Death's Sweet Song (10 page)

“Good old Manley!” I felt like laughing. “He's going to have a fit when he reads the morning paper.”

“The hell with Manley,” Sheldon said. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

We had already started for the car when I heard it. I didn't know what it was, but it hit me like a hammer. Sheldon looked around at me. “What's the matter?”

“I don't know. I thought I heard something.”

“Heard something? Where?”

“I don't know. I think it was in the garage.” Both of us stood there as rigid as a pair of department-store dummies. I listened until my ears ached, every nerve drawn to the snapping point. Then it carne again, a scuffing, shoving sound that started an unscratchable itch on my scalp.

I glanced at Sheldon. “Did you hear it then?” He shook his head.

Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just an overactive imagination, or maybe it was just the strain. After all, a man doesn't commit a thirty-thousand-dollar robbery every day. But I had to be sure. It was much too late to begin taking chances.

I said, “Wait a minute. I want to have a look in there.”

I opened the door and stepped into the pitch-darkness of the garage. There was no sound, absolutely no sound at all. Hooper, I thought, you'd better get hold of yourself before you go off the deep end. Then, just as I turned to go, the light hit me right in the face.

It was brighter than any light I had ever looked into. Brighter than those floodlights. Brighter than the sun. It hit me right in the eyes, that ball of brightness, and I couldn't see a thing. I lunged to one side just as the revolver crashed and resounded with unbelievable violence around the walls of that high garage. I felt the hot breath of the bullet. I heard the instantaneous
spat!
 
as the slug smashed itself against the brick wall.

I turned to run. I fell over something—God knows what —there in the darkness and went sprawling just as that revolver exploded again. Then I knew, somehow, instinctively, that running was not the answer.

That light had been on my face. The owner of that pistol was not only trying to shoot me,
 
he knew who I was!

There was no time for rationalization. That deadly .38 of Sheldon's was in my hand. I fired once, twice, three times at the sweeping ball of light that was trying to pick me out of the darkness. I heard the incredible reverberations shatter the silence of the night, and I knew, somehow, that there was no use shooting any more.

It had happened with unbelievable speed. One second? Two seconds? No more than that. By the time Sheldon came crashing into the garage, it was all over.. Realization of what had happened was just beginning to hit me, and it left me cold and weak.

“Hooper!”

“It's all right,” I heard myself saying. “It's all over.” That flashlight still stabbed the darkness. I could hear it rocking back and forth on the cement floor. Its beam swept shorter and shorter arcs across the floor, and finally it stopped, pointing directly at me.

Sheldon said, “For God's sake, Hooper, what happened?”

“I just killed the watchman,” I said.

Sheldon took about four quick steps in front of me and picked up the flashlight. He turned the beam on the watchman's face.

He was dead, all right. There was no use feeling for a pulse this time. Those pale old eyes stared directly into the beam of light, unblinking. A broken little man, completely dead. He had fallen on a small heap of waste rags, the kind you find in every garage, and for a moment he looked as though he were another pile of rags and not a man at all.

Sheldon moved the flashlight beam up and down, slowly and carefully, and it was easy enough to see what had happened. The watchman's feet were still tied, but he had somehow managed to loosen his hands. He had pushed himself over to the garage wall, to a workbench where the pistol must have been, and the flashlight. Probably he was just beginning to untie his feet when I heard him.

Sheldon suddenly shot that beam of light at me. “Well, Hooper,” he said tightly, “you've fixed things this time. You've fixed them good.”

“I
 
fixed them!” I stepped forward and knocked that beam out of my face. “You were supposed to have him tied and gagged! A fine fix we'd have been in if I hadn't stopped him before he threw that switch.”

“Did you have to kill him?”

“What was I supposed to do? He had that flashlight right in my face!”

“But you didn't have to kill him. It could have been some other way.”

Sheldon's voice was almost a whine now. I could look . right through that tough front of his and see his guts deserting him. This was something I hadn't figured on. If anybody went to pieces in this operation, I had expected it to be me. But I should have known. I'd seen the signs— I'd seen how Paula could shut him up. From personal experience I knew that he would not touch a job unless he figured it to be an absolute pushover. The signs were there, all right, but I hadn't seen them until it was too late.

Now Sheldon wiped his face on his coat sleeve. “This isn't just robbery now, it's murder! I didn't agree to anything like this.”

“You didn't agree! Listen!” I grabbed the front of his shirt and twisted hard. “Listen to me! Do you think I wanted it? I liked this old man. I liked him a lot, and about the last thing in the world I'd want to do is kill him. But I had to do it. Do you hear me? He had the flashlight in my face!”

“Christ!” I could feel him shaking. “I didn't plan on anything like this!”

“You didn't plan! You gave me the gun, didn't you?”

It was amazing, really. I had never killed in my life and I had never imagined that it could be so easy. I was sorry that it had been Otto; it would worry me for a long time, but still it wasn't as bad as I had heard. It had been Otto or me. Otto had shot at me and I had shot back, and there was no way in the world to change it now. I had to accept it. Besides, there were other things to think about. It was staggering how many things there were.

“Hooper, we've got to get out of here!”

“Wait a minute. I think I've got something.”

The one word that kept hitting me was “murder.” To me it didn't have the usual meaning. It was like thinking of cancer or TB. You get yourself branded with it and it kills you, only with murder you the in the electric chair instead of in a bed.

I said, “Sheldon, you wait right here.” Then I went down on one knee and lifted the dead watchman to my shoulder. Sheldon looked as though he had been clubbed. He stared dazedly as I hurried out of the garage with the dead man across my back. What I had in mind wasn't going to fool anybody for long, but it would cross the Sheriff up for a while, at least, and maybe that would be long enough.

