by Gil Brewer
“You through?” she said. “Are you through, Lee?”
I didn’t speak, trying to catch my breath. Then I shouted at her. “Where’s the money, Evis? Where’s Kaylor? Don’t lie to me! That’s all I want from you.”
She lay back against the tent and slowly let herself slide to the ground, the dress pulling up to her waist. She sat on the ground, crumpled there, and began to laugh. She looked like a two-bit whore propped up in an alley after wearing out a line-up.
I heard somebody running through the brush across the clearing.
DeGreef burst into the clearing, saw us, stopped.
Evis went on laughing. She was some picture, sitting against the side of the tent with her hair hanging down that way. She sat with her knees drawn up and wide apart, her full bare white thighs exposed to the thin line of pants.
“Sullivan—damn you!”
DeGreef charged across the clearing, stumbled around the fire.
Evis stopped laughing. “Who’s he?”
I stood above her, breathing hard, still wanting to hurt her in some way and at the same time afraid I had.
“You bitch,” I said. “Where’s that money?”
She looked up at me. “I don’t have it.” Just then DeGreef reached us. He stopped and looked down at her, then over at me, then at her again. I saw the way his eyes drew at her, and something heavy came into his expression.
“So, this is Evis,” he said. He had his gun in his hand. He sighed deeply and there was a watery squish as he changed position. Water slowly dripped from his clothes. He was soaking wet and covered with mud and bits of black seaweed.
Evis made no attempt to cover herself. She stared at him and said again, “Who’s he?”
“He’s the Law.” I told her his name and who he was.
“So, you’re Mrs. Sullivan,” DeGreef said again.
“Yes!” she shouted. “Yes! So what?”
She got up and stumbled around the side of the tent and stood facing the fire.
I stepped past DeGreef and he grabbed my arm. “You two can get ready to make for home,” he said.
“Didn’t you hear her? She doesn’t have the money.”
“She’s lying.”
“Fine. Okay. She’s lying.”
We stared into each other’s eyes. He jerked free and went over to her and took her arm, holding the flesh tightly. He seemed to lift her off her feet and bring her around and set her in front of him. His voice was hoarse and loaded with fury.
“Now, little girl,” he said. “Where’s the money you and your herd of stallions took from that building and loan association?”
She put one hand to her mouth and stared across his shoulder at me, shaking her head slowly from side to side.
His hand came up, flashed against her face. The mark showed white, then red and dark, even in the light from the fire.
I moved toward him, then stopped.
“Let go my arm,” she said.
“I’ll break your arm right off short,” he said slowly. “You’d better talk, and damned fast, girlie.”
“Don’t call me girlie.”
I went over and grabbed him and whipped him away from her. Then I faced her. I started talking and I was so damned mad I couldn’t talk. It all caught in my throat and I just stood there staring at her.
“Yes,” she said. “You don’t have to believe me. I know you won’t believe me. Berk left me here—just left me. You understand that?” She leaned a little forward, speaking bitterly. “I don’t expect anybody to believe me. He left me here and took off and he’s got the money with him. By now he’s on a plane out of Miami. And I’m glad, you hear that?”
“She’s lying like hell,” DeGreef said, with a sigh.
I saw now that the dress she wore looked as if she’d been living in it for days, but I knew it hadn’t been that long. It was streaked with mud, and she seemed altogether wild and sick and lost.
“He pitched me off the air boat. Right out there in the water and mud,” she said. “Tent, clothes, and everything.” She looked at me. “Oh, why in hell should I try to explain?”
“You tell me,” I said. “I’d like to know why.”
“She’s lying like hell,” DeGreef said again. He brushed past me and elbowed her out of the way and ripped the tent-fly open and went inside. I heard him grunting, rooting like a bear. Evis kept watching me, her eyes sick and frightened.
“I mean it,” she said softly. “I mean it, Lee.”
“I’m laughing.”
