The Long Ride (12 page)

When they returned to the car, Miss Kennicot again plunged into the seat originally occupied by Mrs. Moore. She waited expectantly for John Benson to get into the one just behind her. She had, during the last leg of travel in the dark, taken to swinging her hand down and cracking it against John’s knee whenever she quoted something. His knee had become quite sore.

Thus he was relieved when Mrs. Landry finally admitted a vulnerability. She did not like to drive at night. She couldn’t see well enough, she explained, to get the kind of speed she liked. When John volunteered to take the wheel, she agreed.

Driving out of Green River into the mountains that preceded Salt Lake, Miss Kennicot kept up an endless flow of quotations, songs, and anecdotes about her Robin experiences. In time, John realized that she increased the volume of her voice whenever he and Margaret Moore, who now sat beside him in front, started to exchange a few words.

But finally Miss Kennicot’s head fell back. Her mouth fell open. And she began snoring softly, in harmony with Allan Garwith.

As he ran the curves looping into the mountains, John said to Margaret Moore, “Do you think you’ll like San Francisco?”

“I’m sure of it,” she said. “I have a feeling about it. I’ve read about it, seen pictures. I love the ocean. Fog. Hills. The water all around. It’s my kind of place, I think.”

“Well,” he said, “I think any place you liked would become your kind of place, Margaret. You have an awareness, a control. I think you’re above places, really. I admire you.”

“Do you?” she asked very quietly.

He glanced at her in the glow of the dash lights. “Yes,” he said very seriously, knowing he meant that regardless of whatever she was, “I do.”

He felt her hand placed gently on his knee, left there, as he drove on, the car silent now, as the miles dropped away. They were in Utah now, curving through the night along the mountain highway. He enjoyed the closeness of her, the feeling of her hand. He held off thoughts about what might happen in Salt Lake City if Garwith, with Wells behind him, went for that money. He forced himself to think only about the pleasure of Margaret Moore sitting beside him this way, silently. It was, he thought, a tremendous improvement over the pounding of Miss Kennicot’s fist against that same knee…

Lights of Salt Lake were first visible by the white glow in the night sky; then, before the sharp descent from the high mountain road to the low flat of the land beside the lake, they looked down on the lights themselves, spread in a large silver-dotted cluster.

The others began to stir as John drove down the grade toward the city. In a moment he heard Miss Kennicot laughing again.

As they came into the city limits, Miss Kennicot got out her Three A’s book. She was given a flashlight from the car’s glove compartment. She began searching for the proper place to stay and said, “What about a motel this time, everybody? I do think they’re generally a bit down on rates. Wouldn’t a motel be nice?”

But after covering a long number of blocks it was obvious there were no vacancies at that hour.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Landry said from the back of the station wagon. “I just feel this is all my fault somehow. Maybe I should have sent ahead for reservations before we even left Loma City. My goodness, I did want this to be such a pleasant trip.”

“We’ll take another run through the city,” John said. “We still might find something.”

“The thing is,” Miss Kennicot said worriedly, “when everyone’s filled up this way, and you’re desperate, why, then they can just charge anything they want to. Highway robbery, in other words.”

Now Allan Garwith finally awakened and said, sitting upright, “Where are we?”

Cicely said, “Salt Lake, Allan.”

“Already?”

“You’ve been sound asleep, dear,” Mrs. Landry said.

“Well, where are we staying?”

“Maybe no place,” Harry Wells said in his flat voice. “The motels are filled. Maybe we ought to keep on going.”

Garwith switched around, looking at him. Then he turned to the front again. “If we’re in Salt Lake it’s time to take a break, isn’t it?” His voice was fuzzed with sleep, but mean-sounding.

“We can do just what anybody wants to do,” Mrs. Landry said. “I just want everybody to be happy.”

“I could use a break,” Garwith said sullenly.

“Well, Allan, maybe—” Cicely began.

“I mean, two days. We’re in Salt Lake? That’s not dragging our feet, is it?”

“It isn’t,” John said. “But I still don’t see any vacancies.”

“Maybe,” Cicely said, “we can just go on and then—”

“What are you talking about?” Garwith said. “You always said you wanted to see Salt Lake, didn’t you?”

