No Beast So Fierce (24 page)

Mary saw what I'd done, understood the meaning. “My car!”

“Hard times make hard people. I was up against the wall.”

“Why my car?”

“It was what I had available.”

She shook her head, resigned rather than angry. When we entered the kitchen, Jerry was at the table with a cup of coffee.

“Let us use the bedroom,” I said to Mary.

She didn't ask what we were going to do; she didn't want to know. She advised us, however, to pull down the shades. “There's a neighbor who peeks in windows.”

When we were in the bedroom, shades lowered, Jerry nodded toward the kitchen. “Seems like a good broad.”

“She's a thoroughbred all right. I could bust in here on fire from a murder and she'd hide me. She ain't evil either—no tramp.”

Jerry dumped the shopping bag on the bed. We separated the shotgun and robbery paraphernalia from the money, which lay scattered over the bedspread. Each of us began counting a separate pile.

“Twenty-six forty,” Jerry said.

“I've got twenty-eight hundred.”

“What about the change?”

“It's about a hundred. Let's give it to the broad?”

“That's fair.”

Mary interrupted us with a rap on the door. “Joey's here,” she said. “You guys hurry up.”

I pushed the rolls of change up under the pillow and put the shotgun back in the shopping bag.

When we went into the kitchen, Joey delivered my newspaper and cigars. I gave him a five-dollar bill and told him I wanted to talk to his mother. He shrugged—the price was right—and went outdoors.

“There's a pile of change under the pillow for you. Get rid of the wrappers.”

She looked at me and shook her head wryly.

“Don't you want it?”

“Sure. Do you think I'm crazy?”

We'd planned to stay at Mary's until noon when lunch traffic would give us additional cover. It was really unnecessary when we were traveling on boulevards that carried a thousand vehicles an hour and could be on any of a dozen roads and would be in a different automobile. Both of us fidgeted, anxious to be on our way, and so we left half an hour later.

Riding the freeway, the vinyl seat warm from the sun, a wisp of breeze spinning through the wind-wing, I closed my eyes and relaxed. The moves of the robbery went through my mind as a chess player might review a completed game. All in all, we'd moved with precision and teamwork. Recalling the face of the teenager confronted with the shotgun made me smile—but we should have brought extra tape. It hadn't caused a problem, but it could have. We might have had several persons in the office—and we should have considered someone walking in unexpectedly. Our margin of safety could have been shortened by several minutes if the boy had run down the stairs yelling.

Yet the robbery had been profitable in several ways. The money was the most important gain, but it had also been a good test. Jerry and I worked well together; he was a good criminal because he lacked the particular type of imagination which is subject to panic. Images of consequences would never make him shatter in a crucial moment. One thing was certain: we'd need better preparation hereafter. Everything has an unforeseen X factor, but in crime it must be reduced to the minimum. Winning almost every time is no good; a single loss cancels all the earlier victories. Boldness, all other things being equal, was usually an asset—but even the audacious had to be calculated with fine precision so that what appeared foolhardy was not really so.

“Where do you want to go?” Jerry asked.

“See a redheaded old pervert up on a hill. He can stash these guns and give me a ride. I'm going to buy a car this afternoon and send a telegram. I'm going for that dude up north. Where'll you be?”

“At home with Carol.”

“I'll give you a ring tonight. Man, I need some fuckin' sleep. This fuckin' benzedrine is killing me. I need rest and it won't let me.”

The Soto Street off-ramp was ahead. “Get in the right lane and go north on Soto. That's the quickest way to Red's.”

“I'll leave the .38 with you. I don't want Carol to see it.”

“I'll take it with me. Red can bury the shotgun until we need it.”

Cars whirred by us as Jerry slowed and eased up the ramp. It wasn't quite noon.

11

L&L
RED
had sold the merchandise from the pawn shop for seven hundred dollars and was overjoyed when I told him to keep half. He was willing to drive me to Miami, much less to look for an automobile. He buried the shotgun.

