“I care a lot.”
“I know what you care for,” Ginger said.
“I care for that, too.”
She didn’t say anything more. I saw a car coming along the road. It was going towards Paulton. “Here’s where we hook a ride,” I said. We stood on the cement. The car was coming slowly. I thought it was a truck, or a farmer. The lights made it hard to see. As it came up I jerked my thumb in the direction of Paulton. The car came to a stop. “Well, look who’s here,” said a voice.
It was Pug Banta.
CHAPTER 8
We slid along the dark highway at forty miles an hour, heading for Paulton. Like hell heading for Paulton, I thought. Heading for a couple of slugs in the gut. I was between two of Pug’s boys in the back seat, both with their rods in my ribs. Ginger was in front with Pug and the driver. There wasn’t any conversation. The guy on my left smelled of garlic.
We turned off the highway at the city limits. To the left I saw street lights. Good-bye, street lights! I thought. We drove on asphalt, the tires humming. Pug lit a cigarette, then held the pack to Ginger.
“Have one, babe?”
“No.”
He put the pack away. We turned down a lane that was lined with trees and went to a big frame house. We stopped in front of the house. I could hear frogs croaking.
“Joe.”
“Yeah, boss,” said the guy on my right.
“Take Ginger inside.”
“Okay.”
Joe got out. Pug climbed out, too, to let Ginger out.
“Pug.”
“Yeah, babe?”
“It isn’t his fault.”
“I warned him.”
“I made him go out. I told him it would be all right.”
“It’s all right,” Pug said.
“Oh, Pug.” Ginger’s voice was husky.
This was creepy. She was badly worried. It didn’t look so good for me. I felt funny in the stomach.
“I wanted to make you jealous,” Ginger said.
“That’s a good one.”
“Really, Pug.”
“Take her in, Joe.”
The guy with me said: “Sit still, dope.”
I heard Ginger crying. She didn’t say anything to me. Pug got in the back seat. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?” the driver asked.
“To the cabin,” Pug said.
We started off. I saw a light go on in the front of the frame house.
I said: “How about a cigarette?”
“Sure, pal,” Pug said.
He gave me a cigarette and lit it for me. We came out of the lane and swung around to the right. The car was moving a little faster than before. I took a drag on the cigarette.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, pal?” Pug asked.
“Nothing.”
“You must be tired of living,” Pug said.
“Why?”
“You heard me last night, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t think you meant it.”
“Get a load of that!” Pug laughed. “Pal says he didn’t think I meant it.” He put his face near mine, trying to see me. “Didn’t you think I meant those punches?”
“Were those punches?”
There was a moment when I could hear the sound of the engine and the rush of air. Then Pug hit me, knocking the cigarette against my face. The ashes burned my lips.
“You’re doing better,” I said.
“By God!” Pug’s voice was amazed. “I don’t get you, pal. Don’t you know I’m going to knock you off?”
“That’s what you think, pal.”
“Listen to the guy.”
“He thinks he’s wise,” the man on my left said.
We went along in silence for a while. We were all thinking. I wondered if there was a way I could get out of the jam. I wondered if it would do any good to tell Pug I was a G-man. He wouldn’t believe it, and he probably wouldn’t care, anyway. I’d have to get a better story than that.
Pug said: “I’m trying to think of the best way of knocking you off.”
“The Chinese do it with rats,” I said. “They let ’em eat the victim.”
“Where am I going to get the rats?”
“Well,” I said, “there’re three in the car now.”
I don’t know which one hit me; Pug or the guy with the garlic breath. It was the barrel of a pistol and it cooled me for a couple of minutes. When I came to we had stopped by a shack. I was alone with the guy on my left.
“On tap again?” he asked, poking his pistol in my side.
“Sure.”
“You take it funny for a guy whose got no more’n ten minutes,” he said.
My head hurt.
“Listen,” he said. “If you’re nice you’ll go without being hurt much. But if you get Pug much sorer, there’s no telling what he’ll do first.”
“When I need your advice I’ll ask for it,” I said.
I think he wanted to slug me, but my attitude had him worried. I felt him sitting there in the dark, wanting to slug me, but not quite daring to. The driver and Pug came back. They had a roll of bailing wire and some rocks. They threw the stuff in back with me and got in the car. We began to move across a field. I shook my head to clear it. The movement hurt like hell.
“That stuff’s no good,” I said, kicking the bailing wire.
“You don’t know what it’s for,” Pug said.
“Oh, don’t I? You’re going to bind me and the rocks up in it, and then dump us in the lake.”
“The guy’s bright,” the driver said.
“Only when my flesh rots,” I said, “it’ll tear loose and I’ll float to the surface.”
“Not the way we do it,” Pug said.
“It’s not as good as cement.”
“I ain’t got cement.”
“That shows you’re a punk,” I said.
I got ready for the blow. It didn’t come. “Listen,” Pug said, “you’re laying up a lot of trouble for yourself. You can go easy, or you can go hard. I kind of think it’s going to be hard.”
“Don’t kid yourself. I’m not going at all.”
“Jeeze,” said the guy with the garlic breath, “I think he’s crazy.”
