Black Alice

by Thomas M. ; Sladek Disch; Sladek Disch

  That son of a bitch. That greedy bastard.

  Roderick felt a sudden sweat prickle his brow. Would he do it—the thing that he had to do? Wasn't there room yet to turn back—not from Bittle's cabin, of course, but from this thing that had to be done? May not this cup pass away from me, except I drink it? he wondered.

  If only he had been able to talk to somebody... (If only there had been somebody to talk to!)... but he had not dared, once the plan had been set in motion, to telephone or meet with any of the others. Now, briefly, while he could be sure he was not under surveillance, he might.

  He pulled the car up to the pump of a lonely gas station and set the attendant to filling the tank and checking the oil and air pressure, while he went inside the station and used the pay-phone.

  'Hello?'

  'Bessy,' he blurted out, Tve got to talk to you. It's important ...'

  She flared up. 'You goddam stupid sonofabitch, what are you calling up here for?'

  The receiver was trembling in his hand. He had to sit down on the grease-stained chair behind the cash register. He knew now that Bessy would not be able to help, nor could anyone else take the cup away. How could she answer a question that he would not ask? He tried to approach the matter indirectly. Bessy refused to listen. 'Are you drunk?' she asked scornfully. He didn't listen to the rest of her scolding chatter.

  If I do do it now (and I must, 1 must), and if she remembers this call, then she will know it was me.

  Therefore he would have to convince her that he had made the call for another reason than he had (which reason was, indeed, anything but clear to himself).

  The question with which he hoped to cover his tracks came unbidden to his lips, from what buried association of ideas he would never know: 'Do you know, Bessy, whether Donald Bogan is still alive?'

  Chapter 13

  Beer, Owen?' Farron Stroud asked, when Owen Gann had emerged from the cooler into which he had just trundled two steel barrels of Spengler's. Farron had promised (an election promise, perhaps?) to stand treat to all the Klansmen returning from their first day of non-violence. Not to overdo it he was laying in extra quantities of the cheapest beer he could get.

  'Make it a Spengler's. We ain't supposed to go round drinking the competition's stuff. Leastways, not with our uniform on.'

  'Aw hell, Owen, one's just the same as the other.' Farron drew a beer at the tap and slid the glass down the bar to Owen, spilling foam. 'Some of 'em advertise more, that's the only difference. You know, I even heard they ship all of it in the same tank cars, then just fill up the barrels and bottles with whatever they got handy.'

  Owen grinned. 'I heard some people say the same thing about cars. They say that, dollar for dollar, Fords and Chevies are just the same.'

  Farron thrust his narrow, hawkbeak face close to Owen's. 'And what do you say?'

  'I ain't never had a new one so's I could find out, Farron. I just got to take other people's word for it'

  'Well, I've had plenty of new cars. I get me a new Ford every other year, and you know why?' His eyes darted to the light and the left, a gesture more of theatrical than of practical value, for the only other customer in Stroud's Bar and Grill was a plumber's apprentice who worked across the street whenever there was work across the street to be had. He sat upon his bar stool, swaying slightly and regarding his face amicably in the mirror, while at his elbow a transistor radio was stomping out the week's number-ten hit.

  'I'll tell you why. Because General Motors is all owned by kikes! It's a fact—they're all a bunch of damn Jews! Ford is the only hundred-per-cent American car.'

  That's a funny thing, Farron,' Owen said, 'because I always heard just the opposite. I always heard it was Ford that was all jews and G.M. that was white folk.'

  'Naw!'

  'S'what I heard.'

  'Say, Owen, if you don't mind my asking, what's that funny smell you got all over you? Smells like perfume.'

  That, oh yeah. That must of been when I made a delivery to this-here cathouse down along the tidewater. Somebody'd broken a bottle of perfume there, and the place was reeking with it. Must have got some on me.'

  Have a safe and sane Fourth! the radio bade all of them. 'Safe insane Fourth!' the apprentice plumber echoed, toasting the radio. He gestured to Farron for another whiskey.

  When Farron returned to Owen he said in a grave, conspiratorial tone: 'You know what, Owen? I just thought of something—what if we was both right! What if both Ford and General Motors was Jew-dominated?'

