A Moment to Prey (13 page)

    My gaze moved to Lily on the bed. The emptiness spread through my stomach. The time moved slowly in the dimly lit room. Whenever there was a sound in the scrub, Marve would run to the door and stand there listening. Finally about midnight he closed and barred it. He let down the wooden window cover and locked it. The only air came through the rips in the cypress shingles.

    Silence pressed tight against the walls of the cabin. You could feel the pressure of it inside that one room.

    Marve's head slumped. I went tense, watching him.

    He jerked his head up laughing.

    "Don't get any ideas, Jake. I wouldn't think of going to sleep. You're my company."

    "Go ahead. Go to sleep, Marve. You'll sleep so good. Such a nice long sleep. Don't worry, Marve. I'll take care of everything. Your money, your girl. Why, Marve, I'll even let old Bull out of his pen for you."

    "You're a funny boy."

    I kept my voice low. "No. I just want you to relax, Marve. You must be tired. The way you carried on in that bed, you must be dead for sleep. Sleep, Marve."

    He stood up abruptly. He worked his eyes open and shut half a dozen times, wiped his hand across his mouth.

    He walked over to the bed. He shook Lily until she woke up.

    "Get up, Lily."

    "What's the matter?"

    "Nothing. I want you to do something."

    She got out of bed obediently. He returned to his chair. He sat down and motioned for her to sit on the floor at his feet. She smiled, anxious to please him, frantic to make him forget his jealous rage.

    "Jake boy thinks I'll go to sleep, Lily. But I won't. You're going to keep me awake. Love me, Lily. Show old Jake the nice things I've taught you about loving me."

    She nodded, pressing close against his legs.

    I wanted to close my eyes, I wanted to get out of there. But I felt Marve watching me, laughing at me. If I let him see what it did to me, he'd really make it hell.

    "That what he taught you, Lily?" I kept my voice casual, even through the lump in my throat and the spreading sickness.

    "That's right," Marve said, "show him, baby."

    "Must be something he read in a book, Lily," I said.

    She pressed closer, frantic as though deathly afraid of my voice.

    Her excitement was getting to Marve. He moved his hands through her hair.

    I raised my voice. "Sure. A book, Lily. Up North the girls didn't care much for lover boy. He couldn't even beat them and make them go out-"

    "Shut up!" Marve leaped upward, and Lily sprawled back on the floor. She pulled herself up, dosing her arms around his legs.

    "It don't matter, Marve," she said. "It don't matter. Don't let him rile you, Marve. Please, Marve."

    "Sure." He nodded, his mouth twisting. "I keep letting you get under my skin, Jake. But that's about over."

    She pulled herself up close to him. He moved his hands in her hair, and the excitement inflamed him. He bent down, lifted her in his arms, carried her to the bed.

    He dropped the automatic on the bed beside them again. I saw the rifle on the floor beside it. He had forgotten the guns as he fought Lily's clothes off her. She was wild, clinging to him and he lifted her up to him, sinking his teeth into her throat.

    She screamed and I sprang across that room, sliding into them. I sent my fist straight at Marve's face, not caring whether it landed or not. What I wanted was that gun.

    My shoe bumped the rifle and I kicked it under the bed, praying it would give me another minute. My hand touched the automatic just under Marve's clawing fist. I had no time for anything except to flip it underhanded back away from us.

    He growled and came up off that bed, meeting me as I thrust downward. We went sprawling back to the floor. He went for my eyes with his distended fingers and brought his knee upward into my groin. But I had already been initiated into the scrub brawl. I moved backwards, jerking my head aside and I put my fist into his face, feeling his nose crunch under the impact.

    It stopped him only long enough for me to get set. He came forward, pulling me backwards.

    Lily had scrambled around on the bed and for the moment sat there stunned, watching us.

    Marve yelled at her, gasping for breath. "Lily. The gun. Get the gun, Lily."

    She came off the bed. We were between her and the automatic. She had not thought about the rifle yet. Her gaze was fixed on the black gun on the floor.

