So what did it add up to? Two strangers… a big-city card shark and a man who had spent a day poking about the area in an old crate that could move like a streak of lightning. A man who said he wanted to go into farming but sounded as if he didn’t know a damned thing about it. Hadn’t made up his mind whether to try sheep or steers or a dairy herd… That’s what he said, just as if there weren’t a hundred different problems in land and money involved in such a choice…
The sheriff glanced at his watch: twenty to eight. For an instant he hesitated, staring at the car, and then letting his eyes sweep down the shining street. It didn’t add up to anything yet. That’s what nagged at him—that little word yet.
There was the fragrance of a good dinner in the warm hallway of the sheriff’s comfortable home on the outskirts of Crossroads. He hung up his hat and slicker, smoothed his hair down and went into the living room to warm his big hands at the fireplace. Everything in the worn and faded room was part of the life he had lived before his wife died; the family pictures on the mantel, the crocheted mats on the backs of the big chairs, the shelves of familiar books beside the hearth. He liked things as they had been in those happier days, and he had resisted the sporadic attempts of his daughter to brighten up the place.
Filling a stubby black pipe, he called, “Nancy? You home?”
“Yes, Dad. In the kitchen.”
“That sounds hopeful.” He strolled down the hallway, unbuttoning his uniform jacket. “What’s for dinner?”
“Roast beef, hashed brown potatoes, et cetera, et cetera. You’ll manage.”
“An army could manage on that.”
“Do you want a drink? There’s time.” She stood at the stove with an apron over the dark skirt she had worn to the office, a tall girl with blond hair and something of her father’s strength in the planes of her face.
He didn’t want anything to drink because he might have to go out again, but he said, “Sure, let’s celebrate, honey. Want me to do the honors?”
“No, I’ll take care of it.” When she turned from the stove he put a hand on her arm. “Hard day?” He studied the clean, familiar lines of her face with a smile. “All tuckered out in the interests of Slade and Nelson, attorneys at law?”
“Just the usual—nothing out of the ordinary.”
He patted her shoulders. “Well, it’s a nice night to put your feet up and relax.”
She glanced at him briefly and said, “How very true.” Then she slipped past him and went into the pantry for glasses and the bottle of whisky.
The sheriff sat down at the kitchen table and took his time applying an even light to the tobacco in his pipe. Rain pattered against the sides of the house, streaming down the dark windowpanes in slow, level waves. A good night to put your feet up and relax, he thought. An innocent comment, but it annoyed her. But how was he to know that?
She made his drink, whisky with a touch of water, and put it beside him on the table. “How about you?” he asked her.
“I don’t feel like anything.”
“Means I drink alone then. Most pretty girls would save a man from that.”
She pushed a strand of blond hair from her forehead. “How was your day?” she said.
“Like yours, I guess, just the usual routine.” He couldn’t tell whether she was really interested or not; she was stirring the gravy and her voice had matched the mechanical rhythm of her turning hand. “I had a speeder this morning, an idiot salesman with a schedule he couldn’t have kept with a jet plane. He had to be in Wilmington by ten, but had three calls to make in Crossroads first.”
She went into the pantry, and the sheriff sipped his drink slowly, relishing the warmth spreading through his body.
When his daughter returned he tried to think of something else to talk about, but this was always a difficult chore for him; he had no taste for tidbits of conversation and his occasional jokes never seemed to strike her funny bone. And his thoughts were turning on his own problems. The two strangers… He wondered what they were doing. He had given the Negro the address of Mrs. Baker’s boardinghouse. He should be there by now. If he really wanted a room.
“Well, what happened to your speeder?”
“Oh, him. Well, I had to throw the book at him. His commissions aren’t worth a child’s life.” Finishing his drink, he said, “Excuse me a second, hon. I’ve got to make a phone call.”
He went into the hall and dialed Mrs. Baker’s boarding-house. When she answered he said, “Sheriff Burns, Mrs. Baker. Hope I didn’t take you away from supper.”
