Nothing In Her Way (6 page)

“Well, don’t crowd me out of my side of the bed,” I said.

“Stop grumbling, darling. Now, tell me about Goodwin. I mean, could you detect any curiosity at all when you met him out there at the rifle range? And don’t forget, never hurry him. You have to play it hard to get all the way.”

Progress report and pep talk in the moonlight, I thought bitterly as I lay in bed in the bleak cabin afterward. Vice-president making a swing through the territory to keep the district managers on their toes. Damn her. But what about San Antonio that night? She could relax and be human when she wanted to.

I cursed myself. That was nice. So I was finding out all over again all the things I’d learned in two years of being married to her and a lifetime of knowing her, and now they were big revelations. We were just going around again. She was a whirlpool I was trapped in. I ground the cigarette savagely against the ash tray and tried to get back to Goodwin.

It began to break faster than I had expected. Little things tip you off. You turn your head suddenly while walking along the street and find the two people you have just passed are staring after you and talking. You come in the door and a sudden hush falls over a group of three or four men enjoying some joke along the counter in the restaurant. You get a lot of innocent-sounding and thinly disguised questions along with simple transactions like buying a pack of cigarettes or picking up your laundry. Are you going to work here? How do you like our town? Good, healthy climate, isn’t it?

People were beginning to wonder what I was doing here.

And what in the name of God was in those boxes I mailed every day?

On Tuesday I mailed four of them. The clerk at the window smiled. “You’re our best customer,” he said, with a lame attempt at joking. “We ought to give you a rate.”

“Oh?” I said coldly.

During the week I dropped into the bank a couple of times to cash small checks, and both times Goodwin looked up from his paper work to nod and smile. And then, on Saturday, I got another break. Taking a chance he’d be out at the rifle range, I put two of the larger boxes in my coat pocket before I took off on my daily walk east of town. Filled with sand, they weighed over five pounds each.

Late in the afternoon I circled around to the rifle range. I was in luck. Goodwin was there, with two other men. I leaned my .22 against a mesquite and sat down to watch them. After a while Goodwin asked me if I’d like to try the gun again. Before I shot, I took off the coat with its bulging pockets and left it by the .22.

When the session broke up he offered me a lift back to town, as I had hoped. I put the rifle and coat on the back seat and got in up front with him.

“Well, how do you like our town?” he asked, as we wound through the mesquite on the little dirt road.

“Just fine,” I said. “It’s just what I was looking for.”

He didn’t ask me what it was I was looking for. I didn’t think he would. He was by nature rather reserved himself, apparently well educated, and had better manners than the town loafers and most of the other natives. He might be curious, but he wouldn’t pry.

“We’re trying to build up our rifle club,” he said. “How’d you like to join?”

I hesitated a little. “Thanks,” I said. “It sounds fine, but I’ll be frank with you. Those guns are a little steep for me right now.”

He nodded. “Yes, they are pretty expensive. But it’s a fine hobby, and keeps you out in the open.” He stopped suddenly, as if he’d said more than he intended.

I knew then it was beginning to work. He’d thought about me. And he’d decided it was health that brought me here, or rather the lack of it. The next thing, of course, was to make him wonder if that was it.

“Well anyway,” he said, “come on out on Saturday afternoons and take a few shots with this gun of mine.”

We were in town now, but he ran on out to the end of the street and dropped me off in front of the motel. I thanked him and got out, purposely not looking toward the back seat where I’d left the rifle and coat.

He started to drive off. “Oh,” I called out, waving my arm and running toward the car. “I forgot my stuff.”

“Sure thing,” he said. He turned around in the seat and reached for the coat, to pass it out the front window.

“No, that’s all right, I’ll get it,” I said hurriedly. I reached for the handle of the rear door, but let him beat me to it. He picked up the coat, and I saw his arm sag at the unexpected weight of it. Almost involuntarily his eyes swept down toward it, but there was nothing to see except the square outlines of the boxes in the pockets.

In a couple of days he invited me out to the house. For dinner, he said, and he’d show me his workshop, where he did his reloading.

