Nothing In Her Way (8 page)

I opened the window and then waited while my eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Two or three cabins up the line there was light pouring from a window, and I could hear a radio playing. When I could see a little in the faint light from the stars, I eased out the window feet first, and then lifted the bags out. I closed the window very gently and slipped away, angling a little to my right to stay clear of the highway.

It was slow going, dodging the clumps of mesquite and prickly pears, but I was in the clear and nobody had seen me leave. After about two hundred yards I swung toward the highway again. It was frosty and still, and in the cold starlight I could see the fog of my breath. I waited beside the road until no cars were in sight, then hurried across and into the desert on the other side.

It was about a half mile to the tracks. The suitcases were heavy, and I stopped once or twice to catch my breath. I tried not to think about Cathy. Every time I saw her I saw Donnelly swinging that murderous shotgun and I’d feel sick. I thought of Charlie and Bolton, safe in El Paso with $65,000 in their pockets, laughing probably, while I struggled through the cactus to catch a freight that might get me out of town before the whole thing caved in on me. Rage would come boiling up and take me by the throat. I’d done the job, and now they’d run out on me.

It didn’t make sense. Sure, they didn’t care what happened to me, but didn’t they have brains enough to know I’d talk if the police caught me? Talk? I’d scream. I’d sing like a nightingale. But then, what difference would it make to them? They’d be gone, and you can do a lot of traveling with sixty-five thousand dollars.

I set the bags down for a minute and thought about it very coldly. If I didn’t get caught, they were going to need a railroad ticket a lot longer than that.

When I hit the old work train, I swung around the end of it. I walked up to it about where I’d boosted Donnelly onto the freight, and ducked in between two cars. I set the bags down and flipped the cigarette lighter to look at my watch. It should be along in about a half hour.

It was a night that would never end. I sat on the suitcases in a dusty boxcar that rattled through cold darkness and then jolted and screeched to interminable stops every thirty or forty miles. When I couldn’t stand the cold any longer I’d get up and walk back and forth, swinging my arms and blowing on my hands. I ran out of cigarettes. I tried to keep the worry about Cathy from driving me crazy. The terrible part of it was that maybe I’d never know what happened. I had to run, and I couldn’t look back or wait.

I thought of Bolton. And I thought of Charlie.

Maybe it was the anger that kept me from freezing.

Just at dawn we slowed for the yards at El Paso. I tossed the two bags out and jumped. After I’d picked them up I hurried out of the yards. Nobody saw me. There was an all-night cafe open on the second street. I went in, ordered some coffee, and bought a package of cigarettes. I called a cab.

“Bus station,” I said when it came. The sun was coming up now. Maybe the bus and railroad stations were being watched, but I had to take a chance on it. There was no other way. I’d already thrown away the steel-rimmed glasses, which helped a little, and I was dressed differently than I had been in Wyecross. There weren’t many people around this early in the morning. I shot a quick glance around, ready to ease out, but there wasn’t anybody who looked like a plain-clothes cop. I checked the bags and went into the washroom to clean up a little and beat some of the dust out of my topcoat. I counted the money I had left. It was less than two hundred dollars. I had to get to Reno. Manners would give me a job, dealing dice. And Reno would be far enough away.

There would be a westbound bus leaving in an hour and ten minutes. I’d better not hang around the bus station, though, in case they were shaking it down now and then. I went out in the street and thought of Bolton and Charlie again and felt the rage take hold of me. There wouldn’t be a chance they’d still be here, but I went into a drugstore telephone booth and started calling the hotels.

After I’d called three I gave up. Even if they were here they wouldn’t be registered under their own names. The thing to do was forget them until I got out of this jam. I tried to. It wasn’t much good.

It was too early to get a shave. I went into a hotel coffee shop to try to eat a little breakfast before bus time. I’ve got to quit looking behind me, I thought. The way I was acting was enough to make a cop suspicious even if he’d never heard of me.

The waitress at this end of the counter was slow getting to me because she was working on an order a bellboy was waiting for. I started to get up to go out to the newsstand for a paper while I was waiting. Maybe there’d be something about it in the papers. Then I looked back at the waitress for some reason I couldn’t figure out. What was it? I saw it then. It was the order. It was the two halves of a Persian melon and a big silver pot of coffee.

What if the odds were a thousand to one against it? I didn’t even stop to think. I followed the boy across the lobby and into the elevator. When he got out on the fourth floor I went in the other direction, pretending to be looking for a number, until he was halfway down the corridor. I turned then and watched him. He knocked at a door and in a minute it opened and he went in. I walked past it and looked at the number, and went on around the corner. When I heard him come out and get into the elevator again I went back.