The car I bought was a black GTO, four years old, but cared for with devotion by a young man who'd been drafted, sent to Vietnam, and blinded by a booby trap. His parents were almost in tears when they sold the car, for it reminded them too vividly of the tragedy. I paid cash, got the owner's registration in hand, and never sent it in to the Department of Motor Vehicles. If something happened it would be another obstacle in tracing me.

It was late afternoon when I got the car and left L&L Red. I was totally enervated. I went back to the motel—stopping to send Aaron the telegram—and fell asleep fully clothed.

After midnight I awoke, went out to eat, and then, impulsively, turned the powerful automobile toward the highway north. There was a joy in driving it, feeling the force I commanded, seeing only blackness surrounding me and the white line racing before the headlights. I turned to a classical music station and let the sounds blow with wild volume.

By dawn the hills of San Francisco appeared. I was not sleepy, but I checked into the Fairmont Hotel, choosing it because it was the best in town—and reflecting that only the criminal can be in a two-dollar flophouse one night and a forty-dollar suite the next.

I napped for an hour and then went shopping, waiting while alterations were made. It wasn't the complete wardrobe I wanted, but it was a major improvement. I bought clothes for Aaron, too—and boxes of ammunition for the .380 and .38.

The GTO crossed the Golden Gate into Marin during the commuter rush; everything moved with excruciating slowness. Soon, however, the river of automobiles began draining away as the highway passed through the outlying Bay communities. The freeway opened, traffic flying, and I hurtled along. The towns became farther apart, with rural landscape between them, and roadside billboards announced the virtues of Reno and Lake Tahoe hundreds of miles away. Near dusk I turned off the superhighway into a state highway. The yellowed farmland became foothills and woods, greenery. The last pink glow left the sky at the same time that the back highway was swallowed into the immense forests of northeastern California. I stopped in a small town for a hamburger. Soon there were no more small towns, or billboards. The pine forest was an endless, motionless wall of blackness, melancholy and mysterious. The headlights illuminated bushes that seemed like hostile shapes rushing to meet the automobile—until the highway inevitably curved away and they fell back into the maw of darkness.

The map had told me the route and the distance, but not the road conditions. I'd expected a more tortuous drive than was the reality and reached the destination an hour ahead of time. The headlights sprayed over the public campground, deserted except for the sign; there was the leveled ground, the cinder block bathroom facility, a barbecue, and a litter of trash. I backed out and continued up the highway, driving slowly. The side road of dirt with the sign designating Calif. Dept. Forestry Camp, two miles, was a mile from the campground. It meant Aaron would have to run three miles through the forest.

I swung the car around and went back to wait. Instead of sitting in the automobile, I took both pistols, the ammunition, and a blanket, and moved thirty yards to the concealment of the forest. If Aaron was wrong about when he'd be missed he might be hiking through the woods while the authorities sped down the road. They'd certainly stop to examine an automobile, and question its occupant, forty miles from the nearest town. It was colder in the forest, but safer. I could remain unseen, millions of acres of sanctuary at my back.

Settling on the blanket and leaning against the rough bole of a tree, I fired a cigar and began waiting. Above the high boughs of the trees, which rustled every so often from a vagrant breeze, a quarter moon cast just enough silver light to give some shape to objects. The sweeping majesty of the night overwhelmed me with a sense of lonely insignificance. I had the utterly senseless urge to fire the pistols into the forest, watch them spit inches of fire into the indifferent night—an act of defiance. Sad thoughts came into mind, Carol in the hospital, Mary in poverty, my father in a grubby furnished room without a friend, and Aaron somewhere nearby in the forest, running from the hounds, running for the hope of freedom.

I finished the cigar and tossed the butt. It described a red parabola and landed in a mat of dry pine needles. They began to crackle and spark. Would it start a million-dollar forest fire? What did I care if the forest, or the whole world, became ashes?

The question of what I'd do became moot when the cigar butt went dead without igniting a flame.

Half an hour went by. I was wondering how long I should wait before deciding he wouldn't arrive. Just then he called my name, his voice coming from somewhere in the line of trees. He was calling to the parked car, its shape visible in the middle of the empty campground. He appeared twenty yards away.

