Murder for the Bride

by John D. MacDonald

  The courage born of anger ebbed fast, and uncertainty began to take over. The plan was stupid. I was casting myself as the indomitable hero, master of all situations. His strength was as the strength of ten … It was the sort of plan of action you can make after seeing too many Errol Flynn movies.

  I opened the door and stepped out onto the street, with some half-baked idea of concealing myself and then trying to follow Straw Hat, even though I suspected that tailing him would be a trick even a professional couldn’t manage.

  Straw Hat came around the hood of the car. I took a step backward, sensed somebody behind me, half turned, and saw a heavy man in a dark, warm suit and a felt hat. He was silhouetted against that part of the sky which held the last pink glow of sunset, and I could not see his features.

  “Sorry we took so long,” Straw Hat said. “Get in the car.”

  They both moved closer. I looked across the street. I could barely see the brown-armed girl, still in the window. Her boy friend had gone. She was not looking toward us. A stoop-shouldered musician was trudging by, carrying a trumpet case, watching the sidewalk a yard in front of his toes.

  “We can talk right here,” I said.

  “We can talk better in the car.” All of Straw Hat’s uncertainties were gone. The toy had been wound up again, the spring tight, the shiny wheels spinning.

  “Don’t make us put you in the car. That’s childish, Bryant.”

  He opened the door. I got in. He pushed against my shoulder and I slid over into the passenger’s seat. The man in the dark suit got into the back. Straw Hat got behind the wheel.

  “We’re going to make a deal,” Straw Hat said.

  “Maybe I won’t like the terms.”

  “We release the girl. A man is going to commit suicide. He’ll leave a note confessing to three murders. We’ll give you ten thousand cash. In return, you tell us where the paper is. We’ll hold you until we have it, then turn the two of you loose.”

  “If I could take your word, it would sound good.”

  I tensed as he casually yanked the gun from the shoulder holster. He tossed it in my lap. It slid down between my thighs.

  “There’s a guarantee of good faith, Bryant.”

  I picked it up. It was an automatic, not a large caliber. It fitted into my hand with vicious efficiency.

  “Don’t wave it around. Put it away.”

  I put it back in my lap. I found the clip catch. The clip was full. I pushed it back into place. I pulled the slide back, eased it forward. He reached over and clicked the safety on.

  “Satisfied?”

  “Yes,” I said. I wasn’t satisfied. I had the feeling that the weapon was just about as deadly as a Roy Rogers cap gun. It isn’t much work to remove the firing pin from some automatics. “Where is the Townsend girl?”

  “We’ll take you there now.”

  “Where is she? As long as we’re going there, is there any harm in telling me?”

  “She’s in a shack about halfway between Westwego and the Huey P. Long Bridge. Does that keep you happy?”

  He started the car. For all his personal dainty precision, he was a poor driver. He had no driving rhythm. I kept trying to push my right foot through the floor boards. He raced the motor and slipped the clutch whenever he shifted. And once again I found myself heading out Airline Highway. He turned down into Jefferson Highway and then went three quarters of the way around the circle and gunned the car for the bridge. The man in the back seat did not speak. I turned and looked at him. He sat in the middle of the seat, leaning forward, his hands on his knees. Street lights flicked across a flat expanse of cheek, a flat wedge of nose.

  At the crossroads on the far side of the river we turned left toward Westwego. He tromped hard on the gas and kept the pedal down. It is desolate country, flat, wet, swampy, overgrown with scrub. The small houses were set in clearings that had been halfheartedly hacked out of the scrub. Our headlights struck the clots of mist that drifted across the narrow highway. There was still enough light in the western sky to pale the orange-yellow of the windows in the small houses.

  I knew that I had to find out, before we arrived.

  The motor roar was loud. I slipped the gun out of my lap and held it pointing down, wedged between the seat and the side of the door. The motor noise and wind roar muffled the sound of the safety as I clicked it off. I pulled on the trigger. I could barely hear the louder click. I slid the gun back into my lap.

  “How much farther is it?” I asked.

