by Gil Brewer
“What do you mean?” Arlene said, nervously.
He grinned at her.
“What do you mean?” she repeated.
“Steady, now—take it easy. I mean what I said.” He looked at Gary. “You’re an active son of a bitch, aren’t you? Not quite the chip you had out at your place. Well, think of it—I almost screwed myself out of the biggest deal of my life.” He shook his head. “That would’ve been sad, all right. I damned near had you beat up, Dunn, to keep you away from her. I’ve been saving her for myself for over a year.”
“What?”
“That’s right. I knew she’d figure something sooner or later, so I could cash in.”
“How?”
He grinned at both of them. “I’m a private cop,” he said gently. “Her old man hired me over a year ago to keep an eye on her, keep her name out of the newspapers, see she didn’t get into too much trouble. I knew I had it made, right then. Because, man—she’s a dilly. It had to happen sooner or later.”
Gary glanced at Arlene. She was staring at Kryder, her lips parted, her shoulders taut, and he wondered how he was going to get at this man. It was like a jetty void in a hangover dream, full of running in wrong directions and hopelessness. He heard Arlene speaking.
“I don’t know you,” she said. “Gary, I’ve never seen him before. He’s lying.”
“Sure, sure,” Kryder said. “It’s true she never saw me, though. I wouldn’t’ve been any use to Harper if she knew me. But I know you, Arlene—I know you well. I can tell you every guy you’ve slept with during the past sixteen months. The list is an amazing one. Dunn, I bet you don’t know much about her.”
“You shut your mouth!” Arlene snapped.
Kryder leaned his head over and looked at her. It was a little like a big bird inspecting a worm on the ground, just before he swallowed it. He blinked his eyes and chuckled deep in his throat. Then he told her what she could do with herself, quite matter-of-factly, and turned back to Gary.
Gary watched him, wondering how he was going to combat this, and it began to seem that the world had given way. He saw the whole thing unfolding before him. He saw them riding back to town, Kryder taking them to the police, and there was inside him a kind of momentary relief. So this was what his life had been coming to all along. There would be no more worrying, no stewing about how to make a buck, no running from one state to the other, searching for something that didn’t exist. He wouldn’t have to concern himself with Doll. It could be he had hurt her too much already. It could very well be that she’d be one hell of a lot better off without him.
He realized it was self-pity, but he didn’t seem to care about that, either. He was done. He should have seen it coming. It had begun the moment he’d disobeyed his own instincts, and gone out there to the Harper home to help see about installing a hi-fi system that had been dreamed up as the first in a series of reeking baits to trap him. Once and for all. Maybe in the back of his mind he’d figured it would end this way.
Then he heard Kryder’s harsh voice speaking again.
“Our little jockey’s dipped her hot little paddycakes into just about everything, Dunn. You see, I lived in the town where she went to college, too.” He flicked his gaze toward her. “You get that ‘went,’ Arlene? Because it’s all over now.”
She stared at him, wetting her lips with her pink tongue. Several times Gary saw her start to speak, but finally she just sat back, watching Kryder, her lips faintly disdainful.
“She passed bad checks. I had a hell of a job, let me tell you. It’ll be worth the trouble, though. Pulled all sorts of stunts. Hell, she even had a campus call-girl racket going up there.”
Gary heard her suck breath sharply.
“Sure,” Kryder said. “You wouldn’t remember me. I was with that redhead a couple times, though. Name of Marge, as I recall.” He coughed into his fist. “Marge is all right, now, by the way, Arlene. I got her home to her mama, where she belongs. She’s getting married next month. She’s off the stuff, too. She deserved some help, and—” he chuckled again—”I couldn’t see any way to hit her for anything. Her folks didn’t have any money. So I fixed her up with an abortion—guy I know.”
“Why are you here?” Arlene said.