It seemed, by now, that I had run that gantlet of floodlights a hundred times, but that didn't make it any easier this time. It was pure gambling; I just had to hope that no one saw me. Old Otto Finney had been a frail little man, and I was glad of that as I raced along the front of the building with him across my shoulders. I didn't even look at the highway. I went right up to the door, pressed Otto's palm to the latch and in two or three places along the door frame. Then I dragged him inside and did the same thing there. Finally I went over to the blown safe and made sure that Otto's fingerprints would be found on the door as well as other places.

That was that. I was breathing as though I had been swimming underwater, but I hoisted the dead man to my shoulders again and headed for the door. Just as I stepped outside I heard the sound of a motor, and then the headlights of a car cut a thin gash in the darkness of the highway. I hit the ground. The dead watchman hit and rolled a few feet ahead of me. As the car hummed past and out; of sight, I lay there for several seconds, breathing hard. And Otto was looking at me. Those pale, sightless eyes were wide open and staring right at me.

I said, “I'm sorry, Otto!” And I knew I had to get hold of myself or I was cooked. What was done was done. I wasn't going to crack up about it. That was the one thing in the world I couldn't afford to do. I shouldered the corpse and made another run for darkness.

Sheldon was right where I had left him, there by the garage door. I hadn't been afraid of his running out on me because I still had the key to the Buick. “Get the car door open,” I panted. “The back seat.”

By this time Sheldon had guessed what I was up to.

It won't work, Hooper,” he said tightly.

“I know it won't work for long. But maybe it will buy us time, let the trail cool a little. Now get the door open.”

He did it, and I dumped the dead watchman on the floor. Then the two of us went back to the garage and cleaned the place up. We picked up all the bloodstained rags, the gun, the flashlight. “Now,” I said, “let's go!”

It was a long, long ride back to the tourist court; I hope I never take another ride as long as that one. Every car I met I expected to be the Sheriffs car. I expected something violent to happen every second, but nothing did. Nothing happened at all. What we were going to do with the dead watchman, I didn't know. I was beyond thinking. It took all my concentration just to keep the car in a straight line.

Then at last we reached the cabins, and I pulled the Buick behind the station and into the carport next to Number 2. There were no lights in the cabin, but Paula had the door open the minute we pulled off the highway, and she was right there the second we hit the carport.

She jerked the door open on my side.

“What took you so long? Did anything go wrong?”

I could smell the perfume she wore. Or maybe it wasn't perfume, maybe it was just her.

“Something happened, didn't it?” she said. “Tell me!”

Sheldon hadn't said a thing. But now he turned toward his wife, and his face looked a hundred years old. “The trouble,” he said, “is back there.”

Paula opened the back door and made one small sound when she saw the dead man. Then she looked at me.

“Who did it?”

“I did.”

She frowned. “I might have known it couldn't have been Karl.”

“I guess we need to talk this thing over,” I said, and got out of the car.

Sheldon sat where he was. “Paula,” he said, “we've got to get out of here. Get your things together right now.”

“The three of us?” she asked coldly, glancing at the back seat.

“Oh.” He looked pretty foolish and he knew it, and that did more than anything else to snap him out of it. “Well, maybe Hooper's right, maybe we should talk it over, coolly, calmly.”

There was a moon out that night. I didn't notice it until I got inside the darkened cabin and saw the whitish moonlight pouring through the open door. “Turn the light on,” Paula said.

“It will be safer if we don't,” I said.

“We can't count the money in the dark.”

First things first. I felt a crazy impulse to laugh. The hell with the dead man outside, we had money to count. She turned the light on.

It really didn't make much difference. The cabins, as usual, were empty, and I was too tired to care, anyway. I was having trouble keeping my thoughts organized.

Then I thought: Christ, I've forgotten all about the money! I kicked the door open, went out to the car, and got it. I didn't look behind the front seat; I didn't want to see those pale, wide eyes again. Just don't think about it, I thought. He asked for it, didn't he?

Paula's eyes were alive with excitement as she dug her hands into the green bills. “Thirty thousand dollars!”

Sheldon said, “We don't know how much there is. We haven't, counted it.”

“I can tell! Just by feeling of it!”

“For God's sake,” I said, “stop playing with the stuff and let's count it!”

Then Paula turned on me with a tight little smile. “First,” she said, “tell me about the watchman.” The look in her eyes shook me. “Forget it,” I said. All this talk was rubbing right through to my nerves. “The old man shot at me and I had to kill him. That's all there was to it.”

“I knew it!” She almost sneered, looking now at Sheldon. “I knew it couldn't have been you, Karl!”

I didn't know what she was talking about, but Sheldon must have. He stood rigid for just a moment, his eyes stormy, and then, without a sound of warning, he back-handed her. The back of his fist slammed into her mouth, knocking her across the room and onto the bed. “Now keep quiet, goddamn you!” he said hoarsely.

I felt the muscles become tense in my shoulders. Stay out of it, I warned myself. This is between just the two of them. You can't afford to butt in now—not until we make the split, anyway.

His knuckles had broken Paula's lower lip and a thin little stream of blood dripped down her chin. She didn't come fighting back, as I had thought she would. She felt of her lip. Then she opened a suitcase, took out some paper tissue, and held it to her mouth. She didn't say a word, but there was plenty in her eyes. Sheldon dumped the money on the table and began counting it out. I helped him. It came to $31,042. We cut it right down the middle without a word: $15,521 each. “Not bad,” Sheldon said. “If we live long enough to spend it!” “Oh, yes,” Sheldon said softly, as though he had been trying to forget it too. “The body.”