“I love you, Vida. You've got to understand that, you've got to believe me. No matter what happens, I'll go on loving you.”
She didn't say a thing. It seemed a long, long time before exhaustion finally slowed the whirling in my brain and sleep began to creep in.
About three o'clock the phone rang. It was one of the runners calling to tell me that my warehouse was burning down.
17
I got there as fast as my Buick could take me, but the situation was already beyond hope. The knock-up little neighborhood grocery store that I had taken over from Sid was a roaring furnace, the two-by-four cross beams twisting, snapping like matchsticks, the roof falling in, spewing showers of sparks into the darkness. The firemen were there but they didn't have a chance. From a block away you could hear the cases of whisky exploding. The whole thing went up in a bright flame.
I stood there for several minutes, knowing that there was nothing I could do. Geez, a fortune in liquor I All gone faster than it took to tell about it!
A small crowd was beginning to gather, sticky-eyed men with pajamas stuffed into their trousers, gaping at the fierceness of the blaze. Another fire truck came up and the firemen hooked their hose onto a plug at the end of the block and began spraying the shacks around the burning store. Goddamn it! Goddamn the lousy goddamn luck! Just when I was going good, a thing like this had to happen! I heard myself cursing when the firemen abandoned the store altogether and focused their attention to the surrounding buildings.
A man, his face black with soot, his slicker dripping, came over to me. “This place belong to you?” he said.
“You're goddamned right it does, and what's the idea of quitting? There's still a chance to save something.”
“Too far gone,” he said hoarsely, “We'll be lucky to save the buildings around it. You know a man named Chuck Thompson?”
“He works for me. Why?”
The fireman looked at me, his eyes narrowed. “He's dead,” he said.
After a moment I said evenly, “Where is he?”
“Over by the pumper,” the fireman said. “We found him just outside the store when we got here. Looked as if he had been inside when the fire started and had crawled as- far as the door and couldn't make it any farther. He was burned pretty bad.” He jerked his head toward the big pump truck. “Maybe you better come over and have a look.”
I went over to where they had Chuck laid out with a wet, glistening slicker spread over his chest and face. I threw the slicker back.
It was Chuck, but anybody who hadn't known him well would never have recognized him. His face was black, his hair was singed to his skull, his clothing was almost burned off his back. But the fire hadn't killed him. A long, open gash in the back of his head had done that. I put the slicker back in place and stood there for several minutes.
Chuck meant nothing to me. Still, looking at him was almost like looking at myself. The blow that had killed him had been aimed at me. The fire that had cooked him black had been built for me.
I thought, So Kingkade had made his move....
The time for decision had come again. Something had to be done about Kingkade, and what I wanted to do was get my hands around his scrawny throat and choke the life out of him. But something inside me warned me to keep cool, keep a strong hand on my anger. Barney Seaward was still the top man in Big Prairie. Barney would take care of Kingkade for me.
I went back to my car and drove away from the fire, toward town. I found a restaurant and telephoned.
Barney wasn't home.
Where could he be at this time of night? I didn't know, but I thought I knew somebody who could tell me, so I dialed again. I listened to the ringing at the other end-five times, six—and then a voice said: “Yes?”
It was Lola.
“I want to talk to Keating.”
She recognized my voice. I could almost see her freezing up. I thought she was going to hang up, but after a long moment of silence she said coldly, “My husband isn't here. He went somewhere with Barney Seaward. Barney was waiting at the house when we got back from the club tonight. They talked, but I don't know what about, and then they left in Barney's car.”
“Did it have anything to do with Joe Kingkade?”
“I heard them mention Kingkade's name,” she said.
I hung up and sat there for several minutes staring fiercely at the phone. What did it mean? Had Barney discovered what Kingkade was up to and set out to stop him himself? That was the only thing I could think of. That was just as well. Let Barney take care of Kingkade for me.
I felt wrung out and tired, and there didn't seem to be anything I could do, even if I had wanted to. The sky was beginning to turn gray in the east as I went out.
