Night of Violence

by Louis Charbonneau

  The job in the shoe store lasted less than four months. Then he was back with American Features.

  He thought again about Daro. If he could make just one sale there, and then a couple in Albuquerque, he could make the car payment and still put one of the commissions aside. That had been the whole motive in agreeing to this trip. He was going to prove to Dorothy that he could do it. He could save money, and within a year or two he could buy his own store some place, and then he would be home with her and the kids all the time.

  Phil unconsciously braced his shoulders, the way he did before tackling a sales prospect. He had hit it big before. He could do it again.

  4

  Lew Cutter glanced at the speedometer. By his calculations he was still twenty-five miles north of Albuquerque. He felt tired and dirty from the mess and exertion of changing the tire. His left forefinger, cut while he was changing the license plates, was throbbing. More than that, he was unable to shake his intuition of danger. He felt that strangely exhilarating tension of a man who has brushed close to death—or close to a woman he wants and cannot have. And yet he knew the blowout didn’t wholly account for this feeling. Something else had warned him.

  Cutter believed in his intuition. He had developed a sharpened awareness of danger very early in his life, dating from the time he had been caught alone, away from the protection of numbers, by the Chalmers Street Polecats. He had been fourteen. They caught him at dusk on his way home from the drug store where his own gang hung out. The Polecats enjoyed themselves with Cutter, taking their time about it, experimenting with him with the studied cruelty of a child pulling off a fly’s wings to see what would happen. That night Cutter had been introduced to the hot agony of a match held against the sole of his foot; to weird sexual experiments which he had watched almost with detachment, astonished by his body’s betrayal; and to that numb state of endurance which is beyond pain, in which a small cold core of the brain stays alive and waits for the end.

  At dawn he had been found lying on broken glass in an alley and rushed to a hospital, where, to his own surprise, his body had slowly healed itself.

  Cutter had never talked, and, in one of those strange twists peculiar to life, it was that stubborn fidelity to the laws of gang warfare which had given him his entry into the world of organized crime when he was nineteen. A member of the old Chalmers Street Polecats, later a well-paid assassin, had hired Cutter for a job because he wanted someone who wouldn’t talk.

  Cutter’s career had not been spectacular, but its record spoke clearly for his acute sensitivity to danger. Only once had he been convicted, that time for robbery, and he was out in a year. He had been beaten only once—on that occasion by a couple of tough cops. He had killed one man, because it was necessary—and because it was safe to do so. He had never taken an unnecessary risk.

  Not until he met Carla. Carla was a dark Italian girl, twenty-three years old, with hooded, sleepy eyes that evoked startling thoughts, and with a body so charged with animal vitality, so sleek with a velvety smooth, animal grace of movement, that it made a man ache to see her walk across a room. She belonged to Sam Garner.

  Sam was Cutter’s boss. He was a little big shot in the rackets, and he was very tough. Cutter knew better than to fool around with Carla, or even to think about it. But it was necessary to be around her because of Sam, and the very fact that Cutter ignored her had intrigued Carla.

  Three weeks ago Cutter had gone up to Sam’s apartment to report on a job. Sam was negotiating with a small oil man from Long Beach who was going to have to pay $50,000 for the privilege of not having Sam Garner as a stockholder in his company. It was a simple case of extortion, made simpler by the fact that the oil man had a wife and two kids whose safety he had to think of. Cutter was the contact man.

  But that morning, without notifying Cutter, Sam had flown to Las Vegas. He wasn’t due back until the next day. Carla was alone in the apartment and she was bored.

  Thinking about it now, three weeks later, Cutter began to sweat. He had not known many women in his thirty-nine years. He didn’t trust them. They were an element of risk which his instinct warned him against. So his moments of passion had been relatively infrequent, taken without emotion or risk, usually satisfied by the somewhat clinical dexterity of a professional in the trade.

  Carla was an education.

  There was something wild and untamed about her. He saw the cunning animal that afternoon in the black glitter of her eyes. He felt it in the sharp bite of her teeth against his flesh—and in the abandoned movements of her brown body.

