John D MacDonald - The Executioners (aka Cape Fear)

by The Executioners (Aka Cape Fear)(Lit)

  "There isnt any chance they might kill him by accident?"

  "These are professionals, Bowden!"

  "I know that. But it could happen."

  "Once in ten thousand times. Even so, we're clear.

  The orders go through too many channels. Even if anybody gave a damn, which they won't, it couldn't be tracked back to you."

  "Do I give you a check?"

  "Good God, no! Cash. When can you put it up?"

  "Tomorrow, as soon as the banks open."

  "Bring it here at the same time tomorrow. I'll begin to move on it tonight."

  "When do you think it will happen?"

  "Tomorrow night or Wednesday night. No later." He finished his drink, put his glass down and slid out of the booth.

  Sam looked up at him and smiled crookedly and said, "Does this sort of thing happen often? I'm pretty naive, I guess."

  "It happens. People get too wise. They have to be straightened out, and sometimes this is the only way you can give them the word."

  "That's one of Cady's favorite expressions."

  "Then he'll be real pleased."

  "At what?"

  "To get the word."

  He saved all three stories until both the boys were in bed and Nancy was in her room studying for her last exam of the year. Carol listened, her face quite still and remote. They sat side by side on the living-room couch. She sat with her legs folded under her, her round warm knee pressing against his thigh. She kept turning her silver bracelet around and around on her wrist.

  "So you're going to pay three hundred dollars to have him beaten to within an inch of his life."

  "Yes. I am. But don't you see, it's the only " "Oh, darling, don't try to explain or apologize. I don't mean it that way. I'm gloating. I feel wonderful about it. I'd mow lawns and do other people's laundry to get that three hundred dollars."

  "I guess women are more primitive."

  "This one is. This one definitely is."

  He stood up restlessly.

  "It's still a wrong thing to do.

  It's wrong that it should be possible to do a thing like this."

  "How?"

  He shrugged.

  "Suppose a disappointed client decided I needed similar treatment? If he had the right contacts, he could get the job done. It makes the world sound like a jungle. There's supposed to be law and order."

  She followed him and linked her arms around his waist and looked up at him.

  "Poor Samuel! Darling, maybe it is a jungle. And we know there's an animal in the jungle."

  "I can't make myself clear. If this is the right way to handle it, then the foundations of my life are pretty creaky."

  She made a face.

  "I'm creaky?"

  "Only in places. I mean my professional life."

  "Can't you see, you great goose, that this isn't a logical situation? Logic leads you to a dead end. In a thing like this you proceed on instinct. And that's woman's best tool. And I know you did exactly the right thing. I would have done it. I wish I could have arranged it instead of you. You are a very good man, darling."

  "I am hearing that just a little bit too often."

  "You don't have to growl at me!"

  "All right. I'm a good man. I'm paying three hundred dollars to put another man in the hospital."

  "And you're still a good man. You suffer so much.

  Stop all the philosophical theories. Just help me rejoice because now I'm not afraid any more. And it is a very good thing not to be afraid. I'm a little bit afraid because it hasn't happened yet, but after it does, I am going to be the gayest wife in town. If that makes me a bloodthirsty witch, so be it."

  After Carol was asleep he got quietly out of bed and moved over to the chair by the bedroom window, pulled the blinds up with silent cautiousness, lighted a cigarette, and looked out toward the silvery road and the stone wall. The night was empty. His four incredibly precious hostages to fortune were in deep sleep.

  The earth turned and the stars were high. All this, he told himself, was reality. Night, earth, stars and the slumber of his family. And the other thing that had seemed so valuable was just a dusty and archaic code which enabled men to live closely together in reasonable peace and safety. In olden times the village elders punished those who broke the taboos. And all of the law was a vast, top-heavy superstucture built on the basic idea of the group enforcing the punishment of the nonconformist. It was a tribal rite, with white wigs, robes and oaths. It just did not happen to apply to his own situation. Yet two thousand years ago he could have sat in council with the elders and explained his peril and gained the support of the village, and the predator would be stoned to death. So this action was a supplement to the law. Thus it was right. Yet when he got back into bed, he still could not accept his rationalization.

  CHAPTER SIX.

  Seivers MADE no report on Wednesday, and Sam could find nothing in the paper. On Thursday morning at nine-thirty he received a call from Dutton.

  "This is Captain Dutton, Mr. Bowden. I got some news for you on your boy."

  "Yes?"