It was a quiet ride back to the apartment. I parked the car and got out, standing there for a moment, breathing in the coolness of the early morning air. I didn't see the three men coming out of the shadows until it was too late.
Two of them were my old friends, Joel and Max. The other was a small, thin-faced man, sloppily dressed—Joe Kingkade.
“Just stay where you are, Foley,” Kingkade said mildly. “This won't take long.”
“What the hell is this?” The words sounded ridiculous.
“A farewell visit, Foley. You're through in Big Prairie.”
“Maybe Barney will have something to say about that.”
Max laughed. Kingkade smiled faintly. Joel stood stone-faced to one side, watchful.
“I'll explain it to you,” Kingkade went on patiently. “Barney isn't boss any more, Foley. I am. I'm the new wholesaler for Big Prairie County and I'll pick my own men. You won't be one of them, Foley.”
“You sonofabitch!” The word jumped out angrily. Max started to swing at me but Kingkade stopped him.
“I gather you've seen your warehouse,” he said. “That's only half of it, Foley. Your cribs are burned down too. Big Prairie is going to be a respectable town from now on— the tramps will be kept in hotels where they belong. I ought to kill you, Foley, for the way you almost ruined this county. But I won't have to. You'll do it yourself, sooner or later....”
He let the words hang and seemed to be wondering if there was something else he should say. Suddenly he shrugged, turned on his heel.
They were gone.
I stood there with sweat on my forehead and emptiness in my belly. God, had Kingkade actually managed to step into Barney's shoes? I couldn't believe it. As long as Barney was alive, he would fight. And no man like Kingkade would ever outfight or outthink Barney Seaward. Was it bluff? Did the retailer actually think he could bluff me out of town?
I didn't believe that, either. If it was a bluff, he would have backed it up with a beating. But something had happened—that much I was sure of. I had to find out what.
The apartment was dark and quiet. I snapped the light on in the front room, went to the telephone and called Barney. He still wasn't home. I sat there sweating, wondering what I should do next. I felt a faint movement behind me, and when I turned, it was Vida standing in the doorway.
“What is it, Roy?”
“I don't know.” I rubbed my hands over my face, trying to think of something. “My warehouse has burned down,” I said flatly. “The cribs, too.”
“Is—it Barney?” she asked, her voice edged with fear.
I laughed abruptly and the sound startled me. “Crossing me would be the last thing in the world Barney would do! It's that goddamned Kingkade.”
“I don't understand,” Vida said. “Kingkade's too smart to think he can go against Seaward.”
“He's trying it,” I said bitterly.
I went to the bar, poured a straight shot of Scotch and downed it. I paced the floor, and Vida watched me.
I tried the phone again and again there was no answer. Out of the exhaustion, an almost overpowering feeling of futility began to grow. I had the feeling that my whole world was falling out from under me and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Abr
uptly, for no reason, it seemed, Vida said: “Let's leave Big Prairie, Roy. Let's go somewhere and start all over again. Now, before anything else happens.”
“What else can happen? Barney will take care of Kingkade.”
“Can you be sure?”
I wasn't sure what she was getting at. I stopped my pacing for a minute and looked at her. “I can be sure of Barney,” I said finally. “He's the one thing in this world I can depend on.”
I could see the questions in her eyes, the questions that she had kept locked up inside her and wouldn't ask. How could I be sure of Barney? What kind of a deal had I made with him? What had I done for him? I remembered Sid for the first time in a long while. I had to look away.
“Everything's going to be all right,” I said. “It would be foolish leaving Big Prairie, now, just when things are opening up. As soon as I take care of Kingkade, the town will be mine.”
God, I thought in the back of my mind, it would be good if we could go away. If we could go somewhere and rest. Then I heard the spat of the morning paper hitting the front door, and the muffled tramp of the paper boy going down the hall.
“Go to bed, Vida,” I said. “Get some sleep and don't worry about anything.”
She saw that I wasn't going to answer unasked questions. There was something in her eyes; it could have been relief, or fear, or maybe it was just weariness. Then she looked away and went into the bedroom.
