Johnny Flagan turned to question the blond one. The door was shut. The blond one stood in front of it. He had a knife in his hand, a knife with a long slim blade. He smiled and waved the blade back and forth.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Flagan demanded.
“Take your wallet out and toss it over to the kid.”
“Are you out of your head? My God, this isn’t the time or the place to be …”
“Take it out, dads, or I’ll cut you a little. I’ll cut you up with this here knife. And move your hand slow when you reach for it.”
Johnny studied the boy. The boy didn’t look nervous or upset. He seemed to be enjoying himself. There was a certain professional competence about him. Johnny took his wallet out carefully and tossed it behind him.
“Take out the money, Billy. How much?”
After a long silence the younger one said, “Two hundred and twenty.”
“That’s nice, dads. You carry a nice roll. It goes with that Caddy. Now just move back against the wall over there. That’s right. Right there. That’s where we want you. Billy, now you go hunt up the old boy that was traveling with dads here and tell him dads wants to see him in here.”
The younger boy went out. “What are you planning to do?” Flagan asked.
“Get a little money and get out of here. We’re taking off.”
“You won’t live long out there, kid.”
“We’ll make out. I’ve been in blows before.”
“Don’t take the wallet along. It’s got papers in it that are no use to you.”
“You telling or asking?”
“I’m asking. As a favor.”
“You be nice and I can be nice. Sure. We’ll leave it for you. Right out in the front yard.”
Flagan cursed him softly. The boy laughed and then gestured with the knife. Flagan closed his mouth. The door opened and Charlie Himbermark came in, wearing his eager please-like-me smile.
“You want to see me about something, Johnny?”
“This kid with the knife wants your money, Charlie.”
Himbermark noticed the knife for the first time. He looked at it with severe disapproval. He looked at it the way a school teacher might stare at sloppy homework. “Now see here!” Charlie said with prissy indignation.
“The wallet, Charlie,” the boy said. “Just toss it on the floor.”
“I most certainly will not,” Charlie said firmly.
The boy waved the knife and took a step toward him. “Don’t get brave, Charlie. I’ll cut you a little.”
“You won’t cut me at all, young man. And you won’t take my money. Who do you think you are, waving a knife around?”
“Watch it, Charlie,” Flagan said warningly.
“Are you afraid of this … this pipsqueak?” Charlie demanded. Flagan looked at Charlie in astonishment. This was an aspect of Charlie Himbermark that he had not anticipated. No situation had arisen that gave any clue to Charlie’s physical courage. It bewildered Johnny to find that Charlie had all the defiance and spirit of a scrawny little fighting cock. It was ludicrous, and it was dangerous. Charlie seemed unaware of how dangerous it was.
“Pipsqueak,” the blond boy said. He smiled. The knife flickered in the semi-darkness of the room. The boy stepped back. Charlie looked down at the front of his white shirt, at the shallow slice in the fabric and the flesh beneath. Blood began to stain the white shirt.
“Now the wallet, Charlie,” the boy said, “before I draw me an X on the front of you.”
Charlie stared at the boy. He opened his mouth and made a screeching sound, a thin sound of rage and indignation and sixty-year-old fury. Before Johnny Flagan could say a word, before he had any chance to do anything, Charlie jumped at the boy and grasped the heavy young wrist with his frail fingers, screeching again. The startled boy pulled back, wrenched his arm free, drove the four inch blade into Himbermark’s chest, pulled it out, drove it in again and pulled it out and backed away.
It had been many years since Flagan had seen violence. He had never seen violence as quick and brutal. It seemed impossible that it could have happened. And it was so senseless. So meaningless. Such an irritable tawdry way to die. The boy was crouched, the knife ready, the blade no longer gleaming, his face strangely animal in its slackness, blond hair falling across the forehead.
