Little Tramp (Prologue Crime)

by Gil Brewer

  “Well,” Doll said. “What’s on your mind?” She and Kryder inched toward the paler darkness of the kitchen. They stood in the doorway and Kryder put one hand over her shoulder, leaning against the door jamb so she was trapped in the circle of his arms, close to him.

  “Kind of a proposition,” Kryder said.

  “Yes?”

  “Been thinking.”

  Doll sighed patiently.

  “All right,” Kryrer said. “It’s this. I know you don’t feel so good about what I had to do with that Lowell woman. I’m sorry about it myself. But I had to do it, understand?”

  Doll said nothing, watching him.

  Kryder turned his head, glanced at Gary, then Arlene. His voice was faintly hoarse, and he spoke almost apologetically.

  “You know what’s got to happen to them, too?”

  Still Doll did not speak, or display any emotion.

  “You don’t have to be with them,” he said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m going to be a rich man, Dolores. Damned rich. It’s not something you can ignore, you know. Be able to buy anything in the world—anything. Live any place. Be free, for the first time in my life, free to do all the things I want. Wouldn’t like to do them alone.”

  “You could buy that, too,” Doll said.

  “I know. I know. Maybe I don’t want it that way.”

  “Is there another way?”

  “Yes,” he said, bringing his hand away from the door jamb, encircling the back of her head with his palm. His fingers strayed, twining the thick black hair. Still Doll didn’t move. “Thinking maybe you’d like to share it with me.”

  “Share the conscience, too?”

  “No conscience, honey. I don’t have a conscience. Trust me for that. Anything you wanted.”

  Gary glanced up quickly. Doll was smiling at Kryder, and she moved closer in to him, her hip gently touching him.

  “Well?” she said. “What do you think?”

  THIRTEEN

  DOLL chuckled softly.

  Gary stood up and strode out onto the porch, his feet squashing in the mangoes that still lay on the floor. He wanted to get out of earshot, but there was no way. No matter where he went, he could hear Kryder’s harsh, demanding tone.

  A window from the room opened onto the porch, and Kryder glanced toward him once. Gary turned his back, looking down toward the lake. He heard Arlene move up beside him.

  “You see what they’re doing?”

  “Never mind.”

  “But she’s going over to his side, Gary—it’s obvious.”

  “That’s her business.”

  Arlene moved closer and he stared at her face. She was very sober in the shadowed darkness, her hands held rigidly along her thighs. Out there, the night charged steadily along toward morning.

  “He’s not going to let us sleep,” she said.

  “He’s not sleeping, either.”

  “What are you going to do?” she said, whispering. The words were hesitant and her eyes were wide, pleading. “Just wait—wait until he kills us? Why don’t you do something?”

  “Like what?”

  “If we could only get that damned gun.”

  “He’s nervous,” Gary said. “Just don’t egg him on.”

  She began to giggle deep in her throat. He looked at her and then quickly looked away. He’d wanted to ask her about what she’d told her father, but she was acting damned queer, and he didn’t like it. He thought for a moment that she was going to cry, and he would have liked to see that. It might even help her. He wanted to help her, but he saw no way. He couldn’t help himself.

  He might dive off the porch, over the railing, get on the ground and make the car; but even thinking it, he knew he wouldn’t make it. Kryder would get him with that gun.

  He heard Doll speaking softly in there and the sound of her tone was like having her spit in his face. She was flaunting Kryder in front of him; she knew he could hear them, and she must have known how it made him feel. He glanced through the window and this time felt truly sick. They were crushed against each other, kissing again, and he could see her hands—and his hands.

  “Enjoy watching them?” Arlene whispered.

  He turned away, and Arlene moved closer to him. He felt the soft pressure of her body and looked down into her bruised face. She wasn’t smiling now, her mouth turned down at the corners, but very red against the pallor of her face. He saw the way her eyes gleamed.

  “You feel all right?” he asked.

  “Perfectly well, thank you.”

  “You still hate your father, Arlene?”

  “Yes! I want him to suffer.”