It was dangerous. It was a stupid thing to do. We were all wanted by the police now, and the surest way in the world to bring them down on us was to start a brawl. But there wasn’t room in my mind for thought. I knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” someone asked.

“Room Service,” I said. “I forgot...” I let it trail off.

The door opened a crack. I saw the baby-blue eyes and the pink jowls, and I shoved, hard. Charlie was still off balance when I got in through the door and I put a hand in his face and pushed. He shot back into the table the boy had set up. The whole thing crashed down.

I kicked the door shut and swung at Bolton. He made an agonized sucking noise as the fist slammed into his stomach, but he was tougher than Charlie. He dropped the cup of coffee he was holding and belted me. I shook my head groggily as I slammed back into the door. Charlie was trying to get up, tangled in a white tablecloth with his hand in the melon. Bolton hit me again and I went down. He was a terrific right-handed puncher. I saw the foot coming for my face and grabbed at it. I got an arm around the other leg and heaved, straining with all the strength I had left. He came down on top of me.

Somewhere in all the wildness I could hear Charlie crying in an outraged and quivering voice. “Mike! What is the meaning of all this stupid violence?” I rolled and got Bolton off me, and when he started to get up I hit him. The shock numbed my hand. I hit him again. Blood trickled out of his mouth. He swayed dizzily and fell backward onto the floor. He wasn’t knocked out, but all he could do was keep picking at the rug, trying to get a handhold on something to pull himself up. I was wild, and almost as groggy as he was. I stood up. Charlie was still trying to say something. I pushed him and he fell over Bolton.

I looked around. Their bags were all packed, standing by the door with their folded overcoats on them. In another few minutes they’d have been gone. Mexico City or Acapulco, I thought. I pulled a leg off the wreckage of the table and said, “All right, we’re going to have a meeting. We’re going to elect a new sucker.”

I didn’t get what it was at first. The next time around, I did. It was a knock at the door. I don’t know why I opened it, unless I was still a little punchy. My head cleared then, very fast. It was Cathy. She was just standing there, white-faced, and when she looked at me she didn’t say anything at all. She didn’t have to. When I looked beyond her I knew I had waited too long.

There were two of them and they were wearing white frontier-style hats and gun holsters, and one of them was holding her by the arm.

They came on in, pushing her ahead of them. They looked around, and then at each other, and grinned. “Well, this is a cozy little group,” the tall one with the pale eyes said. “Looks like His Royal Highness, Prince Charlie, and the one with the bent face must be Judd Bolton, alias Major Ballantine.”

He swung his eyes around to me. “Drop it, friend.” He meant the table leg. I dropped it. I couldn’t say anything.

“All right, boys, on your feet,” he said to Charlie and Bolton. “Shake ‘em down, Jim.”

The other cop came over behind us and patted us under the arms and down the sides. “They’re clean, Shandy.”

Charlie made a try at the outraged taxpayer. “I demand to know the meaning of this. And who is this young lady? I’ve never—”

Cathy turned on all of us, her eyes blazing with contempt. “You stupid, blundering idiots!”

Bolton lashed at her. “Why, you little fool! Why’d you bring ‘em here?”

“All right, all right. Simmer down, boys and girls,” the one called Shandy said. He was a great kidder, but none of it ever got as far as his eyes. “Keep an eye on ‘em, Jim, while I go through the suitcases.”

I collapsed into a chair and tried to light a cigarette. My hands were shaking. The whole thing was just a nightmare, and maybe I’d wake up in a minute.

Shandy had all the suitcases open and clothes scattered around on the floor. He grunted and came up with two big Manila envelopes. He took them over to the bed and emptied them. It was the money. There was a lot of it. “Let’s see that list, Jim,” he said.

The short cop passed it to him, and he sat down on the side of the bed with it. “If everybody was as sharp as that banker, we’d get these birds out of circulation,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “Hmmm. Here we are.” He lifted a bill out of the welter of currency and set it aside. There was terrible silence as he went on. “And here’s another one. Numbers match, all right.”

He looked across at Charlie and gave him that cold grin. “You should have stayed out of the sticks, Charlie, my boy. Looks like the wise guy slept in the hoosier’s barn.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Charlie said.

“They never do,” Shandy said. He turned to the other cop. “I better call in, Jim. Just keep ‘em happy, and don’t let ‘em sell you anything.”

He got up and walked over to the telephone on a table in the corner. He picked it up, with his back to us, and turned, watching over his shoulder. “Police Headquarters,” he said. “Boy, what a bunch of sad-looking wise guys!” Then he chuckled. “No, I wasn’t talking to you, Operator. Extension Two-seven, please.” He tapped a foot on the floor and whistled softly. “Hello, Sarge? Say, if you’re interested in buying some stock in a sausage mine or a Pepsi-Cola well, I think we can fix it up for you…What? Yeah…Yeah. All four of ‘em. It’s Charlie, all right. And Ballantine. We even got the girl. She was asking for ‘em at the desk. Yeah, the same one the motel man in Wyecross described. Redhead. The Caddy was parked right out in front of the hotel.”

