The Brat (5 page)

I could almost hear her laughter. How many times had she laughed at me during the last two years? With me not knowing it.

That’s what heat can do to you, Sullivan. That’s what she started that day on the wharf at Hager’s Point. She wriggled just right, and when you touched her, you died….

What was inside her? What was it you missed?

Hell, Sullivan. Hell. That’s what’s inside her.

I’d need some clothes. I wanted another look at the house. She wouldn’t be there—not her—but I had to know how far the Law was on this thing.

I kept breathing as if I were tied up, with somebody kicking me in the chest. Over the heart. I couldn’t stop breathing that way. I thought of the miles she was putting between us. It was black thinking.

Ray Jefferies’ dead body … Ed Fowler and my wife back in that bedroom. How in hell had they been able to face me. No, not her—him. She could do anything. I knew that now. Only how had she been able to say and do all the things she had. How long had it been going on?

What difference, Sullivan?

And I’d talked with Ed this afternoon. No wonder he hadn’t liked Ray Jefferies.

But how could you blame Ed? Because when Evis wanted her way, she got it. Sure. And what man could deny her?

T
HEY
were there.

It was like a carnival grounds, the way it was lit up. The bright yellow porch light glared out across the soaking front lawn. A harness cop leaned against the door of a cruiser by the curb, talking and waving one arm. Two cops stood on the porch. As I watched from the shrubbery-shrouded alley across the street, I saw a plain-clothes man hurry out of the house, skip down the steps, and walk fast toward the curb.

“Douse ‘em!”

All the windows in the house showed lights. Suddenly the lights went out, fast. The cops on the porch turned the porch light off and the door closed from inside. The cops ran down the porch steps and around the side of the house. The cruisers out front drew away. I watched them. They drifted quietly down to the middle of the next block, and parked just around the corner. They had a fine view.

A black and white cat moseyed across the front lawn from the house opposite and sat down on the front walk in a dry spot. The cat meowed plaintively, then began licking one paw.

It was beautiful, silent, peaceful. Not a sound.

All ripe and ready for Lee Sullivan.

Waiting for me to come home.

If I’d been a few minutes later …

I wondered if that would have been better?

I didn’t think along those lines for long. I had to find her and bring the money back. The only way I’d ever be clear was to find her. And I would, if it took me the rest of my life.

Turning, I stepped carefully back down the alley, close in against garages and a tall hedge of Turk’s cap. Finally I made the convertible, climbed in and drove off.

Suppose Ed Fowler talked her out of heading for her home in the ‘glades? What then? I started laughing, driving across town … then I thought for a minute I’d be sick, gagging with what was inside me.

Wouldn’t that be sweet? They’d be gone by now. They could have taken a plane already. Taxi to Tampa International, and from there … anywhere you could guess—just name it. Canada. Rome. France. South America. South Africa. Some quiet little thatched-roof village in Southern England. Any place there was a comfortable bedroom. There didn’t have to be pillows. She didn’t need a pillow—not with what she had.

Then when that part began to tame down a little—if ever—they could just travel.

They had enough money.

I wondered exactly how much?

Only she would fight to go home—if I knew her at all. And I had to take that chance. God knew, I’d been wrong about a lot of things.

I didn’t even have enough money for gas. I needed a different car, but wasn’t going to get one unless I stole it. So maybe that was how it works: one thing leads to another, until you are over your head, and don’t have a chance.

Stopping at a candy store in the suburbs, I phoned Mrs. Timothy. There was the chance the cops had already reached her.

“Yes?”

“This is Lee.” I said that much and waited. There was no wild reaction, so it looked all right. The cops could be there, prompting her, I thought.

“Yes, Lee?”

“I got tied up. Couldn’t get back to the shop this afternoon. Wanted to thank you for closing.”

“That’s all right. I know you’ve got troubles, Lee.”

Her voice was kind. It was good to hear. It was good not to be battling with somebody for the moment.

“I’ll need whatever cash we had on hand,” I said. “Did you take it home with you?”

“Uh-huh. I thought I’d better.”

“Swell. You did right. I hate to bother you—I know it’s getting late. All right if I stop by and pick it up? I need it right away.”

“Certainly. There’s only fifty-six dollars, Lee. Some odd change. Thirty-two cents, I think it is. I’ll check.”

“Never mind. I’ll be right over.”

In the convertible, I drove toward the south side of town. I’d have to take the chance, and leave by the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, rather than go around by Tampa. Mrs. Timothy’s home wouldn’t lead me far from my route.

