The Big Bite

by Charles Williams

  “You know, I expected somebody much older,” I said. “I don’t know where I got the impression, but I thought you’d be thirty or thirty-five.” It was an old gag, of course, and she’d recognize it as such, but still it was the truth in a way. Purvis’d said she was thirty, but she didn’t look it.

  She gave me a faint smile and nodded. “You’re very flattering, Mr. Harlan,” she murmured. “And so early in the morning, too.”

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could see that amused devil looking out of her eyes for just a second. It was beginning to appear to her that I didn’t know I’d ever seen her before, and the tension was easing: Two-hundred-and-thirty pounds of ham-handed athlete trying to be a smoothie probably tickled her, too. She’d heard all the compliments, by experts; and with those eyes, she’d probably been using men for throw-rugs since she was three. Well, that was all right. I’d be something new for her; I’d be the first one that ever cost her a hundred thousand dollars. She’d probably sleep with a lock of my hair under her pillow.

  I pitched my voice down a little and looked at my hands. “I—uh—” I said. Then I glanced up at her, ill at ease and awkward, but sincere as hell, “There isn’t anything, really, that I can say, is there?” I asked.

  “I don’t think there’s anything that has to be said,” she replied quietly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Well—it isn’t a question of blame,” I said haltingly, “It’s just that—well, there was a wreck, and I was involved in it. I wanted to come and see you after I got out of the hospital, but didn’t know what there was I could say if I did come. I knew how badly you were torn up about it, too, and realized you didn’t want to see me and be reminded of it—”

  That ought to get her off the hook, I thought, so she could relax. I was just a big simple muscle-head who didn’t have the faintest idea why she’d avoided me. There was nothing for her to be afraid of any more. All I had to do now was ease her mind as to why I’d come back here, and I’d be in.

  It was as if we were working off the same script. “It’s quite all right,” she said. “I’m glad you came. And I’m very sorry I didn’t come to see you in the hospital, but it’s nice to know that you understood. However, I’ll admit I was a little surprised at seeing you now. I didn’t know you were back in this part of the country.”

  “I came back to finish that fishing trip,” I explained. “Going to work on a new job in September. I won’t get a vacation for a year, so I thought I’d better do my fishing now while I could.”

  The big eyes became very grave and sympathetic. This baby was good. “I was so very sorry to read that you had been—I mean, that you weren’t going to play any more. Do you think the accident had anything to do with it?”

  I shrugged. No way to tell, actually. It was just one of those things.”

  She ran the rheostats up a little and brushed my face with a lingering glance that would melt butter at fifteen-feet. “I hated to hear it,” she said simply.

  Not half as much as you’re going to hate it this time tomorrow, baby, I thought. I took my eyes away from her face. Looking at her was too damned distracting, and I still had plenty to do. Part of what I’d come for had been accomplished but the big item still remained. How was I going to get in? The front door was out of the question; that was probably locked all the time. How about windows? They’d all be closed because of the air-conditioning. But maybe they wouldn’t be latched. There weren’t any windows in the living-room, however, except the big plate glass ones, and of course they didn’t open at all. I couldn’t think of any excuse to get into another part of the house to look for some. Maybe I’d been too optimistic.

  Then I saw two windows, and knew I was worse off than ever. Looking out through that filmy drape, I could see a little of the two wings of the house that formed the sides of the U plan. On both sides there were windows, smaller ones, looking out over the patio. They were the casement type. I’d never tried it, but I knew they couldn’t be opened from outside except by stripping and wrecking the gear and crank mechanism that operated them. It was a worm type gear, which can be driven from only one end. They’d all be the same. Windows were out; it had to be a door.

  Suddenly I was conscious she was saying something. I “Oh?” I asked. “I beg your pardon?”

  She smiled. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Uh-thanks.”

  “Geraldine!” she called.