  She made no sense. It was useless talking with her.

  “Look at them,” she whispered. “And that’s the woman you love so much. What do you think about that now?”

  He listened to the night.

  “He won’t let us sleep!” Arlene said loudly.

  “Nobody told you you couldn’t sleep.”

  “He’s going to kill us.”

  Suddenly Kryder laughed. It was loud laughter, and it was mean. Gary looked through the window again. Doll had stepped back from him. Kryder’s voice rose.

  “I was just seeing how far you’d take it, you crazy bitch!”

  Gary stepped through the doorway.

  “You think I wasn’t wise you were playing a game?” Kryder said. “I just wanted to see how far you’d go, you fool.”

  Doll looked at him and her upper lip drew slightly away from her teeth.

  “Pretty damned smart,” Kryder went on. “But not half smart enough, sweetheart.” He wheeled toward Gary, then back to her again. “How far would you’ve gone? Right here in front of him? What did he think? It’s good, real good. Maybe I should’ve let you. You think for a minute I’d be soft enough to let you get away with a stunt like that?”

  He stepped closer still to her and thrust his face near hers, the words spitting out against her. “What’d you plan to do? I’d like to know. You aren’t carrying a knife—what’d you figure? I had my eye on him every damned minute, baby—didn’t you know that? I’d have got him. Even he knew that. He didn’t try anything. He knows better. What’d you figure—get me in the bedroom, maybe, grab my gun? That it?”

  “Are you finished?” Doll asked quietly.

  Kryder stared at her, fumbling for words, but not finding them. He was empty. He was nervous and he knew the nervousness showed plainly to all of them and this angered him. He didn’t know how to cover now, and his hand began to tremble with rage.

  “You seem to be finished,” Doll said. “So I’ll tell you you’re right. But I’ll tell you something else. I couldn’t have stood another kiss from those slobbery lips of yours. And when you touched me I nearly threw up. Think about that.” She paused, watching his eyes.

  Gary knew she would have gone the limit with the man if she thought there’d been any chance of his getting away for help of some kind. What she didn’t seem to realize was that they were all involved, and that he could never leave her.

  What she said then brought it all to focus. “Yes. I was doing it for a reason, for Gary. I’d have got that gun of yours, and I’d have killed you.”

  Kryder nodded, grinning, some of the deadly composure returning.

  “I’d have enjoyed killing you.”

  Gary knew she’d better lay off.

  “Well, well,” Kryder said. “You slay me.”

  “Maybe we’ll really slay you,” Gary said.

  “Yes,” Doll put in. “Perhaps we will.”

  Momentarily, things took a change; there was a sense of rebellion in the air, and Kryder felt it. He looked at each of them in turn, and Gary heard Arlene move in the porch doorway. The screen door closed as she came into the room.

  “You,” Kryder said to her. “Get a damned broom and clean up that mess.”

  He gestured at the squashed mangoes lying on the floor, drawing flies. He had to regain top hold and he k
new it. For a moment there he’d felt it slipping away from him, and it had frightened him.

  “Me?” Arlene said. “Sweep the floor? Are you mad?”

  “No, girlie. I’m not mad.” He walked over to her and looked into her eyes. “But exactly how do you feel? Now,” he said, giving her a shove toward the kitchen. “Get that broom and sweep the floor.”

  Arlene moved into the kitchen, her legs stiff, looking back over her shoulder at Kryder.

  “And you,” he said to Doll. “Get in there and cook us a meal. I wouldn’t trust that kid with the stove. She’d probably burn her hands off.”

  For some reason this seemed humorous to him and he spluttered brief laughter, then became sober. His voice grew soft and harsh again.

  “None of you will sleep until you lay down for the long count. Understand what I mean? And when that time comes makes no matter to me.”

  Half an hour later Gary managed to be alone with Doll long enough to speak with her. He’d been trying for many minutes, but Kryder sensed it and trailed him wherever he moved. They were all hungry, so Doll didn’t mind cooking. Kryder happened to be in the living room, baiting Arlene, when Gary moved close to Doll where she stood at the sink.