The car came to a stop. Pug said: “Now we take a nice little walk.”
“First I want to talk to you,” I said. “Alone.”
“Come on,” Pug said, opening the door.
“Not until I talk to you.”
“Go ahead,” Pug said. “I got no secrets.”
“You scared to talk to me alone?”
“Go ahead,” Pug said. “Talk.”
His voice was different. He hadn’t had anybody act this way on a ride. Mostly, I guess, they begged for their lives. I had him thinking, at least.
“Before you bump me,” I said, “you’d better ask the Princess.”
There was a silence. In the east I saw a faint light. In an hour it would be daylight. There was a noise of lapping water. “Why?” Pug said.
“She’s going to be sore.”
Pug said: “What makes you think I care?”
“You care.”
I could almost hear the other guys listening. I was pretty sure Pug hadn’t told them about his arrangement with the Vineyard. A guy like him wouldn’t. He’d want to act like he was the big boss.
Pug said: “What makes you think I care?”
“Ask the Princess.”
Pug was silent.
“Listen,” I said. “Send those mugs away.” I tried to see his face. “You’re going to need all the help you can get after tonight.”
The car shook a little as somebody shifted his weight. One of the seats had a squeaky spring. A current of cool air came off the lake.
“Do you know who you knocked off at Papas’s?” I asked.
“I wasn’t at Papas’s,” Pug said. “I can prove I was somewhere else.”
“Not if Gus talks.”
“He won’t.”
; “Don’t be too sure.”
“Who was knocked off?” Pug asked.
“Did you ever hear of a guy named Caryle Waterman?”
This hit him. He was silent for a minute. Then he said to the hoods: “You guys scram.”
They climbed out of the car and went away. “I figured there was something funny about you,” Pug said.
“Look,” I said. “The Vineyard will be sore as hell about what you’ve done tonight. You know how they feel about rough stuff.”
“Do I?”
I went right on. “There’ll be plenty of heat tomorrow. And you’ll need the Vineyard’s help. But you won’t get it if you knock me off.”
“Who says so?”
“The Princess, for one.”
“Okay,” Pug said. “Maybe I’m in a jam. But why should I believe you?”
I told him some of the things the black-haired girl, Carmel, told me. I told him about the ten thousand a month split, and how the Vineyard ran most of the joints in the county.
“And if that doesn’t convince you I’m in, ask the Princess.”
“If you’re lying,” Pug said, “I’m going to chop you up like hamburger.”
“Ask the Princess.”
“Okay, pal.”
I felt better. That gave me a little time. Maybe I could get away before she came. Maybe something would happen. An earthquake, or a tidal wave. I wasn’t particular. Pug called the others.
“We’re putting this guy in storage for a while,” he said.
We drove back to the shack where they had got the wire and the rocks. The car stopped. “Get out.”
I got out. Pug told the others to stay with me. They prodded me towards the shack. Pug got in the driver’s seat.
“Be back in half an hour.”
We went in the shack. One of the toughs lit a lantern. It was the driver. The other one grinned at me. He had crooked teeth.
“You must of talked fast,” he said.
“I had to,” I said.
He thought that was funny. He laughed. The driver was a dark man with a thin face. Something was wrong with his left eye. He didn’t laugh. He watched me, keeping his pistol pointed at my stomach. He looked like an Armenian.
“Sit down.”
There were three chairs around a stove. I sat in one of them. The shack looked like a place fishermen and duck hunters used. I saw some rods and some old boxes of twelve-gauge shells on the floor. There was a cot in the corner, and over it was a window with a cracked glass. The toughs pulled their chairs away from me and sat down. They kept their pistols on their laps.
I tried to figure an angle. If I could get one of them alone, I’d have a chance. “Is there any water?” I asked. “I’m thirsty.”
“He wants water,” the driver said.
“Think of that,” said the other.
They didn’t move. They weren’t going to move. I shifted my legs and found I could reach the driver’s chair. If I could hook my foot on the leg and pull the chair out from under him, I could make a play for his gun. That is, if the other guy didn’t shoot me. I figured I’d have to take the chance. I was gone if I waited till Pug got back. I edged my foot nearer the chair. The driver cracked my shin with his pistol.
“Don’t get funny.”
The shin hurt like hell. I rubbed it for a while. “You boys play rough, don’t you?”
“Shut up.”
I could tell by their faces they would shoot if I made another move. It was a wonder the one with the garlic breath hadn’t let go when his pal cracked me. I sat quietly in the chair. There wasn’t a damned thing I could do. My mind went to all the times I’d seen it done in the movies. They did it fine there, and in books. The hero was always knocking hell out of three or four armed men. I even saw one movie where he took on eight at once. Franchot Tone, I think it was. I could lick hell out of eight Franchot Tones, armed or otherwise, but I couldn’t do anything about the two toughs. Not without getting shot. I wanted to put off getting shot as long as possible. I closed my eyes. I thought, well, nobody will miss me, anyway.