She laughed. “If you did I wouldn’t mind none. What is it, Sheriff?”
“I sent a man over to your place a while ago. I just wondered if he’d shown up yet.”
“No, not yet. What was his name?”
“John Ingram.”
“I’ll watch for him. I’ll keep something hot for him. And I’m much obliged to you, Sheriff, for recommending my home.”
“Don’t mention it. Good night, Mrs. Baker.”
When he put the receiver down the sheriff realized that his vague uneasiness was hardening into suspicion. He knew his town well and he trusted his feelings about it; when something felt wrong he became cautious. His picture of the village was made up of conscious and unconscious impressions, tactile, emotional, intuitive. The place had a right-and-wrong impact on him and when something was wrong he couldn’t relax until he had pinned it down. But when everything felt right the town seemed whole and perfect; the smell of burning leaves or factory smoke, the sounds of traffic and the activities of dogs, cats and small boys, all of these merged into reassuring patterns of harmony and sense.
Now something was wrong; the pattern was blurred and little storm signals flew in his mind.
“Hon, I’ve got to get back to the office for a while,” he said, buttoning his jacket.
“Right now? Before dinner?”
“I’m afraid so, hon.” He saw the quick disappointment in her eyes and it puzzled and hurt him; why couldn’t he ever figure out this girl of his? He had felt she was bored, and would just as soon be alone. But no. She wanted to have dinner with him, and had gone to a lot of trouble to make a little occasion of it. Instead of chops or an omelet, there was roast beef with all the trimmings. That meant she must have shopped on her lunch hour, probably had driven all the way to Pierce’s for the roast…
“I may not be long,” he said rather awkwardly. “Could you hold things up for half an hour?”
“It doesn’t matter. I might as well go ahead.”
Every kid in town brought him his problems, he thought, somewhat bitterly; they trusted him, listened hopefully to his injunctions or suggestions. Grownups, too. Men with business worries or family mix-ups talked them out with him, knowing his judgments were usually tempered with humor and common sense. He was not an educated man but he had a knack of seeing straight to the core of a situation without being distracted by emotional irrelevancies.
Everybody in town leaned on him—everybody except this girl of his.
It was a failure that had rebuked him since his wife’s death a dozen years ago. When Nancy was just a child he had been ruefully amused by his inability to understand her completely; sometimes she would snuggle in his arms for hours at a stretch, but on other occasions he couldn’t even coax a smile to her lips. When his wife was alive it hadn’t seemed too serious. His wife used to say: “She’s a real live girl, not a little toy. Just let her be, let her grow. Open your arms and let her go—she’ll come back, don’t worry.”
But with his wife gone he had felt his inadequacies much more keenly. He had been eager for Nancy to marry, feeling that might solve most of it. He had dreamed of gunning trips with her imaginary husband, family dinners on Sunday, and grandchildren to teach all the things he knew about the woods and fields around Crossroads. It wasn’t a selfish dream; he wanted it for her, not himself. The right kind of man would fuse all of her contradictory moods into his own strength and needs, and children would challeng
e her quick intelligence and release the springs of compassion he knew were locked beneath the cool surface of her personality.
If they could only talk things over, he thought. Sit down with a cup of coffee and be free and easy with each other. He didn’t want to run her life, but he longed to be a useful part of it. When she wanted to take a job in New York a couple of years ago he had sent her off with a smile—even though he knew the house would be a tomb without her. But he had opened his arms and let her go, as he’d promised his wife he would. She seemed happy in New York. Her letters bubbled with excitement. New job, new friends, all kinds of fun. He had visited her several times, wearing a good suit and determined not to play the hayseed in front of her friends. She shared an apartment with a saucy, bright-eyed girl who did something with women’s clothes in a department store. The walls were covered with odd-looking pictures and bullfight posters. They sat on little stools about eight inches high and ate dishes made with sour cream and wine.
