“Chrissakes, don’t beat up an old woman!” he told Skip.
“What was all that yap in Mex?”
“Just that. Don’t hurt her.”
Skip showed his teeth through the silk mask. “She knows where that money is.”
“Well—just ask her, then.”
“Ah, she’d never tell us.” By main force Skip got the wadding of cotton back into Mrs. Havermann’s unwilling mouth. He pushed it in hard, then wrapped her face in the piece of cloth.
“Not too tight,” Eddie warned.
“She’ll keep her yap shut now,” Skip said savagely, giving the wrapping another knot.
Eddie was uneasy, but he didn’t want another fight with Skip. He went to the closet door, opened it, and looked in. It was a big closet, neatly arranged, well filled with clothing. Skip inched Mrs. Havermann off the bed, carrying her by the shoulders, and he and Eddie got her into the closet under the hanging garments. She struggled and bumped around, made frantic muffled noises under the gag. Skip stood and watched interestedly from the closet doorway.
Eddie said nervously, “Please, Mrs. Havermann, just lie still. We won’t bother you again. Mr. Stolz will come and find you, and you’ll be all right.”
Mrs. Havermann thrashed and convulsed. Her thick legs whipped back and forth with surprising force, scattering some shoes set in a row along the closet wall.
“She acts like she’s having a doggone fit,” Skip said musingly.
A shrill noise now came from under the gag, as if Mrs. Havermann had swallowed a toy whistle. The whipping motion of her lower limbs was slowing down. She tried to push herself erect by means of her bound hands, but soon fell back.
Eddie had gone out of the room. “You just take a nice little nap,” Skip said to Mrs. Havermann, and kicked her foot back into the closet and shut the door.
They went back to the search. Skip looked through Mrs. Havermann’s room before leaving it, inspecting a sewing box, a big basket of mending, a small black trunk. Everything the old woman owned, he thought, stank of moth balls. When he lifted the trunk lid the odor was almost stifling. He noted that in the top tray there lay a large framed photograph, the picture of a stout man with an autocratic and arrogant expression.
Havermann, he thought.
He rifled the trunk, threw stuff back into it, shut the lid. Hell, there was no money in this room. Nor in this part of the house, either. He thought about the cupboard where he’d found the two packets hidden behind the dog food. There ought to be a clue there. Something had made her change her mind. She’d thought of a better spot. Skip tried to figure out what there was about the cupboard or the stored dog food to remind her of some better place, tried to think as Mrs. Havermann would have thought, and failed. Neither the cupboard nor the dog food reminded him of a thing.
There was an especially loud thump from the closet, as if Mrs. Havermann had made one last try for the door with a heel. Then there was silence.
Skip left the room, went downstairs, and then, taking care to move silently, he went out into the rear yard. He needed to reassure himself that Big Tom wasn’t out there. He scouted around the car, looked down the driveway to the street. It would be a hell of a note if Big Tom showed up and caught them here in the middle of the search. Skip pulled off the stocking from his face, smoked a cigarette, sheltering the lighted tip inside his palm, watching the street and trying to think his way past the stalemate. The old woman had outfoxed them, beaten them. Skip hissed the killdeer cry between his teeth and thought of what he would like to do to her.
All at once he saw Eddie in the porch used as a laundry room. Eddie moved over to the door and peered out and said, “Skip, we’ve got to get out of here!”
Skip walked toward him, pulling on the mask. “You can say that again,” he growled.
“I’ve been thinking. Mrs. Havermann’s going to have to tell us. Not by hurting her. But we could threaten to do something. Like burn the house down.”
“Okay. What happens if she doesn’t bite?”
“Maybe she’ll bite,” Eddie said hopefully.
They went back through the hall to the stairs. Karen was there, standing as if all life, all emotion, had drained out of her. Her eyes seemed set deep in her head, burned dark with strain. She said in a little above a whisper, “Let her go, Skip.”