He had a nice place, a big two-story house out on the edge of town about three blocks off the main drag. I met his wife. She was a young blonde who wasn’t as young or as blonde as she had been, but she was nice, and a wonderful cook. She did water colors, and she was a bullfight fan. I admired the landscapes she had done, and we had a good session with the corridas. I told her I’d lived in Mexico a couple of years, working for some company I never quite mentioned.

They had swallowed the idea by this time that I had come out here because my health had gone back on me, though we very pointedly never talked about it. I think they felt sorry for me. I knew, of course, that he’d also heard about the strange boxes I was always mailing, because everybody knows everything in a town of that size, but he didn’t mention them.

I let it ride along about a week, going out in the dunes every day with the little gun, and continuing to mail the boxes. They had me out to the house again on Saturday night for dinner, and to return the compliment I took them to the restaurant and to the movies. We were getting quite chummy. They liked me, and, oddly enough, I liked them when I wasn’t thinking about the thing he had done.

Cathy met me twice that week, but it was just the same old pep talk. She was wild to know how it was coming along, and full of suggestions as to what to do next.

It was near the end of the following week that I knew the time had come to let him have the stinger. I’d walked into the restaurant late one evening, and two men who were playing the pin-ball machine near the door didn’t see me come in. I passed close behind them and as I went past I heard one of them say, “It’s rabbit feet, I tell you. Don’t he spend all his time huntin’ jack rabbits? He’s got a friend in New York sells ‘em for him.” I heard them laugh as I went over and sat down at the counter.

All right, boys, I thought, I’ll clear it up for you. After I’d eaten I went back to the motel and started getting it ready. I got out the bottle of sulphuric acid I’d brought from New Orleans and mixed a little with some water in a glass jar to the approximate strength of battery solution. Then, taking out a cardboard box—one of the larger ones—I wet it along the corners and seams with the solution and let it dry. Filling it with sand I’d brought in during the afternoon, I wrapped it with paper, tied the parcel with white string, and addressed it, just as I had done with all the others. To finish it off, I put a drop of the acid solution on the string in three or four different places, let it set for a minute or two, and wiped it off. It was ready.

In the morning I waited until after eleven before I started downtown with it, to be sure he’d be in the bank. I had to handle it carefully. He was at his desk, and he looked up and waved as I walked in. I set it down on the edge of the glass-topped stand, got out my checkbook, and started to write a check, keeping my left elbow near the parcel and taking a long time to make it out. It’d be a lot more effective if he came over, though it would work whether he did or not I was in luck. He did.

I heard the gate in the railing open and close, and then his footsteps coming up behind me. I tore the check out, paying no attention.

“Say, Reichert, Mrs. Goodwin told me to ask you out tonight for some frijoles and cabrito,” he said behind me as he came up.

I swung around. “Thanks. That sounds—” I began, just as my elbow hit the box and knocked it off. “Damn!” I said explosively, and lunged for it. It was too late. It hit the tile floor, and the acid-weakened box came apart across one side like a dropped squash. Sand spilled out onto the floor.

He looked down, and wasn’t able to control the amazement on his face. Then he looked at me. I flushed and stammered something, and then bent down hurriedly and began trying to scoop the sand back into the box, as if trying to cover up while I thought of something.

“I’m sorry about the mess,” I said uncomfortably, when I stood up. “It’s—well, you see, my niece, back in New York, she’s bedridden. I was sending her this box of sand to—well, she colors it, you see, and uses it in a sort of Navajo sand-painting idea.”

“Oh, I see,” he said in a tone that meant he didn’t see at all. “Well, don’t bother with it. The janitor’ll clean it up. It’s too bad it broke, though.” He paused, then tried an embarrassed joke. “One thing about it, you can find plenty more around here.”

I managed a hollow grin. “Yes, that’s right, isn’t it?”

I went back to the motel with the remains of the box. It had gone off beautifully. He knew I was lying, of course. That was the most obvious part of it. And then, after an hour or so, he’d probably decide I wasn’t crazy, in spite of the way it looked. It would really begin to get him about that time.

Try it, pal, I thought. It’s not as direct as diluting a concrete mix, but it’s interesting when you work on it—and tricky.