“Coming to that. I just wanted Dunn to have a general outlook on things. I been watching you two. Followed you out here last night, but I figured it was just another one of your little games, Arlene, baby. I didn’t hang around. What the hell, I figured—it’ll keep. And that’s when I thought I’d hire a couple guys I know to take care of Gary. Went back to town to report to your old man, only when I started talking with him, what does he say but his daughter never got on the plane for New England, like she was supposed to. I asked him what plane he meant, he hadn’t told me. He said he’d been trying to get me for the past two days to let me know. He was all excited. His daughter’s vanished. What next? So I clammed, and decided to check around, first.” He tapped his forehead with a blunt finger. “I used my head at exactly the right time. So I came out here. Been hanging around. Field glasses over across the lake, stuff like that. Interesting. When it got dark, I came up close and listened to you two. Of course, I read all the papers, too. You didn’t see the evening papers, did you?”
Nobody spoke.
“Well, they’ve hit on the possibility of kidnaping.” He heaved himself on the chair, settling more comfortably. “Ordinarily, Dunn, you’d say she was young and fresh—well, she’s fresh, all right. But, hell, that young business don’t mean a thing.” He looked at her again, his eyes licking up and down her body. “Is there anything you haven’t done, sister?”
She did not move, boldly staring at him.
“See, Dunn? See how she looks at me? She’s scheming to get her pants off already. She thinks that’s the answer. It isn’t. You don’t look washed up, Arlene—but you are. Washed up at eighteen. Her birthday was only last week, Dunn. Would you imagine it?”
Gary waited. He saw Kryder lean down in the chair and stared at her and he saw hatred in the man’s eyes. The possibility was that he now had two screwed-up people to deal with.
Kryder said, “Honey, you’ve caused me a lot of grief. I’m forty-four years old to your eighteen. I’m an old man. But I figure I got a few more years—and, honey—they’re going to be good ones. I been in this game for twelve years. A long time, eating crusts, listening to other people’s troubles, helping them with their problems. But I got into it for one reason, because it came to me that some day I’d hit. I’d hit big. I been waiting for that, and the time’s come.”
Gary kept watching him, wanting to take the chance of jumping the man, weighing the chances, and knowing somehow that Kryder would be very fast with a gun even from the hip pocket—and where would it get him? He had to do something, only right now it seemed as if the thing to do was wait. He’d been waiting too long already. Only what do you do? Kryder’s face had paled slightly beneath his normal ruddy coloring.
“A lot of folks who come to guys like me don’t have much dough, see? Some have a little, but not enough. Only, I knew that some day, I’d meet up with a sweet little whore like you, Arlene—one I could nick for the cream. Not just bleed and bleed. Too much can go wrong that way. But one hard sock. Your old man’s got a legitimate bagful, and he’s not going to miss it. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw what you’d done.”
Gary heard the man’s voice growing harsher now, and Kryder stood up, stepped over to the couch. His eyes were hard. The whisky hadn’t made him drunk, but it had loosened his tongue a little, and there were a lot of tired old years springing into his mind, wanting out. Everything about him was tough, completely brutal.
“I kept my nose clean for twelve years,” he said gravely, the harsh quality of his voice carrying, biting. “For twelve years, I waited. I earned my bread—just waiting. I was chosen. So maybe now you’ve got some notion as to what you’re up against if you try bucking me.” He paused, then said, “That’s bucking, Arlene.”
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Gary didn’t move and he began to see it very clearly now. He wasn’t sure Arlene saw it, though. In another moment he was proved right by her actions.
Kryder went on. “We’re going through with this kidnaping scheme, just like you’ve planned. You’re going to talk it over with me. I’m going to collect that ransom money, see? You’ve set it up for me and I’m taking it. There’ll be no more piddling fees, no nothing—just the big hit.”
Arlene leaped off the couch, scrabbling for him. “No,” she said.
“No, you won’t!”
Gary came to his feet. He saw Kryder look at her, saw the curl of his lips as he struck her with his fist. He struck hard. She sprawled across the room and crashed to the floor, rolling, her hair tossing wildly about her head.
“Try that again, Arlene,” Kryder said.
She came to her knees, screeching like an animal at him. Her face reddened, and a bleeding gash showed on her right forearm, dripping stains on her skirt.
