twenty minutes had passed. He walked to his car, moving swiftly, face turned from people walking toward him. He stopped on a quiet street, put the cotton and glasses in the dispatch case along with the deposit box keys. He put the necktie in his jacket pocket and the hat on the seat beside him. He shifted the rear-vision mirror, peered into it carefully as he combed his hair. He grimaced, showing himself his even teeth.

It hadn’t been tough at all, he thought. Not so far. Done everything just right. Careful about everything, even thinking up a name to use. Thought of some pretty good names. Gregory Gable. Clark Armstrong. And then I got smart. Every little delay is going to help. Thought of somebody who has a beef against the Droveks. Couldn’t remember his last name. Had to ask around in a smart way until I got it. Heard he’s still in the area. It may give us an extra hour or two, while they hunt up the guy they think rented the box and sapped Papa. Mark Brodey. He has a beef. They fired him.

On the following Friday afternoon at two o’clock, following Glenn’s third uneventful visit to the bank, Glenn and Sylvia met in the last row of a second-run movie house six blocks from his rooming house. No one was sitting near them. Glenn risked lighting a match to look at the small crude map she had drawn for him.

“You better drive out and take a look at it so you’ll be able to find it all right.”

“Okay, okay. I can find it all right.”

“I’ll be waiting for you, honey.”

“With your car, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Make sure it’s gassed up good, running right. I might have to push it pretty hard, baby.”

“All right.” Her fingers closed cold on his wrist. “I won’t see you again until it’s over.”

“Why the hell not?”

“It’s too much risk, honey. Honest. When it’s over we can be together all the time.”

“You’re nuts about me, huh?”

“I’m crazy about you, honey.”

“You got the number to call me at that I give you?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I’ll answer; maybe somebody else’ll answer. Be sure. It’s a pay booth in a saloon. Be sure you got me before you say anything. Nick opens at nine. I’ll be there from nine on.”

“Don’t get drunk, honey.”

“The way I’m going to feel, forty drinks wouldn’t touch me. But I’ll take it real easy. Just a couple of shots. For my nerves. Remember, if somebody comes along the wrong second, we’ll have to wait a month.”

“I know.”

“And that means I don’t see you for all that time too?”

“Maybe we could figure something out. Something safe. I got to go, Glenn.”

He held her, kissed her, ran his hands over her body until his breathing was shallow and fast. She pulled away from him, whispered goodbye and left him there. He sat
through another half hour of space opera and walked out into thunder and a heavy rain.

On Saturday morning, using the map she had given him, he drove south on 71. Three miles beyond the city limits he turned left at a light and drove two miles over to State Route 118, a two-lane asphalt road that headed roughly southeast. Twelve miles from where he had turned onto 118 he slowed down and began looking for the collapsed barn on his right. He found it, a great pile of gray boards and timbers, with one angle of the roof sticking about ten feet up into the air. A hundred yards beyond it, on the right, he found the turnoff she had marked. But a farm truck was coming, so he drove right on by. When the road was empty again, he found a place where he could turn around and head back. When he reached the turnoff, the state road was empty. He turned off quickly. It was a narrow gravel road that made S curves between high banks. Grass grew tall in the middle of the one-lane road, and he was not pleased to see fresh-looking grease that had rubbed off the underside of cars onto it.

Three hundred yards from the state road, the road ended in a rude bowl set in the small hills. The far banks were cut steeply away, but vines had begun to cling to the raw earth. He saw that it had once been a gravel pit. But now it was filled with deep blue water riffled slightly by the morning wind. The road slanted right to the edge of the water. He backed around so that the car was heading out, turned off the motor and got out.

He soon found out why the winding road showed recent signs of use. He saw where cars had parked, saw the great quantity of beer cans, ranging from shells of rust to gleaming newness, saw the litter of empty cigarette packages, the broken and unbroken pint bottles, and the latex spoor of roadside love. A hidden place, where they’d come at night, but not during the day. He stood and heard the bugs in the grass, and heard a noisy car clatter by on 118. When the sound had faded away he broke a long branch and tested the depth of the water. It seemed to shelve off deeply, but he couldn’t be
sure until he had taken off his shoes, socks and trousers and waded out a little way. Ten feet from shore it was at least fifteen feet deep. Probably more. The water was unusually icy. He guessed the pit had been abandoned when they had broken through into water-bearing strata. Finally, reluctantly, he stripped down, waded in again, swam out about twenty feet and dived. He could not reach bottom. He surfaced, gasping, swam to shore and came out, shivering. The sun soon warmed him and dried his body.

He grinned. She knew what she was doing. It made the whole thing look better. Give the Ford a good start and it would tuck itself right down out of sight. And off they’d go in the Chev, wearing the Florida plate he’d smuggled into the Ford and had hidden under the rubber floor mat in front on the right side. He took a last look around. Brush grew tall about ten feet to the left. He kicked a beer can into the pond. It floated, one third out of water. He threw rocks at it until it sank.