Himbermark stood there, quite dead. He looked down at his shirt and he half lifted his hand as though to brush at the front of himself, the gesture of brushing away lint. He half turned toward Johnny Flagan, the left side of his face illuminated by the pale glow from the shuttered window, the right side in shadow. He looked at Johnny and on his face there was an expression of troubled apology. A self-deprecatory expression. Quite as though he wanted to say, Look at what I’ve done now.
He went down onto his hands and knees and the storm sound concealed the sound of the bony knees striking the board floor. He coughed a small amount of blood onto the floor and then his arms folded slowly so that his face rested in the blood on the floor, his thin backside still canted in the air in the ludicrous position in which infants sometimes sleep. Then he went over onto his side. Flagan went to him, ignoring the knife. He knelt by him and touched his shoulder and wanted to find some words of great apology. He sought one phrase that would make up for everything, make up for a man’s whole life. But there were no words.
He turned and looked up at the knife and the eyes behind it. He didn’t feel fear. He felt contempt. “You silly young bastard,” he said. The knife wavered. It did not strike. They ran for the door, the three of them. Flagan still knelt there. Then with great weariness he got up onto his feet. He tried to listen to them on the stairs. He could not hear them. The wind sound had changed. Underneath the shrillness there was a heavier noise. Like the sound of great freight trains running through resounding caverns. He saw his wallet on the floor and picked it up. The money was gone. On impulse he wedged Charlie’s wallet out of his hip pocket and opened it and looked inside. Charlie had nineteen dollars. A ten, a five and four ones.
Steve Malden, looking for Flagan, came out of the room just in time to see the two boys and the girl from the panel truck hurry down the narrow staircase. He hesitated only a moment. He knew with the sure and automatic instinct of the law man that the procedure was to stop them first and find out later why they were running. The water was much further up the staircase. He hesitated for a moment before he waded down into it. They were at the door. They had gotten the front door open. As Malden started toward the front door, the girl, apparently alarmed by the water, tried to pull back. He heard the thin sound of her protest. The younger one pushed her and the blond one pulled her by the wrist and they forced her through the door. The girl looked back toward him, crying out again. Even though she was obviously in terror, her features were too dulled, too indistinct to register fear. She looked like a querulous angry baby.
They went out into the deeper water, and were immediately swept off to the right. Malden reached the doorway. The water inside the house was up to his waist. He held onto the door frame and looked for them. The blond boy was swimming, a long smooth powerful crawl, angling back across the front of the house toward the trees on the far side of the invisible road. The cars were covered by water. Only the radio aerials showed, thin steel wands like some strange water weed.
He saw the other two struggling, their heads close together, arms flailing the water, and he saw that the girl had gotten behind the boy and was clinging to him. Malden took off his jacket and dropped it behind him and dived out through the doorway. He was not a graceful swimmer. He used a short powerful choppy stroke and kept his head high. But it was a stroke he could maintain for a long period of time. The current that swirled around the house was astonishingly strong. It carried him quickly to the two who struggled there. They were both wild-eyed, in panic. The current moved them along rapidly. Malden’s knee hit something and he realized that it was the top of one of the cars. He did not know which one.
; He pulled the girl free and yelled to the boy to swim back to the house. The girl fought to wrap her arms around him. Malden levered her back, waited until he had the right opportunity, then hit her sharply with his fist on the point of the chin. She went loose in the water, eyes glazed. He turned her around and got his hand under her chin. The blond boy had reached the trees on the far side. Malden heard his thin hail over the wind roar. He struggled against the current, towing the girl. He fought with all his strength toward one of the radio aerials. He reached it, grasped it, got his knees against the car top and rested there, breathing hard, the girl trailing out in the water in the current behind him.
He looked around. The blond one was holding onto a tree. The younger boy was swimming doggedly toward the other boy, swimming diagonally against the current. His progress was painfully slow. Malden watched him, fascinated. He saw the boy’s arms moving more slowly, saw him stay even with the current for a few minutes, and then begin to lose ground. He began to thrash in panic. Had he swum with the current, there were trees he could reach. He was swept away into the gloom. Malden saw one arm upraised and then nothing but the boiling surface, the wind-swept scud. He looked over at the other one. They looked at each other across the dark water. Then the other boy turned and started swimming strongly toward another group of trees further from the house. Within moments he was out of sight.