“So, Dunn, what d’you think?”
Gary moved toward Arlene.
“No fight, pal?” Kryder said. “Don’t you want to save the little bitch?”
Gary paused, and looked at the man. “Sure,” he said. “Take the gun and throw it out that door. Then say what you just said.”
Kryder breathed harshly. Gary stepped up to the man.
“Watch it,” Kryder said.
“That’s what I mean. Let’s see you throw the gun.”
“You’re asking too much.”
They stood there like that, watching each other. When Gary moved a step, Kryder moved back, and then Gary saw him stop still and he suddenly knew that Kryder would use the gun if he was pushed just a bit. There was a quiet and inevitable certainty in the man’s eyes.
Gary turned and stepped over to Arlene. She was rising from the floor. She thrust past him, and ran stumbling across the room, her fingers shaped like claws.
“You won’t have the money!” she shouted. “It’s mine—you won’t!”
Kryder reached out, grabbed her by the shoulders. Her fingers raked helplessly at his arms, drawing blood, and he ignored that, holding her out and shaking her until her jaw rattled.
“I’ll tell you what you mean to me,” he said softly. “Just nothing, honey. I’d as soon kill you right now. I’d as soon squeeze that pretty throat of yours till you died in my hands. I’d enjoy it—that’s what you mean to me, see?” He said it gently, explaining carefully to her and her eyes rounded with awed horror. “You’re less than dirt,” he went on. “You high and mighty little slut. I guess maybe I hate your kind more than I hate anything in this world. You’re beautiful and you’re a fake—real women sneer at the likes of you. You’ve bought your way in and out of life and you’ll never know what love is—you’re a used-up, sexed-out phony. So shut your mouth and take what you get.”
He flung her at the couch. Her back struck violently on the edge and she sprawled out on the floor. The blouse pulled open across the white and pink curve of one breast. She lay there, staring at him, her eyes quite dry.
The man was insane. Gary moved at him, swinging hard with his right fist. Kryder turned, stepped in and shoved brutally with the heel of his hand. Again it was dreamlike. Nothing went right. The fist missed, slung past, and Kryder’s hand caught him in the throat. He windmilled backward, smashed against the couch. He looked at Kryder, knowing that somehow, some way, he was going to get him.
“You try that once more,” Kryder said, “and I’ll shoot you in the belly. In the belly. It don’t matter if you die, pal. Don’t you realize that?”
Gary slowly came to his feet, watching.
“Make up your mind,” Kryder said. “I’m going to kill both of you later on, anyway. You want it now, step up and take it.”
NINE
FOR a long moment nobody spoke. Down by the lake a croaker began bellowing, and from someplace far away came the lonely, echoing single honk of a car’s horn. Then in the following silence, Gary heard the steady dripping of a faucet in the kitchen sink.
“All right,” Kryder said. “We’ll postpone that part, then.”
Arlene was slowly standing up. There was a nasty gash in her arm, and Gary moved over to her, glanced at Kryder, then guided her toward the bedroom.
“See that you take care of her arm,” Kryder said. “I’m going to fix something to eat.”
They moved through the bedroom door. Suddenly, Kryder moved in after them and Gary watched the man check the single bedroom window. The screen was on the inside, rusted in place to the steel casement. He turned and looked at them, then at the bed. His eye caught the open suitcase filled with the liquor bottles. He grunted, and unwrapped each of them, six in all, and set a bottle of rum on the dresser.
“I’ll just put the others in the kitchen,” he said. “Okay with you, honey?”
Arlene said nothing. Gary moved on through the bedroom to the bathroom, and began fishing around in the medicine chest over the rust-stained sink. He’d caught a look at himself in the mirror, haggard, face drawn and beard heavy; the eyes shot with streaks of blood, harried and impatient. In the chest, he found a small tin of antiseptic powder.
“In here,” he called to Arlene.
She came in and stood silently, staring at her arm. His anger toward her was mixed with pity. He knew of no way to really help her. He knew of no way to help himself.
