The Stalker (15 page)

They were talking through him now, watching him, testing him for a reaction. Oh, they knew, all right. He hadn’t had any doubt in his mind from the beginning. He sat there and tried to make himself tell them about Granite City, and about Drexel and Helgerman, but it was just no use.

Commac said, “Do you remember the Smithfield robbery, Mr. Kilduff? It made quite a splash in the Illinois papers.”

“I remember it,” he answered softly. “But I don’t see what that has to do with Jim Conradin. Or with me.”

“Maybe it has a lot to do with
him
,” Flagg said carefully.

“Are you saying Jim was mixed up in that?” Kilduff tried to make his voice incredulous, but the words came out flat and toneless.

“There’s a good chance of it,” Commac said. “A very good chance of it.”

“How do you mean that?”

“Conradin’s wife opened their safe deposit box this afternoon,” Flagg said. “Up in Santa Rosa. What do you suppose she found in there?”

“I don’t have any idea.”

“Money.”

“Money?” The incredulity was there this time, and genuine.

“Forty-one thousand and some-odd dollars.”

“But that—”

“And a newspaper clipping,” Commac said. “Dealing with the robbery.”

“That doesn’t prove Jim was involved.”

“No, it doesn’t. But just the same, it opens up a lot of possibilities, wouldn’t you say?”

“Look, why come to me? I don’t know anything.”

“Mrs. Conradin remembers you from the funeral,” Commac said.

“She says you spoke to her at the mortuary.”

“Well, so what?”

“That newspaper clipping I mentioned. It carried general descriptions of the only two bandits whose faces were seen.”

“So?”

“They match both Conradin and you, Mr. Kilduff.”

“For Christ’s sake!” he exploded. “You just said they were general descriptions. I look like a million other guys, and so did Jim Conradin.”

“Sure,” Flagg said. “We know that.”

“Do I strike you as some kind of hoodlum?”

“Nobody said anything about hoodlums.”

“Who else would rob an armored car?”

“Six young guys who thought they had a foolproof scheme worked out,” Commac said. “Maybe ex-soldiers, regimented and disciplined.”

“What is it you’re trying to say, Commac?” Kilduff asked. “That I was one of the six men? That Jim Conradin and I were both in on it? Is that it?”

“Were you?” Commac asked quietly.

Well, there it was. The question. No long speeches now, Kilduff. One word, that’s all, just one word.
Yes
. Say it. Just open your mouth and say it. Say it, you son of a bitch!

Yes.

“No,” he said. “And I resent your accusations.”

“I’m not making any accusations, Mr. Kilduff.”

“What the hell else would you call it?”

“You know,” Flagg said softly, “if you
were
involved there’s nothing we can do to you now. The Statute of Limitations ran out a long time ago.”

“If I was involved, and I’m not, I’d still be a fool to admit it.”

“Maybe so,” Commac said.

“Listen, I don’t know where Conradin got that money his wife found and I don’t care. If he was in on that robbery, I never knew anything about it.”

“All right, Mr. Kilduff,” Commac said in a placating way. “Now, suppose you tell us a little more about Conradin.”

He lit another cigarette from the butt of the first one. “Like what?”

“Do you remember the exact date of the last time you saw him?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Just like that? Without consideration?”

“I don’t remember. It was after we were discharged.”

“Then it was in February of 1959.”

“Yes, February.”

“And where was that?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Granite City?”

“No.”

“I thought you didn’t remember.”

“Goddamn it, you’re trying to confuse me!”

“Take it easy, Mr. Kilduff,” Flagg said.

“Christ,” Kilduff said.

“Can you give us the names of some of Conradin’s friends?” Commac asked. “Other than yourself, that is.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember any of his friends?”

“No.”

“I thought the two of you were buddies?”

“We were.”

“Well, all right. Then give us the names of some of your
mutual
friends.”

I can’t do it, Kilduff thought, I can’t tell them, it’s no use, and I’m going to pieces sitting here. I’ve got to see Drexel, I’ve got to talk it out with him, I’ve got to have some time to think. He got on his feet and stood there trembling. “I don’t have to answer any more of your questions,” he said. “You’ve got no right to come here like this and accuse me, and I don’t have to answer any more.”

They looked up at him impassively.

“Listen,” Kilduff said, “if you think I’m some kind of criminal, why don’t you arrest me? Why don’t you take me downtown and book me and grill me in the back room? Isn’t that the way you people do it?”

“No, that’s not the way we do it,” Commac said softly. “And we couldn’t arrest you if we wanted to. You know that as well as we do. The Statute of Limitations has long since run out on the Smithfield robbery.”

“Then what are you digging it up again for?”

“It’s our job,” Commac said simply.

“Well, I think you’d better leave now. I don’t have any more to say to you.”

They got to their feet in unison. Commac said, “I think you’ve said quite a bit already, Mr. Kilduff.”

They moved unhurriedly to the door and Commac opened it and Flagg said, “We’ll be in touch.” They went out and Commac closed the door very softly behind them.

In his room at the Graceling Hotel, the limping man lay in darkness, his hands clasped behind his head, resting, thinking. Through the rain-streaked glass of the single window, he could see the coral-tinged light from some proximate but unseen neon sign blink on and off, on and off, on and off through the thinly falling night mist. Faint automobile sounds drifted through the panes and beneath the wood frame, muted, directionless.

The luminescent dial of his wristwatch read: 10:25.

Five minutes.

