The Empty Trap (2 page)

Valerez had just lighted another cigarette. Back in the motel Lloyd had seen the name on the packet. Delicados. Valerez held the cigarette to Lloyd’s lips. The paper had a sugary taste. The smoke was raw and strong when he sucked it down into his lungs.

Tulsa had been going more slowly, watching the drop at the right side of the road. He stopped. “You think it’s okay, Giz?”

“It is wild country. But we should look, maybe.”

Tulsa turned off the motor, took the key out, set the parking brake hard. Lloyd knew he took no chances. At no time had he left any opening. He was a professional. They got out and walked up ahead of the car, walked fifty feet. Benny, who had been driving the Pontiac, hurried to join them. There was no need for Benny to take precautions. Sylvia, his only passenger, was dead.

Lloyd Wescott watched them. They pointed over the drop. It was very still in the mountains, with no sound of bird or insect. They talked together and he could not hear them. Tulsa stood with his big hands on his hips. Had he not been beside the others, his breadth of shoulder would have made him look shorter than his six feet. He wore tailored khakis, skin-tight at the waist, taut around lean hips. The short stiff black hair was like a cap, and when the sun broke through, Lloyd saw a pink highlight on Tulsa’s quarter profile, on the high hard cheekbone. Benny, the squat little man with the clown face, pranced and gesticulated as he talked. Valerez, the stranger, had put his dark suit coat on over the pink shirt, the dark maroon knit tie with the ruby pin. His black hair gleamed above the pale, narrow, handsome face, and he stood a little apart from the other two.

Careful selection of grave, Lloyd thought. And I can be grateful to them for one thing. There isn’t any room in me for fear, or regret or remorse. No room for anything but hate. Life ends here. The lights go out. I should be thinking about eternity, and remembering, in this last time left to me, all the bright days of my life. And all I can think about is how I want to see them dead.

Tulsa made a gesture of impatience, of decision, then sent Benny back to the Pontiac. Tulsa returned to the Chrysler, leaned on the window frame on the driver’s side and looked in at Lloyd.

“I’ll make it easy,” he said.

“Thanks.” The word was blurred by Lloyd’s broken mouth.

“You got more guts than I figured, boy. Harry said make it rough for both of you. She got it rough. But the way I figure, she knew what she was doing, and you got suckered along. This wasn’t your league, Lloyd. So I’ll make it easy. You won’t know about it.”

“Don’t … do me any favors.”

“I’ll let Harry know you took it good. And she took it bad.”

Benny swung the Pontiac around the Chrysler, brought it to a precise stop aimed at an angle toward the drop. Tulsa said to Valerez, “How soon before anybody finds them?”

“One cannot say. A week, a month, maybe one hour. But it does not matter.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“These people, you think they call the policia? There will be things of value, perhaps pieces of the car to be taken to a village, sold for a few centavos.”

Tulsa snapped his thick fingers. “God damn. I nearly forgot. Harry woulda chewed me good. Benny!”

“Yeah?”

“Get those rings off her.”

“Rings? Sure.” He dived back into the Pontiac. After a few moments he called to Tulsa, “They’re on tight.”

“Those rings are worth three grand,” Tulsa said. “Harry told me before he married her.”

“Thirty-six thousand pesos,” Valerez said wistfully.

Benny came back with the rings and gave them to Tulsa. Benny looked in brightly at Lloyd. “How they breaking, pal?”

“Cut his ankles loose, Giz,” Tulsa said. Valerez leaned in and, with quick blade thrust, deftly slit the nylon at his ankles. Tulsa pulled him out the other side of the car and set him on his feet. Lloyd’s knees sagged. Tulsa cursed and bent as though to carry him over his shoulder. Lloyd felt there might be one slim chance if he kept on his feet. Not a chance to save himself. It had gone far beyond that.

“Can walk,” he said, and locked his knees. The pain of the burned feet was excruciating.

“A gutsy guy,” Benny said admiringly. “He maybe was in the wrong business, Tuls.”