CHAPTER 9
I heard the car coming along the road. It was a few minutes before sunrise and the sky was blue. I could see the sky through the cracked window. There weren’t any clouds. I had a funny feeling in my throat. I’d been close to death a lot of times before, but I’d never had so much time to think about it. I wished I’d made the break, shooting or no shooting. I would, anyway. The car came up in front of the shack. I heard the motor stop. I heard a woman’s husky voice say: “Is he inside?”
“Yeah,” Pug said.
She came into the shack and stared at me, standing with a hand on her hip. The lantern and the cracked window made it light inside. Her hair was the colour of a bamboo fishpole, and she had on rouge and mascara, but underneath the paint her skin was good. She had on black slacks and a scarlet shirt and open sandals. She was beautiful. Pug scowled at me over her shoulder. Brother, I thought, this is the third-act curtain.
“So it’s you,” she said.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. She turned to Pug. “What’s the idea of beating him up?”
That question was like a kick in the belly. It knocked my wind out; I could hear it rush through my throat. She was going to play along with me.
Pug said: “He had it coming.”
“You’re going to have it coming,” she said.
“He never told me he was a friend of yours until the last,” Pug said. The driver and the Armenian watched him. “You guys scram,” Pug said.
They went out. The Princess said to Pug: “We’ll get another guy if you keep knocking off everybody who makes a grab for that redhead.”
“Get this,” Pug said. “Nobody grabs.”
“You get this. Another murder or two from you and they’ll clamp down on the county.”
Pug looked thoughtful. I wondered if he’d told her about what happened at Papas’s. “He’s already done ’em,” I said.
Pug scowled at me. She said, “Yeah?” I told her about Caryle Waterman.
“Did you have to pick the richest guy in town?” she asked Pug.
“How’d I know he was in there?”
“You dope!”
“They won’t pin it on me. I got an alibi.”
“A lot of good that’ll do. The Governor won’t care about that. He’ll start a grand jury investigation and we’ll have to close down. Then who’ll pay you your dough on the first of every month? Not us. You’ll probably have to take up bank robbing, or kidnapping, and then the G-men will grab you.”
She was plenty sore. Pug didn’t answer her. He stood scowling at me. He was wishing he’d shot me long ago.
She said to him: “Now beat it.”
“All right.” He went to the door. “How’ll you get back?”
“We’ll ride, you damn fool. The walk’ll do you good. It’s only a couple of miles.”
Pug said: “It’s three miles.”
“All the more good it’ll do you. Now beat it.”
“No.”
She slapped his face. It was a hard blow. His eyes got red with anger. Then he turned. “Okay.”
She laughed as he went out. She had liked hitting him. She went to the window. I got up and went to her.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said.
“Why?”
“Now he’ll have to kill me.”
“I don’t get you.”
“No guy like Pug is going to stand for another man seeing a woman hit him. The slap was all right, but not my seeing it.”
“So what?”
“So he’ll try to knock me off as soon as he dares.”
“Listen, honey,” she said. “You couldn’t be in a worse spot than you were half an hour ago.”
That was true. I should bellyache about Pug. I looked out the window. The sun had come up. It looked like an orange. Pug and the others were walking across the field. She laughed.
“Those small time punks,”
she said.
I stared at her. She looked pale in the light. I could see the curves of her shoulders and the rise of her breasts under the scarlet shirt. Her skin was white and soft-looking. She turned and looked at me. “Well …”
“Thanks.”
“I like big men,” she said.
Her voice was raspy, like she had a cold. She came up to me and grabbed my arm. Her fingers hurt the muscles. I could smell her perfume. She came close to me. I thought I knew what she wanted. I tried to kiss her. She jerked away.
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
She slapped me. She was strong; my cheek stung. She moved in, swinging both arms. Now she had her fists closed. She hit my arms and my chest. I tried to hold her.
It was queer. I held her arms, but she got loose. She struck my chest. Then, I hit her easy on the ribs. “That’s right! That’s right!” She hit me a couple of hard blows. Her eyes were wild. She hit me a hard puch on the neck. I hit her in the belly. I heard the breath go out: ouf! It didn’t stop her. She kept coming in, punching hard. She looked beautiful and wild. She bit my arm again and I slugged her in the ribs. My hand caught in the scarlet shirt she was wearing. When she tried to twist free the silk tore in ragged streamers.
I got a glimpse of her quivering white flesh. Then she came against me, her hands clawing my arms. There was a hot look in her eyes.
“All right,” she panted. “Now!”
Later on when we got around to talking again, I said, “I don’t understand you.”
“It’s fun, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Then what do you care?”
We had quite a problem fixing up her torn shirt. It was in tatters. We didn’t have any pins.
I found some fish-hooks and fastened the black pants to the shirt. She helped me. Then I put the hooks through the worst tears in the shirt. I backed away to look at her. There was a bad rip over her right shoulder. I fastened it and then I kissed her neck. I would have kissed her mouth, but she wouldn’t let me.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t want you to.”
“All right.”
I backed away again. From a distance you wouldn’t have known anything was wrong.
“I should take up dressmaking,” I said.
“You should take up wrestling,” she said. “I feel as though I’d been through a mangle.”
The Fifth Grave Page 7