She looked puzzled. Then, almost immediately, she slipped back into that Hollywood dream. I looked at her and had the uneasy feeling that I was sitting beside a total stranger. I looked at her objectively, the way you would look at a photograph of a person you had never seen. By no stretch of the imagination could she be called beautiful, or even pretty, although she was pleasant enough to look at, and certainly she wasn't ugly.
Her face was small, and her hair was rather thick and long, which was the wrong way to wear it. Even I knew that. Her figure was all right, if a little thin. But her arms always freckled in the summer, and they were freckled now. Her eyes, I think, were the best part of her. They were large and startlingly clear.
It's difficult to dislike people with eyes like Beth's, and maybe that's the reason I had fallen into the habit of dating her. But what the hell, I thought. A guy had to do something. If she had let herself believe that it meant something, it wasn't my fault.
She turned her head briefly and looked at me. She smiled and took my hand and squeezed it. The night was hot and her palm was sweaty, and I had to go through an elaborate act of lighting a cigarette to get my hand free. My nerves were beginning to get on edge and I didn't know exactly why.
I settled back in the seat, tried to get comfortable, and stared determinedly at the screen.
It wasn't a minute before I was thinking of that blonde again.
Chapter Two
I went straight back to the station after taking Beth home. The place was dark; Ike Abrams had already called it a day and locked up. I put the Chevy in the carport and then went around and checked all the locks to see that Ike hadn't missed anything. Four of the cabins were still empty, I noticed. Right at the height of the tourist season and only one cabin rented!
The dead, hot air hit me in the face as I went inside my own shack. The lights were still on in the Sheldon cabin, and I could hear the muffled sounds of their talking, without being able to understand what they were saying. Probably, I thought, that blonde is still raising hell about having to stay in such a place.
Well, I couldn't blame her for that.
Think about something else, I thought. Or think about nothing—that's better. Just get your clothes off and hope a breeze comes up and you'll be able to get some sleep before the sun comes up again.
It wasn't any good. The bed was hot, and pretty soon it was clammy with sweat, and I lay there in the darkness smoking cigarettes and wondering when the hell my luck was going to change. When would I be able to pull out of this hole for good?
Times like this were the toughest. It isn't easy to have faith when you're alone. The harder you pray for a break, the more they seem to avoid you, and pretty soon you begin thinking that maybe you've got it figured all wrong, that maybe you're destined to be stuck here the rest of your life, just, the way you are now.
That's when it gets tough, when you have no money, when you have no special influence, and you know there's no way in the world to go out and make something happen. All you can do is wait and be ready to take advantage of any break that happens to come your way—but they never seem to come. And soon, if you let yourself, you'll get to believe they'll never come.
When I'd got out of the Army I'd gone to work in the Provo Box Factory in Creston—just marking time, I told myself. I'll keep my eyes open and wait for something to come up. Then there had been rumors of a big superhighway project along Route 66 and I had grabbed this tourist court on a GI loan. The superhighway project had flopped, and with it my plans for big right-of-way profits. So I was right back where I'd started, except that I was now saddled with a slipping business.
It was almost midnight and not getting any cooler. Disgusted, I got out of bed and walked around in my shorts. Then I thought: Hell, I might as well go outside if I want to walk. So I put on my pants and a pair of moccasins and went outside.
The lights were still on in Number 2, and they were still talking. That Sheldon! Why didn't he just get in that Buick of his and start driving? That's what I would do if I was in his shoes.
I sat on the steps arid started to light another cigarette. But something stopped me. I didn't know what it was at first, but I knew something wasn't right. I listened hard, the unlighted cigarette in my mouth, but the only thing I could hear was the talking over in Number 2. Sheldon and his wife. I listened some more, knowing that something was wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
Then it hit me. It wasn't Sheldon and his wife talking; it was Sheldon and another man!
I couldn't hear what they were saying, but the talk kept going on and on between the men, and only occasionally did Mrs. Sheldon put in a word. The thing seemed funny to me. If Sheldon knew anybody in Creston, he hadn't mentioned It. Then I remembered that car trouble that didn't seem to exist. And the fact that he had chosen one of my shacks instead of a first-class motel. And now he was receiving company at midnight, in a place where he was supposed to be a stranger.
Little things, but put them together and it came to a pretty queer situation.
I had no qualms about eavesdropping; I was trying to hear what they were saying now, but the words were mushy and senseless by the time they had drifted over to where I was. Finally I got up and swung wide around the carport and came up in the shadows by the east window. You're going to have a hell of a time explaining this, I told myself, if Sheldon happens to look out that window and sees you standing here.
I needn't have worried. The shades were drawn, the windows and door were closed. With no ventilation, the thermometer inside that cabin must have been reaching for 105, and that only made me more curious. What could be so important that a man would take precautions like that?
I stood there behind the carport for maybe three or four minutes before anything began to make sense, and then I heard Sheldon saying:
“It sounds too good. That's the trouble. I don't like jobs that look like pushovers, because there isn't any such thing.”
“Just the same,” the other man said, “this one is a pushover. I tell you I would have done it myself, all alone, if it hadn't been for that safe.”
