The Whip Hand
Page 3
When we rolled past the office of the camp I throwed the key so's it would fall on the front porch. Then I swung the car over onto the highway and headed towards Dallas.
Chapter 3
Bill Brown
YOU might say it was warm in Dallas.
The middle of America. A gathered-in collection of white buildings wanting to be a city. Heat waves rising from pavement and bricks. A large town sprawling and shimmering in the Texas sun. A fitting destination after the miserable trip through the desert.
I had picked a great place to start over. The dubious prospect of this new start was crowding for space with the pain in my head.
My assets were not impressive. An ex-cop who could hardly apply for police work. In green gabardine with black shoes, I'd be irresistible to prospective employers. A three-day growth of black beard and no razor. One thin dime in the cash on hand. Ten cents. I could buy coffee.
Carrying the coat-half of my present wardrobe, I stepped from the bus and dripped my way into the station, trying to get a decent breath of air from the hanging mass of humidity.
I wasn't sorry to find the waiting room was air-conditioned. I walked about halfway through, then took a comfortable seat on the outside end of a row of joined chairs. I could at least cool off and delay squandering my last dime. I wanted a cup of coffee but I dreaded the idea of going flat broke before I had made any plans.
My mind was as barren as the desert I had traveled through. I gave it free rein but no brilliant method of regaining my former living standard leaped into my visions. The visions rapidly descended the ladder of employment possibilities to the level of an apprentice dishwasher in some greasy spoon which had just lost its latest drifter. At least I'd be in a kitchen, insured against hunger. No references required. Just be sober when you come to work and get out if you get drunk on the job. Right in line with my qualifications. I was savoring these pleasant prospects when I was interrupted by a traveler who wanted a seat.
He was a clumsy rube, bumping against my crossed legs, stumbling over my feet, and banging me on the kneecap with the corner of the heavy leather two-suiter bag he was manhandling. He grunted a couple of times; but I didn't think if was an apology. He folded heavily into the third chair in the row, leaving one empty seat between us. The big bag he placed flat in his lap, handle-to-stomach, and draped his heavy forearms and stubby fat hands across it. He was an oddity of some magnitude.
Obviously a man of the soil. A loose-looking, fat, ultra-seedy hick. Faded Levis hugged sockless ankles above half-laced brogans which had displaced their quota of clods. An old suit coat hung in an ill fit over his once-white undershirt. He didn't look prosperous.
His red face was weathered into crevices starting from various points of the compass, running carefree through the fat to the corners of his mouth. He wasn't pretty. But that new suitcase lying on his flabby thighs was no eyesore.
If I had a piece of luggage like that I could check in at a middle-class hotel on its looks. My eyes narrowed a I shoved that thought around the turntable in my mind again for another look. And once more, it had definite appeal. I liked the comforting possibilities of the idea. Instead of wishing for some luggage like his, why not relieve the farmer of the burden of that particular suitcase?
My conscience offered a weak protest against pursuing this line of scheming. Too weak. Right now I wasn't inclined to hear the little voice inside. Besides, this rube had stepped on me.
Maybe there was a razor and a change of socks in that bag. My own socks were stiff and thick from the drying sweat that had run into my shoes. I grinned when I remembered he wasn't even wearing socks. If he had any, they were in the suitcase. Well, if not, in a hotel room I could wash and dry my own.
But how could I take possession of this object of my new desire? I couldn't risk just grabbing it and running out of the station. If I got caught I couldn't describe the contents and the farmer could, which would leave little doubt as to its legal owner.
I'd have to get him to move around. Maybe he'd get tired of holding it sooner or later and set it down for a minute. If I was ready with a good line, I could try to make him forget about it. Try to get him away from it for a few minutes. Watch it for him while he went to the can; or talk him into going for a couple of cokes, or cigarettes, or aspirin. Anything. And disappear with it before he got back.
