She darted into the shower room and threw water on her face. Then drying her face, she dragged a comb through her long, tangled hair. As she came out of the shower room, she saw Chuck standing in the open doorway.
“Where have you been?” she demanded shrilly. “I’ve been waiting and waiting . . . where have you been?”
Chuck closed the door. There was a set expression on his face that frightened her.
“Pack up!” he said curtly. “We’re leaving.”
He went to the closet, grabbed his few belongings and threw them on the bed.
“Where are we going?”
He caught hold of her arm, spun her around and slapped her buttocks with a viciousness that made her squeal.
“Get packed!”
She backed away, staring at him.
“Want more?” he asked, moving forward threateningly.
“No!”
She hurriedly pulled her rucksack from under the bed, then going to the chest of drawers, she began throwing her things on the bed beside his.
The cabin door opened and Poke Toholo looked in.
“Chuck.” He beckoned and then backed away.
“Pack my things,” Chuck said. “We take off in five minutes,” and he went out and into Poke’s cabin.
Poke had his rucksack packed.
“Yeah.”
“Is she all right?” he asked.
Chuck nodded.
“You know where to go and what to do?”
“Yeah.”
“See if the old woman wants more money. Be careful how you handle her.”
“We’ve been over that,” Chuck said impatiently.
“So long as you remember.” Poke picked up his rucksack. “I’ll get off. Don’t forget: ten o’clock any morning.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Poke slung the rucksack on his back.
“The last one didn’t go so well,” he said as if talking to himself, “but it was tricky.” He looked at Chuck, his black eyes glittering. “That cop asked for it.”
Chuck didn’t say anything.
“The cops hate a cop killer.” Poke eased the straps of his rucksack. “That means they hate you as much as me - if they find us.”
Chuck’s eyes narrowed.
“Do you think you have to scare me?” he asked.
Poke regarded him.
“I just want you to remember . . . she’s in it too.”
“Okay . . . I’m not deaf.”
“You’ll be hearing from me.” Poke went past Chuck and into the sunshine.
Chuck watched him stride away. When he had lost sight of him, he went over to the motel’s office.
Mrs. Harris was eating a hamburger which she held in a paper napkin.
“We’re checking out, ma’am,” Chuck said.
Mrs. Harris’s four chins became two as she lifted her head.
“You said you were staying longer.”
Chuck had his tale prepared.
“We ran into friends. They want us to stay with them. We paid for a week, didn’t we? Do you owe us something or do we owe you something?”
Mrs. Harris took another bite out of the hamburger and munched while she regarded her account book.
“No, I guess we’re quits,” she said. “You have still two days to go, but you didn’t give me notice. Let’s call it quits.”
“Okay, ma’am.” Chuck put a dollar bill on the counter. “That’s for the old man. Thanks, ma’am. We’ve been comfortable. Maybe if we’re this way again, we’ll look in.”
Mrs. Harris beamed.
“You’ll always be welcomed.” She whipped up the dollar bill. The Indian going as well?”
“Oh sure . . . we’re all going.”
Mrs. Harris chased a piece of onion off her lips with her tongue.
“Is he a friend of yours?”
Chuck had been well coached. He shook his head.
“He’s just a nice guy my wife and I ran into on the road. He’s going to Key West now . . . got a job waiting for him.” He smiled. “Well, we’ll get on. So long, ma’am.”
He returned to the cabin where Meg was waiting with the two rucksacks packed.
“Let’s go,” Chuck said, picking up the rucksacks.
“Where are we going?”
He turned and glared at her.
“Will you never learn to keep your goddamn mouth shut?” he snarled.
“Can’t I say anything?” Meg said with a flash of spirit. “Can’t I even ask where we’re going?”
“Oh, come on!”
Chuck carried the rucksacks to the Buick, dumped the m on the back seat and slid under the wheel. Meg got in beside him.
“Where’s Poke?” she asked. “Don’t we wait for him?”
