Whom Gods Destroy (16 page)

Barney looked at me, then he glanced at Keating with that same hard smile. I realized then that he had his own reason for wanting Keating in on this. Barney was an ambitious man—more ambitious than I had realized until now. Maybe one day he would be wholesaling for all the bootleggers in Oklahoma. After he had made Keating governor of the state. Even now he knew too much about the county attorney for Keating to dare refuse him anything. On top of bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution, Seaward had already made him a party to one murder-Marty Paycheck's—and was preparing to make him a party to one murder more. You couldn't refuse a man anything after you had joined with him in crimes like that, and Seaward knew it better than anybody.

I sat there looking at Barney Seaward with a new kind of respect until I realized that all that power could be mine.

But it didn't mean a thing if I didn't get it on the tape.

“Did you bring the money, Seaward?” I said.

He lost his smile. “Don't push me, Foley. I've lost a truck of liquor and a driver and a guard this morning, and before long somebody's going to get hurt and hurt bad. It could be you, Foley.”

“I told you what my price was. If you want me to kill Sid, you'll have to pay for it.” Keating winced. Suddenly his knees seemed to give away and he dropped to the couch and lit a cigarette, his hands shaking. I looked at him and said, “Keating, you can pay half of it, you're in it as deep as Seaward here.” That got their names on the tape. “Now that I think of it,” I went on, “I wouldn't have it any other way. If there's an investigation, I want the county attorney on my side. If it ever comes before a grand jury, I want Keating to be in a position to throw up every smoke screen he can think of. And you can think of them, Keating. You thought of them all right when Mary Paycheck was killed.”

Barney laughed, in that abrupt, completely humorless way of his.

“The punk's got a head on his shoulders,” Barney said.

I said, “Don't call me that again, Barney!”

It startled him. “Maybe,” he said softly, “I'd better call Max and Joel in and show you again who gives the orders.”

“And maybe I'll raise so much hell,” I said, “that it'll be heard all the way to the State Crime Bureau in Oklahoma City!”

I could see kill behind those cool eyes of his, but he kept a strong hand on his emotions. First things first with Barney. “All right,” he said, as though he had completely forgotten everything but the business at hand. “Ten thousand dollars. But you'll get it after the job, Foley, not in advance.”

If I had said twenty thousand, it would have been the same thing. He would promise it and I would never see it.

“And you'll do it the way I tell you,” Barney said. “Tomorrow morning I'll send Sid to Ardmore to make some collections for me. He's going to have an accident on the way. A bad one. Do you know the highway between here and Ardmore, Foley?”

“Not very well.”

“About thirty miles west of Big Prairie the highway is straight and the land is flat for the most part. Traffic moves fast out there. There's an arroyo there—a place called Little River—the bed is dry most of the year, but it's deep. It would be a long, hard fall in a car. Especially a convertible like Sid's.”

“What kind of a bridge is it?” I said.

“The bridge is concrete, but the approaches are two-by-six railing. It wouldn't take much to shove a speeding car through them. West of the bridge there is a section line road, and beyond that there is a service station. Their business is whisky, but you can buy gas, too, if you want it, or you get a bent fender straightened or a new paint job or even a new license plate. A man by the name of Carter runs the place. He has a couple of trucks that he rents sometimes to friends.”

It was clear enough, but not as clear as I wanted it for the tape.

I said, “Let's see if I've got it. First, I go to this service station and rent a truck. You'll have to arrange that end of it. Then I go to the crossroads west of the bridge and I wait until I see that red convertible of Sid's. Then I pull out, force him through the railings and into the arroyo. After that, I take the truck back to the service station where they straighten out any dents that might be in it, paint it, change license plates, and I get in my own car and come back to Big Prairie. What will I do about passing traffic? I can't just drive away as if nothing happened.”

“Tell them you're going for a doctor,” Seaward said. “Let them see your license plate—it won't make any difference. Thirty minutes after you get the truck back to the service station it will be a different truck. Nobody will ever recognize it.”

“What about the highway patrol?”

“By the time they get there, it will be over.” He looked at Keating. “Have you got anything to add, Paul?”

Keating looked ten years older than he had when he first walked into the room. “That bridge is within a few hundred feet of the county line. If anything happens in the next county, I won't be able to help you.”

“It will happen just the way I said,” Barney said, looking at me. “Won't it, Foley?”

I thought of the recorder, all the words going on tape. I thought of Lola—I'd like to see her face when she first heard this recording!

“It's going to be just exactly the way you said, Barney,” I said. “You don't have to worry about that.”

After they left, I played the tape all the way through, from beginning to end. It was all there, the complete plan for a murder. I could hardly breathe as I sat there listening to Barney's voice, ragged with nerves. The only thing missing was the murder itself. That was up to me.

It didn't worry me at all that I was in it as much as Keating and Seaward, because I wasn't bluffing this time. The power that I held was staggering.

Even as I thought about it I heard the heavy tramp of shoes on the stairs. The knock on my door startled me and for a moment I felt my insides go loose and I thought hopelessly: It's happened! Something's happened and the bottom has fallen out of everything!

“Mr. Foley!” It was the landlady's voice, harsh and indignant.

There was another heavy-fisted knock, a knock that meant business. “Open that door, Foley!” A man's voice this time.

“What is it?” I said.

“It's the police,” the landlady said, sounding outraged now.

I couldn't move. I couldn't get my mind to working as the pounding on the door got more insistent. I watched the door give under the weight of heavy shoulders, then the lock snapped and a piece of the door facing splintered and flew across the room as the door came open.

A big plain-clothes cop came into the room with a gun in his hand. “Shake him down,” he said, and his partner got behind me and patted me.