They held his arms, Tulsa on his left, Benny on his right, and walked him toward the Pontiac. He walked as steadily and as strongly as he could, forcing himself with what was left of strength and will. Tulsa did not relax his hold, but Benny did. He felt the slackening of the grip. He timed his steps, summoned up the last bit of explosive energy in deadened muscles, then lunged hard to his right. Tulsa hauled him back. But his shoulder had slammed hard into Benny’s. Benny lost his grip and staggered toward the brink, giving a shrill yelp of fright. He fell, scrabbling at the gravel, half over, sliding further, yelling again. Valerez reached him at the last instant, caught his wrist. They were both poised there and Lloyd tried to dive at them, to take both of them over with him, but Tulsa held him. All energy gone, Lloyd sagged to his knees. Valerez pulled Benny back onto the road. Benny sat, his face grey, cursing thickly. He got up slowly, came over and kicked Lloyd in the side.

“God damn, Tuls,” he said. “I’m shakin’ all over. Jesus!” He kicked Lloyd again, heavily.

“Cut it out,” Tulsa said. “Get him on his feet.”

“I’ve always been scared of falling off something high.”

When they stood him up, Lloyd thought he wouldn’t be able to speak, but he managed to say, “Then … that’s the … way you’re … going to die … Benny.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“Everybody … dies the way … they’re scared of.”

“Hey, is he kiddin’ me, Tuls? Is he?”

“Shut up. Get the door open there.”

Tulsa put him in the car, behind the wheel. Sylvia was slumped against the door on the far side, body slack in death, black hair wreathing the side of the empurpled face. Benny had dressed her after death, dressed her in the yellow short-sleeved sweater, the pistachio flannel skirt. Tulsa gave an order, and Valerez and Benny Bernholz went over the car, wiping it clean.

“When I say go, push with your shoulders,” he said. “Don’t touch it.”

Tulsa reached a heavy arm through the window, a spring-handled sap in his hand. “This’ll make it easier,” he said. He snapped the lead end of the sap against Lloyd’s forehead with a backhanded twist of his wrist. Lloyd moved instinctively, and just quickly enough so that it glanced off the side of his forehead, just ahead of the temple. One of the familiar pain-flowers bloomed and burst in gaudy blue and white and at the other end of an echoing tunnel he heard Tulsa yell, “Push!”

He could not move, but he could see straight ahead. “Wait,” Tulsa yelled and he held the car back with his great strength. Lloyd was only partially aware when Valerez reached in, cut the nylon from his wrists. Again they pushed. The car moved forward. The right front corner dropped first. It happened so very slowly. Now, he thought, that thing they talk about is happening!

I argued with the salesman about this car, about his offer. The red and white hardtop convertible. He wanted fourteen hundred difference and I wanted to trade for a thousand. When I went into the sales manager’s office, the air conditioning was turned very low. There was an award certificate on the wall. We could not get anywhere until I told him I was the manager at the Hotel Green Oasis, and then the atmosphere was more cordial and we traded for eleven fifty and I drove it back, and it smelled new and it ran well, and that was the week Harry Danton brought Sylvia back from Los Angeles and they moved into the hotel
.

It dropped on the right side, and he was thrown against Sylvia’s body and for one moment he could look down the long cruel slant of steep brown rock, at small wiry trees that grew out of the rock, and then the roll and fall continued a clanging and crashing and a steep sickness, and then he spun high and free and he saw the car and the mountains turn around him and knew he was apart from the car. Then, in the turn, the brown rocks came up to a smash of whiteness against his face, a floodlight
whiteness that dwindled down and away like the last white spot on a cooling TV picture tube.

He knew he was cold. There were great sounds around him. It was very difficult to think. Needles of cold beat against his face. He turned his face slowly and with great difficulty until his cheek touched a sharp edge. He opened his eyes and he saw wet rock inches from his eyes. The rain drove against wet rock, exploding into silvery mist. There was a blue glare of lightning and then thunder cracked loudly and the long echoes boomed and rolled through the mountains. Slowly he began to know that he was bent oddly, body arched back at the waist, something hard across the small of his back. Lightning was close for a long time, and then moved away and the rain slackened and stopped. He felt rigid with cold. Almost at once the sun came out, a high white glare over the mountains, and the wet rocks began to steam. He could not think why he was here, where this place was, why he should be made so uncomfortable. When he tried to move pain brought a threatening blackness. His right hand and arm seemed willing to move when he willed it. He brought his right hand up close to his face. He turned his hand over and looked with distant curiosity, with a clinical remoteness, at the great tear in the heel of his palm, at the thick flap of skin and flesh that lay back over his wrist. It bled slowly.