  “He made me phone Harper again,” Gary said. “Had me change the pick-up time for the ransom money to tomorrow night. So we have maybe twenty-four hours. Maybe not that long. He’s getting damned nervous.”

  “He’s afraid,” Doll whispered.

  “Sure, he’s afraid. But that’s not going to stop him.”

  “He doesn’t want to kill again.”

  “I’ve got to do something. Maybe I could jump him. I could try.”

  “No,” Doll said. “It wouldn’t work. He’s ready for that. That guy’s worked up to trip like a trigger. And, listen. Something’s wrong with Arlene.” Doll tapped her head. “She’s not acting right—too quiet.”

  “Doll?”

  “What?”

  She turned and looked at him and her soft dark eyes seemed to smile reassurance. He wanted to grab her and run out of the cabin, only he knew it wasn’t going to be that way. Somehow, he knew it was going to be bad—maybe a lot worse than he was able to imagine.

  “You’re not going to like this, Doll—but I’ve got an idea.”

  “Make it good.”

  “You know how you were making up to that guy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, he didn’t fall for it. He’s wise. But suppose now you went to him, got him alone—and told him you did mean it. That you had to say those things, to keep me from bungling, or something, that he’d got you wrong.”

  “That’s far enough—”

  “No, wait, Doll. I mean it. He might believe you. Tell him you said what you did because you couldn’t face us. Me and Arlene. Me, anyway. Tell him you did go for him.”

  “Gary.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why do you say this?”

  He held her shoulders, drawing her close to him, yet not touching her with his body. He looked into her eyes and knew how much he loved her, how much she meant to him. He had never really known before, perhaps. Sometimes it took a lot to bring understanding to people. He had learned many things since coming to this cabin.

  “Because,” he said. “He’s sure as hell going to kill us, Doll. There’s no way I can see to escape that. The man’s not quite level any more. He’s ready to kill—he’s priming himself for it, working himself up to it. It’s all he’s thinking about.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “If you’ll do as I say, Doll, you’ll be able to live. You’ll at least be able to get safely away from here.” He saw the way she looked at him. She started to say something, but he didn’t let her, speaking in a serious whisper, trying to convey with his eyes and voice something of the logic he saw in his own reasoning. “I love you, Doll. I always have loved you, and I’ve made a stinking mess of the whole thing. Now, wait—I know it sounds lousy, but—” He pressed one hand to her lips and he saw the way her eyes were. “I mean it, Doll. There’s never been much of anything I did right. No matter what you think, you won’t be very bad off without me.”

  “Please, honey!”

  “I’m trying to be serious, in my own fashion. I want you to do as I ask. Go to the guy, make him believe you’re stuck on him, anything. Anything at all. It’ll maybe buy your way out of this. Christ, Doll. It’s worth it. Life is worth it.”

  “Gary—I’ll yell if you don’t stop. The way you go on—for God’s sake, anybody’d think you were delivering a lecture on peace to the Indians.”

  “How can I make you see?”

  “You can’t make me see something like that.”

  “Doll, the guy’s not right, and neither is that Harper kid. Don’t you see?” He shook her lightly. “Doll,” he said, looking straight into her eyes. “He’s going to put a lead slug into each of us, that’s God’s honest truth. You don’t know what that’s like. I took one in the back during the war—just one, Doll, and I damned near kicked off with it. But it was a miss, see? Well, if he misses, he’ll just keep on shooting till you’re done. You can’t understand that. I don’t want it to happen to you. What I’m telling you to do is the only way I can see.”

  “Why not try for the gun again?”

  “I can’t make it.”

  “Maybe you can.”

  “You saw what happened last time.”

  “That was an accident.”

  “How’m I going to get away from him long enough?”

  “There must be a way!”

  “Doll, there isn’t any way. He’s primed, I tell you. That man is ready to kill. Willing, even anxious, now. The only reason he hasn’t done it yet is maybe he wants me to make one more phone call, and that’s it. It still worries him—the killing—but the more it worries him and the closer the time comes, the more certain he is to do it. He’s waited twelve years for this. Can’t you see the kind of guy he is?”