Malden began swimming again, toward the house. He fought the current. He counted the heavy strokes in his mind, savoring each inch that he gained. He determined not to swim to the limit of his strength, but to save some should he have to turn and find other shelter. The girl was a dragging weight. Yet he gained slowly.
The cramp came suddenly. It jackknifed his right leg. The pain could have been no more sharp if the muscles were being torn from his leg. He released the girl. He took a deep breath and doubled up in the water and kneaded the knotted calf with all the strength of his hands. When his face rolled to the surface he took another breath and began kneading again. He felt the tension slowly relax. Within a minute and a half of the time the cramp had struck he could swim again. He lunged as high out of the water as he could, looking for the girl. He could not see her. He was tempted to swim back and see if he could locate her. But he felt that there was little endurance left. He turned back toward the house again, swimming slowly but cautiously, favoring the leg. Slowly he came closer to the house. The current seemed stronger there. It flowed inland from the Gulf, sweeping around the house.
He watched the corner of the house. He was not gaining an inch. He felt panic. He had used up too much of his strength. There was not enough left to turn back, to try to gain the safety of the trees. He saw her in the doorway, saw Virginia standing in water above her waist, holding onto the door frame, watching him, calling to him. He could not hear her. He called on some deep resource and was able to swim again with all his strength. The corner of the house came closer. He moved slowly toward her. She held onto the door frame and reached out to him. With one last convulsive effort, the last effort of which he was capable, he surged forward the last foot and reached out and caught her slim wrist. She pulled him strongly to the safety of the doorway. He caught the door frame and pulled himself inside. He was able to stand. There did not seem to be enough air in the world to fill his lungs.
She half supported him as they waded across the room, felt for the stairs, found them, climbed above the water level. He sat heavily, panting, head bowed. When he looked at her, trying to smile at her, he saw the tears on her face.
“I … I lost her.”
“I know. I saw it. I thought you were both … gone.”
“Cramp. I let her go before I thought. Then she … was gone. Saw them running down the stairs. Thought I ought to stop them. Couldn’t do it. Why were they running? Why did they go out in that? Two of them drowned.”
“They killed the man with Mr. Flagan. The older man named Himbermark. They killed him with a knife.”
He stared at her. “Killed him?”
“For his money. He wouldn’t give it to them.”
He forced himself to his feet. “I better go up and see what I can do.”
She stood up beside him. “I’m glad you made it back, Steve. I’m terribly glad. If I saw you couldn’t, I was going to come after you.”
He looked at her and saw that she meant it, saw how she meant it, and felt very proud and very humble. He felt the sting of tears in his own eyes. He put his arms around her and held her close. They stood on the stairs in their soaked clothes and held each other tightly and it seemed a very good moment to them.
He lifted his head. The wind had become deep-throated, thunderous. The house trembled, shifted, tilted. He stopped breathing. The moment did not continue. It had turned and tilted and wedged itself in a new position. The stairway was slightly canted.
“It’s here!” he shouted to her, over the roar. “Here’s the worst of it.”
They went up the stairs. Just as they reached the top the northwest corner of the roof was wrenched off. The newlyweds came stumbling into the hall. The blare of wind was deafening in the exposed hallway. He looked at the torn edge of roof. He saw another section twist and rip free. He held the woman tightly and braced his back against the hallway wall and waited.
Frank Stratter had clung to the tree and watched Torris drown. Billy went under with the money from Flagan’s wallet still in his pocket. That had been a tactical error. But there had been no time to transfer the money.
