1971 - Want to Stay Alive (16 page)

“I’m listening.”

“As soon as we’ve collected the money,” Chuck said, “we’ll take his car and beat it. There’s nothing he can do! Two thousand five hundred bucks!”

She remembered what he had said: When you get stuck with a crazy Indian, you’re stuck with something special. Okay, so suppose you get as far as Miami? What’s the good of getting to Miami if you land up with a knife in your guts or a slug in your head?

It was at this moment she ceased to care about death, pain, the police or anything.

What did it matter? What the hell did anything matter?

The lobby of the Excelsior hotel was crowded with tourists waiting with the patience of sheep for the bus to arrive to take them to yet another dismal hotel with another high sounding name.

None of the tourists looked at Meg as she crossed to the line of telephone booths. Booth No. 3 was unoccupied. She slid open the door, stepped in and felt under the coin box. The envelope, fastened by tape was there. She jerked it free and put it in her handbag. She made no pretence about faking a call. Precautions? She just didn’t care anymore.

She walked out of the hotel and across the boulevard, feeling the sun hot on her face.

She got into the Buick, opened her bag and dropped the envelope on Chuck’s knees.

“No trouble?”

She saw he was looking towards the hotel. She saw his small eyes were darting like the eyes of a trapped rat. He cared, she thought. He was frightened while she had lost all feeling of fear. That put her one up on him and she felt a small surge of triumph.

She watched him rip open the envelope, count the money and heard him suck in a quick breath. Watching him, seeing the fear, the greed, the immaturity on the suntanned face, the hopelessness of her future with him swept over her like a shroud drawn quickly over a dead face.

“Now the railroad station,” Chuck said. “Telephone booth 8. I can’t park there. I’ll drive around and pick you up.”

He drove down side streets to avoid the heavy traffic of the boulevard while Meg sat still, her hands between her knees, looking sightlessly through the dusty windshield of the car.

“Okay, baby!”

Her thoughts were miles away and it wasn’t until Chuck shook her arm roughly that she came out of her trance: a trance in the safety of the past.

She went into the station, moved through the crowds and to Booth 8 of a line of telephone booths. She collected the envelope, stuck under the coin box, then putting it into her bag, she walked to the station entrance and stood, waiting.

A minute or so later, the Buick slowed and she got in and Chuck drove away.

“No trouble?”

She again looked at his sweating face and darting eyes. “No.”

He whistled softly.

“Man! This is like picking cherries.”

He drove until he found a parking bay, then he pulled up. “Give.”

She handed him the envelope and while he slit it open, she watched the glossy, expensive cars drift by. She looked at the well fed faces: the women in their awful hats and the men with spider webs of broken veins covering their faces. People, she thought, who have security. Is this what security means: big cars, gross bodies, purple faces and flowered hats?

“We’re a thousand bucks ahead,” Chuck said as he put the envelope in the glove compartment. “You see what I said . . . a gold plated meal ticket?”

She nodded, scarcely hearing what he was saying.

From his pocket he took a scrap of paper that he had found in the bottom of the sack of oranges Poke had given him.

“Here we go . . . the Adlon hotel. Booth 4.” He set the car in motion. “The Adlon? That’s third right, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know anything?” Chuck snarled. “Do I have to do all the goddamn thinking?”

Ten minutes later, Meg came out of the Adlon hotel and waited until the Buick pulled up. She got in and Chuck, his eyes darting uneasily, drove away.

“No trouble?”

“No.”

“This coon really has a bright idea!” Chuck said and steering the car into another parking bay, he pulled up and slit open the envelope.

“One thousand five hundred,” he muttered. “Two more, then we take off.” He checked the list. “The airport this time. Booth C. Then the Greyhound bus station. Booth 6.”

Chuck found parking near the entrance to the airport. “Hurry it up, baby,” he said. “I’ll wait here.”

She walked quickly across the tarmac and into the busy lobby of the airport. She didn’t give a damn if anyone was watching her or not. She went to the line of telephone booths. A man was just coming out of Booth C. He glanced at her and she saw disapproval in his eyes. He was middle-aged with a neat potbelly and immaculately dressed. The kind of square she hated. She brushed by him and entered the booth. She didn’t even bother to close the door nor look around to see if the man was watching her.

