On the Run

by John D. MacDonald

  “Put this under your tongue, Thomas, and be still.”

  “Look at the chart, idiot. She took it less than a half hour ago.”

  “Hmmm. So she did.”

  two

  Sid Wells awoke from an aching dream, his sweat chill in the air-conditioned silence, a memory of his own voice hanging in the room, saying, “Thelma.” The dream was gone before he could grasp it, leaving him with a metallic taste, a residue of panic and flight. His phone was ringing. He sat up on the edge of his bed and answered it. It was Scobie, phoning from the lot.

  “Sid? Sid, we got a sure thing on that Saab if we pull it down to nine and a half.”

  “Was Bimmer in this morning?”

  “When we opened up, yes.”

  “So did you ask him?”

  “Burnsie did.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said it was up to you. The way I see it, Sid, we’ve had it a long time, you know. I mean you can get sick of looking at something, you keep it around long enough.”

  “Have you got the card there?”

  “Right in front of me, Sid. We allowed eleven bills on it against a Chrysler that went at twenty-two five, and we got three bills out of the Chrysler including the shop order on it. The shop debited us sixty dollars on the Saab. So what that would be …”

  “It would be taking two hundred and ten off what we cleared on the Chrysler, which brings us below percentage on both of them, Scobie.”

  “But this is clean, Sid. Cash on the line.”

  “What do we have to have to make percentage on both?”

  “One thousand seventy-five.”

  “Two months ago, Scobie, you would have apologized and figured it out and called me back.”

  “I guess that’s right. Maybe I’m learning.”

  “Kid, you can pull it down to an even thousand, and we’ll put the plates on it, but that’s as low as it goes. Can you deal?”

  “I can sure try, Sid. Thanks. I wake you up or anything?”

  “I was up. After ten isn’t it?”

  “A woman was here looking for you. I told her you come on at noon today.”

  “Buying?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so somehow. One thing I noticed, she’s driving a rental.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “Not bad. Not bad at all. Medium tall brunette, knocking thirty, stacked pretty good, no wedding ring, talks Yankee, well-dressed. A nice smile, Sid. She didn’t give a name. Burnsie asked her. She just said she’d be back is all.”

  “Scobie, was she a little on the … on the rough side?”

  “Oh no, nothing like that. More like a lady, Sid.”

  “Thanks, kid.”

  He hung up. He took a long shower. As he showered and shaved and dressed he thought of all the things he always thought of whenever something happened which could not be immediately explained. Were they still looking? Maybe not actively, but Wain would never give up. Not with two kinds of pride at stake, the deadened face and two failures on the record. And he reviewed his preparations, looking for a flaw. All proof of his actual identity was in a safety deposit box in a bank in Jessup, Georgia. A detailed search of this motel unit would turn up nothing to tie him to Sidney Shanley of Jacksonville. He always wore the same belt, with a concealed zipper compartment containing the lock box key and two thousand dollars, half in fifties, half in hundreds. He could walk away at any time, leaving behind the car, the clothes, the innocuous belongings of Sid Wells, stroll away, take a bus, take a plane, find a new place, establish a new identity, find work in any city in the country doing the same thing, selling cars to the people. Used cars. Be ready to wander, or be ready to die. He sensed that one day he might lose patience with his own solution to that dilemma. Life, under that discipline, had limited merit. But for now it was the lesser of the two evils. Stay wary and stay alive, for the meager pleasures of the loner, food and drink, books and walks and climate, the infrequent girl who also wants to avoid emotional involvement.