On her street, I spotted the cruiser in the middle of the block. It was slowing in front of her house. I rode the brakes, pulling to the curb, and sat there. I had to have money, not much, but at least enough to get me down there.

The cruiser’s spotlight flashed on the house, brightly picking out the house number, then the beam faded out. A uniformed cop opened the driver’s door, hurried around the car and up the front walk. Something in his pocket jingled.

I was too late everywhere.

I turned down an alley, headed for the main road over toward the Sunshine Skyway. There was nothing else to do. As it was, time passed swiftly, and every minute was another mile between Evis and me. The half tank of gas in the car would take me part way, and I had nearly four dollars in my pocket.

On the Skyway Bridge, there were no questions at the toll gate. I broke every speed rule in the books. The gas pedal went to the floor and stayed there.

All the Law had to do was pick up a phone. Here I was, trapped on this bridge. The right word, and they’d have me. I slowed the car in abrupt braking waves and passed the regular highway patrol.

I tried not to think of her. Of what she was. And of what she had done to me. Of how she must look right now, eyes shining, heart yammering with excitement. Maybe even now they had stopped some dark place, trying to wear off a little of their heat in the back seat of whatever car they had. It was hell, just having to drive, racing through the night, hoping to Christ I’d find them.

And what then? What then, Sullivan? Alone, like this, you even talk to yourself.

It was a dark, star-studded night over Tampa Bay. Looking off across the lightly white-capped waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the right, I could think about Mexico and other distant shores; how maybe I’d never get to see any of them now. Or maybe that would be all I would see, for the rest of my life, running from what I hadn’t done. I had to find her.

I thought about her. And Ed. Back in my own home a week or so ago. Drinking beer. Talking. And I could remember very clearly her fine gestures that were so readable now. How they looked at each other. And I could feel a crazed jealousy I didn’t want to admit.

Bitch, bitch, crazy bitch
was piercing my mind like a knife.

• • •

On the outskirts of Sarasota, just beyond the town, I drew up to the curb in a well-wooded section, behind a Ford pickup truck. The truck was empty. Turning the convertible lights out, I sat there a moment, still thinking back and back … the soft lips, the way she’d snuggle up, the things she’d say, the way I’d feel when I saw her in the evenings with the whole world right and fine again, even knowing right then that she had the crazy streak in her, but denying it, because, after all, she was mine.

All right, Sullivan … And how do you get over that?

The street was quiet. I was one block over from the main highway. There were no lights in the houses along here, and the truck was parked beside a vacant lot. I started the convertible, eased alongside the truck.

Still quiet. A bird in a live oak began to cry.

I got out, left the engine purring, and rummaged in the trunk, finally found a knotted length of rubber tubing. The tubing had been there for a long while, back before I’d met Evis. I had used it for syphoning gas from a can into my outboard kicker. It seemed one hell of a long time gone.

I got the tubing into the truck’s tank, then jumped as a car beamed slowly around the corner a block down. The lights were bright on me. I dodged down, running in the shadow of the truck for the convertible. The car’s lights slowly slanted away. The car was just making a turn. It went off in another direction. I went back and drained the truck’s tank nearly dry, leaving enough to get the owner to a gas station. I had a full tank again.

I drove hard out of there now. I’d have to stick to the main route and take the Tamiami Trail, unless I wanted to cut over to the East Coast. That was out of the question. I had to make time; there was no telling how long Evis would stay down there once she arrived.

They’d have the Insurance Company on my tail. Florida law, the highway patrol, and all the rest would be out looking for Lee Sullivan in a hot blue Chevvie convertible.

Oh, yes—real hot. I could get barely seventy out of her. She shivered at sixty-five and smoothed out at seventy. Beyond that, she’d shake herself to death.

The one thing was, the Law wouldn’t know where I was headed, once I’d left town. They might even think I was holed up somewhere back there.

Evis and me. That’s what they’d think, wouldn’t they? The headlines would read HUSBAND AND WIFE TEAM UP ON ROBBERY-KILLING.

• • •

In Fort Myers I spotted a lonely Buick sedan. It had worked once, why not again? It was parked on a residential street, and I had my tank nearly full again when a big guy stepped out of a dark house nearby and ran at me.

There was no yelling. Just the pounding feet, the harsh breathing. He came running down across the lawn.

I went through the far door of the convertible, slid under the wheel and got out of there. He ran like hell down the road behind the car, still not shouting, just waving his arms.