“Sure,” Skip agreed. “We’re going to let her go. Right now.” He ran up the stairs with Eddie following, and crossed Mrs. Havermann’s room and threw open the closet door. Mrs. Havermann’s contorted form fell out into the room, dragging some fallen clothes with her. Somehow, after he’d shut the door on her, she’d writhed around to lie against it. Skip bent over her, got a good look at her, and he knew.
Mrs. Havermann was dead.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Skip and Eddie looked at the dead, contorted face and then slowly at each other; and the silence was like the ear-bursting backslap of an explosion or like the vast sucking up after a great wind had passed or like the final stillness after the toppling of a tidal wave.
Eddie said unbelievingly, “I stood right here and let you do it!”
“What do you mean, let me do it?” Skip’s mouth thinned to an ugly line and his hands balled to fists. “Hell, you were in it; you helped me get her into the closet where she suffocated.”
“You murdered her,” Eddie said slowly.
Skip’s fists knotted tightly, and he knocked Eddie down with one blow. Eddie had been dazed, not looking, too shocked to react, to protect himself. He hit the wall and slid down, and then in an automatic response to terror he started to scramble for the door. Skip had run out swiftly. He collided with Karen at the top of the stairs, and they half fell part of the way down before they could stop and disentangle themselves. Karen cried, “What’s wrong up there? What’s happened?” Her face was wild with fear.
“Go to hell.” Skip stiff-armed her, and she toppled away and staggered on down to the lower hall.
Eddie came out of the room, got to his feet, stood there hanging horrified on the railing. He looked down at Karen. “She’s dead. The gag was too tight, and it choked her to death.”
Karen gave a choked scream and tried to run back up the stairs, and again Skip stiff-armed her and she backed away, crying breathlessly, holding her stomach.
“We’re leaving, you sap. Aren’t you coming?” Skip said to her.
He ran past her, on down the hall. Eddie came downstairs quickly. Karen looked at him with stunned, uncomprehending eyes and said, “It isn’t true, is it? She’s all right.”
“She’s dead.” He saw the shock of these words go through her like a blow, draining her skin of color, her eyes of life. There wasn’t time for gentleness, but Eddie had to be gentle with her. He put an arm around her. “Don’t go back and look at her. Not if you liked her, and I guess you did.”
She said: “Liked her? I loved her. I just never could . . . She never let me show her.” She covered her face then and would have wept against him, but Eddie pushed her gently away.
“We’ve got to leave. Quick. Come on.”
He took her hand, and she let him lead her out through the rear door. At the car Skip had stripped off mask and gloves and was inside fitting the key into the switch. Eddie and Karen ran around to the other side and got in, Karen in the middle.
Skip started the motor, and then it coughed gently and died. He tried again, nursing it, giving it gas, and Eddie could hear the tired sparkless rattle as it turned over without catching, and the noise of loose fittings and the gradual wearing down of the battery. And over all this, Karen’s exhausted crying.
Eddie had stripped off the stocking from his face, the gloves. He was sweating now; his heart was pounding. The old motor ground and ground, and each time it turned over the sound was weaker and more dragging.
Skip looked at them jeeringly. “Anybody got any suggest
ions?”
“For Chrissakes get it started,” Eddie said.
The motor caught for a second time, hesitated for an instant that seemed an eternity, and then settled into its rackety rhythm. Eddie let out a long aching breath, unaware that he’d even been holding it.
The car slipped down the drive in the dark, and once in the street Skip switched on the lights and let it pick up speed.
Eddie said hotly, “I wish I’d never heard of that goddamn money.”
“We just had bad luck, that’s all,” Skip answered evenly. He was beginning to calm down somewhat, to reconsider what had really happened. He didn’t believe their situation to be completely hopeless. It was too bad of course that they couldn’t leave Karen here to palm off some yarn to the homicide dicks about strange, unknown men breaking in and killing Mrs. Havermann and mistreating herself. In his present mood he was more than ready to mark Karen up to leave the right impression with the cops. But he had no illusions about Karen standing up under questioning. She was too young and soft, too easily hurt. Skip jerked his head over his shoulder in the direction of the house. “Well, good-by Stolz’s dough, wherever you are.” He laughed a little under his breath.