  He arrived at the lot a little before noon. Scobie had unloaded the Saab and was delighted with himself even though, by taking the deal below percentage, he had shorted himself slightly on his commission, and shorted Sid in a very small way on his override as lot manager. Vern Burns was working on a small rancher. Scobie said he doubted Vern and the rancher had said over ten words apiece in the last half hour. They were leaning against the tailgate of the pickup the rancher was thinking of buying, staring out at the hustle of traffic on Almeda. Joselito was working his way along the front line, rubbing the dust from the specials under the striped canopy. A yellow T-Bird turned slowly on the big tilted wheel. The pennants hung limply in the airless heat of July. Inside the sales shack, bright as a fragment of Mondrian, the window conditioner rattled busily. Scobie reported all that Bimmer had said. Sid listened, standing and looking out the picture window, his arms folded.

  “I needed that sale,” Scobie said. “I was feeling like I was standing in a hole.” He was a blonde boy with an understated chin, an earnest, likeable manner.

  “You can sell,” Sid told him. “When you don’t get too anxious, you can sell. And this is a good place for it. There’s forty ways to steal, and Bimmer uses only about four of them. So face the folks relaxed. They deal once a year and we deal twenty times a day. Who has the edge?”

  “I guess we do, but sometimes I …”

  “Is that the woman who was looking for me?”

  Scobie came to the window. “That’s her, sure enough.”

  She had parked her rental Falcon fifty feet from the shack. His wariness diminished as he looked at her. She looked, as Scobie had said, like a lady. She wore a grey blouse, blue skirt, blue shoes, carried a white purse. She walked well, an erect leggy stride, her head up and shoulders back, squinting slightly in the sunlight as she stared toward the shack.

  When Scobie opened the door for her she looked directly and inquisitively at Sid. “Mr. Wells?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Paula Lettinger. I’d like to speak to you on a personal matter, if you aren’t too busy right now.” Sid glanced at Scobie. Scobie nodded and went out of the shack.

  “Will you sit down, Mrs. Lettinger?”

  “It’s Miss. Thank you.”

  He sat on the corner of the scarred desk, looking down at her. He held a light for her cigarette. It trembled as she held it to the flame. She was attractive. And troubled. And thoughtful. Suddenly she looked at him very directly and said, “I guess I have to do this my way. I’m no good at tricks. I can’t make things up. What you must understand, I mean you no harm.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I was told to make up some kind of a story. To get your guard down, or something. I was told that if I came right out with it, you’d run.”

  “Came out with what? Run from what?”

  “You don’t look like a man who’d run. But I know you have been running. Please don’t run from me. Please give me a chance.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You must have the wrong guy.”

  “Possibly. I have something with me. I want you to look at it. If it doesn’t mean anything to you, I’ll go away and I won’t bother you any more. But if it does mean something, then we must talk. Is that all right?”

  “Miss, you can show me anything you want to. I don’t know what this is all about.”

  She snapped the white purse open and dipped her hand in. As she brought her hand out, he reached very quickly and clamped his fingers on her wrist. He had bent down toward her. Their eyes were close. She looked at him steadily and said, “Don’t be afraid of me.” He looked at her hand. She held something wrapped in tissue.

  “You say wild things, Miss. It’s a hot day.”

  “Unwrap it yourself. It won’t bite.”

  He hefted the small heavy object. He thought of the ways they did things. Not in the daylight like this, not with Scobie and Joe and Burns nearby.
He unwrapped it. The pink box and the small carved animal were tantalizingly familiar. His hands had begun to tremble and he did not know why. He opened the box and saw the two shiny dimes, and it all came flooding back, clogging his throat, blinding his eyes. He stood and walked away from her. She said something. He heard the sound of her voice but he could not understand what she said. She said it again. “Do you remember him?”

  “Yes. I remember the old man.” He stood with his back to her.

  “He’s dying.”

  “That old man? He died long ago.”

  “He’s ninety-two. I’m his nurse. He sent me down here to bring you home, Sidney.”

  He turned and tried to smile at her. “Home? Does he think that’s my home?”

  “You don’t have any other do you?”

  He looked out the window. Burns was bringing the customer toward the shack. She said, “There’s a lot I want to tell you. And maybe a lot you would like to ask. I’m staying at a motel. The Houston House, just off the Gulf Freeway near the airport. I’m in number ninety-two. Come out there after work, why don’t you? And … please don’t run. It would mean I did it wrong.”