He drove out, turned right and drove on down to the junction of 118 and the River Road, turned right again and came out onto 71 five miles south of the Crossroads and turned north. No point in going back to town. Eat at the Haven. Check in early on the job. Big deal for Marty.

EIGHT

During the first twenty-two days of July the Crossroads Corporation experienced the normal seasonal change in the character of the business. Summer vacationers clogged the roads. The young families stopped at the restaurants and gas stations and motels. The young husbands, with fourteen days, or twenty-one days of freedom, spent it abrading their souls against the shimmer and stink of fast traffic, counting each night the thinning stack of traveler’s checks. The young wives put on pretty
summer skirts and blouses in the morning, and by ten o’clock were stained, wilted, wrinkled and rump-sprung, the victims of the attrition of summer heat, sticky hands and road fumes. They called their husbands
darling
with iron emphasis. Small, weary, windburned children whined and threw up. The young families visited dear friends they had not seen in three years, and found nothing to say to them. They visited the showplaces of the nation, made the proper dutiful sounds of appreciation and found them a litter of gum wrappers, bored guides and the ill-mannered children of the other young families. They careened down the endless stone rivers between the bright thickets of billboards. Virginia Beach was where Junie thumped Russell on the head with a rock. Three stitches. The Suwanee River was where the trunk compartment lock jammed. The Grand Canyon was where Baby broke Mummie’s glasses. Franconia Notch was where Tiffin got into the poison ivy.

Tires burst. Speedometer cables squeaked and died. Pebbles chipped windshields. Pets escaped (
You were the one hadda bring that goddam dog in the first place
.) Fan belts snapped. Ten billion pieces of Kleenex tumbled along the dusty shoulders.

Of all the young families a remarkably small percentage, statistically speaking, were crunched into bloody ruin.

At the Motor Hotel Restaurant the proportion of Kiddie Dinners served increased greatly. At both the Motor Hotel and the Midland Motel, loss and breakage increased in a predictable percentage. Marty Simmons had to arrange to have the gas station washrooms cleaned at more frequent intervals and the concrete aprons hosed off more regularly. Each day the Motor Hotel was generally full by four-thirty, the Midland loaded by five. And still the vacationers flooded through, a certain flavor of desperation visible in the eyes of the young parents. It was easy to fall behind schedule. And everything cost more than you had planned. And if it doesn’t stop overheating, Melvin is going to go out of his mind.
Please
stop wiping your hands on Mummie’s skirt, darling. They’ll have a table for us very soon now.

In addition to the normal seasonal change, Chip Drovek was aware of a continuing and potentially more significant change. New small houses were going up on the hills east of 71 at the rate of about thirty a month. Shopping Center traffic was increasing. An intricate boulevard traffic control light system was proposed for the big corner at the north end of the Drovek land, just beyond the shopping center and the drive-in movie. And, without warning, the state cut the speed limit for the whole area, from a spot a mile south of Truck Haven all the way to the Walterburg city limits, to forty miles an hour. That, he knew, would inevitably mean a certain reduction in the number of long-haul trucks stopping at the Haven. They would find faster alternate routes. And it slowed the tempo of the familiar sound. There was a new laziness about it. He judged that the average speed of through traffic had dropped from about fifty-five to about forty-five. The Crossroads was still basically a highway operation, a tourist business. But the focus was changing. Eventually it would become merely a suburban marketplace, attracting local money. He hoped his planning could keep up with this change, that they would give him an ample number of transitional years before a new bypass route was constructed.

During the first twenty-two days of July there were the expected number of incidents. John Clear fired a bus boy who bored a peephole through one wall of the female employees’ washroom. A motorcade containing the governor of the state, escorted by sirens, stopped at the Motor Hotel Restaurant and the politicos had lunch in the private dining room. A semi-alcoholic editor of a large housewife magazine stopped at the Motor Hotel with her most recent young male editorial protegé, and, after posing several operational problems for the staff of the Starlight Club, managed to back her Chrysler convertible into the Motor Hotel swimming pool, after first churning through a flower bed. It landed upright in the shallow end. The first people to run to the side of the
pool found the lady sitting behind the wheel, hip deep in water, vainly trying to start the car while she used language that could well have wilted those flowers she neglected to squash. While seeing a double feature at the Crossroads Drive-In Theater, a local man got out of his car, told his wife he was going to buy cigarettes, and was never seen again. The wind flipped a long board off a southbound lumber truck. The board struck, butt first, against the windshield post of an old Pontiac, driven by a Georgia carpenter named Rumsey, which had just swung out to pass the truck. One long splinter pierced the windshield and the center of the carpenter’s throat. He drove over onto the shoulder, stopped his car, turned off the motor and finished bleeding to death, wearing an expression of utter indignation. A thief broke into three cars parked outside the Midland Motel. There was a small fire in the laundromat which destroyed two dryers before it was extinguished.