  Owen grinned his L'il Abner grin. 'Don't know, Farron. Guess we'd all have to go out and get ourselves Volkswagens.'

  'I don't think that's so funny,' Farron said stiffly. 'VW is a rotten foreign car that comes into this country just to take bread from honest American mouths. There oughta be a tariff against things like that. I say that anybody that drives a foreign-made product isn't any better than a kike himself.'

  ... and drive carefully. Alcohol and gasoline don't mix. The plumber's apprentice nodded sombrely. 'True, very true.'

  'I hear our Kladd, O'l Boggs, has got a car he wants to sell,' said Owen, sliding gracefully into the subject that (aside from the delivery) had brought him to Stroud's Bar and Grill.

  'Yeah, he got himself a real pig. You pay nothing and you get nothing—that's what I say. I hear tell he bought it from some nigger. Them niggers will drive the guts out of a car.'

  'Still, I'd like to have a look at it,' said Owen carefully. I know a little about cars. If it's only a valve job, I can take it down myself.'

  'You wouldn't want an oil-burning pig like that. Believe me, Owen, that car is with its last owner right now.'

  'Can't hurt to look at it though. Thought I'd run over to Pete's place this afternoon if it ain't too far. Where does he live?'

  Farron looked miffed that his advice should be valued so slightly. 'Well, if you really want to waste your time... He lives in this tumbledown cabin, used to be part of a motel, but nobody ever stopped there. Go across to Hampton, then take Route 17 out past this town, name of Ordinary. Motel's called by the same name. You can't miss it, there's still a big sign.'

  'Thanks. I think I'll go there now. Don't you go calling up Pete and telling him I'm interested, hear?'

  'Can't. He ain't got a phone. Hey, before you go there you should take a bath. You smell like some goddamn fairy with that perfume all over you.'

  But Owen Gann was already out the door. The plumber's apprentice waved at the departed figure benignly and bade him, loudly, a safe insane Fourth.

  Within fifty feet of Bittle's cabin, the wheels of the rented car slewed and settled into the red-brown mud. 'Everything is going wrong!' Roderick's tone was shrill, especially for a man speaking only to himself.

  No—if he could keep himself calm, calm and courageous, but above all calm, then everything would be all right. Truly great men meet setbacks with a glad heart, for these are the best yardsticks by which their greatness may be measured.

  He raced the engine, but the back wheels only dug in deeper. Hey!' he called out the window. 'Can't you bastards come out and give me a push? I'm stuck in your damn slough.'

  Bittle, looking unhappy in a business suit, came out on to the wooden platform of the porch. 'Leave it. I'm not going out in that muck with this suit on. Besides, Harry's going crazy, waiting to divide up the cash.'

  'I'll bet he is.'

  The cabin was far cleaner than Roderick, judging by its exterior, had expected. The plasterboard walls, though violently warped, were recently whitewashed, and the boards of the floor had been scrubbed to ashy whiteness. The room achieved a sort of spaciousness by admitting only the barest bones of furnishing: a pallet covered with an army blanket, a home-made table and three wooden chairs, a metal wall locker, and, at the foot of the pallet, a black trunk with M/Sgt J. Bittle stencilled on it in white.

  'You were in the Army, Jim?' Roderick asked, in a fatherly way.

  'No, sir, that was my Daddy's footlocker. I haven't been in ... y
et.'

  'You shouldn't have any trouble with it, by the looks of this room. It could pass inspection this minute.'

  The attache case lay atop the table, unopened, and lying on the attache case was Harry Dorman's hand. Harry looked briefly towards Roderick, flicker of green eyes, and away.

  Clever of him, Roderick thought, not to mention the letter he sent me with young Bittle present. Clever, hut his eyes give him away.

  'Shall we?' Harry asked, holding up a small chrome-plated key. Roderick nodded. Harry unlocked the case and solemnly, slowly opened it. Bittle, who had lived through this same moment in numberless movies, knew his part: he whistled.

  'There's so much,' said Harry.

  'There's enough,' Roderick replied coldly. He kept his hands in his trouser pockets. It would have looked odd to be wearing gloves on a hot July afternoon.

  Bittle whistled.