I called up and begged off on the dinner date. I said I had a bad headache.

The next day was Friday. I didn’t go out to the dunes at all, or mail anything at the post office. Saturday was the same. I sat around the drugstore most of the time, reading all the new magazines. I didn’t even go out to the rifle range.

Sunday morning I decided I’d let him wait long enough, and I could try it. This time, instead of taking any boxes, I stuffed my pocket with about a dozen little cloth bags like tobacco sacks, a bunch of string, and some tags. I took the gun and walked east on the highway, the way I always did, left it before I hit the sand dunes, and circled to get into them some distance from the road.

This was a phase of it now that I didn’t have much control over. If I’d played it right up to this point, I should have him now. He should be ready to go along with me. I was doing something crazy, something he couldn’t figure out, and I was doing it on his land. The fact that it was his land and that I not only hadn’t told him about it but had actually lied about it should be enough to overcome his natural reluctance toward spying on anybody. If I’d guessed it right, it would be Frankie or Johnnie who’d let him know when I went out there again.

As I wandered around I kept watching the highway. Time went by and I didn’t see anything of him. After a while I began to worry. Had I bungled the whole thing? Hadn’t I made him curious as to what I was up to? If he wasn’t interested now, the whole thing was a fizzle.

In another quarter hour I was sure it had gone sour. And then I saw a car that could have been his coming down the highway. I watched it out of the corner of my eye. It went behind some scraggly mesquites growing along the fence, and it didn’t come out. I felt a tingle of excitement. We were getting him.

In a moment I saw the glint of sunlight on something near the end of the mesquites. I knew what that was. He had the spotting scope with him. It was a twenty-power job, and with it he could see what I was doing as well as if he were sitting in my lap. I began pacing, taking long steps like a man measuring something. At the end of twenty strides I squatted down, scooped up some sand, put it in one of the bags, and tied it. Then I fastened on a tag and made a show of writing something on it. Of course, he couldn’t see the tag, but it’d take him only a few minutes to figure it out.

I took twenty steps more and repeated the whole thing. I was going toward him all the time, but before I began to get near enough to scare him I turned ninety degrees and paced off the next twenty parallel to the highway. After tagging this bag and putting it into my pocket I made another right-angled turn, away from him.

He’d know now. Anybody with even normal intelligence could see what I was doing. I was laying out the whole area in an immense grid and picking up a sample of sand every twenty yards. It was completely systematic.

I went on two or three more laps and then sat down on a sand dune with my back to him to eat my sandwich and give him a chance to get away.

All right, pal, I thought, it’s up to you now.

I didn’t have long to wait. About four o’clock Monday afternoon Frankie or Johnnie came back to the cabin and said I was wanted on the telephone. I went up to the office. It was Goodwin, all right.

“Mrs. Goodwin and I wondered if you’d like to come out and try potluck with us this evening if you’re free,” he said.

“Oh,” I said hesitantly. “Uh—Thank you very much.”

“About seven, then.”

“That would be nice.”

I wondered how well I’d carry it off. This was tricky, and Goodwin was no fool. There was one thing in my favor, however, the same thing there had been all the time, and that was that there couldn’t possibly be any reason for my trying to kid him. He owned the land, didn’t he?

I dug the letter out of the bag, stuck it in my pocket, and walked over to Goodwin’s. The moon wasn’t up yet, and it was cold and dark and my heels rang on the sidewalk. Goodwin let me in, and we went into the living room. There was a nice blaze going in the fireplace. Mrs. Goodwin came in with some drinks on a tray and we all sat down.

I had to beat him to the punch, to make it look better, but I had to be sure he was ready, that he had figured it out. I was making a big show of being intensely preoccupied with something and under a bad strain. During the few minutes of small talk over the drinks I appeared not to hear half that was said to me and was always waking up with an “Oh? I’m sorry…Beg pardon?” I had something on my mind, and I was burning. They could see it. Or I hoped they could; I wasn’t too sure I’d ever win an Academy Award with it.

He waited until she left the room to see about dinner. The minute she was gone he put down his glass, lit a cigar, and looked across at me with a probing glance that meant business.