DeGreef came out of the tent and looked at us. “She’s alone,” he said. “She wouldn’t've had time to hide that money.” He came up to me, his eyes dark shadows under the bristling brows. “Sullivan? Oh, Christ!”
He stepped a few feet away, then held the gun in the air. He fired it, waited a moment, then fired again, waited, and fired a third time. Then he flipped the gun open, felt around in his trouser pocket, brought out some shells and reloaded the revolver.
“They may hear that and they may not,” he said. “The upstate cops’ll be around, Sullivan. They’ll hear it sooner or later, and they’ll be here. You won’t get off the island, so don’t try anything.” He stood there watching us. “Go ahead and talk, you want to talk.” He turned and walked squishing over to the fire, held the gun in the air and squeezed off three more well-spaced shots into the night. The explosions rocked and echoed off across the swamp.
We waited.
There was no answering shot.
There was nothing I could do about him. I watched him peel off his jacket, wring it out, and drop it across a cabbage palm stump. I wondered if the shots had been for our benefit, maybe just to prove his damned gun worked, or if he actually thought the upstate cops were in the vicinity. It looked to me as if he wanted all the glory of taking us in. And he wanted that money, too. He began gathering wood for the fire from around the clearing, watching me all the time.
I looked over at her. “Where’s Kaylor?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to tell you. Can’t you see?”
“Who in hell did you think you were calling to out there, when we came in with the boat?”
She turned away. “I thought it was Berk coming back. What else? He won’t come back. I know that.”
She looked at me again, standing in front of the tent opening. Then her gaze turned to the ground. Then she looked up at me again. Oh, great. So what could I do to her? I could hate her and what good did it do? She could stand there and look at me that way, like a little kid with her finger in the God-damned jam jar, and I knew what was going on behind those eyes.
“You framed me for murder,” I said. “There are two dead men. You robbed and you ran and you stand there with the sweat of a dead man still on you, and look like that.” I was disgusted and mad. What the hell—it would never touch her. Not her. Not that one. Nothing would touch her.
“I know, Lee—I know.”
“Oh, fine—you know!”
DeGreef coughed loudly and I heard him break some dry wood, toss it on the fire. The fire blazed a little higher, flaming across her features, and her eyes watched me with a kind of determined bitterness now.
I took a step toward her. “I ought to wring your neck,” I said. “I mean, really wring it.”
She backed away from me, her eyes frightened again.
“I’ve had all I can stand!” she snapped. “Don’t you see? I’m sorry—sorry—sorry! What do you want me to do?”
“You’re sorry.” She was terrific.
“Ed killed Jefferies,” she said.
“He sure as hell can’t say different.”
“I was crazy, Lee—just plain crazy. I wanted too many things. So much we didn’t have. It’s always been that way.”
“Only now you’re not crazy any more.”
She kept looking at me.
“You’re both crazy,” DeGreef said, working on the fire. “But, hell—I can’t see as it’ll do either one of you any good.”
&nb
sp; Chapter 16
IT WAS QUIET for a time. You could hear sounds that came from deeper in the island growth. There had been a note of resignation in the way she spoke, but she was a sweet actress.
She glanced across at DeGreef, then stepped up to the tent. Her voice was bitter as she called to him.
“You want to keep tabs on me? You—out there by the fire! I’ll leave the tent open. I’m tired and sick and I want to lie down.”
She flung the tent open and stepped inside. The firelight played across her body. Her mouth was set, the eyes glistening as she peered out at me.
I turned to DeGreef, feeling helpless. He looked at me from under the eyebrows, then went back to his fire. I moved inside the tent and stood above her, trying to think.
She lay back on one elbow across a heavy blanket.
“You’re not going to get away from here,” she said. “At least not the way it looks. Why not relax?”
All right, Sullivan, I thought. Okay. There she is. Right there. Plain and fancy. Let’s see you read her.
“Come on,” she said. “Sit down and relax. Boy, you had me scared out there, Lee. I’ve been scared for hours. Staying here all alone.”