“Wash the arm,” he told her. He turned the water on and waited until the top ceased spouting rustily. Then she washed her arm and he doused it with the powder. “That’ll have to do,” he told her. “Hurt bad?”
“What’s going to happen to us?” she whispered.
“We’ll probably get killed.”
“Don’t say that. What’s the matter with you?”
“What the hell do you want me to say? Didn’t you think something like this might happen?”
She didn’t reply. She looked at him and licked her lips, her eyes shining. All the drunkenness was gone now. He knew he shouldn’t feel sorry for her—he knew she wasn’t feeling sorry for him—not that it mattered.
“He’s not going to succeed,” she said. “I’ll think of something. You wait, I’ll think of something.”
“Sure.”
“He’s not going to get away with it. Not all that money. It’s my money and I’m going to have it. This was my idea. I won’t let him step in and ruin everything.”
“How do you plan to stop him?”
She bit her lip. “I don’t know. But I’ll think of a way. Listen, he’s older than you—you can beat him up.”
“He’s got a gun, remember?”
“You’ve got to jump him,” she said. “I won’t stand for it.”
“Good for you.”
He left her standing there and wandered aimlessly into the bedroom again, trying to think. He came up with nothing. He was dealing with a desperate man; a man who would use every wile, every nerve, to go through with his plan. Kryder was no fool.
Only something did have to be done. Not for Arlene—for himself. He knew he had to do something. Only what, damn it—what? It nearly made him burst out laughing.
“Got it figured yet?” Kryder said.
He was leaning in the bedroom doorway, chewing on a sandwich. His eyes darkened as he looked at Gary, the pale light in the bedroom scattering in his iron-gray hair.
“You can’t do this!” Arlene said, coming out of the bathroom.
Kryder took another large bite from the sandwich, chewed.
“I’ll split with you,” Arlene said softly.
“Go to hell,” Kryder said, chewing. “No splits—not that kind, anyway.” He lunged off the door jamb, and strolled back into the living room. Gary heard him pour whisky into a glass. Maybe the man would get drunk. But he knew Kryder wouldn’t be such a fool as to do that, either.
“I’m going to phone your old man,” Kryder said. “Want to listen in?”
Gary moved into the living room, followed by Arlene.
Kryder hauled the phone over to the studio couch, and stretched out, still chewing the sandwich. He picked his teeth with a fingernail, took a swallow from his glass, set the glass down. His eyes were quite calm and gray now.
“Know what I’m going to do with you?” he said. “How I’m going to work it?”
Arlene sat down in the chair by the kitchen doorway, her hands on her knees. She was thinking. Gary hoped she wouldn’t try anything. From the way she’d been acting he couldn’t expect her to pull anything very smart.
“Going to tell him I’ll be working on locating little passion pants. Going to tell him I’ve got a lead. Then we’ll let some time go by. I’ll keep the old man posted on things, you know—imaginary things. All sorts of junk. Then I’ll collect the ransom, see? When the time’s right. I’ll have you do the talking about the ransom,” he said, glancing at Gary. He looked at Arlene. “How much did you figure on?”
“Five hundred thousand,” she said.
“Atta girl,” Kryder said with a laugh. “Always helpful where a man’s concerned, huh? Can’t avoid it, can you?”
Gary looked over at her. Kryder was right about a lot of things concerning her, yet, he felt differently about her now. She’d got him into this, but she was in a jam herself.
“Not bad,” Kryder said. “I figured on two-fifty. That’s all I need for the rest of my life. I’ve got it planned. But if you think he’ll stand for five, it’s better yet. A lot better.”
He sat up, swinging his feet to the floor. “Isn’t she a honey, though?”
“What’ll you do after you collect the ransom?” Arlene asked quietly, inspecting her cut arm.
“What do you think?” Kryder said. “I’m going to kill you. Both of you. Then I’m going to find you, see? Maybe I’ll just say I had to shoot you, or get shot. It’s easy. Anyway, the cops’ll love me—everybody’ll sob. And I’ll have found the kidnaper, too—only he’ll be dead and the dead can’t talk.”