“Prisons are full of men who thought a job was a pushover. Well, let me see that sketch again.”
Then, after a few seconds of silence, “Look. From this first-floor window to the front office, how far is it?”
“I don't know. Forty, fifty feet, I guess.”
“I want to know exactly how far it is, right down to the last inch,” Sheldon said. “It's going to be dark and we're not going to have a guide to lead us by the hand. I want every piece of furniture listed, in the storeroom as well as in the office, and I want all the electrical wiring checked. That's very important. How about burglar alarms?”
The other man laughed. “Not a chance.”
“I know a hundred men who said the same thing,” Sheldon said dryly. “They're in cells now.”
“Cripes, I can't go in there with a yardstick and measure the place off for you. I'm takin' a big chance as it is.”
“All right,” Sheldon said flatly, “we'll forget the whole thing. The deal's off. I told you how I work, and that's the way it's got to be.”
For several minutes they just haggled, Sheldon saying the deal was off and the other man trying to change his mind. I stood there thinking: Well, I'll be damned! It didn't take a mindreader to figure out what they were planning. They were planning to rob somebody! That realization stunned me for a moment, and I guess a kind of panic took hold of me. This was a hell of a thing. The only thing I could think of was getting to a telephone and calling the Creston County sheriff.
But that would be foolish. What could I tell him? I didn't know who they were planning to rob, or how, or when, or anything else. The only thing to do was wait and see if I could learn something else.
So I waited. They were still haggling about how it ought to be done. After a while I stopped listening to what they were saying and began concentrating on the man Sheldon was arguing with. The voice sounded vaguely f
amiliar. I couldn't pin it down exactly, but there was one thing I would bet on: He was a native of Creston. The thing that puzzled me was how a native of Creston ever got to know a man like Sheldon.
“Now, wait a minute. Maybe a hundred and fifty people work at this factory. They draw between fifty and a hundred and fifty a week, so what does that make a two-week payroll? Close to thirty thousand dollars, the way I figure it. Think of it! Are you sayin' we should forget thirty grand?”
“I'm saying the job will be done my way or not at all.”
“All right, all right! I'll get the information you want. I don't know how I'll do it, but I'll do it. Now is everything all right?”
“Everything is just fine,” Sheldon said pleasantly. “Now let's have another look at that sketch. Did you notice what kind of safe it is?” .
“All I know is that it's big and looks plenty rugged.”
“Get me the make and model and it won't be so rugged. Now tell me about this factory again; I want to hear everything there is to know about it.”
I already knew what factory it was, because there was only one factory in Creston, and that was the one that made boxes. It was owned by a tough old Bohunk named Max Provo, and I had worked there one summer after getting out of the Army. I had sweated off fourteen pounds in the place for a lousy fifty bucks a week. I'd never thought of it before now, but it was a wonder the place hadn't been robbed long ago, considering how it was run.
Old Provo was the kind of penny-pinching gaffer who never put out a dollar if he didn't absolutely have to. Long ago he had figured out that writing checks cost money. A hundred pay checks, costing about ten cents each, meant that he would have to pay out ten dollars every two weeks for nothing. Twenty dollars every month, two hundred and forty every year. Not for a man like Provo. He paid in cash.
And did he have the cash brought out in an armored car? Not Provo; that kind of foolishness cost money. He picked up the cash himself and made the bank furnish armed guards, free of charge. And he picked the cash up the day before payday and made the office force come in an hour early the next morning in order to get the payroll ready by noon. That was Provo's idea of good business, squeezing that extra hour's work out of the office force.
Well, by God! I thought. At that moment I was remembering the long hours and low wages and bad working conditions, and I was almost ready to go back to my cabin and forget that I had heard anything. Let them take the cheap bastard. Let them take him good; it was none of my business, anyway.
I don't know—if I had walked off right then, maybe that's just the way it would have happened.
But I didn't walk off. I heard Sheldon saying: “Now about the watchman; what kind of routine does he follow?”
The other man laughed shortly. “His routine is to sit in the garage arid read Western magazines. He's about sixty years old, he's got a gimpy leg, and on top of that he's half deaf. You could probably blow the safe with him right there in the garage, and he'd never even know about it.”
I got the unpleasant feeling that Sheldon was not amused. “He'll have to be taken care of,” he said flatly, “but that shouldn't be any trouble. Now look. Here's a list of things I want you to do. Today's the seventh, isn't it? Yes, the seventh. Paula and I will leave this place first thing in the morning, and we'll come back on the fourteenth. I'll pick up the things I need and we'll take care of that safe the night of the fourteenth. That's right, isn't it?”
The other man must have nodded. “All right,” Sheldon said, “that's all there is to it. We'll come back to this same place. It's a lousy place, but there's one thing about it—it isn't crowded with tourists who might recognize me. The farmer that runs the place is too stupid to guess anything. He'll think we're just returning from our vacation.”
The other man sounded amused. “It's funny, in a way. Joe Hooper used to work at this factory.”
“Who's Joe Hooper?”
“The guy that owns this fly trap you're stayin' in.”
The meeting was about to break up. Paula Sheldon began complaining about the heat and somebody opened the window, but not until I was well back in the shadows.