  In the days that followed she almost destroyed him. Carla laughed at the danger, and she taunted Cutter for his fears. When he was with her the fear rooted in his instinct for survival was blotted out by the fury of passion she aroused in him. When he was alone the fear came back with an intensity that would leave him shaking—but it couldn’t compete with the vivid image of Carla’s sleek brown body.

  He met her in bars, in motels, in suburban hotel rooms, in Sam’s apartment. Never in his own room. Even in that period of blind madness, drunk with lust, unable to sleep or to think clearly, he still retained enough of the old, deep-rooted sense of caution not to take her to his room, as if that one link with sanity might save him.

  It didn’t. Sam found out.

  Two days ago Carla was to meet Cutter in the afternoon in a drug store on Highland Avenue in Hollywood. That night Cutter was supposed to make the pickup of $50,000 from the oil man in Long Beach, who had agreed to pay. Carla didn’t show up, and Cutter knew, with the sureness of his old instinct for danger, that Sam had guessed.

  Only forty-eight hours ago. For that eternity Cutter had not put his hands on her squirming brown body. That was long enough for the haze to clear from his brain, and, although thinking of her could still make him sweat, there were moments now when those three weeks with Carla were like a story heard long ago.

  Cutter had been afraid to go to Sam’s apartment, but he had to know if he was right, and his hunger for Carla had been stronger than his desire for self-preservation He couldn’t just stay away and wait. Sam was expecting him. From the apartment Cutter was to go straight to Long Beach for the pickup.

  Carla was there in the apartment, but she was sullen and quiet, and she didn’t look at him. There was a cut on her lip, and a bruise under her eye was swelling and turning purple. Cutter tried not to look at her. The heavy beat of fear blended with the throbbing of desire still at full heat, preventing him from thinking clearly.

  Sam betrayed nothing. His eyes were cold when he looked at Cutter as they talked, but Sam’s eyes were always cold. After a while Cutter understood. Sam didn’t let pleasure interfere with business. He couldn’t kill Cutter now without risking $50,000. Cutter had to make the pickup. He was the only one the oil man had actually seen. Afterwards Cutter could be taken care of.

  Al Baer was sent with him. The fact that Sam didn’t send Cutter alone was not unusual, but the choice of a partner was. Where a large sum of money was involved, Sam never sent one man out on a pickup. A man alone might be tempted by the money. Two men acted as a check on each other. But Al Baer was young and brutal, and he liked to hurt people. He was usually used for strong-arm stuff. Cutter had never worked with him before.

  Long before they had reached the rendezvous point, Cutter knew why Al Baer had been picked. And he knew that he had to take the money and run. The decision was not a reckless impulse but a return to sanity. When he had made the decision, Cutter felt an intense relief.

  Baer would have to wait until after the pickup. That made it easy. Cutter had only to act before getting the money, when Baer wouldn’t be expecting it.

  They were to meet the oil man in a bar on Highway 101. Baer was driving. He found the bar and parked on a side street a block away. Cutter reached over into the back seat to get the empty suitcase that he was going to exchange for a case full of money. Baer turned to open the door and get out. Cutter’s hand came up with a lead-weighted
blackjack. He caught Baer behind the ear. The blow made a dull crunch against the big man’s skull, and he didn’t utter a sound. He fell back against the seat. One of his legs was sticking out the open door.

  Cutter took the keys and locked the car. He didn’t bother to check to see if Baer was dead, but he didn’t think he had hit him that hard. He was out cold, and he would be out long enough for Cutter to make the pickup and get away.

  There was no trouble with the pickup. The oil man was scared silly, and he had done exactly what he was told. The suitcase full of money helped Cutter to hitch a ride a few miles along the highway, until he found a used car lot that was open till midnight. There he bought the black Ford.

  He had been driving for forty-eight hours without sleep, heading across into Nevada, then cutting down into New Mexico, taking a random route that would be difficult for Garner’s men to follow.

