Death's Sweet Song (8 page)

Two full minutes must have passed before he said, “Are you sure about all this?”

“I was in the place yesterday. I made it my business to find out.”

“And also to make a suspect of yourself.” The sneer was beginning to show again.

“There's a guy in the place I know,” I said. “I owed him five dollars and just dropped in to pay him.”

The sneer disappeared. “What about the safe?”

“The biggest goddamn safe I ever saw. A Kimble Monarch, Model K-four-six-seven.”

He began to relax. He even smiled, very faintly. “Given time, I could open it with a nail file. However, that won't be necessary. What about burglar alarms?”

“The place is wired, all right, front and back. But the master switch box is in the garage, where the watchman stays. It shouldn't be much of a job to find the right switch and cut off the power to the building.”

I could see that he was interested, and I began to breathe normally again. “When we cut off the power,” J said, “it will darken the building, of course, but I don't think it will be noticed because the front of the factory is lighted with floodlights.”

“How do we get in—
if
 
I should lose my mind and decide to try it your way?”

“Through the front door. It's the only way.” “With all those floodlights?” An eyebrow lifted, that was all.

“I told you it's the only way. The back door is a big power-operated steel affair and out of the question. It would take all night to saw through the bars on the rear windows. What we'll have to do is take the keys from the watchman, watch our chance, and go right in the front door.”

He wasn't even listening. He was back to studying that sketch I had drawn. Paula was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder.

“It looks all right,” she said. “Everything you want is there.”

Sheldon said nothing. He was thinking. “It's a lot better than your pal Manley could do,” Paula went on.

Sheldon ignored the gentle prod about Manley. “It could be a soft touch,” he said thoughtfully, “if something hasn't been overlooked. That could be a big
 
if.
 
I should have scouted the place myself. It was a mistake to leave it up to Manley.”

“Manley!” Paula spat the name. “You were a fool to listen to an ox like Manley in the first place. He's smalltime. He'll never be anything else.”

“But he spotted the factory,” Sheldon said, as though he felt somehow obligated to defend Manley.

Paula said one word, a word that is not often heard, even among men. There was nothing sleepy or passive about her now. There was an almost electrical energy about her. She walked across the room, snapped a cigarette out of a pack, and lit it.

“Leave Manley out of it,” she said. “Forget him. He's contributed nothing so he gets nothing.”

Until now I had been satisfied to remain quiet and let Paula get my argument across. But this business about leaving Manley out of it was no good.

She took one nervous drag on the cigarette and then ground it out on the floor, ignoring an ash tray less than twelve inches away.

“I know what you're going to say, Hooper,” she said to me, as though she had never seen me before. “That
 
is
 
your name, isn't it? You're going to say that we can't leave him out. But we will. Manley's a fool, all right, but he's not fool enough to yell cop in a situation like this. When he reads about the burglary in the morning paper, he may not like it, but there'll be nothing he can do about it.”

I shook my head, and Sheldon started to speak, but she stopped both of us. “Think of that five thousand dollars, that extra five thousand that will be yours, Hooper, if we leave Manley out of this. Anyway, what are you afraid of? Manley doesn't know that you've cut yourself in. There's no way he could hurt you.”

Sheldon managed to break in this time. “I'm afraid there's one small detail you've overlooked,” he said. “I haven't decided to take this job.”

“I
 
have decided,” Paula said. “We have to have that money, Karl. It's not too late to set yourself right with those people, but we've got to have the money!”

She could be beautiful and decorative when she wanted, but she could also be other things. We stood there looking at each other over Sheldon's head. She's a hell of a woman, I thought, realizing vaguely that my argument about Manley was slipping away from me. One hell of a woman!

I went back to my cabin feeling nine feet tall. Fifteen thousand dollars! What a man could do with that much money! I looked at my watch and saw that it was already six o'clock. I'd been in the Sheldon cabin almost two hours and the thing was settled.

Everything was all right, it was fine. Paula had everything, brains as well as looks. What a hell of a team we would make!

And then I saw Ike Abrams peering through the screen door. “Where the hell have you been, Joe? Your dad was around a while ago and we couldn't find you anywhere.”

“Where have I been? Nowhere.”

Wait a minute, I thought. That won't do. “Oh,” I said, “I was over in Number Two. The shower was leaking again and they wanted me to fix it.”

Just in case he had seen me go over there.

He kept standing there, one foot on the step and his face almost against the screen. “What is it?” I said. “Is something wrong?” '

“No, I guess not. It's just your father. He looked worried.”

“He's always worried about something. Probably he's pulling another of his hard-scrabble farmers through another siege of malaria.”

“I think he's worried about you, Joe.” He had something on his chest and he wasn't going to rest till he got it out. He said, “I know this is none of my business, Joe, but if you and Beth have had a fallin' out about something, well, it's never too late to make up, they say.”

“Great God!” I exploded. “Ike, will you get back to the station and stop sticking your long nose into my business?”

He looked as though I had pulled a knife on him. Backing away from the steps, he mumbled, “All right, Joe.... I'm sorry.”

I hadn't realized I was so on edge. I almost called Ike back to apologize to him, but I didn't. What difference did it make? I was cutting away from Creston anyway.

I prowled the cabin for maybe thirty minutes, but the place wasn't big enough to hold me. I wanted to see Paula. I wanted to make plans for the future—a future with just me and her and no Karl Sheldon. But I couldn't talk to her now, and I couldn't very well just sit in the cabin until time for the robbery.