He had adopted an approving manner for her sake. Her friends chattered like birds, but he didn’t expect her to share his preference for men who could hunt together for a week without using more than a few dozen words the whole time. One young man had asked him how many bandits he’d killed, but he was too old to fall into traps like that. He had got along fine. Nancy hadn’t been ashamed of him; if she had been he couldn’t have stood it. Not for himself, but for her.
And then, without any warning, she had returned to Crossroads. He knew something was wrong, but there was no way to bridge the awkward gulf between them; they had both tried but the attempts had been frustrated, and finally lost in a waste of banalities.
It was such a damned loss, he thought now, feeling the stiffness and hurt in her silence. She was a lovely, moody child in his eyes, but she had the hips and breasts of a woman, and her limbs were slim and graceful and strong; she was more than ready for the pain and joy of a home and children, but here she was keeping house for a father who couldn’t even guess at the thoughts running through her head. In spite of her maturity, she was still the little girl who had baffled him with her reserve and her secrets; she had to carry her troubles by herself because she wasn’t able to ask him for help. And that was his fault, not hers.
It was a hell of a thing to fail in, he thought wearily. “I’ll shove along,” he said, touching her shoulder. “I’m sorry, hon. Dinner smells wonderful.”
“I’ll leave yours on the stove,” she said.
“Sure. Thanks.” He hesitated an instant, smiling at her smooth cheeks, then turned and walked into the front hallway. The rain had stopped, but he put on his slicker anyway; at this time of year you couldn’t tell. He adjusted the chin strap of his hat, checked his gun out of long habit, and stepped out into the night.
CHAPTER TEN
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK the last customers were ushered from the bank. The stout, elderly guard called a smiling good night to each of them before he stepped back inside and pulled the big double doors shut against the windy darkness. The lights in the shops along Main Street went out one by one and the stream of shoppers evaporated quickly from the shining sidewalks. The rain had stopped but a wind lashed the sides of the buildings, reverberating against the metal trash cans and stirring currents and whirlpools in the dark waters rushing along the gutter.
It was one minute after eight.
Earl and Ingram stood at the windows of the hotel room staring down at the closed doors of the bank. Their faces were pressed close to the curtains, and their eyes shone softly in the dimly lighted room. Earl glanced down the block to the drugstore. “I’ll be right behind you,” he said, whispering the words into Ingram’s ear. “I’ll be watching you.”
“You keep watching me and that guard’s gonna blow your head off,” Ingram said dryly. Fear hadn’t left him, but some of it had been dissolved in an exasperated anger; he didn’t care about Earl’s contempt for him, but he couldn’t be indifferent to Earl’s stupidity—the man was ready to get them all killed through his dumb suspicions and hatred. Instead of concentrating on what was coming, he was indulging his prejudice like a spoiled child. “You watch yourself,” he muttered softly. “You’re acting like you never pulled anything but a toilet chain in your whole life.”
But Earl didn’t hear him; he was staring at the doors of the drugstore, his fingers tightening on Ingram’s arm. “Here it goes,” he said, his voice hard with tension.
The doors of the drugstore had been pushed open by a white-jacketed Negro balancing a tray of sandwiches and coffee in his right hand. As he stepped into the pool of light from the neon sign, a big man in a dark overcoat moved toward him from the shadows of the side street. The Negro started for the curb, but before he could take two steps the man in the overcoat stumbled heavily against him, jarring him with his bulk, and knocking the tray of coffee and sandwiches from his hand.
It appeared to have been a simple, unavoidable accident. No one who watched the sequence of events could have thought otherwise…
“Get set,” Earl said sharply.
Burke was adding to the confusion now, he saw, apologizing profusely to the delivery boy, and then stooping in an awkward attempt to retrieve the soggy sandwiches and the split-open cartons of coffee. The boy was staring in dismay at the mess of food on the sidewalk. Burke patted his shoulder consolingly, and took a wallet from his hip pocket. The boy shook his head quickly at that, then picked up his tray and hurried back into the drugstore. An elderly couple stopped and smiled sympathetically at Burke before going on their way. It was a small incident, forgotten as quickly as it happened… Burke shrugged and walked across the street, strolling toward the bank building, his black, bulky figure almost lost in the shifting shadows of the night. Earl checked his watch for the last time. They had about eight minutes to work in; it would take the counterman at the drugstore that long to make up a fresh order for the bank.