  There was no answer. She looked at me and lifted her shoulders with a graceful shrugging motion, spreading her hands. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”

  “Surely,” I said. I stood up. She went out toward the dining-room. I watched the rear of those bullfighter pants out of sight, and then turned, and while I was still turning and saying, “Holy hell!” very softly under my breath I saw the answer to the thing I was looking for. It was a glass door opening onto the patio. I’d been looking at it all the time but hadn’t noticed because it was behind that semi-transparent drape. I was just to the left of the end of the big picture window and I’d thought it was a part of it. The drape had been made wide enough to cover the door in addition to the window when it was closed, apparently so as to give an unbroken line clear across that side of the room.

  I could hear her talking to Esmerelda or whatever her name was out in the kitchen. I stepped swiftly across to the door and pulled back the end of the drape. Opening it, I tried the knob from the outside. It didn’t turn; the night latch was on. Looking quickly around to be sure I was still alone, I reversed the push-button plungers in the edge of the door to unlatch it, closed it softly, and let the drape fall back in position. The door apparently wasn’t used much, so the chances were she didn’t bother to check it every night.

  I walked back and sat down. In a moment she came in from the dining-room with two cups of coffee and some cream and sugar on a tray. I did some more of the earnest young man about how sorry I was for the accident, even if it wasn’t my fault, and while I talked I tried to keep my eyes off her long enough to get the exact layout of that patio. She regretted some more that I was washed up in football. I shoved the silken weight of her off the edge of my mind and told her how brave she was. She told me I was nice and that it was considerate of me to call this way, and I knew she was just waiting for me to get the hell out of here so she could call Tallant. They were going to have one hot conference about this, but I thought I had her fooled. l was just a goof who’d come back to go fishing. I wondered if the maid slept in, and decided she probably didn’t. They’d had to stay under cover all this time, so Tallant was probably coming here late at night. They were too cagey to be seen together for probably another six months, even with Purvis out of the way. So that’s the way it was. She’d be waiting for him—waiting— Damn it, I thought. Cut it out, and attend to business. Get that look off your pan; don’t think she won’t recognize it—she’s been seeing it since she was twelve. Be sorry about something.

  About what?

  Hell, anything.

  ”Are you going to be here very long, Mr. Harlan?” ‘she asked. “Two weeks,” I replied. “Maybe a little less.”

  “And you’re out at that same cabin where you were before?”

  “I will be,” I said. “Right now I’m at the Enders Hotel. The friend of mine that owns the shack is mailing me a key. It’ll probably be here today.”

  “Well, I do hope I’ll see you again while you’re here,” she said.

  I stood up on cue. “It’s been nice meeting you,” I said earnestly. “I probably won’t come to town much, but if you’re out that way drop in and go fishing with me. Heh, heh.”

  She smiled, the way you would at a meat-head who wasn’t too bright, and came to the door with me. She held out her hand very graciously. I took it. The brown eyes looked up at me from about the level of my shoulder. Brother! I thought. I simpered like a clown and said good-by three times, standing on one foot; then the other, gave her another poor-but-honest pitch about how nice
it was of her to let me call, and finally backed out the door like a high school kid escaping from the stage after winning a scholarship in the essay contest. She’d call Tallant all right the minute the door was closed, but they’d just have a good laugh. was utterly harmless.

  I drove on around the corner and down the hill, casing the terrain, and went back to the hotel. I parked car behind it and went shopping. I bought a small pencil flashlight in a drugstore, and in Woolworth’s picked up a three-way outlet plug for a wall receptacle, some typewriter paper, a pad of yellow second sheets and a few sheets of carbon paper. What else? I already had the cardboard box. Oh, yes. Wrapping paper twine, and some address stickers.

  I walked back to the hotel, avoiding the south side of the square and keeping a lookout for Tallant. I didn’t see him anywhere.

  7

  It was almost noon now; blazing sunlight fell straight into the square, and it was very hot inside the room. I put down all the stuff I’d bought, turned on the fan, and lit a cigarette. The minute I stopped moving and planning I started thinking about her again. I could see the sleeping devil inside those cool brown eyes and that slender figure packed into those bullfighter pants and the way she moved. I became uncomfortable, and cursed her, trying to drive her out of my mind. The hell with Mrs. Cannon. Stick to business. There’d be plenty of that later. With a hundred thousand dollars I’d be using types like Mrs. Cannon to strike matches on.