  "We got him for disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. He got into a fight last night at about midnight in the yard in back of that rooming house on Jaekel Street. Three local punks jumped him. They marked him up pretty good before he got them. One got away and two are in the hospital. He threw one through the side of a shed and gave him a sprained back and multiple bruises. The other one's got a broken jaw, a broken wrist, concussion, and some ribs kicked loose. They laid his cheek open with a bike chain and thumped him around the eyes with a hunk of pipe."

  "Will he be put in jail?"

  "Definitely, Mr. Bowden. He was dazed, I guess, and it was dark in the yard, and he swung on a patrolman when he came running across the yard and gave him a nose as flat as a sheet of paper. The second patrolman dropped him with a night stick and they took him in and got his face sewed and then brought him in and threw him in the tank. Judge Jamison has night court this week, and we'll see what we can give him tonight. He's yelling for a lawyer. Want the job?"

  "No thanks."

  "Judge Jamison doesn't co-operate as much as some of the others, but I think he'll lay it on pretty good.

  Drop around tonight about eight-thirty and you can see how he makes out."

  "I'll be there. Captain, is it too early to ask you how they made out in Charleston?"

  "No. It came out like I figured. The woman was contacted at her home by the Charleston police. She admitted she was married to Cady at one time, and claims she has not seen him since he was sentenced.

  She told them she didn't know he had been released.

  Too bad."

  "Thank you for trying."

  "Sorry more didn't come of it, Mr. Bowden."

  Sievers phoned at four and asked Sam to meet him in the same place. Sam arrived first. He took his drink back to the same booth and waited. When Sievers arrived he sat across from Sam and said, "You should get a refund."

  "What happened?"

  "They got careless. I sent word down the line that monkey was rugged. They gave him some love taps and when he didn't go down, they tried to love-tap him some more. And suddenly it was very much too late.

  And he purely scared the living hell out of those boys.

  The one that ran got hooked in the gut first. He can't breathe right yet, I hear. The word is going around.

  It's going to be hard to line up boys for a second shot at him. I hear that when one of them went through the shed wall it sounded like a bomb going off. I'm sorry it was handled so badly, Mr. Bowden."

  "But he will go to jail."

  "And he will be released."

  "Then what do I do?"

  "I guess you pay for another treatment. You better set aside a thousand for this one. He isn't going to be caught napping a second time."

  By the time Sam got home Carol had most of the information from the evening paper, a single paragraph on a back page that gave
the names of the two in the hospital and told of Cady's arrest.

  "Are you going in?"

  "I don't know."

  "Please go in and find out, darling."

  Night court was crowded. Sam sat in the back.

  There was a continual mumbling and shuffling of feet, a constant coming and going, so that he could not hear a word of what was going on. The ceiling was high, and naked bulbs made stark shadows. Judge Jamison was the most bored-looking human being Sam had ever seen. The benches were narrow and hard, and the room smelted of cigars, dust and disinfectant.

  When he saw a chance he moved up into the third row from the front railing. Cady's case came up at nine fifteen One of the city prosecutors, Cady, a young lawyer Sam had seen at bar-association meetings but whose name he couldn't recall, and two uniformed patrolmen lined up before the judge.

  Sam, strain as he might, could catch only a word here and there. Cady's lawyer, in an earnest undertone, seemed to be stressing the fact that the attack had taken place on property where Cady rented his room. The patrolman with the bandaged nose testified in a blurred monotone. When the noise in the courtroom rose to too high a level the judge would rap indolently with his gavel.

  The prosecutor and the defense lawyer talked animatedly, ignoring the judge for a time. Then they both nodded. The judge yawned, rapped the gavel again, and pronounced a sentence Sam could not hear.

  Cady walked over with his lawyer and paid money to a clerk behind a small desk. A bailiff started to lead him toward a side door, but Cady stopped and looked back, apparently searching the courtroom. Tape was a vivid diagonal white across his cheeks. His brows were swollen and bluish. Sam tried to shrink down on the bench, but Cady spotted him, raised one hand, smiled, and said quite audibly, "Hiya, Lieutenant. How's it going?"

  And he was led out. Sam spoke to three people before he could find out what had happened. Cady had pleaded guilty to striking the officer. The other two charges had been dismissed. He was sentenced to pay a hundred-dollar fine and spend thirty days in city jail.

  He took the news back to Carol. They tried to believe it was good news, but it wasn't very comforting. Their smiles were stiff and faded easily. But, at the very least, it was thirty days of grace. Thirty days without fear. And thirty days of anticipation of the fear to come. As far as their morale was concerned, Cady could not have planned it better.

  School had ended. The restrictions on the children were lifted. The golden summer had begun. Cady's thirty days began officially on the nineteenth of June.

  He would be released on Friday, the nineteenth of July.

