The Tiger Among Us

by Leigh Brackett

  "No. I remember there was one of 'em, though—sawed-off type, didn't look too bright—he had a laugh on him like a jackass."

  "I know," I said. I drank my beer, feeling baffled and depressed. So far I hadn't got anything but hot and tired. Noddy moved off to serve another customer. The fans whirred. One of the women at the tables burst with the regularity of a metronome into shrill laughter. Down the bar one of the men regretfully finished his beer, practically squeezing the glass to get the last drop out of it, and then he turned and walked out the door with even, careful steps looking straight ahead. He was not drunk but he would not ever be really sober again, either. And he gave me an idea.

  I got out the paper with the four names and the two addresses written on it. I waited till Noddy came back, and I showed it to him.

  "Would you happen to know any of these men?"

  His face became as blank as a shuttered window. "Lots of guys come in here. I don't know the half of 'em."

  "Tell you what," I said. "If you should happen to run across any of them, tell them I'd like to talk to them." I explained why.

  Noddy looked at me suspiciously. "Why don't you hunt 'em up yourself?"

  "I tried. And I got just what you're giving me now." I put one of my business cards on top of the piece of paper. "Tell 'em there's money in it. And I promise not to get anyone into trouble. They wouldn't believe me if I told them that. They might believe you."

  I went out, giving him no chance to shove the paper back at me. I don't know whether anything would come of it or not. Probably not. Probably Koleski was right. Anyway, it was a try.

  The storm had moved closer, and it was dead still and hot as the inside of a furnace. I crawled back to my car and drove homeward by way of Williams Avenue.

  I passed the plant. They would not hold my job for me forever, and Tracey was beginning to worry out loud about the money. I thought of how much those five boys had cost me in dollars and cents, over and above insurance. I wanted to go back to work as a return to normalcy, to the life I had been living before this happened. Yet I didn't want to because there was a gnawing restlessness on me to hunt these nameless shadows, to track them down and force them into the light. The police would keep the case open, but already more urgent things had taken their attention. It might be years before the boys were caught. It might be never.

  I passed the place where it happened.

  A wave of physical sickness came over me. I hung onto the wheel and I thought, I've got to find them, I will find them. Then the thunder rumbled and the rain began to fall, blowing cold on my face, and I knew that I would not find them, that they were safe behind the darkness and the namelessness, safe to maul and tear as the whim took them, young tigers roaming in the forest of the night.

  And there was still the question of the letter.

  They had cost me more than money, more than time or pain or health. They had cost me my faith in Tracey. And they were going to get away with it.

  Why?

  Why should they be allowed to get away with it? Why should they have the right to do what they did and have it all forgotten? Koleski can forget. All the people who read about it in the paper and shook their heads and clucked their tongues against their teeth, they can forget. Only I can't forget. I was the victim.

  Rain drummed on the top of the car. It was dark with that slaty storm-darkness, and thunder cracked and boomed, and lightning made a lurid flaring in the gloom. I was out of town, on the tree-lined road that serves the Northside suburbs. The rain fell in sheets, clogging the windshield wipers. I slowed and turned on my parking lights. And a light-coloured convertible went around me like the wind, throwing out a great contemptuous wave of spray.

  A gray convertible with a black top and white side-wall tires, a souped-up job with twin tail pipes, roaring as it went.

  It raced away from me down the narrow shining road, under the trees and the storm-shadow and the pouring rain. This is the way they were headed that night, I thought. Williams Avenue feeds this road, and they were coming from town, not toward it. They live out here somewhere, not far away from me, and they use this road, and that looks like the same car. Something tightened inside my head.

  The same car. Their car.

  I jammed the throttle down to the floor.

  My tires whined and sang against the wet road. I took the curves wide and fast but I wasn't afraid or excited and my car was under perfect control. There were others on the road but they didn't matter, they flicked past and were gone. I kept my eyes on the gray blur ahead of me, following it like a star. I could hear the sound of its motor under all the noise of wind and thunder. It sounded just as it had that night when it stopped in front of me on Williams Avenue.