I looked through the window and Paula was sitting on the steps of Number 2 again, but this time her husband was standing in the doorway behind her. What the hell, I thought. I pulled on a clean shirt and went out.

“Hooper?” Sheldon said.

“Yes?”

“What do you usually do this time of day?”

“Do? Nothing in particular, I guess.”

He opened the screen door and stepped outside. “It's important,” he said soberly, “to keep to your regular routine, if you have one. Are you sure there isn't some kind of pattern? Don't you have a girl friend in town that you see pretty often?”

I looked straight at Paula and she smiled faintly. “No, I don't have a girl friend.”

“Then why don't you drive into town and see a movie, if you're not going to stay at the station? The less we see of each other, the less chance there is for suspicion. Just be sure you're back by midnight.”

Maybe he was right. I had to do something to kill time, and sitting alone in my cabin was no way to do it. Of course, there was always the chance that I might get a few minutes alone with Paula if I stuck around, but odds were long. Everything would go to hell if he caught us together.

“All right,” I said. “Midnight.” I headed toward the station to get the Chevy.

It was the longest movie I ever sat through. It was the first time I had missed Beth, or even thought much about her, since I had made up my mind to break away. I was so used to having her sitting there beside me that it was almost like being lost. It was strange at first—but I had a cure for that.

All I had to do was think of Paula.

I didn't see a thing that happened on the screen; I just sat there and thought of what Paula and I would do after the robbery. Then I began thinking about the robbery itself, and that was when the first stirrings of uncertainty made themselves felt in my bowels. What if I had overlooked something at the factory! What if that switch had nothing to do with the burglar alarm at all? After all, I didn't know a damn thing about burglar alarms. Maybe the wiring on it was independent of the original circuits. What a hell of a thing that would be!

I never hated a thing in my life as much as I hated that movie. Every instinct told me to get out of there. Get out in the cool clean air and get this thing straightened out before it strangled.

That's just what I did, and it worked. The minute I got outside, the uncertainty was gone and I felt fine. I killed some time at a beer drive-in, then took a ride out north of town, and the first thing I knew there was the box factory looming up in the darkness. I don't know what had pulled me in that direction, but there I was.

Looking at it made my guts draw in a little. At night the place looked much more formidable than it did in the daytime, those two solid brick buildings squatting on a clay hillside. They looked almost prisonlike, with those floodlights pouring down the front of the main building, and I thought: I hope to hell that's not an omen.

I kept driving until I came to a section line and turned around. On the way back to town I tried not to look at it, but the thing was too big, too formidable to ignore. How were we ever going to get inside the place with all those floodlights pointed right at the front door? I had seen the factory a hundred times at night, but I had never noticed that there were so many of those floodlights or that they were so bright.

Then I thought of all that money. Thirty thousand dollars, maybe more. I thought of what Paula and I could do with money like that, and it would be just a beginning. The factory didn't look so tough after that. I drove straight through town and headed for the station. It was getting close to midnight.

Karl Sheldon said: “Have you got a gun?”

“We don't need guns to take care of the watchman.”

“I hope you're right. But in case you're not, take this.”

It was a nicely blued Colt's .38, and it looked as though it had never been fired. “I'll take it,” I said. “But I'm telling you now, I'm not going to use it.”

He looked at me. “Let's hope not.” It was almost a prayer, the way he said it.

The time was twelve minutes past midnight and the three of us were back in Number 2 cabin. Paula still had on those white shorts and halter and was lounging on the bed.

“Well,” Sheldon said, “I guess there's no use waiting.”

“I guess not.”

He took up a satchel, similar to the one my father carried his medical supplies in, and the two of us went out the door. Paula said nothing. She lay there on one elbow, her eyes quick and alive, but she didn't make a sound.

“We'll take the Buick,” Sheldon said. “You drive.”

I got under the wheel and Sheldon sat on the other side, holding the satchel very carefully in his lap. “There's one thing,” I said, before pressing the starter. “This old night watchman, he's kind of a friend of mine. He might recognize me, so you'll have to take care of him. Tie him up or something, but don't hurt him.”

“My friend,” Sheldon said dryly, “I understand that they have not yet installed a lethal gas chamber in your state penitentiary, and the electric chair is a very nasty way to die. You may be assured that I want no part of murder.”

“I'm glad we understand each other.” I started the car.

The traffic on Highway 66 was very thin, and there was almost none at all in Creston, but I played it safe anyway. I didn't want to be seen driving that Buick, so I took the side streets through town until we hit the north highway. Sheldon seemed lost in thought and neither of us said anything until we saw those floodlights in front of the box factory.

Then he said, “Keep in the shadows as much as possible and drive around to the back, where we can't be seen from the highway.”

“Do you think I'm crazy enough to park under those floodlights?”

He looked at me coldly. I was just about ready to turn onto the factory road when a car topped the hill ahead of us, headed toward Creston. I had to drive on to the next section line, turn around, and try again. This time there were no cars. I tried not to look at those floodlights as I shoved the Buick into second and skidded onto the graveled factory road.

“Take it easy, you fool!” Sheldon snapped. “There's enough nitro in this satchel to blow us both to hell!”

I didn't look at him. I kept out of the light as much as possible, but I couldn't get off the road and leave tire tracks everywhere. When we neared the factory office building I cut sharply to the right and pulled around to the back. The car lights had been snapped off.