“Well—” Cicely said. “It sounds interesting. I guess if—”

“There
is
so much to see!” Miss Kennicot said. “I, of course, read a good deal on it before we left Loma City. It’s the home of the Mormons, you know, right here at the foot of the Wasatch Range. It was founded in eighteen forty-seven by Brigham Young. The Temple and Tabernacle are right in the heart of the city. And it’s called the City of the Saints. Isn’t that poetic?”

“Well, I just don’t know what we should do,” Mrs. Landry said.

“But,” Miss Kennicot said, “I wouldn’t want to find some awful motel that was the last thing anybody wanted to rent, not even clean, I mean, and find out they’ve skyrocketed their rates just because they know they can take advantage of you at this time of morning. People can be so awful about that. Just take terrible advantage, because they know you’re stuck with it.”

“I have an idea,” Margaret Moore said. “It’s going to be daylight in a little while. When we leave Salt Lake we’ll cross the desert, and that’s going to be very hot when the sun comes up. If we want some rest before we go on, why don’t we wait until people start checking out of the motels—that ought to start in a couple of hours. Then we can check in, rest until this evening, and start driving when it’s cool again. If we left, say, at midnight, it’s going to be a lot more comfortable driving between here and Reno.”

There was a moment’s pause, then Allan Garwith said, “That’s the most intelligent thing I’ve heard all year.”

“Yeah,” Harry Wells said quickly. “Let’s stop and get some coffee and wait it out.”

They had coffee and waited in an all-night restaurant, then returned to the car. Sunlight had finally begun washing over the city, revealing its broad, clean streets, the old but neat buildings; the sun crept over the mountains they’d left behind, clearing the last webs of darkness and soon the city was splashed in a bright, shimmering morning light.

John Benson started the search along the highway running through the city. At last they found a motel with neat stucco cabins. Three had just been vacated. These were taken by the Garwiths, Margaret Moore, and Miss Kennicot and Mrs. Landry together. The motel’s manager assured John that two more cabins would open up shortly, and he waited in the station wagon with Harry Wells.

Wells, John noticed, kept checking his watch, then staring at the door of the cabin taken by Allan and Cicely Garwith. He kept thinking: I would like to slam you right into death row, Wells, and watch you squirm while you wait for the same thing you gave that kid in that Loma City motel and that guard, but…

He said conversationally, “I hope they don’t take too long checking out. I can use some rest.”

“What?”

He met Wells’s eyes and tried to decide whether or not Wells had suspected him when Miss Kennicot had revealed his position near that post office in Cheyenne. Wells stared at him coldly, unemotionally, with no clue whatever. He didn’t know. But he was fairly certain that Wells was not suspicious about him. He was only concerned, John was certain, with that money.

“I said,” John repeated, “I hope we get into a cabin pretty quickly. I can use some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Wells nodded and resumed his silence, checking his watch, then staring at the Garwiths’ cabin.

At seven thirty-five two more cabins were vacated. Fifteen minutes later, when they had been cleaned, John and Harry Wells each stepped into a cabin.

Inside, John pulled the drapes of his front window almost shut, leaving a slight opening. Through this he looked at the other units. Margaret Moore’s was beside his own. The one shared by Mrs. Landry and Miss Kennicot was next to it. Across the small green-grassed court was Harry Wells’s and the one used by the Garwiths. He waited, watching.

A half hour later two people owning a car with Maine license plates checked out. He watched the manager roll a cart up to the door of the vacated cabin and disappear inside with fresh towels and sheets. Five minutes later he reappeared and rolled the cart into his own unit and disappeared again.

John lit a cigarette. His mouth was dry. He was beginning to feel a dull ache at the base of his skull. Finally, at ten minutes to nine, Harry Wells stepped out of his cabin.

He did so carefully, looking at the other cabins, staring at the Garwiths’ for several seconds. Then he moved away swiftly. He went around the corner of his cabin, away from the one used by the Garwiths. In a moment he was striding down the sidewalk, heading downtown.

Seconds later the Garwiths’ door opened. Allan Garwith came out quickly. He ran in a trot to the corner of Wells’s cabin, then stopped and looked after the retreating Wells. When Wells was far down the block, he moved off in the same direction, hurrying with brisk, nervous strides.