  Cutter slowed the Ford as he saw a sign announcing a curve ahead. As he neared the curve he saw a motel advertisement with an arrow pointing along a side road leading to Daro. Suddenly the knowledge of his fatigue hit him. Just as quickly his instinct told him what to do. A rundown motel on a side road in the middle of nowhere was the only safe place to stop, and he had to have some rest soon. He couldn’t allow himself to get so tired that he stopped thinking coherently.

  He turned off, following the old road. The motel was a half mile away, opposite a roadside café. That was perfect, too. He could have food sent across.

  Cutter drove past the office and parked out of range of the windows, the plan already forming in his mind to register as a family rather than as a single man. It was an unnecessary precaution, perhaps, but it was the unnecessary move which distinguished the careful man from the ones who died young.

  He took the Drown suitcase with him. There were two people in the office, which was so cool that Cutter shivered, feeling the sharp chill in contrast with the heat still lingering outside.

  “Got a double?” Cutter asked. “For four?”

  “Sure thing,” the man said.

  Cutter glanced at the girl, noted her striking, dark-skinned beauty, and looked quickly away. Automatically he gave the man a quick appraisal. He was a big man, not heavy but tall and broad-shouldered, with a quiet, competent look. Cutter saw two things about his face. One was the fact that the man’s brown eyes were steady and observant. He was a man, Cutter thought, completing an appraisal that was unimportant but habitual, who would not easily be frightened. That made the second fact a little surprising. There was a quality of resignation about the face, something in the eyes and the set of his mouth that betray a man who has given up.

  Cutter registered as Mr. and Mrs. Albert Harrison, Jane Harrison and Jimmie Harrison, of Dobbs, New Mexico.

  When he took the key from the girl’s hand, he saw that she was staring at him, with a question forming behind her eyes. Cutter held her gaze with a cold stare of his own, deliberately holding it until she looked away, coloring slightly.

  Then he went out.

  When the door closed behind the man named Albert Harrison, Marina looked curiously at Art.

  “Did you notice anything familiar about him?” she asked.

  Art shrugged. “He looked like a hood, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No.” Marina frowned. “He reminded me of someone.”

  She had a way of pushing out her lower lip when she frowned or when she was thinking seriously. She did it now, and Art found himself staring at her mouth. The expression should not have made her face more attractive, but it did, like the look of concentration on the face of a beautiful child.

  “I know!” Marina exclaimed. “Sleepy Summers!”

  “Who?”

  “The singer! Sleepy Summers. You must have heard him. You can’t go anywhere without hearing his records. He’s the bobby sox rage.”

  “I didn’t even know they still were called bobby soxers.”

  “Well, teen-agers. Do you suppose he is Sleepy Summers?”

  “He says he’s Albert Harrison,” Art said dryly. “And he’s got a wife and two kids.”

  “That’s just it! I saw his car go past the door. A black Ford. And he was the only one in the car!”

  Art looked surprised but not impressed.

  “Well, why would he register for four—and pay for a double—when he’s alone?” Marina demanded.

  “Don’t ask me.”

  “And why did he bring that suitcase in here with him, when he was just going to register? Why not leave it in the car? He had to go back out to the car.”

  Art smiled. “You’re too curious for a motel woman,” he said. “You better stick to your reporting.”

  Marina looked annoyed. During the day she wrote news copy for the Daro Times, a small weekly paper.

  “You just don’t care, do you?” she snapped.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t care if he’s one man or four. I don’t care if he’s a singer or a gangster—as long as he pays.”

  Marina’s mouth tightened. “Yes,” she said coldly. “That’s all that counts.”

  5

  The nasal drone of a hill-billy singer filled the car. Burt Herman wiped his shirt sleeve across his brow and cursed.

  “Jesus Christ!” he growled. “Do we have to listen to that all the way across the country?”

  Bess smiled—that tired, patient smile that annoyed Burt more than anything else she did.

  “Oh, Burt,” she said. “The kids like him.”

  “Well, I don’t!” Burt said, and he reached out for the radio dial.