  They had planned that Nancy would go again to summer camp, and she had pleaded to be allowed to attend for six weeks this year instead of the usual month. It would be her fourth year at Minnatalla, and probably her last. The six weeks would begin on the first day of July. Jamie would return for his second year to Gannatalla, the boys' camp that was three miles away and under the same management. The camps were on the shore of a small lake in the southern part of the state, a hundred and forty miles from Harper. Camp plans had been settled in family council back in April when the applications had to be in. After consideration of all factors, Nancy's request for six weeks had been granted. Then Jamie had objected strenuously to being limited to one month. It was pointed out to him that Nancy had been allowed to stay but one month when she was his age. He settled for a guarantee that when he was fourteen he would be allowed to register for six weeks. Bucky had been stolidly indignant about the whole thing. It meant nothing at all to him that he would start going in three years. Three years was half his entire age. It was an eternity. He was an unwilling victim of cruel and unnecessary discrimination. Everybody would be gone.

  When he was at last resigned to a fate of staying home all summer he came up with a series of firm opinions about camps. They were crummy places. You had to sleep in the rain. The horses would kick you and the boats all leaked, and if you didn't wash six times a day, they beat you and beat you.

  After the arrangements had all been made, Nancy had slowly begun to change her mind about it as summer approached. She was changing in body and emotions from child to woman. It was obvious from her attitude that she had begun to think of summer camps as kid stuff. A lot of the gang would be around Harper all summer. She named boys who were going to work on the new road job, a super-highway that was in process of construction and would cross Route 18 three miles north of Harper. She thought maybe she could get a job in the village. But Sam and Carol thought it would be best for her to extend her childhood through one more summer of swimming, riding, handicraft, cookouts, hikes and singing around the bonfires.

  Nancy was not sullen, and she was not a whiner.

  When it was made clear to her that she was going to go, she went into what Sam called her duchess condition. It was a majestic and patronizing aloofness, punctuated by telling sighs and barely audible sniffs.

  She was above all of them and, of course, would condescend to go along with their ideas, no matter how childish they were.

  But at some point during the week after Cady was sentenced, there was a startling change of attitude.

  Nancy became vibrant about the plan, excited, going about with tiptoe pleasure. The change intrigued Sam and Carol.

  One night Carol said to Sam, "Mystery solved. I got her cornered today. She was packing her red dress, and with a furtive little manner about the whole operation. So I told her that would be a divine getup for scrabbling up the side of a mountain. So she told me firmly and haughtily that there are social evenings when the groups from both camps mingle. So I told her I was quite aware of that, and I was also aware that the top age for the young gentlemen from Gannatalla was fifteen, and thus the red dress would be like shooting a cricket with a deer rifle. Rather than be accused of lowering her sights, she confessed that Tbmmy Kent has a job as assistant director of athletics this year at Gannatalla."

  "Ho!"

  "Yes, indeed. Ho! And the campers are closely supervised, and the female staff members of Minnatella are not so closely supervised, and her Tbmrny will probably become very buddy with an elderly staff member of eighteen or so and break our chicken's heart."

  "It's a calculated risk. But I'm glad the duchess routine is over anyway. She'll be fifteen on the twentieth. What day does that come on?"

  "A Saturday this year. We can drive down, bearing gifts." She paused and gave him a stricken look.

  "I didn't think before. That's the day after..."

  "I know."

  "What about them down there? Jamie and Nance.

  Will they be safe?"

  "I suppose he could find out where they are. Almost any contemporary in the village would know where they go. I've thought about that. You know how it is down there. They travel in packs. Great yelping packs, full of muscular enthusiasm. I've planned to instruct the kids and have a talk with the management when we drive them down. But having them there may simplify it. I can talk to him. I think I like that kid. There's a look of competence about him."

  "You'll have to hurry, then. They have a date tonight, and he leaves early in the morning. He has to get there early to help get the camp ready. They're going to the benefit barn dance at the firehouse. He's picking her up at eight."

  "I never knew this routine was going to start so soon."

  "We gals with Indian blood grow up early."

  That evening Nancy raced through her dinner and was ready by quarter to eight. Sam cornered her in the living room.

  "Very rustic," he said, approvingly.

  "Do I look all right?"

  "What are those things called?"

  "These? Ranch jeans for girls. They're cut sort of like men's."

  "Sort of. But just to humor the idle curiosity of your senile male parent, just how do you get into them?"

  "Oh, that's easy! See on the side of the legs here?

  Concealed zippers from your knee to your ankle."

  "Very effective with that shirt. It looks li
ke a tablecloth from an Italian restaurant. Nance, honey, I assume you've told Tommy about our problem."