A Killer is Loose (18 page)

“I wanted to meet you,” he said to Harvey. “Go on inside,” he told him. He stepped toward Harvey. Harvey faded back into the cabin.

There were six couples, as I’d thought. The redhead was nearest the door, sitting on a couch. Two men were very drunk, but conscious of what was going on, and they were sorry they were drunk. One stood over by the wheel housing, the other by the companionway leading into the foreward cabin where the bunks were.

Everybody was quiet and nobody spoke. But they looked plenty.

Two men sat with their women in a small booth, a kind of breakfast nook. They avoided our eyes. Harvey faded on back until he was in the middle of the main cabin. The rest of the women, with Jack, were on the couch, stacked together in a welter of flesh. Lillian went over and sat on the arm of the couch and stared at the floor. Spindleshanks was beside her and one of the women began to cry.

“You know who we are, don’t you?” Angers said, looking around.

I sat down on the edge of one of the benches in the breakfast nook and looked up at him. He stood in the cabin doorway with his roll of paper and the damned gun. Well, he couldn’t shoot them all. If he started shooting now, somebody would get him, because the shells would run out. He wouldn’t have a chance to reload. My God, I hoped he wouldn’t start to shoot.

“You owe my friend some money,” Angers said to Harvey.

“I—I do? Do I?” Harvey began smiling all over. “Well, now, is that it?” he said.

“That’s not it,” I said. “But for God’s sake, use your head.”

“He just stands there,” one of the women whispered.

“He’s crazy,” another whispered. “He’s going to kill us.”

The one that was crying began wailing. She was a large woman, very lush and sexy-looking, dressed in a tight white two-piece bathing suit. She had an enormous quantity of jet-black hair. Her breasts swelled and she wailed and it looked very silly, somehow. She had her eyes wide open, wailing.

For the first time, just then, I noticed Harvey’s nose. It wasn’t bandaged, he probably couldn’t stand marring his beauty with a bandage, and there were no bruises that showed. But his nose wasn’t right. It was a little off center, and I remembered how it had felt against my knee. He was running around with a broken nose, without any bandage, for the sake of a party.

“My friend here,” Angers said, “wants two hundred and seventy dollars. That’s what you owe him, isn’t it?”

“Sure, sure,” Harvey said.

“Come up here,” Angers said. “Come here.”

Aldercook walked slowly up to Angers and Angers stood there looking at him.

“Why didn’t you pay Steve what you owed him?” Angers said.

“Why …” Harvey tried to keep his voice level. It didn’t look as if anything was going to happen to him. This guy Angers wasn’t so bad, after all. A little pale, maybe, that’s all. Maybe most of these stories were the bunk. Who really knew? I could see that’s how his mind was working. He couldn’t help it because he was born like that.

“Tell me about it,” Angers said. “I want to know. You see, Steve saved my life today, and he’s my pal. We’re buddies and buddies stick together. I want to know why you didn’t pay him the money you owed him.”

A woman laughed. It was Wilma. It wasn’t funny laughter, it was the tense laughter of nervous release. She sat there very tight and stiff and sober-looking now, and the laughter simply burst out of her face. It was the same kind of laughter that erupted from Angers once in a while, only not quite so mad.

“Tell me,” he said.

She did it again. He looked over at her and she looked at him and she laughed right in his face. It was pretty bad. She was trying to control herself but it didn’t work. She kept looking at him and laughing. She roared with it. It rocked her and the other woman kept on crying while she sat there looking at Angers, trying with all her might not to laugh.

“It’s real funny, isn’t it?” Angers said.

I felt Lillian’s eyes on me. Her eyes smiled a little at me, wrinkling up at their corners. And I knew something. She had given up. All the way.

Harvey wasn’t as scared as he had been because Angers seemed so calm.

“I think this money business should be between Steve and me,” Harvey said.

“Do you?”

“Yes. Why are you here?”

“I wanted to meet you. I want that money. I want you to give it to Steve, so your friends can see. I want your friends to see what kind of a man you are.”

That got him a little. He didn’t like it and it scared him just a little.