  “Half a mile.”

  Once the car stopped I was through. A nice unmarked grave back in the scrub. And a lot of unpleasantness before I could fill it. Very possibly a double grave. I wondered what would happen if I yanked on the wheel. We were going about sixty-five. Their chances of living through it were just as good as mine. Maybe one in 20.

  I shifted my left leg closer to him, pulled it back a bit. There was a second thing that could be done. He would start to slow down when we were approaching the place. I doubted that Jill was there. To slow down, he would first take his foot from the gas. I watched his right foot in the reflected glow of the dash lights. I reversed the automatic so that I held it by the barrel. This was going to give me a better chance, I hoped. Not a good chance, but a better chance. I risked a quick look in the back. The dark-suited one still sat as before.

  Just as I looked back, Straw Hat took his foot off the gas. I slammed my left foot on the brake as hard as I could, jamming it down to the floor, and in the same split second I moved forward so that my right shoulder was braced against the dash, my head against the glass.

  A Ford has enormous brake-band surface in relation to its weight. The big man in the dark suit came forward over the seat like a projectile. Figure it out. We were going sixty-five and I locked the wheels. Dark Suit kept right on going sixty-five. That’s about a hundred feet a second. One eighth the speed of a .45 slug. I had planned to hit him with the automatic as he lurched forward. But the force pinned me so firmly against the dash that I couldn’t lift my arm. Besides, there was no need of it. He tried to drive the rear-vision mirror out through the windshield with the top of his head, before falling face down between us. It all happened in fractional parts of a second. Yet each fragment seemed clearly divided from the other fragments of disaster. Across the man’s broad back, I could see Straw Hat fighting an oddly misshapen steering wheel, his mouth sagging open. My foot had slid off the brake and the unconscious man pinned my left leg with his weight. The car was still moving, probably at about thirty miles an hour. I tried to hit Straw Hat with the automatic. I missed his head and hit his shoulder. As I tried again, and as he lifted his right arm to protect his head, the left wheels of the car dropped off the side of the road. It was enough of a drop to wrench the wheel out of his left hand. The car dipped down into the ditch and the soft dirt wrenched the front wheels to the right. I felt the car going over and tried to brace myself. It seemed to go over very slowly. For one instant I floated toward Straw Hat, then we struck and I was hammered down against him. Up and down lost all meaning. Something smashed against my head. I was probably out for not longer than two or three seconds. I came to in a dark world. A silent world. The lights were out and the motor was dead. My left cheek was against a cool metallic surface and something heavy was across the backs of my thighs, doubling me up into an awkward position. Insects made a singsong in the night, and the smell of vegetation was damp and heavy.

  A droning sound came from a remote distance. It increased into a shrill roar, then whipped by with a flash of reflected light, a ripping sound, a diminishing moan into the distance. The reflected light gave me a chance to orient myself. The car was back on its wheels. The door on the driver’s side was open. My cheek was on the running board. My legs were canted up on the seat, with the weight across them. I tested my arms. They worked. Three cars went by, close together. As they did so, I lifted my head. Straw Hat lay crumpled face down in the bushes, his heels a foot from my face. I judged we were about
fifty feet from the highway, and the dimness of the light reaching me indicated that we must have rolled across brush that had sprung up again. I gingerly touched my head. Over the left ear was a long swollen welt, damp to the touch.

  I grasped the chrome edge of the narrow running board with my hands and pulled myself forward. I wriggled my legs and made a few more inches. I reached out into the blackness and found the base of a bush, grasped the main stalk, and pulled myself farther. There was a thud and shift of weight behind me and my legs came free. I crawled out on my hands and knees, then stood up and leaned against the side of the car. A truck pounded by, and I saw the crushed and dented roof of the car. I found a match and leaned back in and lit it. The heavy man had slid part way to the floor. His hat was off. His bald head was inches from the brake pedal. I looked at the top of his bald head and all I could think of was that silly story about how Columbus made an egg stand on end. The match burned my fingers and I dropped it. I reached in and forced myself to touch his body. When, gases trapped in his body made a distinct sound, I yanked my hands back. It was several seconds before I could continue. He had, as I had hoped, a gun. It was a stub-barreled revolver and it was crammed into his hip pocket. I ripped it free. The mosquitoes had begun to tell all their friends. Little darts of fire were piercing my neck and bare arms and ankles.