Stratter had had no idea that the water had gotten so deep, that the currents would be so strong. It was like being caught in an incoming tide. He saw the big man trying to save the girl, trying to tow her back to the house. Stratter felt uneasy. Some of his confidence had gone when the old man had jumped at him, grabbed at him, screeching. The look Flagan had given him, kneeling there in the gloom, had diminished his confidence further. And finally the astonishing strength and depth of the water had shaken him.
He looked back toward the house, the wind like a weight against his face and shoulders. All the world was gray, the roof corners of the house almost indistinguishable against the inky racing clouds. Spume stung his cheeks and the current tugged at his legs. He turned and looked the other way, saw trees fifty yards farther, let go and swam toward them with the current, saving his strength, keeping himself afloat, letting the current carry him on. The wind was so strong that it had an odd effect. Low as he was in the water it seemed to catch at him and thrust him along. He sensed that the wind had grown stronger since he had been in the water. There was a deep note in the heart of it, like the constant bowing of a string on a bass.
He reached the trees and held to them and rested for a few moments and then went on. Soon it would be dark. He wanted to reach the main road before full dark. He suspected that it would be higher, high enough so that he could get out of the water. It should not be over another half mile away. He could barely see another clump of trees ahead. Pines. They were slightly to the side and he swam toward them. When it looked as though he would be carried by them, he swam as strongly as he could and reached them. He held on to a tree on the east side of the cluster, a tree a foot in diameter. He shook the water out of his eyes and looked above him and saw two soaked miserable raccoons on a limb in silhouette against the lesser darkness of the sky.
He began to feel confident again. It was a good possibility that none of those back in the house would survive. Even should the one named Malden rescue the girl and learn his name, he would not live to tell. When the water finally went down they would find the truck, the other bodies, and suppose that he too had drowned. It would come out all right. Everything had always come out all right. You used your head and took the breaks and things always worked out.
He hooked his right leg around the tree and turned and looked east, looking for the next group of trees, the next stopping place. It was getting dark. All this water and the darkness like the end of the world. It had been the end of the world for Billy Torris.
The sudden heavy pressure against his right ankle made him cry out in sudden fright. He grasped the tree with his arms and yanked hard, but he could not free himself. He could not understand what had happened. Then he saw the altered angle of one of the other trees. The rush of water had loosened the soil around the roots. The wind and the current had canted the tree over until it rested at an angle against the tree to which he clung. The two trunks met about four feet below the water level, imprisoning his leg between them, locking it just above the ankle.
He made himself take a series of slow deep breaths. He thought it out and saw a way he might free himself. He locked his arms around the trunk of the tree, raised his left leg and got his left foot planted firmly against the trunk of the tree that had tipped. Slowly he exerted his strength until he was blinded by the effort and he could hear a red roaring in his ears. His shoulders popped and creaked and the cords of his throat stood out. At his maximum effort he felt a tiny diminishing of the pressure on his leg. He tried to rip it free. It moved a few inches and then the larger tree moved and settled more firmly against his. He felt the ankle socket go, a slow inexorable crackling, as of a soft round stone caught in the slow turning of a vise.
He screamed with the pain and screamed again and the world blurred and he sagged into the water. The water revived him and he lifted his head again, coughing the water out of his throat. He made himself be calm again. It took longer. He took a deep breath and went under, twisting himself awkwardly against the current down to where he could feel the leg where it went between the two trunks. It felt sickeningly flat. He tore at the bark with his fingers. He felt how the leg was caught in a sort of inverted V, and had he pulled down instead of wrenched upward when he felt the first pressure, he might well have freed himself.
He thought of what could happen. The tree might shift again, releasing him. He sensed that he was bleeding. He might faint and drown. He tried to think of what he should do. He could take off the purple shirt and use the knife and cut a strip for a tourniquet, and fashion another longer strip into a sort of sling and tie himself to the trunk so that should he faint, his head would stay above water. But suppose his own tree should go while he was tied there? The thing to do was keep the knife handy, ready to cut himself free.
Murder in the Wind Page 20