  Their car.

  It came closer. Suddenly I was on top of it. Through the glass of the back curtain I could see heads inside, dark shapeless blobs in the gloom and the rain-blur, and one of them turned a white surface toward me as though in startled fright. I smiled and leaned on the horn. The spray flew up from the puddles on either side and we raced together, the convertible and I, under the wind-lashed trees.

  A red light blinked ahead in the murk. We were coming up on a main intersection. The convertible put on a sudden burst of speed. I settled myself behind the wheel. There was a dead service station on the corner, one of those old one-pump affairs in front of a shacky store, and it had been closed for a long time. I thought I knew what the convertible was going to do.

  It did. It angled off into the station yard, churning up mud and gravel, rocking from side to side. I was supposed to go straight through, unable to stop. But I didn't. I stood the car on its nose, let up again, and spun around the turn on two wheels. The convertible came to a stop not three feet away and I had them boxed. I had them cornered.

  I took my heavy cane in my hand and got out and went over to the gray car, with a curious flicker of light before my eyes and a tight pain in my head.

  I pulled open the door.

  5

  THERE must have been a period of five or six seconds—it couldn't have been much longer—when I stood looking into the car, and they sat looking out, and nothing happened. Then, almost simultaneously, they began to scream. They were not boys at all. They were girls. Two girls, side by side in the front seat. I had never seen either of them before.

  All of a sudden the rain had turned cold and drenching and there was no excitement any more. I let go of the door and stepped back.

  The girl in the driver's seat shrieked, "Don't you touch us!" The other one flung herself at the opposite door. I kept backing away, trying to say something, but they were both scrambling. out of the car now. They began to run around, yelling for help.

  There was a produce stand across the road on one corner and a diner on the other. People were already staring out of both of them to see what the trouble was. A couple of cars were slowing down. One pulled in next to mine and three hardy-looking millworkers got out. The girls flew to them, sobbing, pointing at me.

  I opened the door of my own car, the off-side door, being the nearest, and sat down with my feet still out in the rain. All I could think of was that gray convertible flying down the road with me after it. I saw it go off the road in forty different ways. I saw those wretched girls dead, dying, dismembered, maimed, and all because of me. It could so easily have happened. It was a miracle that it hadn't happened. I looked once more at the convertible to make sure. Then put my head in my hands and just sat there, shaking.

  "Drunk, huh?" said one of the millworkers, with rough disgust. He reached in and took my keys. "You're not going any place, Mac."

  I told him I wasn't even going to try.

  A crowd was gathering in spite of the rain. The three millworkers appointed themselves my guards, and some other people wrapped raincoats around the girls and took them over to the diner. We were all waiting for the cops. Somebody had called them, of course. It crossed my mind that Tracey would have words to say if she found out about this, and that I
had put an ideal weapon into her hands to use against me. But at that particular moment I didn't care. I didn't care about anything except that there hadn't been an accident.

  The storm went on its way, and the downpour slackened to a chilly drizzle. I wanted to put on my jacket, but one of my guards had to make sure first that there was no gun in the pocket.

  "Your kind," he said, "can't be trusted. Okay." He threw the jacket at me. "Put it on."

  "What do you mean," I asked him, "my kind?"

  "Goddamn rapist, that's what I mean. What do you think I mean? Those poor little girls——"

  "Oh Lord," I said. "It wasn't like that at all. I thought——" I looked at their three hard unsympathetic faces and gave up. They wouldn't have believed anything I said.

  About two minutes before the police car came, it occurred to me that convertible still might be the right car, that the boy who owned it could perfectly well have a sister, or sisters. I wished I could ask the girls but I didn't think I could make the men understand that, either. I didn't try.

  The police came. There were two of them in the car. One of them went over to talk to the girls and the other one questioned me. The three mill hands hung over his shoulder and listened when I tried to explain.