Or maybe--and better yet--maybe I could get him to store it in a locker, so I could work the old key-switch gag on him. On the surface he wasn't the type of world traveler likely to be familiar with that game. I decided to try whatever opportunity I could foster. The old man noticed me studying him and offered me a repulsive scowl.
I leaned toward him confidentially across the empty seat between us.
"You here to catch a bus, too?" I asked, in what I hoped was polite and natural curiosity.
He just nodded.
"Where to? Maybe we'll be traveling together," I persisted.
He cleared his throat with a deep rattle; but he still didn't speak.
"Sorry, sir, I didn't catch that. Where did you say you're going?"
"Oklahoma, I reckon," he answered, rather defiantly.
I settled back in my chair and waited for him to think I had run out of curiosity. Then, "Have you bought your ticket yet?"
"Naw, I ain't. I'm just trying to rest a spell, mister. I'm wore out. And I got to eat breakfast first anyways."
I smiled pleasantly. "You won't get much rest that way." I pointed to his suitcase. "Why don't you put it in a locker? That's where mine is. Left it there while I ate my own breakfast. Didn't want to worry with it while I ate." I pointed to the row of coin-operated lockers against the wall nearby.
An interested glow lit his puffy eyes. "I been thinking some about that," he said. "Them lockers must be pretty safe. I've saw lots of people using them."
"Safe? Why, of course they're safe. Haven't you ever used them?"
"Naw. I ain't never. I always went in my own car before this here trip." He looked rather sad as he said this; then his expression brightened, as though some cheerful thought had pushed the inconvenience out of his mind.
"Well, believe me," I told him, "once your bag is inside a locker and the key is in your pocket, nothing's coming out of there until you turn that key again yourself. Real handy, I find."
"Reckon you're right," he said. And to my joy he started shifting the bag and his tonnage in an effort to get out of his seat.
"I'll help you find an empty locker, sir," I told him. He nodded and looked very pleased as he started bumbling away from the row of seats.
I had plenty of time to hurry across to the lockers ahead of him. I quickly spotted two adjacent empties with their keys sticking out, and unobtrusively slid my dime into one of the slots and palmed the key. I was glad I had postponed that last cup of coffee.
I turned and waved encouragingly to the rube, and watched contentedly as he waddled flatfootedly toward me. I opened his locker with one hand and reached for his suitcase with the other. But getting it away from him was not as easy as I anticipated. For a moment his pudgy fingers retained their grip around the handle.
"I'll put it in the locker for you, sir." He nearly sprawled on the floor when I gave the bag a final tug that tore it loose from his hand. While he recovered his balance I carelessly tossed the bag into the locker, and turned around with my open hand outstretched.
"A dime, sir. It takes a dime to turn the key."
The farmer dug in the pocket of his tight pants and handed me a dime. The yellow eyes watched me closely as I put the dime in the slot and turned the key and removed it. I tugged at the locker door to show him it was tightly fastened.
"See? Tight as a bank vault! Try it yourself." He did, and seemed reassured that everything was as it should be.
"Gimmie that there key, mister," he demanded.
I placed a key in his hand--the one that fit the locker next to his. To divert his thoughts from checking the numbers or practicing with his key,
I started conning him once more. I put a whining note into my voice.
"Sir, I haven't been entirely honest with you." That got his attention promptly,. "You see, I'm not a traveler. I'm just a very sick man. I was waiting here in the station just hoping to help a kind stranger like you, who would help me in return. I'm hungry, and I'm a very sick man. What I need at the moment would only take twenty-five cents, just a small quarter of a dollar. Won't you please help me, sir, as I helped you?"
My hand was out entreatingly again, palm up. He stared at it and back up at my sad expression. Then he shrugged his thick shoulders, carefully buried the locker key in his watch pocket, and fumbled in another pocket for change. He came up with a dime, two nickels, and five pennies which he carefully counted into my begging hand, to my eternal surprise. Not changing expression, I chuckled inwardly to think that I had increased my cash investment by a hundred and fifty per cent.