Stupid farmer! I thought. Well, by God, we'll see about that! You're going to look pretty silly, Sheldon, when you tackle that safe with a roomful of deputy sheriffs looking on!
I got back to my cabin just in time. I saw the lights go out in Number 2, then the door opened and a man came down the steps. He came right in front of my cabin, whistling softly through his teeth, and suddenly I had him pegged. His name was Bunt Manley. He was a thickset bull of a man, wearing a flapping sport shirt and a wide-brimmed straw sombrero. He walked around the far side of the station, and after a while I heard a car pull off toward Creston.
Well, I thought, the picture is beginning to fall in place. I didn't know Bunt Manley very well, but I knew that he had recently served a year and a day in Leavenworth for some dealings in moonshine whisky, and that was probably where he had met Sheldon.
I lay across the bed again and pieced the thing together as well as I could. It was possible that the robbery had been Sheldon's idea in the first place, but it didn't seem likely to me. Probably Manley had spotted the box factory as a soft touch and had got in touch with Sheldon, who seemed to consider himself an expert on safes.
Looking at it objectively, I had to admit that they were . working it very nicely. Almost every man in Creston had worked in the box factory at one time or other, and probably Bunt Manley had too. So he would know the place, and there would be no special reason to suspect that he had a hand in the robbery. Sheldon, of course, was just a man on a vacation. You couldn't arrest a man and his wife for spending the night in a tourist court.
It was a nice setup, with one exception. I knew about it.
Tomorrow, I thought, the Sheriff will know about it. Comes the night of the fourteenth and we'll see who's the stupid farmer, Mr. Sheldon!
I couldn't sleep. This new excitement had me alive to my fingertips and I was up pacing the floor all over again. What a hell of a thing this is! I thought. Planning a robbery right here in one of my own cabins—a thirty-thousand-dollar robbery! The thought of so much money stunned me. Thirty thousand dollars, just for one night's work!
Of course, there was going to be a monkey wrench in Sheldon's machinery, and I was going to throw it. But the idea that the thing could be done, if it weren't for me, just about knocked the breath out of me. All that money!
Hooper, I thought, what could you do with that much money? Think of it!
I didn't dare think of it. Sure, I was looking for a break, an angle to grab hold of, but this business of pulling a robbery was too much of a gamble. No, sir, a thing like this just wasn't in my line.
But it was a pile of money, more money than I had ever had at one time, and it was hard getting my mind on anything else. Across the way the lights were still on in Number 2. The door was open now and I could see Sheldon working over some papers at the table. I didn't see the blonde.
Then I did see her. She was outside, sitting on the bottom step of the cabin, and the slant of light from the doorway just fell across the top of that platinum hair. I sat on the edge of the bed for a long while, just watching her, and it was then that I realized that she had hardly been out of my mind from the first moment I'd seen her. All afternoon she had moved back and forth through my consciousness. Even tonight, when I'd been with Beth, she had been in my brain.
Well, I thought, you might as well forget her, Hooper, because in just one more week she's going to be in jail, along with Sheldon and Manley. I wondered what Sheldon was doing there at the table—probably going over those sketches that Manley had made of the factory.
As I watched, the blonde stood up and stretched, and then she called, “How much longer are you going to be, Karl?”
“Not long,” Sheldon said. “Why don't you go to bed?”
“I can't sleep with the lights on. Besides, it's too hot.”
Sheldon said something else and
his wife stood there for a moment, smoothing down her hair. Then she turned and started walking out toward the highway—not going anywhere, just walking to kill time while her husband got caught up on his homework. If I had a wife like that, I thought, I wouldn't be fooling with paperwork this time of night; you could bet on that!
But when you're a professional safecracker, I guess you have to work odd hours. I turned around and watched the blonde go past my door, and then I went to the door and watched her walk as far as the station. She didn't do anything. She just stood there and looked at the empty highway, and you could almost tell how bored she was by the way she stood. I lit a cigarette and told myself it was time to get some sleep.
I didn't budge.
As long as she was where I could see her, I couldn't take my eyes off her. After a while she moved around to the other side of the station, making a wide, lazy circle on her way back to the cabin. I went to the icebox to get myself a beer, and when I got back to the door she was standing right there at the bottom step.
She laughed softly, and just the sound of her voice was enough to shake me.
“I saw your cigarette,” she said. “The heat keeping you awake too, Mr. Hooper?”
For a moment it was pretty awkward. I couldn't think of anything to say. She had known all along that I had been watching her and it didn't seem to bother her a bit.
Then a cloud slid from under the moon and there was sudden light in front of my cabin. I saw that she was smiling. “Is that beer you're drinking?” she asked.
“There's more in the icebox, if you'd like one.”
“I think that would be fine,” she said softly, still smiling.
I had a fast pulse as I went for the beer. I kept reminding myself that it was all probably very innocent, that she was just bored and wanted to talk. Still, that was the way things got started.
I didn't have any definite plans; I'd just take her the beer and see where we went from there, if anywhere. When I stepped out of the kitchen I saw that she was no longer outside by the steps.
Death's Sweet Song Page 2