The Red Scarf

by Gil Brewer

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Everything’s got me down. Trying to figure a way out of this mess.”

  “I know.”

  Oh God, I thought, if she only did know…

  A few minutes later she was in by the desk, checking the bills. “Roy—that man just drove past again.”

  I went over by the desk. “What?”

  She turned and looked at me, frowning. “The man in the hearse, Roy. I’ve seen him go by the place twice now.”

  I stared out the window. It was quiet on the street, but I knew she had seen him. And I began to know she would keep on seeing him.

  Chapter 9

  “Mrs. Nichols. I’ve got to see your husband.”

  “Oh, hello, Miss Latimer.”

  “Is Mr. Nichols around?”

  “Yes. He’s in the other room. What is it?”

  “Well—I think he’d better have a look at my stove. There’s something wrong with the stove.”

  “What seems to be the matter?”

  I went on out there. She was on the back porch, talking with Bess. She was still wearing the shorts and she looked wild. Her hair was like she’d been combing it with her fingers. She had on lots of lipstick, but the rest of her face was the color of flour.

  She saw me over Bess’s shoulder and her eyes got kind of crazy. Bess heard me and turned, holding the door open.

  “Miss Latimer’s having trouble with her stove.” She gave me the eye.

  “Well, all right. You want me to have a look?”

  “Would you?” Vivian said. “I hate terribly bothering you like this.”

  “Sure.” I brushed past Bess. Vivian went off the porch onto the grass and Bess stepped after me. I didn’t dare say anything. If Bess came along, there was nothing you could do.

  “Think I’ll see how Hughes is making out with the shuffleboard courts,” Bess said.

  “Every time I light the gas, it pops,” Vivian said.

  “Air in the line.”

  Bess went off along the rear of the apartment. “God. Nichols!”

  “Wait’ll we get over there.”

  As soon as we were in her kitchen, she whirled, and it was like somebody was running a knife in and out of her. “I saw him: Radan! That’s Wirt Radan! I know about him. I know why he’s here. You don’t even have to tell me. He’s famous, Nichols—famous! I met him once in New York. He moves around the country. You know what he is?” She was breathing quickly, her eyes very bright, and she had her fists bunched tight against her thighs. “He’s a killer.”

  “Cut it out…”

  “Sure. You wouldn’t believe that. I knew you wouldn’t, you’re such a damned square. But it’s true. That’s his job. He’s one of them that works to a contract. You think they don’t do that anymore? Do you? You’re crazy if you think that!”

  “Take it easy.”

  “Noel told me about him just a few days ago.” She paused and turned and held her back to me that way, and her shoulders began to shake. She whirled on me again and I thought for a second she was going to yell. She didn’t. She just kept talking, with her voice held down in her throat, and she was really scared now. “Noel said Wirt Radan was getting so tough the men are afraid to work with him, even.”

  “And you told me you weren’t mixed up in any of this.”

  “I’m not. I was Noel’s girl. That’s all.”

  “Only that wasn’t enough.”

  “Nichols! You’ve got to get me out of here!”

  I wanted that as much as she did. Only, how? “Did you ever stop to think of the mess you’ve got me in?” I said. “Did you?”

  “I’m paying you. Remember?”

  “Vivian, all you think about is that money. Money can’t take care of everything.”

  “You’re thinking about it, too! Plenty. True, Nichols?”

  “All right. How do you want to work it?”

  “I want plane tickets to South America—Chile, probably. You’ll have to get me to the airport, see me on the plane. Somehow. Then you’ll get yours.”

  “Why not just get the tickets? Can’t you get them yourself, for that matter? You can drive to the airport yourself. It’s not far.”

  “Can we still get them now? You think it’s open, downtown? The ticket office?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Then let’s get going. I can’t go alone. I know they’ll be at the airport.”

  I just stood there. She turned and rushed out of the room and I heard her in the bedroom, yanking the bureau drawers. I went in there.