  Harry removed the packages from the case. There were a hundred banded bundles each containing a hundred hundred-dollar bills.

  'I suppose,' Roderick said off-handedly, 'that you'd like half of that.'

  Harry opened and shut his mouth in the manner of a fish considering bait. 'Half?' he managed at last to say. 'You think I ought to have half?'

  it's only fair, isn't it, Harry, considering how hard you've worked for this? You've certainly done half the work, haven't you? What can I do to prevent your taking half, if you want it? Go to the police?' Roderick laughed mirthlessly and, mirthlessly, Harry joined in. All the while Roderick had been talking. Harry had been putting the bundles in stacks of five, each worth fifty thousand dollars. Now there were twenty such stacks.

  Roderick carefully pushed one of these stacks to the side of the table. 'That's Jim's.' Another stack to the other side of the table. 'And that's for Bessy. Now the rest must be for us.'

  Dorman's upper lip tic-ed. 'You're sure in a generous mood, Roderick, old pal.'

  'I can afford to be! But I'll leave it up to you, Harry—what do you want? There it is on the table. Take what you think is your fair share.'

  With no uncertainty Harry scooped up three bundles, the agreed-upon $150,000. His green eyes lifted then to regard Roderick curiously. Tentatively, his eyes not moving from Roderick's, he stretched a hand forward to take another bundle, two more. He stuffed the money into his coat pockets. Soon there was no more room in his pockets.

  'Are you sure you don't want more, Harry? Go ahead, take a few more.'

  Harry's eyes narrowed. 'Say, what kind of game is this? Are you making fun of me, or what?'

  'It's not like that at all, Harry. I'm just trying to be fair. Fair's fair, isn't it? I know what a lot you've gone through for this, Harry. How many years were you in jail? Go ahead— take a few more. If you need something to carry it in, why don't you use the case?'

  Harry surrendered to an unconsidering greed. He emptied out his pockets into the attache case, then took more bundles from the stacks on the table. When he'd finished, he had taken fully two-thirds of the ransom money. 'There,' he said weakly, 'the rest of it is yours. No matter what you say.' He took up the case and cradled it in his two arms like an infant.

  Roderick let the silence grow hollower and hollower until Harry would look up at him. Bittle, meanwhile, had retired to the corner of the room to sit on the pallet.

  'Harry, Harry, Harry!' Roderick said, giving each repetition a slow, sad shake of his head. 'I'm really surprised at you. I would have thought you'd had more sense than that. Not to mention honour. Haven't you ever heard of honour among thieves? You have to ruin a wonderful crime like this because you just can't get enough.'

  'I—but you said ...'

  'You know what you are, Harry? You're an avaricious son of a bitch, and like many another avaricious son of a bitch, Harry, your greed has been your undoing.' Roderick took the pistol out of his pocket and aimed it at a point between Harry Dorman's wide-open, ivy-green eyes.

  'You should be ashamed of yourself, Harry,' Roderick said, and pulled the trigger. Harry, in his last conscious moment, reached for his own gun, and he was quick enough so that before he fell to the floor he had it in his hand.

  'Sorry I had to mess up your place,' Roderick said to Bittle, who had risen from the pallet, though remaining in the farthest corner of the cabin.

  'You don't want more than your fair share of the money, I hope?' He asked, stooping to take the gun, a -45, from Dorman's hand.

  'No ... I... no. I don't want any money.'

  'None? Nothing at all? Oh, don't be silly!' Roderick stooped again to pick up the briefcase and set it on the table. 'How old are you?' he asked.

  'Me? I'm nineteen.'

  'Nineteen. Then you'll be needing some money for college, or dates or something, won't you. You can't get anywhere these days without a college diploma.'

  Recognising the mocking tone that had preceded Harry's murder, Bittle began to weep. 'No, please—take the money and just leave me be. I won't ever talk, I swear to God. You don't have to kill me.'

  'It's a pity. I know.' Roderick was quite astonished at the kick that the .45 had. His first shot ploughed into one of the whitewashed rafters overhead.

  The youth rushed at him, but the second shot did not go wild. 'God!' Bittle screamed, and his body convulsed about the belly wound. He assumed a curled-up attitude on the floor that put Roderick distinctly in mind of a photograph in that morning's newspaper of a civil-rights demonstrator.

