Death's Sweet Song

by Clifton Adams

  I hadn't even thought of that. I got out of there.

  The minutes crawled by. Every minute seemed like an hour as I stood there in the darkness behind the garage with a thousand insane fears tearing through my brain. What if Sheldon fouled it up? What if he pulled the wrong switch, cut the wrong wire? What if the sky fell? What difference did it make? I was in it to my neck and there was no pulling out.

  Then the lights went out. The garage was black. The whole building was black. But the lights were still on in the factory building across the way, and the floodlights were still on. I heard my breath whistling through my teeth in relief.

  Sheldon had done the job right. Sheldon was a good man. At that moment I almost loved him. I heard him walking carefully across the cement floor of the garage, and then he was at the door.

  “All right,” he said, “I got the keys off the watchman. Let's go.”

  We went around to the far corner of the building, then under the catwalk, and walking into those floodlights was like walking into machine-gun fire. We cast shadows twenty feet long. We stood out like tarantulas in the snow.

  “Jesus!” Sheldon said. We stood there blinking, our backs against the office building. I felt that if we walked under those lights they would be able to see us all the way to Tulsa. But there was absolutely no other way to do it. We had to go right up to that front door and open it.

  “Well,” Sheldon said finally, “at least we can be thankful that traffic is light on the highway.”

  “Give me the keys,” I said.

  Sheldon was still staring at that highway. “I'll take care of the door,” he said at last. “You move back in the shadows and let me know the instant you spot a car. The first damn instant, understand?”

  I was getting tired of being treated like an irresponsible idiot, but I kept telling myself that it wouldn't last much longer. I moved back against the wall, then went back to the catwalk and crossed over to the factory building, where I could stand in the shadows and still see the highway. Sheldon glanced at me and I nodded. He slipped around the corner and headed for the door.

  He cast a shadow as big as an elephant against that brick wall. He went up the two cement steps to the door and I could hear the keys jingle as he went to work. I was so busy watching Sheldon that I didn't see the headlights on the highway until it was almost too late. Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference, maybe the people in the car wouldn't have noticed. But at that moment it seemed absolutely impossible that they could fail to notice Sheldon's enormous black shadow under the glare of those lights, and if they ever noticed, it was sure going to look fishy. People just don't fool around factories at that time of morning.

  “Sheldon!” I called hoarsely.

  He didn't hear me. He was so busy with that lock, concentrating so hard on which key to try, that he didn't hear a thing.

  “Sheldon!” I practically yelled it this time, and this time he heard and reacted instantly. He hit the ground as though a bomb had gone off. He dropped off those steps, maybe three feet down, and hit face down in a flower bed. The car roared past the factory and hummed off into the night.

  After a minute I gave him the go-ahead and he picked himself up and went back to work. It didn't take long. Not more than a lifetime. But he got the door open and motioned me to come on.

  I crossed back over to the office building and sidled along the edge of that brick wall as though I were walking a tightrope. By the time I got inside, Sheldon was ready to go to work. It wasn't dark in there, with those floodlights pouring through the front windows, and Sheldon had already spotted the safe.

  “Well,” he said, sounding pleased, “this shouldn't be difficult.” ”

  It still looked like a hell of a safe to me, but Sheldon was supposed to know. He was the expert.

  “How long will it take?” I asked.

  He shrugged, walking back and forth in front of the safe, looking it over from all angles. “That all depends. I'd say about fifteen minutes if I could use an electric drill, but I can't. As it is, it shouldn't take longer than thirty minutes.”

  That was going to be long enough for me. Already the echoing silence in the place was making me edgy. Sheldon was down on one knee, his black satchel open. He pulled on a pair of tight black suede gloves and tossed a pair of white cotton work gloves to me. “Put these on and wipe both doorknobs. Wipe the doorframe, too, while you're at it, and any other place that you think you might have touched.”