  "Don't believe a word of it," one of them said to the cop. "He's nothing but a goddamned rapist. I saw him with my own eyes, chasing those poor little girls——"

  "With that?" I said, pointing to the brace on my leg. "And if I was going to commit rape I wouldn't pick a gravel patch on a main crossroads, in a pouring rain." I said to the cop, "You don't have to take my word for it. Ask Detective Koleski."

  He said he would. The other cop came back with the girls. They got in the convertible and drove away, giving me dirty looks. I didn't blame them. The two cops talked for a minute, and then the one who had questioned me retrieved my keys, handed them to me, and motioned me under the wheel. He got in beside me.

  "Downtown," he said.

  I drove downtown with the police car hanging on my bumper.

  "Who did you say knew you?" the cop asked once. It was the only time he spoke.

  I told him again. "Detective Koleski. I was talking to him just a couple of hours ago."

  And how I wished I had taken his advice. Of all the people I could think of in the world, City Detective Peter Koleski was the last one I wanted to see. But I drove on slowly and carefully, and the rain stopped and the sun came out again, pretty well down now and considerably subdued, and then there I was back again at Police Headquarters.

  They made me wait while one of them went up and talked to Koleski. After a few minutes Koleski phoned to have me come up too. The cop who had questioned me said,

  "All right, mister, he backs up your story, and if he can get you off the hook with those girls it's all right with me. But I'm warning you——"

  "You don't need to. I feel lousy enough already. If anything had happened——"

  "You just hold to that thought," said Koleski angrily. "It may keep you from doing some other damn-fool thing in the future. Okay, boys, I'll take it from here."

  The cops went away and Koleski sat down at his desk.

  "Look," I said. "I——"

  "Shut up," he said. "I'm going to try and get you out of this."

  He looked at a paper one of the cops had given him, picked up the phone and asked for a number. He got it. He must have talked for half an hour while I sat, dumped and ashamed and miserable, and listened. At first the party on the other end did all the talking. I could hear a woman's voice going like fury, and all Koleski said was, "Yes, Mrs. Wosnicek. I understand, Mrs. Wosnicek. No, Mrs. Wosnicek." But somehow, imperceptibly, it swung the other way, and by the time he was finished it was Mrs. Wosnicek who was doing the yes-and-no bit, as one warmly, even eagerly, co-operating with the police. Finally Koleski thanked her for her invaluable help and hung up. Then he glared at me.

  I didn't say anything. When he was through glaring he read to me, without comment, from the notes he had been scribbling while he talked.

  "The convertible is registered in the name of Howard Wosnicek. Howard Wosnicek is the brother of Gloria Wosnicek, who was driving the car this afternoon. Howard is at present serving his country in the United States Navy. He has been doing so for nearly two years, and on April seventeenth last he was on a tour of duty in the Canal Zone. I have explained to Mrs. Wosnicek——"

  "I heard you."

  "Well, you didn't seem to hear me very well this afternoon, Sherris, so I wanted to make sure. You hear me now? Then listen. You've got a grievance. It's a legitimate grievance. But it doesn't give you any special rights. It doesn't suspend any laws. You're still required to behave yourself as a responsible citizen. If you don't, you'll wind up downstairs in a cell just as fast, or faster, than the boys you're looking for. Is that understood?"

  "Don't worry. I've had my lesson."

  "I hope so. Where'd you go after you left here this afternoon? Before the convertible, I mean."

  "To Noddy's. It didn't come to anything."

  "Well, take it easy on the way home. And, Sherris——"

  "What?"

  "We'll get 'em."

  I went out and got in the car and drove homeward again. This time I made it.

  Tracey met me at the door. "Where have you been all this time? I was getting worried."

  "Just around," I said. Bets came running up, and I sat down on the couch and took her on my lap. "Get me a drink, will you, Tracey? I'm beat."

  She went into the kitchen, still talking to me. "What do you mean, around? You must have gone somewhere that took so long."

  I told her I had been to see Koleski and the bartender.

