by Peter Rabe
He ran back into the house and into the bedroom.
“Betty…..”
“Please!”
“Quiet, Betty, quiet quiet. Here now, get this on.”
“What are you—who are—”
“Nonono. Forget that. Sam Smith. Remember? And the buttons.” He held the coat to her but she stepped back into a corner.
“Betty, please,” he said, “Betty, please. One more run is all, Betty sweet, one more and it’s over. When you’re gone and it’s over, they won’t want you any more.”
“What are you—”
“He said so, remember? Before he was dead. Here, the coat.”
She put it on, so he would go away. When she had it on he pulled money out of his pocket. “Now this, Betty. Stick it here, in the pocket,” and he held the thick roll out with two hands.
“No. I won’t touch….”
“Betty.”
“You’re some filthy kind of….”
“Please,” he said, talking slower now. “Please don’t quarrel.”
He put the money into her pocket and she held still with fright.
“You come now,” he said. “Here, shoes. Then we go. Run, I mean.”
She put the shoes on and he rushed her. He left his jacket where it was, but was not so confused that he did not take the Magnum. He put it in the place under his belt but moved it into the pocket when he saw how she looked at it.
“Please,” he said again. “Don’t quarrel,” and he ran her out to the street.
He ran her to the car at the corner and when they were inside he drove fast and skilled. For a while they sat next to each other like that without talking, he not talking because of all he was thinking. What there was of him and the things he had done, so that she would know the bad and the good of him, and what he had wished would have happened. But he did not know enough about any of it and the confusion kept him from talking. She sat still too, so he felt that she felt the same kind of things, and was kept from talking. Once he reached over and made a light stroke on her arm. Her fright kept her silent and stiffened.
Her fright made her keep step with him when they ran into the airport; and when he found a ticket for a plane which left in five minutes; and when he rushed her last through the gate and said something she did not understand….
He latched the chain across the empty gate and watched the plane swivel slowly and then move slowly with a big roar. It moved out of the light and in a while it will fly off, he said to himself.
He felt no need to watch that. And he did not remember where her ticket went. Just that the girl had been.
They picked him up again in town and they had him when he went into the bus station. He had gone into the station because there were people. Then he saw the three men and knew immediately.
They shot him against a wall with a summer schedule behind him, and that got torn too.
It felt to him as if he sat on the floor a long time, and for one very bad moment a sudden, great wildness almost tore him open, like pigeons beating around inside a wire-mesh cage and even their eyes with the stiff bird-stare turned wild with glitter.
But he made that all go quiet again. He could not see any more and wished he had said more to the girl, had told her some things he had done, so that she would know the bad and the good of him and he would not be just a blank.
He had a great deal of pain and then died.
When the policeman turned him over, he found one driver’s license which said Smith and another one which said Jordan.
“Must be Jordan,” he said. “There aren’t any Smiths.”
The End
This edition published by
Prologue Books
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
4700 East Galbraith Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45236
www.fwcrime.com
Copyright © 1960 by Peter Rabe, Registration Renewed 1988
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4005-5
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4005-9