"Thank you, sir. God bless you," I said, and pretended to shuffle away. As he also walked away, the hick muttered something about the questionable character of any city which let beggars and winos hang around inside the bus station.
Out of the corner of my eye I watched him set a course for the lunchroom. As the door to the lunchroom closed behind him, the door to his locker opened. In thirty seconds I was outside on the street with his suitcase.
I covered two blocks in a hurry and checked into the Southwesterner. In my relief at setting up suitable headquarters, I almost became an honest man. I registered as Bill Brown, and remembered just in time to change my address to Lancaster, California. I'd left the Mojave Desert town years ago but I could still call it home, in an emergency. The clerk read my registration and smirked like the whole entry was phony anyhow.
The bellhop tried to take my bag but I was too quick for him. I couldn't afford the price of a tip and I wanted no contempt directed at me just now. I don't appreciate contempt.
"I can manage it," I said.
He looked disappointed but led me into the elevator and pushed the button for the fifth floor. He hadn't entirely written me off as a prospect, either.
"Anything you needs, Boss?"
"No."
"I means anything," he said, his grin displaying a set of golden choppers.
"It sounds like you mean it."
"Mean it? Boss, just you give me one request!"
I guess he did mean it, but I couldn't cooperate. I opened the door to 502, then the window. I turned the cold water on in the shower, undressed, came back to the bed and opened my new bag.
There was nothing in it but money.
Fives--tens--and a little digging turned up a layer of twenties. Hello, Dallas. I started to count, then said the hell with it. I just made sure it was real. Then I found the phone and called the desk for a fifth of I. W. Harper and a set of shaving equipment. I closed the bag and pushed it under the bed.
The shower felt good. I felt fine, the headache notwithstanding. I was a very fortunate ex-cop. It made no difference how the hick got it. Or how he felt without it. He wasn't getting it back. With assault and battery charges following me, or maybe even manslaughter, a little unarmed robbery was just kicks for variety.
A knock on the door announced the bellhop with my liquor and the shaving gear. He had a sixth sense, or powerful logic, for he'd added a toothbrush to my order on his own. I gave him a ten dollar bonus.
His eyes showed me ten dollars worth of whites, but the real profit was in his wide grin. All the gold that wasn't in Fort Knox was shining between his thick lips.
"Hot damn! I sho' do thank you, suh!"
I waved him out magnanimously, wondering why I should be anything but generous.
I sloshed a triple of the Harper into a water glass, and when it found the shrunken boundaries of my stomach I knew I'd better eat. With priority. I shaved carefully but rapidly, dressed, and fattened my thin billfold with a nice sheaf of twenties. I delayed my own appetite to count the money left in the suitcase. I was curious to know just how well-to-do I had become.
Forty-seven hundred hard ones passed through my fingertips. Very nice odds on a dime.
I couldn't really hide the bag, so I stowed it in the closet, took the elevator down, and made my way to the grill next door. I spent some time over a medium-rare sirloin, grateful for every bite of juicy Texas steer. Very satisfying to the inner man and it gave my mind time for a little cog work.
I could taxi to a quiet section of town and find a room. Hole up incognito for a couple of weeks. That would give the hick time to get discouraged and hitch-hike to whatever destination he had in mind. It would give me time to contact Ed at my leisure, if I couldn't learn what I wanted to know from the local papers.
After a brief retirement, I could look around. Pick and choose; find some kind of job I liked or buy a small business and become a respectable citizen in Dallas. Summer couldn't last forever, even in Texas.
By the time I followed the steak with apple pie and ice cream, I had settled on that plan. I left a respectable tip on the table, hauled the overload out of the chair, and moved over to the cashier's corner. She wasn't repulsive. As a matter of fact, she'd be welcome to share any desert island of mine.
"What have you got for a headache?"
She handed me some powders wrapped in blue oil paper, smiled brightly, and rang up my check.
"Just open one and shake the powder down your throat," she instructed me graciously.
I did just that but I didn't notice any relief. For a moment I considered the idea of investing my new wealth in producing an effective headache potion. I bought two packages of cigarettes from the willowy lovely and started for the door.