  I pushed her off me and got back on the track. Now. The typewriter was down in the car, the recorder was up here, and for the next two moves I had to switch them. But I didn’t want to go lugging stuff back and forth past that desk down there like an ant at a picnic; there was no use starting people wondering what I was doing. I was supposed to be on my way to a fishing camp. Then why not go on out there now? But maybe the key hadn’t arrived. Everything had broken so smoothly and so fast I was way ahead of schedule. Still, it could be. If George had mailed it yesterday—

  Well, hell, one way of finding out would be to go around there and ask. I went down in the street again and one of the locals told me how to find the post-office. It was on a side street north of the square.

  “Harlan?” The man at the General Delivery window looked in his pigeonholes and shook his head at me, “Nothing today.”

  “Any more mail coming in from the west in the next few hours?” I asked. “From Fort Worth?”

  “Putting up some now,” he said. “Try in half an hour.”

  I went over to the coffee shop that’s across the street from every Federal office building in the country and ordered a coke. There was a wire rack near the entrance with a stack of Houston Posts on it. I grabbed one off and shuffled through it while I drank the coke. Purvis was there, near the bottom of the second page but it was about the same story as last night with no new developments. Then I remembered this was the out-of-town edition and probably went to press about the time I left Houston last evening. It was still hard to realize I’d accomplished so much in such a short time. God, this time tomorrow— Easy, pal, easy. It’s long time till tomorrow, and a thousand things could happen.

  A whistle blew somewhere and it was twelve o’clock. The coffee shop began to fill up with government stenographer types, Honey Chile division, wearing cotton prints and ordering lettuce and tomato sandwiches. I ordered a sandwich myself but got to thinking of Mrs. Cannon and choked on it. I paid the check, went back across the street, and stooged around the postoffice for another ten minutes, looking at the mug-shots of the wanted men stuck up on the wall next to last year duck hunting regulations. Then suddenly while I was staring at them and thinking of what some psychology prof had told a class of us in college about there being no such thing as a criminal type of face, a little chill ran up my back. I was breaking the law, and they could blow the whistle on me. But, hell, who’d tell them? Mrs. Cannon? She’d go to the chair just to get me sent up for a couple of years? That was a yak. But still—

  I shrugged it off impatiently. What the hell, it wouldn’t be the Federals, anyway. It was nothing to them. Then I stopped suddenly. Wasn’t it? The way I had it planned I had to send something through the I mail, didn’t I? The fact I was sending it in the other direction and to nobody in particular didn’t make any difference; I was still using Uncle Sugar’s mails for something illegal and there was hardly anything that’d cause him any quicker to take a good, long look down your throat. No, I’d have to fake that part. Uncle I’d just as soon leave alone.

  Well, that could be done easily enough, I thought. All I had to do was mail something else, something legitimate that looked like the same package. No sweat there.

  I went back to the General Delivery window again. This time the key was there. It was stuck to a piece of cardboard with Scotch tape and mailed in a brown Manila envelope. On the way back to the hotel I went past a hardware store that had a display of sporting goods in the window. One of the items was a big card full of cork-bodied bass bugs, the kind you use with a flyrod. I went in and bought six of them. George would appreciate them, and I had to mail something to somebody.

  I packed everything, checked out of the hotel, and loaded the car. On the way out of town I stopped at a small grocery store and bought some eggs, bacon, bread, and coffee. The road going out toward the lake ran south from the square, a little-traveled secondary road that connected with an east-west highway about thirty miles beyond at a town named Breward. Some people contended it was a short cut in coming up from Houston, or had been until they’d widened and speeded-up the other highway, and that Cannon had been coming from Houston when he’d hit me. He’d been down there on a business trip. Purvis, apparently, had found put he had come into town on the main highway and then gone out to the lake. How, I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter now because I was using a different approach to the matter of proving the whole thing.