  By the time I had done that, Sheldon had his tools laid out—a hand-operated brace, diamond-tipped drilling bits, a teaspoon, a small bottle of yellowish liquid resting on a cushion of foam rubber.

  “All right,” I said, “what do I do now?”

  “When I blow the door,” he said, “we need to have something over the safe. Something like a very heavy quilt or blanket would do, but we'll have to make out with what we can find.”

  “How about a canvas tarp?” I said. “They usually keep them in the warehouse.”

  “Fine!” He locked in a drilling bit. “I couldn't have ordered anything better.”

  The warehouse was dark and ringing with silence. I could hear my own breathing, I could hear the wind sliding softly over the high tin roof. The echoes of my footsteps sounded like an army of marching men in the darkness.

  I had no light, but I knew my way around back there, and I finally found the pile of heavy tarps that I was looking for. They were big pieces of canvas, maybe twenty feet square and very heavy. They used the tarps to protect new shipments of material from the weather when there wasn't enough storage room in the warehouse. The thing was too cumbersome to carry, so I dragged it across the cement floor and through the partition to Sheldon.

  “How's it coming?” I said.

  He just grunted. He had shed his coat and loosened his tie, and in the floodlight glow I could see the drops of sweat beaded on his forehead as he struggled with the brace and bit.

  “Anything else you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Just keep out of my way,” he said shortly. “Go over to one of those windows and keep an eye on the highway. Don't bother me until I'm finished.”

  It looked like Sheldon's show from here on in. I went over to one of the far windows and stood staring out at the night. This was the part I didn't like. As long as I was too busy to think, it wasn't bad, but just standing and waiting began to get on my nerves. I began thinking about that Buick sitting outside. It was in the shadows, of course, hard against the building, but it would be a lot better if we could just open that big back door and drive it into the warehouse.

  Then I began worrying about Otto Finney. What if the old man was really hurt? Hurt bad? What a hell of a mess that would be!

  I looked at my watch and it was almost one-thirty. We had been there in the office almost forty minutes. What was taking Sheldon so long? Then I heard him throwing the tarp over the safe.

  “You going to blow it?” I asked.

  “That's what we came here for, isn't it?”

  “You need any help?”

  “All I need is for you to keep out of my way. Get over there by the partition and stay on your belly until this door's off.”

  I thought: One of these days I'm going to shove that nasty voice down your throat, Sheldon. But not now. I was going to be a good boy and do exactly as he said, because this was Sheldon's party.

  “You ready?” he called.

  “Yes.”

  “All right.” He set the fuse, then took about five quick steps and lay down behind the safe. The building seemed to bulge with the explosion.

  It wasn't such a loud noise—most of it was muffled by the tarp—but it was loud enough for me. It was enough to make the windows rattle. It was enough to make my teeth rattle, too.

  But it did the job. The safe door flew open as though a bomb had gone off inside, and a little whitish smoke drifted up in the darkness. Sheldon and I began picking ourselves up.

  I couldn't be as casual about it as Sheldon was. I
rushed to one window and then another, not knowing exactly what I expected to see, but something. It seemed impossible that nobody had heard that explosion. But evidently nobody had. Everything outside was nice and quiet, the highway empty. I began to breathe again.

  When I got to the safe, Sheldon was grinning. “Well, here it is.”

  “It sure as hell is!” I had never seen so much money. The explosion must have broken the inside compartment, because money was scattered all over everywhere, nice new, clean, crisp, green bills, tens and twenties and fives and ones. It was beautiful.

  I said, “What are we going to carry it in?”

  “Carry it in the box it was in,” Sheldon said. So we began crawling around on the floor, grabbing bills and stuffing them in the tin box. All that money! More money than I had ever dreamed of—and half of it was mine!

  “Well,” Sheldon said when we'd got it all together, “how does it feel to be rich?”

  “It feels fine! But it will feel even better when we get away from this factory.”