Karen tried to draw away from him. “How can you make a joke . . . how can you act as if nothing had happened?”
“You and Eddie go ahead and tear your hair and squall,” Skip said. “Me, I’ve got to drive the jalopp. It’s never learned to drive itself. And I can’t see to drive if I’m crying.”
He had turned into the busy boulevard. A big transit bus rolled by, a scattering of people in it, tired faces turned to the windows. In a rear seat a small wrinkled hatless man looked especially discouraged and weary. His eyes were almost covered with drooping, parchment-like lids. As the car gathered speed, Skip found himself staring up at the bus window, keeping pace; and the wheel wobbled between his hands.
“Hey!” Eddie said. “Watch it, we don’t want a ticket now.”
The bus sped on, and they kept abreast of the rear window. Skip could see the tired, wrinkled face just above; the washed-out old eyes seemed dead beneath the parchment lids. “Look at that,” Skip said between his teeth. “Look at this old geezer by the window. You know what?”
“What?” said Eddie uneasily. He couldn’t see the old man from where he sat, but he heard the anger in Skip’s tone.
“We had a chance,” Skip said. “The old woman ruined it for us, the only decent chance we’ll ever have.”
“It’s over,” Eddie said, his tone hardening. “We were lucky to get out.”
“All we needed was the dough,” Skip went on. “She didn’t have to act like a son of a bitch over it. She could have cooperated a little.”
He glanced up again at the bus window. The old man sat with his forehead sagging toward the window, his tired eyes fixed on nothing. He had glanced once at Skip, almost sharply, but now seemed withdrawn again into his private limbo. He had only the night, the passing cars, the gloomy and uninteresting way home. He was the kind of old man who existed in an endless rut. Lives in some rattrap rooming house, Skip thought. His feet hurt. He must have a job where he stood up all day. Maybe he was a dishwasher. Skip pictured the old man over a steamy sink, scraping garbage, stewing his hands for hour after hour in hot soapy water. Once in a while ducking out to a littered alley for a cigarette. What a life, what a dirty rotten break. Such rage rose in Skip that he had difficulty in keeping it under control.
The through boulevard swung to the east in a slight curve. In the distance, across vacant rising ground, the Havermann house among its trees glittered with light. Eddie said, “Oh, for God’s sake, look at it. Like a Christmas tree! Why didn’t we turn off the lights?”
“Yeah, why didn’t you?” Skip said.
“What do the lights matter?” Karen cried as if bewildered.
They were passing the hamburger diner when Skip braked the car sharply and turned in at the parking lot.
“You’re not . . . stopping?” Karen gasped.
“I’m hungry as hell,” Skip said. “I didn’t get any dinner. My unc was too worked up to cook anything for me.”
“What was he worked up about?” Eddie said quickly, suspiciously.
It had been a slip, but Skip didn’t worry about it. He parked the car and cut the motor, took the keys from the lock. “Ah, he was going to an A.A. meeting for the first time.”
“I didn’t know he drank,” Eddie said, still curious.
“Well . . .” Skip spoke with mock reluctance. “God knows Unc should have learned better by now, but I think he’s planning some sort of con on those A.A. people. He thinks he’ll get their sympathy, sing them a hard-luck story, maybe cop a little dough.”
“They’ll know right away he’s a phony,” Eddie said positively.
“I don’t see how you can worry about Skip’s uncle and whether he drinks or not and what he’s doing with the A.A. people,” Karen said with frantic urgency. “If we don’t want to be caught . . . just please, please don’t stop here!”
Skip glanced at her. “Well, it’s good to see that you’ve started to collect your marbles. You’re worrying about getting away instead of about the old woman. But you’re right in a way—someone might know you, this close to home. So you stay in the car, and Eddie can stay with you while I go in and have a bite.” He got out, brushed back his hair where the stocking mask had disarranged it, and walked away across the graveled lot.