  She had the briefcase. She got her suitcase off a chair, snapped it shut without putting anything extra back inside, and looked at me. “Let’s go, Nichols.”

  She was off her rocker. She wasn’t thinking; traveling in some kind of a vacuum, she was like a hound dog on the scent, flying like the crow.

  But I thought about that money, and not only that—if I could get her out of here now, I could tell Bess I’d taken her downtown. Tell her anything. Because she’d be gone and there wouldn’t be any chance for an argument.

  She glanced down at her shorts, turned abruptly, dropped the briefcase and opened the suitcase and whipped out a blue skirt. Her anxiety was almost comical, except you knew how real it was.

  I heard Bess call to me from outside.

  “No,” Vivian said. “Please—don’t go.” She grabbed me. “Tell her something—anything. You know I’ve got to leave here now.”

  I shoved her and she went windmilling across the bedroom and landed against the wall. I beat it out into the kitchen and Bess was just coming up on the porch. I opened the door. Bess tried to look past me. I let her look.

  “Did you fix her stove all right?” There was a slight touch of sarcasm in her voice. But as she looked at me, she began to smile.

  I grinned at her. “You go fix dinner,” I said. “I’ll be along soon.”

  She turned and went back toward our place. Vivian came out of the bedroom wearing the blue skirt. That wild look was still in her eyes. There was something about the way she held her mouth, too; a tenseness that told you a little about what went on inside her. Just a young kid, really—only not a kid—and her life all twisted out of shape. And she was trying to save her life in the only way she knew. Watching her, I felt a sense of hopelessness.

  “All right. Let’s get going.”

  She picked up the briefcase and the suitcase and I saw the filmy red scarf fall softly, lazily, from the briefcase to the floor. She jammed the case under her arm and we went out into the kitchen.

  “Wait’ll I check.” I looked outside. Nobody. “All right. You get in your car. I’ll be along in a minute, so it won’t look bad. Make it fast, now, to the garage.”

  “Yes.” She gave me a quick harried look, turned and went outside. I watched her cross the grass swiftly and slip between the garages toward the drive, her shoulders held rigid, as if she were trying to hide behind them. Twinkletoes.

  I waited another moment. I knew it was better this way. She’d be gone, and the worry would be gone with her. She’d carry that part wherever she went, but it would be off my back. Somehow, I knew it was going to work out all right.

  I stood there, trying to get my breath evened out, and then I went on outside and closed the door and started across the grass. She came running at me.

  She tripped, stumbling, and the suitcase fell out of her hand. She made a wild grab for it, missed, and came on, her mouth open and her eyes stricken and sick.

  “Get back!” She kept running. “He’s out there. Radan just drove through the alley!” She came past me and rushed inside.

  I went out and got the suitcase and made it back to the porch. I entered the kitchen and looked at her. “Did he see you?”

  “No. No, he didn’t see me.” She kind of turned and bent over like an old woman, moaning to herself. She still had the briefcase plugged under her arm.

  “Did he stop?”

&
nbsp; “No. I saw him coming. I was right out in the drive, there. He’d just turned in off the street with that big black car. I could see his face—looking. Not at me, though. Oh, damn it!”

  “That’s bad.”

  “I’ll never be able to get out of here now. He’ll watch, and he’ll watch some more.” She flopped down into a chair, hugging the briefcase and she began to cry. It was wild, angry, hurt crying.

  “The money. We’d better hide the money again,” I said. “But not in the bureau. I’ve got a much better place. Come on.”

  She just sat there. I went over and grabbed her arm, pulled her up, and she leaned against me, shuddering. She was an awful sight and I felt sorry for her.

  “The apartment next door’s empty. That’ll be a better place—just in case. We’ll have to run for it again. The front way this time. So come on.”

  We went outside, and there was no sign of Radan. The sun was beginning to dip. Another day gone, and things just that much worse.

  We went in next door. It was hot and stuffy. It hadn’t been aired in weeks, and our footsteps were loud on the floors. “Suppose somebody moves in here?”