Everything was ready. He had all the items he needed—save for the one he would buy on the way—in a large, double-strength shopping bag with braided-twine handles. The Ruger .44 Magnum Blackhawk revolver was freshly oiled and freshly cleaned and freshly loaded, wrapped again in the chamois cloth at the bottom of the American Tourister briefcase. He wouldn’t need it, of course; but it was there, and it was ready. Just in case.

He watched the greenish second hand of his watch sweep another minute away.

10:26.

In one hour, perhaps an hour and a half at the outside, barring difficulties unforeseen, Green would die.

And there would only be Orange.

The limping man smiled faintly in the darkness and swung his legs off the bed and sat up and gained his feet. He found his canvas shoes and put them on, and put on his overcoat, and lifted the shopping bag and the briefcase from the glass-topped surface of the writing desk. He went to the door and opened it and stepped out into the hallway and locked it behind him.

He looked at his watch again.

It was exactly 10:30.

Fran Varner stared at the telephone in the kitchen of her Santa Clara apartment, willing it to ring, willing Larry’s voice to be on the other end, knowing that it wouldn’t ring at all, waiting for a few more minutes to pass so that she could dial his number again for the twentieth or thirtieth time since six o’clock.

Thinking about the growing foetus deep in her womb.

She hadn’t been able to put off seeing a doctor any longer; she had finally realized that yesterday. She had to know, one way or the other. She had made an appointment with a physician in San Jose whom she had once seen for a virus infection. Embarrassed and ashamed by the absence of a wedding band on her left hand, she had refused to meet the doctor’s eyes during the consultation and the subsequent examination; but he had been very nice, and very kind, and very understanding. He wasn’t there to make moral judgments, he had told her; that wasn’t his profession—or his inclination. He would know the results tomorrow, he had told her. Call him at three.

She had called him at two-thirty, holding her breath as his nurse put the call through to him, telling herself the tests would prove negative, they simply had to prove negative . . .

And then he had come on the line and said quietly, “I’m sorry, Miss Varner, the Achheim-Zondek was positive. You are pregnant.”

She had taken it very well, considering.

She had telephoned El Peyote immediately after promising the doctor she would come in for regular check-ups, and told Juano, who was managing things while Larry was away, that she wouldn’t be in tonight—she had some kind of bug. Then she had gone home and thought it all through, weighing the alternatives.

How much did she love Larry Drexel? More than life itself, that was how much. But suppose he wouldn’t marry her when she told him of the child? Suppose, as she had feared all along, he refused flatly? Did she want this baby—her baby, their baby—more than she wanted Larry?

No, she wanted nothing, no one, that much.

Then her recourses were clear.

Adoption.

Or abortion.

The latter was totally unthinkable. In spite of everything, she was incapable of committing a sin of that magnitude; if she had been unable to prevent the
conception
of human life by simply taking birth control pills, how could there be within her the capacity for
destroying
an unborn child, a child of and within her body, from the seed of the man she loved?

But adoption—yes, she would do that. It wouldn’t be easy, especially if she saw the baby after it was born, if she held him (her?) in her arms, so warm and soft and defenseless; it wouldn’t be easy, but she would do that if it meant keeping Larry. She would find a good foundling home where they screened the applicants very carefully, where only those who desperately wanted a baby and would give it love and a good home and all the requisite material benefits, too, were allowed to adopt, and if necessary she would do it out of her money. Of course that wouldn’t be necessary, because Larry wasn’t a cruel man—strange and cold at times, but never cruel; he wasn’t like those men you read about in books who got a girl in trouble and then denied all responsibility and abandoned her completely. Not Larry, not her Larry.

Why, she might even be wrong about his refusal of marriage.

He might
want
to marry her with the baby coming.

There really was a good chance of that.

There really was.

She had to see him, she had to tell him about the child in just the right way. And she had to do it soon, very soon.

She called El Peyote again, but Juano didn’t know where he had gone—“back east somewhere, I think, he didn’t say exactly”—and he didn’t know when Mr. Drexel would be back. Yes, he would have Mr. Drexel call her as soon as he showed up there, yes, no matter what time it was, yes, he would tell him it was urgent.

Fran had begun calling his home then, just before six, and it was ten-fifty now. No answer yet, and her phone had not rung. She continued to stare at the instrument, and she imagined she could feel the child move inside her. She closed her eyes and put one hand against her abdomen, pressing it there; then she opened her eyes again and with her other hand lifted the receiver out of its cradle, put it down on the breakfast bar, dialed Larry’s number again, and then picked it up and put it to her ear. She listened to it ring five times, six, seven, eight...

Then: “Yeah, hello?” a little breathlessly.

Her hand tightened around the receiver, and she leaned forward, her heart singing violently in her chest. “Larry? Oh, thank God!”

“Fran?”

“Yes, darling,” she said. “Oh, Larry, I ...” The words constricted in her throat, and she swallowed and tried again. “Larry, I have to see you.”

“Sure, baby,” he said. His voice was distant, abstracted. “Tomorrow, at El Peyote.”

“No, no, tonight.”

There was a brief silence. Then he said, “Look, Fran, I just got in from Chicago. It’s late, and I’m tired...”

“Larry, I have to see you!”

“Not.”

“Please, please, I have to!”

“Goddamn it, I told you no.”

“Darling, please, it’s . . . it’s very important.”

“I don’t give a crap how important it is,” he snapped. “Not tonight. Do you understand? Not tonight!”

He hung up.