“All right,” he said to Ingram. “Grab that tray.”
There was no need to take anything else from the room. Earl’s things were in the station wagon, and Ingram’s overcoat and fedora could be safely left behind; they were standard-brand, secondhand clothes and the police would learn nothing from them.
Earl went quickly down the stairs and opened the door that led directly to the street. He stepped out, pulling his overcoat collar up around his throat, and glanced casually up and down the sidewalk. This was the one chance moment in Novak’s plan; a pedestrian pausing in front of the hotel might have delayed them. And their schedule allowed precious little tolerance for delays. But the sidewalks were deserted, shining and empty under the street lamps. Earl waved Ingram on. “Get going,” he said.
The injunction was unnecessary; Ingram was already on his way, the tray balanced professionally in his right hand as he angled across the street toward the bank building.
Earl watched Ingram’s white-jacketed figure move into the semidarkness, before drifting across the street to intercept Burke, who was sauntering casually toward the intersection. Everything was working perfectly; the sidewalks were empty and the town was quiet as they fell in step with their hands deep in the pockets of their overcoats and their faces shadowed by the turned-down brims of their hats. They didn’t speak or look at one another, but Earl could sense the excitement in Burke; his breath was coming sharply and rapidly, whistling faintly through his flattened nose.
Twenty yards ahead of them Ingram trotted up the steps of the bank and rapped sharply on the glass panel of the big, brass-handled door. The sound carried clearly along the street, sharp and distinct in the silence. They had the town to themselves, Earl thought, glancing over his shoulder. Only an occasional car or truck came through the town, yellow fog lights gleaming, and tires spinning with a liquid sound on the wet asphalt.
Ingram rapped a second time, and then turned to look down the street at them, his eyes white and scared in the darkness.
“Goddamit,” Burke said. His voice was a high, sharp whisper. “What’s the matter?”
/>
“Slow down,” Earl said. They were closing the distance too rapidly. He put a hand on Burke’s arm, forcing him to match his own measured strides.
They heard the metallic click of a sliding bolt, and then light flashed over Ingram as the door swung open. A voice said, “You’re late, Charlie. Come on, these people can’t work on empty stomachs.” It was an old man’s voice, high and strident, but charged with a folksy good humor.
Ingram murmured something under his breath, holding the tray in front of his face. The guard moved aside to let him enter, hands resting negligently on his hips.
Ingram heard Burke and Earl coming up behind him, their heels striking the sidewalk with an urgent emphasis. He stepped quickly into the warm and bright interior of the bank, seeing the women in the tellers’ cages directly ahead of him and several men working at desks behind a low wooden railing. No one paid any attention to him; the men at the desks didn’t look up, the tellers were busy with their accounts.
He stood in the glare of bright lights with warm air on his face and a feeling of busy, serious work going on around him—that was all he knew, that and the fear being driven through his body by the desperate pounding of his heart.
Ingram heard the guard say, “Sorry, gentlemen, we’re closed for—” But then his voice broke off in a sharp grunt of pain.
The door closed with a soft click, and Earl passed swiftly in front of Ingram, looking big and dangerous as he stepped over the wooden railing and pointed a gun at the startled men at the desks. “Everybody keep quiet,” he said, without raising his voice. “Just stay nice and quiet.” The girl at the switchboard near the side door stared at him in terror, her face twisting in a spasm of hysteria. “Get those earphones off,” Earl yelled sharply. “Stand up and keep quiet. You scream and I’ll start shooting.” The girl came quickly to her feet then, clamping both hands across her trembling mouth. “That’s right; don’t be a hero,” Earl said, his gun swinging easily over the four men at the desks. “Everybody take it nice and quiet. Nobody’s going to get hurt.”
Odds Against Tomorrow Page 10