A minute later the automobile's tires were squealing on the curves as we stormed down the road. Aaron slapped me on the back and squeezed my neck in a headlock of joy. It was by far the most effusive I'd ever seen him. Of course it was the first time I'd ever seen him outside prison walls, which could have had something to do with it. It isn't every day that a man serving a life term manages to escape.

“Say, man,” I said, “lighten up or you'll wrap our asses around a tree. Take this biscuit”—I handed him the .38—“and there's some clothes in the back seat.”

He accepted the pistol and scrambled to the rear to rid himself of the prison denim. “I knew I could count on you. Yet when I was running through the trees I wondered what I'd do if you weren't there.”

“There's ulterior motives. I'm talking you into bank robbery.”

“Bank robbery! You'd better talk cogently.”

“I'll talk shit.”

“That's cogency.”

Twin white-yellow orbs of headlights appeared ahead. Aaron crouched down, though it was impossible for anyone in the other car to see more than outlines. First there was the headlight glare, and the buffet of wind as the car passed. I watched the rear view mirror to see if the car began to turn. The GTO might outrun a highway patrol car especially when I was willing to take more chances for my freedom than they would for their pay, but it was impossible to outrun the two-way radio. If it was the highway patrol and they turned, I'd take a curve, slam on the brakes, and Aaron could dive into the brush. They were seeking a Negro. My identification could withstand on the spot examination.

The other car kept going, making the plan unnecessary. Yet I watched until we'd covered another twenty miles and turned on the superhighway—eight lanes—toward the south.

Aaron already knew from the grapevine that I was a fugitive. Rosenthal, or some other parole officer, might have told a parolee in jail—maybe trying to get information about me. The parolee went back to prison. The first few days he'd spend telling stories and answering questions: “I saw so and so; guy's doin' good.” Or, “So and so's old lady is hooked to the cunt.” Or, “So and so is out there snitching.” Or, “Max Dembo belted his parole officer and lammed.” Some other convict, going to camp, knew Aaron was my friend and told him.

“What happened to your good intentions?” Aaron asked.

“I was bullshitting myself. That's not me.”

“That's essentially true, but there's more to it. What happened?”

I told him in detail, the image of Rosenthal in mind, adding venom to the story. Self-pity crept in too; I told him the awful tension and endless fear that went with being a fugitive. “It's a bad way to live.”

“It's better to be fugitive from a cage than already in it.”

I then realized that I was complaining to a man who was taking his sole chance for freedom. If caught, it would be twenty years before he had another chance. And in the recess of mind that stores opinions without examining them, I believed he'd be caught—sooner or later. Eighty percent of the escapees are caught within a week; less than 3 percent last a year. I could think of only two who'd been gone five years or more. One was an Australian, who'd travelled extensively around the world before his imprisonment and so was uniquely equipped to get away. The second, though still officially missing, had been dead and secretly buried within three months of his escape. He'd become deranged, paranoid, a threat to his friends, and one of them had shot him in the head and buried him in the wilderness. The story was common knowledge in the big yard, and undoubtedly the authorities knew it too; but there was nothing they could do.

My own chances of remaining free were just slightly better than Aaron's. Yet being hunted was better than being caught. Death is also inevitable, but one runs from it, too.

The speedometer rested at seventy for hours. There were almost no automobiles. A ninety-mile-per-hour speed would have been safe, but some rural policeman might pull us over for speeding, and would be suspicious of a black and white man being together, especially so late at night. Aaron lacked identification. It could turn into something ugly.

Aaron had things on his mind. He'd anticipated that I'd have a place for him to hide, that I'd provide help beyond taxi service to town. He hadn't expected as much help as I was able to give—money, clothes, identification—and he hadn't thought of robbery, but he did need enough money to flee the country. He spoke excellent Spanish, and from his years of working in the prison's dental department (convicts drilled, filled, cleaned, did inlays) he'd become a sufficiently qualified dentist to be in demand in many backward parts of the world. His knowledge of electronics was also an asset (one I wanted for us). He was thinking of Central or South America. First he needed a passport and money.