She put her fingers under the coin box and felt metal. She stiffened, then felt again. There was no envelope under the box!

She looked hastily over her shoulder at the glass door. She had made no mistake. This was Booth C.

“Are you going to use the phone or are you sheltering from the rain?” a man asked sarcastically.

Another sleekly dressed, potbellied square, she thought as she left the booth. God! how she hated these successful bastards with their smug, know-all expressions!

She walked quickly back to the parked Buick and got in. “Okay?” Chuck asked as he started the engine.

“No.”

His hand hovered over the gearstick.

“What do you mean . . . no?”

“You said Booth C?”

“Yes you heard what I said!”

“There was nothing there.”

Chuck’s face turned vicious.

“Are you trying to gyp me, you stupid bitch?”

She dropped her handbag on his knees.

“Take a look. Go in there and see for yourself. There’s nothing in Booth C.”

Chuck shoved the handbag back to her.

“You go back and check every booth! There could be a mistake.”

“You do it.”

He slammed his fist down on her knee. Pain shot right through her. She hunched forward, her hands gripping her knee. “Get in there and check!” he snarled.

She got out of the car and returned to the airport lobby. Her knee hurt so badly she limped. Most of the telephone booths were occupied. Now, she didn’t give a damn what happened to her.

She opened the booth door whether anyone was using the booth or not, pushed the caller aside, felt under the coin box, then went on to the next booth. There was something about her white face and her staring eyes that silenced any protest.

It took her less than five minutes to go through all the booths and to make sure there was no envelope under any of the coin boxes. By now people were staring at her.

A large man wearing a tweed hat, with a cigar clamped between his teeth was in the last booth. He pressed back against the wall of the booth as Meg leaned forward to feel under the coin box.

“You lost something, chick?” he said with a wide grin.

“Not you, freak,” she said and turning, she hurried back to the Buick.

“Nothing,” she said as she got into the car.

“Hell! What’s gone wrong? Do you think some funk found it before you got there?”

Meg rubbed her knee which was still aching.

“I don’t know.”

“Is that all you can say?” Chuck snarled. “Five hundred bucks!”

He drove away from the airport and headed for the Greyhound bus station. During the drive he kept muttering to himself and every now and then he would pound his clenched fist on the driving wheel.

“You don’t give a damn, do you?” he said. “You stupid, zombie bitch!”

Meg said nothing. She leaned back in the seat, rubbing her aching knee, her eyes lost.

At the Greyhound bus station, Chuck saw it was impossible to park. He slowed and leaning across Meg, he opened the off side door.

“Booth 6 . . . get going. I’ll be back.”

Meg got out of the car and walked into the crowded lobby as Chuck pulled away.

A girl was using Booth 6 and Meg saw that she would have to wait. This girl had a face carved out of stone. She had long blonde hair and finger nails like claws. She was wearing expensive clothes and as she talked, she waved her hand that carried three diamond rings.

The girl continued to talk while Meg watched her. But after a while, she became aware of Meg and her hand began to wave less.

There was something about Meg’s stillness, her dirty sweater, her stained hipsters and her lank long hair that upset the girl’s concentration. Finally, she hung up, left the booth, making a circle as she passed Meg.

Meg went into the booth and into the smell of expensive perfume. She found an envelope under the coin box and she came out of the booth.

A young man in a turtle neck yellow sweater and white slacks, his long hair flopping on his collar, his sideboards making points to his chin, smiled at her.

“Treasure hunt?” he asked.

At one time a boy like this would have thrilled her. Now, she saw him only as a sex symbol and trouble.

She stared stonily at him and then went past him. She knew a man like this: clean, well off, romantic, handsome was lost to her. Walking away from him, to her, was like dying.

She gave the envelope to Chuck who opened it and checked that here were five one hundred dollar bills in the envelope.