He took out his wallet and counted out two hundred and seventy dollars from a wad of greenbacks that swelled the wallet so much it didn’t close right. That’s the kind of guy he was. He laid the money on the little table in front of me and the two men and the two girls looked at it. Everybody watched Harvey now.

“There,” Harvey said. “There’s the money.”

“It’s not enough,” Angers said.

Harvey looked at him.

“It’s not enough for the kind of job he did,” Angers said. He turned to me, holding the gun. “Is it, Steve?”

I didn’t answer him. I just sat there. I could feel all the tension and I looked up at the cabin window and the man who had been sitting in the rocking chair was standing up there on the wooden pier. He was trying very hard to act nonchalant, as if he were just out walking his dog. Only it wasn’t that. He stood up there kind of watching us through the cabin window. Then I got it. He was watching the street out there, too.

I began to perspire.

The man took two steps toward the street, watching, then two steps back again, still watching. He was very nervous, trying not to show it. He was a big man, dressed in shorts, smoking a pipe. Every time he took a step, the dog took a couple and sat down. The dog was a cocker.

The woman who had been crying was sniffling now.

“How much money have you there?” Angers said.

Harvey looked at his wallet, just held it in his hand and looked at it.

“Take it out and count it,” Angers said.

One of the men in the booth where I was saw the man up on the pier. He looked away immediately, then glanced at me. I nodded my head slightly.

I had a friend. It felt great. It was a fine sensation. The best in a long while. This bird in the booth knew what was going on, he’d got it straight, and he wasn’t brave and he wasn’t a dope, either. He was my friend. I could depend on him if anything happened.

So what good did it do?

Harvey counted the money in the wallet and said, “There’s two hundred and fourteen dollars here.”

“Put it with the other and we’ll call it all right,” Angers said.

Harvey did as Angers said. He looked at me sitting there and there was no expression on his face. He was scared all over again now.

“See, pal?” Angers said.

I didn’t say anything.

“Take the money, pal,” Angers said. “There’s four hundred and eighty-four dollars there. I figure that’s about right for a job of this kind, don’t you?”

I didn’t want to take the money. Harvey watched me. He didn’t want to look at Angers any more. Only Angers wasn’t through with him.

“That’s the kind of friend you have,” he told the people in the cabin. “Isn’t he a nice guy, though?”

Harvey stood there with the empty wallet in his hand and swallowed. He looked around at them all and smiled a sickly smile and nobody smiled back. Then he had to look at Angers again, he had to, standing there with the wallet in his hand.

“Now,” Angers said, “I want you to get a piece of paper and a pencil and write out on it that you paid Steve that money for the work you had him do. And I want you to sign it with your name.”

“This is foolish,” Harvey said.

“Is it?”

The man in the booth, my friend, pushed a pad of paper across the table, took a pencil from the pocket of his sport shirt, and laid it by the pad.

“Go ahead, Harve,” he said. “Do like the man says.”

“Sure, sure,” Harvey said. He wrote fast on the paper and signed his name. Then he laid the pad down and tore off the top sheet and put it with the money. “There,” he said, looking at me. “But you couldn’t do it alone, could you? I threw you off the boat and now you’ve got to get a friend.” He pushed the money and the note over to me.

I felt sorry for the guy. He couldn’t help getting his oar in.

“Feel of your nose,” I said. “How did you cover up the swelling?”

“Pick up the money, pal,” Angers said.

I took the money and the note and shoved it all into my pants pocket in a wad. As I did that, I glanced up at the pier. The man out there was still watching us and watching the street out there. I was positive he had called the law. He’d heard what was going on and the cops could be here any minute. I prayed for that, but at the same time I didn’t know whether it was the right thing.

If they came now and started shooting it would be plain mayhem.

“Lillian,” Angers said. “Come here.”

Lillian got up from the arm of the couch and went over by Angers. She acted as if she were in a dream. Everybody watched her cross the cabin. Harvey just stood there, staring at Angers, and I saw my friend look up at the pier again.

Then everything went sour inside me, because Angers saw him look, too.

And the guy out there saw it happening. He saw Angers turn his head and stare out the cabin window at him and he froze. Oh, it was grand. The guy out there froze solid and the cabin lights shone on his guilty face.

You could almost see it come into Angers. The understanding of what was going on. I was glad it wasn’t me Angers had noticed.