I tried the phone again and still nobody answered. To kill time, I got the morning paper, opened it and looked at the headlines.
PROMINENT BIG PRAIRIE NEWSPAPERMAN, COUNTY ATTORNEY KILLED IN AUTO CRASH
I must have looked at it for a full minute before I realized that my world had collapsed. The club I held was useless. Seaward and Keating were dead.
18
TWO OF BIG PRAIRIE's most prominent citizens were killed instantly this morning, shortly after midnight, in an auto accident on the Rock Island overpass west of town. One witness to the fatal accident, Robert Manning, truck driver for the Big Prairie Oil Well Cementing Company, explained to the police that he was momentarily blinded by the bright headlights of Seaward's car as it came toward him on the steep western slope of the overpass. Manning stated, under questioning by the police, that Seaward's car had been traveling at a high rate of speed. “He must have hit an oil slick near the top of the overpass,” the truck driver continued. “The car seemed to go out of control. It came straight at me, and then the driver tried to miss me by pulling sharply to the left.” The car crashed over the cement barrier and fell onto the railroad track below. The bodies of Seaward and Keating were thrown clear of the car and were found some distance away.
I let the paper drop to the floor. The first thing I thought of was Kingkade. The bastard had planned it. But almost instantly I realized that it hadn't been planned at all, unless fate had done it. It was the luck this time; rotten, lousy luck, and in an instant it had torn down everything I had worked to build.
Almost instantly I remembered those recordings. Christ, I had to get them back before Kingkade found out about them. If the crime bureau ever got their hands on those recordings....
Sweat broke out on my face. I remembered Lola.
It was time for decision again, and this one, like the others, was ready for me. Run. It was the only thing to do. Christ—I held my face in my hands, feeling coldness go through me—why did I ever send that recording to Lola! Lola had the club now, and she had nothing to lose by using it, because her husband was dead. Her dreams of the governor's mansion were dead. Like me, all she had left was her hate. And that recording. A one-way ticket to an electrocution.
“Roy, what is it?”
Vida was standing in the doorway again, staring at me. Then she saw the paper on the floor, picked it up and looked at it. She made a small gasping sound in her throat.
“Roy, what are we going to do?”
“We've got to get out of Oklahoma,” I said, “and we've got to do it fast. In a matter of hours every agent in the state will be looking for me.”
“But why? You didn't have anything to do with this.”
And only then did the irony of the thing hit me. That suicide note of Sid's that I had so carefully destroyed, it could save me now, if I had it. But I didn't have it. And, after hearing that recording, who would ever believe that there had been such a note? No one. Not even Vida.
I put my arms around her and held her hard against me. “I love you, Vida. No matter what happens, I'll always love you. Now we've got to pack, Vida. We've got to get out of-here.”
“Roy, something has happened to us. I can't go on much longer without knowing what it is.”
“Nothing's happened. Everything's going to be all right, but we've got to get out of here. We'll head south, maybe to Texas. I know Houston pretty well, we can get lost there. They'll never find us, Vida.”
It was a lie and we both knew it. I touched her hair, feeling that strange gentleness inside me. “You don't have to go with me, Vida,” I said finally. “After a while, after it's safe, I can let you know where I am and you can come then.”
She clung to me as though it were for the last time. “We'll go together,” she said evenly. “I'll be packing.”
She had to know sometime about Sid. I had to explain it to her before it came out in the papers, but not now. My gaze drifted around the room. So this is the way it ends, I thought dully. One jump ahead of the law, two jumps ahead of the chair. At least I had money this time. Then I noticed the newspaper scattered on the floor where Vida had dropped it, the gaudy colored splashes of comic pages.
Geez! The realization hit me as I looked at those pages of colored comics. It was Sunday. The banks were closed.