  “They won’t. I’ll see to that. Listen, I’m going to drain the tank behind the toilet, shut it off, and we’ll put the briefcase in there.”

  She was lost again, praying. I got the briefcase and there was an immediate thrill, knowing what was inside it. It was heavy and full and it made you want to run some place, hanging onto it. I took it into the bathroom, turned the water off, flushed the john, and put the money in the tank.

  “What are you doing over here, Miss Latimer?”

  “I—we—he’s checking the stove for something.”

  I came out of the bathroom, dodged into the kitchen and stood there sweating. Bess was talking in the living room now, about it being so hot. I went out the back door and let it slam real hard. I went over to number six, and stood there fiddling with the stove, turning it on and off, hating every minute of this and wishing I didn’t have to treat Bess like a stranger. I could hardly see the stove.

  Pretty soon they came along. Bess entered the kitchen first and I didn’t look at her. I got out a match and lit the stove, and the gas caught just fine.

  “Hi. She’s okay now.”

  “That’s fine,” Bess said.

  “Thanks so much, Mr. Nichols. Honestly, I hate all this trouble I’m causing.”

  I looked at Bess. Boy, was she sparking! Vivian moved past us, on into the living room and stood by the front window.

  “You just call me if there’s any more trouble.”

  Bess and I went outside.

  “You’re sweating, Roy.”

  “Roy. She’s got a man’s suitcase in there.”

  “What?”

  “Miss Latimer. She’s got a man’s suitcase, and it’s full of a man’s clothing.”

  “What’ve you been doing in her apartment?”

  “I just looked in, that’s all, while you were next door. I saw it. What would she be doing with another suitcase, like that?”

  “Darned if I know. Maybe it’s her husband’s. Maybe she’s married, just doesn’t want to say anything. Some women are like that.”

  “She acts pretty queer, if you ask me. Has she said anything to you about being married?”

  “No.”

  I had to shut her up, or get away from her. I couldn’t take it, because I knew now that I was in on everything with Vivian, and I was scared. Just plain scared. I didn’t know what to do. With Radan skulking around like that. Only you couldn’t call the cops. Not on a thing like this, not even if you did want to back out of the bad part.

  Besides, that money. It was there, and I had to have some of it. Somehow. It was the only way I could see—even if it was a wrong way. When the taxes for this property came due, we’d really be in the soup. I didn’t want to lose this motel. I wasn’t going to lose it. I couldn’t let Bess take it on the chin anymore. She’d never had peace, never—all our married life, it had been like this. From one thing to another, never any peace, and by God, she was going to have peace and some of the things she wanted.

  One way or another.

  Even if I had to get hold of the briefcase myself and run. God, I was in a sweet mess and I knew it. But something had to be done.

  “Roy,” Bess said. “I hate to keep at you like this. But I know darned well something’s the matter with that woman. You must have seen that. She’s afraid of something. We’ve got enough around here without somebody tossing their troubles in our laps.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t figure her out, but I do know something’s wrong. You think I should ask her?” I knew Bess had been doing a lot of thinking. There was no way of her catching onto the truth, but I didn’t like her this way. It was my problem, not hers. She said, “I’ll bet she’s in some kind of trouble, Roy.”

  “Well, maybe so. But let’s not stick our noses in, huh?”

  “Yes. I know you’re right.”

  I went into the bedroom and lay down. I finally dozed a little. Once I heard Bess come in, very softly, and stand there looking at me. I didn’t open my eyes. She went away.

  I woke up and it was dark. I could hear Bess breathing quietly. I rolled off the bed carefully, so as not to disturb her and stood there in the dark. It was after midnight by the clock ticking away on the dresser. I had conked off for sure. I hadn’t even eaten and Bess had let me sleep. The poor kid was plenty worried about everything.

  I started to undress, then looked at her again. She was really knocking it, breathing deep and heavy.

  I left the room. In the office, I looked out through the window. The sign was still lit up and I sat down at the desk for a while, trying to think of something. I got nowhere.

  It was real quiet, inside and outside. And it got real lonely.

