1965 - The Way the Cookie Crumbles (24 page)

The traffic ahead speeded up and Jess changed from second to third. Ahead of him he saw the traffic lights. He wondered if he could beat them. The car ahead of him suddenly surged forward, leaving him behind. Jess couldn’t resist shoving down on the gas pedal. As he did so the lights five yards ahead turned red.

Cursing, he slammed on his brakes and skidded to a standstill, a yard over the line. Then before he could reverse, he was thrown forward with a sickening shock as a car behind him crashed into the back of the Ford.

Jess turned in his seat, snarling with fury. He could see the driver, a fat, elderly man getting out of his car. Then he heard the sound he most dreaded - the sound of a police whistle.

His heart suddenly hammering he snatched the automatic from his hip pocket with the intention of hiding it in the glove compartment when a hard, cop voice bawled, ‘Hold it!’

He looked up. A big red-faced policeman was staring at him through the off-side window. He had come up without Jess seeing him. The cop already had his gun in his hand and he was pointing it at Jess.

‘Put that gun down!’ The cop said, steel in his voice. ‘Quick!’

Half blubbering with fear and rage, Jess let the gun drop on the car seat and he held up his hands. His door jerked open and another cop grabbed him and hauled him into the street.

Car horns were sounding.

People were pausing and staring.

‘Watch him,’ the other cop bawled. ‘He’s just ditched a rod!’

The red-faced cop grinned and slapped Jess across the face, sending him staggering. Then he reached out arid before Jess knew what was happening, handcuffs were pinching his wrists.

He felt the packet of money he had stuffed inside his shirt shift and before he could stop it, the money began to spill out onto the road.

‘Hey, what do you know?’ The red-faced cop exclaimed, his eyes opening wide. ‘This punk is bleeding dough!’

* * *

Ticky Edris opened his eyes. The pain in his head was so bad he let out a low, whinnying moan. He lay still, trying to remember what had happened, then he remembered.

It took him several long painful minutes to sit up. He held his aching head between his stumpy hands until his head began to clear and the sharp gnawing pain subside.

He pushed himself to his knees and then up onto his feet. He took two staggering steps forward. His left shoe squelched in the drying pool of blood from Algir’s wound and he shuddered, trying to wipe his shoe clean on the carpet. He moved on as if fifty years had been put on his life during the half hour he had been unconscious. He reached the cocktail cabinet, opened it with an unsteady hand and grabbed the bottle of whisky. He took out the cork, letting it drop on the carpet and raised the bottle to his lips. He drank long and steadily, feeling the spirit fan through his body, giving him back warmth and life.

Gasping, he set the bottle down and patted his hip pocket. He knew it was a useless gesture. The money was gone.

He walked unsteadily into the bathroom and bathed his head and face. His mind was too numbed to work. He stood looking at himself in the mirror and he felt his heart shrink at the sight of himself. He looked like a little wizened old man moving to his death. He looked as if he could die in a very few hours.

He turned away and returned to the living room. He picked up the whisky bottle and took another long drink. He belched as he sat down in his miniature armchair and put his feet up on the foot stool.

There would be no boat now to Mexico, he thought.

Without money, Ticky, old buddy-boy, you’re sunk. May as well face it. No good running away. No good making any more plans. You’re in the deep, deep hole and you’ll never get out of it.

He looked over at Algir and his lips came off his teeth in a snarl of hate. Just because that dead lump of nothingness, that flash dumb sonofabitch was too stupid and too lazy to have buried a body deep enough. Just that - only that to foul up the sweetest set up for the Big Take ever dreamed up.

Edris drank a little more whisky. He was drunk now: drunk and sorry for himself. He began to cry, tears flowing down his shrivelled face while he gently beat his stumpy hands together.

Beigler and Hess found him like that, still crying, when they burst into the apartment some twenty-five minutes later.

Ticky Edris went with them without any fuss. What did it matter? he said to himself as he stumped down the steps to the waiting police car. What did anything matter now? You made plans; you played your cards right, then some slob spoils it all.

‘It’s the way the cookie crumbles,’ he said half aloud as he got into the police car, and because he was so very drunk, he put his stumpy hands over his face and began to cry again.

* * *

Dear Mel,

I can’t call you daddy any more, can I? This is just to
say goodbye and to say I am sorry.

I don’t expect you to believe me, but I honestly didn’t know they had killed your daughter. They told me she had died in a drowning accident.

I know I shouldn’t have taken her place, but there are
so many things in my life I shouldn’t have done. I did get a lot of happiness with you. . . it was a funny sort of happiness which I knew all along couldn’t last.

I’m going for a swim now. I shall go on swimming until
I can’t swim anymore. I hope, by doing this, I’ll save you from getting too involved in this mess. I would like to think you will miss me a little. I am glad about Joy; she’ll make you happy and you’ve earned it.

So goodbye, and please try to believe I really wouldn’t
have done it if I had known about Norena.

Love, Ira.

She put down the ballpoint and read the letter through.

She was in the beach cabin and she had on a white bikini that made her skin look more bronze than it was. She was very quiet and unemotional as she put the letter in an envelope and sealed it. She wrote Devon’s name on the envelope and propped it against a flower vase on the table.

She stood up, looked briefly around the room, then walked out into the hot sunshine.

In the far distance, she could see people bathing, but they were too far away to worry her. With long, easy strides, she walked down to the sea, her head held high, her mouth firm, her eyes dry. She walked into the sea and began to swim with powerful strokes that took her swiftly away from the land, and the new way of life that she had found but that wasn’t for her.