  "Did you learn anything?"

  "No."

  Bets snuggled up under my jacket, butting her head against me to make me pet her, in a puppyish way she has. "Daddy's all wet," she said. "Daddy went out in the rain." She was feeling my shirt, which was still damp. Pudge was in his playpen across the room, and this seemed to strike him as funny because he let out a hoarse squeal of laughter and pounded the corner post with his fat fists. The youngsters had been home for a little over three weeks now. So far nobody had threatened them, and by some unspoken consent Tracey and I had not discussed the possibility. When I got well enough the kids came home, and that was it.

  Tracey returned with a highball, which she put in my hand, and then she bent over Pudge, who held up his arms to be lifted.

  "Come on, doll-baby. Time for bed."

  "Ooh," said Bets. "Daddy's cold."

  The ice cubes were clattering in the glass. I set it down. Tracey turned around with Pudge in her arms. Her face was alarmed. I put Bets on the couch and tried hard to stop shaking.

  "I had a little trouble with the car," I said. "In the rain. I guess I got wet."

  I wasn't cold at all but I was ashamed to tell her the truth. She put Pudge back in the pen and left him bawling there, and sent Bets for dry towels, and made me go in the bedroom and take off my shirt. Then she scrubbed me with the towels until I was crimson, lecturing me the way she does the kids.

  I caught her hands and held her. "You've been good to me these last weeks."

  Her face became subtly altered and her eyes avoided mine. "I'm your wife, Walt."

  "I know, but you have been good, beyond the call of duty. Patient, too, even when I was acting like a skunk."

  She tried to draw her hands away. "You'll get cold again. I'll get you a dry shirt——"

  "And a drink," I said. "A straight one this time."

  I let her go. Between lovers, things don't need to be said. Between strangers, there isn't any way you can say them.

  I put on the shirt and drank the drink. We smiled and ate our dinner and put the kids to bed and pretended to be a family.

  I dreamed a lot that night. Mostly I chased that damned convertible down a dark wet road, and wrecked it, and picked the bodies out of a ditch. But every once in a while I could hear Chuck's voice speaking to
me, laughing, saying, "We even took your wife away, and you'll never find us." And I would try to find him in the dark but I never could.

  The next afternoon the whole story of the convertible was in the paper, a neat little item right on the front page, naming names, times, and places. One of the reporters on the regular police beat got it, I suppose, or else somebody who knew somebody on the paper happened to be there, I don't know. But they ran it. Victim of Beating Chases Wrong Car, occupants narrowly escape accident. And so on.

  Tracey read it. "I can understand," she said, "why you didn't want to tell me about it."

  I was angry for the obvious reasons and the old, not-so-obvious reasons. I said, "I guess we've all done things we'd rather not have shouted from the housetops."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Just exactly what I said." Which was no answer, but I wasn't going to let her bait me out into an open accusation where she could really let go at me. "Anyway, it's all right for you and Koleski to be perfectly calm and reasonable. Suppose you were me, and you were sure it was the same car. What would you have done?"

  "I guess you couldn't help it," she said in a curiously subdued voice. "But you know what it means."

  All of a sudden she jumped up and caught Pudge in her arms protectively, and turned on me.

  "Those boys will read it in the paper. They'll know you're trying to find them and they might do anything, Walt. Anything."

  "Yes," I said. "They'll probably laugh themselves right into hysterics with sheer fright."

  "All right," she said. "Make a joke of it. But if anything happens to the children I'll never forgive you."

  She ran past me into the house—we'd been sitting on the terrace, trying to find a breeze—still carrying Pudge. The exit line and the exit itself seemed pure theatrics to me. But then I looked at Bets playing hide-and-seek with the cat in the middle of the best flower bed, and I thought how diabolically clever Tracey had been to hang her lie on that particular peg. Because you didn't dare to assume wholeheartedly that it was a lie. You didn't dare.

  And then I realized two things. I realized the flaw in Tracey's cleverness and what I had to do about it.