Inch by painful inch he turned his body to the right, toward the cliff face, moving his face back from the corner of rock. The hardness that had been across his back now bit into his waist. After another few inches he turned the rest of the way suddenly and the hard thing was across his belly and he was jackknifed across it. And he looked down a steep sickening slant. There was brown rock and sun on steaming brown rock, and a few trees with knotted trunks no bigger than his forearm. Far below him he saw a patch of color, of red and white. He closed his eyes. The height made him feel sick. When he could look again, he knew it was the car. His car. His mind and memory until that moment had been like
a dry stream bed. The single act of recognition of the car was like opening a dam at the head of the stream. The waters came roaring down, turbulent, filling it from brim to brim.

He closed his eyes again. Blood pounded in his head. Have to think, he told himself. Hanging across a tree. Broken all to hell. Thrown clear. Ought to be dead. Can very easily become dead. Just wiggle a little. Slide off the tree. Never feel a thing after the first bounce.

But it would be nice to see Tulsa Haynes. And Benny Bernholz. And Giz Valerez. And Harry Danton. Maybe, most of all, Harry Danton.

He felt as though the tree was slowly cutting him in half. He could see his legs, ankles, feet. Both shoes were gone. His left foot was twisted crazily to the side, the ankle big as a melon. Blood dripped from the toes of the right foot. He tried to swallow and could not. His entire face felt numb below the eyes. He touched his face with the fingers of his right hand. He could not identify what he felt. Bone in the wrong place. Splintered things that could be teeth. He let the right arm hang. He wept for himself, wept for the broken body. This was the gateway to death; he was a half step away.

He felt unconsciousness coming, the way a night shadow moves across a lawn. He fought it back. He looked down again. There was the steep drop. Close below the tree was a ledge. It was more of a crevasse than a ledge. The ledge tilted back. He did not see how he could lower himself to it, lower himself gently enough to keep from continuing on down the slope. But life or death had narrowed down to this one lean chance, with the probability that even if he could manage it, death would only be delayed. He knew he was close to passing out. He caught the trunk of the tree in his torn right hand, and using the leverage, he began to worm his way back. The trunk was across his diaphragm, then his chest. He hooked his left elbow over it, moved further. When the trunk came under his chin, the almost useless left arm slipped. The trunk hit him under the chin. His feet swung against the rock and he made a thin squeaking sound when his left
ankle banged. His right hand began to slip as his weight slowly opened his fingers. But as his hand opened the toes of his right foot touched the ledge. He found precarious balance, and when he let go with his hand, he fell against the cliff face, supported by his right foot. He caught an edge of rock with his right hand as he started to topple. It delayed him slightly, but then he fell full on his back, head snapping back to strike the rock, and the shadow moved quickly over him, the world turning dark.

When he came to, it was a world of blue-gray. He could see the sun on the high peaks across the valley. It took him several moments to decide that it must be nearly night rather than dawn. He watched the sun line move up the peaks. He was thirsty and his body had stiffened. He moved gingerly, painfully, trying to make himself more comfortable. If this was the place to wait for death on this night, then be comfortable, if you can. When the blackness came again, it was not like sleep.

He awoke and stars were high and he felt he was on fire. In the night he babbled and yelled and had strange bright visions. The yells echoed faintly from the far mountain wall of the deep valley. At dawn the visions were gone and he was cold. In the morning there was rain, another heavy rain. He held his face in the rain, and though he did not have enough feeling in his face to know if his mouth was opened or closed, he felt the coolness trickle into his throat and he was able to swallow after a fashion. He pulled his shirt up with his right hand and squeezed the rain moisture from it into his mouth. The water brought him back from the dulled wait for death.

When he was able to look around, he saw that his ledge went narrowly around a shoulder of the cliff, and slanted down slightly. He worked himself over onto his belly. He could use his left elbow, his right hand and arm, his right leg. The left leg dangled. He inched himself along. He did not know how long it took to reach the shoulder of the cliff, one hour or six. There he could see
the rest of the ledge. It opened out, almost as wide as a road, and went down steeply. After two hundred yards it reached a place where the mountain side was a different texture. There was a long sand slide, studded with róund rocks and boulders. He followed it down with his eyes and saw that it ended at the valley floor where tropic growth was more luxuriant, where a rain-fed stream wound between the great stones that had tumbled down the flanks of the mountains.