  “No, please, Daddy!” Lois cried, leaning forward from the back seat.

  Burt’s hand came away from the dial. He looked back at her—at the slim woman’s body that had been plump and shapeless hardly a year ago, at the fifteen-year-old face that contrived to look twenty, at the bright blonde hair which Bess had objected to when Lois first wanted to dye it last fall.

  Burt hesitated, still tempted to turn off the annoying twang of Sleepy Summers’ voice. The fact that Lois could be thrilled by a cheap hillbilly with sideburns and tight pants filled Burt with an unreasonable anger.

  “Ah, turn it off,” Frank said, the familiar sneer in his voice. “Who wants to listen to that creep?”

  “I do!” Lois cried hotly. “And he’s not a creep. He’s … he’s beautiful!”

  Burt’s hand came away from the dial. “Women!” he said.

  But it was Frank’s voice which made him decide. For some reason everything the boy said, and particularly the wise guy sneer he always adopted these days, annoyed Burt. Frank was seventeen, and he seemed to have nothing on his mind but girls.

  Thinking of Frank and his girls, the sixteen and seventeen year olds with small breasts bouncing inside their sweaters, who sometimes came to parties at the house, or were glimpsed racing off with Frank in his jalopy, Burt felt a vague stirring of discontent. He glanced sidelong at Bess, who, at forty-one, had acquired all of the plumpness that Lois had so quickly shed. It was like making love to a pillow, Burt thought unexpectedly.

  He felt uncomfortable with the thought, and that increased his general sense of irritation. It was stifling in the Chevrolet, and he was tired and dirty after covering almost five hundred miles since dawn that morning.

  “Jesus Christ!” he said without meaning. “How far are we from Albuquerque?”

  He heard Frank rustling the map. The boy had taken over the job of reading the map and outlining their route for most of the vacation trip. Burt had let him, because it saved him the trouble and because Bess had never been reliable at reading maps.

  “There’s a little town just ahead,” Frank announced. “Daro. It’s off the main road. And it’s twenty miles from there to Albuquerque.”

  “Is there an AAA motel in Daro?” Burt asked.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “There’s one there,” Frank said. “The Hideaway Motel. But it’s not recommended.”

  Burt grunted, undecided. It wouldn�
��t take long to get to Albuquerque, but he was ready to stop, and it was late enough so that they might have trouble finding a vacancy in Albuquerque.

  A few minutes later he reached the curve in the highway where the old road forked off to the right. He slowed down. At the same moment he saw the $5 figure on a sign advertising the Hideaway Motel. That decided him. He swung to the right.

  “It’s not recommended,” Frank repeated from the back seat.

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Burt said.

  He wondered what the rate would be for a double. If it was cheap, it might make up for last night, when he had been forced to pay $15 for a double because he had driven too late and had had to stop at a luxury motel, the only one offering a vacancy.

  The whole trip was costing a fortune.

  He studied the motel as he approached it. There was a café just across the road, and the motel didn’t look too bad—just needed a coat of paint. And it was air conditioned. The red “VACANCY” sign was blinking.

  With a sign of relief Burt turned in and stopped just outside the office. A man was coming out the door and he looked at them sharply, then headed for a Ford parked a little farther ahead.

  “Look!” Lois said. Her voice rose with excitement. “Look!”

  Burt looked, but he didn’t see anything special.

  “It’s Sleepy Summers!” Lois squealed.

  She grabbed the handle of the door near her and pushed frantically. Without thinking Burt twisted around in his seat and caught her arm. His fingers bit into the soft flesh.

  “Don’t be such a little fool!” he growled in a low voice.

  Lois stared at him. Her big eyes were suddenly liquid with tears.

  “But—” She choked up. “You’re hurting me,” she whimpered.

  Burt released her arm hastily, feeling stricken with guilt, suddenly too aware of the soft warmth of her body, faintly surprised at the quick boiling anger he had felt. Lois’s eyes held an accusation. Burt wasn’t quite sure why he had grabbed her so brutally.