  I rolled Straw Hat over and lit another match. Blood had run from the corner of his mouth. He was breathing. I found his pulse. It was strong and steady. I searched him. He had no other weapon.

  Maybe it was hysteria. I felt the laughter well up in me. I couldn’t stop it. It came out. It hurt my throat, strained my taped ribs. I fell helplessly back against the side of the car. The laughter made a flat, harsh sound in the night. I was laughing at everything in the world, and mostly at one Dillon Bryant, who happened to be dumb enough and clumsy enough to remove these two professionals from the field of operations.

  I had stopped thinking clearly. I plunged through the thin line of brush and fell to my knees in the ditch, still laughing, holding the revolver in my hand. I climbed up onto the highway and headed in the direction we had been going, my left arm clamped around my middle to hold tight the pain of the crazy laughter.

  The headlights coming behind me brought me back to my senses. I shoved the gun in my pants pocket. I tried to walk as though I were from one of the houses, as though I were taking an evening stroll. After it had gone by, I tucked the shirt inside Tram’s voluminous trousers, opened the last visible button, and shoved the revolver in to lie against my skin. I wondered why I hadn’t put a bullet in the back of Straw Hat’s head. For someone accused of killing two, and who had actually killed one, what would another one matter? It wouldn’t be like killing a person. It would be merely like breaking the spring on a wind-up toy.

  Peepers chanted in the swamplands. The stars began to look bright. The heavy air was saturated with moisture.

  Ahead, on the left, I saw the feeble light of the first house. I approached it cautiously, angled toward it, and picked my way across a yard littered with junk. I moved to the side of the house, edged over to the window, and looked in. A woman in a dirty slip lay on her back on a couch, reading a comic book. A naked kid played on the linoleum floor. A stringy man with yellowish skin slept in a rocking chair, stripped to the waist. They were tuned in to a quiz show. I could hear a voice saying, “Now, our contestants don’t know this, folks, but that bag hanging there is filled with thirty pounds of whipped cream.” And then he laughed like everything.

  I backed away into the darkness and headed out toward the road. I’d gone only a few steps when, right behind me, I heard a sound like water being sucked down an open drain. I spun just as the monstrous dog came streaking toward me, low to the ground, moving with unmistakable intent. I started to run backward. Just as he jumped for my face, my heels hit something and I went over backward. I had only a moment’s glance at him when he sped through the light that shone from the window, enough to see the unbelievably heavy mastiff head.

  He went over me and landed in jangling trash. I scrambled to my feet and heard his low snarl as he came at me again. There is a way to handle a killer dog. As he springs for your throat, you must grab a front paw as he rises from the ground and then spin and hurl him with all your strength in the direction of the leap. But I wasn’t going to be able to see a front paw, much less grab it.

  The front door slapped back against the frame shack and an oblong of orange light shone out into the yard.

  “Mack!” the stringy man snapped.

  The dog skidded to a stop two feet from me, his shoulder muscles tensed, a rumbling snarl in his throat. I could see him clearly now. I backed away. The dog moved at the same speed.

  “What you doin’ in my yard?” the stringy man demanded.

  I turned and gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “Got the wrong house, apparently. No harm done, is there?”

  The woman in the dirty slip stood behind the man, bent a little so that she could peer under the arm he had braced against the doorframe.

  “What house you want?”

  “The next one up the line, I guess.”

  I had the feeling of loss. I pulled my left forearm against my stomach. The revolver was gone. I had apparently lost it when I fell.

  “When the dog chased me, I fell. I lost something. You got a light so I can look for it?”

  “Got a lantern,” he said grumpily. “Git the lantern, May.” He moved slowly out into the yard.

  “Some dog you got there.”