  “Honey, I always knew you had it in you, and so the hell with it.”

  “You won’t do it?”

  “I won’t do it.”

  He stood there in defeat. She wasn’t going to do it, he saw that plainly enough, and that meant one thing. He was going to have to somehow beat Kryder at his own game. He had to win with every card against him. Kryder wasn’t just a man with a gun. Not any more, he wasn’t. He was a man with a gun with a purpose, and he was a fanatic.

  They ate in silence, sleepily, and Gary’s watch read three forty-four when he looked at it. The food was good and each of them was tired, but Kryder found secret mirth as he recognized this fact.

  “Anybody sleepy?” he kept saying.

  Gary knew there was nothing he could do so long as Kryder stayed on edge, watching, the way he was doing right now. He looked back to when he’d been fired from his job, tried to re-experience the worry of that moment, but it was gone. A tiny, insignificant fact in this wild medley of horror. And Harper was taking the cruel brunt of something he didn’t deserve.

  He looked around the table, watching each of them in turn. Doll, quietly picking at her food, her eyes now and again meeting his, showing traces of despair, trying to hide despair and so making it more obvious. Arlene was not eating at all, not even bothering to avoid her food, just sitting and staring with a kind of nonchalant scheming, straight at Kryder. Arlene’s eyes were gleaming but lifeless, without depth. Kryder, eating voraciously, downing huge portions of food, gulping coffee, chewing with his mouth forever twisted in the somehow comical, yet hideous, self-conscious grin.

  But he watched Kryder for the most part, patiently waiting for the opening that didn’t come. Because Kryder was wise and also patiently waiting.

  “You think you could jump me when I’m not watching?” Kryder asked suddenly. “I know that’s what you have in mind.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybes. I know. Well, try it, why don’t you?”

  When Gary didn’t reply, Kryder chuckled sof
tly, scraped his chair around by the wall and leaned back again. He took out the nickeled revolver with the black grips and flipped the cylinder open. He ejected two spent shells, reached into his pocket and brought out two fresh ones and inserted them. He flipped the cylinder back and held the gun in his palm, looking at it, his eyes almost loving.

  “They can have their automatics,” he said. “I’ll take this any time. It’s a thirty-eight, really handy, and it packs the wallop, too. A good gun.”

  “If you shoot it out here, somebody’ll hear it,” Gary said. “You realize that?”

  “Yes. If I shoot it here.”

  “A couple of the cabins down the road are occupied.”

  “I would shoot it here, nevertheless.”

  “The pillow wouldn’t always be handy.”

  “True.”

  They watched each other.

  “Go ahead,” Kryder said. “Try.”

  Gary watched the man lift the gun and aim it across the table, holding the barrel just above the edge so the slug would catch him in the abdomen.

  Kryder chuckled and put the gun away.

  Later, seated in the living room, Arlene still hadn’t spoken. She still wore the gaping blouse and the play skirt. But she was not teasing now. She just didn’t care. Kryder was keeping an eye on her now, too. A suspicious eye.

  “Seriously, Dunn,” Kryder said. “What good would it do you to live?”

  Gary looked at him. The question somehow seemed so logical that it startled him. He began to realize how close they were to dying. But he only half listened, his mind thronged with possibilities of overcoming Kryder, discarding each in turn as impossible.

  “What good would it do?” Kryder said. “Suppose I was out of the way? You couldn’t show your face. You’re finished, any way you look at it. Little hot pants would come out of her shell and make you go through with her original plan. She’d buy you with that. And you’d sell out, too—even if you don’t feel so hot on the kidnaping deal right now. What else would there be?”

  Gary saw Doll go over to Arlene and say something to her, touch her shoulder, but Arlene didn’t move, didn’t speak, only watched Kryder with that glassy stare.

  “Because,” Kryder said, “you’re the kidnaper, see?” He turned his chair and looked across the room at Arlene. “Right, honey?”