"Hurry back, now--you hear?"
"Yeah, I hear," I said over my shoulder. I was still wondering just what she meant when I got into the elevator. I made a mental note to ask her when I came out of hiding.
The bellhop who had anything took me up. He stopped at the third floor.
"I'm on five," I reminded him.
"Please, Boss, follow me, suh!"
There was urgency in his eyes. I followed him past three doors; then he produced a passkey and jumped into a room. I walked in behind him.
"Boss, I don't know if you is in trouble or if you ain't, but I ain't forgetting that ten-spot."
"That makes two of us." I was feeling witty.
"Mister, I don't know what's wrong, but I does know there's two detectives in your room, not counting our house dick."
"Well, don't stop to count! What are they up to?"
"Boss, I don't want you mad with me, but maybe it's my fault. You see, suh, I was telling Jack--Jack he works the second floor--about that ten dollar tip you give me. This here house dick, he heard us talking and he got s'picious. He seen, pardon me suh, he seen how you-looked when you checked in. He took hisself a look in your room and first thing I knows here comes two city detectives. They is all up in your room and if the desk clerk seen the elevator indicator stop at this floor they'll be coming down here. And you better go if they is something wrong, and if they ain't, excuse me, suh!"
His eyes were rolling in fear.
"Quick! Where's the fire escape?"
Already I heard heavy feet pounding on stairs, and then somebody rapped loudly on a door down the hall.
"Out through that window, Boss! Oh, Lordy, I sho' was praying you was just lucky in a honest poker game, suh!"
He was scared. Hell, who wasn't? And I couldn't even get back to my room for a try at the loot. That dream was over and done. Gone.
At least two men were shouting in the hall as I squeezed through the window onto the fire escape. I started down in a wild rush. In my garbled mind I wondered if I had drawn cards in a bank robbery when I stole the suitcase. Or if the boys above were just curious to know if I always carried a small fortune around with me. Either way I couldn't let them get their hands on me.
A shout inside the room I had just vacated added speed to my feet. A second or two later I was sure a booming voice or
dered me to stop, but I pretended not to hear. Then the game got deadly serious.
A shot exploded above and rust showered from the second-floor landing of the steel stairway. It answered my question--I had stepped into something big and unhealthy. I had come all this distance in all that heat and misery to be shot down in a dirty little alley in a town like Dallas. I could have died among friends and in comparative comfort in Los Angeles. But then, there was Ed, too. I reached the rough pavement of the alley, and I hit it running.
The gun roared from above, and I felt the wind off of the slug as it slipped past my neck. As I zigzagged and bounced toward the nearest street opening, I thought the next shot would surely knock me down. That fellow was obviously an expert, and I was too big a target to think he would miss with them all.
The alley was a block long, and I had a little less than half of it to cover from the fire escape. But in my frightened eyes it looked like a half-mile tunnel about the size of a small culvert. The next slug from the gun zinged off the concrete between my feet as I turned and dodged in an effort to spoil his aim. I mentally braced to take the next one somewhere in my back. I was nearing the street opening and saw there was a smattering of pedestrian traffic moving at right angles to the alley.
The gun behind me didn't fire again, and I hoped it was from fear of hitting one of the pedestrians instead of me. I also hoped it didn't mean the end of my escape tunnel was sealed and that I was running into the waiting arms of other cops. I didn't slow down to see.
I wheeled out the mouth of the alley, did a left turn at full speed, kept it up to the next street crossing, did a right at that corner on a yellow signal, and then slowed to a fast walk on the outer edge of the sidewalk. I searched frantically for a cab, either standing or cruising. I saw a cruiser coming up from behind me, and jumped out in the street to stop it by force if necessary. It wasn't necessary.
It stopped and I leaped in. I leaned back, almost through the backrest, took a deep breath, looked at the driver, and abandoned a lifelong inhibition right then. Henceforth I would tolerate women drivers--this hackie was a female.