“Hell,” Cassel said. “That’s what I mean. Why should he leave here? Young guy. I can use a guy like him. He’s got a great future right here on this farm with me. Hell, he’s a young guy I’ve come to depend on. Why should he go anywhere?”
12
“All right, Mitch, where is that money?” Bart Cassel’s voice struck at me like deer shot. It was the first thing he said when I walked in his bedroom just before three o’clock that afternoon. “I want it”.
“Sure. Go and get it.” I said. I stared at him on that bed, his head swathed in fresh bandages.
“No.” His voice was cold. “You go and get it.”
“You must be nuts,” I said.
“I’m not nuts. And don’t go making any other stupid mistakes about me, Mitch. I’m in bed for one reason. I want it to look good for the cops and the insurance adjuster. Don’t think you can get cute with me because I’m in this bed.”
“I’m not about to touch that money,” I said. “You think they won’t be watching? You think just because Palmer and the sheriff left and pulled the deputies out of the house they wouldn’t be watching for just such a stupid move?”
Cassel’s face was rutted. “Sounds real clever, Mitch. Sounds like you might think you’ve got all the angles figured.”
“You know you can’t walk out there and pick up that money.”
“Yes. I know.” His voice was cold, and his huge fists were clenched on the bed.
I stared straight at him. I suppose he could see the hatred that had been like a sickness since I’d learned he’d known before I took that money that another man had confessed to the murder of that girl back home. The bastard. He didn’t give a damn what happened to anybody as long as he got what he wanted. Another skin for his trophy room.
I kept my voice level, with the kind of innocence in its tone that wasn’t innocence at all, but told him to make what he wanted to out of it.
“Sounds to me like you’re the one not being very smart, Bart. The great Cassel. God knows you ought to know you got to leave that money alone until it’s safe to touch it.”
“That would be fine. If I knew where I could touch it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I warned you, you bastard. Stop playing cute. I tried to get that money. In the sump where I told you to leave it. It wasn’t there.”
“Maybe somebody stole it”
“You’re damned right somebody stole it. Only you’re not going to get away with it. You’ve made the dumbest move you ever made.”
“Did I? How smart was it to go romping around in the sump looking for that money?”
“Get one thing straight. I’m Barton M. Cassel. I can go anywhere on these two hundred sections, and nobody can question it. If you’d been smart, you’d of left that money there, and we’d have something now.”
“You’d have something now.”
He stared at the backs of his fists. “And just what do you think you’ve got?”
“Well, unless the bank short-changed you, Barton M., I’ve got a hundred and forty grand.”
“Decided you’d keep it all, eh?”
“Not when I planted it in a new place. No. I was still going along with you. But I didn’t want you outsmarting yourself by trying to outsmart me. So I put it where it would be safe.”
“Okay. Go and get it.”
“No.”
“Look, Mitch. I’m trying to keep my temper. You push me, and we’ll blow this deal. Go and get that money.”
“No. We’re not going to blow any deal, Cassel. If we had any deal, it was off when you didn’t deliver Palmer’s message to me in town.”
His laugh was a snarl. “So that’s what’s eating at you, is it?”
“That’s what’s eating at me.”
“So you’ve decided to cut me out of my money, eh?”
“That’s right. You crossed me. I been through hell. Plenty of it. I was clear. But you fixed me. Somebody has got to pay me for all that hell.”
“So you elected me?”
“If you want to look at it that way.”
His hand moved on the cover. “Do you think you can get out of this place alive if I give the order to stop you?”
“I think I can. Because as long as I’m alive, you’ve a chance to get that money. But the minute I’m dead, you’ll never get it.”
“Might be worth it to me.”
“Sure. Only you’re in a spot. You’re in debt. You couldn’t stand to have anything happen right now.”
“You feel pretty safe.”
“Rich, safe, young and lovely,” I told him.
“I’d hate to be in your shoes.”
“Maybe neither one of us would like to change. So why don’t we just drop all this?”
“You think I’m going to let you walk out of here with a hundred and forty thousand dollars of my money?”
“You are unless you want the roof to fall on your head.”
Now his laugh had a tone of cruel pleasure in it. “Oh, boy, I love this. I love it when you clever boys think you got ole dumb Bart Cassel by the short hairs. Ole country boy like Cassel. You think you can really take him.”
“I think I’m going to try.”
“Well, you better clean out your think pipes, buster. You think you been in trouble before, but you been living high.”
“Not like I’m going to, Bart, And I want to thank you. If you’d told me what Palmer said in town, I’d be an honest man, but free. Now I’m almost as dishonest, as immoral and vile as you are. But I’m a rich man.”
“Sure. You stupid clown. I could have told you, there in Fort MacKeeney. We could have danced in the street, sang happy songs. You were free. Cleared of all charges. How lovely? And what then?”
“You wouldn’t be out of a hundred and forty grand, for one thing.”
“Buster, this little game hasn’t even begun yet. You try to take that money, and you’re a dead little duck.”
“It’s a chance I’ll take.”
