The Murderer Vine (27 page)

I bit my thumb to keep from moaning. When the spasm passed, I kneaded the calf with all my might. The cramp finally went away. I was beginning to lose patience. I picked up the gun and started to wade ashore. But suddenly there was a lot of chair scraping and “see y’alls.” Then the door opened and Andy and Boone walked out and drove away.

I went back and put down the gun and took a deep breath. Thank God. God would take a more lenient view about five deaths than he would about seven.

I didn’t know what the sheriff said next. My attention was turned in another direction: someone was coming down the walk. It swayed and creaked. Then he ducked under the top railing, dropped to the mud, and came toward me. It was only later, when I played the tape, that I heard the sheriff tell Vince to get some mud, and smear it over their license plates.

All I knew at that second was that a man was coming toward me. I thought at first that he was going to urinate, but when he came off the walk I knew I was wrong. And the chances were very good that he would see me and the mattress. There were just too many bars of light coming down on me and the equipment.

I could have gotten him with my machine gun. But the silencer didn’t mean that it functioned in complete silence. It meant that it didn’t go off with an ear-shattering
blam! blam! blam!
It made a sound which would carry over a hundred feet or more on a quiet night, and even further in a narrow river with high banks. It was all right for night ambushes, or to pick off a patrol without alerting the main body, but the sound of the gun below the Catfish Club would certainly alert the men above. That and the splash he would make when he would fall into the water. And he might scream.

They had guns above and they knew how to use them. I might even get knocked off myself.

It would be better for me to handle Vince without the help of Hiram Maxim’s noble invention, the silencer.

So, as soon as Vince ducked under the railing I began to wade toward the shore as quickly as I could. It’s not easy to wade fast and quietly at the same time. I moved several feet, then got behind a piling only two feet from the shore. I stuck out plenty on both sides, but I didn’t worry too much. I had had lessons in Korea. I was making a night patrol toward the Chinese lines when a flare went up. And I was standing. You might think the best thing to do in such a situation is to dive flat. Well, that’s wrong. The best thing to do is not move. You might think you stand out like the Empire State Building. But you don’t. People frequently will not notice the most obvious thing. As long as it doesn’t move. So I froze.

He squatted down with an old pie plate. He was three feet in front of me. He began piling the mud onto the plate. Since I hadn’t heard the sheriff telling him to get the mud, I thought he was so drunk he had reverted to childhood and was going to make himself some mud pies. And he wasn’t too smart to begin with.

That made me hold back. It was almost like attacking an idiot child. I wouldn’t have gone for him if he had just gotten his mud, stood up, and left. I mean I wouldn’t have gone for him then. Later would be different.

But when he had almost filled the plate, his eyes lifted and saw my knees. His eyebrows shot up and he started to open his mouth.

I clapped a hand over it, and with my other hand clapped to the back of his neck I pulled him forward fast. Since he was squatting, he was easily knocked off balance. I forced his mouth and nose deep into the mud. Since he would make too much noise thrashing around, I got his right arm in a good strong lock and then I lay on top of him. He couldn’t move and my thirty pounds weight advantage kept him pressed into the soft mud.

He shuddered and quivered for two minutes. Then it was over.

It was much worse than I ever thought it would be.

I lay on top of Vince for a minute more. To make sure. Then I waded back and got the gun. Then I put it back.

The reason why Old Man Mose had been killed was because of my shoes.

I had walked all around the melon patch in the damp ground. All those footprints. So I went and thought up the camouflage idea.

And here I was all set to walk all around the murder scene with my sneakers. They were a distinctive pattern. They had been made for gripping slippery decks and I used them whenever I went out fishing. They cost nine and a half bucks. Because of four little side holes at the arch they let in cool air, and on especially hot days when I was out taping people I had worn them. I bet no one within a hundred and fifty miles had a similar pair.

“Vince, what the hell’s keepin’ you?”

I took off the sneakers and put them on the mattress. I picked up the gun and waded ashore. “Goddammit, what you doin’?”

I grunted out, “Minnit.” It was a pretty good imitation.