    Marve shifted to the right and I hit him beside the head with my fist. He kept crumpling to the right, clutching for support. I thrust out my arm, jabbing Lily on the side of the head. She reeled off balance and fell against the front door.

    As I turned, I saw Marve move forward catlike from his knees, spring toward that automatic. I let him get almost to it and I kicked him in the stomach. The air burst from him and he curled up, arms pressed against his middle, head inches away from the automatic.

    I picked up the gun and turned, leaning against the wall. Lily was just getting to her feet. I told her to sit down on the chair. She sat down, watching me.

    Marve was writhing on the floor, trying to get his breath again.

    I moved between them, knelt beside the bed. I got the rifle out, held it under the crook of my arm. I looked around the room, my gaze settled on Lily.

    "That knife, Lily," I said.

    She stared at me, black eyes chilled. She jerked her head toward the table. I found the sheathed knife, stuck it in my back pocket.

    I leaned against the table, panting.

    Marve got his breath. "If you think you're going to get away with this, Jake, you better kill me. Quick."

    "Don't tell me, Marve. I'll tell you."

    "No. I made a mistake. But when you make one, Jake, nothing is going to save you."

    I looked around the shack.

    "That money is not here, Jake." Marve laughed. "But worry about it. You ain't ever going to get it."

    "I'm a lot closer to it now than I have been."

    "Jake, you're dreaming. You ain't nowhere. You're just where you got by taking advantage of a lapse. Hell, I give you that. You moved in fast." He laughed. "What you did was caught me with my pants down."

    "Go ahead, Loud-mouth. Run off at the mouth if that makes you feel better."

    Marve laughed. "Man, what a fool you are. Every minute you stand there and don't pull that trigger to kill me proves it."

    "Don't worry about me so."

    "But I do, Jake. It's a hell of a spot to let you get in. If you don't kill me pretty quick, you're going to be in more trouble than you ever thought of. And if you do kill me-" he laughed, throwing his head back. "If you do kill me, there's nobody alive can tell you where to find that money."

    I stared at him. In chess they call it checkmate. In baseball they call it a tie and called on account of darkness. I had the gun. He had the money. He had never been safer in his mother's arms.

    His laughter told me just how safe he knew he really was.

    "What I got, Jake, is old-age security."

    "Sure you have," I said. "It's just that I'm weary of you, Marve. I'm tired listening to you."

    I walked over to the pack on the table. I laid the rifle down, stood across the table from Marve, watching him. I took the roll of wire from the pack.

    "All right, Lily. You go over there and sit in front of the fire. Lock your hands on top of your head. Stay that way."

    She moved slowly. She sat down, locked her hands on top of her head. Her uplifted arms stretched her full breasts taut. I told myself to forget it.

    I stood well in back of Marve, forced him to kneel. I wrapped his wrist with eight turns of the wire. I felt his shoulders slump. Nothing but a wire cutter was going to get him out of this. I carried the wire in three twisted strands across to his other wrist and made eight loops on it. I circled the connecting link and then carried the wire down between his ankles. I wired up his ankles and he was moored arms and legs.

    I pushed him forward and he rocked on the floor. "Talk big, Marve," I said. "On you it's becoming."

    He rolled over on his side. "You going to tie up Lily, too, huh?"

    "Don't tell me, Marve. I'll tell you."

    His mouth pulled into the savage caricature of a grin.

    "It don't matter," he said. "What you've done is favored me kindly, Jake-boy. Now I can sleep." He laughed. "Isn't that lovely, Jake? Now I can sleep and you're the son of a bitch has got to stay awake."

    

    

    I made myself four cups of coffee, drank it black. Marve slept on the floor, legs and arms tied behind him. I sat drinking the coffee, staring at him, hating him, listening to him snore.

    "That's your lover boy," I said to Lily.

    She shook her head, would not answer. She moved to the bed.

    My voice woke Marve and he tried to sit up. He could not do it.

    "Man, you look dangerous," I told him.

    He licked his dry mouth with his tongue and stared up at me.