“Well,” he said. “Pal, we’re leaving now.”

Harvey began to tremble. His throat and chin were fleshy, bloated, and the flesh trembled.

The woman who had been sniffling fainted. She just collapsed, and spread back on the couch, and fell over against Wilma. Wilma began laughing again. It was a kind of snicker, from the side of her mouth. She tried to keep her mouth closed, but it wouldn’t work. The woman who had fainted finally sprawled down into Wilma’s lap, out cold. Wilma kept on snickering.

“Look,” the man in the booth by me said. “Why don’t we all have a drink on it?”

He was going to be brave. He had to. I suppose he felt it was the only thing to do. He was the one man in the whole room who understood the score. You could tell it in his face and now he was going to be brave.

“Harve,” he said, “why don’t you fix these folks a drink?”

“We have to go,” Angers said, looking at the man.

I stood up and looked at the man, too. “Forget it,” I said.

He understood, all right, but something inside him kept egging him along. “Hell,” he said, “we could make this a real party. We could take the boat out, couldn’t we, Harve?”

I knew then that he’d been drinking a lot, this guy, and maybe that accounted for the way he was acting.

“Come on, pal,” Angers said. “We’re leaving.”

“Sure.”

We’d only been here a few minutes and the guy who was trying to detain us knew that if we’d stay a little while longer, the cops would be here. I knew that, too. But he didn’t understand Angers. He hadn’t seen Angers work with that Luger.

I didn’t dare look out the cabin window now. I didn’t know whether the man was still out there with his dog or not.

Angers pulled the cabin door open and motioned us outside. Nobody said a word. It had been a bad time so far and I was drenched with perspiration.

The guy in the booth knew Angers was wise and Angers kept looking at him as he closed the cabin door. It was a screen door, and everybody sat inside watching us. You could feel the breeze outside.

“Lillian,” Angers said, “I want you to go back in there.”

She looked at him. Her eyes were numb. She didn’t speak.

“Go on,” he said.

She walked back into the cabin.

“All right, pal. Up on the pier. Go ahead now.”

I went up the steps and jumped onto the pier. The man was getting aboard his boat with his dog in his arms. Angers came up behind me.

“Out to the car, pal,” he said. “Hurry up.”

As we went past the Rabbit-O, I glanced down into the cabin, and they were all sitting there, just as we’d left them. Harvey and Lillian were standing in the middle of the cabin. Their eyes followed us along the pier.

“Run,” Angers said behind me. “We haven’t much time, pal, and this can’t be botched now.”

We went past the guy with his dog and Angers didn’t even look at him.

On the street there was no sign of the police.

As we reached the stretch of grass by the curb, Angers grabbed my arm.

“We may run into some trouble, pal. Stick by me, will you?”

I looked at him. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. After all, he believed in all the things he was doing and he at least half believed in me.

Down there in the cabin it had meant a lot, momentarily, to know that I had a friend in the crowd who understood what was going on. Well, I got to thinking how Angers must be with his mucked-up mind and everything.

“What about Lil?” I said.

“To hell with Lil,” he said. “Get in the car.”

I got in beneath the wheel of the car and Angers slammed his door and turned to look at me. He set the roll of paper on the floor between his knees and sat there with the gun in his fist.

“I think somebody called the police,” he said. “I just feel it. I saw something.”

I didn’t say anything. I tried to stall as long as I could. I didn’t start the car. Maybe we were both wrong.

“You’ve got to stick with me, pal,” he said.

“Sure.”

“Start the car, then. We’ve got to get out of here.”

I stepped on the gas and knew the fellow on the boat next to the Rabbit-O had missed his chance. He should have fixed this car. He hadn’t. It ran fine.

“Turn around right here,” Angers said.

I thought of Lillian back there with them and what she would do now. She was out of it, anyway. She was safe.

“I didn’t like letting Lil go,” Angers said. “But what could I do? Anything could happen and I don’t want her hurt.”

I glanced at him.

Somebody yelled nearby. It was the man with the dog. He was running out on the wooden pier toward the slip gate as I made a U turn. He ran out into the street, waving his arms and yelling as loud as he could. The dog bounded along beside him.