Chuck stared at her and this time the expression in his eves chilled her.
“Who’s Poke? What are you talking about?” he said and started the engine.
She began to speak, then stopped.
“That’s it.” Chuck shifted into drive. “That’s more like it.”
The car moved forward and he drove away from the motel and onto the highway, leading to Paradise City.
When they reached the City, he avoided the main boulevards, cutting down the side streets until he reached the harbour. He found parking space on the waterfront, cut the engine and slid out of the car.
“Come on,” he said, dragging his rucksack out of the car. “Get yours. We walk now.”
Together, their rucksacks bowing them down, they walked along the waterfront that teemed with activity. This was the commercial end of the harbour with its sponge boats and its turtle crawls.
Walking blindly, Meg followed Chuck who seemed to know where he was going.
They trudged past a rattlesnake cannery. Above the factory was a red neon sign picturing a coiled snake. Another sign, blinking on and off read: Snake Snacks. They made their way through the milling crowd and around the fruit market, then Chuck led the way down a smelly alley, lined either side by two-storey, weather beaten wooden buildings. He stopped outside the end building and dropped his rucksack.
“Stick around,” he said and went through the doorway, protected against the flies by multi-coloured nylon strips.
At the end of a short, dark corridor, a fat Seminole Indian sat behind a desk, gnawing at a chicken leg.
Chuck said, “We’re booked in here . . . Mr. and Mrs. Jones.”
The Indian dropped the chicken bone out of sight, slightly raised himself to wipe his fingers clean on the seat of his trousers, then settled back in his chair. He smiled, revealing a mouthful of gold capped teeth.
“The room’s all ready, Mr. Jones. First floor, left. No. 3.”
“I’ll get my wife,” Chuck said.
The Indian continued to beam.
“That’s it, Mr. Jones, you get your wife.”
It was a back room, overlooking the harbour. There was a double bed, a rickety chest of drawers, a wall closet and surprisingly, a telephone that stood on the night table by the bed. The so-called bathroom and the smelly toilet were across the landing.
Meg dropped her rucksack on the floor and looked around the room.
“Why couldn’t we have stayed at the motel instead of moving into this awful dump?” she asked, and with a hopeless gesture, she slumped on the bed.
Chuck went to the window and looked down at the waterfront. He stood there for some minutes, fascinated by the noise and the activity, then he turned and came over to the bed. Meg looked up at him.
“Honest, Chuck, there are times when I think you’re crazy,” she said. “Why leave the motel? It was comfortable. Why come to this awful dump?”
He stared at her, his eyes like glass.
“What motel?”
Meg shivered. She pressed her hands to her face.
“Chuck! What is this? Are you trying to drive me nuts? I ask you about Poke and you say who is Poke. Now I . . . you say what motel! What is it? What’s the matter with you . . . or is it m
e?”
“There’s nothing the matter with me, baby,” Chuck said quietly. “We never met Poke. We never stayed at a motel.” Meg lifted her tangled hair in a gesture of despair.
“You mean that’s what I tell the police?”
Chuck grinned.
“Now, baby, you’re showing you do have brains. That’s it. No Poke . . . no motel.”
Suddenly her dreary, nagging parents, her dreary home came into her mind as a haven of refuge.
“No, Chuck.” She hurt herself by beating her clenched fists against her forehead. “No! I’m going! You carry on with that crazy Indian. I don’t want to know anything . . . I won’t say anything. I’m going!”
“Are you?”
The tone in his voice made her stiffen.
Chuck had taken out his flick knife. The gleaming blade made her shrink back.
“You’re in, baby,” he said gently. “I warned you and you said you were in. You quit now and I’ll slice you. You want to go through the rest of your life with your face hacked up?”
She stared at the knife in horror. Chuck watched her, then grinned. He put the knife back in his pocket.
“Come on, baby, let’s go look at the town.”
She sat motionless, her arms folded tightly around her stomach.