The door of the shack was half open. I walked through the mud, ducked under the railing, and walked in. They were all sitting together at the table, I was happy to see.

Ray began to talk. He got out, “Vince, you — ” before he fell silent.

The others turned.

I brought the gun up and swung the muzzle slowly back and forth. The arc was small but big enough to cover them all in its oscillations. “Freeze,” I said.

The sheriff was stretching his arms in a huge yawn. His gun belt was hanging from a nail in the wall three feet in back of him. The gun rack had two shotguns in it. It was four big steps from the nearest club member, who was Ray.

No one said anything. They were staring at the gun. I couldn’t blame them. It didn’t look like a gun. With that pale plastic stock and the fat round silencer and the round pale-blue drum on top, it looked like a bad piece of modern sculpture or a sloppily designed electric fan.

Then they looked at me. I just wore a pair of swim trunks and my legs from the knees down were black with mud. I was covered with mosquito bites and they were beginning to puff up. I had just killed Vince and that must have given me some sort of an added bonus for my personal appearance which I wasn’t aware of, but it all totaled up to something which made the sheriff’s next remark, now that I thick back, seem reasonable.

“Now, perfessor,” he said, soothing. “You’re a little drunk, looks like, an’ what you’re doin’ half naked I’ll be goddamned if I can figger out. What you need is to sit down an’ have some of our white mule here. So you better sit down. Ray, give your chair to the perfessor.”

His right hand was beginning to drop toward the back of the chair. It would also pass by his gun butt. I had to take charge immediately.

I put the lever on single shot, dropped the muzzle, and squeezed off one shot. The gun went
chug!
and the jug blew into splinters. The sheriff’s hand went up again and stayed there. I put the gun back on automatic.

They looked at it with respect.

“Well,” Ray said agreeably, “I’ll be diddle-dog-damned if I ever see a thing like that.”

No one looked scared. Joe Sam looked expectantly at the door when he thought I wasn’t looking at him.

“Vince isn’t coming,” I said.

“What you do with Vince?” asked the sheriff.

I saw no reason to get into a debate. Ray was inching toward the shotguns every time he thought my attention was diverted. The sheriff was watching my eyes. In a few seconds I would have to keep both Ray and the sheriff under close observation, and I was sure that within a few seconds one of the others would make a try for my gun or for the shotguns. Then a mess would develop and my chances of coming out of it unhurt would lessen.

I had thought of making some sort of a statement; after all, I was both judge and executioner, and the right to make a brief speech before carrying out sentence was traditionally mine. I wanted them to know exactly why I was there and why they were about to die.

I pulled the trigger instead and swept the gun back and forth across the table as if it were a fire hose. It went
chugchugchugchugchug!

Although the sheriff had been sitting down, the impact jerked him to his feet. His hands shot out, palms downward, and then jerked up to chest level. His face was contorted.

After a while I realized the drum was empty. Yet I was still squeezing the trigger so hard that my knuckle was white. No one was moving.

The shack was filled with the sharp, bitter smell of powder. I made sure they were all dead. I bent down and took out the sheriff’s .45. I went to each one and took his pulse. I put the muzzle of the .45 in each man’s ear. If any one of them had made a move, I would have fired. No pulse beats.

I wiped my prints off the .45 butt with the dirty dish towel. I put the gun back in the holster.

I went underneath the shack and waded out to the mattress. The moon had come up. There was a lot of blood dripping down through the cracks. The towel was pretty well soaked with it. I balled up the towel and was about to toss it in the river when I realized that it might be found downstream. I had bought it yesterday in town. I untied the mike and put it away. I untied the mattress from the pilings and towed it ashore. I wiped the blood from the recorder and my sneakers. I rinsed out the blood from the towel. I couldn’t get it out of the sneakers by wiping them, so I rinsed out the sneakers in the river.

I sat in the mud and put the sneakers on. My fingers were trembling. I couldn’t even tie the laces. I turned and butted my head against the piling. A little pain would take my mind away from whatever it was contemplating and force it to dwell on mundane things like pain and how to tie shoelaces effectively.