“This is my last offer, Mitch. I want you to think about it carefully. You bring that money to me, and when I get it fenced, I’ll give you the forty grand I promised. We forget this little mistake you made.”
I was staring at him. “Fenced?”
His mouth twisted. “Oh? Didn’t I tell you? That money has got to be sold somewhere. Every thousand dollar bill of it is hot. Like radioactive. That’s one reason the cops pulled back. They were all so sorry for me, but then the bank told us that we don’t have anything to worry about. All that money will be recovered the first time any of it appears. They kept a record of the serial numbers. Just trying to protect good old Barton M. Cassel who wouldn’t listen to reason, but insisted on dealing in cash. So now it looks like we’re back where we started, and you’ve got to trust me.”
I stared at the pictures on the wall, the drapes at the windows, the rectangle of yard I could see through the pane, white with the sun on it, silent and white.
I shook my head. “No. I’ll still keep it. I might have to travel farther and oftener, but I’ll make it.”
“You’d never spend more than one of them.”
“I might.”
“Have you tried to imagine what it’s going to be like? You trying to run from here to the Mexican border with a satchel of hot money?”
“Like you told me, don’t worry about me.”
“I don’t. I’m just trying to make you see some reason before you hold a gun to your own head.”
“Hell,” I said. “I’ve had it that way so long now, I wouldn’t be comfortable without it”
He lifted his fist, waved toward the door. “Okay. Get out of here. But let me warn you. When you walk out that door, I’m turning Palmer loose on you.”
“What for? He doesn’t want me any more. He told you that. What you going to tell him? That I robbed you?”
“If I can’t think of anything else.”
I jerked my head toward the phone beside his bed. “Be
my guest. You tell them that. And I’ll swear you waited for me in town until I took that money, that you met me afterwards—before you went to the sheriff and reported the robbery—and that you got a hundred thousand of that money. Hell, I’ll tell them you got all of it.”
“You think anybody in the state of Kansas would take the word of a tramp over Barton M. Cassel?”
I shrugged. “Maybe not. But you got the insurance people to think about. Maybe they won’t even believe me. But they’ll investigate you because I’ll swear you told me you were on the verge of ruin—”
He laughed again. “Who’ll believe that? I still got plenty I can sell off, plenty of ways I can hang on.”
“Sure. Like I say. Maybe they won’t believe me, but they’ll have to audit you, they’ll have to investigate. And right now you can’t stand to be investigated. When they find out how deeply in debt you are, they’ll know that you did plan a fake robbery.”
He chewed that over for two full minutes. Neither of us spoke. His face got so white, it matched the sheet on his bed. But at last he smiled, his lips taut and gray.
He stared up at me.
“Go on. Get out”
I frowned. Things hadn’t changed that much that he was now willing to allow me to walk out
But I decided to play it along with him. He wasn’t going to panic. Neither was I. But I had a feeling of wrong, of some gimmick that Cassel had come up with that I knew nothing about. Maybe things had changed more than I realized. Because suddenly he wasn’t fighting any more.
We stared at each other another moment and then I shrugged, turned toward the door. I was walking out, but I had a hellish feeling, as if I were in a lion’s cage, and the lion himself had politely held the cage door open so I could leave.
She was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs.
Eve had the honor of being runner-up to her husband in the person-I-least-wanted-to-meet stakes.
Her face was chalky and her hand gripped the newell post. She looked at me as if I were a fellow conspirator in some dangerous plot.
“We can’t talk here,” she said as I stepped off the stairs.
I kept my voice low. This was easy because I was drawn taut, my throat almost closed. I felt as though I was wearing a target on my back and Barton M. Cassel was drawing a bead on it. I had tried all the way down those steps to figure why it was he’d decided to allow me to walk out of there.
“No,” I said to Eve Cassel. “You’re right. We can’t talk here. But we can’t talk anywhere.”
“Not here.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Because we haven’t anything to say to each other, anyhow”
“I’ve got to talk to you.” I had never seen her like this. She was pleading.
“I’m on my way out of here,” I said.
“You can’t leave now”
“I’ve got to leave now. Barton M. gave me his okay. He might decide to rescind it.”
She caught my arm, gripping it. “Please. Listen to me. It’s after three. Stay just until the buses come in, until Evans gets back.”
“Even if I was nuts, why should I do that?”
“He’s going to kill him.”
“Cassel is going to kill Evans?”
She nodded, her mouth trembling. “Please. Not so loud. Stay. Just long enough to warn him out of here. He’ll be back with the men.”
I stared at her. “I thought you got a large charge out of all this hell you were causing.”
“Please. Not now. Maybe I’ve been evil. Insane. But Bart told me—he’s known about me and Evans for a long time—he is going to kill him. Please, help me. Just wait until Evan gets back down there.”
I walked out of the front door. I had been sweating inside the air-conditioned house. The yard made me as wet as a steam bath.
I felt as though Bart Cassel were standing at that upstairs window looking along a gun barrel at me as I walked across the yard.