  He pushed the box toward her. “Take it along.”

  “It’s yours,” she said. “He gave it to you a long time ago. But you left it behind, under your pillow. He never thought you meant to leave it.”

  “A very long time ago,” he said. She gave him a brief and uncertain smile.

  “I’ll wait for you,” she said, and went out as Burns and the customer came in. Burns had made a deal. Sid approved it. They left to arrange about plates. Scobie came in and picked up the jade box.

  “What’s the animal on here, Sid?”

  “It’s just an animal. I don’t know.”

  “She was selling this junk?”

  “Put it down, Scobie.”

  “Sure. Sure. What are you getting so hot about?”

  “Mind the store,” Sid said, going to the door.

  “You be back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He got into his wagon and drove an aimless mile and found a beer joint he had never been in before. The air was frigid and the juke was noisy. He sat at a table in the back, chair tilted against the wall, hat tilted forward over his brows, thumb hooked onto his belt. The two thousand dollars was there, nested and comforting. Walk-away money. Sid Wells could be laid to rest. Then there would be no need to try to figure anything out, no need to try to judge the woman.

  It all seemed too tricky and intricate to be anything except exactly what the woman claimed. It wouldn’t be Wain’s style. The incident in Atlanta had demonstrated Wain’s style. The finger, the confirmation, stealth in the night, and then a sudden dirty violence. Atlanta had proved it was suicide to relax.

  And even if she was exactly what she claimed, what did he owe that old man?

  But one thing bothered him. How had that old man managed to have him found? How had that old man accomplished what Wain had failed to do? Obviously, he had left some sort of a trail. And if he did not find out what it was, he could not stop himself from leaving it again. She could tell him how it was done. Yet if he went to see her, he might be walking right into a setup.

  He decided to see her. Once he had decided, he felt glad. She had good hips and good eyes. She moved well. Woman hips and woman eyes, but the forearm and wrist clearly childish in his memory, a little neatness of pale hair against honeyed skin, and a fragility of bone, and warmth under his grasp when he had touched her, when she had dipped her hand into the purse and the warning bells had rung.

  But he would see her with guile and preparation. And no matter what happened, this was the end of Houston. The lair had been violated.

  In the late afternoon he went back to the Gateway Courts. Once it had been a transient motel. After a rerouting of a highway, it had been remodeled into small efficiency apartments priced to rent to locals. He parked some distance away and approached in a careful way, a way he had thought out long ago, to a place where he could look, listen, enter quickly and quietly. No one was there. No one had been there. He called the Houston House. Yes, they had a Miss Lettinger registered. Unit ninety-two. She had arrived the previous evening. He phoned Bimmer and said he was quitting. Sorry. Family emergency. He wouldn’t be back. Vern Burns could handle the lot. Bimmer was upset about it. He had some money coming. Not very much. Sid told him to mail the check to General Delivery, New Orleans. Small fee for a false trail. He showered, changed to a tropical weight suit, packed his big cheap suitcase and put it in the back of the wagon. He had a few hundred dollars in a bureau drawer, under the newspaper lining. He put it in his wallet. There was no room in the belt. He scrawled a note to the owner saying he was leaving, and sealed it into an envelope with his key. The rent was paid in advance. No bills due. No bank accounts. A utility deposit that would more than cover the reading on the meter.

  He looked around the place without pleasure or regret. He felt nothing. It had been another place to hide. Another burrow. When the smell of the predator drifts down on the wind, you dig your way out and go dig another hole to stay alive in. Whether it makes sense or not. Just the stubborn will to stay alive on any terms at all. Or maybe just the desire to frustrate someone who seriously wanted you dead.