She lay back, turned on her stomach, and pushed her face down into the blanket. Then she rolled her head to the side, looking away from me. “I’ve done wrong, Lee—I know that. I can’t expect you to forgive me all I’ve done. I don’t ask for that. I just want you to know I’m sorry—that’s all. There’s nothing else I can say.”
“On top of everything else,” I said, “you were sleeping with Ed.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“He told you that?”
“That and everything else.”
“He was a dreamer, Lee. He tried, plenty—but he never succeeded.”
It was quiet again. I stood there. It was like soft chocolate fudge; you ate it with a spoon and it was real sweet.
“I was out to Ed’s place a few times. That’s all. We were planning what to do.” She spoke evenly now. “I knew you’d never go through with it. That was plain enough. So I brought Ed into it.”
“Nice.”
“I—sure, I promised him plenty if he’d do it with me. I’d have promised him anything—I did. But I never went through with it, Lee.”
I could have choked her then, but for some reason I didn’t want to touch her. Right then, if I had touched her, I might have killed her.
“I was at his cabin,” I said. “I saw! You were using me to take the rap. I know how you two were.”
She sighed, not moving. “I don’t want to argue—I just don’t. I did plenty of promising—that’s all.”
“They call it promising now? Well, you can sure promise to beat the band.”
“Any woman can.”
I turned and went outside the tent and stood there a moment. Thoughts of what she’d done had me all fogged up. Everything—all the trouble—hinged on her, lying there at my feet.
“Ed wanted that money bad as soon as he saw how it could be taken so easy,” she said. “I really didn’t have to do a whole lot of persuading on that score, Lee. And—well, frankly, he was in love with me. He’d been after me for a long time. Ever since he brought you home that night, drunk. He tried that night, Lee—chased me all over the house. He got me on the bed, but I cut his leg with the scissors.”
There was nothing that could help. Not now. It was all gone to hell. I began to realize all over again that I had to get that money somehow and return it to where it belonged. Only it was gone with Kaylor.
They could even claim Kaylor had been in on it with us.
“I don’t much care what happens to me now,” she said. “I’m telling you the truth. That’s the way it is. It’s all blown up. It’s all over with.”
“Ed said you planned to kill me.”
“That’s how he planned it, Lee. I’d never have let that happen. You know me better than that.” She hesitated, then said, “All right. Sure. I fixed it so you’d be trapped. True. Only I didn’t think anybody’d be killed. Ed and I were arguing in the office when Ray came back with the coffee. Jesus. Ray went out of his head. He saw what was going on. Ed had the money in his hands. He’d been drinking, said he’d been drinking with you. He got his gun out when Ray yelled—Ray yelled like hell, you know—and started running out of the place. With that coffee—and Ed simply shot him. I don’t think Ed really believed he’d done it.”
“There’s just one thing: why? Why, Evis?”
She went on speaking in that same deadly, washed-out monotone. “Then I talked Ed into coming down here. It’s where I had to come. I guess you knew that. Right away, it was like old times, with Berk after us. He saw us together the way we were, and Ed was getting pretty bad, by then. He didn’t want to take no for an answer any more.”
“So you decided it would be best to tell Berk. After all, maybe he could help. Right?”
“Yes. Certainly. I couldn’t keep Ed away from me. And, honestly, I never cared much for Ed Fowler. Berk was a friend. He’d always been a friend, no matter what you think.”
“So he left you here alone and he’s a friend?”
She sighed. “What’s the use? How can I explain that to you. You can’t understand—you never could. Sure, I kind of hate him for leaving me here the way he did.”
“Kind of hate him.”
“I understand him!”
“How often did you promise him?
“I wanted that money, Lee. I still wanted it, even when Berk got his dirty hands on it. But it’s gone now. That’s the way the ball bounces. It’s all gone out of me, too. Berk Kaylor wanted the same things I did. Only he just waited for them to happen. Lots of people down here are like that. That’s why they never leave this damned, stinking, horrible country.”