Chick pulled open the gate and I went through it, hurrying toward the machinery pool. There was one thing I wanted. I wanted a jeep that would take me as far as the Wild Horse turn-off. I had to get that money and get out of here.
I still believed that if there was a hundred-dollar bill in that satchel, I could buy a plane ticket to Brownsville, Texas, or somewhere on the border. A hundred-dollar bill wasn’t going to attract enough attention, even in a travel office, to have its serial number checked until it got to a bank. Anyhow, this was a gamble I’d have to take.
All I wanted right now was a flying start.
I was almost to the machine garage when I heard the buses rolling into the yard, coming around the milk barns.
I paused, looking over my shoulder. I didn’t have time to waste warning Evans Howell out of here. Maybe even if I told him there was a bullet waiting for him, he’d look at me with that sick face and ask the Great Plains Empire stock question: “Where would I go?”
I’ll never know why I walked through that lower gate and moved toward the buses as they unloaded. The men spilled out, glancing at me.
Potter stood alongside the buses, watching the men. He looked sweated down.
I didn’t see Evans anywhere.
“Tom,” I said. “Where is Evans Howell?”
Potter nodded at me. “He’s not with us.”
“Where is he?”
“Beats hell out of me, Mitch,” he said. “Barton M. Cassel come out to the fields in his station wagon and picked Evans up right after we got out there this morning. Evans ain’t been with me all day. It’s been hell trying to handle it by myself. I don’t know why Evans never did come back.”
I looked around, wildly.
All I could see was fences topped with barbed wire. It seemed a mile back to that machine garage. Suddenly I had the feeling that Cassel had anticipated that move anyhow. I was sick, willing to bet they had orders to refuse me a jeep. Why should he help me rob him?
Just the, same, I wanted to get out of there, and there was no way out.
I heeled around and had to fight to keep from running toward that lower gate.
“Mr. Walker!”
“Senor Walker!”
I paused, chewing at my mouth, and looked over my shoulder. Jose and Old Man Hogan came running toward me.
“Please, Senor Walker,” Jose said. “Just a minute.”
“Some other time,” I said. My voice was shaking.
“Senor Walker. Today we talk with Senor Howell—”
“When?”
“This morning. Just before he left fields with Boss Cassel. He said he was worried about you.”
“I’m all right.”
“You been good to us,” Hogan said. “Since you come around, Jose and me been treated better.”
“If you need anything,” Jose said, “both Hogan and me got a little money. You can have it if you need it to get away from this place. Hogan and me want you to let us help you if we can. In our small way.”
“No. I’m all right,” I said. “Thanks. You two take care of yourselves.”
They wanted to say more, but I turned and strode away toward the gate.
At that moment I heard the screaming from the messhall porch. I stopped as if stunned, listening. I knew that it was a man screaming down there, but the sound had the high keening wail of a terrified woman in it.
13
I stood there listening to the strange wailing scream of the man at the messhall.
Everybody in the barrack yards was running toward the messhall. Men near the gate ran past me, shouting. I heard the prisoners on the other side of the fence yelling as they converged on the messhall. When they reached it, they crowded up on the porch, pressed against the fence.
I did not move.
Jose and Old Hogan heeled around and ran with the herd toward the messhall.
I stared at the gate, but I did not move toward it, either. They were shoving it closed and I saw Handecker standing there watching them.
The gate slammed shut and
Handecker began to blow shrilly on his whistle. The sound of the whistle was almost lost in the raging screaming of the prisoners.
I could see them milling around the messhall porch, leaping against the fence. Those men didn’t give a damn what had happened, but they were not going to miss a chance to scream at the tops of their lungs, add as much to the confusion as they could. The two guards stood helplessly, afraid to move into that crowd even to try to break it up.
All I could think was that I would have been out of the farm yard, almost to the last gate before the creek if I had not wasted those minutes coming out here looking for Evans Howell.
I stared at the closed gate, at the strands of barbed wire across it, I did not really believe that I would have gotten away.
I began to see I was never going to escape.
When I could move at last, I walked slowly past the buses and the barracks, going toward the messhall.
I reached the outer rim of the workers. They were staring silently at the Chinese cook who seemed to be in an hysterical state on the porch.
Ling was standing only because Potter and Handecker on each side of him were supporting his arms.
Ling’s mouth was sagging open. His eyes were distended. He was trying to speak, but none could understand him because in his terror he had forgotten how to think in English.
I pushed through the closely packed rows of men. At first they grunted, protesting, but when they recognized me they stood aside. I walked up the steps to the porch when all I wanted was to run.
“He can’t do nothing but spout Chinese,” Potter said to me. “Let’s take him inside.”
Ling must have understood this because he began to shake his head violently. His body trembled and he tried to writhe free.
Potter and Handecker merely lifted his feet off the floor and pushed through the swinging screen doors. I turned and told the herd of men to stay where they were and I followed. The prisoners were still raving beyond the fence.
Inside the messhall, Ling quieted down some. He pointed toward the rear of the kitchen. I took his arm and the four of us walked past the serving counter and into the rear pantry.
A Night for Screaming Page 12