  As soon as it was time, he drove to the airport and put the car in the parking lot. He carried his suitcase to the cab line and taxied to the Houston House, registered as T. K. Hollister of El Paso, and paid cash for a single night occupancy of number seventeen. He took off his jacket and tie, unpacked a bottle of bourbon, one-third empty, and made himself a drink. He turned the room lights off, opened the door and stood behind the screen, looking out at the warm night. Beyond an angle of one of the wings he could see the lighted pool. A young couple went by, snickering and whispering to each other. Colored floods shone on the shrubbery. He sipped his drink and watched the units across the way until finally a portly couple came out of one of them, locked their door and headed for the restaurant. When they were gone, he wandered over and made certain of the room number. Thirty-four. He went back to his own place, made a fresh drink and called Paula Lettinger. She answered eagerly on the first ring. “Sidney? I was beginning to be afraid you’d …”

  “I didn’t run. Not yet.”

  “I’m so glad. Are you phoning from the lobby?”

  “No. I’m a paying guest too. Number thirty-four.”

  “I … I don’t understand.”

  “Come on around and I’ll buy you a drink. We can talk here.”

  “Well … all right. It will be a few minutes.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  He went back and stood in the dark doorway and waited. After five minutes two men came along the far walk, moving purposefully. He tensed and felt a coldness along his spine. But they walked on by. After five more minutes he saw her coming from the left. He recognized her when she walked through the glow of floodlights. She wore a pale green dress, carried the same white purse. He heard the tacking of her high heels on the walkway. She was looking at the numbers. She stopped at thirty-four. He thought he could hear her knock. He was not certain. He waited and watched. At last she started slowly back the way she had come. He finished the drink, put the glass aside, walked swiftly and silently across the grass between the wings and spoke her name before she could reach the area of brightness.

  It startled her. “Oh. Where were you? Getting cigarettes or something?”

  “I just happened to see you. Couldn’t you find it?”

  “I found it. I knocked and knocked.”

  “Seventeen?”

  “You said thirty-four.”

  “Did I? I’m sorry. I must be nervous. Come on. My place is over there.”

  He took her back to seventeen. He held the screen open. She hesitated and walked into the darkness. He went in quickly, close behind her, pushed the door shut, grabbed her shoulder and spun her back into his arms. With an objective and calculating coldness, he watched her
and watched himself. She felt sturdier than he had expected, a lot of woman-warmth and resistant fragrance in his arms. She fought him in a dogged gasping silence, wresting her mouth away. He grabbed her dark hair and levered her face back, holding her strongly, caressing her ruthlessly and intimately. Then he sensed that her strugglings were bringing her to the edge of excitement and response. He felt the change in her mouth and in her breathing, and wryly measured his own reaction to that response. She sensed her danger and gave a long shuddering sigh and went absolutely limp and dead in his arms. This was a considerable woman. And a smart one. He released her abruptly. She staggered and caught her balance and moved back away from him.

  “What do you think I am?” she asked in a rusty indignant whisper.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Turn on the lights.”

  “Shut up,” he said. He put his hand against her shoulder and shoved hard to send her stumbling over to sprawl across the bed, hissing with alarm. He went to the window and lifted one of the flaps of the Venetian blind and looked across at number thirty-four. He saw no one anywhere near it. A light went on behind him. He dropped the flap, put the night chain on the door and turned and looked at her. She was standing by the bed, looking disheveled and smeared and indignant. He picked the purse up, hefted it thoughtfully and took it to her.

  “There’s the bathroom. Fix yourself up. Stay away from the phone and we can get along just fine.”

  She snatched the purse away from him. “Thinking everybody is an enemy or something! That’s paranoid.”

  “In a foxy world, sweetie, you can get to be a very tricky rabbit.”

  She gave him a contemptuous look and swept into the bathroom and banged the door. He stretched and yawned with the slackening of his tension. He had wanted to shock her off guard and watch her response. If it was indeed a setup, she would have responded to him. It would be expected of her. Fish grab the bait. It would just have been a little sooner than she would have expected.