    "Jake-boy, maybe you misunderstood me. Did I say your danger came from me? Oh no. And not Lily. Hell, if I told her to she might try to kill you. When a woman belongs to you, Jake, why she just can't help what she'll do for you. But it ain't Lily or me you got to worry about."

    I tried to look as if I didn't care.

    The dark and the silence was like unbearable pressure inside that shack. I got up, threw another oak log on the fire.

    "They don't burn good, Jake-boy. They're too tough. Like iron. But I never wanted a big fire. Hard to hide smoke in the scrub. Never saw any sense in letting people know where I was. People that might have been looking for me." He laughed. "Now, when they get here, they'll find you, Jake."

    "What are you talking about?"

    Lily had lifted her head, listening intently, staring at Marve. I felt the hair standing along the nape of my neck.

    "I been trying to tell you, Jake. You ought to have let me run this. You didn't know when you was well off, Jake. Now you got me tied up, and I think you're in trouble."

    I didn't say anything.

    He said, "Remember, Jake, that morning when we took the hundred grand from McAteer's? I wasn't alone, was I, Jake? Oh, no. There was Brycki. He came from Chicago. Real smart hood. Man, he knew all the tricks. And the other guy? A real brain. Name of Claude Piper. Piper and Brycki. They needed me. I was just a dumb country boy and they were smart but they cut me in. Man, the way they cast-off on old Marve, the country boy. We got the money. Only I got it now."

    He laughed, remembering.

    "I got to figuring, Jake. Here they were, smart guys, brains. The way they told it, they were smart. So smart it looked to me like they could figure another take like the one at McAteer's any day in the week. But me. I was just an old country boy and I might not get my hands on a hundred grand for a long, long time."

    I stared at him. "Holy mother of Mary," I whispered.

    "You crossed them. You took the whole hundred grand- and ran."

    "That's why you came back here," Lily said.

    "Baby, I came back for you. Sure, I figured I'd be safer in country that I knew. After all, I'm just a country boy. Those two guys are smart. Killers. They'd be on my trail. So I reckoned I'd be safer in the scrub until something happened to Brycki and Piper."

    We sat there, the three of us, in the silent cabin.

    Finally Marve laughed. "Only nothing happened to them. I hear they been looking for me. Back here in the scrub I'm pretty hard to find. But I figure it has to happen sometime. One of these nights they're going to find me. Oh, they ain't together. Hear they split, each thinking I'd crossed just one of them. But they're both after me. So I come back here to the scrub, but it ain't as roomy as I remembered it. It's a kind of a prison."

    "Just waiting for them to find you."

    "Not exactly. Last week I heard you were looking for me. My old friend Jake from the Crow Bar. The honest lad with the hurt look. Lord, Jake, I have to laugh right to this day when I think of how you looked when I called you by name that day at McAteer's. Man, you looked like the devil had you, sure."

    "What have I got to do with Brycki and Piper?"

    "Jake, what's the matter with you? Is it too late at night for you? Think, man. I'm hiding out in the scrub, knowing Brycki or Piper is going to find me. I can't even get out-not with that money. So I thought of you. I decided I'd rather cut old Jake in than those smart boys Piper and Brycki. So I told Lily when she was up here last time to bring you up."

    I shook my head, unable to believe it but unable to doubt it.

    "Why do you think I didn't kill you when you walked in this clearing?" Marve said. "Why you think I didn't kill you when you kept pushing me? I knew you could get that money out of here. Lily couldn't, because Brycki and Piper would hear that she was my girl. But you could. Nobody would ever believe I'd turn a hundred grand over to my pal Jake."

    "I still don't."

    "Might be touchy, Jake. But I figured you'd hold still for a deal. I even planned to go as high as fifty-fifty. I'd let you go with it, because you couldn't ever outrun me."

    I sat there for a very long time. At last I shook my head and stood up.

    "You're in a hell of a spot to be making me any deals," I said.

    "Oh, no. I'm all right. Now I'm all right. You're here, Jake boy. I can sleep. For the first time in weeks I can rest. You're the boy in the bad spot, and you just don't know how bad until Brycki or Piper turn up here and find me wired together and nailed down."