I stopped half a mile away, capped the tank. The tubing was gone now. After that I sweated it out.

Twice I passed highway patrol cars. I kept driving, trying not to think about what she’d done to me. Only it was me, now—the whole thing was me.

Hagar’s Point was a small swamp and river town in the middle of nowhere. You slowly passed civilization going backwards, and then—poof!—nothing. Dirt streets. Jungle. Steaming fields on either side of the humpbacked road, with sounds coming out of them, sounds you’d never think existed. Discordant symphonies of mad screeching and hollering and bellowing and grunting and wallowing. Now and then, off somewhere, a bird screamed. Then that same damned bird would laugh.

The road that led to Hagar’s Point was a route you’d never find just by looking. It wasn’t there for anyone who didn’t know its exact location.

I drove across the river on the old corduroy bridge and passed the corners, then came down the main drag. It was ghost dead. A pack of accordion-ribbed hounds were spread out for about a block, all over the road, wallowing in the liquid, silvery dust and moonlight. I took it slow and they very grudgingly bellied out of the way and flopped again.

I passed the constable’s office, dim light coming from a grimy window in a small long-roomed building set under a cluster of scrub oak. I drove past the general store, and two ramshackle bars that hadn’t closed yet, then finally reached the hotel.

I stopped the car, dead tired, exhausted. It wouldn’t be too long till morning; another five hours and the sun would be up there, smoking through the vines.

The hotel was so old even the citizenry marveled that it was still upright. Its three stories, wing-boarded, the outside the color of sand from heat and rain and years and years without paint, circled with a broad gallery, stood about fifty yards from the river’s bank. You could see the river out there beyond the oaks, with white mists curling across the smooth, gleaming waters.

Evis’s folks lived further up the river. If Evis was there, she’d be here in the morning. I needed a shower, a half-hour’s rest on a bed. Then I could start—I’d still be making good time. The hours behind the wheel, knocking the hell out of that engine, were beginning to tell.

I started up the dirt path to the hotel—Hagar’s Point Hotel in black letters across a white sign on top of the front gallery. In the doorway, broad and glassed, I saw dim light far down the shadowed lobby.

I went inside, creaking across the boards, then the worn carpet, up to the desk. The place smelled of mildew and age, like a meal cooking in an open pot.

He was asleep on a cot behind the desk, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and string tie. He wore dark glasses. His hair was thin and the color of a dirty dust-mop. An old calf-bound book was propped up on his chest, but he was fast asleep and snoring between pale lips and gold-capped teeth. If there were three people living at this hotel, it would be amazing. Yet he never left the desk. Evis had told me about him. I’d never met him. His name was Hadland. Tollers Hadland.

I knocked lightly on the desk.

He came awake like a bird and almost flew away.

“Yes, sir! There, now! What—Oh?”

The book hit the floor. His feet hit the floor. He saw me, made a stab at the book, missed, his glasses fell off, he snatched them out of the air. He crept up to the desk, peering at me. His face was white, his nose a knife handle, his eyes like two fingertips rubbed in cigarette ash.

I told him I wanted a room with a bath.

It nearly cooled him for good.

Under control, he hooked the dark glasses over his beak, hauled a thick ledger from under the desk, flipped its yellowed pages open, dampening his thumb with quick flicks of a sick-looking tongue.

“Let me see, here. I reckon, yes—A bath, you say?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Reckon so. There must be—yes! Here we are.”

“You have a vacancy?”

He glanced at me. He must have seen something in my eyes. His face changed a little, then he smiled without moving his lips and spoke very softly, almost gently, looking down at the ledger.

“Yes,” he said. “There’s a vacancy. That’ll be two dollars for the night. Sign here, please.”

I signed. He gave me a key and told me the room number. I climbed the long, low, creaking stairs and found the room at the rear, on the second floor.

It was a large, high-ceilinged room, with windows from the floor to the curling frieze of plaster nymphs and rollicking brigands around the top of the wall. The lace curtains might once have been white. They were now dust-colored, like everything else.

I sat on the edge of the large, sway-backed bed. The bedding was fresh and clean. Getting up, I opened one of the windows and the wet night breathed into the room. A roof sloped to the right of the window.

Evis was out there some place. Maybe not far away. There was a sudden sharp feeling of hate, mingled with loss. I looked over at the bathroom, then slouched back further on the bed. A tub full of steaming water would be the thing.