Here is where you make the mistakes, I said to myself.
Slow Down.
Don’t try to get away fast. Stick around. Sit and think.
Think.

I folded my arms on my knees and leaned my forehead against them. I could feel my arteries throb in my upper arms. I must have had a pulse rate higher than a hummingbird’s. I took several deep breaths. I thought about diving off the aft deck of my new cruiser into the Caribbean through the clean, green, translucent water down to the bottom. The wave patterns of the surface would be transmuted into quivering lines that would oscillate across the white sandy bottom. I would spin onto my back and look up at the hull of my boat and the bottom rung of the ladder over the stern.

I sighed and lifted my head. I had shifted down to a lower heartbeat. All right. What am I doing wrong? The answer came: your sneakers.

Of course. Footprints all over again. I took them off and knotted the laces together. I slung them around my neck like a necklace.

What else? Now I was thinking calmly.
What else?

I didn’t move for thirty seconds. Nothing else.

Good. I unscrewed the air valve on the mattress. I rolled it up slowly. The air hissed out under pressure. It sounded like an enormous snake and I didn’t care. I wasn’t worried about snakes. It was funny, but I didn’t give a damn anymore. It was as if I didn’t care really about anything anymore.

I put the wet towel inside the mattress. I hung the Kim over one shoulder and slung the machine gun over the other. I wasn’t going to throw it in the river so close to the shack. They were bound to drag around it and maybe even send down a skin diver.

I climbed up on the walk. I wasn’t sure whether I had touched the railing or not when I came up the first time. I went inside the shack, not looking at the bodies. I took the dish towel and wiped the railing wherever I might have touched it. I put the dish towel back. It was then I realized that everyone knew I had been a guest at the shack — why shouldn’t my fingerprints be on the railing?

It was possible to be overcareful. Easy, easy.

I padded along the walk and came out at the parking area. I went past their cars — the cars that wouldn’t be driving around at night anymore with mud smeared over the plates.

The thought of that made me feel better.

I turned left at the road and began walking toward Alexandria.

If anyone came along the road, I could get into the bushes and squat out of sight fast enough. As for a possible night-operating snake, I made plenty of noise. Any decent snake would get out of the way, and since no one lived along the road, no one could hear me clumping along. After a mile and a half I put on my sneakers. The ground was packed hard and wouldn’t show anything.

Half an hour passed. Kirby should be coming along about now. And three minutes later I saw headlights far down the road. I had told her to alternate the up and down beams every five seconds as soon as she hit the river road. They were going up and down. There was no other car in sight.

I stepped out into the road. She stopped. I had the gun wrapped in the mattress. I put everything in the trunk and got in without a word, I saw that the taillight bulb was still unscrewed. I could drive around at night without anyone spotting my license just as well as they could.

I dressed as she drove. When we got home, I stayed inside.

“Are you all right?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“Did you get the information?”

“Yep. I’m just tired.” I slid back of the wheel.

“You’re not comin’ in?”

“I’ll be back soon.”

“Half an hour?”

I nodded.

“I’ll have some coffee on. ’Bye, honey.”

All nice and wifely. Our act would have to go on till we were back in New York, I knew, but I sensed a real concern. Too much concern. And I felt too good when she called me “honey.” Honey, I just killed a few people. Keep your distance, if you know what’s good for you. But how can you know that? At least tonight you don’t have to know. And for tonight I would like to be treated like a nice guy. Maybe for the last time. But that’s the way it goes, Dunne. You made your investment capital. Now lie in it.

I drove ten miles north. There was a bridge across the river. No one ever went fishing from the bridge. No farmhouses were near. No kids ever parked nearby at night. I parked and opened the trunk. I set the jack outside and leaned the spare tire against the car in case a curious car might come by. I unwrapped the mattress and with a length of heavy wire I lashed one of the tire irons to the gun very strongly. I left about three feet of the wire sticking out. I whirled it over my head a few times like one of those gaucho bolas they use on the Argentine pampas, and when I had wound up a lot of energy in it, I let go. It sailed in a nice long arc and made a neat splash about seventy-five feet away.