All the money, I thought, near insanity, and no way to get it out! I couldn't wait until the banks opened the next day. I couldn't write checks to be traced. There was only one thing to do—leave Big Prairie the way I had come into it. Broke. I went through my pockets and found almost a hundred dollars in bills and change. Maybe Vida would have ten or twenty. I threw my head back and laughed idiotically. I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. My face looked back at me, gaunt-cheeked, hollow-eyed, the face of an old man, a broken man. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the biggest-phony of them all? And the mirror answered—or. I imagined that it did—God, you make me sick!
I thought, I'm not beaten! I'll get out of this somehow!
The mirror laughed. Great God, you make me want to puke, Foley! Do you know what you'll be doing a month from now—if you're still alive? A week from now? You'll be in a hash house—another grease-stinking sandwich joint, that's where you'll be! Maybe you can get Vida a job waiting on customers. I'll bet she'd love that. Like hell she would! Imagine going to bed with Vida, smelling of onions and mustard, and never quite getting away from the odor of stale grease. There's another thing, too. What about Lola? Oh, Lola's going to love this! God, how she's going to laugh!
“Roy,” Vida called, “I'm through packing. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Methodically, I began going through the drawers to see if she had missed anything of mine.
I found an empty wallet in one drawer. A hair brush and two handkerchiefs in another. The last thing I found was a beautifully blued bone-handled .38 revolver that I had bought to carry with me when I made the rounds with the runners. I held the gun in my hand, caressing it gently with my fingers. I checked the cylinder and saw that there were five live rounds in the chambers. For safety's sake, one chamber had been left empty and that was where the hammer rested.
“Roy,” Vida called tightly, “are you ready?”
“Yes.”
I gripped the cool butt, slipped my finger inside the trigger guard and gingerly tested the double-action. I thought It's so simple! and fleetingly I remembered the truck driver and guard. Merely by pointing it at a person and then exerting the slightest pressure with your finger, I thought, it is possible to put a complete, irrevocable end to a human life.
Any life. A person could put an end to his own life, for that matter....
The thought rose suddenly, unexpectedly out of the darkness of my mind. I heard Joe Kingkade saying, “I won't have to kill you. You'll do it yourself.”
Stop it!
My hands were shaking. I told myself that I could pawn the gun or sell it if we got desperate for money and it would be foolish to throw a valuable gun like that away for no reason at all. I wasn't beaten. Somehow I would find a way to beat all of them—Kingkade, Lola. But I was tired. I felt as old as a mountain. I put the gun in the suitcase and locked it.
19
WE LEFT BIG PRAIRIE IN THE COOL quiet of early morning. Sunday morning. In a matter of two hours we had crossed Red River and were heading south toward Dallas.
I kept the radio on, tuning in all the news broadcasts I could find, but there was nothing at all about me. I thought: Maybe Lola didn't turn the recording over to the bureau after all, but I didn't dwell on it long enough for it to become a hope. I had only to remember that hate in her eyes. She would never forget what I had done to her, and she would never stop until she had ruined me.
We stopped in Dallas long enough to trade my Buick in on a '49 Ford. I got only five hundred in cash out of the trade, but I didn't have time to try to do better. We left Dallas and headed south again. There still wasn't anything about us on the radio.
Vida hardly said a thing all day. It was blazing hot and she sat on her side of the front seat, staring flatly at the shimmering highway. I drove until midnight, until I couldn't stay awake any longer, and then I turned the Ford over to Vida and she drove until almost dawn.
Both of us were too tired to go any farther. We pulled into a knock-up little tourist court to rest.
Day broke early. The blazing Texas sun beat down on our clapboard cabin and within an hour it was as hot and stifling as a bakeoven. The first thing I did was go out to the car and turn on the radio.
It had happened.
“A statewide search is being conducted throughout Oklahoma,” the announcer said, “for one Roy Foley and his wife Vida. Foley is wanted for questioning in connection with the death of Sidney Gardner, Oklahoma bootlegger. The Oklahoma State Crime Bureau has announced that, until recently the death of Gardner was believed to be accidental. However, new evidence has apparently been brought to light, and the bureau has hinted that other prominent Oklahomans...”
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