  “Have to keep him chained daytimes. What you lose, mister?”

  “Cigarette case. Had it in my hand.”

  The mosquitoes were after me again. They didn’t seem to bother the lean, hollow-chested man. The woman came out with the lantern. The dog’s eyes showed green in the light, green with a tinge of yellow. The lantern chimney was badly smoked, and she held it away from her side as she padded, barefooted, across the bare cindery dirt of the yard. The light escaped around the tin top of the lantern. A beam of it struck her hand that grasped the wire handle. It shone on the handmade silver ring I had brought from Venezuela and given to Jill Townsend. Jill had had it made smaller to fit the third finger of her right hand. The woman had it on her little finger. The light touched her vacant doughy face, her eyebrows puckered to a hairline, the shapeless body that stretched the sleazy slip.

  Chapter Fifteen

  There are moments when time, as a progression from one incident to the next, ceases to exist. I saw the ring on her hand, and it was as though we were three figures in a diorama, one of those little three-sided boxes. We were frozen there, and would remain there forever, for museum visitors to come and peer in at our little box and exclaim at how real the dog looked.

  It was akin to what is supposed to happen in the mind of a man during the instant of death. During that frozen moment I relived the days from the moment of receiving Jill’s letter up to the present moment. And the ring was somehow a symbol of everything that had happened. Jill’s ring, forced onto a pasty finger—just the way my life and Jill’s life had been forced into a new pattern, a pattern of strangeness and violence, with unreality superimposed on the sanity of everyday living much like a double-exposed negative.

  I moved back to where I had fallen. The dog retreated, maintaining that same spacing between us. I saw that I had fallen over a rusted bedspring. I turned so that I kept the shadow of my body on the place where the revolver might be. I saw it, the curved butt protruding from a coil of the spring. The dog snarled as I bent over and grasped it. My idea was to spring back and shoot the dog, to pick the gun up slowly and then explode into action.

  As I pulled the gun free, the dog sprang without a sound, ignoring the man’s sharp command. He jumped not at my throat, but at my right wrist. His jaws closed on my wrist, not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to hold me absolutely motionless, as though caught by a vise.

  The woman moved to the side and the lantern made oi
led blue highlights on the gun. The man cursed softly and said, “Drop it, mister.” It dropped back onto the springs. He bent over and picked it up and said conversationally, “Leggo, Mack.”

  The dog released my wrist and backed away, still intent on me. I wiped my wet wrist on the side of the linen trousers. My fingers were slightly numbed and they prickled as the circulation flowed back into them.

  “What ya doin’ in my yard with a gun?” the man demanded.

  “I came for the girl. I wasn’t sure which house it was.”

  “Hole up that light, May,” the man demanded.

  She took a step nearer me and held the light high. The man studied my face. “Where’s the big car ya come in?”

  “Down the road a way,” I answered truthfully.

  “Who sent ya?” he demanded.

  “A sandy-haired man with a sunburned nose, about this tall. He couldn’t come and he sent me. I wasn’t sure of the house. That’s why I came in and looked in the window. He’d described you and I was coming around to the door when that damn dog came at me.”

  “What’s my name?”

  “You know better than to use names.”

  “S’on the mailbox, anyways, Sipe,” the woman said, speaking for the first time. Her voice was nasal. “Ain’t I seen him somewheres?”

  “How the hell do I know?” he said irritably. “I don’t like none of this. There’s no girl here, mister.”

  “Then where did your wife get her ring, Sipe?”

  The woman made a small gasp and covered the ring with her left hand. Sipe turned sharply toward her. “Didn’t I tell you not to take nothing off her?”

  “Yes, but—”

  He swung a lean arm at her. His hard palm cracked across her mouth and she fell down. The lantern went out. Sipe cursed her. “Git up and git on in the house, May,” he said softly when his anger had run out.

  “You better bring your car up here, mister.”

  “I can walk her down to it,” I said.

  He laughed without mirth. “She ain’t doin’ much walkin’ tonight. You got the rest of the money?”