“Two thousand,” he muttered, then thought for a long moment. He put the envelope in the glove compartment. “It’ll have to do. We’re getting out of here, baby. Two thousand is better than nothing. We’ll go back, pick up our things, then we’ll head for Los Angeles.”

While he drove to Paradise City, Meg stared out of the window, looking at the traffic, then at the bathers as they had fun on the beach, then at the fruit stalls as they reached the waterfront.

Chuck took the envelopes from the glove compartment and put them inside his shirt.

“Come on . . . let’s get packed,” he said. There was a nervous note in his voice. He looked at his watch. The time was 12.45. It had been a long morning. In another half hour, they would he heading along highway 25: Belle Glade, Whidden, Buckingham, Nocatte, then onto highway 17.

Two thousand dollars was better than nothing!

They walked along the quay, down the smelly alley and to their rooming house.

The fat Indian was behind his desk. He beamed at them as they went past him and climbed the stairs to their room. Two thousand dollars! Chuck was thinking as he followed her, plus the car. This crazy Indian wouldn’t dare squeal to the police about losing his car. Once they were on the road, they were shot of him and with two thousand dollars!

Meg paused on the landing.

“Well, go on . . . go on!” Chuck said irritably and stepping around her, he opened the door of their room.

Poke Toholo was sitting on the bed, eating an orange. As Chuck came to a standstill in the doorway, Poke spat an orange pip on to the floor.

“How much did you get?” he asked, his black eyes glittering.

***

It was while Meg was at the Greyhound bus station waiting for the girl with the diamond rings to finish her telephone conversation that Captain Terrell finally decided that an Indian called Poke Toholo was the Executioner.

Laying the last report he had been reading down on his desk, he pushed back his chair and lit his pipe.

“He’s our boy,” he said to Beigler. “Now we’ve got to find him.” The report from the Homicide squad had made the decision final. The squad not only had found in the cabin of the Welcome motel Poke’s finger prints that matched the prints they had found in the small back room where Poke had lived with his parents, but they had also found the unmistakable signs that a gun had been hidden under the mattress in the motel cabin. There was not only the imprint still to be seen in the floppy mattress but also gun oil.

To add to this, Poke’s description Mrs. Bertha Harris had given them matched the description Lepski had got from Dr. Wanniki.

Dr. Wanniki was over eighty years of age and his eyesight was failing.

Lepski got the impression that the doctor’s mind could also be failing. For minor ailments he was still in the running and the Seminole Indians went to him because their grandparents had gone to him.

“Poke isn’t a bad boy,” Wanniki told Lepski. “A little quick tempered perhaps, but then the young are quick tempered. Mentally sick?” The old man stroked his bristly chin. He had forgotten to shave that morning. Well, there are many people mentally sick. I wouldn’t say Poke . . .” He broke off and stared at Lepski uneasily as if a thought had struck him: a thought that hadn’t occurred to him before. “He did have a quick temper.”

Lepski questioned and probed but he couldn’t get anything else from the old man except a description that matched that of the man who had stayed at the Welcome motel.

“Well, we now know who he is,” Terrell said. “The motive beats me. Can it be possible this man killed all these people because an old woman called him a nigger?”

“He’s a nutter,” Beigler said. “He’s got a blood lust. He’s making the rich sweat. You never know what triggers off a nut.”

“Now we’ve got to find him.”

“Yeah.” Beigler had been doing his homework. “There are one hundred and fifty two Seminole Indians registered in the City,” he said, “and half of them look alike. The other half look like the other half except they are older. We’d better put out we want to talk to Poke Toholo: get it on the radio and TV and the press. Do you think the Mayor would offer a reward? That could flush Toholo out if the reward was big enough.”

Terrell considered this.

“These Indians stick together. Up to now this man doesn’t know we’re on to him.” He paused to light his pipe. “Once he does know he’ll go underground. I have the idea that right now he is feeling safe enough to be in the open, but once he goes into hiding, it could be one hell of a job to find him.”

“Not if the reward is big enough,” Beigler said who believed in the power of money.

“Our boys have been working nonstop for the past days checking on the Indians. What have they come up with?”

“Enough paper to sink a battleship.”