  That was one time Sheldon gave me no argument. He got his satchel and I picked up the box of money, all that beautiful money, and we headed for the door.

  We waited until the highway was clear and then made a run for it. Going under those floodlights was nothing now. I had thirty thousand dollars under one arm and was on top of the world. By the time we reached the garage I was four stories tall and growing by the minute.

  “By God,” Sheldon said, “I'll have to hand it to Manley. He said this would be a pushover, and it was. I'd never have believed there could be such a pushover if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.”

  “Good old Manley!” I felt like laughing. “He's going to have a fit when he reads the morning paper.”

  “The hell with Manley,” Sheldon said. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

  We had already started for the car when I heard it. I didn't know what it was, but it hit me like a hammer. Sheldon looked around at me. “What's the matter?”

  “I don't know. I thought I heard something.”

  “Heard something? Where?”

  “I don't know. I think it was in the garage.” Both of us stood there as rigid as a pair of department-store dummies. I listened until my ears ached, every nerve drawn to the snapping point. Then it carne again, a scuffing, shoving sound that started an unscratchable itch on my scalp.

  I glanced at Sheldon. “Did you hear it then?” He shook his head.

  Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just an overactive imagination, or maybe it was just the strain. After all, a man doesn't commit a thirty-thousand-dollar robbery every day. But I had to be sure. It was much too late to begin taking chances.

  I said, “Wait a minute. I want to have a look in there.”

  I opened the door and stepped into the pitch-darkness of the garage. There was no sound, absolutely no sound at all. Hooper, I thought, you'd better get hold of yourself before you go off the deep end. Then, just as I turned to go, the light hit me right in the face.

  It was brighter than any light I had ever looked into. Brighter than those floodlights. Brighter than the sun. It hit me right in the eyes, that ball of brightness, and I couldn't see a thing. I lunged to one side just as the revolver crashed and resounded with unbelievable violence around the walls of that high garage. I felt the hot breath of the bullet. I heard the instantaneousspat! as the slug smashed itself against the brick wall.

  I turned to run. I fell over something—God knows what —there in the darkness and went sprawling just as that revolver exploded again. Then I knew, somehow, instinctively, that running was not the answer.

  That light had been on my face. The owner of that pistol was not only trying to shoot me, he knew who I was!

  There was no time for rationalization. That deadly .38 of Sheldon's was in my hand. I fired once, twice, three times at the sweeping ball of light that was trying to pick me out of the darkness. I heard the incredible reverberations shatter the silence of the night, and I knew, somehow, that there was no use shooting any more.

  It had happened with unbelievable speed. One second? Two seconds? No more than that. By the time Sheldon came crashing into the garage, it was all over.. Realization of what had happened was just beginning to hit me, and it left me cold and weak.

  “Hooper!”

  “It's all right,” I heard myself saying. “It's all over.” That flashlight still stabbed the darkness. I could hear it rocking back and forth on the cement floor. Its beam swept shorter and shorter arcs across the floor, and finally it stopped, pointing directly at me.

  Sheldon said, “For God's sake, Hooper, what happened?”

  “I just killed the watchman,” I said.

  Chapter Seven

  Sheldon took about four quick steps in front of me and picked up the flashlight. He turned the beam on the watchman's face.

  He was dead, all right. There was no use feeling for a pulse this time. Those pale old eyes stared directly into the beam of light, unblinking. A broken little man, completely dead. He had fallen on a small heap of waste rags, the kind you find in every garage, and for a moment he looked as though he were another pile of rags and not a man at all.

  Sheldon moved the flashlight beam up and down, slowly and carefully, and it was easy enough to see what had happened. The watchman's feet were still tied, but he had somehow managed to loosen his hands. He had pushed himself over to the garage wall, to a workbench where the pistol must have been, and the flashlight. Probably he was just beginning to untie his feet when I heard him.