“It’s there . . . just across the way,” Chuck said.
He watched her scramble across the corridor, then when the toilet flushed, he left the bedroom, closed the door and locked it. He was waiting for her at the head of the stairs.
Side by side, they went down the stairs, past the fat smiling Indian and into the noisy heat of the waterfront.
***
Poke Toholo braced himself against the side of the cab.
The truck driver, short, heavily built with freckles and a balding head yearned to talk to someone . . . anyone. Seeing Poke, standing on the highway, waving his thumb, he had pulled up and helped Poke get his rucksack into the cab. After Poke had settled, the truck roaring along the highway towards Paradise City, the driver began to talk.
“Man! You shouldn’t be heading this way! You heard the radio? You didn’t? Man! That’s all I listen to, except when I’m home and have to listen to my wife! You heard about the Executioner? Yeah . . . something! Makes a change from the old crap I get on the radio . . . Nixon and trouble. Man! That really bends my ear, but this is different! Everyone for miles around is yakking about this killer. Where are you from? Jacksonville? Sure, I know it . . . not many towns on this highway I don’t know. On vacation, huh? Well, you sure could be walking into trouble. This Executioner . . . I guess he’s a nutter. Right now before I picked you up, the radio gave out the cops are looking for an Indian. Don’t make any mistake about this . . . the cops are smart around here. They wouldn’t give that out if they weren’t sure it’s an Indian who knocked off these slobs. Now look, I like Indians, but to me every Indian looks like any other Indian . . . you get what I mean? I’m no dope. I guess every white man looks like any white man to an Indian . . . makes sense, doesn’t it? But imagine! An Indian knocking off these rich slobs! You want to know how I feel about it? I’ll tell you: who the hell cares if three rich slobs get knocked off? It was on the radio like I said. This whore saw him: Mandy Lucas. She flops at the Pelota Club. Man! Could I tell you something about that joint! She saw this guy getting out of her car . . . that’s something, isn’t it? Her car ! I stopped off at a cafe for a bite to eat and there she was on the telly . . . on the telly! A whore! Okay, I wouldn’t mind throwing her over. She has something! Those tits! So the cops are giving her protection. She says she can pick this guy any time and the cops are going to line up every goddamn Indian in the City so she can put the finger on one of them. How do you like that? I tell you, Man, this is a red hot City for an Indian . . . so watch out!”
Poke, his face expressionless, but his black eyes on fire, said he would watch out.
***
Police Officer Wargate yawned, stretched his muscular arms and yearned for a cigarette. The time was 02.45. He had been in the parking lot behind the Pelota club now for the past two hours. He had had his instructions from Sergeant Beigler.
“Listen, Mike,” Beigler had said “the only way up to the girl’s room is by the fire escape. She’s our only witness. Just make sure no one gets at her.”
Wargate’s feet hurt. He didn’t believe the girl was in any danger, but this was what he was paid for so he patrolled, yearned for a cigarette and pitied himself.
Poke came around the building like a black ghost, pressed against the wall in the deep shadows. He had a knife in his hand. He watched Wargate moving around and he waited.
The sound of drumbeats and the strident notes of a saxophone came from the club.
Wargate stopped walking and leaned against the fire escape. He looked around the moonlit parking lot, crammed with cars. There would be no one around now until the club shut down - in another half an hour. He yielded to his need for a cigarette. As he struck a match, Poke threw the knife.
The wail of the saxophone drowned Wargate’s cry. Poke moved forward, pulled out the knife, wiped it on Wargate’s sleeve, then started up the fire escape.
Each of the six hostesses who had rooms on the top floor of the club had their names on their doors.
This was something their Agent had insisted on.
“Girls like to be thought stars,” he said while hammering out the contract with the manager of the club. “You want them to be happy, don’t you?”
So Poke had no trouble in finding Mandy Lucas’s room.
The smell of stale perfume and sweat greeted him as he eased open the door.