  Was he quite dead? To fire another bullet to make sure would not advance the impression he'd hoped to create of the two men having fallen out over their spoils and killed each other. On the other hand, it was better to be on the safe side, so he fired a third bullet, into Bittle's head. He replaced the .45 in Dorman's hand, and his own gun in Bittle's.

  He congratulated himself on his self-control, but now that the deed had been done he could feel the panic swelling up in him, like a wolf standing outside the cabin door and demanding to be let in.

  He reopened the case and packed a full amount of the money back inside it. He checked his clothing to make certain he had not splattered himself with blood; he had not. He took a tranquilliser, and while he waited for it to take effect he recited the poem that was reputed to be Franklin Delano Roosevelt's favourite, Invictus by William Ernest Henley.

  'I'm Averill Hotchkiss of KHGG-TV's Hotline News. And what's your name, sweety-pie?' 'Mmankf,' said the little black girl.

  'Look into the camera now. There, that's more like it. And speak into the mike. Now, what was that name again?' 'MMNKF!'

  'Alice! '(Hotchkiss made an adjustment in the audio level of the microphone.) 'Well, Alice, what do you think of all this trouble?'

  'I don't know what to think. I don't think that man should be kicking the poor old...'

  'A terrible thing, yes. What about school, Alice? Do you want to go to the same school as little white girls?'

  After a brief pause, the girl said: 'I don't see why not. Shouldn't I want to?'

  'Wellthankyouverymuchyounglady,' Averill Hotchkiss said, hurrying on to his next hotline interview. 'Now here's a man who looks as though he might have something to say ...'

  'You bet I have,' said the bedsheeted but unmasked Klansman. 'First, let me say this to every nigger in this town—stay in your houses. Ya hear? Because tomorrow...'

  'Now that's what I mean,' said Peter Boggs, turning down the sound on the television set. 'It just ain't right! I swear, sometimes a person's ashamed to be white, some of the things the Klan does. It wasn't like this where I come from. We always treated the niggers nice, and they was nice right back. Course, there weren't so damned many of them in Booneburg. I ain't no nigger-lover, the Lord God knows, and I say there's a place for the Klan, but did you see him there, just kicking that old woman. That just ain't a Christian thing to do.'

  'Why don't you quit, if that's the way you feel, Pete?' Owen asked.

  'I reckon I ought to, but the truth is I'm scared to. And maybe I always keep hoping that things'll get the way they used to
be, back when I was your age. I can still .remember the day I joined up. I'd just seen Mae Marsh in Birth of a Nation, a movie about the Civil War and afterwards. She was about as pretty and sweet a girl as ever walked this earth, more like an angel than anything else, and there was this nigger—he was wearing a Yankee uniform—that chased her up this mountain, and there she was, standing right on the edge of the cliff, with that black beast slavering after her. Of course, there was only one thing she could do—she jumped. Now, that's the sort of thing the Klan should be looking after.'

  Owen had arrived at the Ordinary Motel fifteen minutes before, and he still hadn't been able to get around to inquiring after the Buick sitting outside in the drive. He had first made the association between Peter Bogg's newly-purchased (and un-licenced) car and the description of the kidnappers' car when he had been at Bessy's, and he had somewhat abbreviated his investigations there in order to follow out his hunch. He was obliged, finally, just to blur it out: 'Pete, what are you asking for that old copper-coloured Buick of yours?'

  'I paid seventy-five for it, and to tell you the truth, Owen, it ain't worth any more. It's been drove to death.'

  'Where'd you get it? Somebody around here?'

  'Ol' Jim Bittle, a nigger that lives up the turnoff by the Dr. Pepper sign. But I don't think Jim had it very long before he sold it to me. He didn't even know what kind of tyres he had on it. Nylon cord tyres, almost brand new. For seventy-five dollars I figure it'd be worth it just for the tyres almost. Anyhow, that's what I said to Jim, and he didn't say boo back. Seemed glad to be rid of it. I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was stole.'

  'Yeah? I noticed the licence plates was gone. I'd hate to buy it off you and find out it was stolen, so I think I'd better wait a while. See you at the meeting tomorrow.'