I let her go to it.
“I wanted a lot of things. Things you could never really give me. I know now it was all foolishness, but I didn’t know it then. People make mistakes, Lee.”
“Sure.”
“I wanted a name. A name as unlike my own as anything I could get. I wanted to be away from where I lived—out where you read about—those places. All the glass and blue skies—I had to get out.”
“You got out. That’s for sure.”
“Not the way I wanted. I wanted everything I couldn’t have. Oh, I finally got it, only the wrong way. I didn’t have it for long. I had to come back here—the way I wanted to come back. I had the paper—the money. But that wasn’t right, either. I wanted the things it bought. I wanted to come back here and show them all the things I had; things I’d dreamed of having, only it never was right. They didn’t know what I was talking about. Rich,” she said. “It was crazy. I know that now. But I couldn’t stop myself—everything went wrong.”
“So now what?”
She moved faintly on the blanket, lifting her hips for comfort, but still holding her face away from me. Then she rolled on her back and blinked at me. “There’s nothing left,” she said. “Nothing that anybody wants. You don’t want me. I don’t care about anything any more.” She kept looking at me that way. She smiled briefly, then turned her head away. “The only thing is, I still love you. Not that it matters. You see?”
“You let Kaylor kill Ed Fowler, Evis. You’re saying these things, yet you were along when two murders were committed.”
“I know.”
I knelt down on the blanket. She did not stir. It seemed as if she were holding her breath.
“Berk had me take Ed out there,” she said. “So we could wait. Wait for Berk, that is. I wasn’t supposed to tell Ed, and I didn’t. I didn’t know what Berk had planned. I thought maybe we’d just leave Ed in the boat. Berk went over to my folks', because word was already out you were down here and he had to know how things stood. He found you there. So right away my crazy sister Rona tells you everything.”
“She didn’t.”
“Don’t kid with me. I’ve had all I can stand. Berk heard her.” She looked at
me. “Rona’s in love with you, Lee. She’s been crazy in love with you as long as I have. That’s the one other thing I can feel—hate for Rona!”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s be truthful,” she said. “What’s the cost at a time like this? Berk told me everything. How she ripped her clothes off. Did you like that, Lee? Sure, you did. And how she flung herself at you! She’s an animal when it comes to you.”
There was sharp bitterness in her voice now.
“She carries your picture around between her breasts, where it stays warm—warm,” she repeated. “Hot. Nice? You like that?”
“Shut it off.”
“She sleeps with your picture. In a little gold locket. I’ve seen her kiss that picture—mouth it—laughing at me. It was a snapshot of the two of us, taken when you met me down on the pier, remember? And she cut me off and saved you.” She nearly laughed then. “She got your head, but I had all the rest, and I had what she really wanted. I used to tell her all the time. It made her plenty mad.”
“Used to tell her?”
“Oh. You wouldn’t know—how could you? She wrote me a lot, and I could read between the lines. Jealous as hell, she was. Wrote at least once a week. She’d keep asking about you, everything she could. She tried not to let me know, but it was easy to see in the letters. I’d write back all sorts of things about you, tantalizing her.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
“I felt mean,” she said. “That’s all gone now. I hate her—but this isn’t what you want to hear, is it?”
“No.”
“Well, when Berk came out where Ed and I were waiting in the boat, he just shot Ed. He came up in the air boat and just took his revolver and shot him. Like he’d shoot a snake—anything. Ed screamed—he screamed awful.”
“Only you understand Berk. That’s swell!”
“Yes. He left me here. ‘You’ll get out all right,’ he said. ‘Take care of yourself,’ he said. ‘I don’t need you any more, I reckon.’ That’s the way he said it. He said, ‘I can buy all the likes of you I’ll ever want and then some. They’ll come a-running.’” She laughed softly. “Anyway, he got all that money—took it away from me, and now he’s gone.”