Moonlight fell directly on the sleeping girl. Since she had become a star witness, Mandy no longer worked in the club. She spent her time sleeping which was a novelty to her.
She was dreaming of her TV triumph, living again that exciting moment when for the first time she had to face the television camera.
As Poke’s gloved hand closed gently over her nose and mouth, she came awake. As her body arched in terror, his grip tightened brutally. He slid the razor sharp knife through her breast and into her heart.
FIVE
Walton Walbeck found amongst his mail the first of a number of notes that were to be received by other wealthy members of the Fifty Club during the week.
Walbeck tall, pale and effeminate, had inherited a considerable fortune from his father and apart from playing expert bridge, had never done a stroke of work in his life. Now at the age of sixty-five, he was a bore to his acquaintances - he had no friends - a bore also to himself and he was terrified of death.
He was more nervous than usual this morning as he ate a lightly boiled egg and read his mail. Mrs. Dunc Brawler’s horrible death had shocked him.
He had heartily disliked the old woman, but as a bridge partner she had pleased him. To the like that! Horrible! Then this brash commentator talking on the eight o’clock news. The police seem powerless to do anything. That really worried him. Then this woman’s murder . . . Mandy something or other . . . stabbed! And the police officer protecting her also stabbed!
Protection! Was that what the police called protection!
His nerves jangled as he heard Jackson, his manservant, drop something in the kitchen.
He reached for another letter and found himself looking at an envelope, addressed to himself in smudgy printed letters that made him grimace in distaste. After hesitating, he slit open the envelope, extracted a sheet of notepaper and flicked the paper open.
Written in crude block letters was a message that set his heart thumping and icy fingers of fear up his spine.
Do You Want To Stay Alive?
Follow these instructions carefully:
Put five one hundred dollar bills in an envelope and fasten the envelope by tape to the bottom of the coin box in telephone booth A in the Airport lobby by 12.00 today.
Unless of course you’d rather be dead.
Police protection? Ask Mandy Lucas.
>
The Executioner.
Enclose this note with the money to insure your future safety.
Walbeck dropped the letter as if it had bitten him. In a surge of panic he jumped to his feet and started across the room to the telephone. Then he paused. His heart was now hammering so violently he felt faint.
“Jackson!” he cried and dropped into a chair. “Jackson!”
His manservant who had endured him for ten years came unhurriedly to the door. He was a year or so younger than Walbeck but wore less well.
“Did you call, sir?”
Walbeck stared at him and realised with a sinking feeling that Jackson was not only useless but he might even be happy that this awful thing had happened to him. Walbeck had no illusions about Jackson’s feelings towards him.
“No . . . no . . . go away! Don’t stand staring at me! Get on with your work!”
“Yes, sir.”
When Jackson had gone, Walbeck forced himself to get to his feet. He went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff shot of brandy. He drank it, then waited until the liquor took hold. While he waited, his brain darted around in his head like a trapped mouse.
The Executioner!
He thought of McCuen and Mrs. Dunc Browler and the woman Riddle had made his mistress . . . now this Mandy woman!
The man was a lunatic and the police could do nothing I Unsteadily, he crossed to the breakfast table and peered at the letter again.
Should he tell the police? Should he call his attorney? What could they do?
No . . . the best thing . . . the safest thing was to pay up. He would do it at once! He would go to the bank, get the money, then go to the airport. It wasn’t as if this was a big sum of money . . . five hundred dollars . . . nothing!
***
Poke Toholo, carrying his rucksack, walked into the airport lobby and mingled with the crowd of waiting travellers. He found a vacant seat near the row of telephone booths and sat down, putting his rucksack between his feet. No one paid any attention to him: he immediately became part of the background. There were several Seminole Indians in flowered shirt and hipsters, in small groups, waiting for planes. Poke opened a newspaper and began to read the sports page.
1971 - Want to Stay Alive Page 9