  It was a narrow blacktop pavement not too well kept up, winding over rolling, red clay hills with rural mailboxes here and there and ramshackle farmhouses sitting back from the road behind them. The road shimmered with heat and the fields looked withered and brown as if it hadn’t rained for a long time. Eight miles out I came down into the river bottom where he had wrecked me. The road went straight across on a long fill about six feet high. I crossed the bridge over the river first, steel girders with wooden planking that rattled under the tires. About two hundred yards beyond it was the concrete culvert where he had crashed. There were no other cars in sight. I slowed, looking at it.

  They had repaired the place where he’d knocked a chunk off the wing of the culvert, and the weeds and shredded bushes were beginning to grow back again. I looked ahead to where I had spun in myself. The scars were still visible on the side of the fill where the wrecker had dragged the Buick back onto the road. It wasn’t as far from Cannon’s car as I had thought. I’d said a hundred yards, but I could see now it was considerably less, not much more than a good booming punt. Call it sixty. Mrs. Cannon and Tallant were bound to have seen it; it hadn’t gone any further off the road than Cannon’s had. So they must have come back to have a look at me and be sure I was unconscious or dead before they slugged him. Maybe they’d even checked again, before they shoved off, to make certain I was still out. A little chill chased itself up my back. Suppose I’d come around about that time and said something to them, or groaned. I’d have probably got the same treatment. These two characters played a rough brand of ball, and they made up their own rules as they went along. I thought of what I had to do tonight and tomorrow morning. For a little while it was going to be like juggling dynamite caps, and if I didn’t have control of the situation every second it could blow up right in my face.

  I drove on. The road in to the lake turned off to the right about two miles ahead. An arrow-shaped sign that read Pete’s Live Bait Skiffs, had fallen down and was propped against a stump in some dead grass. The road itself was just a pair of ruts wandering over a sandhill through some cut-over pine. A mile or so ahead there were some fields and an
abandoned farmhouse, and then it dropped back into the river bottom again. The air was a little cooler under the big timber, but the sloughs were mostly dried up now in late summer and the mud had dried and cracked in geometric patterns. In about fifteen minutes I came to a fork in the road with Pete’s sign pointing to the left. I’d never been down there, and presumably the Cannon camp was in that direction. The other fork was just a dim trace. It went nowhere except to George’s camp, around the upper end of another narrow arm of the lake.

  In another few minutes I came abruptly into the clearing. The gray, weather-beaten little two-room shack with its shake roof stood under a couple of big oaks near the water. Beyond it I could see the inlet extending straight ahead, the water flat and glaring in the sun like a sheet metal between the dark walls of timber. I stopped the car in the shade before the front porch and got out. It was intensely silent; there was a feeling of isolation about the place as if it were a thousand miles to the nearest road instead of only six.

  I unlocked the door and went in. Everything was just as I had left it. A deputy sheriff had come out am locked it after the wreck. The front room held a cook stove and a homemade pine table covered with oil cloth. Cooking utensils hung from nails in the wall behind the stove and there were some shelves of staple groceries. I unlatched and opened the small window at each end of the room and went into the back one. It was a little larger and held two single beds and an army cot. Some more cots were folded and stacked in a corner and my two flyrods in their aluminum cases lay on one of the beds. Hunting and fishing clothes hung on nails all around the room. The trapped, dead air was stiflingly hot. I opened the windows, feeling my shirt sticking to me with sweat.

  I looked at my watch. It was a little after two. Leaving the recorder in the car, I brought in the bags and the typewriter. Putting the bags in the back room, I set the typewriter on the table in the front and took the cover off. I opened one of the bags and got out the yellow typing paper and carbons. Then I remembered I hadn’t bought an eraser. Must have had a lot of confidence in myself, I thought sourly; I hadn’t used a typewriter since I’d got out of college. I scouted around the cabin and finally scared up the stub of a pencil that had a little eraser left on the end of it.