“What the hell is this!” I said.

“Get him downstairs,” the first cop said flatly, and the two of them got me handcuffed and hustled me out of the room.

“What the hell do you think you're doing!” I was almost yelling by now.

The first cop slammed a sledgehammer fist into the small of my back, and I almost went to my knees. “That's just a sample, Foley,” he said. “If you want some more, just try hollering again.”

They half dragged me out of the house and all the roomers crowded onto the front porch, staring wide-eyed. I saw Joel come around from the back of the rooming house where he had been standing watch on me, and Max standing undecided beside the pickup. The two cops were shoving me into their car when Max came forward and said: “What is this?”

“Just stay out of it, buddy. Move away and you won't get hurt.”

He got me into the back seat and then got in beside me, the gun still pointed at my middle. The first cop got behind the wheel. We left Max standing there, his mouth open, looking worried.

I said, “I don't know what this is all about, but I know one thing. You're going to get your rump warped when Barney Seaward finds out about this!”

“Jesus,” the driving cop said wearily. “Everybody works for Seaward, if you listen to what they say.”

I felt like hell. My beard was coming out and I was sweaty and dirty and numb for want of sleep. Then I remembered that recorder in my closet, and that tape. If somebody found that....

They didn't give me time to worry about it. We went straight through the middle of town and then pulled into a parking lot behind the courthouse.

“Get out,” the sweating cop said. The two of them got my arms and started walking me across the graveled parking lot, toward the rear of the courthouse.

Big Prairie's courthouse is a three-story, red-brick affair, with the county jail on the top floor and the county and city offices down below. They hustled me through the rear entrance and down a hall, then we stopped in front of a frosted-glass-paneled door and the sweating cop knocked. In black letters beginning to peel on the frosted glass, there were the words:
Thaddeus M. McErulur, Chief of Police.

McErulur was in his shirt sleeves, sitting behind a battered desk, when we came in. His long, horselike face looked as hard as a granite slab. He leaned slowly across the desk, jutting out his big chin. “You lousy punk bastard,” he said harshly. “Foley, you're going to be one sorry punk before this day is over!”

“When this day is over,” I said tightly, “Big Prairie is going to be looking for another gutless ape to take over the police department!”

The sweating cop shot that hammer-like fist into the small of my back again and the wind went out of me.

The telephone rang as I was picking myself up. McErulur picked it up, answered it, and the grin suddenly left his face. “I tried to get in touch with you, Barney,” he said worriedly. “Hell, how was I to know?” He listened some more, his long face getting redder all the time. “Sure, Barney. There was no fuss, none at all—”

“Like hell,” I said. “Everybody on the block knows I was hauled out of the rooming house by your cops!”

The sweating cop was about to let me have the fist again, but McErulur shook his head. “All right, Barney. Whatever you say.” He hung up, looking at me with a new kind of hate. “Get him downstairs,” he said to the cops. “I'll let you know later what to do with him.”

They took me out into the hall again and then we went down a flight of stairs to the basement. “In here,” one of the cops said, opening a door to a naked, window-less room. That was when I saw Mefford and Cox.

They came down the stairs at the other end of the hall, handcuffed, two uniformed cops behind them.

“Get going,” the sweating cop said. His partner gave me a shove and I stumbled into the room. The only furniture in the room was a long plank table and four straight chairs. I dropped into one of the chairs and sat there raging. I had risked my neck for nothing! I'd hijacked a liquor truck, killed two men, and two goddamn farmers had ruined everything!

The sweating cop sat on the edge of the table and shook out a cigarette. “What's the matter, Foley?” he said sourly. “Did you see somethin' that upset you?”

“Lay off,” the other cop said. “Let McErulur take care of this.”

“Don't worry about your partners,” the sweating cop went on, “they'll be taken care of, all right.” He laughed.

I looked at him. “What partners?”

“You goin' to tell us you never saw the two farmers before? That ain't the story they're tellin'. They say a whisky truck was hijacked and you ramrodded the job. They say you killed a couple of men. Now ain't that a hell of a thing for a man's partners to do, turn on him like that? You want to know how we caught up with you? Your partners were stealin' you blind, Foley,” he said grinning. “All that liquor you went to so much trouble to get, they were haulin' it away in broad daylight!”

Then the door opened and McErulur and Barney Seaward came into the room. McErulur jerked his head and the two cops went out. Seaward came over to the table, his face, white with rage. He put his hands on the table and stood there glaring at me.

“Take it easy, Barney,” McErulur said softly. “We can take care of it.”

Barney wheeled as if he had been stabbed. “You took care of it all right! You and your dumb cops. The whole thing would be in the headlines right now if I didn't own the newspaper.” He turned back to me. “You punk, I should have killed you in the beginning!”

“That would have been smart,” I said. “Kill me, then kill Sid, then kill the man who pulled the trigger for you! Where's the end to it? How long do you think you can get away with a thing like that?”

His hand darted out like a snake, but I hardly felt the sting as it whipped across my face. “You're the big man in Big Prairie!” I said. His rage seemed to have spilled over on me. “All right, keep on killing and it won't make any difference how big you are. The Crime Bureau will get you, Barney. They'll take you to McAlister and strap you in the two-thousand volt chair and you'll squirm just like anybody else.”

He would have killed me right then if he had had something to do it with. Then the door opened and Paul Keating came into the room.

Barney turned on Keating. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I was out of the office when McErulur tried to get me,” he said, not quite able to hold Barney's gaze. He took off his hat and put it on the table and I saw that his hands were shaking.

“Do you know what it's all about?” McErulur said.

Keating reached for a cigarette, not looking at me. “Not all of it.”