Well, if it meant anything now, I thought with weary bitterness, that explained how they’d got her. She’d come by for me, after all. Just about ten hours late—after the roof had fallen in.

This was the end of everything. They had us dead to rights. Goodwin could identify the three of us without any possibility of doubt, and they had the money with the serial numbers. We didn’t have a prayer. Cathy was the only one who might beat it, with a good lawyer—if she kept her mouth shut.

And what would be the use in trying to explain who Goodwin was and what he’d done? The fact that he’d broken the law in some banana republic sixteen years ago wasn’t going to cut any ice with a judge. It didn’t excuse our taking the law into our own hands. That’s fine, I thought bitterly. It’s nice to think about now.

I looked up. Shandy had finished with the telephone and was talking to the other cop. He nodded toward Bolton.

“This guy’s face is pretty banged up, Jim. Maybe you better take him on in so they can get a doctor or nurse to patch him up. I tell you. You take him and Prince Charlie and start booking ‘em. Sergeant’s sending over a couple of men, and they ought to be here by the time you get down front. One of ‘em can go back with you, and the other one can come up here and help me finish checking this money and gathering up their stuff, and then we can bring in the girl and this other guy. How’s that?”

“Oke,” Jim said. “You want me to put the cuffs on ‘em?”

Shandy shook his head. “Nah. These con men never get rough. Give the hotel a break. Looks like hell, guys going through the lobby in handcuffs.”

“Yeah,” Jim said. He jerked his head at Bolton and Charlie. “All right, boys. Let’s go.”

They went out. I lit another cigarette and walked over to the window to stare out because I couldn’t look at her. I just couldn’t. We’d been so near to making it. If it had broken the other way...

“Mike,” she said behind me.

“I’m sorry, Cathy,” I said. I didn’t look around. Early-morning sunlight was golden in the street. I saw the three of them come out onto the sidewalk below me. The other two policemen weren’t anywhere in sight yet. The cop called Jim said something to Charlie and Bolton, and they walked over to a black Ford sedan parked at the curb. Bolton got in front, and Charlie got in the back seat. The cop went around and got in behind the wheel. I saw the exhaust fog in the chill air as the motor started.

And then the cop got out again. He came around the rear of the car and up on the sidewalk, apparently looking for the men from Headquarters. He must be stupid, I thought. It had become strangely silent behind me in the room now, but I still didn’t look around. I was fascinated with the idea of his going off and leaving Bolton in the front seat of the car with the motor running. Then it happened so fast I could hardly follow it. There was a scream of rubber, and the Ford leaped ahead into the street. It must have been doing forty-five by the time it passed the corner. The short cop ran a few steps after it, waving his arms and yelling. He could have saved his breath.

I heard something behind me, and turned. Cathy was sitting on the bed with the pile of bills in her lap, laughing at me. The cop called Shandy was laughing too.

There had been too much. I couldn’t absorb any more. I just stared at them as she counted out some bills and handed them to him. “Here’s his, too,” she said. “Five hundred each. And you can keep the guns.”

I sat down weakly and watched them. It could have been a play I was seeing. I didn’t seem to have any connection with it yet.

He quit laughing and was looking at the money a little hungrily. “That’s a lot of dough, Red,” he said. “Mebbe we ought to have a bigger slice.”

She quit laughing too, and the brown eyes became very cold. “You know what you’ll get a bigger slice of if you try to squeeze me,” she said. “Impersonating an officer is a penitentiary offense.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

He looked at her again, and must have seen the answer. “O.K., O.K. Don’t strip your gears. I’ll see you around.”

He was out the door by the time I’d digested what she had said about impersonating an officer. But he had called the station! I’d seen him and heard him. It hit me then. How stupid could you get? He’d had his back to us, and it was the simplest thing in the world to hold the other hand on the hook.

I was beginning to get up to date at last. Charlie and Bolton hadn’t double-crossed me at all. She just hadn’t come by to pick me up because she had other things to do. She couldn’t be bothered. She was too busy cooking up this act to double-cross them and take all the money. I could get out from under any way I could. I thought of the whole night in that boxcar sick with worry over what had happened to her.

She smiled. “I’m sorry I had to scare you like that, Mike, but...”

I got up off the chair and walked over to her. The whole room was going around in a dark whirlpool of rage. I reached down a hand and caught the front of her fur coat and yanked her up. I pulled her toward me and she looked at my face and tried to cry out. I opened my mouth, but there were no words. I threw her back across the bed with money scattering everywhere, and went out and slammed the door.