He sat over a hamburger and coffee, frowning in thought. He couldn’t get the image of the old man in the bus out of his mind. There seemed some sort of carry-over, some connection with himself. A threat.
The old man who swamped dishes in the diner came out and began to clean the counter. Skip watched him, thinking that this old character with the gray face and the white tee shirt resembled in some way the old man on the bus and seeing that the pattern could have been laid out to enfold himself.
In the car Karen was weeping on Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie held her, at first loosely and then more closely, feeling the shudders that racked her young bones beneath her flesh.
Big Tom parked two blocks from the house, down the boulevard where there were a liquor store and a drugstore, both open, and a closed barbershop and shoeshine stand. He parked his car out of the direct light, went into the drugstore, and looked around, walked out quickly, went briskly away down the dark sidewalk to the cross street. He strolled uphill, eyes and ears alert. When he finally got within sight of the Havermann house and saw all the lights in it, he was filled with a ravaging disappointment. It had all the signs of a four-bell alarm.
Still he continued, drawn by bitter frustration, and walked on past. He had expected to see cars in the driveway, indications that the police were there, but it all seemed quiet enough. Not a soul moved in the grounds.
A full-fledged conviction had come into his mind that Skip and his friend had moved in early, forestalling him, had botched it and been discovered by the old woman. Now he wasn’t so sure.
On an impulse he ducked into the heavy shrubbery bordering the drive, crouched there, waited. He could hear a dog barking in the distance, perhaps inside the house. There was no other sound at all. He pushed further into the shrubs and came out into a sort of lane, overhung by dusty evergreens and ditched for irrigation purposes, which led up directly to the house. Big Tom stole forward, careful to make no noise, and in a couple of minutes he had sized up the house, both front and rear, and was more puzzled than ever.
He retreated into the shadowy darkness to figure things out. It seemed now that no public alarm had been given; the place was much too silent for that. The old woman might be inside, scared, with all the lights on, having been alarmed by some preliminary boobery by Skip. Or—his mind seized on a new idea—Skip and his friend might be in there searching, the old woman having outwitted them somehow.
Stolz could be there, of c
ourse, a grimmer possibility to Big Tom than the presence of the police. Big Tom chewed a lip, squinted at the lights, considered thoughtfully.
Common sense and every instinct for danger he possessed warned him to get out of here, forget the job, forget he’d ever heard of the old house and the money in it. But Big Tom hesitated. He was curious. His hands itched for the money, the great beautiful green heap—hot or not.
All at once he caught a movement at an upper window, stiffened, his eyes narrowed with fright. Something yellow bobbed against the pane, an indistinct furry mass; and then the dog had his paws on the window sill and seemed to be peering out at the dark and barking as if to summon help.
“Now that’s a funny thing,” Big Tom said under his breath. He waited, and the dog bounced there, pawing at the pane, and the echo of his barking drifted out upon the night. “He’s shut in. He’s raising hell about it.”
Big Tom went on thinking. If the old woman was in there scared, with the lights on to drive away potential prowlers, she wouldn’t have the dog shut up that way. The dog would be downstairs, or outside, watching the place.
If Skip and Eddie were in there, though, messing around, shutting the dog up out of the way would be the first thing they’d do.
A faint smile touched Big Tom’s lips. He pushed the dark cap back off his head a little; a few locks of the stiff gray hair escaped. He scratched around at his hairline. “By God, that must be it. They’re in there doing something. Or they’ve just left.” The thought that they might have just escaped with the money sent Big Tom hurrying from the bushes to the back door. He stopped there, took an old pair of gloves from his pants pocket, and slipped them on his hands. He patted the gun against his belly. Then he tried the screen door. It opened under his touch.
Like a man made of smoke, he drifted silently through the outer porch, glancing at the washing machine and the tubs in passing, and entered the kitchen and paused to listen. The dog’s barking echoed sharply from upstairs. He couldn’t hear another sound. No voices, footsteps, no clatter of struggle or search. He wondered briefly if the house, except for the disturbed dog, could be entirely empty.
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