  I finally got up and went and looked into the bedroom again. She was sleeping quietly. There was a dim shaft of light down across her face, from where one of the slats in the Venetian blinds was tilted open. She looked worried, even in sleep. I knew she was catching on to things, to something anyway, and it troubled her plenty, even if she didn’t know what it was. She knew me too well, and she trusted in me too much, and God, I loved her and I wanted her to be happy.

  I left the room and slipped out of the back door and around between the apartments. It was quiet over at number six, but there was a light inside. I went up onto the porch and kept checking out there on the lawn. I opened the door and stepped inside and closed the door.

  “Yeah,” Noel Teece said. “Yeah. Here he is now.”

  They were sitting there. She was on a chair, with her hands clenched in her lap, holding her thumbs, staring up at me, round-eyed and hopeless-looking.

  Teece was humped on the studio couch. He was all bandaged up, the way I’d seen him. His hat was on, jutting above the bandages on his face.

  Chapter 10

  Teece had an evil-looking eye. That eye watched me, blinking under the hat brim, and you kind of wished you could see the other eye, too. But the bandage covered that. The eye that watched me was bloodshot and tired, yet kind of frantic and steady, even behind the blinking. His cheek was mottled and his lips were pale and thin and he needed a shave. He just sat there, blinking that damned eye at me.

  “Noel just came in. He sneaked in the back way,” Vivian said. “Noel, honey—we thought you were dead. You know we thought that.”

  He kind of laughed. It sounded a little like he was crying inside.

  “You two been happy?”

  Neither of us said anything. I didn’t like the looks of him at all. Like I say, there was something frantic about the way he looked. As if he was out of hand and knew it and didn’t care. He was breathing pretty fast.

  “All afternoon I’ve been trying to get in here, you two. Now, I’m here.”

  His eye was watering. Vivian just sat there, holding onto her thumbs.

  “Thought I was dead, di
d you? Well, I’m not dead.”

  Still we didn’t speak.

  “You know why I’m here?”

  Vivian began nodding slowly.

  Teece stood up. Now I could see what it was. The man was scared. He was so scared he didn’t know what do next. It was knocking the hell out of him, the way he was.

  “I talked with them on the phone,” he told us. “I can’t go see them. They’ll kill me. Oh, yes. But if I get that money back to them, maybe I can swing it. Maybe they’ll understand.”

  He said it like that, but you could tell he didn’t really believe himself. He knew they wouldn’t understand. That’s what you could read in the half of his face that showed, and in the way he began prowling up and down the room.

  “All right. Where’s the money, Viv?”

  She looked across at me.

  “We haven’t got it,” I told him. I heard myself say it and went along with it. “They beat you here, Teece. You worked too slow.”

  He was like an animal. His mouth came open and the way I’d said that had hurt him. He stood there, blinking, with the light gleaming in that bloodshot eye.

  “We gave the money to some guy called Radan.”

  “Wirt Radan?” He turned on her and she bobbed her head fast.

  “That’s right, Noel. He came and we gave the money to him. We had to.”

  “But, he’s—”

  “Radan said they were going to get you, Teece.”

  “You lie! Both of you lie! You and Viv, you think I can’t see through this? You’re planning this together. But you’re not getting away with this. Now, where’s that money?” He reached into his coat and came up with a gun. It wasn’t very large, but it wouldn’t have to be. Only he wasn’t sure of himself. He wasn’t certain that we were lying.

  “That’s not going to do a damned bit of good. I told you, this fellow Radan came here today. This afternoon. He drives a big black Caddy. He knew all about everything—you, the accident, the works. We gave him the money, and that’s it.”

  He moved his head slightly from side to side.

  “It’s the truth, Noel.” She came up out of the chair, with an imploring look on her face. It was a real art, the way she did it. “It’s true, Noel.” She stood there, looking straight into his eye. “He told us what they were going to do. There wasn’t any other way. You know Radan. Sure, I was going to try and get away with the money. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing? What else was there for me to do?”