  Sheldon suddenly shot that beam of light at me. “Well, Hooper,” he said tightly, “you've fixed things this time. You've fixed them good.”

  “I fixed them!” I stepped forward and knocked that beam out of my face. “You were supposed to have him tied and gagged! A fine fix we'd have been in if I hadn't stopped him before he threw that switch.”

  “Did you have to kill him?”

  “What was I supposed to do? He had that flashlight right in my face!”

  “But you didn't have to kill him. It could have been some other way.”

  Sheldon's voice was almost a whine now. I could look . right through that tough front of his and see his guts deserting him. This was something I hadn't figured on. If anybody went to pieces in this operation, I had expected it to be me. But I should have known. I'd seen the signs— I'd seen how Paula could shut him up. From personal experience I knew that he would not touch a job unless he figured it to be an absolute pushover. The signs were there, all right, but I hadn't seen them until it was too late.

  Now Sheldon wiped his face on his coat sleeve. “This isn't just robbery now, it's murder! I didn't agree to anything like this.”

  “You didn't agree! Listen!” I grabbed the front of his shirt and twisted hard. “Listen to me! Do you think I wanted it? I liked this old man. I liked him a lot, and about the last thing in the world I'd want to do is kill him. But I had to do it. Do you hear me? He had the flashlight in my face!”

  “Christ!” I could feel him shaking. “I didn't plan on anything like this!”

  “You didn't plan! You gave me the gun, didn't you?”

  It was amazing, really. I had never killed in my life and I had never imagined that it could be so easy. I was sorry that it had been Otto; it would worry me for a long time, but still it wasn't as bad as I had heard. It had been Otto or me. Otto had shot at me and I had shot back, and there was no way in the world to change it now. I had to accept it. Besides, there were other things to think about. It was staggering how many things there were.

  “Hooper, we've got to get out of here!”

  “Wait a minute. I think I've got something.”

  The one word that kept hitting me was “murder.” To me it didn't have the usual meaning. It was like thinking of cancer or TB. You get yourself branded with it and it kills you, only with murder you the in the electric chair instead of in a bed.

  I said, “Sheldon, you wait right here.” T
hen I went down on one knee and lifted the dead watchman to my shoulder. Sheldon looked as though he had been clubbed. He stared dazedly as I hurried out of the garage with the dead man across my back. What I had in mind wasn't going to fool anybody for long, but it would cross the Sheriff up for a while, at least, and maybe that would be long enough.

  It seemed, by now, that I had run that gantlet of floodlights a hundred times, but that didn't make it any easier this time. It was pure gambling; I just had to hope that no one saw me. Old Otto Finney had been a frail little man, and I was glad of that as I raced along the front of the building with him across my shoulders. I didn't even look at the highway. I went right up to the door, pressed Otto's palm to the latch and in two or three places along the door frame. Then I dragged him inside and did the same thing there. Finally I went over to the blown safe and made sure that Otto's fingerprints would be found on the door as well as other places.

  That was that. I was breathing as though I had been swimming underwater, but I hoisted the dead man to my shoulders again and headed for the door. Just as I stepped outside I heard the sound of a motor, and then the headlights of a car cut a thin gash in the darkness of the highway. I hit the ground. The dead watchman hit and rolled a few feet ahead of me. As the car hummed past and out; of sight, I lay there for several seconds, breathing hard. And Otto was looking at me. Those pale, sightless eyes were wide open and staring right at me.

  I said, “I'm sorry, Otto!” And I knew I had to get hold of myself or I was cooked. What was done was done. I wasn't going to crack up about it. That was the one thing in the world I couldn't afford to do. I shouldered the corpse and made another run for darkness.

  Sheldon was right where I had left him, there by the garage door. I hadn't been afraid of his running out on me because I still had the key to the Buick. “Get the car door open,” I panted. “The back seat.”

  By this time Sheldon had guessed what I was up to.

  It won't work, Hooper,” he said tightly.