“There’s something I want to talk to you about, Reichert,” he said.

Well, here we go, I thought. I broke in on him. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you, too. I’ve been trying to make up my mind about it all day. I suppose you’d call it a question of loyalty to the people you work for, and just how far that loyalty is supposed to stretch before it breaks.”

“And who is it you work for?” he asked.

“Occidental Glass,” I said.

He made an impatient gesture with his hand, and swore under his breath. “That was the thing I never could get,” he said. “Glass. It was just so obvious, I guess, I couldn’t see it.”

I jerked my head up and looked at him. “Then you knew what I was doing?” I asked in surprise.

He smiled. “You’re probably a good engineer, Reichert, but you’ll never set the world on fire as an undercover investigator. You give yourself away everywhere you turn.”

“Oh?” I said uncomfortably. “Well, what I wanted to tell you was that I’m not working for them any more. I’ve sent in my resignation.”

“Why?” he asked.

“For two reasons. The first is that I couldn’t tell you what I’m going to, as long as I’m drawing their pay. But the big one is that they’ve backed down on a promise they made me. If this thing proved up and we built a plant here, I was supposed to have a free hand with the whole design, and I was to have complete charge of production.” I fished out the letter. Charlie had written it, and where he’d got the Occidental Glass Company letterhead only Charlie would know. “Apparently office politics got in the way.”

I passed it over to him. “Take a look at that last paragraph. They’re ‘very sorry, but...’”

He read it, glanced again at the letterhead, and handed it back. “It’s a rotten deal,” he said. “And I’m sorry, Reichert.”

I nodded, waiting. In about a minute he ought to get past my sob story to the real news. He did. His eyes jerked around to me again and he said, “But what about the plant? Are they going to put one up? Here?”

I stared at him, took a sip of my drink, and put it down, taking my time all the way. “If they don’t,” I said, “somebody else will. That’s what I wanted to tell you. You’ve been a good friend since I’ve been here, and after the deal they’ve handed me I don’t see that I owe them enough to help them hand you the same one.”

“You mean—that exploration work you did, it proved up?”

I nodded. “You can just about name your own price for that sand deposit. Within reason, of course.”

It’s just as Charlie says. No matter who they are, the minute you dangle the big money in front of them they begin to get the fever. Anybody will go for it, if you make it look right.

“Are you sure?” he asked, trying to keep down the excitement in his voice. “I mean, it looks like any sand.”

“They didn’t want it back at the lab just to look at. If they wanted to look at sand they could go out to Coney Island.”

“Then the lab reports were good? But why? I mean, what makes it valuable?”

“It’s technical,” I said. “But what it boils down to is a question of purity; that is, the ratio of silica to foreign matter and undesirable grit, dust, organic matter, and so on. They’re working on a new line of high-silica glass—that’s the stuff with the low coefficient of expansion—and this sand of yours out here is made to order for it. Of course, it isn’t pure silica, because sand deposits like that don’t exist, but it’s so near it’s unbelievable. They’ll go plenty high to get it.”

He was leaning forward, staring at me. “How high do you think they’ll go?”

“They’ll cry, but you can get a quarter of a million for it.” He whistled. “My God, Reichert.” Then the businessman began to take hold again. “But why did you tell me? I mean, what’s your deal?”

I shrugged. “No deal. I don’t like what they did to me, and since I’m not working for them any more, I’d like to see you get what it’s worth. Of course, I’m not implying they were going to steal it from you, or anything like that, but they probably won’t offer over fifty thousand until you make them come across.”

“Well, don’t think I won’t remember it. I mean, if it comes off and I get anything like that for it. But do you think they’ll try to get in touch with me?”

“Of course,” I said. “And it won’t be long. I’ll tell you why. My resignation’s already in the mail, and when they get that they’ll be out here as if their clothes were on fire. You see what I’m driving at? There are several things I could do. I could buy an option on the land myself. Or, what’s more likely, since I don’t have that kind of money, I’ll go to work for some other glass company, and let them in on it in return for the job Occidental was supposed to give me.”