John opened the door of his own cabin and walked across the court to the public telephone booth beside the manager’s unit. He checked the number of the local FBI office in the telephone book and dialed it. A man named Sands came on: “Benson—yes. Glad to hear from you.”

“Wells and Garwith both just left on foot from where we’re staying, the Restwell Motel, and they’re going west on Norfolk Avenue. Have somebody pick them up and watch, only don’t, for God’s sake, let them know it.”

“Hold on.” There was a pause, then, “Okay. It’s done. We’ll have a man on them in seconds.”

“Good. Did that package show up here?”

“No. But we’ve got someone on both trains right now, checking. We may pick it up by Reno.”

“How about the post office here? Have you got it covered right now?”

“Can do, very quickly.”

“I would. And at least one man on this motel, all the time we’re here. I think Wells and Garwith will be back. I’ve got a hunch about what’s going on. I’ll check with you again in a few minutes.”

He returned to his cabin and waited. In ten minutes, neither Wells nor Garwith had returned. He walked back to the telephone booth and called Sands.

Sands said, “They showed up at the post office, just now.”

“That’s where I thought they were heading.”

“Wells walked up to the general delivery window at nine o’clock. He asked for a package addressed to Allan Garwith. When they told him there wasn’t one, Wells left. Three minutes later Garwith came in and asked if anyone had checked for a package in his name. They told him yes and described Wells. Then he took off.”

John nodded, brain turning, “I think that gives us the picture all right.”

“Garwith’s got the money. But he sent it somewhere else. Wells isn’t hooked up with him. He just wants to get the money. Now Garwith knows who Wells is and what he wants.”

“That ought to be about it.” John looked out of the booth and saw Wells coming down the street swiftly. “Thanks, Sands. Wells is coming back.”

He hung up and moved quickly back toward his cabin. As he did he thought he saw one of the drapes move behind the front window of Margaret Moore’s cabin. He went into his own unit, then looked out between the drapes. He wasn’t certain. But unless his senses had played tricks on him, that drape at Margaret Moore’s window most certainly had moved.

Wells then appeared and moved into his cabin. Minutes later, sneaking in from the back, Allan Garwith turned the corner of his cabin and hurried inside.

Then it was very silent.

CHAPTER

Allan Garwith sat in his cabin, smoking, staring with hard eyes at the gently sleeping Cicely. It was early evening. The air-conditioner, though it hummed steadily, seemed to do little good. The sweat kept streaming down Garwith’s forehead. He could see the beading on Cicely’s face. She was covered with a single white sheet to a point just above her breasts, nothing else. That morning he had tried to go back to sleep, after he’d returned from the post office when he’d absolutely proven who Harry Wells really was. That, of course, hadn’t worked. But Cicely had awakened neither when he’d left nor when he’d returned. He’d begun tossing in the bed angrily at noon and finally awakened her. She’d gotten up, put out the sandwiches for him, showered, and then asked, clad in her housecoat, if there was anything she could do for him.

“Yeah,” he’d said. “Take off the housecoat.”

When she got into bed again, he’d started thinking of Wells once more. He’d finally said, “To hell with it.” He hadn’t really started anything. She didn’t seem to mind very much. She’d said, “I’m just so tired, Allan. Maybe we’re just both tired.”

“Well, sleep,” he’d said bitterly.

Since then he’d stalked back and forth in the cabin, eaten a sandwich, and periodically gotten out the pills and looked at them. They had taken on an extreme significance since they’d come into this motel. He kept remembering the pleasant way he’d stopped caring when he’d taken them in Cheyenne, the beautiful way he’d slept all the way to Salt Lake. But now, having verified who Wells was, he knew that he could not afford going out on that stuff again. Yet, the temptation to return to that pleasant state of dreams, not caring about a damn thing, was heavy.

Now, as darkness began to settle over the city, he got out the two bottles and looked at them. His hand began to tremble as he did, and he suddenly got up, walked to the bathroom and flushed all the pills away. He stopped on the way out and yanked viciously at the handle of the hot-water tap of the sink. There was a faint drip there. He looked at the yellowish stain on the white porcelain where the drops had been striking. He wrenched the handle again. He waited. Another drop fell with a soft, barely detectable sound.